c. 2007 Religion News Service

BURLINGTON TOWNSHIP, N.J. _ A public safety drill at a New Jersey school has caught the ire of several conservative Christian groups and pastors around the country who are charging local police and school officials with anti-Christian bias.

The groups are demanding formal apologies because mock gunmen in the drill last month at Burlington Township High School were marked as members of a “right-wing fundamentalist group,” the “New Crusaders,” who were intent on avenging the punishment given to a fictional student for praying before class.

In the last week, on blogs, cable TV and in the local Burlington County Times, pastors and spokespeople for conservative and religious groups have alleged that police who oversaw the drill were insensitive _ at best _ to Christians. They want the police to apologize for how they conducted the drill.

Walt Corter, who designed the exercise as public safety director for the Burlington police, said future drills will include only generic descriptions of the assailants. Still, he said he believes the March 22 drill did not carry negative messages about Christians. The word “Christian” was not used at all, he noted.

“I did not envision any religious group when I drew this scenario up,” he said. “This could’ve been any religion.”

The Burlington Township School District struck a similar note in a prepared statement: “Any perceived insensitivities to our religious community as a result of the emergency exercise scenario are regrettable. It was certainly not the intent to portray any group in a negative manner.”

The afternoon exercise, conducted after a half-day of school for 150 teachers and about 30 of the school’s 1,000 students, Corter said, was a simulation of how police and school administrators would react if two gunmen shot students and took hostages. Police officers posed as the gunmen; student volunteers as the hostages.

The goal was to practice the school’s procedures for lockdown and evacuations, he said. Such drills at schools have become more common since the fatal shootings of 13 people at Columbine High School in Colorado eight years ago.

During the drill, a group of leaders instructed other attendees that the gunmen were supposed to be members of a right-wing fundamentalist group that “didn’t believe in separation of state and church,” and one of the intruder’s daughters had been suspended from school for praying before each class, Corter said.

“There was no mention of any religion, no mention of Christianity,” Corter said.

But the Rev. David Boudwin, associate pastor at Fountain Life Center, a non-denominational church in neighboring Florence, said the connotation was obvious.

“When you say right-wing fundamentalists, that’s one group. That’s Christian people that are upset with the child being not allowed to pray in school. … If it’s not Christians, who is it?”

Conservative groups like the New Jersey Family Policy Council and the Washington D.C.-based American Center for Law & Justice have demanded formal apologies by the school and police.

“Hostage drill at NJ school features mock `Christian terrorists,”’ blared an e-mail alert by the New Jersey Family Policy Council.

Boudwin said he learned about the drill after reading an article in the Burlington County Times describing what happened, a few days after the exercise. He said he has not spoken to anyone who was there but that he welcomed the out-of-town attention, which has included a segment on Fox News.

“Finally, Christians are speaking up,” he said. “Unfortunately we all should have started doing this years ago when they took prayer and Bible reading out of (public) schools.”

(Jeff Diamant writes for The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J.)

KRE/CM END DIAMANT