Quiet calling

ORANGE COUNTY, Calif.—On a recent Saturday evening, hundreds gathered at an Orange County, Calif., church to testify, worship, and pray for one another. Nothing surprising about that. More surprising—they came from public school districts from across Southern California: K-12 teachers, principals, administrators, custodians, college professors, and parents.

A solemn-looking Latino man in a suit stood next to a vivacious black woman with a silvery shawl. Across from them, a balding, elderly white man in flannel and khakis worshipped beside a young Asian woman with red-dyed hair and a chic blazer. Some have decades of classroom experience. Others carry still-fresh teacher’s certificates. And they all share a common desire to transform their schools through God’s loving truth—despite hostility, their own ignorance and timidity, and the often overwhelming demands of the job.

More than 50 million children attend public elementary and secondary schools in the United States, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics. That means roughly 90 percent of K-12 students spend their most impressionable years in an environment that is largely hostile to Christianity. The gathering in California, sponsored by Biola University, Azusa Pacific University, and Christian Education Association International (CEAI), a professional association of Christian educators, hoped to change that by empowering the educators.

Andrea Brannam, a second-grade teacher in a dual-language immersion school in San Clemente, Calif., was teary after a 76-year-old man at the gathering prayed out loud for her. The 11-year public school veteran described the “strong resistance” she’d experienced after posting a notice on the whiteboard in the teachers’ lounge inviting staff to an after-school prayer meeting for the gravely ill father of one of her students. A teacher complained to the local union, and the union president relayed the complaint to the principal (both professing Christians), citing separation of church and state. That’s when Brannam realized she didn’t know her legal rights as a public school teacher—and that she wasn’t the only one. So she spent all lunch period doing research on her right to pray on campus.

That night at the gathering, Brannam discovered another opportunity she didn’t know she had as a teacher: She could legally start and teach a Bible study in her own school, so long as it wasn’t held during school hours and the students had parents’ permission to attend. Immediately she began texting parents who’d been asking to launch a Good News Club, a weekly Bible study program for 5- to 12-year-old children.

But even amid that excitement, Brannam remembers her own daughter, a high-school senior who Brannam says has “hardened” her heart toward her childhood faith. When a speaker at the gathering warned that “the souls of our children are being stolen right before our eyes,” Brannam thought of the “very liberal” education system both her daughter and students are in, where she has learned not to be surprised when her students ask: “What’s church?” “What’s God?” “What’s that ‘T’ on top of those buildings mean?”

Secular humanist John Dunphy once wrote in The Humanist magazine that “the battleground for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers” of what he called “the new faith of humanism.” Teachers tell me this new faith now dictates the rules and customs in public education: One California teacher told students to write a persuasive essay on why religion promotes ignorance. A teacher in another school who’s also head of her high school’s English department listed the Bible as mythology. Some school districts have tried to shut down Christian-related clubs.

Teachers tell me they constantly feel the tension against their freedom of religious expression. For example, Brannam remembers some teachers telling her that wearing a cross necklace to school was illegal (not true). High school ASL teacher Cheryl Perez remembers receiving email complaints from teachers when she and her Christian club students partnered with Chick-fil-A for a fundraiser, calling the fast food company anti-gay. When she tried to tack fliers announcing Christian club activities, the activities director kept insisting she get approval first, even though he didn’t require that from any other clubs. During the National Day of Prayer, in which Perez and several other teachers and students gathered before school to pray, a teacher stood nearby wielding a sign of protest against praying on public grounds.

At a recent CEAI conference, a woman stood up and asked with a shaking voice how she can help students who are struggling with homosexuality. She said several have come to her confused and hungry for adult guidance, but even as her heart breaks for them, she doesn’t know how to give them the answer they need without dunking into legal hot waters. When is the right time to stand up and oppose? How to best honor God when schools mandate transgender bathroom access, shove pro-LGBT topics into the curriculum, and downplay the health risks of AIDS in sex education?

Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, a nonprofit legal defense organization, said those are the most common questions he gets from Christian teachers. But teachers can still be influential on campus, he said: It’s not the absence of legal opportunities that impede evangelism in public schools, but the ignorance of legal opportunities.

Sometimes, teachers’ own timidity creates a barrier. Two years into Brannam’s teaching career, she was strolling with a fellow teacher who revealed with great anguish that she was having difficulties getting pregnant. At that instant Brannam felt a strong conviction that she needed to pray with this teacher, but she was too afraid and embarrassed—they were out in public, the teacher’s an unbeliever, and what if she rejects her? So Brannam kept quiet. But guilt and regret plagued her all day, and she quickly repented. “I learned my lesson that I just have to obey. That feeling [of disobedience] was awful, and I didn’t want to feel that way ever again.”

