Recent newspaper article. I grabbed it from the Gazette in Billings, Montana (about an hour and a half north of me.)

What do you think, is this promoting religion on school property?


Students lead prayers at flagpoles
By SUSAN OLP
Of The Gazette Staff
At least a couple of million teens across the country will gather early this morning around flagpoles at their high schools and middle schools to pray.

This is the 17th year of the student-initiated, student-led prayer time called "See You at the Pole." This year's event has a theme of "Gather. Unite. Pray. Come Together."

Last year, according to the national organizers, 2 million students met at schools in all 50 states, as well as internationally. The Rev. Jim Taber, youth and college pastor at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Billings, sees great value in the event.

"It's a great chance for students to step out and lead on their own, not to mention it's just great to be able to pray for your school and country," Taber said.
It helps students to focus on people and situations outside of themselves, he said.

"It also gives them a chance to be together with students who may not be in their church, to find a commonality in their faith," Taber said. "I think there's a great unity in it."

Taber, who grew up in Laurel, took part in "See You at the Pole" when he was in high school.

"I honestly remember thinking 'I didn't know there was this many Christians in my school,' " he said.

Taber's wife, Brandi, who also works at the church, said it's not necessarily easy to take part in the morning prayer session.

"Standing up for your faith in high school is not the popular thing, but if you see others doing it, it spurs you on," she said.

She also sees strength in numbers.

"Knowing other people out there believe what you believe, it brings strength to students as believers and strength to the body as a whole."

Jim Taber and the other youth leaders from his church and others will join the students at the pole, but they will stay outside the circle of students and let the high schoolers and middle schoolers be in charge.

To expand on the morning prayer time, Emmanuel Baptist will hold a rally tonight for students throughout the area. One aspect of the evening will be to focus on being thankful for the freedom to be able to gather in public and pray.

"We don't realize that being able to go to your school and stand around the flagpole and pray doesn't happen in many, many other places," Taber said. "It's really neat to be able to do that."

it's okay - as long as it's not during school hours nor led by the administration.

I kinda like that they're doing it around a flagpole rather than screaming for the right to put up a huge cross on school property.

I still don't know why they can't meet at a church to do their praying - but, it doesn't hurt anything for them to do this before school IMO.

Not promoting religion at all. It seems like a very sweet idea actually.


Oh and just for you Myt:


heh heh heh, heh heh heh, you said POLE. heh heh heh

Probably because school is a central meeting place for everyone in the school. A church wouldn't be.

I know at my children's schools there are children bussed in from all over. Meeting at a church wouldn't be feasible.

LOL!!! Thanks.. you just made my day.

I think it's cool that people that think alike are gathering together to share in something positive.

I'm not complaining. It's not teacher led and it's not discriminatory or hateful, so I don't see a problem.

1) It doesn't go too far. It's student lead. I think the only caveat would be that it not interfere with school access (i.e. not hundreds of people out front blocking the area) and not interrupt school schedule / classes.

2) I think it's actually kind of cool.
One thing that annoys me with the whole "school prayer" issue is that it seems so hypocritical to me in some ways. People wanting to institute "school prayer" ignoring what they can CURRENTLY do, and just plain not doing it.
How many times have you ever seen a family bow their head and pray in a restaurant before the meal?
Or when in high school, before they ate?

Here we have people actively taking it upon themselves to pray instead of demanding others set aside time for them to do something they are not already doing.

To both I would say NEVER - but, maybe it's happened once or twice in fifty years, so I'll say awesomely rarely.