June 5, 2000
Revival at high school sparks debate on church & state
___By Bruce Nolan
___Religion News Service
___CARRIERE, Miss.--Football jocks wept in the gym. Teenagers took the microphone, confessing their personal demons and begging for friends' prayers. Students in corridors wept on one another's shoulders.
___In an unusual outbreak of fervor being applauded by conservative Christians nationwide, the regular class schedule at Pearl River Central High School broke down one day this spring as teachers and administrators at first watched, then joined students in expressions of faith, personal testimonies and prayer in a student Bible club meeting that lasted four hours.
___Since that day, news of the so-called "Pearl River Revival" has been spreading on Christian radio and websites, where it is noted approvingly as a supernatural event--and a welcome example of a public school's hospitality to Christianity.
___Meanwhile, hundreds of congratulatory e-mails have formed a pile four inches thick on the desk of Principal Lolita Lee, who suspended classes April 12, the day a late-morning program by Pearl River's Christian students mushroomed into a daylong, school-wide revival.
___But there is no criticism yet, largely because the event is still not widely known outside conservative circles, and because students, faculty and families in heavily evangelical Pearl River County overwhelmingly approve of what occurred that day, Lee said.
___"In the first couple of weeks, I must've had 30 or 40 calls from parents, and they were all just real glad that it had happened," she said.
___"I think this was a message from God that we need to put God back in our schools," said Judy Mitchell, one of the Bible club's faculty supervisors. "That's how I understood it, and that's become my goal."
Judy Mitchell, one of the Bible club's faculty supervisors
___But the high school's official hospitality to the class-time event, including teachers' own participation, apparently violated the state of Mississippi's duty to act as "a neutral, honest broker" among all faiths, said Charles Haynes, a constitutional scholar at the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center in Arlington, Va., and a consultant generally regarded as a friend of educators' attempts to integrate faith into school life.
___"The First Amendment does not keep religion out of schools," Haynes said. "But it says religion can come in only in a way that protects the rights of all the kids, protects them from the government either denigrating or promoting a particular religion.
___"I grant you, there are times of great emotion when a principal cannot just bring out a gong, as it were, and gong a show to an end without it being hurtful or damaging to young people. That may be the case in times of great stress, if young people gather and begin to pray after a shooting, for instance. I sympathize with that.
___"But even then, they have to set some kind of limit, and more important, this school I think should not have put itself in that position in the first place."
___The Pearl River phenomenon began when the school let a student group, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, sponsor a 90-minute program for other students during the last class before lunch that day, Lee said.
___That in itself was not unusual, Lee said. Similar arrangements have been made for blood drives or student fund-raisers.
___Students who wanted to attend were excused from class. "About 90 percent" of Pearl River's 640 students gathered in the school's gym to watch a series of skits promoting the Christian life, prepared by the fellowship's members.
___"We didn't know what the closing would be, so we left that to God, and he totally took over," said Cary-Anne Dell, a senior and one of the event's organizers.
___In short order, students began to open up with sometimes intense, emotional confessions in a process that began to feed on itself, Dell and others said.
___"I said to myself, 'The Spirit is filling these kids, and I'm going to let it continue. I don't want it to stop,"' said Lee, who had been sitting in the front row.
___The line of students waiting to talk quickly grew to 30 or more, she said. Several administrators and teachers, starting with Lee, took the microphone to offer their own testimonies, several participants said.
___"Everybody was crying, hugging and kissing," said 14-year-old Jaquaila Jefferson.
___Lee announced the arrival of the lunch hour, but few people left, said Don Davis, one of the club's supervisors.
___A little later, Lee placed a call to her supervisor, county school Superintendent Zeno Carter. "But I wasn't calling to ask permission to let it continue," she said. "I wanted him to come see this."
___Students grouped and regrouped to pray among themselves in the gym and nearby corridors, participants said.
___The club had arranged for two youth ministers to be on hand to talk to students, "but nobody needed them," Dell said. "It was all kids coming up to other kids and asking, 'Will you pray with me?"'
___"We don't have an official number, but something like 15 or 20 came up on faith," as a sign of personal conversion, Davis said. "I guess hundreds gave testimonies and rededicated their lives to Christ. It just kept ballooning and ballooning.
___"The only reason we stopped is because the buses came at 3:15 p.m., and we still had kids waiting to speak," he said.
___April 12 was a Wednesday, and that night many participants took news of the event to their midweek services at nearby Baptist churches.
___Within days, they said, word rocketed around the area. A week later, Dell said, she was asked to describe the event at a Fellowship of Christian Athletes gathering in Jackson.
___The Internet was only a short leap away.
___Websites run by the Southern Baptist Convention and Christianity Today, a monthly evangelical magazine, featured stories about the event and included Lee's e-mail address, prompting the torrent of electronic applause.
___Christian radio stations began calling for phone interviews. An account of the event, described as "a full-fledged revival," appeared on Decision Today, a website operated by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
___Amid all the applause, there have been one or two reservations, among them a Pearl River teacher who told Lee she may have broken the law.
___If so, Lee said she is unsure how, given that the session was student-led and voluntary.
___Since the event, she also has learned that one teacher and perhaps two students at the school are Jewish, but none has complained.
___But protecting minority faiths from state-approved religious activity is what the Constitution requires, "and that's a good thing for religion," Haynes said.
___Had a high school in Utah, which is predominantly Mormon, sponsored a similar program promoting Mormonism during class time, "you can be sure those good Baptist parents excited about what happened in Mississippi would be first in line at the courthouse with a lawsuit charging the public schools with illegally promoting Mormonism," Haynes said.
___"When you're in the majority, you have to behave as you'd like to be treated if you were in the minority," he said.
___
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