CREEDE HINSHAW: Dublin teacher crosses the line

What school system did public middle school teacher Nancy Perry think she was teaching in? What made her tell her impressionable 8th graders that anybody who voted for President Obama couldn’t be a Christian?

Now this zealous Dublin, Ga., teacher has taken administrative leave of absence until her retirement this June and as fast as you can say “furious,” conservative Christian internet websites are careening out of control and raging about secularists, socialists and communists who intend to squash Christians. Apoplexy and righteousness are rampant.

It didn’t have to turn out this way. Calling Obama a Muslim (also reported to be her words) is ignorant, but not grounds for dismissal. Suggesting that parents are pagans would have crossed a line.

Nobody except Nancy Perry and her 8th-graders know exactly what was said in that classroom. In Ms. Perry’s defense, my own three sons sometimes came home from school mangling what a teacher said. Maybe Ms. Perry said what the 8th-graders reported; maybe she didn’t. She denies it all.

A teacher more skilled in human relations could probably have pulled her bacon out of the fire at the parent-teacher conference by displaying a little contrition (a good Christian attribute), listening carefully, respecting the parents, and offering carefully a crafted apology like, “I am truly sorry if anybody misheard or misconstrued the words I spoke that day. I am not a fan of President Obama, but if I misspoke to my 8th-graders, whom I love dearly, I regret it.” That would likely have ended everything.

But reports have it that Ms. Perry came to the parent conference in no mood to back down, distributing to parents a packet of information printed from a fire-breathing website condemning our president. Bad mistake. (I tried unsuccessfully to obtain the web addresses of her information). Furthermore, she brought her husband along, a disastrous decision since this former conservative radio talk show host is also a member of the Dublin School Board and not permitted to attend such meetings.

She now sits on the sidelines, nobody to blame but herself. A little more biblical wisdom on her part and she’d be teaching right up to retirement.

Ms. Perry represents a segment of our society who does not want to understand the difference between the public school and the religious private school, and who seeks a fight with godless America on every street corner.

Despite the fact that Georgia is heavily populated with evangelical Christians in almost every church and county (11 out of 14 Republican District Conventions recently demanded a state religious freedom law without any softening anti-discrimination language), these people fancy themselves as the persecuted minority, one of them ludicrously suggesting that practicing faith today is akin to when Christians were thrown to the lions.

Those using Ms. Perry’s story to prop up their distorted view of America have it wrong. Ms. Perry forgot to respectfully leave her religious/political views outside the schoolhouse front door and then cooked her own goose at a heavyhanded parental meeting. If she wants to teach 8th-graders – or their parents – the evil intent and action of elected officials, she can do so in this state’s Christian academies.

Creede Hinshaw, of Macon, is a retired Methodist minister.