Hemant Mehta is rightly troubled by a letter to the editor published in the Chicago Tribune. Here’s the text of the letter:
Eighteen months after graduating from a public high school, I had a chance encounter with Mr. Clark, my old guidance counselor. In what might have been a fishing expedition, he asked me who my most influential teacher was.
“Mr. Eitmueller,” I replied.
He then asked if it had anything to do with Christianity. It did.
I was a teenager in the ’70s and had succumbed to many of its temptations. As a student of Mr. Eitmueller, he was well-aware of the resulting changes in me, and it seems, of my potential. When he told me I’d be receiving a failing grade in his class, I asked if there was anything that could be done (you know, to fix that).
There was. If I agreed to read the Gospel of John that summer, he would agree to elevate my failing grade to passing.
Certain I had just made a great deal, I walked away quite pleased with myself.
As agreed, he passed me.
As agreed, I read the Gospel of John. By summer’s end, I accepted Jesus Christ as my savior.
Thirty-seven years later, I can still point to Mr. Eitmueller as the most influential teacher in my life.
I can’t imagine that happening today.
But what I can imagine is how often it should happen but doesn’t.
— Ed Leighton, Chicago
Two things are troubling – and ought to be troubling even from a Christian perspective, never mind any other. First, what does it say about the integrity of an educator if they are willing to overlook failing grades in exchange not for learning the material but acceptance of religious doctrine? While Ed Leighton may have come to a genuine faith for all I know, is the enticement of a passing grade not at the very least risking bringing someone into connection with Christianity via inappropriate motives – not to mention communicating that Christians will ignore all sorts of rules simply to get someone to read a Gospel? This doesn’t send a message of personal integrity. Add to that the educational issue – a student managed to graduate without doing required work or achieving the required grade – and it becomes clear that both religiously and educationally, an action like this sends the wrong message, and would thus be inappropriate even if it were legal – which it is not.
That leads on to the second point. If the teacher had done this with the Qur’an or something reflecting an atheist perspective, Christians would be protesting. The prevailing interpretation of the establishment clause is that the only way to deal fairly with state-sponsored schools is to prohibit everyone from using their influence as teachers to proselytize young people. And so any Christian concerned with constitutionality, their religious freedom, or the application of the Golden Rule, should be appalled that anyone, whether Christian or anything else, could utilize their influence upon your child to influence them in ways that you are not happy with. That’s the whole point of the system, and if you ignore these safeguards when it is Christians flouting the system but not when others do it, then you are guilty of hypocrisy, a subject about which Jesus had some choice words.
As a Christian, I can understand why Ed Leighton recalls this teacher with fondness. It is quite possible that this course of events led to a life-changing experience for him. But as a Christian, as an educator, as someone supportive of and grateful for America’s laws protecting religious freedom, I am also dismayed that the teacher Mr. Leighton remembers most favorably is one who was willing to break rules and treat whatever subject he taught as utterly unimportant, and send Mr. Leighton into the world with the message that faith alone matters, while education and integrity count for nothing.
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