"This is my dad's church!" exclaimed the eight-year old daughter of an evangelical minister as she walked through the hallways of a public school in New York City...Responding to the Appeals Court decision referenced in the June 4 post by Jordan Lorence below, author Katherine Stewart's Op-ed in last Sunday's New York Times describes the situation at her own child's New York City school. Stewart writes that her child's school is just one of 60 in New York that are used for worship services, free of rent, in an attempt to not discriminate student "clubs" for their religious beliefs. She describes the plethora of New York public school church worship meetings as "the work of national 'church-planing' organizations attracted to New York by the combination of cheap space and the opportunity to save the city from its apparent godlessness." The recent decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals disallows such meetings as a violation of the religious establishment clause of the First Amendment. Stewart is the author of the forthcoming book, “The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children.”
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