City School Board made the right call

Tim Tebow’s breakout season came to an end Saturday with a 45-10 thumping by the New England Patriots.

The loss was felt well beyond the world of professional football.

That’s because Tebow was more than just a second-year pro quarterback leading his team to the playoffs for the first time in years.

He was, among so many other things, a Christian whose real breakout this season may have come in getting the rest of the world to understand that his true motivation wasn’t worldly.

Tebow wasn’t the first Christian to play in the National Football League, but he was the most successful in getting his personal spiritual motivation out front when the sports media was much more interested in Xs and Os and his throwing motion and passer rating.

Not all Christians are as vocal as Tebow has been about his faith, of course. But as we’ve seen recently in the Dan River Region, collisions between public expressions of faith and the secular state have caused plenty of controversy in the past few months.

In Pittsylvania County, the Board of Supervisors has taken a public and defiant stand against legal pressure by the American Civil Liberties Union over the narrow issue of whether members of the board — elected public officials just moments from taking part in a public government meeting — can say explicitly Christian prayers.

In Danville, the School Board has been asked by members of the Danville Camp of the Gideons International to be allowed to pass out Bibles in the public schools. The school system, fearing a lawsuit it can’t afford, has declined the Gideons’ request.

The school system’s reason for that decision is that allowing one religious group access to the public school students would force it to allow any religious group the same access.

It’s not too much of a stretch to believe that those people who support the distribution of Bibles to public school students would not want any other religious text distributed in the same manner. For that reason, Danville Public Schools was left with a choice — let everyone in, or no one in.

That they’ve chosen the latter is good public policy, and it challenges the Gideons to find other, better distribution channels for Bibles beyond the public schools.

While Tebow had a breakout year for a Christian athlete willingly and publicly proclaiming his faith, not all public expressions of faith are legally appropriate — even if most people support them. On this issue, Danville Public Schools was faced with the threat of a lawsuit, and it did the correct thing.