Texas Cheerleader Madness

School officials at an East Texas high school give ample evidence of Joseph Goebbels maxim that if you tell a lie long enough and loud enough people will believe it. The evidence in question is their attempt to bar high school cheerleaders from displaying banners with Bible verses—District Judge Steve Thomas granted an injunction allowing the Scriptures verses to remain until the lawsuit is settled. In the meantime the cheerleaders hold our nation hostage with their reckless use of ancient literature.

It makes you wonder what other portions of Harvard’s Five Foot Shelf are to be banned from government funded education. No doubt The Confessions by Augustine are out and these cheerleaders will be chomping on detention slips if they dare quote The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a’ Kempes. Charles William Eliot should have been more selective. What fine prose would find its way into 21st century five foot shelf?

Would these girls find resistance quoting Vince Lombardi, Woody Hayes or Bobby Knight? Perhaps a more palatable bibliography would include Noam Chomsky, Whoopi Goldberg or Bill Maher. Just how benign must the verbiage be to make the menu of the public school? A menu with pictures always whets the appetite. Is there a clear thinking person with the remotest grasp of American history who actually believes that stifling cheerleaders from writing Bible verses is what the framers of the Constitution had in mind with the establishment clauses? If so, why do they open congress with prayer, why are there numerous allusions to a Creator in our government’s documentation and why are Bible verses carved in granite all over our nation’s capital? Were the fathers double-minded men?

Are we aware of what we are doing when we chastise young people for choosing inscriptions from the finest volumes in human history? Listening to the running media commentary on this issue was maddening. Otherwise clear thinking journalists—journalists who would, no doubt, fight tooth and nail for literary liberties have transitioned into a covey of match-wielding Terry Jones wannabees. They speak as if the public school is sacred ground—a pristine environment that these girls are seeking to stain with the pollution of apostolic indecency.

What is the lie everyone is believing? For one, it’s the notion that the establishment clause pertaining to religion was designed to protect the state from the influence of the immaterial convictions of private individuals—regardless of where those convictions might surface. No, the clause “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” was designed to protect the individual from government tyranny and a government run church—a government who tells teenager girls what classic literature is verboten. To quote Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Plain and simple, the Bible is out because it has something of impact to say. It is a life changing, culture transforming document which is the last thing on earth a monstrous government wants to deal with. A steady diet of The View will yield a much more malleable culture of young people than those who would deign to embark upon a trek through the Epistle to the Hebrews. But strong societies are not made of oatmeal. We should desire our young people set their face like flint to wisdom. Suing them for quoting Scripture will not yield that desired end.