Zealous groups with an agenda to pursue often take extraordinary steps to push it. Plenty of Religious Right organizations throughout the nation spend loads of time and money to reach the huge audience of youngsters in the nation’s public schools.
“The Power Team,” a Texas-based group made up of over 20 athletes, has convinced many schools to open the doors to their antics. The Team’s feats-of-strength performances include bending steel and smashing stacks of concrete blocks and other items. According to the group’s Web site, Team member John Kopta, a 6-foot, 250-pound former wrestler and body-builder, crushes “countless tons of ice and concrete with his fist, forearm, and head.”
The evangelical Christian group employs its acts to recruit students to attend religious gatherings after school. Indeed, Team President Todd Keene boasts on the organization’sWeb site that his group performs at more than 1,000 school assemblies a year, reaching “hundreds of thousands” with its evangelistic message.
The Web site proclaims that the Power Team’s mission is, “To reach people with the gospel of Jesus Christ which an ordinary church meeting or event cannot. Drawing people through the use of performing visually explosive and spectacular feats of strength by incredible athletes who share with them the life-changing message of the cross.”
The Power Team has been successful at reaching public school students. But that success has its limits, and as more and more parents, school officials and students pick up on the group’s religious outreach, its success is likely to wane.
In Wisconsin recently, several school districts cancelled appearances of The Power Team after a local citizen raised concerns.
Jefferson County resident John Foust contacted five school districts where The Power Team was scheduled to perform and pointed officials to its Web site, which boasts of raising church membership with its events.
All of the districts subsequently cancelled the appearances, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
Jefferson County School Superintendent Mike Swartz told the newspaper that his school district “didn’t want to cross the line on separation of church and state.”
It was a smart move. Americans United for Separation of Church and State has monitored The Power Team’s crusade and warned school officials that they must not help the organization advance its evangelistic work.
Late last year, Americans United successfully thwarted a planned Power Team event at a Washington State public school.
“The Power Team is a thoroughly religious organization that describes itself as a ‘strength based ministry specializing in growing churches through Family-Focused Evangelism,” Americans United Litigation Counsel Aram A. Schvey wrote to officials of the Colville School District.
Schvey’s letter noted that allowing the group to “encourage students to attend Christian events, which The Power Team calls, ‘crusades,’ after school” is constitutionally suspect.
Public schools serve students of many faiths and none. School officials should never open the door to this kind of covert evangelism. The Power Team has every right to try to win converts and build churches, but they shouldn’t try to do it at school.
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