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Louisiana school district streamlines prayer policy

A Louisiana parish school system has agreed to adopt a Christian legal defense firm's model prayer policy for the long-standing practice of invocations at its school board meetings.



Tangipahoa Parish School Board, which regularly finds itself at odds with the American Civil Liberties Union, will invite clergy to lead in the invocation up to three times in one calendar year -- first come, first served -- and the prayers will not be endorsed, censored, or reviewed beforehand. The clergy will be chosen from established congregations based on information provided by the Yellow Pages.

Attorney Mike Johnson of Alliance Defense Fund, which provided the model policy for the district, says this latest decision comes in Tangipahoa's ongoing battle with the ACLU, which has filed five lawsuits in 13 years against the school district's board on matters relating to religion.

"You know, this is the ACLU's campaign of fear and intimidation and disinformation. They try to, really, pick on certain city councils, school boards, in an effort to intimidate other surrounding boards," says Johnson.

In another ACLU suit against the parish, a July 26 ruling of the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower-court decision that determined the opening invocation was unconstitutional because it offended someone present at a meeting.

Johnson says Tangipahoa's decision on the prayer policy, and persistence against the ACLU, reminds public officials throughout the country that they can and should resist the "increasingly radical" demands of secularist groups.

Is there possibly a more anti-Christian organization in this country?  I don't even think atheists loathe Christians to this extent.

Many of the aclu and their supporters are atheists.

That explains it all.  I didn't know that, but considering their strong anti-Christian stance, I'm not surprised.