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The fear of a lawsuit delayed the implementation of a program allowing volunteer chaplains in Osceola County public schools

Aug 30, 2024

What does it take to stop a public school district from inviting Christian chaplains into the building? The threat of non-Christian chaplains, including Satanists, wanting the same opportunity, apparently.

You may recall that, earlier this year, Florida passed a bill allowing untrained Christian chaplains to volunteer in public schools, essentially as substitutes for trained social workers and counselors.

There were some caveats to HB 931. Parents had to be informed about the religious affiliations of those chaplains. They had to give permission before their children could see them. All potential chaplains also had to pass a background check. All that’s fine, but it’s the bare minimum.

We always knew what this would look like in practice.

If a school district approved that kind of program because the state told them it was legal, there would be a line of Christian chaplains out the door just waiting to get the green light. And anyone could be a chaplain! There are no special credentials they need to prove they’re up to the task of helping kids! If they had the blessing, so to speak, of a local church, they would be good to go. (And you could easily expect some pastors would hand out “certificates of chaplaincy” to anyone who wanted them much like they did with COVID vaccine exemption notes.) Simply put, there would be nothing stopping those adults from using public schools as target practice for conversions. All they needed was permission from parents, and they could do whatever it took to lure kids to Jesus.

That would be a huge problem for students who weren’t Christian (even if their parents were) and for LGBTQ students whose parents thought seeing a Christian chaplain could fix that.

After the bill was signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis, the ball was in the court of individual school districts. Would they choose to allow chaplains into their schools or would they rely on people who actually knew what they were doing?

That’s the decision that the Osceola County School Board faced earlier this month.

Instead of voting for or against chaplains in their schools, board members chose to delay the decision while they weighed competing interests. Specifically, they heard that The Satanic Temple wanted to participate in the program.

In a letter to board members, Rachel Chambliss, the Executive Director of Operations for TST, wrote:

… While we believe that investing in licensed, professional counselors would be more beneficial for Osceola County’s students, we are enthusiastic about the opportunity this policy presents for our Ministers of Satan, who are eager to build positive, supportive relationships with students and become an active part of the school community.

…

The response from Floridians interested in becoming Ministers of Satan and Satanic Chaplains has been overwhelming. With hundreds of members of The Satanic Temple already in Osceola County, we anticipate a significant increase in Satanic Clergy members actively participating in the Osceola community in the near future.

Glorious. And, if you’re a member of the school board, concerning.

The delay came as a bit of a surprise, too, since DeSantis literally signed the chaplain bill at a high school in Osceola County. Superintendent Mark Shanoff said to him during the April event, "It's an honor that you have chosen our community for today's signing ceremony." Yet the same school district was now second-guessing whether this was a good idea because a non-Christian group was eager to get involved.

DeSantis was part of the problem. When he signed the bill, he was asked about the possibility that Satanists would want in on the action. DeSantis insisted that would never happen.

"We're not playing those games in Florida," DeSantis continued. "That is not a religion. That is not qualifying to be able to participate in this." 

He was wrong or he was lying. Non-Christian groups had every right to participate in the program, and The Satanic Temple is recognized as a religious group by the IRS. If the school board allowed chaplains into their buildings, but rejected Satanists, they could expect to see litigation—and it’s not like DeSantis would go out of his way to help the school board.

Board Chair Heather Kahoun said she supported the delay because she wanted to think more about the First Amendment concerns and “federal litigation that we could receive if we were to approve this as it is today.”

In order to clear up any concerns, Florida officials released a “model policy” for school boards last week. That policy, however, appeared to exclude certain groups (like Satanists) altogether because it defined “chaplain” as an “individual who is officially authorized by the leadership of a religion under the religion’s governing principles to conduct religious exercises.” (That’s very specific.)

It also required all chaplains to have a graduate degree in counseling or theology and have two years of experience—both of which favor the sort of people who attended Christian seminaries and exclude religious minorities that don’t have that kind of infrastructure in place. It gave principals the ability to reject volunteers if they felt those individuals would go against the “pedagogical interests of the school”—basically veto power over certain people.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State said that model policy was “misguided and unconstitutional.”

… The model policy would exclude some minority faiths or Humanists for example – even some Christian traditions like Baptists, Quakers and non-denominational congregations could be left out. And it requires school principals to determine if someone who applies to be a school chaplain is a member of a state-sanctioned faith. Principals must decide if the chaplain’s religion is led by a “hierarchy,” “worships a supernatural entity” and “imposes moral duties.” 

Telling principals they need to wade into theology to parse a faith tradition’s beliefs about the nature and existence of God, moral codes and governance structure is not just unfair and unwise – it’s unconstitutional.

That brings us to Tuesday night, when the school board, after delaying the decision weeks earlier, met once again to discuss their version of the chaplain policy (page 13 of this document). The meeting involved nearly an hour of public testimony, and many of the speakers opposed the policy of bringing chaplains into schools.

Those speakers included David Williamson, co-founder of the Central Florida Freethought Community. He pointed out that there were 257 religious congregations in Osceola, and only 14 weren’t Christian churches. That meant the chaplains, restricted by the draft policy, would be overwhelmingly of one mind.

If you're reconsidering draft policy 3.81, I'll point out again that II. D. 3. indicates that no matter what they say, as long as the chaplains believe it to be true, they cannot be accused of proselytizing. Calling kids severely mentally ill, or victims of demonic possession, using threats of hell, are permitted by this policy as long as they believe it.

