Update on School Boy With Jesus Drawing

There is an update to the story yesterday about the boy who drew a picture of Christ on a cross as a Christmas theme, only to be sent home and told undergo a psychiatric evaluation.

Now the school is claiming the boy wasn’t actually suspended (terminology may be an issue but I don’t think the original story said “suspension,” just “sent home), that there was no assignment to make a drawing about Christmas, and that the drawing you see here wasn’t the one the boy drew in school.

But things still seem a little fishy. This is what WPRI reported:

“This incident occurred nearly two weeks ago, it was handled appropriately, and the school staff and family had been working together in a cooperative and positive manner,” the district said in a statement posted on its Web site.

School officials did not specify any action they took, but said they followed “well-established protocol,” including reviewing the child’s records and consulting with school psychologists.

“It is unfortunate that the actions of our district staff have been classified as “religious” in nature when, in fact, they were based solely on the well-being of the student,” Hackett statement said.

You can take the school officials at their word if you’d like. Indeed, it would be good if we could simply do that with government authorities. However, experience has taught me to be extremely skeptical for a number of reasons.

The main reason I’m skeptical is that these types of assaults on religious liberty happen all too often. In fact, there is a second video below about a child who was told by her teacher to put away her Bible during a time set aside for students to read the material of their choice quietly on their own.

Sometimes through hostility to religion (and Christianity in particular) and sometimes through the vast amount of ignorance that has been spread about “separation of church and state,” far too many incidents like this have been perpetrated on America’s school children.

And while the officials in the New Jersey incident (second video below) admitted their mistake, not all government officials are nearly so willing to own up to their mistakes.

It will likely be difficult to know for certain exactly what happened in the case of this boy and his drawing. Unfortunately, the climate of hostility toward the Christian faith which has become far too common on our government systems makes it almost impossible to rule that out.

And that’s a shame anywhere, but especially in a nation founded by Christians on Christian principles, with a First Amendment protection of religious expression.

Video update

NJ Teacher Tells Student to Put Away Bible

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