I think you’ve confused me with someone else. I never said that about the show.
Your choices don’t come from me. If I were her, I’d stand quietly with the group but not pray as a show of team solidarity, which is what they invited her to do, and which is what she did until her father went all batshit. After that, she stood away from the team and suddenly felt “ostracized”. (Not a word that she ever used.)
What did you mean by this:
I’m sorry, but standing in a prayer circle has nothing to do with team solidarity and is not an acceptable choice for many atheists. How many Christians would see kneeling on mats during a Muslim call to prayer as any kind of a “compromise,” even if they were told they didn’t actually have to pray? The “invitation” was no invitation at all, it was an attempt to coerce religious compliance and her non-compliance was punished by the school. It was illegal, institutionalized bigotry. The father was right to go apeshit. I would have too. What’s wrong with just standing outside the prayer circle. Why is that so intolerable to some people?
I don’t really see the harm in it. I have personally participated in religious rituals and obsservances with which I have no affinity, its a gesture of respect for the “spiritual quest” (to use one of any number of inadequate phrases…) She might very well have made it clear that her own personal beliefs were not in line with such prayer, but gone ahead anyway as a gesture towards her teammates that, we may hope, might be answered with appropriate respect for her own beliefs and/or lack thereof.
Much human cruelty is expressed by the medium of religious intolerance, but it is the intolerance that is inhumane.
Rats! The Err Apparent didn’t log out, previous is mine own.
Why should she have to “go along anyway” with an unconstitutional act?
Having gone to school back in the Dark Ages, I remember when they added “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance (1954). I thought that was a very bad change, and after that, I refused to say the Pledge.
Fortunately, everybody knew I was kinda nuts, and I got straight A’s in school, so people just kind of lived around it, saying “Intention’s at it again” or the like.
In the present case, my humble opinion is:
Based on everything I’ve read, the charges of shoe stealing and threats were bogus.
I have no problem with people saying prayers in school, even the Pledge of Allegiance is a prayer these days. I do have a large problem with them being a requirement for participating in anything, be it graduation, class, field trips, or basketball.
An offer to drop charges if the family leaves the state strongly suggests that the charges are bogus.
I doubt that it is a coincidence that she was accused of threatening another student and kicked off the team a second time on the day after she once again refused to join the prayer (she said the Pledge of Allegiance without “under God” instead".
I find it astonishing that some people claim she was trying to stop the other girls from praying, and I join the request for a citation for that claim.
I find the narrow-mided, petty nature of the students, principal, and faculty depressing but not in the least surprising. America was founded by Puritans, and remains a puritan nation to this day. (You remember, Puritans were people who fled religious oppression so that they could be the religious oppressors …).
The jury found that the Principal lied … shocking, I tell you, shocking. This, of course, makes all of his statements about the case very suspect.
w.
20/20:“You could have just bowed your head and… remained silent.”
N.S.:“I wouldn’t do it because it’s disrespectful. To me, I think it’s disrespectful to them. Why would they want an atheist in their circle saying the lords prayer. If I was a jew or a muslim of a hindu I’d have problems saying that prayer.”
N.S.:“I told the coach, ‘I don’t believe in god, I’m an atheist’ and he said ‘well go to the locker room then.’”
You’re right. She didn’t use the word “ostracized”. She just described the concept while crying.
N.S.:“Ummm… it’s hard to talk about this. Gimmie a second. You know, they’d call me devil worshiper. I walk down the halls they’d laugh at me and look at me weird- stare me down. [The teachers would say] this is a christian country and if you don’t like it, get out.”
Well, OK. I’m not sure why you felt it necessary to remind me of that. Let it be clear that it’s just an offhand impression. Guymon has a population of 10,000. Not what I would consider a small community. Besides that jury panel was carefully selected to be unbiased. Hardesty has a population of around 300 people, according to a quick google search.
I stand by what I said. Seems like the kind of place where everyone knows everyone and people would single you out for being an atheist and cross the street (i.e, small and backwards). Again, I’ve never been to Oklahoma and I don’t know much about the state so take my comment for what it’s worth (not a whole lot).
Shouldn’t have to. Might choose to, with a good natured shrug. I have bigger fish to fry, I choose my battles with exceeding care. You are entirely free to suspect a lack of committment on my part, but remember: doubt is as holy as faith, and certainty is the mark of a fool.
I have to say, without intending to argue with anyone in particular, that the idea of an atheist reciting the Lord’s Prayer “just to go along” is way weird. At the very least, it brands one as a hypocrite. In Nicole’s case, it would have validated the despicable behavior exhibited by the “good Christian” students, teachers, and administrators. You know, those teachers who professed to hate her, and told her to move somewhere else if she didn’t like it?
Having everyone in school against you is hardly being “picked on.” I admire her courage.
I’m inclined to believe that there was a whole lot of behavior going on here that doesn’t exactly reflect good Christian action, but it sure would be nice if there were some sources from the other side of the issue. Everything I’m seeing seems to be pretty much from the atheist side. It’s all being reported as “she never did anything to antagonize anybody, they just picked on her” and she says “teachers (plural)” would say things like “this is a Christian country, if you don’t like it, get out.” And I’m not saying it didn’t happen that way. In a school and town that small it’s certainly possible. I’m just wondering how balanced this story is. The family is saying the harrassment was constant and from pretty much everybody, and the teacher who’s quoted is saying it never happened. Those are extreme positions, and usually the truth is somewhere toward the middle.
Jenyoowine born and bred Okie atheist checking in.
I actually hadn’t heard of this case (don’t watch the news much), but it doesn’t surprise me at all. I live in a liberal hotbed (for Oklahoma) and work in the largest city in the state, and I’ve had similar responses to people finding out I’m atheist.
