<p>I just had to share that included in my son's invitation to a pubilc school awards dinner was an invitation to a church service for seniors on the Sunday before graduation. I wonder if that's promotion of religion. :</p>
<p>In my town (small town public) there's always an interfaith church service, as well as graduation services within each church. As long as it's not mandatory, I see no harm. It's kind of just a nice thing for people who are religious, and the ones who aren't don't have to go.</p>
<p>Well, yeah! </p>
<p>That sort of thing happens where I live, too.</p>
<p>It took my husband MONTHS as Lieutenant Governor of this area of Kiwanis to stop the largest local chapter from starting and ending their meetings with exclusively Christian prayer. That was in the face of one of their most generous and well-known members being a prominent member of our town's only synagogue. People in places like this often just don't consider the fact that everyone isn't just like them. It takes gentle or sometimes not-so-gentle reminders to get them to open up.</p>
<p>It's not an interfaith service and I think it's inappropriate to mail the invite with official school business. I'm not objecting to the service itself.</p>
<p>ctymom, I agree they don't consider that everyone isn't like them. The problem with reminding them is that then you become the anti-christ. Kudos to your husband.</p>
<p>Thanks on his behalf. He deserved it, I thought, especially given the fact that he was within three months of taking final vows as a RC priest himself several decades ago, so he had no personal stake in the situation--just a personal sense of fairness.</p>
<p>I think any legal not for profit organization that wants to invite students, or use public property should have reasonable access. Its when schools pick and choose whose programs they will permit or mention that I get worried. I know some schools use churches for high school graduation because of auditorium size requirements.</p>
<p>Is this the same thing as a baccalaureate? We had one, too. It was held in the school aduitorium and was completely optional. I don't get ruffled about this type of activity on a public school campus.</p>
<p>Our high school has the baccaluareate service at a local church and it's always very well attended. The year my daughter graduated they did a special tribute to a senior that had died in a car accident just a couple of months prior to graduation. Anyone can attend and you'll see recent grads, parents but mostly the senior class.</p>
<p>My high school had a baccalaureate (non denom service) on a Sunday in the school auditorium. Attendance was optional. Some of the smaller schools here have them, but our large public school does not.</p>
<p>There are no baccalaureate's where we are. But I have to agree with the poster that said that in some of these small town public schools, people assume that EVERYONE isn the same or of the same religion, or celebrating the same holidays. We run into this AT school, not just in the commuity. This has been an issue for my children at school with regard to the insensitivity and lack of awareness in this day and age that not everyone is the same or of the same religion. I won't bother you with the stories but suffice it to say, teachers and schools ought to know better and I almost think they simply have never thought about that others are not all the same and are not observing the same religion. Sometimes it has to be pointed out and even then, it has been handled insensitively. It is like going back in time or just that some of these people do not know any better and have never been out of the town or something. </p>
<p>Susan</p>
<p>Maybe it's just a long standing tradition (not that that excuses it from updating). I actually remember prayer in public school. I was in the first grade, and without warning (how I felt) the teacher led us in a prayer. The problem, for me, was that she hadn't made the sign of the cross and the wording was slightly different from what I'd learned at home. I felt I had done something wrong, against my faith - as, in fact, I had. I had been taught to make the sign of the cross before 'speaking to God' and it bothered me terribly to have gone along with the crowd, yet I didn't have the courage to speak up or do things my own way. School prayer was abolished that year and no mention made until I graduated from high school and we had a baccalaureate. I have almost no recollection of it, except that I was surprised to find a religious event included in the public school. </p>
<p>I agree with Susan. I don't think people intend to offend, they're just usually people who haven't travelled outside the circles they were born into (geographically, culturally, whatever). Sometimes I go along, but I have learned to speak up when I feel it's necessary. If everyone in a school absolutely shared a similar faith (and I mean down to the sect) it would never be questioned. More and more, though, that's not the way it is.</p>