Teacher Sacked for Bible on Desk Sues School District in Federal Court

Teacher Sacked for Bible on Desk Sues School District in Federal Court...

"The children of God will face enslavement by the enemies of God, known as your world Christianity, unless you pray and carry the banner of Faithful and True to God the Father." - Our Lady of the Roses, September 7, 1974

LifeSiteNews.com reported on June 12, 2009:

A 8^th grade public school teacher who says he was fired for refusing to remove his personal Bible from his classroom desk is now taking the school district to federal court, suing them for defamation and breach of contract.

John Freshwater, a teacher with over 24 years of experience, filed a lawsuit Tuesday with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio against the Mount Vernon City School District Board of Education, and its officials for terminating his contract. He accuses the district of violating Ohio public policy, and perpetrating religious harassment, retaliation, conspiracy, and defamation against him.

Last June, the Mount Vernon School Board voted unanimously to fire Freshwater from his teaching position based on the report of an independent investigator, which found that Freshwater had "burnt" what they determined to be a cross (and not an "x" as Freshwater claimed) on a student's arm during a routine science experiment, taught religion in the classroom, refused to remove religious articles from the classroom, and prayed at a Federation of Christian Athlete's (FCA) meeting, which is a Christian student-led group Freshwater advises.

However, the event that evidently precipitated the school board’s investigation against Freshwater was his refusal to remove his personal Bible from his classroom desk – the only significant allegation Freshwater has admitted to.

According to Freshwater’s pastor, Rev. Don Matolyak of the Trinity Assembly of God church, Freshwater’s conflict with the school began after he broached the topic of Intelligent Design in the classroom after teaching the theory of evolution.

"Since then, there have been people who have had it out for John," Matolyak told LifeSiteNews.com in an interview earlier last year. While the Bible may have been the immediate catalyst to Freshwater’s firing, the investigative report done on Freshwater indicates that any expression of Freshwater’s religion in the public school, including bringing other points of view to facilitate discussion on his teaching of biological evolution, were the primary concern of school administrators.

The investigator’s “Freshwater report” revealed that Freshwater would encourage critical analysis and debate on Darwinian evolution, and hand out supplemental materials on Intelligent Design and evolution. Freshwater had also disputed a Time magazine article that claimed scientists had found a “gay gene” and instead emphasized to his students that homosexual behavior was a matter of personal choice and a sin in the Bible.

In responses to a ninth grade questionnaire given to incoming students, a number remarked that evolution was one of their favorite topics in science due to the even-handed approach taught by Freshwater in the 8^th grade. One student wrote that evolution was the favorite subject that was covered “because we learned about it and how it can or can’t be true and got both sides of the story.” Another said “Evolution because we always had debates about it.”

However, because students entering the 9^th grade were challenging the positions of the teachers on evolution, the teachers complained that they had to “re-teach” evolution to students as an incontrovertible fact. The report cited one teacher who complained that Freshwater was "mis-teaching science (i.e. that there's some sort of 'difference between facts and hypotheses')" so that she had to start every year “reteaching students how science ACTUALLY works.”

According to Christian Educators Association International (CEAI), public school staffers in Mount Vernon were ordered this school year by school administrators to “remove all religious materials and displays from their rooms.”

"I am pleased to see a public school teacher like John Freshwater willing to go outside his comfort zone and fight for the religious freedoms our forefathers guaranteed us through the U. S. Constitution," said Finn Laursen about the case, CEAI’s Executive Director.

"It is imperative that all Christian educators, students, and parents be willing to step forward to insist on their rights, or those rights will slowly be forfeited."

View the “Freshwater report” here.

See related coverage by LifeSiteNews.com:

Teacher Fired for Refusing to Remove Bible from Desk, Allegedly Teaching Religion in Class
Pastor says that claims that Freshwater "burned" crosses into students' arms are false

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Third Circuit Court of Appeals Upholds Ban on Bible-Reading in the Classroom...

LifeSiteNews.com reported on June 3, 2009:

In a 2-1 decision, a federal appeals court has ruled that school officials did not violate the free speech rights of a kindergartner and his mother when they refused to allow Donna Busch to read a selection from the Bible as part of a classroom "All About Me" program intended to spotlight her son Wesley and his favorite book, the Bible. In appealing to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, attorneys for The Rutherford Institute had argued that school officials violated the Busches' First Amendment rights by discriminating against them based on the religious nature of the selected reading.

"By excluding religious expression, and Christian expression and symbols in particular, from the classroom, school officials have exhibited the kind of hostility toward religion that should never be found in an American public school," stated John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute. "If these situations continue, there will be absolutely no freedom for religious people in public schools in this country."

The case began in October 2004, when Donna Busch accepted an invitation to visit her son Wesley's kindergarten classroom at Culbertson Elementary School in Newtown Square, Penn., and read an excerpt of Wesley's favorite book to his classmates. Wesley's teacher had invited Mrs. Busch because Wesley was the featured student of "All About Me," a school program intended to feature a particular student during the week and emphasize that student's personal characteristics, preferences and personality in classroom activities.

One activity made available to all featured students during "All About Me" is the opportunity to have the child's parent read aloud from his or her favorite book. Wesley, a Christian, had chosen the Bible as his favorite book, and Mrs. Busch planned to read an excerpt from Psalm 118. However, on the day of the reading, Wesley's teacher directed Mrs. Busch not to read the passage until the principal had determined if it could be read to the class. When Principal Thomas Cook was summoned, he informed Mrs. Busch that she could not read from the Bible in the classroom because it was against the law and that the reading would violate the "separation of church and state."

In filing suit against the Marple Newtown school district in May 2005, Institute attorneys alleged that the reading incident was just one example of the school's efforts to suppress the right of Christians to freely express their religious beliefs. For example, although Mrs. Busch was not permitted to read from the Bible, another parent was allowed to read a book about Judaism; teach the class the dreidel game; and display a menorah in celebration of Hanukkah.

In upholding the lower court's ruling, the court of appeals held that "educators may appropriately restrict forms of expression in elementary school classrooms" even when they have invited speakers into the classroom.

“The public school setting may implicate the Establishment Clause, especially where public authority undertakes or is reasonably perceived to have undertaken to give one religious belief official approval or approval over other religious beliefs,” Anthony Joseph Scirica, chief judge of the appeals court, wrote in his decision.

However, Circuit Judge Thomas Hardiman issued a vigorous dissent, pointing out that the reading of a passage from Psalms to Wesley's class was within the subject matter of the "All About Me" unit, which was to highlight things of interest and important to Wesley, and the exclusion constituted viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First Amendment because it was based solely upon its religious character.

"My children, I repeat, 666, known forever in the Book of life, the Bible, as the man of perdition, is not one man, but the forces of evil gathered like vultures to destroy the Christian and Christianity, to enslave the good and make powerful the bad, to make sin a way of life until each and every living creature of knowledgeable age must make the decision: Who is your master, man or God?" - Our Lady of the Roses, April 9, 1977

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