Posted on 07/01/2002 12:34:51 PM PDT by SkunkPunk
Last night I attended Calvary Chapel in Fountain Valley, home of Pastor Chuck Smith, founder of the original Calvary Chapel. He told us that Michael Newdow's daughter is a born again Christian and attends a Calvary Christian school. Mr. Newdow was the atheist who brought the Pledge of Allegiance ban lawsuit to court claiming his daughter's rights were violated because of a reference to God in the pledge. Chuck Smith was told of this through a sister Calvary Chapel and got a hold of his contacts in the media. The daughter will now appear on the Today show later this week to denounce her fathers lawsuit. Calvary will release this information to the press later today.
Then why was the suit brought against the Elk Grove school district?
Michael Newdow, a retired surgeon whose case to ban the phrase was supported, then suspended, by a Californian court this week, prompted angry criticism in a country where religion is theoretically barred from government life.From The Plain Dealer:
Dr. Newdow, a single father who brought the suit on behalf of his eight-year-old daughter, received death threats after the court's decision that the word God in the daily school recitation was unconstitutional. "Shame on you" and "You Commie bastard", were some of the milder messages. One of the most extreme was left by a woman who said: "I hope you and your daughter go to hell. People are going to get even. I hope you suffer."
Newdow's complaint, filed ostensibly on behalf of a daughter who attends a public school, is that by its mere mention of the deity, the pledge flunks the Establishment Clause - the constitutional prohibition against Congress creating or endorsing a state religion.From The Times-Picayune:
A lower court, quite properly, threw out his complaint, thus issuing an invitation for the oft-reversed 9th Circuit to prove once again just how far out of touch it is with both the general public and a rational interpretation of the law.
The dissenting judge, Ferdinand Fernandez, got it right: "Such phrases as "In God We Trust," or "under God" have no tendency to establish a religion in this country or to suppress anyone's exercise, or non-exercise, of religion, except in the fevered eye of persons who most fervently would like to drive all tincture of religion out of the public life of our polity."
Even before "under God" was added, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that no kid could be forced to recite the pledge or salute the flag after Jehovah's Witnesses filed suit citing the biblical injunction against worshipping graven images. But teachers in various parts of the country have still been required to begin each day with the pledge for such kids as wish to recite it.From Newsday:
The right to opt out was not enough for Michael Newdow, who filed the suit that led to the apocalyptic ruling. Newdow, an atheist with a daughter in grade school, must have too much time on his hands, for listening to kids recite the Pledge of Allegiance is a brief ordeal that is unlikely to cause even an unbeliever's offspring any lasting psychic trauma.
Two years ago, Newdow, a Sacramento doctor who holds a law degree and represented himself, sued because his second-grade daughter was compelled to listen to her classmates recite the pledge at the Elk Grove school district. On Wednesday, a federal appeals court covering nine Western states declared that reciting the pledge in public schools is unconstitutional because of the words "under God" inserted by Congress in 1954.
Born again? I thought she was in 2nd grade? What does 'born again' mean anyway? Don't you have to have been a christian, lost the faith and then returned before you can be 'born again'? Or is "born again" just being baptised again? I'm confused.
You should read John Chapter 3, at least to verse 21. John 3:3, Jesus answered and said unto [Nicodemus], "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Nicodemus had the same question you have.
Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/06/27/MN244348.DTL
I think you are being scammed. I admit that I do not really understand what all the implications of the term "born again" but I can't begin to imagine how it could apply to an 8 year old child. No Christian denomination that I am aware of would consider a child below the age of reason capable of falling from God's grace and in need of being "born again."
I'm glad this turned out not to be bogus. I sit corrected.
If this is true, and she does not attend a public school, then -- as I doubted on another thread -- Dr. Newdow indeed lied to the court. This statement appears early in the Ninth Circuit's opinion: Newdow does not allege that his daughter's teacher or school district requires his daughter to participate in reciting the Pledge. Rather, he claims that his daughter is injured when she is compelled to "watch and listen as her state-employed teacher in her state-run school leads her classmates in a ritual proclaiming that there is a God, and that our's [sic] is 'one nation under God.'"
but I've noticed a few times lately that this isn't the case anymore.
sorry - but I do not know when it started, or when it stopped.
Sorry. I can't buy that. God makes children perfect. It takes us adults a while to screw them up. 8 years is not enough.
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