A Pro-Life Club and the Public School
Religion & Liberty Online

A Pro-Life Club and the Public School

I’m not typically a big fan of litigation. But that option needs to be there for some cases that can’t be solved in other ways. It’s a big stick that should only be used when absolutely necessary and only when appropriate.

I’m glad that option was there for Stephanie Hoffmeier of Colonial Forge High School in Stafford, Virginia. When Stephanie applied to register a student club at the school, the administration denied her request, “on the grounds that it was not tied to the school curriculum.”

What was the club proposal? “The Pro-Life Club,” thought to be the region’s “only anti-abortion club in a public high school.” After filing suit in federal court, the educrats at Colonial Forge had to rethink and reexamine their position: “Even some advocates of strict separation of church and state say religious speech is protected under the Constitution and federal law.”

One of the basic rights that is consistently tread over by the public education bureaucracy in the United States is the right to integrate religious faith and intellectual learning, fides quarens intellectum. And even in a case like this, in which faith is brought into an extra-curricular activity, the first and most basic instinct is to squash it.

Thankfully, “School officials, conceding they were wrong, officially recognized the club on Oct. 24, and Hoffmeier dropped the suit.”

Jordan J. Ballor

Jordan J. Ballor (Dr. theol., University of Zurich; Ph.D., Calvin Theological Seminary) is director of research at the Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy, an initiative of the First Liberty Institute. He has previously held research positions at the Acton Institute and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and has authored multiple books, including a forthcoming introduction to the public theology of Abraham Kuyper. Working with Lexham Press, he served as a general editor for the 12 volume Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology series, and his research can be found in publications including Journal of Markets & Morality, Journal of Religion, Scottish Journal of Theology, Reformation & Renaissance Review, Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Faith & Economics, and Calvin Theological Journal. He is also associate director of the Junius Institute for Digital Reformation Research at Calvin Theological Seminary and the Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity & Politics at Calvin University.