I didn't make these things up. People in this room actually believe them. And if you're in the volunteer chaplain corps, that will be protected speech. If you think coaching will prevent that, you should seek legal opinions on what happens when the government attempts to tell clergy members what they can and cannot say.

And according to III. E. 2., those conversations will be confidential and behind closed doors of an office paid for by our tax dollars. The ramifications of this are huge… The students will surely bear the brunt of it. For your clergy volunteer members as well, administrators will have to censor their remarks just to keep the peace. Assuming we even hear what was said in those confidential sessions.

All this and more are why people are scared sick about a chaplain program—not as much for the legal risk you're into, but the real harm that will be done when clergy are permitted to tell students what some of them really think about who they are, who they love, and how they act.

Jocelyn Williamson, the other co-founder of the CFFC, also spoke out against the policy:

… If we allow chaplains in our schools, we risk not only repeating but also increasing this harm by spreading religion throughout the school experience, especially for marginalized students like LGBTQ youth and others who already struggle to be accepted.

Please protect our schools as places of inclusion and acceptance for all students by rejecting this proposal. Let's ensure every child can thrive without fear of being judged or excluded. Thank you.

The spokesperson for The Satanic Temple, Lucien Greaves, also showed up to warn board members what might happen if they pass this policy.

… Some of your churches have not had the best records regarding child care and safety. Maybe your church has had no such problems, but you cannot keep this program contained to your church. You cannot keep this program contained to your religion.

Governor Ron DeSantis lied to you from the podium during a press conference after signing the School Chaplain bill into law. He declared that Satanists would be disallowed. Such proclamations hold no legal weight and do nothing to overturn the Constitution, which guarantees religious liberty for all.

Similarly, your Department of Education has released recommended policy guidelines that attempt to narrow the definition of religion to exclude Satanists. This also holds no legal weight and defies all relevant legal precedent.

So the short of it is: You're voting on a policy that is unpopular, divisive, poorly planned, obviously dishonest in its goals, unnecessary, and introduces new risks to children. Even if you are allowed to implement it according to your wishes, the reality is, you'll have to accommodate religious identities you may not agree with.

You will end up with Satanist chaplains. Vote how you will.

Good luck… and God bless.

It wasn’t just atheists and Satanists, though. There were many community members speaking out against the policy, including Christians who knew pushing their faith on students wasn’t the job of the public schools.

At the end of those public comments, it was time for a vote, and the board voted 3-2 against bringing chaplains into their schools… at least for now. There were simply too many legal concerns about adopting the model policy the DeSantis administration released.

It was a huge victory for Satanists, secularists, church/state separation advocates, and people who actually give a damn about children.

It was also infuriating for the two board members who supported the proposal. That included both Scott Ramsey, a DeSantis appointee, and Jon Arguello, who showed everyone his entire ass through his public statement:

Wow. I mean, if that's the way that you fight for the community, I’d hate to see the way that you fight for your family in need. The adherence to the radical leftism are the other side, by the way—and I wanted to make sure that that's clear. These are ideologies that are fighting against this program.

Number two, if there was a student who came up here asking for, “Hey, I want to be chemically castrated because I'm a transgender ideologist, the school board members on this dais would pay for the Uber to send that student to go to the clinic.

But here, in this situation, a student comes and they ask for spiritual guidance because they need something that is different than what we're offering, and they want to cut it down or provide some lukewarm voting because they're running for office. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. We can gaslight and obfuscate and confuse and deceive, but all those things are very clear to the people who love their children. And that's not what's being protected here today, as you can see.

…

We can be honest, or we can be crazy and mentally ill. You can choose that. You can choose that. But those things don't bother me, and they don't scare me, and I'm not going to be intimidated by a bunch of crowds of people who don't care anything about our kids, because I'm actually a man that will fight for his family and fight for his community, and I don't care what all these crazy people say. 

The people who respect the Constitution and don’t want children victimized by Christians with an ulterior motive are apparently “crazy and mentally ill,” according to Arguello. (In the clip, when he made that obscene remark about trans students, there were audible reactions from the audience, saying “What?!” and “Shame!&rdquo

After the vote, Arguello was pissed off—and he still didn’t understand that the biggest obstacles in his colleagues’ way were possible legal problems, not a newfound love of Satanism:

“The program is dead. The school board of Osceola County allied itself with the Satanic Temple in killing the program. And it's crazy that the majority of the school board here in Osceola County allied itself with the Satanic Temple,” said Arguello.

I assure you The Satanic Temple did not gain three new members that night. Not those three, anyway.

(Arguello may have been extra angry because he recently lost the Republican primary for a seat in the Florida State Senate.)

None of this means the proposal is dead. A committee will look at the policy, make suggestions in order to avoid legal conflict, and it’s possible it’ll pass at that time. Other school districts in Florida will also be making their own decisions about whether or not to adopt this kind of chaplain policy.

But for now, the outrage and backlash had a very real effect. Students in Osceola County schools won’t have to defend themselves from predatory Christians who see them as targets. Instead, if they need help, they can rely on the trained professionals who take their jobs seriously.

If the board wanted to help those students, they could hire more counselors and social workers. Instead, however, Arguello plans to resurrect his motion at the next board meeting on September 10.