Christian Clubs Finding a Comfortable Fit in Schools

With every desk claimed, Westlake High School students scramble for floor seats as Kristin Withers starts strumming a folksy tune on a black acoustic guitar.

“Is everyone feelin’ OK?” the 17-year-old asks before breaking into song.

Eyes closed and feet tapping, with sandwiches and sodas in hand, 40 young voices follow hers: “My life is in you, Lord/ My strength is in you, Lord/ My hope is in you, Lord/ In you, it’s in you.”

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Three songs later, the weekly Wednesday meeting of the Christian group Campus Light is in full swing. The lunchtime gatherings, students say, are a quiet sanctuary from the nonstop demands of schoolwork, peer pressure, athletics and family. If Campus Light is any indication, more and more students from Simi Valley to Camarillo are seeking such sanctuary in their secondary schools.

“My freshman year, we had 15 or 20 people come every week,” said Kristin, now a senior. “But this year--all of a sudden--on our first meeting we had 50 people come. People were sitting on the floors. It’s pretty amazing.”

Her group is not alone. Thousand Oaks and Royal highs have two prayer groups each. Newbury Park, Simi Valley, Santa Susana and Adolfo Camarillo highs all have chartered Christian clubs. Moorpark High students are forming one.

Religious club members live a different high school experience than the average Ventura County teen. During lunch, while others eat, study or just hang out, club members read Scripture, pray and talk of “witnessing” to others.

While no one tracks the prevalence of such groups in Ventura County high schools and middle schools, “most schools have some sort of religious clubs or have in the past,” said county Supt. of Schools Charles Weis. “So far it seems to be a Christian phenomenon, but any religion can use that same avenue.”

That avenue is the Mergens Decision, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling six years ago that upheld Congress’ Equal Access Act of 1984. The decision says secondary schools that permit extracurricular clubs on campus, such as a scuba or chess club, must also allow religious clubs.

Club devotees say the groups enhance their educational experience and encourage impressionable teens to steer clear of drugs, alcohol and premarital sex. Civil libertarians worry about the ever-blurring line between church and state. School administrators sweat the details of what clubs can and cannot do.

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Simply put, the Mergens Decision and the Equal Access Act combined allow school religious clubs that are student-led and student-initiated, explained Charles Haynes, a scholar in residence at Vanderbilt University’s Freedom Forum First Amendment Center in Nashville, Tenn.

The nondenominational clubs are allowed to use classrooms during lunch or after school. If other groups have access to the public address system or bulletin boards, religious clubs have the same access. They usually have a faculty advisor, who is prohibited by law from participating in the meetings.

To understand why such clubs are necessary on school campuses, rather than in homes or churches, you must see them in action, student members say.

* A game of Bible trivia is the order of the day at a recent meeting of the Royal Christian Club. Categories: Old Testament, New Testament, History and Geography, Prophets, Names, Wisdom and Letters, Numbers and Sequences.

About 20 students munch chips and fruit while guessing whether Bethlehem and Jerusalem are really five, 15, 25, 35 or 65 miles apart. (Correct answer: five) Then they bow their heads and pray: about the fate of their school, the safety of family and friends and the outcome of a math test next period.

* At Thousand Oaks High, students clad in tennis shoes and gray and green track sweatshirts learn about the plight of the homeless at a Fellowship of Christian Athletes meeting. After watching a video about a skid row rescue mission, they ask about volunteering opportunities and plan a spring field trip.

* At Westlake’s Campus Light meetings, advisor Rich Acton sits quietly in a corner while stylishly dressed students sing, lead prayers, talk about teenage concerns and even swap homecoming photos.

Membership in all three groups has swelled in recent years. Members are tennis players, choir singers, leaders of student government, black, white, Asian American, Mormon, Catholic and Evangelical Christians.

“We’re normal kids, we just know what we believe,” said Connie Strome, 17, a member of the Royal Christian Club, “We’re not always serious. We’re not Puritans. We go to parties, dances and football games. But we realize that the decisions you make now are going to matter on how you turn out 10 years from now.”

Maybe it’s the casual atmosphere, maybe it’s a feeling of closeness to God and friends, or maybe it’s an increasing religiousness in teens that makes the clubs popular. Whatever the reason, students say, it’s clear that the groups satisfy a gnawing spiritual hunger.

