By Bob Walsh
There is a very interesting piece in the local fishwrapper (Stockton RECORD) today by their principle columnist, Michael Fitzgerald. He goes into some detail about the cozy relationship between the Lodi Unified School District and the First Baptist Church of Lodi. He describes it as having the appearance of a “school to Jesus pipeline.” He is almost certainly right.
A local atheist group, the Stockton Area Atheists and Freethinkers, submitted two FOIA requests to the district in order to dig into its relationship with the church. The group found the following.
There is a program called 180 Teen Center which is an arm of the First Baptist Church. It is a line-item on the church’s budget and describes its employees as “missionaries.” This group does get funding from other sources and keeps its own bank accounts and its own payroll, but it is without a doubt an arm of the church.
The 180 Teen Center is allowed to send staff into at least some middle schools and high schools in the district. They invite teens to the center. Their written material and their Facebook page say nothing about a religious connection, though the religious connection is very obvious when you actually enter the building.
The founding director of the 180 Teen Center is now a pastor at the First Baptist Church. His wife is now the Teen Center’s director.
The Teen Center recently purchased a very nice 35 foot Winnebago from Lodi Unified for less than 20% of its fair market value. The guy who handled the sale was at the time the Director of Personnel for Lodi Unified. He is now a Principal in the district. He is also on the board of the First Baptist Church.
Over three years the school district paid the Teen Center over $111,000 to provide “counselors” [proselytizers] to the school district.
The Teen Center staffers liberally plaster posters advertising Upwards Sports Programs around the schools. This group advertises itself as “promoting the discovery of Jesus through sports.”
As Fitzgerald said, this may not, strictly speaking, be a violation of the Second Amendment but it may very well be what the lawyers (other than Hillary Clinton) would call “excessive entanglement.” It is a recognized valid legal concept.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Here in East Texas the woods are thick with them Baptists. It looks to me like this is a clear violation of separation of church and state. Anyone other than a Baptist or Evangelical would resent their tax dollars being used to further a Baptist church.
This story reminds me of my favorite bumper sticker:
JESUS LOVES YOU
Everyone else thinks you’re an asshole
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