Christian Clubs on the Rise at Area High Schools : Religion: In the Valley alone, about a dozen of the 17 district secondary campuses have such groups.

It’s Monday lunchtime again in Room 206 at El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills, and the two dozen students who have gathered there talk and laugh as they pull out their sandwiches, potato chips, juice packs--and Bibles.

Then the chatter subsides, the rustling of sacks and wrappers is stilled and a young male voice, cracking with the changes of adolescence but sounding assured nonetheless, begins:

“Let us come before You with a righteous heart, Father God,” the teen-ager says solemnly, his head bowed. “I pray that You will strengthen us. . . . Help us do well in school, God, and help us be a light to other people.”

“Amens” from the others seal the prayer. The weekly meeting of the Chi Alpha club--Greek letters that stand for Christ First--goes into full swing with a reading from the New Testament and teaching by the group’s president.

Such scenes are becoming increasingly common at public high schools throughout Los Angeles and the nation as religious students exercise rights recently granted them by the U.S. Supreme Court. In a near-unanimous decision in June, 1990, the justices ruled that secondary schools must allow religious clubs on campus if other non-academic student organizations are permitted.

Since then, Christian clubs have begun cropping up at high schools throughout the sprawling Los Angeles Unified School District. More than half the district’s 49 high schools have groups that attract from five to 50 students at meetings held before class, during lunch or after school.

In the San Fernando Valley alone, about a dozen of the 17 Los Angeles district high schools have such groups.

The rise of campus Christian clubs coincides with an increase in churchgoing by teen-agers. According to a recently released Gallup youth poll, half of the nation’s youths attended church weekly in 1993, up from 45% the year before.

Some civil libertarians decry the campus organizations, saying they blur the line between church and state. But advocates of such associations, not least the students themselves, defend them as a legitimate gathering of youths with a mutual interest, akin to a chess or ski club.

“It’s a place for people who have a common belief in Christianity to come together and anybody who’s curious about Christianity to come,” said Daniel Chapman, a 17-year-old junior who leads El Camino’s Chi Alpha group and often conducts the weekly Bible study. “It’s a good resource.”

“It’s a way of witnessing to people . . . of fellowshipping with people at my school,” added Deanna Turner, 17, who founded a Christian club at Sylmar High School in December. Her group, like most in the Valley, plans to devote itself to Scripture, prayer and mutual encouragement.

School district officials say the establishment of Christian clubs at high schools has sparked surprisingly little controversy so far. But because of the constitutional eggshells underfoot when it comes to religion on a public school campus, the system’s legal office has issued strict guidelines on the proper application of the Supreme Court decision and the 1984 Equal Access Act, which initially unlocked classroom doors to religious meetings.

Howard Friedman, an attorney for the Los Angeles school district, said the high court ruling, known as the Mergens decision, broadened the Equal Access Act to put religious student groups on virtually the same footing as other clubs. With that status comes the ability to tap materials and resources available to other sanctioned organizations, such as use of the school bulletin or campus public-address system to announce meetings.

Under the court ruling, the clubs must be student-initiated and led and should have a school staff member monitor proceedings. The law covers groups of any faith or ideology, but the vast majority of high school religious clubs in Los Angeles that have taken advantage of the liberalized environment are Christian, Friedman said.

Fears that the law would spawn meetings of devil-worshiping, neo-Nazi or hate groups have not materialized, either in Los Angeles or other parts of the country, said Charles Haynes, co-chairman of a broad-based religious and educational coalition that developed equal-access guidelines for schools.

“I have not in all my travels found the parade of ‘horribles’ that people predicted--that there would be all these Satan clubs or proselytizing all over the place,” said Haynes, a visiting professional scholar at Vanderbilt University’s Freedom Forum First Amendment Center in Nashville, Tenn.

At Fairfax High School in Los Angeles, clubs have been formed by Muslims, Jews and Korean Christians. “The kids are all very, very serious about their religion and I put out the red carpet for the positive things they are thinking about,” said Fairfax Principal Mike O’Sullivan.

“Who could be against them leading their lives in a socially acceptable way?”

Still, advocates contend that students across the nation are running into opposition in setting up such groups. In February, the conservative American Center for Law and Justice filed suit against school districts in New York and Virginia--where the center is based--on behalf of youths who alleged that they had been prevented from starting Bible clubs.

The predominance of clubs with a Christian orientation is precisely what worries Carol Plotkin of the Pacific Southwest region of the American Jewish Congress. The congress, along with other civil-liberties groups, opposed the Equal Access Act and the Mergens decision.

“One of the reasons we are philosophically against the creation of the clubs in the first place is that it puts minorities at a disadvantage, whatever the minority happens to be. We happen to be Jewish, and in a pluralist society it’s hard to compete with the majority religion,” she said.

“It’s not surprising that you don’t see a Muslim club or a Buddhist club. We live in a majority Christian culture. And (in) the more fundamentalist organizations that are around, part of the religion is to spread the word.”

Plotkin said her own son has had to turn away invitations from Christian friends to attend school Bible studies--invitations that create a social pressure she believes teen-agers should not be subjected to.

Students involved in the clubs deny that their goal is to aggressively proselytize in campus hallways and classrooms. Rather, they said, the groups offer an outlet for committed young people to integrate their faith with everyday life, much of which is spent at school.

“It’s kind of nice to get involved with Christians at your school so you don’t live a church life and a school life,” said Melisa Powell, 15, of El Camino. “You can be a Christian at school.”

The clubs also offer support for students striving to live a Christian lifestyle in the midst of the temptations facing teen-agers today, such as drugs, sex and alcohol.

“I see that students need and want this kind of encouragement and alternatives,” said Elva Quintero, faculty adviser for the 20-member group at Roosevelt High School on Los Angeles’ Eastside. “They have a sense that they don’t need to follow what society is projecting on them.”

Howard E. Miller, who advises the Christian club at Fremont High School in South-Central Los Angeles, said the 20 or so students who meet twice a week during lunch in his wood shop class “really love Jesus, don’t like gangbanging and want to get away from that type of life.” The Bible study sessions have taken on a bilingual flair, with many students praying and reading in Spanish.

“We as a group would show love to all people and show people how we live and how they’re missing something,” said Monroe High’s Ray, who brings his Bible and a book of verses to school each day. Sometimes he gets needled as “Reverend Ray” by fellow members of the basketball team.

Ray and a few other Christian Club friends congregate at one of their homes every Tuesday at 6:45 a.m. to pray for the success of their weekly lunchtime meeting.

The Northridge earthquake prompted Christian students at several schools to gather for mutual solace, said officials of Grace Community Church of Sun Valley, whose ministers often visit campus Bible clubs.

“They needed comfort, so we looked at the Psalms talking about the power and the love of God and at some of Jesus’ teachings,” Spencer DeBurgh, co-director of the church’s youth ministry, said of one such gathering.

All meetings must be attended by each group’s faculty adviser. However, Los Angeles school district guidelines--and those put out by Haynes’ coalition of religious and educational groups--mandate that supervising teachers be impartial observers. Staff advisers should refrain from commenting or participating in any way “that would convey either support or disapproval of meeting subject matter,” according to a school district memo.

“They’re a school staff person who should maintain a neutrality,” attorney Friedman said, “whether it’s religion, politics, or sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.”