Persecution of Christians

I never thought I would see the day, but the persecution of Christians has begun in my very own backyard. Chris Lind is a Christian employee of the Prior Lake Savage ISD 719 School District at the Prior Lake Savage High School. This is the same school district that refused to let a local Christian youth pastor onto school grounds but invited an Imam to speak to one of the elementary schools. Chris recently spoke to a group of students after school and off of school property about abstinance and why he thinks it is the optimal form of birth control. Yes that did include a discussion about his faith. Now, Mr. Lind (in all fairness and disclosure we do go to the same church) is on unpaid administrative leave pending a final decision by the school board on his employment status. The school board will meet tomorrow to decide his fate.

Now I am well aware that there is more to the situation than meets the eye. Mr. Lind did admit that he did have these discussion with students, as well as conversations about the dangers of the homosexual lifestyle with the Gay Student Alliance. However, because these conversations took place off of school grounds and outside of school hours, there does not appear to be any reason for administrative actions. Mr. Lind is not employed in a teaching capacity, or so I have been told, and the supposed infraction did not take place on company time or property. This appears to be a simple 1st Amendment case. Mr. Lind has hired an attorney who feels that he has a fairly decent case against the school district.

I will be getting reports from the school board meeting (I am going to try to attend, but I do have a prior engagement that overlaps with the meeting time). It will be intesting to see what will come of this.

If you live down here in the Savage Lands and you want to have a say in the boards action, or even if you just want to sit back and watch, I would encourage you to go to the board meeting tomorrow night. The board meeting is held at the District offices at 4540 Tower Street in Prior Lake (the old Pond's Edge Early Learning Center). The meeting starts at 7pm. If you do attend and decide to speak, please be respectful.

If you don't live in the district and you would like to write a note of encouragement to Chris, you can reach him via his website.

UPDATE AND BUMP - Lady Predator asked for an update in the comments, so I thought I had best follow up on last night's school board meeting. There were approximately 100 students and concerned citizens at the school board meeting. Considering our school board rarely gets ANY audience, I think they were a bit taken aback by the response by the community. I arrived late (the Junior Logician had a baseball game that ended at the same time the board meeting started) so I only got to see one speaker, but it was enough. The board, citing privacy issues for the complaintant, decided that this issue should be resolved in a closed meeting, but that they would be taking written input from all citizens. The two local papers (the Prior Lake American and This Week Prior Lake) were in attendance and spent a lot of time interviewing those of us who came to lend support to Mr. Lind.

This is far from over. I suspect that the public outcry will get louder once the story hits on Saturday.