Back in the early 1990s, I wrote a column about the “Scopes II” conflict in east Tennessee between public educators and conservative Christians.
Thus, I talked with Stephen Bates, author of an amazingly balanced book on the topic titled Battleground (attention “Religious Left”: Note the book’s endorsement from Bill Moyers), about ways for public-school educators to avoid these kinds of classroom wars.
By the end of the conversation, we had concluded that this is what school leaders should do: When faced with conservative or even fundamentalist parents who have concerns about class activities, textbooks or other issues in which their faith clashes with their children’s school work, public educators should do everything in their power to pretend that the parents making the requests are not Christians, but Muslims, Orthodox Jews, Native Americans or members of some other minority group.
I thought about this when readers started sending me links to columns about the recent events at Burlington Township (N.J.) High School, where police staged an emergency drill that simulated a Columbine-style attack on students, only this time by an armed “right-wing fundamentalist group.”
Yes, yes, I have read Michelle Malkin’s column on the event, the one she begins by noting:
Three years ago, I wrote about a mock terrorism drill at a public school district in Muskegon County, Mich. Instead of Islamic terrorists, educators substituted Christian homeschoolers. Yes, Christian homeschoolers. Here was the description of the school drill plan:
“The exercise will simulate an attack by a fictitious radical group called Wackos Against Schools and Education who believe everyone should be homeschooled. Under the scenario, a bomb is placed on the bus and is detonated while the bus is traveling on Durham, causing the bus to land on its side and fill with smoke.”
I mention this column merely because people keep bringing it up. Stop, please.
As always, I am more interested in the actual news coverage, which has been small in the mainstream press and massive in alternative conservative media. However, a Burlington County Times report by David Levinsky provided this much-quoted information:
The drill scenario was created by the Burlington Township Police Department and was written in an information packet describing the objectives of the drill. It specified that two armed men invade the high school through the front entrance, shoot several students in the hallways, then barricade themselves in the media center with 10 student hostages.
The written scenario used by police during the drill described the intruders as “members of a right-wing fundamentalist group called the ‘New Crusaders’ who do not believe in the separation of church and state. They also have a strong commitment in their right to bear arms.”
The scenario also indicated the mock gunmen went to the school seeking justice because the daughter of one of the men was given detention and eventually expelled for praying before the beginning of class.
That seems rather straightforward to me. However, check out this statement in the same newspaper report:
Although police and township officials said the scenario was generic and did not specify any religion, many inferred it described the school invaders as conservative Christians.
Wow, I have no idea why local ministers and churchgoers would “infer” that public officials planning this tax-payer funded drill were suggesting that the “right-wing fundamentalists” in the “New Crusaders” who oppose the “separation of church and state” and were angry about a “school prayer” issue were Christians of some sort. No way. Get out of here.
Thus, the newspaper notes:
During the drill, the detectives portraying the hostage takers did not mention God or any religious figure, police officials said. A joint statement issued yesterday by Burlington Township municipal government and the school district said officials “regret any insensitivity that might have been inferred” by the scenario.
And that’s that. Newspapers always accept what public officials say, you know.
At this point, I am curious about the actual details of the drill. I would enjoy reading more factual material — you know, journalism — about what happened. How about some follow-up stories? Will students be allowed to talk to the press? What were the fake terrorists wearing? Is it true that they said nothing to their hostages?
If the drill was totally religion-free, as carried out, then how did this story break? How did the words on the pages of the written scenario leak out to all of the religious fanatics in homes and churches who like to “infer” bad things in order to attack public schools?
I realize that all of this is going to end up on a Focus on the Family broadcast, but I would really prefer to see real journalists try to answer some of these real questions. I like journalism. How about you?
Meanwhile, an editorial in the Courier-Post in Cherry Hill, N.J., managed to say the obvious, while stating that these kinds of drills are appropriate and needed:
Hindsight is always 20/20. However, in this case, the school district and township police should have foreseen that something like this could happen. Had they made the fictional terrorists from an Islamic extremist group, Muslim groups might have taken issue. Had they made the fictional terrorists Jewish, Jewish groups probably would have been upset. The same goes for any faith.