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“There are temptations every day to do things you know you shouldn’t do like drinking or smoking or hanging with the wrong crowd or ditching school,” added Royal High’s Connie. “With the Christian club, you know that you don’t have to do all that. You have people who understand you . . . so you don’t have to worry about trying to fit in.”

Club leaders say the groups also help students deal with peer pressure of another kind--the sort that says it’s not hip to love God.

Vocal Christians “get a lot of discrimination,” said Kristin, vice president of the Westlake High club. “A lot of kids make fun of you: ‘You’re going to church club,’ or ‘Why don’t you go chase after someone with a Bible?’ I think it’s intimidating to some kids that we like [religion] without our parents forcing us into it.”

Jeremy James, president of the TOHS Fellowship of Christian Athletes, likens his 50-member group to a big family.

“Everyone here is close,” said the 17-year-old senior. “And there’s always a feeling of love--of God’s presence.”

Perhaps more profoundly, Westlake High’s David Turner credits his participation in Campus Light with turning his wayward life around. “I’ve always been a Christian, but I didn’t lead the life of a Christian,” said David, 17. “I used to go to parties, drink and listen to secular music.”

Joining the group last year and engaging in discipleship--a form of Christian mentorship with other students--helped him change, he said. “I realized what I was doing, and I realized it was wrong,” said the senior, who is now the group’s president.

With results like David’s, why do religious clubs at public schools still make some people squeamish?

Certainly, religious clubs faced more resistance when Congress first approved the Equal Access Act, said the First Amendment Center’s Haynes, who had studied the issue for more than a decade.

But when dire predictions of mushrooming Satanist clubs and rampant religious coercion failed to materialize, many civil libertarians warmed at least a few degrees to the idea of religious clubs.

“There are those who were concerned, when the law first passed, that it would look like school sponsorship of religion, even with all of the safeguards” prohibiting teachers from participating actively in the clubs, he said. “Many people believe that if schools allow religious clubs, there is a perception that the school is promoting religion.”

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Locally, most school principals sound like Westlake High’s Curt Luft. “I think the more organizations we have at school that students want to get involved in, the better,” Luft said. “I’ve heard no negative parent reaction on these organizations. I think most parents would be delighted to have their sons and daughters join this kind of club.”

Still some teachers and civil libertarians worry about the proselytizing--or witnessing--nature of the clubs and about the tender age of the participants.

Most club members profess that they will witness--or talk freely about--their faith in school without proselytizing.

“That’s a very fine line between simply letting others know what you’ve experienced and pushing it on them,” said David Wascow, program director for the Pacific Southwest region of the American Jewish Congress, which includes Ventura County.

As far as the law is concerned, Haynes said, proselytizing is permissible in schools so long as an overzealous student does not harass other students.

Even if religious clubs are well within the bounds of the law, Wascow said, Christians should be sensitive to the needs of people who practice other religions.

One Thousand Oaks teacher, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that religious clubs on middle school campuses degenerate into “13-year-olds interpreting the Bible for other 13-year-olds.”

Even at older ages, the teacher said, religious clubs focus on sensitive issues of gender relations, sexuality and abortion. And he worries that their views on those issues may be prematurely shaped by the religious positions of their peers.

Most other school clubs take on less controversial issues, he said. “There are certain rules you can follow for a chess club,” the teacher said. When a dispute arises, “you can look in a rule book without getting into areas of interpretation or belief. There’s no rule book for the Bible.”

Club members argue that the Bible is its own rule book, and they follow it closely. Besides, the clubs steer clear of some divisive denominational issues, such as baptism and communion, in favor of preserving fellowship.

While familiar with concerns about keeping church distinct from state, the students say they have heard not a single complaint about running their clubs from public school facilities. If students of another religion feel left out or uncomfortable, they are free to form their own affiliations.

The only real worry Christian clubs have nowadays, according to Westlake High’s David Turner, is space for their growing membership. After a first-ever rally of religious student groups from across the Conejo and Simi valleys, “We’re probably going to need another room,” he said.

Matt Zurcher, the 17-year-old president of the Royal Christian Club, predicts an extended boom in club membership.

“I think a lot of people probably think these clubs aren’t doing any good for the campus, and that we’re all religious freaks,” he said, with a wry laugh. “But the clubs will continue to exist, and I think, in the future, they’ll gain strength. But I don’t know the future; the Lord does.”