I often wonder if the primary reason so many people want to have Bible reading and prayer in public schools is that the U.S. Supreme Court said we couldn’t have it some 40 years ago. Certainly that was the case in Weiser.
I was about a sophomore in Weiser High School when the ruling came down. I had gone to first grade in Stockton, Calif. and began the second grade in East Side School in Weiser. To my certain memory I had never heard a prayer said or a Bible read in that entire time.
I guess you could say that subjects were taught from a Christian perspective because we all considered ourselves Christians, even though not that many went to church. There was a small community of Jews, who made up the core of Weiser’s business community. But they generally kept their heads down, which probably says more about the Christianity of local Christians than any amount of reading the Bible or saying prayers.
Let’s face it, we weren’t a very Christian community. A chief commandment in Christianity is to love one another, and in Weiser, the different churches were barely tolerant of each other. The Mormons disapproved of the Protestants, the Protestants disliked the Mormons and no one liked the Catholics very much. Prayer and the Bible was the farthest thing from our minds in school. What religious discussion there was consisted of whether popular Mormons and Catholics were dating Protestants in order to ensnare them in their church.
Then the Supreme Court came down on the Bible and prayer. The National Honor Society began reading Bible passages over the intercom every morning at Weiser High School. Nobody is going to tell us not to read the Bible declared NHS President Jack Beyer, a Methodist and leading anti-Mormon. Susan Millbrook, a tall and beautiful blonde who dated only Catholics, volunteered to organize the readings.
In an unprecedented wave of cooperation, it was decided that Catholic and Protestant Bibles would be read on alternating days. The Latter-day Saints, who made up a significant proportion of the student body, did not request equal time for the Book of Mormon.
I suppose it could be said that the Supreme Court decision lit the fire of ecumenism under Weiser’s Christians. Well, not quite all of them. Goldie Bostrum, the chief cook and an ardent Catholic, reached up and snapped off the intercom in the kitchen when the Protestant Bible was read. “Next thing you know, they’ll be askin’ for meat on Fridays,” she grumbled.
And she was right. If Friday lunches had been something other than fish sticks, tuna-noodle bake and macaroni and cheese, no one would have complained. As it was, even the Catholic students hated Friday lunches.
Matters came to a head when Goldie was stuck with several pounds of brisket at the end of the week. It wouldn’t last until Monday and there was not enough to feed the whole student body anyway. But, throwing it out was not an option. On Goldie’s personal list of deadly sins wasting food was on an equal basis with eating meat on Friday.
She resolved the dilemma by grinding up the leftover brisket and making sandwiches. She stationed herself behind a table at the head of the lunch line, right behind the cashiers. As the students approached she demanded, “Are you Catholic?
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If you said no, you got a chopped beef sandwich. If you said yes, you were waved passed the sandwiches to the fish sticks. This created a serious dilemma for Catholics and Goldie knew it. Even non-observant Catholics knew full well that eating fish on Friday was a relatively minor sin. However, publicly denying you were Catholic was a one-way ticket to Hell.
Normally Goldie held that anyone, Protestant or Catholic, who ate meat on Friday was committing a sin and she would be equally sinful by serving it to them. On this occasion, however, she reasoned that it was okay since all non-Catholics were going to Hell anyway; eating some extra meat wasn’t going to damn them any more.
The Bible readings crackled and popped over the intercom system for a couple of months until a fight flared up over whether the Song of Solomon was appropriate for teenage ears. There was also a scuffle when Catholics wanted to read parts of the Apocrypha. The Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Lutherans and Methodists sided with the Catholics against the Disciples of Christ, Nazarenes, Assembly of God and the Four Square Gospel.
To my knowledge the Bible has never been read in Weiser High School since.
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