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Brace yourself for a rocky ride. This story has more twists and turns than the Tilt-A-Whirl at an amusement park. Add in knee-jerk reactions from the right and the left, two battling newspapers, a host of finger pointing and you get the scandal du jour in the world of religious news stories.
Initial Story
An eight year old, African-American, special-needs boy is suspended from elementary school in Taunton,MA. When his teacher asked the class to draw something that reminded them of Christmas, he drew the crucifix of Jesus with X's for eyes to show that Jesus was dead. The school said this was a "violent image" and insisted the child undergo psychological evaluation before being readmitted. The family had just visited the Christmas display at the La Salette Shrine nearby, which has on the grounds a large, well-lit, very tall crucifix of Jesus. The child has no history of behavior problems. He takes the evaluation, shows no sign of problems, and is reportedly traumatized about returning to that school.
Here is a close up of the drawing.
Initial Reaction
I hard this story and was furious. Was this reaction by the school a spill-over from the violent depiction of the crucifixion in Mel Gibson's movie? Were all Christian believers to be characterized as being fixated on violence? Is this an extension of a ban on religious expression in public places? Did the school also expel kids who drew pictures of tanks and guns during the year, or space ships with phasers? Were people reacting without even looking at a picture of the shrine he had just seen? If the child was a church-goer, he may have even heard a sermon about how the infant Jesus ended up as the Christ on Calvary. Or, his church may have had a crucifix of Jesus near a nativity scene. This is not uncommon in Catholic churches. The kid is eight, hardly a violent threat to anyone's well-being.
Blog Reaction
Plenty of folks, liberal and conservative, were irate and felt this was a further restriction on religious expression. Here the child was asked to draw about Christmas, but this expression of it was not OK. Sodahead said "If schools are going to go to such lengths to remove any hints of religion from the classroom—and the individual student—then maybe they should stop celebrating holidays like Christmas and Easter altogether. It just sends mixed messages to all involved." Right wing blogs pointed to it as just another sign of religious repression in America, and the old echoes of "school prayer" began to resurface.
The press published articles. TV News stations featured it. Right wing or Left wing, there is nothing we like more than a little righteous indignation. There was plenty to go around as people -- and I include myself -- rushed to judgment.
Then other details started trickling out. Are they true? Is it the school district just defending itself? Is the father scamming? Is the child really a victim?
The Debate Rages
The Boston Globe reports that the Taunton school district denies that they suspended the child. They also say that the copy of the picture being circulated by the family is not the one they found. They also add that the child said, when asked who was on the cross, that he himself was. They also say that no one asked the class to draw pictures reminding them of Christmas. And the father? The Globe article says :
Making the story more compelling, the boy’s father held court for much of the day at his girlfriend’s apartment, granting interviews to reporters from Providence to Boston, demanding that the school district compensate him for his family’s pain and suffering.
“It hurts me that they did this to my kid,’’ Chester Johnson, the boy’s father, said in an interview with the Globe. “They can’t mess with our religion. They owe us a small lump sum for this...
Johnson said his son was suffering as a result of the commotion. He said his grades have declined in recent days and that he wanted him to be transferred to the Elizabeth Pole School, the most recently built in Taunton.“He said he was uncomfortable,’’ he said. “I also think they should give him a fully paid scholarship to the school of his choice. We should be compensated for our pain and suffering.’’
Johnson acknowledged that his son identified himself on the cross, but he said
