Stanhope Elmore High School held a supposedly mandatory event centered around accepting Jesus

May 21, 2024

A public school in Alabama invited a preacher to speak to students about Jesus and lead them in prayer. One reason we know that is because the preacher bragged about how he got away with it online.

It happened at Stanhope Elmore High School, part of the Elmore County Schools District, on April 12. John Eklund was the speaker at a mandatory assembly that students were told would address “mental health.”

As a licensed clinical social worker, Eklund could have told students about how to deal with mental health struggles in a way that was universal. Instead, he used the opportunity to proselytize before leading students in a group prayer.

Was he going rogue? Did he do this despite promises that he would keep things secular?

Nope. It seems the school was well aware of what he planned to do.

In fact, in a post on Facebook later that day, Eklund thanked Principal Ewell Fuller for “his willingness” to let him preach at students and “talk about Jesus.” Ewell allegedly told Eklund, “I’ve been doing this for 26 years. If i’m gonna get in trouble it might as well be for Jesus!” So Fuller knew there would be preaching involved, and he knew it wasn’t legal.

(Follow above article link to view photos/PDFs that accompany this article.)

It’s always helpful when an arsonist points you to the matches…

Eklund’s primary qualification for speaking to students isn’t his work as a therapist. There’s no shortage of therapists who could have offered students useful information about the struggles they face. Rather, Eklund’s claim to fame is his ministry, Recovery ALIVE, which functions as a kind of 12-step program to help people recover from… who knows. Anything? Everything? The website doesn’t specify. But it makes very clear that Christianity is at the center of it all:

Recovery ALIVE prioritizes the Power of Jesus through the Holy Spirit to raise Hope From The Dead. Recovery ALIVE is an organic, living program, representing a living God. 

​Recovery ALIVE works through a 12 step recovery process to promote healthy change centered around “3 P’s”, the POWER of Recovery, the PEOPLE of Recovery, and the PROCESS of Recovery. 

​Our program harnesses the unchanging truth of Jesus Christ and His word to a living, organic process, in order to reach and ministry to an ever-changing world.  

In no sane world is Jesus a solution to the very real problems students are facing. While religion may be a way for some students to cope with their problems, it’s certainly not the way for all students to deal with them.

Stanford Elmore High School wasn’t even Eklund’s only stop in the area. One day earlier, he appeared at Holtville High School (in the same district) to give a similar talk. That school even celebrated the event online:

Thank you to John Eklund, founder and CEO of Recovery Alive, for speaking to our students today during our assembly. The Young and Alive group will start meetings next Wednesday in Coach Blakely’s classroom during Bulldog Period for all students that would like to join. 

It’s unclear from that post how much religious content there was in his sermon. But in his earlier post that I cited above, Eklund wrote, “This morning, during two assemblies, hundreds of teenagers flooded central court to receive prayer for struggles of value and worth.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation recently wrote a letter to the district, on behalf of multiple parents who spoke with them, demanding a stop to these Christian assemblies:

“It is unconstitutional to take away instructional time from students to expose them to religious proselytizing,” FFRF attorney Chris Line writes to Superintendent Richard E. Dennis. “It is well settled that public schools may not show favoritism towards or coerce belief or participation in religion.”

…

“It is an unacceptable intrusion for outside speakers to be allowed to foist their religion,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “The principal is heavily complicit in this.” 

FFRF said “Principal Fuller should be reprimanded and additional training should be provided for staff members who allowed this violation of students’ rights to take place.”

The district has now responded to FFRF… by effectively denying everything. Superintendent Richard Dennis says that the assembly was not religious or, for that matter, mandatory. He adds that only one student filed a complaint because s/he didn’t know the assembly was optional and that the district has “taken measures to prevent any similar concern in the future.”

FFRF isn’t buying it—and for good reason: the Facebook posts, as well as the anecdotal stories, make clear that religion was definitely part of the message.

FFRF’s complainants, including two parents, reported that during the assembly Eklund told students that “Jesus Christ set him on his path of redemption” and “he will save them too.” Eklund reportedly offered students money to come down and be “prayed over.” He also reportedly told students to attend church and passed out pamphlets advertising Shoal Creek Baptist Church.

While the superintendent’s response to FFRF indicated that “school faculty and staff will continue to be reminded of students’ rights,” the district’s denial of the true religious nature of the assembly raises concern that the district would allow Eklund or other evangelists to target a captive audience of students in the future.

…

“We’re calling on the district to stop gaslighting the situation and adopt clear policy disallowing religious assemblies masquerading as secular seminars,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Elmore School District must take action to protect its students from preying (and praying) evangelists.” 

For now, all FFRF can do is monitor the situation, but it’s clear the district wants the whole problem to just go away. That would be a lot easier if the culprits weren’t openly bragging about their perfect crime online.

The fact that students had to sit through this garbage—when religion often contributes to mental health problems—is unfair to them in addition to being illegal. They would have been better served with an actual expert in the field rather than a Christian preacher whose main goal is to spread the Gospel instead of actually helping people by arming them with useful information.