An atheist organization has warned public schools that taking their students on a trip to Ken Ham’s Creation Museum would be a violation of the Constitution.
Christian Today reports that atheist organization Freedom From Religion
Foundation (FFRF) emailed letters to three public high schools, telling
them that their planned trips to the Creation Museum violated the
Constitution’s Establishment Clause.
"Public schools may not advance or promote religion. Bringing students
on a field trip to a religious venue is a blatant promotion of
religion," said FFRF Legal Fellow Madeline Ziegler in her letter to
Nicholas Subashi, legal counsel for the Brookville Local Schools.
The FFRF instead suggested that the public schools take their students on field trips to seculuar institutions instead.
"It is unconstitutional for a public school to take students on a field
trip to a religious venue such as the Creation Museum, a Christian
museum which promotes the religious doctrine of creationism and lists
its mission as 'to point today's culture back to the authority of
Scripture and proclaim the gospel message,'" the letters read, according
to the Christian News Network.
However, Ken Ham, the Creation Museum’s founder, says that having
public school students visit the museum on a field trip does not violate
the Constitution as long as teachers present Creationism as one
possible viewpoint.
"If public schools were bringing students here and their teachers were
saying, 'THIS interpretation is the only truth that you should
personally accept,' then that would be a violation of the Establishment
Clause of the Constitution," he said. "Public school officials should
neither personally endorse nor diminish the museum's view, but rather
present our beliefs objectively.”
Ham also said that groups like the FFRF like to bully public schools
because they don’t want students learning about alternate
interpretations besides Evolution.
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