The “devil-worshipper” comment is often the first response. I’d say the vast majority of people here have no idea what atheism actually is. If they know anything about it, it’s what they’ve been told by some revival-meeting preacher, which is that atheists are EEEVVVIIIIILLLLLLLLLLLL. I will say that it’s gotten much better over the last couple decades, at least where I am.
Fortunately, Okies are mostly nice people, and most of 'em get over it after a while. Especially if they knew me before they found out, so knew what kind of person I am without filtering through their religious biases.
I am somewhat surprised by the trial result, but I’d guess that was some careful jury selection. There are a lot of “mind your own business” Okies in the rural areas. They don’t quite understand how someone could not be Christian (since they’ve never really known anything else), but as long as you’re behaving yourself, they don’t really care.
I’d guess that the dad is part of the problem, though. Not because he’s atheist; like I said, I think they’d get over that. Not because he went after people that hassled his baby girl; they’d absolutely understand that. Nope, it’d be because he’s a damn obnoxious Yankee. The way he talks, the pushy attitude he projects - I’d bet dollars to donuts that he rubs people the wrong way in that little town. People just don’t act like that 'round here.
Former Okie and I’ve been in Guymon and some of the tiny surrounding towns out there.
If she were a boy, she would have been beaten up by now several times.
If these weren’t the days where “small town news=national news” it would be worse. Probably a family pet would have been killed by the “Christians” or a some bullets would have gone through their windows. The family would have been run out of town.
They tried to run them out of the state.
Here’s a little tidbit about Oklahoma.
I was in grade school in Oklahoma, at a public school. Every Monday we had what was called “Sunday School count.” The teacher asked for a show of hands on who’d attended Sunday School, who’d attended church, who’d attended Sunday night service, and who’d attended Wednesday night. The results were tallied up and reported, room by room. For every grade in the school.
I don’t remember what the prize was. I do remember that there was a lot of pressure to go to all those things. The church I got dragged to didn’t have a Sunday night service so I was down for the count on that–until a fellow member of my Sunday school class told me that, since they don’t have it, you can count it. Oh, okay, so that’s how it works… I knew so little about religion that I didn’t even twitch when the Jewish girl always raised her hand for Sunday School, church, and Sunday night. (Turns out Jewish kids really do go to Sunday School, although I didn’t know that until years later.)
We also had a morning prayer. In the older grades the deal was that the teacher would single someone out to come up to the front and give the morning prayer. I will reiterate that this was a public school, not a parochial school.
So, when the Supreme Court decision about prayer in schools came down (1961?), I for one was quite relieved. This obviously would put an end to all this religion crap.
But no. The teacher, a very small, very old woman, stood up in front of our class and said, “Well, we don’t care what the Supreme Court says. We want to pray, and we’re going to pray! Carolyn, will you lead the prayer?”
And something like this happened in classroom after classroom in our school. Maybe not all of them.
Wait a second.
Did the basketball team win or lose the game with GOD on their side and did the other team pray before hand and, really, WHICH TEAM DID GOD PICK TO WIN!!!111!!! I gots to know.
Cause if they won, maybe the power of Atheism would help the Lions this fall.
One thing to remember - we’re usually talking people whose total concept of religious tolerance is that the Baptists think the Assembly of Godders are wrong and vice-versa, but in these tolerant days have agreed to be mostly friendly about it.
They really have NO CONCEPT of non-religious people. I mean, at least the Christ-killing Jews believed in God! Them Muslims are all backwards and the Catholics worship idols, but at least they’re not Godless Atheists!
The Texas high school football case a few years back (which I believe was in the Texas panhandle, not too far from this area) was similar. I heard tapes of the high school kids who simple could not understand why required prayer was a problem. Of course it was OK to make everyone pray to Jesus, after all, that’s the right thing to do. And it would be horribly wrong to expect anyone to listen to, much less participate in, a prayer from a different religion - they’re all going to hell, why would anyone allow that? And they were absolutely serious.
I’ve seen newspaper stories in the last ten-fifteen years of small towns where the local preachers came in and held services (Sunday school type stuff) in the schools every day - attendance required.
The people in that town probably truly believe that no one did anything wrong and no one picked on the girl and no one was discriminated against and blah blah blah.
Doesn’t mean that’s how it happened.
There’s a lot of places in Oklahoma that I wouldn’t tell anyone I was atheist. There’s a lot of good people here that probably wouldn’t care. But there’s a few people that would believe they had the God-given responsibility to put the fear of the Lord into me. Unfortunately, the people in the first group often turn a blind eye to the whacknuts in the latter role.
Hilarity N. Suze, I remember my older siblings being required to tithe to the Baptist church in school. Teacher took up a collection every week.
This would have been in the mid to late 60s, public schools in suburbs of Oklahoma City.
At that time, “Methodist” wasn’t even on the radar as a real church. My brother and sister were harassed any time they didn’t contribute, even when they explained that they were Methodist and went to a different church.
Fortunately, we moved before I started school, or I might have ended up even more virulently anti-Christian than I did. (I’ve mostly gotten over it, but I was an obnoxious anti-theist for much of my teens/early twenties. And I was only an agnostic, then!)
I went through pretty much the same thing in Fort Worth, Texas. We had prayers over the loudspeaker every morning in elementary and middle school, and a “Moment of Silence” in high school, with a “Thought for the Day” preceding the silence. In elementary school, some teachers would give us quite a bit of religious instruction, and some wouldn’t, depending on how the teacher in question felt about witnessing and such.
When my daughter graduated from the county community college, there was a prayer of about half an hour in length. This was AFTER the turn of the century, mind you.
Actually, the USA was founded by Puritans and a whole bunch of other people who were not anywhere near Puritan.