Confessions of a Recovering Pharisee

[Charlotte Observer]

A church-state separation group this week asked two South Carolina school districts to halt a church-run program that gives needy students new shoes and socks because the youths engage in ritual foot-washing as part of the giveaway. School officials said Tuesday the claim is off base and overblown.

Laces4Love, a program run by the First Baptist Church of North Augusta, distributes new shoes and socks before the holidays each year to students identified by school officials as in need of the new footwear.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State sent letters Monday to school officials in Aiken and Edgefield counties, asking that they put a stop to the program that “subjects disadvantaged students to ritual foot-washing as part of a shoe giveaway.”

“I have never heard of any program remotely like this anywhere in the country,” the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of the Washington-based group, said Tuesday. “This is clearly an attempt to evangelize public schools students and even allowing a religious group to come in to perform what it sees as a religious ritual violates the Constitution.”

The Rev. Gary Redding, pastor of the First Baptist Church of North Augusta, referred comment on the program to the districts. Laces4Love’s Web site says children in the program are brought to a school lunch room, where “the volunteers carefully remove their old shoes and socks if they have them. Then wash their feet with warm towelettes and put the new socks and shoes on their feet checking for the correct size as they go.”

David Mathis, associate superintendent for administration in Aiken County, said it’s the children, and not church officials or volunteers, who decide if they want to clean their feet before putting on their new shoes and socks.

“It’s in no way seen as a ritual. It’s an effort to help these kids, they’re in need,” Mathis said. “If they want to put on their new socks and shoes with clean feet, they can make that choice. … It’s not a Biblical representation of washing feet.”

Read about it here.

[From me]

I guess the Americans United for Separation of Church and State are being Scrooges!  What ritual is there in washing someone’s feet?  I know Jesus washed feet but this church isn’t preaching to these children.  They are providing them with brand new shoes and socks what are the Americans United for Separation of Church and State people doing for these poor children?  Quit being Scrooges and give the kids some shoes!

What do you think?