School's Christmas Toy Drive Canceled After Atheists Claim It Violates 'Basic Constitutional Principles'
Thanks to the campaign efforts of one prominent atheist organization, one Kansas school is ending its affiliation with a Christian nonprofit, Samaritan’s Purse.
According to the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), the annual project that Samaritan’s Purse organizes in conjunction with various schools is one that “violates basic constitutional principles.”
What is the name of this apparently insidious project might you ask?
Operation Christmas Child.
The FFRF continues to prove how noble its mission against organized religion is by preventing toys from being shipped to various children around the world for Christmas.
Operation Christmas Child, led by Rev. Franklin Graham, the son of the late evangelist Billy Graham, is an annual project through which shoeboxes filled with gifts are sent to children in more than 160 nations, according to The Christian Post.
It isn’t the giving of presents that FFRF takes issue with, however.
Along with the gift, children also hear the Gospel message and receive a booklet that teaches them about Jesus Christ.
According to Billy Graham’s grandson, Edward Graham, the shoeboxes have reached more children with the Gospel than any of the massive speaking events his grandfather had famously held in the past.
Liberty Middle School in Kansas continued working with Samaritan’s Purse until the Freedom From Religion Project stepped in.
Now, the school is “discontinuing that effort upon learning that its mission is more sectarian in nature than we realized” a school superintendent said as reported by The Christian Post.
The FFRF accused the Samaritan’s Purse of using “school staff and resources to convert people to Christianity,” which, in the organization’s view, “violates basic constitutional principles.”
“While it is laudable for a public school to promote student involvement in the community by volunteering and donating to charitable organizations, the school cannot use that goal as an avenue to fund a religious organization with a religious mission,” FFRF said in its letter to Liberty Middle School, according to The Christian Post.
“Certainly, there are other secular nonprofit organizations that offer charitable opportunities.”
One thing that Liberty Middle School and the FFRF fail to realize, however, is that atheist groups like the FFRF are not impartial.
They have their own set of values and principles and our forcing them on others while preventing Christians and other religious groups from being afforded the same opportunity.
Atheism and nontheism aren’t neutral.
They’re merely additional sets of religious principles based around the notion that there is no God.
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