The concept of separating church and state in America dates back almost to the founding of the English colonies. The debate over that idea has been going on ever since.
The latest battleground in Mississippi in this ongoing struggle in Brandon. Last week, the Brandon High School band didn’t march at the school’s first football game of the season because the Rankin County School District said the band couldn’t play the hymn “How Great Thou Art” during its halftime show.
Parents, students and others in the community protested the ban on the playing the hymn. Some spectators at last Friday’s game sang the song during the game. Based on the video I saw, they did not make a joyful noise unto the Lord.
District officials banned the playing of “How Great Thou Art” because they didn’t want to pay a $10,000 fine. The district has had a series of legal run-ins over allowing religious activity at its schools during the past few years.
In July, U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves ruled that the Rankin district had violated twice last year a 2013 agreement to not allow school-sponsored religious activities.
Reeves ordered the district to refrain “from including prayer, religious sermons or activities in any school-sponsored event, including, but not limited to assemblies, graduations, award ceremonies, athletic events and any other school event.”
The judge also fined the Rankin district $7,500 and warned that future violations would cost $10,000 apiece. Freddie Harrell, Rankin’s school board attorney, said the district doesn’t want to face any more penalties.
“It’s analogous to that red light,” Harrell told The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson. “There might be times when nothing’s coming; I’m in a hurry, but I’m required to honor the fact that the light is red, and the court order specifically admonishes the school district to refrain from promotion of religious activity. And the law states that the school district — that is, the government — has to remain neutral.”
Harrell said he met with the district’s officials and principals in July to explain the agreement and the restrictions the district is under. Not everybody got the message.
Brandon High’s principal told the Rankin County School Board that the school’s band was planning to play “How Great Thou Art” just days before the game, according to Ann Sturdivant, school board president. After the board banned the song, it was too late for the band to change its show.
This incident doesn’t say much for the Brandon band director as an educator. One of a band director’s jobs is to put a band on the field during football season. He failed to do that. It’s possible that the director didn’t know the legal and financial peril the district was facing if church broke out at a school activity again. But given the attention surrounding the Rankin case, I find this difficult to believe.
I also find his choice of music suspicious. Counting junior high, high school and college, I spent 10 years playing in the band. In all of that time, none of my bands ever performed a hymn. “How Great Thou Art” is meant to be performed at a revival service, not a football game.
The band has replaced the hymn with a secular tune, “Nautique,” and will march tonight.
Public schools shouldn’t be promoting or teaching any religion. Religious instruction is best done in the home and church.
Some people believe that religious instruction should be part of their child’s school experience. If so, they should send their child to a private or parochial school.
In 1644, more than a century before the U.S. Constitution was drafted, Roger Williams, who organized the first Baptist church in North America, wrote of a “hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world.”
That’s what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they wrote in the First Amendment that Congress shall “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
I just pray that public school officials — in Rankin County and everywhere else — will one day figure out that this applies to them, too.
• Contact Charles Corder at 581-7241 or ccorder@gwcommonwealth.com.
