NC School Orders 6-year-old to Remove 'God' From Poem

 

A North Carolina community is embroiled in controversy after a school ordered a six-year-old girl to remove the word “God” from a poem that she was supposed to read during a Veteran’s Day ceremony.

The girl is a first-grader at West Marion Elementary School. She was supposed to read the poem during a school assembly marking Veteran’s Day. The poem honored her two grandfathers who had served during the Vietnam War.

“He prayed to God for peace, he prayed to God for strength,” the poem read.

A parent reportedly found out about the poem and expressed concern about mentioning the word God during a school event. The parent did not want the Almighty’s name mentioned anywhere in the program, according to one account.

“We wanted to make sure we were upholding the school district’s responsibility of separation of church and state from the Establishment Clause,” Supt. Gerri Martin told the McDowell News. 
Martin told the newspaper she made the decision in consultation with the school’s principal and vice principal.

“We jointly decided that we must err on the side of caution to prevent crossing the line on the Establishment Clause of the Constitution,” Kirkpatrick told the newspaper. “As a principal of a public school, I must put aside my personal religious beliefs and follow the law — which upholds that we have freedom of speech and freedom of religion, but that we, as public schools, cannot endorse one single religion over another.”

Fox News contacted the parents of the child but they declined to comment on the controversy.
The incident has sparked widespread concern across this western North Carolina community — called by many the buckle of the Bible Belt.

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