By making the fictional terrorists extremist Christians, not surprisingly, some Christians are upset.
And all the people (not just conservatives, hopefully) said, “Amen.”
The images are from the Left Behind video game. I couldn’t find any online images of Christian terrorists attacking public schools.
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Comments (27) |
April 6, 2007, at 11:40 am
Decades ago this would have been cast as left-wing revolutionaries attacking a school to the discomfort
of the left. Now it’s cast as right wing extremist
terrorists. Thus the pendulum doth swing.
April 6, 2007, at 12:00 pm
I think that Courier-Post op/ed said it all - what if the scenario had been played out with “Jihadists” instead of Crusaders… or those opposed to the “separation of synagogue and state”… Any self-respecting journalist would have rightly inquired about potential “inferred insensitivities”, AND would have proactively sought interviews with those present. They also would have sought comment from leaders of the respective religious group.
According to Malkin’s article - which I first found out about from your post, and which you don’t want brought up anymore for whatever reason
- the story broke from children who (amazingly!) “inferred” anti-Christian “insensitivities” and brought it up to their parents. You can guess where it went from there… some of those parents belong to Christian/religious rights groups, and/or blogs, where some are journalistically/politically connected, and the ball got rolling.
Another idea, that someone involved in the initial decision-making or “brainstorming” (with small brains apparently) disapproved and leaked it. I’d be interested how much awareness of potential offense there was before implementation, and how it was handled (stifled?).
April 6, 2007, at 12:24 pm
As the “terrorists” stedfastly shunned the G-word, they must have been fanatics from the Church of Liberalism, recently described by Anne Coulter; and the discipline girl must have been “praying to herself”, as Bill Clinton says he did in school.
April 6, 2007, at 12:42 pm
I have to say, making the casus belli that the daughter of one of the terrorists had been expelled for praying was downright stupid. Why on earth was it necessary to make this a religious group?
Why not a fictional group of political or criminal or just ‘drill with group Purple who have not been attributed any beliefs or philosophies’? It does sound like someone was going out of their way to make a point, or carry on a petty vendetta. I’d love to know more; if I were a parent of one of the children at this school, I’d be demanding to know whose bright idea this was and why they picked a faith issue to make an example of.
Or are we really to believe that there are Homeschool Militias out there just lying in wait to bring down the state educational system? And is this what this is all about, at the bottom: rivalry with the homeschool movement and the pat identification that Homeschooling = Fundamentalist Christian = Wacko?
If they have a problem with people wanting to take their children out of school, they should address that in some other manner. And maybe they just might want to look at why people want to take their children out of the state system - in some instances, it’s not because they’re Dark Age throwbacks who are worried about creeping liberalism, it’s because they think it’d be nice if their kids could actually learn to read and write and not be searched for guns or knives before going into class.
April 6, 2007, at 1:48 pm
The question I would want to hear a reporter ask the planners is this:
“Why was it considered necessary to specify who the attackers were in the scenario? Why not simply say “unknown assailants?”“
April 6, 2007, at 2:43 pm
Hmm. Maybe that’s because the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Weathermen, the Red Brigades, the Baader Meinhof Gang and other real left-wing terrorist groups were conducting violent terrorist campaigns throughout Europe and the U.S.
It’s specifically cast as people who “don’t believe in the separation of church and state”. Can you name one such group in the United States that has engaged in terrorist activities? I don’t think you can.
Thus the rationalizations and equivocations begin. How about just admitting that this is a pretty egregious example of religious bias, rather than trying to minimize it by misleading comparisons? When journalists noncritically accept the pathetic explanations of the officials (“Religious bias? Us? We’re sorry that you inferred that.”), they lose all credibility.
