Teacher seizes candy canes, says 'Jesus is not allowed' | The Daily Caller

This is another story that has been sitting for a few (err) weeks. Although I haven't seen any follow-ups as of yet concerning the demands made by Robert H. Tyler of Faith & Freedom, I have been busy searching. You see when this originally hit I was thinking why are they rehashing an old case? But I realized this was not the issue.

A few years back I read about a case out of Plano, Texas that involved a third-grader who was prohibited from handing out candy-cane pens with religious messages to fellow classmates. Four families filed a federal lawsuit over that issue and similar incidents. I was searching for the resolution of that case. To my surprise that case is STILL ongoing. Oh and for the record, it began in 2003 (http://planoblog.dallasnews.com/2013/07/yet-another-turn-in-the-plano-isd-candy-cane-case.html). So yea I can understand why the school choose the path that that did.

What I don't understand is how a so-called lawyer can ignore the DOE 1998 Guidelines on Religious Expression in the Public Schools which effectively state: "Public schools can neither foster religion nor preclude it. Our public schools must treat religion with fairness and respect and vigorously protect religious expression as well as the freedom of conscience of all other students. In so doing our public schools reaffirm the First Amendment and enrich the lives of their students." Specifically in regards to religious literature: "Students have a right to distribute religious literature to their schoolmates on the same terms as they are permitted to distribute other literature that is unrelated to school curriculum or activities. Schools may impose the same reasonable time, place, and manner or other constitutional restrictions on distribution of religious literature as they do on nonschool literature generally, but they may not single out religious literature for special regulation."

Another thing I just can;t seem to grasp, why would they be fighting for the peddling a myth? I'm not sure which Christianized version of the candy cane story was being presented: the 'identification used by European Christians during a time of persecution" version, the "choirmaster in Cologne, Germany" version or the "candymaker in Indiana" version. All three versions of the narrative have historical and factual errors. Sound familiar,,, sigh!!


Teacher seizes candy canes, says 'Jesus is not allowed' | The Daily Caller

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A Teacher Slandered - Another view from a personal perspective:

Such behavior would be entirely unbecoming of Christians even if the teacher in question were all the things she has been called. In fact, she is herself a pious and confessional Christian, though it would be impossible to discern as much from the coverage of much Christian media.

I know this because I was present at her baptism; I participated in the catechesis leading to her reception into the theologically (and, overwhelmingly, politically) conservative Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod; I preached at her wedding; my wife and I are godparents to her children, as she and her husband (who is himself on the faculty of a Christian university) are to our youngest. Needless to say, I have complete confidence that her far less dramatic version of events is much the more accurate account.