Legal firm continues to look for graduation 'friends' and 'foes'

Legal firm continues to look for graduation 'friends' and 'foes'

Is public expression of Christian faith permissible under the U.S. Constitution? According to Liberty Counsel founder and attorney Matt Staver, yes indeed.

Staver has finished the fifth successful year of his organization's "Friend or Foe" Graduation Prayer Campaign, and it has shown that education on the First Amendment free-speech rights of public school students -- in religious speech or otherwise -- is just as necessary as when the campaign started.

Liberty Counsel, a litigation and education public policy group, uses "Friend or Foe" to defend free expression of religion in the public and private square during the Christmas holiday, and at graduation time for public high school students.

This year alone, Liberty Counsel helped a high school choir in New Jersey to keep the song "The Lord Bless You and Keep You" in their school's graduation; and helped students in Arkansas to keep prayer and a youth speaker in their graduation ceremony.

"Every year, the same thing happens," says Staver. "Students around the country are told that they can't pray or can't engage in religious, or particularly Christian, expression during graduation. So 'Friend or Foe' is designed to first educate, and if necessary to litigate, to make sure that prayer and Christian viewpoints are not eliminated from graduation."

Staver says for him the importance of the advocacy for students' free-speech rights is reinforced by the realization of what memories and images they would be left with if they were censored during their last act as high school students.

"So secular's fine, Christian viewpoints are not. That's the kind of message these future leaders would have left the school experience with," the attorney suggests.

On the contrary, it is the goal of "Friend or Foe" to leave students with a sense that Christian viewpoints and public expression are permissible as well as protected by the U.S. Constitution -- and that as Christians, people can stand up and make a difference for Christ where they live.