(ETH) – The American Humanist Association, along with an unidentified couple and their five-year-old daughter, have all filed a lawsuit against a public school district in Oklahoma for allowing Christian missionaries to teach a monthly class to pre-K through eighth-grade students according to a report by the Christian News Network.
The lawsuit claims that a class simply called “missionaries” had been held once a month at Maryetta Public School with the knowledge of the Maryetta Public School District. The class was placed on the school calendar and in email announcements. According to the report, During these sessions, three men reportedly sang songs and played games with the children, while teaching the students about the Bible.
The lawsuit claims that the plaintiff’s parents claim that their daughter was subjected to the classes without their foreknowledge and without the ability to opt-out. The parents that are suing identify as humanists and are raising their daughter accordingly.
Details of the report, state that the child was picked up from school by their mother in September 2019, where the girl asked on the ride home, “Mom, is God real?” “When the mother asked her daughter what it was that prompted her to ask such a question, she said that, ‘these people came and sang songs and told us a story about God and how he’s real,’” it outlines.
The girl later told her parents that she “didn’t want to get in trouble,” so she “pretended to believe in God” at school, which made her distraught. She soon advised that she did not wish to participate in the class anymore. The Christian News Network stated:
“When the girl’s father addressed Superintendent Lori Means about the matter, he was reportedly advised that the class was for the purposes of “character education” but also informed that he could opt out the girl via a note to her teacher. While the girl’s mother provided a note requesting that her child be allowed to skip the class “if she chooses,”
the lawsuit states that because the volunteer teacher’s assistant was not present during the next missionaries class, the girl could not sit out participation that day. The child thus relayed the information to her mother after being picked up from school, who in turn contacted the American Humanist Association for assistance.”
