You may have heard about the little boy who wanted to distribute to his class candy canes with messages about they symbolize Jesus and the Gospel.  His teacher wouldn’t let him.  So Glenn Beck, Fox News, and many Christian activists have been excoriating that teacher.

But Hillsdale professor Korey Maas says that the teacher first consulted her principal, who told her that the school did not allow that kind of “witnessing” in class.  And she is far from being a militant secularist or the worse things she is being called.

In fact, she is herself a pious and confessional Christian, though it would be impossible to discern as much from the coverage of much Christian media.

I know this because I was present at her baptism; I participated in the catechesis leading to her reception into the theologically (and, overwhelmingly, politically) conservative Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod; I preached at her wedding; my wife and I are godparents to her children, as she and her husband (who is himself on the faculty of a Christian university) are to our youngest. Needless to say, I have complete confidence that her far less dramatic version of events is much the more accurate account. (more…)