When Nevada high school valedictorian Brittany McComb began talking about the virtues of her Christian faith during her graduation speech, the school turned off her microphone. Tom Krattenmaker wonders where we should draw the line in such situations:
Probably at the place where a speaker—a speaker in the privileged position of representing her entire class before a captive audience—promotes her particular belief as superior to others, and puts non- and other-believers in the undeserved position of being told their own creeds and philosophies are deficient. (One suspects that Brittany McComb and her supporters would not have appreciated a Muslim valedictorian making the case for Mohammed’s teachings and promising listeners fulfillment if only they’d embrace Islam.)
Conservative religious news media outlets such as the Christian Broadcasting Network grab stories like McComb’s and hold them up as examples of the persecution of Christians. While these foul calls can be as hyperbolic as they are one-sided, some truth can be found beneath the rhetoric. In many quarters in present-day America, we have lurched too far toward behaving as though expressions of religion must be scrubbed from public venues. Cases in point: efforts by the American Civil Liberties Union and others to remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance and to dismantle the Mount Soledad war-memorial cross sitting on government land near San Diego since the 1950s. And more recently: a decision by school officials in Billings, Mont., to have a valedictorian strip from her speech a line about not letting fear “keep me from sharing Christ and his joy with those around me.”
Yes, it can be uncomfortable for some to hear a fellow citizen emphatically voicing what-faith-has-meant-to-me sentiments in a public setting especially when it comes in the doctrine-heavy language used in the Nevada valedictorian’s speech. (One line in the silenced speech, according to the Christian Broadcasting Network, read, “God’s love is so great that he gave his only son up to an excruciating death on a cross so his blood would cover all our shortcomings and our relationship with him could be restored.)
But what secularists sometimes forget is that, for many believers, experiencing momentous events like graduation without gratitude and witness to God is as distasteful as it is for an atheist to be subjected to hard-edged proselytizing.
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