CLEVELAND — Due to the complaint of a parent in a small-town Ohio middle school that free Bibles were being passed out in her son’s class, Rushville Middle School principal Gene Scott has agreed to stop the practice of allowing representatives from Gideons International to enter the school to distribute copies of the New Testament. The public school of about 295 students is in Rushville, a town of about 1,550 residents some 45 miles southeast of Columbus.
A parent complained that on Nov. 20 a representative of Gideons International was allowed to give out New Testaments in the fifth-grade science class. The parent, who did not want to be identified, contended the practice violates the constitutional separation of church and state.
Scott said students were not actually handed Bibles but were allowed to take one if they wished. But even that kind of passive distribution raises the ire of many civil libertarians, who argue that children who do not take the book risk being stigmatized.
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