Bill to Allow Religious Expressions at School One Vote Away from Becoming Law

The Tennessee Senate approved a bill today to allow students to cite their religious beliefs in doing schoolwork and to allow prayer groups to be formed as easily as a chess club.

Senator Kerry Roberts of Springfield says students should be allowed to express their “religious world view” in doing school work. His bill also sets up a right to form religious clubs.

“Under this bill, a student may organize student prayer groups, religious clubs, or other religious gatherings to the same extent that students are permitted to organize other non-curricular student activities and groups.”

Last year, in Roberts’ home county of Sumner, the American Civil Liberties Union brought a federal lawsuit against the school board to bar the “promotion and endorsement of religious activity” including teacher-led prayers and proselytizing by a particular youth minister in a school lunchroom. The two sides reached a settlement in December.

Roberts says his proposed law would let schools and teachers know what is allowed and not.

The bill passed the Senate 29 to zero.

The House version is awaiting a floor vote before the bill can go to the governor.

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Memphis Senator Beverly Marrero said she was unconvinced by arguments for the measure.

“Aren’t our schools basically supposed to be secular? Aren’t we supposed to have some separation of church and state? It looks to me like this is the kind of thing that I did in Sunday School.”

The House version is officially held on the parliamentary “desk” in the House, from which it can be brought up and voted on as early as tomorrow (Thursday).

In arguing for the bill Roberts used the example of a student writing about the decline of society and using the evidence of the “nation of Israel turning away from God.”

Later he elaborated to a reporter.

“Of course in the Prophets and the Old Testament, the repeated warnings to the nation of Israel to … leave idolatry and things like that, and return back to God, and of course, that’s…for anyone who grows up in a religious household, whether Christian or Jewish, they are familiar with this history, and it is something that really shapes their world view. So to have somebody come to school and to say that they can’t write about their view of the world is a form of censorship.”

So a reporter asked if that put the public school teacher in the position of judging whether the student got the Biblical references right? Sure, says Roberts.

“If they’re using the document as an historic document and they incorrectly document it, then they have failed in that assignment to reference material, and it would be no different than if they were referencing the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights, or any other document and mis-attributed it, or had a wrong reference.”

The House sponsor of the bill, SB 3632 Roberts/ HB 3616, Rep. Andy Holt of Dresden, has previously said that he thought every group had been given the right to express their beliefs “except Christians.”

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