ICC Note: In June of 2014, California high school student Brooks Hamby defied his schools orders and professed his Christian faith during his graduation speech as salutatorian. After this incident, the faith-based legal group Liberty Institute demanded that the California school district exonerate Hamby of any offense and announce that they will refuse to censor students on account of their faith in the future. The school did not agree to the Liberty Institute’s requests, saying that they are obligated to keep God away from the graduation ceremony. The Liberty Institute is currently considering taking Brawley School District to court over the incident.
By Heather Clark
07/13/2014 United States (Christian News Network) – A school district in California has refused to apologize for disallowing its 2014 salutatorian to speak about his faith during his graduation speech, contending that it was ‘obligated’ to ban the mention of God from the event.
As previously reported, Brawley Union High School student Brooks Hamby defied school officials last month in presenting a bold Christian speech during the ceremony. He explained to those present that he had submitted several drafts of his speech, each of which were rejected because of their religious content, and urged students to do what is right, even if they must stand alone.
“In coming before you today, I presented three drafts of my speech, all of them denied on account of my desire to share with you my personal thoughts and inspiration to you—my Christian faith,” he said. “In life, you will be told, ‘No.’ In life you will be told to do things that you have no desire to do. In life, you will be asked to do things that violate your conscience and desire to do what is right.”
“The advice I give to you is this: No man or woman has ever truly succeeded or been fulfilled on the account of living for others and not standing on what they knew in their heart was right or good,” Hamby declared.
He then quoted the words of Christ from Matthew 5.
“So I will leave you with this, with a quote from the biggest, best-selling book of all time in history: ‘You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot,’” Hamby read.
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