The Story
Pawn, a Christian rock band out of Ohio (and the group responsible
for building A New Guard) was banned from playing an anti-drug/anti-alcohol
show at a local public high school during school hours. The
performance was to be optional and the band had agreed to limit
its message to the anti-drug/anti-alcohol theme only. However,
the reason given by the Superintendent of the school system
for Pawn’s cancellation was that they were a “religious
band” and the risk of proselytizing was too great to
allow the group to perform. She made statements to newspapers
claiming that the students needed to be “protected” from
Pawn and that having the band play would be a “violation
of the separation of church and state.” The superintendent
even claimed that, “There is some controversy [in this
matter] and I’d rather err on this side.” Pawn
was then replaced with a “secular” group.
A day following the cancellation, The Toledo Blade ran a front
page story about the controversy. Shortly after, the Drudge Report
released the same article. There were nearly half a million hits
on the web-based version of the article over the next two days
and the “Pawn Controversy” was listed as one of the
top 10 stories of the year by the Toledo Blade.
Over 120 of Pawn’s supporters came to the next school board
meeting to show their support. Their plea fell on deaf ears.
The board (wanting to support the superintendent, but hoping
to avoid any legal battle) decided to take no action, and therefore
upheld the Superintendent’s decision to cancel the band.
On the day that Pawn was supposed to perform at the high school,
over 200 students wore black t-shirts stating, “Students
for Pawn, Dec. 21, 2004” and collected over 380 signatures
from students wanting the band to play, which accounted for nearly
75% of the student body. Furthermore, police were called to lockdown
the school after hearing that students were planning a walk-out.
Over the next month Pawn wrote three letters to the board of
education stating that there would be no risk of proselytizing
and that they would give the board everything in writing that
would be said ahead of time for review. No responses to the letters
were ever given to the group either verbally or written. Pawn
also attended and spoke at the next two public board meetings
in an effort to avoid litigation, but were limited to three minutes
each meeting. In fact, at the final board meeting, when Pawn
asked for more time to plead their case due to the important
nature of the subject, the board president responded with “have
a seat.” Each following effort to ask for more time was
met with the response “have a seat.” There were 22
minutes left in the open forum for public participation and only
one other person from the public spoke that day.
After every effort was made to handle the controversy without
litigation, Pawn chose the Rutherford
Institute to represent
them in their legal fight against the school system. They filed
a lawsuit against the school for the total of one dollar in damages
in an effort to give the school an opportunity to apologize and
move on. The school chose to fight the lawsuit. The last public
disclosure of the lawsuit’s expense to the school (in lawyers
fees) was $124,000.
While immersed in this controversy, the band became aware of
a similar pattern of events taking place across the nation. Students
were being denied their constitutional right to the freedom of
religious expression in the public school system out of fear
that a “violation of the separation of church and state” would
take place. In mass, public high school students would approach
Pawn with stories of being denied their rights. Unfortunately,
they admitted that at the time they were too uninformed about
their Constitutional rights in order to do anything about their
situation.
The need for rights education was evident. Pawn started to enlist the help of many amazing independent artists in an effort to offer students free music downloads and to give ANG exposure across the nation. After many months of research,
help from the Rutherford Institute and God's help, the vision of ANG became
a reality.
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