Bush got reamed for using the word “crusade” to describe the war in Iraq, because people (rightly, in my opinion) inferred that “crusade” meant a religious war conducted by Christians. However, when the police in Burlington County use the same word to describe a terrorist group, the public is supposed to accept that they weren’t referring to Christians? That’s not credible, and it calls for further questions by the reporter. At least the reporter should have included an etymological explanation that “crusade” comes from the Latin “crux” or “cross”, so it’s entirely reasonable for Christians to take the term as referring to them.
Instead the reporter writes about how local Christians “felt” about the language, not what they understand the words to mean. It’s entirely reasonable to infer meanings that are contained in the words themselves.
April 6, 2007, at 3:18 pm
If the drill was merely supposed to let the authorities practice tactics for gaining full control of the school and taking down the assailants, then (as Gary points out above) the motive of the attackers is irrelevant and could easily have been left unspecified.
If the drill was supposed to include tactics for dealing with the motives of the attackers in order to assist in gaining the release of the hostages, then I would certainly hope that someone (probably the FBI rather than the local police department) was concentrating on a certain non-Christian monotheism in their preparation…
April 6, 2007, at 4:11 pm
I’m not sure just what to make of this, other than to say (as a Christian who takes his faith seriously), we all need to lighten up & enjoy the life we’ve been given by God. Which brings me to my shameless plug - check out my site “Necessary Therapy” and have a good laugh before you send yourself to an early grave.
April 6, 2007, at 4:15 pm
I have to answer Dale. A quick search did not absoletely link these terrorist attacks exactly with the premise of the exercise but it’s pretty close in my book. A few minutes with google found these references:
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=549
and:
A relatively new tenet gaining popularity among some radical Christian Identity believers justifies the use of violence if it is perpetrated in order to punish violators of God’s law, as found in the Bible and interpreted by Christian Identity ministers and adherents. This includes killing interracial couples, abortionists, prostitutes and homosexuals, burning pornography stores, and robbing banks and perpetrating frauds to undermine the usury system. Christian Identity adherents engaging in such behavior are referred to as Phineas Priests or members of the Phineas Priesthood. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Identity
and http://www.church-state.org/alts.htm which pointed me at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominionism
April 6, 2007, at 4:18 pm
Arguably, the entire Christian Identity movemeet would fall into this categoy. This movement, along with the radical pro-life Christian movement, have carried out terrorist activities in the past. Abortion bombings, the Atlanta Olympics bombing, some have suggested OKC bombings, bombings of gay bars, fires at black churches.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that the city was wise to use this as an example. It was a poor decision, just as it would be a poor decision to use Islamic terrorists.
April 6, 2007, at 5:35 pm
Fun fact I haven’t seen any coverage mention: both Burlington Township High School and the Evesham Township School District are located in Burlington County, New Jersey. The latter has gotten some press coverage recently for showing a controversial tolerance video to elementary school students. Although little of the coverage I’ve seen has treated the religion ghost in the story in any substantial way, many of the parents involved in the debate have been hitting each other over the head with religion and issues of church/state separation. So in addition to the questions tmatt would like to see answered, I’d like to know whether or not these stories are related (were those involved in planning the demonstration having a dig at their neighbors, etc.?)
April 6, 2007, at 7:08 pm
They should have made the terrorists outraged vegans pummeling the security guards with organic carrots.
April 6, 2007, at 11:57 pm
I’m more confused than ever now. If it was a ‘Columbine-style’ attack, then what has a religious group to do with it? The youths involved in that were not doing it because they were crazed from long sessions of Bible-study. And if they want a right-wing group, why not the common-or-garden militia type who thinks (a)Government in any form is bad (b) it’s just a front for the U.N. anyway and (c) it is beaming mind-control signals into our brains from its secret moon base? No need to drag religion of any stripe or shade into it.
