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Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times
Seekers,
which has a presence at about 30 high schools in the city, praying
at Stuyvesant High School. |
A Christian Group
Finds Its Place
in the Public Schools
By MICHAEL LUO,
NYTimes on the Web, May 24, 2006
On a recent sunny afternoon at
Stuyvesant High School, the track team warmed up in the lobby. On the
sixth floor, the school newspaper staff assembled to listen to a speaker.
Outside, a cluster of students gathered to pray.
The students were members of Seekers, the elite school's Christian club.
Like Joshua marching around Jericho before the walls came tumbling down, they
were walking around their building and praying in preparation for an event
called Jesus Day.
"Our main goal for Jesus Day is evangelism," said David Seok, 18, a senior and a
co-president of Seekers. "We try to reach out to our school and our
friends who don't believe."
About 30 public high schools in New York City have Seekers clubs like
Stuyvesant's. Loosely affiliated with the Urban Youth Alliance, an
evangelical Christian organization based in the Bronx, the Seekers clubs, which
date to at least the 1980's, comprise the largest and most established network
of Christian student groups in New York City public schools. For most of
them, Jesus Day — actually a series of outreach-oriented rallies that were held
on different days last week in schools across the city — is their capstone event
of the year.
"It's a day to tell everyone what we're about," said Regina Chan, 17, a senior
and the other co-president of Stuyvesant's Seekers club.
But evangelism in a public high school, especially in New York City, can be
complicated. In a school like Stuyvesant, full of people with different
beliefs and some with none at all, belonging to an evangelical group like
Seekers can make members the objects of scorn from classmates and even teachers.
"There are a lot of people who respect that you're religious and you're involved
in Seekers," Miss Chan said. "And there are also a lot of those who just
kind of see you as someone who's a religious fanatic, that we don't care about
science, that we're ignorant."
School administrators must also wrestle with difficult questions about where the
right to religious expression ends and the separation of church and state
begins. Some school officials have discouraged their Seekers clubs over
the years from having Jesus Day, while others have imposed strict limitations on
advertising for the event, including prohibiting groups from using the name
"Jesus" in any literature.
At the Bronx High School of Science last year, Michael Zhou, 18, the Seekers
club president, said, the group got around restrictions placed on them by
leaving out the letter "u" from Jesus, putting up posters reading, "Jes s," and
the message, "All that's missing is U."
At Townsend Harris High School in Flushing, Queens, the Seekers club was not
even allowed to meet on campus until several years ago. The school's
principal barred members of the faculty from advising the club, making it
impossible for it to become an officially sanctioned student organization, said
Ellen Fee, a math teacher and assistant principal who is the club's current
adviser.
Ms. Fee agreed to become the club's adviser after coming to the school in 2003 —
she also advises the Muslim students group — paving the way for Seekers to
become official. Today, it is the school's second-largest club, she said.
But the school's principal, Thomas Cunningham, asked the members not to take
part in Jesus Day.
"That's one of the criteria that the principal laid down," said Vivian Shibata,
the club's president. "He preferred that we didn't have Jesus Day.
We didn't want to push the limits."
At Stuyvesant, Stanley Teitel, the school's principal, has given the group wider
latitude, saying he trusts other students at the school to be able to make up
their own minds about Jesus Day. The school also has Jewish and Muslim
clubs. The members of Seekers were free to post fliers for Jesus Day
around the school and hold their event in the cafeteria after school.
"It's your decision as to whether or not you want to go," Mr. Teitel said.
"I'm not forcing you. It's not part of your instructional day.
They're just advertising this event is occurring. We do many after-school
events."
Several years ago, after receiving a directive from the New York City Board of
Education, the school reversed its policy of prohibiting students from holding
Jesus Day on campus, he said. Before that, the students held the event on
a street corner near the school, off school property.
"We were told we had to give everybody equal access," he said.
As a result, about a hundred students gathered last Tuesday in the Stuyvesant
cafeteria for Jesus Day 2006. A colorful poster explaining "How do U get
saved" covered one window. A poster in the middle of the cafeteria was
decorated with pink hearts containing prayer requests. "Get into Yale.
Get love," one read. "Stepmom, stepdad get saved," another read.
A book table offered Bibles and tracts. "The Atheist Test," was the title
of one; another explained evolution, "The Evidence: For and Against."
Stuyvesant's is one of the largest and most active Seekers clubs in the city.
During the school year, about 30 students meet every Thursday after school in a
classroom, where they worship and study the Bible together, or just talk.
At its essence, the group provides students, Christian or not, a spiritual and
social refuge in the midst of what can be a difficult time, high school, members
say.
Wing Wong, 17, a senior, who described himself as still searching spiritually,
joined Seekers about two months ago after enlisting in the Marine Corps.
He did it, he said, because he was looking for people who would genuinely care
for him. "I wanted to look for a new group of friends who would always be
there," he said.
The program last week got off to a shaky start. The group had scheduled
several performances and "testimonies" by Mr. Seok and Miss Chan on what Jesus
Christ had done in their lives. But the acoustics in the cafeteria made it
difficult to hear. Many of the students appeared to be there just for the
free food, goofing off, while others tried to hush them. Many started
trickling out after the event began.
But the guest speaker, Yei Jong Ahn, who works with a youth group at the United
Korean Church of New York in Brooklyn, managed to hold the attention of most
through a half-hour-long message about Jacob wrestling with an angel of God.
"No matter what you've done in your life, no matter where you are, you will
never be alone," he said. "God is there with you, struggling with you."
Afterward, the Rev. Frank Meyer, a pastor at the Church of Living Grace in
Livingston, N.J., offered quarters to students who asked him a "tough question
about God."
Soon, he had them going: Is evolution true? What does God think
about premarital sex? If God loves us, why is there so much suffering in
the world?
The event drew to a close with a final musical number. But by then there
were mostly only Seekers members remaining. Gone were the unbelieving
friends many had invited. Gone were those on the fringes of the group who
had come. The people left were family. They danced and sang
together.
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