N.C. Public School Cancels Religious Rally After AU Protest.

Officials at a North Carolina high school agreed to cancel an appearance by a fundamentalist Christian evangelist after receiving a complaint from Americans United.

Greg B. Williams, principal of New Bern High School, sent letters last April to ministers of local churches advising them that a Christian speaker, R.V. Brown, would appear at the high school in October during school hours at an assembly for students and staff.

Williams invited the religious leaders to offer financial support and "prayer support" for the event. The principal's letter, sent on school letterhead, opens with the phrase "Greetings; in the name of the Lord! ... This is a time of revival and thanksgiving for the works that the Lord has done. One area that is in need of both is our area schools."

Continues the letter, "Schools serves [sic] as the place where adolescents receive many of the morals and beliefs that will affect the way they live their lives. Many students walk through our doors and never know the love and goodness of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Many never see the impact of good, solid Christian rolemodels [sic]. The lack of Christian involvement in their lives, [sic] leads to behavior problems, bad attitudes that gets [sic] in the way of education for students and teachers."

When Americans United's East Carolina Chapter got wind of the letter, it reported the incident to the national AU office and requested help. On Aug. 4, Americans United Litigation Counsel Ayesha Khan wrote to William Rivenbark, superintendent of the Craven County Schools, and Carrs Ipock, chairman of the county school board, and warned them that school sponsorship of a religious assembly is unconstitutional.

"The Principal's letter, as well as the scheduled events, constitute gross violations of constitutional principles," wrote Khan. "The law requires all units of government to refrain from action that endorses, favors or promotes religion. This concern is heightened in the context of the public school because students are legally required to attend school and are thus a `captive audience,' and because schoolchildren are considerably more impressionable than adults."

School officials subsequently announced that Brown's appearance had been cancelled.

In other news about religion in public schools:

* A small, rural school district in central California dropped its plan to use textbooks rife with fundamentalist Christian dogma after the American Civil Liberties Union threatened to sue.

The controversial books were provided to the Belridge Elementary School in McKittrick by an anonymous donor. Principal Steven Wentland, who critics say is on a religious crusade to infuse the school with a narrow brand of sectarian beliefs, agreed to use them at the school, which serves children in grades kindergarten through eighth grade.

Parent Veronica Van Ry complained and sought legal backing from the ACLU, which filed suit on Aug. 24. Wentland originally planned to contest the lawsuit and lined up legal backing from the Pacific Justice Institute, a California-based Religious Right group, but in mid October he abruptly announced that the school would drop the books.

Wentland told The Washington Post that he would return "every last flash card" to A Beka Books, Inc., publisher of the material. "We'll pull them out."

A Beka, based in Pensacola, Fla., produces books and other materials that are used in many fundamentalist Christian schools and are also popular among fundamentalist home schoolers. The Post reported that Van Ry, a retired Methodist minister, sought legal action after she examined the textbooks and found them laced with fundamentalist dogma.

A Beka describes itself as "unashamedly Christian and traditional in its approach." A history book published by the company asserts that "God allowed America to remain hidden from Europe until Columbus discovered it" and also states, "The Renaissance revived the classical literature and scientific ideas of ancient Greece and Rome and inspired beautiful art, but it also promoted pagan ideas and immorality."

The book goes on to state that ancestors of Native Americans came to North America after Noah's flood when they were cast out of the Tower of Babel. It states that "the early American Indians, like most other people, had forsaken the things that their ancestors knew about God. Their stories about the Creation and the Flood were not accurate." Another book calls Mormonism, the Jehovah's Witness faith and Christian Science "cults" and disparages non-Christian faiths such as Islam. One of the history books is titled America: Land I Love in Christian Perspective.

* A Santa Fe, Texas, high school student offered a prayer before a football game Sept. 3 after a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order forbidding school officials from punishing any student for praying. The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year that group prayers before football games are unconstitutional. After that ruling, Superintendent Richard Ownby warned that any student who violated the court order would be punished.

Seventeen-year-old Marian Lynn Ward filed suit, saying the school was violating her free-speech rights. U.S. District Judge Sim Lake agreed, and issued an order, effective for 10 days, forbidding the school from punishing any student who led prayer. By forbidding prayers, Lake wrote, the school had "clearly preferred atheism over any religious faith."

* Advocates of school-sponsored prayer in California are working to collect 600,000 signatures on petitions to win a spot on the November 2000 ballot for an initiative called the "Prayer and Pledge of Allegiance in Public Schools" measure. The initiative would amend the state constitution to require public schools to reserve at least one minute at the beginning of the day for "voluntary" prayer and would also mandate that the pledge be recited daily.

The measure's primary backer is Carl Towe, a political consultant. Towe insists that the project is necessary because some public schools have been denying students the right to prayer. "This has nothing to do with the separation of church and state," he said. "This is more [about] religious freedom and discrimination."

Observers note that even if the amendment gets enough signatures and wins a majority vote, it would still face a court challenge and would likely be found unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court declared mandatory prayer in public schools unconstitutional in 1962.

* School prayer boosters are active in New Jersey, too, where Bea Cerkez, former mayor of Deptford, is circulating petitions to change New Jersey law to allow vocal, mandatory prayer in schools. Cerkez, who claims to have collected 10,000 signatures so far, seems undaunted that her proposal is blatantly unconstitutional. "I don't agree with the [school prayer decision] as it reads," she told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "[Required prayer] should never have been taken out of schools, and the thousands of us will be able to put it back in."

A handful of state legislators have endorsed Cerkez's crusade.