She got her second chance when she passed that same teacher in the school halls one day and spotted the downcast look on her face. Brannam immediately asked, “Hey, is everything OK?” The teacher later visited her classroom after school and cried as she unloaded her personal burdens. At that moment, Brannam felt the same conviction to pray out loud for her again, and this time she did not hesitate. After the prayer, the teacher thanked Brannam, saying, “There’s something you have, something special.” Since then, Brannam encourages other teachers not to go “undercover” with their faith.

AS GOVERNMENT REPRESENTATIVES, public school teachers cannot proselytize or do anything that establishes or promotes any particular religion during school time. But those who are well-versed in their legal boundaries find careful ways to express their faith—even while following a curriculum that opposes their beliefs.

High-school biology teacher Mike Hicks says he loves teaching the theory of evolution, since he figures his students will likely never encounter another academic authority willing to point out its flaws. He presents the view of Darwinists, but he will also present views from other scientists who don’t agree with Darwinism. His students almost always ask, “Well, what do you believe?” Hicks replies that he believes in intelligent design. Then someone will ring out, “Mr. Hicks, are you a Christian?” while another will gasp, “But he’s teaching biology!” and Hicks will watch the shock, disorientation, and curiosity in his students’ expressions. At times, he glimpses relieved smiles from students who also believe in a Creator.

But teachers tell me it’s not easy staying focused and enthusiastic about teaching, let alone sharing their faith in an increasingly hostile environment. The stress of meeting the expectations of parents and school districts, the frustration in motivating apathetic students, the ever-swelling class sizes—all these responsibilities squeeze the joy and passion out of even the youngest, most energetic teachers.

Perez, the ASL teacher, has been teaching at James Logan High School in Fremont, Calif., for 27 years, and she says she’s never seen teachers as stressed out as they are today: “It gets so busy and crazy with the demands. … Sometimes I’m just trying to get my stuff done rather than talk to the kids.” And sometimes, it’s spiritual fatigue that weighs her down when she cannot see the fruits she wants to see.

For decades Perez has prayed for a revival in her school, for teachers, administrators, and students to be radically transformed by the gospel. She “prayer-walks” around the campus every Monday during lunch break and participates in a staff prayer group. A recent church-sponsored campus event attracted a large group of students for free pizza and games, and 80 of them repeated the sinner’s prayer. However, few seem to graduate beyond their verbal commitment to Christ. In a 4,000-student school, only four students currently attend the Christian club that Perez leads.

But at least one former student says her prayers have not fallen to waste. Gilbert Gonzalez Jr. was a senior when he took Perez’s class. The very first day of the semester, Perez performed “Wind Beneath My Wings” by Bette Midler in sign language in honor of a friend who had died from cancer. “She performed so passionately, there was not a dry eye in the class,” Gonzalez recalled, and he began to feel drawn to something inside her. Every lunch period, every opportunity he had, Gonzalez visited Perez in her classroom. There, he told her whatever issues he was going through: the physical beatings and hurtful names he says his mother lashed on him, the taunts and bullying he endured for his homosexuality. Meanwhile, Perez constantly prayed for his salvation.

At the time, Gonzalez was a Roman Catholic–raised “borderline atheist,” but he saw “this warmth and glow about her. … I felt protected, that if I was around Mrs. Perez, I will be safe even if the world came crashing down.” After he graduated in 1999, they continued to keep in touch. One day over the phone, Gonzalez agreed to profess faith in Jesus Christ. He visited her church several times, but held back because a voice kept telling him, “This is not your God. This is a God of ‘straight’ people. If these people knew you were gay, they wouldn’t want you here.”

Although at times Perez felt discouraged to see little change in her former student, she kept inviting him to dinner with her family, comforting him when he was down, and praying for him. She prayed seven more years until one night, Gonzalez bawled on his knees after reading Romans and professed faith in Christ. After eight years of cold silence, Gonzalez called his mother and told her he forgave her. He now teaches a weekly Bible study to a group comprised mostly of the LGBT community—social outcasts, homeless youth, porn stars, and prostitutes.

Gonzalez, now a 34-year-old ASL interpreter, said if not for Perez, he would have swallowed whole the media’s portrayal of Christians as racist, sexist, gay-hating bigots. “Mrs. Perez broke that stereotype for me,” he said. “She was my first model of what the Bible taught about the fruits of the Spirit.” He still calls her every Mother’s Day, and on other days too. Perez knows not every student will turn out like Gonzalez, but she struggles with her desire to “save them all.”

Every day students haul their anger, despair, and confusion into her classroom, “looking for love in all the wrong places,” and Perez bites down the urge to hug them and declare, “Christ is the answer!” During her most discouraged moments, she cries out to God, “When? When is it going to happen?” “That’s when God says to me, ‘You just do what I tell you to do.’”

Listen to Sophia Lee discuss this article on The World and Everything in It.