Deer Park Gazette:
I am writing in response to the Meet the Candidates forum held at the Tri County Christian Center on July 26tth, advertised as a forum for the community to engage with the five candidates.
The meeting was moderated by Timothy White, Pastor of the Tri County Christian Center. As he stated in his letter to The Gazette dated August 3, 2023, some have accused him of “lecturing”, or “sermonizing”, which is, I suppose, what a pastor does. However, my objection is that his moderation was skewed toward a conservative viewpoint, rather than just introducing the candidates, which is appropriate at a public forum.
In his letter he also stated that his agenda was to allow the voters to meet, hear from, and speak to the candidates. After his long introduction, and after each candidate offered their platform, almost all of the questions were asked by the moderator, Tim White. There was no time for any questions from the audience.
He went on to claim that some people will be opposed to a pastor running the meeting because of “some notion” of separation of church and state, making a misleading statement that the founding fathers only meant separation from the King. He also said the founding fathers claimed that religion should not be removed from statesmen because they knew that men without character or morality could not govern a free people, and believed that integrity and morality came through faith in god. “If there wasn’t a christian religion as a moral base of our founding fathers, America would not exist today”, according to White. Actually, integrity and morality comes from within each person.
I wonder what history he is looking at. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, among others, were Deists, but they favored no particular religion and believed in their own natural theology. These founders believed that “no establishment” meant no national church and no government involvement in religion. Jefferson argued that there should be a “wall of separation” between church and state.
White also contends that there has been a “flood of corruption” and “sexualization” in the schools. This is alarming language, without offering any context to what he is claiming. He oddly termed it the “elephant in the room, but not republicans. Is this an introduction or a biased sermon?
One candidate, Richard Price, stating that he is a Christian and a patriot, continued that he opposes “radical social policies”. He states that “some of these radical social policies are evil.” The accepted definition of evil is immoral or wicked. This from a candidate that flew a Trump flag for an extended time at his home.
School board members take an oath to support the state constitution, which includes all laws passed by our legally elected representatives. It is beyond belief that these candidates said that they would ignore state law if elected. Is this White’s definition of morality and integrity?
Thankfully, Eric Keller had the morality and integrity to state “In the end, we have to follow the law, folks.”
Craig Barrile
Deer Park
Reprinted with permission.
Letters to the Editor are not edited or corrected for content or grammar.
