TOP STORY: SCHOOLS AND RELIGION: They’re taking their faith to school

c. 1996 Religion News Service CONYERS, Ga. (RNS)-It’s 7:45 Monday morning at Heritage High School in Conyers, Ga., and from the home economics classroom come the sounds of hymns and prayers. Outside, throngs of students pass by with backpacks slung over their shoulders, apparently oblivious that worship is going on within the confines of this […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

CONYERS, Ga. (RNS)-It’s 7:45 Monday morning at Heritage High School in Conyers, Ga., and from the home economics classroom come the sounds of hymns and prayers.

Outside, throngs of students pass by with backpacks slung over their shoulders, apparently oblivious that worship is going on within the confines of this public school 30 miles east of Atlanta.”Our God is faithful and able to keep us holy, to walk us boldly into the land,”sing 30 members of the Fellowship of Christian Youth, assembled for their daily gathering.


They are taking their faith to school, declaring their belief in Jesus, pledging sexual abstinence and decrying alcohol and drugs.

On one level, these teens-most of whom are evangelical Christians-view their daily gatherings as a comfort zone, a place to be among friends who share their religious beliefs.

But they have another goal. They are part of a movement of overtly religious students who hope to convince others to adopt their moral code.”This is a lot easier part of the day,”said 15-year-old Kamden Robb, a ninth-grader who attends the independent Bible club at Heritage High.”When you’re out there, there’s different groups of people who think different things,”he said.

Though negative role models proliferate in media and real life, there are plenty of teen-agers-religious or not-who want to avoid promiscuity, alcohol and drugs. And as evangelical ministries step up efforts to encourage teens to share their moral and religious standards with others, educators and civil liberties experts say tensions are inevitable.

But there was nothing but enthusiasm at a recent”True Love Waits-Thru the Roof”rally in Atlanta. Thousands of kids cheered as a chain of cards pledging sexual abstinence, signed by 350,000 students worldwide, was hoisted from the floor to the ceiling of the 27-story Georgia Dome.”True Love Waits,”is a nationwide teen chastity program established in 1993 by the Southern Baptist Sunday School Board and embraced by a variety of Christian denominations. The Atlanta event is part of a series of efforts that will culminate on Valentine’s Day 1997, when public-school Bible clubs across the country plan to decorate school lawns with cards of students who have pledged to remain chaste until their wedding day.

Such demonstrations are as legal as pep rallies under the Equal Access Act, which since 1984 has allowed student-initiated religious clubs to meet before and after school. But just as these students have the legal opportunity to meet, pray and pledge sexual abstinence on school grounds, their peers have the right not to participate and school officials are obliged to prevent coercive behavior.

Although students may have a constitutional right to speak their minds on campus, Lee Berg, a specialist in human and civil rights for the National Education Association, warns that the emphasis on abstinence could create tensions between those who sign up for”True Love Waits”and those who don’t.”The danger is that … students who wish not to participate in the campaign are often branded as sinners”or assumed by their peers to be sexually active, Berg said. The campaign could actually be harmful, he added, if it creates a”greater sense of guilt”among those teens who are sexually active.


Oliver Thomas, legal counsel for the National Council of Churches, foresees discomfort for the religious teens as well.”I think it’s good for kids to learn that there’s a price to being faithful and sometimes being different is uncomfortable,”he said.

Kamden Robb has paid that price. He recalled being teased in health class last semester for being in Fellowship of Christian Youth.”`We see you in that group every morning,'”he remembered his classmates saying.”They’re just all over me. They have these little stereotypes.” Robb and other group members say their peers watch them to make sure they maintain the high standards they’ve set for themselves. Some outside the group-religious and non-religious alike-consider them pious”Bible thumpers”or judgmental”holy rollers”who place themselves above the average student on campus.

Eleventh-grader Michelle Le said there are many students like herself who go to church but choose not to be part of the Bible club because it seems like a”perfect little group.” Heritage High Assistant Principal Andy Symons gets questions from students and teachers about whether the group’s on-campus presence violates the principle of church-state separation.”They’re irritated because this kind of thing’s going on in the building,”he said. Symons responds by reminding them of the rights granted by the federal Equal Access Act.”The kids that I see in there don’t seem to really fit into the rest of the population here-and I don’t mean that in a negative way,”Symons said of the Bible club.”They’re going to get a lot of flak for being church people. … The good part about that group is they are putting their moral values out on the line for people to see, and that offends some people.” In the northwestern suburb of Powder Springs, members of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes at McEachern High School have a different dilemma. The group, a well-established tradition at the school, draws more than 200 students-athletes and non-athletes alike-to its Friday”huddles”with skits, speakers and a Scripture lesson or two.

The fellowship, designed to be a bridge between teens and the church, is so popular that some of its members risk being considered hypocrites when they don’t practice what they preach-especially when it comes to drinking.

Sophomore Kelly Ridings doesn’t belong to the group, but she’s noticed that some of the same kids who denounce drinking at Fellowship of Christian Athletes meetings frequent parties attended by students from the school.”They preach about all this stuff, but it never really happens,”she said during a lunch break in the cafeteria.

Fellowship officers acknowledge that they have to deal with the reality that some of their members aren’t perfect. “There are people involved in FCA that are big partiers,”said co-president Alicia Ripley.”We don’t condemn them because that just turns them away.” (STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS.)


The Fellowship of Christian Athletes, one of the larger Christian organizations that work with teens, has grown from 3,500″huddles”five years ago to 5,600 today, meeting in public schools and private homes around the country.”See You at the Pole”a back-to-school prayer rally promoted by about 80 denominations, ministries and legal groups, draws Christian youngsters for annual September prayer sessions on school campuses.

And in April, a two-day evangelism blitz, dubbed”48 Hours,”will ask students from grade school to college to share their Christian faith with a friend or relative. The effort is endorsed by a variety of evangelical groups including Campus Crusade for Christ, the Southern Baptist Convention and Focus on the Family, the Colorado-based ministry headed by radio psychologist James Dobson. “There’s a yearning on the school campuses across the country for something different, a platform for them to be able to stand up and count for something,”said Kevin Harlan, senior vice president for programs of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, based in Kansas City, Mo.”I’m real hesitant to say the word `revival’ because I don’t know if that’s what we’re in the middle of, but I do sense that God is doing a work in the teen culture today in the midst of what looks like a very dark and bleak time.” Adults who lead youth ministries compare these activist teens to those involved in the”Jesus movement”that swept Southern California and other Western states in the early 1970s, when many young people became vocal about their faith. Some public schools allowed outright promotion of Christianity; others banned all religious expression.

Today, armed with the Equal Access Act-and recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions affirming it and allowing churches to use school auditoriums-some Christian teens are distributing evangelistic tracts on campus and urging their peers to join church activities.

Rallies like Atlanta’s”True Love Waits-Thru the Roof”are spurring teens to further action.

Allison Guinn, a 15-year-old from Erwin, Tenn., was part of the rally, wearing a silver ring on her wedding finger, an emblem of her decision to”stay pure until I get married.” Guinn said she listens patiently to her peers who think premarital sex is all right”if you really, really love each other.” While some of her peers don’t share her faith and probably wouldn’t want to sign a pledge to shun premarital sex, Guinn remains resolute.”I feel very strongly about this,”she said of the abstinence campaign.”I think more people should make the commitment.”

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