Teacher With Bible Divides Ohio Town

An Ohio teacher, who apparently forgot that he represents the state, provided a field guide for those who would establish religion in the public schools.

He led his football players in prayers before games; before practices; before team meetings. His district had to settle a $18,000 suit as a result.

Later, he proposed that the school board adopt a policy to teach evolution as theory, not proven scientific fact and was denied. He taught Intelligent Design instead and his colleagues began to complain that when they received his former students they had not mastered the basics, causing them to have to reteach.

Students complained that he said, “Science is wrong because the Bible states that homosexuality is a sin, and so anyone who is gay chooses to be gay and is therefore a sinner.”

Then there was the time he burned a cross (he says it's an X) on the arm of one of his students with a tesla coil.

More recently he posted the Ten Commandments on his classroom door, adorned his room with three more copies of the decalogue and other posters with scripture on it. Supported by a religious activist, he drew battlelines refusing to remove a Bible from the view of his students.

His persistent effort over time to impose his strongly held views promoting a specific religion is the clearest case of establishment of religion in recent memory.

This from the New York Times:

Most people in this quiet all-American town describe themselves as devoutly Christian, but even here they are deeply divided over what should happen to John Freshwater.

Mr. Freshwater, an eighth-grade public school science teacher, is accused of burning a cross onto the arms of at least two students and teaching creationism, charges he says have been fabricated because he refused an order by his principal to remove a Bible from his desk.

After an investigation, school officials notified Mr. Freshwater in June 2008 of their intent to fire him, but he asked for a pre-termination hearing, which has lasted more than a year and cost the school board more than a half-million dollars.

The hearing is finally scheduled to end Friday, and a verdict on Mr. Freshwater’s fate is expected some months later. But the town — home to about 15,000 people, more than 30 churches and an evangelical university — remains split.

To some, Mr. Freshwater is a hero unfairly punished for standing up for his Christian beliefs. To others, he is a zealot who pushed those beliefs onto students...

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