And it was the *police department* who crafted this scenario? Why? Why this particular one? It does sound like some local high-up in the copshop was having a pop at some particular target, but not knowing the local politics, we’re none the wiser. This is a story that demands reporting which means digging around a bit, not just regurgitating the PR handout.
April 7, 2007, at 9:16 am
Jerry said:
Michael said:
C’mon, guys. Describing the Christian Identity movement as people who “don’t believe in the separation of church and state†is tendentious and misleading. They’re racist and anti-government; that has much more to do with their activities than a position on the First Amendment and school prayer.
Arguably, the North American Man-Boy Love Association can be described as a group that “advocates for the legalization of consensual sodomy”. If I described it as such to justify a smear on homosexuals as potential pedophiles, I would be accused of being a bigot, would I not? And, Jerry, despite the fevered conspiracy theories of the left, Rushdoony and the “dominionists” have never acted to violently overthrow the government. Their eschatology is premillenialist: they believe that the government will waste away on its own.
Michael said:
Yes, and that begs the question: why were the police and the school administrators seemingly unaware how patently offensive their scenario was? Perhaps because they have been influenced by propaganda/media that would, for example, try to scare the public into adopting a specific interpretation of the First Amendment by describing a terrorist organization like Christian Identity as people who “don’t believe in the separation of church and state”?
April 7, 2007, at 6:01 pm
Or maybe because it’s far-right terrorist groups—who often have a strong religious influence—who are Ameican’s “home grown terrorists.” Who know why they picked the group they did, but it doesn’t erase the fact that there are “home grown terrorists” in the U.S. who are connected to far-right, fringe groups who often use religious rhetoric to justify their actions.
April 7, 2007, at 7:18 pm
Dale,
About such groups as dominionists, I’ve had an ongoing debate with an Islamist who feels that that the UK will inevitably become an Islamic state. All he needs to do is wait. But what happens if he becomes impatient and feels that just a little effort is needed? And what happens if he goes from a little effort to more violent means of persuasion?
This issue also reminds me of the “but they’re not really liberals” many years ago when we were confronted by the lunacies of such groups as the Symbionese Liberation Army and the rest you cited. They had as much to do with liberal values as the Christian Identity adherents have to do with Christianity. So maybe the whole issue would have been avoided if the bad guys had been cast as a group of “Christian Identity” types.
April 7, 2007, at 11:05 pm
From what I can judge, many who do such things seem to really believe that Christians, unlike other groups, have no feelings to be offended. After all, they’re the MAJORITY (when they aren’t using “Christian” as a label implying abnormal weirdos.)
In an organization I have mentioned before, those concerned with members’ emblematology told them that we could not use Christian symbolism because it would ofend the pagans, and we could not use pagan symbolism because it would offend the pagans. That is not, repeat NOT a slip of the keyboard. Offend Christians? Clearly impossible.
And remember AMFAR’s “Prayer won’t cure AIDS” ad? After protest, they did not even use the “sorry if anyone was offended” non-apology, but asserted that only The Religious Right (TM) had complained. Obviously, nobody else believes in the power of prayer, or would be bothered by AMFAR making theological pronouncements about what God can and can not do.
April 8, 2007, at 9:20 pm
Casting my (possibly unreliable) memory back to the previous episode involving the drill with Christian homeschoolers as the terrorists, I seem to recall that homeschoolers eventually received an actual apology, but that Christians didn’t. I don’t know if that’s because homeschoolers are more sympathetic than Christians, or just because we’re more likely to make the angry phone calls.
I suspect the latter: after all, if you rounded up ten random Americans, none of them would express the view that Christianity should be outlawed, while I can promise you that two or three would express the view that homeschooling should be outlawed or so restricted as to be effectively banned. I’m more afraid for my right to teach my own children math than for my right to teach them my faith.
April 9, 2007, at 8:54 am
Hmmmm … Having looked at the 2004 coverage of the silly “homeschooling terrorists” drill in Muskegon, I’m reminded that there was no apology to Christians because it was not said, implied, or in any way indicated that the “terrorists” were Christians. Ms. Malkin seems to have made up that part herself.
