Reply to SSL Hours for Religious Activities and the First Amendment

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Reply to "SSL Hours for Religious Activities and the First Amendment"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Service learning hours are supposed to involve acts of service that benefit the community/society.  So obviously it shouldn't include tasks where the goal isn't to benefit people/community/society, but instead just to advance some specific religion (and no, you can't just say "well I think if more people practiced my religion it would be better for society, so obviously helping advance my religion is service!")   I believe you can get SSL hours for church activities that are actually about service to the community, which is fine, but it would be nuts to say that kids should be able to count helping assist in religious services or delivering religious training to children as community service.[/quote]

It’s not nuts at all.  No community service is going to benefit everyone.

Doing community service by volunteering as an assistant baseball coach benefits the team members.  Doing community service by tutoring math benefits those receiving the tutoring.  A HS student being an assistant teacher or tutoring at a religious program benefits the people in the program just the same.

It’s really hard to see how the community at large benefits from little Johnny getting help on his baseball swing in a way it doesn’t if Johnny is learning about Easter, Passover, or Ramadan.

[b]More importantly, it’s not the government’s place to prioritize between these acts of community service.[/b][/quote]

This is my gripe with this issue.

My kid actually did get tons of SSL volunteering as an assistant coach for a sport.  She loved it and it was a good experience.

But why should she get that and a kid who is helping out at Sunday school not get SSL?

Arbitrary and discriminatory.

And I have never been to Sunday school, nor do my kids attend.[/quote]

Because we have something called separation of church and state enshrined in our Constitution.  If your kid wants credit for teaching Sunday School, send them to Catholic school rather than expecting MCPS to provide credit for teaching Christianity.[/quote]

I didn’t see anyone say anything about Catholicism or even Christianity.

And your constitutional “analysis” ignores the free exercise clause of the First Amendment.  You are right that the government can’t establish a religion, meaning they can’t teach Christianity (or any other religion) in school, but they also can’t impede the free exercise of religion, and generally can’t express hostility toward religious activities relative to secular activities.

If a school is going to require community service, but refuse to permit a student (if they so choose) to complete that community service in a religious setting while permitting the exact same service in a secular setting, there is a strong argument that is illegal.[/quote]

MCPS has SSL Guidelines for Faith Organizations in the Community.   And people have repeated the content of these rules over and over again in this thread.

Why don't you try reading rather than throwing out words you don't understand like "illegal"?
https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/siteassets/schools/high-schools/k-q/qohs/uploadedfiles/ssl/religionandssl.pdf
The following are key to faith organizations awarding SSL 
opportunities:
 Address and/or serve issues and populations beyond their religious community and general membership.
 Serve the wider public (generally an underserved population: poor, elderly, infirmed, disabled, at-risk youth, 
etc)—not just members of a particular faith community or those who are adherents to their denomination.
 Be an activity that is open to the non-denominational public
 If educational, be in a setting that has a secular curriculum and secular programming[/quote]

I’ve never said I didn’t understand the rules or disputed that what I am proposing violates current MCPS policy.

I’ve been saying there is a good chance that current MCPS policy violates the constitution.

Those are two very different things.[/quote]

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