Posted on 06/19/2013 6:37:38 AM PDT by marshmallow
Ellery Schempp, at 16 years of age in 1956, stayed in his seat while the rest of his high school class stood to recite the Lord’s prayer; he flipped through the Koran while his homeroom teacher recited ten verses from the Bible. What began as a quite protest in his Philadelphia high school became Supreme Court case Abington v. Schempp, which declared Bible readings and prayer in public schools unconstitutional.
“A sense of fairness motivated the teen. He knew his Jewish friends were uncomfortable and believed the same must be true for other religious minorities and non-believers,” and his parents backed his idea.
“I was touched by the children here,” said Schempp recently after watching a fifty-year anniversary skit performed by 4-13-year-olds, reenacting his classroom protest. “First of all, I noticed that they didn’t know the Lord’s Prayer. You can blame me for that.” Today, Schempp is a Unitarian and self-proclaimed atheist and secular humanist.
Whether or not the children know Schempp by name, they certainly live with his legacy. When told, “Back in those days, we read the Bible in school,” one child who now attends Schempp’s former high school immediately replied, “They can’t do that. It’s against the Constitution.”
(Excerpt) Read more at firstthings.com ...
But America was founded by Christian Europeans... I don’t even know if there were any Jewish people (or other faiths) on the Mayflower!
what an asshat.
He did a lot of good. Everyone these days says that Philadelphia public schools are like an earthly paradise. They’re so safe, the students are so disciplined and successful, the dropout rate is 0% and graduation rates are 100%.
/s
Ah, saw the word “Koran” and I knew from whence the evil came.
War with Islam.
It’s a comin’, folks. Like it or not.
Trouble is...will it happen before, after, or during CW-II.
Things look to be a bit messy in our future.
I have wondered myself how that city became singularly vile.
If he's a Unitarian then he's not an atheist and vice versa.
Just like our top 50 Catholic blue ribbon school here in the midwest...where there is a stone statue with the beatitudes right outside the front door.
Philly is not the Utopia that Chicago is, my friend. Just look how safe and altogether wonderful the Second City is, thanks to its outstanding public schools. And surely Detroit should be mentioned too, in this List of Great Cities to Rear Children.
The Mayflower was not the first or close to the first group to come over. Not all of the Mayflower compact signers were Puritans either. One of my direct ancestors and his family came over on the Mayflower as the King’s Administrator. He had already sailed to and been a part of the founding of Jamestown when he signed onto the Mayflower. The first Jews officially came over with the Dutch in the mid-1600s and some came over, probably disguised as christians to escape persecution, from Spain earlier than that.
Ummm sorry, politics aside, Chicago is a great city.
I'd always believed that decent people were in bed at a decent hour, at least their children were.
The Koran, doesn’t GWB read that too?
Philadelphia - Ben Franklin (or Frank Rizzo) = Vileness
It’s too bad the decision to ban prayer in school came from the bench.
America was the only land in which differing views on Christianity have been widely accepted, and freedom of religion was granted here and only here in the world. Before shutting down Christian prayer in schools, this nation celebrated life in kind acts and prospering one’s fellow man, welcoming children into the world, working hard at becoming first in math, science, literature, the arts, and physical and mental fitness of every kind.
The present fall from the top has coincided exactly with the loss of this fairness to allow Christianity to be shared and its members given incentives and encouragement in matters of spirituality with the creator and being one with the spirit.
I’m not celebrating this jubilee of stamping out prayer by a bench that heretofore had reverence for Christ, his heritage in Mosaic law, and his people who by faith are made one in the spirit of Him who is all good. Sorry.
Indeed!
Revelations 6:8: And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.
What I meant was that the people who came here and eventually forced the issue of independence from England were primarily, Christian Europeans.
The whole freedom and autonomy experiment was THEIRS and to behave NOW, as some do, forcing Christianity out of the equation is so wrong.
Could anyone force Islam OUT of ME societies? No-and shouldn't try. It belongs there and it's primary to their cultural and religious identity.
Well... in the US, Christianity is the primary cultural and religious identy of Americans. There is nothing wrong with this...it's just how it is... and it is mostly who we are. THESE people wrote the Constitution and devised the laws, etc... There is nothing wrong with their remaining within the American social, cultural and political equation.
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