Christian students share Gospel on their campuses
Religion Today, August 30, 1999
Christian students say they will be more active in the nation’s public schools this year, becoming campus missionaries through prayer, Bible reading, and evangelism.
“My daughter’s death will not be in vain,” Darrell Scott, father of Columbine High School shooting victim Rachael Scott, told a U.S. House subcommittee. “The young people of this country will not allow that to happen.” A spiritual awakening is taking place “that will not be squelched,” he said.
Since the shootings, Christian students have vowed during rallies around the country to be bold in bringing their faith into the schools. At least two of the 15 Columbine victims, including Scott and Cassie Bernall, died in April after bearing witness to their faith at the Littleton, Colo., school.
Salt and light
Many students say they want to be “salt and light” in public schools, fulfilling Jesus’ teaching that His followers should affect others. Focus on the Family is one of the groups helping with outreach in public education. “As more and more Christian parents get involved and pray, rebuilding is taking place,” Cheri Fuller said in an article in the August issue of Focus on the Family magazine.
A national campaign by 60 denominations and parachurch ministries is recruiting Christian students to pray for and share the Gospel with every young person in America’s 81,000 schools. It is coordinated by the National Network of Youth Ministries.
Challenge 2000
As part of the campaign, called Challenge 2000, churches are being asked to pray for and “commission” student leaders and Christian teachers during their services Sept. 11-12. Individuals also are being asked to pray for public school students, schools, teachers, and principals every time they drive through a school zone.
See You At the Pole – National Day of Student Prayer, is in its 10th year. The gathering of junior high, senior high, and college students around their school flagpoles will take place at 7 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 15. More than 3 million are expected to take part.
The movement, initiated and led by students, began in Texas in 1990 when a church youth group prayed around a flagpole to bring moral and spiritual awakening to the nation. It receives promotion from the National Network of Youth Ministries and nearly 100 organizations and denominations.
The gatherings are legal, says U.S. Education Secretary Richard Riley, who sent a letter to school officials in 1995 listing See You at the Pole among activities that are appropriate forms of religious expression on campus.
Other initiatives
Other initiatives are taking place. A Christian who teaches in a Trenton, N.J. public school is urging Christian “academic activism” across the country. Students and teachers should “figure out appropriate ways to present biblical concepts,” Bob Pawson told Religion Today. Pawson, a pro-life activist who runs a ministry to public school students, says students should bring their Bibles to school every day, read them during breaks, and use them for class work. His Internet page suggests ways to “properly and legally present Bible ideas in classroom settings.”
God’s Word is powerful in any circumstance, said Pawson, who anticipates that many students and teachers will become Christians “because of God’s Word entering their hearts through academic evangelism.”
Religious-rights groups say they will back student activists should they get in trouble. The Liberty Counsel, based in Florida, is suing a St. Louis school district that prevented a student group from distributing Bibles before and after classes because of a policy requiring prior approval for any distribution.
Anti-Bible pledge required
Members of the group were “called into the principal’s office, where they were scolded” and made to promise “never to bring the Bibles back,” Mat Staver, Liberty Counsel president, told Religion Today. They had circulated a petition among students requesting the right to distribute the Bibles. The school’s principal called the police when a different group met before class with the intention of handing out Bibles, Staver said.
“The Supreme Court has ruled that students have a right to free speech, both verbally and using literature during noninstructional times,” Staver said. Schools cannot prohibit free speech or require preapproval unless it “substantially interferes with conducting school,” such as disrupting classes by using megaphones, he said. “Pre-approval of literature distribution is becoming more prevalent in school systems.”
Other Christians take a different approach, saying their children were overwhelmed with worldliness in public schools. They are weary of efforts to reform the institutions and urge Christians to abandon them.
Anti-public school activists include E. Ray Moore, Jr., founder of Exodus 2000, a group that refers to public schools as the “government system” and urges parents and children to choose Christian education. It has gained the support of D. James Kennedy’s Coral Ridge Ministries. Similar groups are Rescue 2010, Christian Liberty Academy, and The Exodus Project, the Washington Times said.
Home schooling also is growing. Approximately 1.5 million children were home schooled in the United States during the 1997-1998 school year, and the movement is increasing by about 15% a year, the Home School Legal Defense Association said.