April 9, 2007, at 5:06 pm
When I was in the military, the “terrorists” in simulations that we ran were almost always pretty, ah, far-fetched.
Incidentally, I believe the majority of America’s home-grown terrorists are extreme environmentalists.
April 9, 2007, at 9:35 pm
Sorry to triple-post, but this is really bugging me. Terry, you say that you want real journalism on this issue, though I understand that you mean the second, recent, terrorism drill. But you reprinted without comment Malkin’s claim that the 1994 drill represented the terrorists as “Christian homeschoolers. Yes, Christian homeschoolers,” without apparently even checking the original Muskegon Chronicle article (still to be found, esp. on some homeschooling sites) to see if there was any reference to Christians at all in the 1994 drill scenario. There wasn’t. I know the conservative blogosphere has picked up Malkin’s claim uncritically, but y’all are *journalists* over here.
April 9, 2007, at 9:43 pm
So they were generic homeschoolers, in a land in which about 95 percent of homeschoolers are doing this for religious motivations?
April 10, 2007, at 8:53 am
But the “95 percent of homeschoolers are doing this for religious motivations” is a myth, Terry. The survey done a few years ago—I’ll try to hunt down a link for you—indicated that more than half of all homeschoolers were hs’ing for primarily academic, not religious reasons. Non-evangelical homeschoolers have been fighting against this misperception for ages. You’ve repeated it, and Malkin took it for granted.
April 10, 2007, at 9:00 am
Wikipedia cites the 2003 survey. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling#Motivations
It was much discussed on the hs’ing blogs and websites at the time. Participants could name as many motivations as they had for hs’ing (which is why it adds up to much more than 100%). Only 33% of hs’ers claimed a religious motivation.
Again, y’all are the journalists. Why toss a statistic like “about 95%” off the top of your head without checking first?
April 10, 2007, at 9:16 am
I apologize—one more triple-post, and one error to correct: the 33% is for “most important reason” for hs’ing. Best link is to the NCES site itself, at
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2006/homeschool/index.asp
72% include religious instruction as one of several reasons to hs. This of course includes plenty of hs’ers (like me) who consider it an advantage of hs’ing, but not at all their primary reason, and who don’t at all fit the “Christian evangelical” (at risk of misusing that E-word) label.
Ask your local hs’ers where you live, Terry: Is the Christian support group growing in membership? How about the non-religious support groups? Is hs’ing getting more popular as an academic alternative to people whose faith wouldn’t itself drive them to teach their own? You might be surprised what you hear. Hs’ing is still growing, but not so much among the conservative Protestant churches, which years ago “maxed out” their potential hs’ing families and are starting to see a backlash against the anti-public school teachings: remember SBC president Welch and the 2005 resolution he opposed?
April 10, 2007, at 9:47 am
SHARON:
Thanks for the links, they help.
I have talked to many homeschoolers and have covered national meetings of the movement. I know the motivations are complex and that there are liberal homeschoolers. But the face of the movement are the people who reject public schools on issues of religion and quality.
The interesting story, for me, is whether homeschoolers are evolving into a kind of under-the-radar “tutor” system and networks that provide some of the benefits of schools but without the legalities.
I’ll be more careful with numbers, in the future, but I reject your essential point — that “homeschoolers” isn’t a term with, in the USA context, heavy religious baggage.
April 10, 2007, at 9:56 am
Okay, we can agree to disagree on the essential point: but do you hold that the “heavy religious baggage” justifies Malkin’s leap from “homeschoolers” (in the actual scenario) to “Christian homeschoolers. Yes, Christian homeschoolers” and from that to seeing Christianity as the primary target? After all, it seems much more likely that someone was thinking “So who would attack a school bus? Who would be against schools? Homeschoolers I guess.” “Heavy baggage” is not enough to support the straight claim that Muskegon Area ISD targeted Christians.