Whatever Happened to the Young Atheist Whose Family Filed a Lawsuit Against a Christian Rapper and a School District?

April 15, 2013 By 413 Comments

Let’s go back to September of 2011, to New Heights Middle School in South Carolina. The school is located in Chesterfield County, a place that’s home to over two hundred Christian churches.

I wrote about an incident that happened there in The Young Atheist’s Survival Guide:

Not only did [Chapman] use his time to rail against atheism, evolution, and homosexuality, he told the students that “a relationship with Jesus is what you need, more important than anything else.” Christian rapper Bryan Edmonds (a.k.a. B-SHOC) later joined him onstage and performed “overtly Christian songs” for the crowd. Even the principal joined the mix by telling students to attend a local church.

But that wasn’t all. Students were told to sign a pledge dedicating themselves to Jesus Christ and teachers were told to pray with students before returning to the classroom. Afterward, the public school’s own website declared that “[b]efore the day ended, 324 kids had either been saved, or had re-committed their lives to the Lord.”

We know about this incident for two main reasons.

First, B-SHOC idiotically posted a video of the event to YouTube (the relevant portion begins at the 3:04 mark):

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Filed Under: Education, FFRF, General, Lawsuits 413 Comments

Dan Barker Talks About Leaving the Priesthood and Becoming an Atheist

April 14, 2013 By 12 Comments

If you’ve never heard the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s Dan Barker tell the story of how he went from preacher to atheist — also detailed in his book Godless — you’ll want to check out this video of a talk he gave at the 2010 Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne, Australia:

(via The Clergy Project)

Filed Under: Coming Out, FFRF, General 12 Comments

The Giant Portrait of Jesus is Finally Coming Down

April 3, 2013 By 73 Comments

It looks like the giant portrait of Jesus that was hanging at Jackson Middle School in Jackson, Ohio is finally coming down for good:

Last we heard, it was being moved to a local high school while the ACLU and Freedom From Religion Foundation’s lawsuit was going through the court.

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Filed Under: Education, FFRF, General, Lawsuits 73 Comments

Pennsylvania Rep. Tim Krieger Doesn’t Care if Atheists Get Harassed by Christians

March 29, 2013 By 115 Comments

Back in December, I posted about a Ten Commandments monument that sits outside Valley High School in New Kensington, Pennsylvania (near Pittsburgh):

Three plaintiffs (including two students) filed a lawsuit against that monument with the help of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. They wanted to remove that obvious promotion of Christianity from the school. Initially, though, there was a stumbling block: In order to proceed with the case, the students were not allowed to hide behind pseudonyms. They had to let everyone know who they were.

In other words, instead of proceeding with the case on the basis of merit and defending the Constitution, they had to expose themselves to harassment from their classmates and community. As we saw in Jessica Ahlquist‘s case, people are not very kind to perceived threats against their religious privilege.

There were already threats coming to the third plaintiff (a parent in the district), so a judge agreed the students could use aliases. And all was well and good.

But now, a state representative is disregarding all of that. He wants young atheists to deal with the consequences if they fight back against monuments dedicated to his faith. He has written a bill — House Bill 922 — that would no longer allow those students to remain anonymous:

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Filed Under: Education, FFRF, General, Politics 115 Comments