The California Social Science Instructional Resources Evaluation states, "The primary sources represent extensive variation and historical value in their nature and include, as appropriate to the content for a grade, materials such as documents, court decisions, speeches, debates, inaugural addresses, diaries, journals, slave diaries, excerpts from autobiographies, essays and religious literature." Based on that, Mr. Williams is perfectly within his right to use the documents to teach his class. He wasn't teaching about God and Jesus from the Declaration of Independence ... he was teaching about the history of our country and its founding fathers.
My first thought, upon reading about this, was disbelief. Even though it came from a credible source, I felt like it had to be someone's idea of a joke (a bad one). Since I like to check and recheck my facts, I dug for more information. That's when I found that this is no joke. The waves of disgust and dismay that I felt only equaled just how appalled I was. My next thoughts were about Patricia Vidmar and I'll admit it ... they weren't very nice. As a Christian, I know that I'm supposed to turn the other cheek, but this is one of those times that I'm having to struggle to do that. This woman is using the power given to her by the school district to single out a teacher (the suit states that he was the only teacher who's lesson plans she had to pre-approve") and discriminate against him because he allows the name of our Creator to be used in his classroom. How dare she?
There are already people around the country backing her up, citing "separation of church and state". Personally, I think that the whole argument of separation, based on the First Amendment, is being taken to new lows. The First Amendment reads "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Some take that to mean that religion, silent prayer, prayer done out loud or even the word "God" being used in a building owned by the government is a violation. Give me a break! The keywords and key-phrases here are "law" "establishment of religion" and "prohibiting the free exercise thereof". Those aren't ambiguous things. They're easy enough to understand. How can that possibly be interpreted to mean "You can't have anything that says 'God' in a government building"? Vidmar refused to allow Mr. Williams to teach history from the Declaration of Independence because it says "God" once and "Creator" once in a public school. He wasn't trying to start a new religion in that classroom. He wasn't trying to start a new anti-religion in that classroom. He was simply trying to teach history to his student's ... American history in an American classroom ... imagine that!
