{"id":928,"date":"2012-10-02T12:50:00","date_gmt":"2012-10-02T12:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2012\/10\/02\/battle-in-the-bible-belt"},"modified":"2012-10-02T12:50:00","modified_gmt":"2012-10-02T12:50:00","slug":"battle-in-the-bible-belt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=928","title":{"rendered":"Battle in the Bible Belt"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>Many regions in Texas and the South boast of being the \u201cbuckle of the Bible Belt.\u201d Deep East Texas just might be the real deal.<\/p>\n<p>A dust-up has occurred at Kountze High School, just a few miles north of Beaumont, over whether cheerleaders can display Bible verses on banners during football games. The case has made national headlines and has created a bit of a stir in that part of the world.<\/p>\n<p>I consulted recently with my pal Tom Taschinger, the editorial page editor of the Beaumont Enterprise \u2013 where I used to work \u2013 about his take on the story. He responded with an email that said in part, that the paper sided with those who say the display of the Scripture verses is a \u201cclearcut violation of church-state separation.\u201d He complained that the \u201clocal judge, and now the Texas AG are refusing to call a spade a spade and are leaving that job to a higher court.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But then Tom offered this bit of a back story: \u201cLost in all this nonsense is the fact that the run-through banners are trampled into the mud and then thrown into the trash with soda cups and popcorn boxes \u2013 a clearly disrespectful way to treat Scripture. Yikes!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I guess I would disagree respectfully with my friend\u2019s view that the banners violate the Establishment Clause of the Constitution, given that the displays are a result of the students\u2019 initiative and not a demand placed on them by school authorities.<\/p>\n<p>But he\u2019s totally right to chide the kids for treating these holy verses in such a \u2013 dare I say it \u2013 blasphemous manner.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many regions in Texas and the South boast of being the \u201cbuckle of the Bible Belt.\u201d Deep East Texas just might be the real deal. A dust-up has occurred at Kountze High School, just a few miles north of Beaumont, over whether cheerleaders can display Bible verses on banners during football games. The case has &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=928\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Battle in the Bible Belt<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}