The Nativity Movie
No Fuss as Schools Prepare to Screen Nativity Movie
By Nathan Burchfiel
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
(CNSNews.com) - As religious groups continue to react to the exclusion of a Bible-based movie from a Chicago Christmas festival, Christian activists in Virginia are meeting no resistance as they move ahead with plans to screen the film in public school facilities.
Not only are the schools presenting no difficulties, but organizations traditionally hostile to the use of public property for religious purposes are also unfazed.
Mount Vernon High School in Fairfax County, Va., is scheduled to host a screening of the "The Nativity Story" Thursday night, the day before its nationwide release. Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, also in Fairfax County, will host a screening Friday night.
Both showings are sponsored by the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA), a non-profit group that supports Christian clubs on high school campuses across the United States. The screenings are free and open to the public.
The film, which is being released by New Line Cinema on Dec. 1, presents the biblical account of the birth of Jesus Christ. City officials in Chicago angered Christian activists this week when they acknowledged they had asked organizers of an annual Christmas festival - the German Christkindlmarket - to reject sponsorship money from the studio.
City officials subsequently said their opposition to the deal was based on New Line's "aggressively marketing the movie," not the religious theme of the movie. The studio had planned to play trailers for the movie throughout the event.
But unlike the film's sponsors in Chicago, organizers in Virginia report no opposition to the planned screening of the film, even though public facilities will be used.
Jay Ruelas, an assistant soccer coach at Mount Vernon and one of the faculty sponsors of the FCA club there, told Cybercast News Service he had experienced "no resistance" from inside or outside the school system. Administrators, including Principal Nardos King, had been "more than helpful."
Rob Boston, a spokesman for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the group didn't have any objection to "voluntary events sponsored by outside organizations."
He said the voluntary nature of the screening "makes all the difference" and that if students were required to attend, Americans United would object.
"Certainly the teachers shouldn't be promoting a religious event," Boston added. "Our main concern would be if any public school were screening this devotional film and expecting all of the students to watch it. That would be schools sponsoring religion - we couldn't have that."
Members of the club are passing out fliers to fellow students encouraging them to bring a "friend or two" to the screening to enjoy "friends ... fellowship ... [and] fun!"
Paul Regnier, a spokesman for Fairfax County Public Schools, said he hadn't heard anything about the movie plans until media queries Wednesday and that no school board members or outside groups had expressed concern.
"As long as they're within the bounds of any other club, they can use the community-use process like any organization," Regnier said, adding that because FCA is a student club, they do not have to pay to use the school's facilities.
"This is in the evening the club is showing this," he added. "This is not sponsored by the school."
Tom Flynn of the secularist Center for Inquiry said there was no law that would allow schools to reject the screenings, even though he felt the current laws were "probably more lenient in this situation than is probably ideal."
The Center for Inquiry has been supportive of Chicago officials' decision to exclude the movie from its festival, but Flynn - who edits the organization's publication Free Inquiry Magazine - said the issue was different at public schools, because "student groups cannot be prohibited from using school facilities after instructional times."
"If you let the chess club meet ... then you can't refuse space after school hours for a Christian student group just because it's religious," he said, adding that the screening "put[s] the school board in a position of appearing to endorse the religious content of the film" but that "current law probably would not support forbidding that screening."
ACLU Virginia spokesman Kent Willis said the screenings were "perfectly acceptable" as long as the schools were not sponsoring the event, they were not mandatory, and the Christian group was not getting any special treatment other student organizations would be unable to get.
The last paragraph says it all. The screenings were not sponsored by the school, and the Christian group was not getting any special treatment. This is the way it should be. All voluntary......no one is forced to watch it.
Originally Posted by Karried
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