NEWS FEATURE: Revival Hits, Disrupts Classes at Mississippi Public School

c. 2000 Religion News Service CARRIERE, Miss. _ Football jocks wept in the gym. Teen-agers took the microphone, haltingly confessing their personal demons and begging for friends’ prayers. Students in corridors wept on one another’s shoulders. In an unusual outbreak of fervor being applauded by conservative Christians nationwide, the regular class schedule at Pearl River […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

CARRIERE, Miss. _ Football jocks wept in the gym. Teen-agers took the microphone, haltingly confessing their personal demons and begging for friends’ prayers. Students in corridors wept on one another’s shoulders.

In an unusual outbreak of fervor being applauded by conservative Christians nationwide, the regular class schedule at Pearl River Central High School broke down one day last month as teachers and administrators at first watched, then joined students in expressions of faith, personal testimonies and prayer in a student Bible club meeting that lasted four hours.


Since that day, news of the so-called “Pearl River Revival” or “Pearl River Happening” has been spreading on Christian radio and Web sites, where it is being noted approvingly as a supernatural event _ and a welcome example of a public school’s hospitality to Christianity.

Meanwhile, hundreds of congratulatory e-mails have formed a pile four inches thick on the desk of Principal Lolita Lee, who suspended classes April 12, the day a late-morning program by Pearl River’s Christian students mushroomed into a daylong, schoolwide camp meeting.

Some letters, such as one from the conservative American Family Association in St. Louis, include a touch of defiance, promising money or other help if Lee or the county school system comes under fire for her decision.

But there is no criticism yet, largely because the event is still not widely known outside conservative circles, and because students, faculty and families in heavily evangelical Pearl River County overwhelmingly approve of what occurred that day, Lee said.

“In the first couple of weeks I must’ve had 30 or 40 calls from parents, and they were all just real glad that it had happened,” she said.

“I think this was a message from God that we need to put God back in our schools,” said Judy Mitchell, one of the Bible club’s faculty supervisors. “That’s how I understood it, and that’s become my goal.”

But the high school’s official hospitality to the class-time event, including teachers’ own participation, apparently violated the state of Mississippi’s duty to act as “a neutral, honest broker” among all faiths, said Charles Haynes, a constitutional scholar at the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center in Arlington, Va., and a consultant generally regarded as a friend of educators’ attempts to integrate faith into school life.


“The First Amendment does not keep religion out of schools,” Haynes said. “But it says religion can come in only in a way that protects the rights of all the kids, protects them from the government either denigrating or promoting a particular religion.

“I grant you, there are times of great emotion when a principal cannot just bring out a gong, as it were, and gong a show to an end without it being hurtful or damaging to young people. That may be the case in times of great stress, if young people gather and begin to pray after a shooting, for instance. I sympathize with that.

“But even then they have to set some kind of limit, and more important, this school I think should not have put itself in that position in the first place.”

The Pearl River phenomenon began when the school let a student group, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, sponsor a 90-minute program for other students during the last class before lunch that day, Lee said.

That in itself was not unusual, Lee said. Similar arrangements have been made for blood drives or student fund-raisers.

Students who wanted to attend were excused from class. “About 90 percent” of Pearl River’s 640 students gathered in the school’s gym to watch a series of skits promoting Christian life, prepared by the fellowship’s members.


“We didn’t know what the closing would be, so we left that to God, and he totally took over,” said Cary-Anne Dell, a senior and one of the event’s organizers. “God was like, `This can’t end.”’

In short order, students began to open up with sometimes intense, emotional confessions in a process that began to feed on itself, Dell and others said.

“I said to myself, `The Spirit is filling these kids, and I’m going to let it continue. I don’t want it to stop,”’ said Lee, who had been sitting in the front row.

The line of students waiting to talk quickly grew to 30 or more, she said. Several administrators and teachers, starting with Lee, took the microphone to offer their own testimonies, several participants said.

“Everybody was crying, hugging and kissing,” said Jaquaila Jefferson, a 14-year-old freshman.

Lee announced the arrival of the lunch hour, but few people left, said Don Davis, one of the club’s supervisors. A little later, Lee placed a call to her supervisor, county school Superintendent Zeno Carter. “But I wasn’t calling to ask permission to let it continue,” she said. “I wanted him to come see this.”

Students grouped and regrouped to pray among themselves in the gym and nearby corridors, participants said.


The club had arranged for youth ministers from two local churches to be on hand to talk to students, “but nobody needed them,” Dell said. “It was all kids coming up to other kids and asking, `Will you pray with me?”’

“We don’t have an official number, but something like 15 or 20 came up on faith,” as a sign of personal conversion, Davis said. “I guess hundreds gave testimonies and rededicated their lives to Christ. It just kept ballooning and ballooning.

“The only reason we stopped is because the buses came at 3:15 p.m., and we still had kids waiting to speak,” he said.

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April 12 was a Wednesday, and that night many participants took news of the event to their midweek services at nearby Baptist churches.

Within days, they said, word rocketed around the area. A week later, Dell said, she was asked to describe the event at a Fellowship of Christian Athletes gathering in Jackson.

The Internet was only a short leap away.

Web sites run by the Southern Baptist Convention and Christianity Today, a monthly evangelical magazine, featured stories about the event and included Lee’s e-mail address (lleeprchs.k12.ms.us), prompting the torrent of electronic applause.


Christian radio stations began calling for phone interviews. An account of the event, described as “a full-fledged revival,” appeared on Decision Today, http://www.decisiontoday.org, a Web site operated by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

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Amid all the applause, there have been one or two reservations, among them an unidentified Pearl River teacher who told Lee she may have broken the law.

If so, Lee said she is unsure how, given that the session was student-led and voluntary.

“If the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) wants to come, go ahead, but the most they can make us do is make up a day,” she said. “The students have told us if that’s what it means, it’s fine by them.”

Since the event, she said she also has learned that one teacher and perhaps two students at the school are Jewish, but none has complained, “and I’m not even sure whether they were there.”

But protecting minority faiths from state-approved religious activity is what the Constitution requires, “and that’s a good thing for religion,” Haynes said.


Had a high school in Utah, which is predominantly Mormon, sponsored a similar program promoting Mormonism during class time, “you can be sure those good Baptist parents excited about what happened in Mississippi would be first in line at the courthouse with a lawsuit charging the public schools with illegally promoting Mormonism,” Haynes said.

“When you’re in the majority, you have to behave as you’d like to be treated if you were in the minority,” he said.

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Meanwhile, teachers and students report something of an afterglow at Pearl River.

“People now are much more friendly with each other; they’re not so critical,” said Jennifer Simoneaux, a 16-year-old sophomore from Picayune.

Posters have gone up in the school corridors: “Stand up for God today. He stood up for you” and “Sign here if you love Jesus.” A hand-drawn map of the United States marks the cities and towns that have sent e-mails to Pearl River High. It is freckled with little red stars.

Students have begun what Lee describes as voluntary, student-led prayer to open some classes, such as teacher Trisha Brewer’s French classes.

And the Fellowship of Christian Athletes still meets Wednesday mornings before school, now often with a half-dozen teachers sitting with students to exchange insights about life and faith.


But Pearl River’s celebrity is spreading even as its school year ends.

“Ever since we had that revival, our class has been praying,” Brewer told a gathering of students at a recent morning meeting of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

“We’ve been sharing how prayers have been answered, and I think it’s really neat we’ve been able to do that. I think it’s really awesome.”

DEA END NOLAN

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