(RNS) — Four Christian leaders and education advocates are seeking the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s permission to join a lawsuit filed by the state’s attorney general that aims to prevent the opening of an online Catholic charter school.
The plaintiffs—Melissa Abdo, Bruce Prescott, the Rev. Mitch Randall and the Rev. Lori Walke—contend that the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board’s decision to sponsor the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School undermines religious freedom in the state and will lead to discrimination against nonreligious students.
“The separation of church and state is not the sole responsibility of the state; the church has to do its part to hold that line and continue to honor that separation,” said Walke.
St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School would be the country’s first publicly funded religious charter school.
Attorney General Gentner Drummond has argued in his own filings that the decision violates Oklahoma’s Constitution. He has said he is ready to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court if needed.
The Oklahoma faith leaders are represented in their effort to sway the case by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Education Law Center and the Freedom From Religion Foundation. They previously filed a separate lawsuit in a district court this summer.
The board is represented by the Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom.
When she learned about the board’s decision to allocate public funds to St. Isidore, Abdo, a Catholic resident of Tulsa County, immediately felt the need to counter assumptions that the lawsuit was an anti-Catholic effort.
“I’m Catholic; this happens to be a Catholic school effort, but I would never expect people of another faith to pay for educating children in the Catholic faith,” she said.
A longtime public education advocate, Abdo sits on the public school board in Jenks, Oklahoma, a suburb of Tulsa, and the Oklahoma State School Boards Association board of directors. Besides her misgivings about religious freedom, she also expressed concerns about whether St. Isidore will be able to comply with all obligations imposed on public schools, such as holding open meetings and keeping records open.
“It’s a very big responsibility when we are accountable to the taxpayers because they’re paying for school,” she said.
The senior minister of Mayflower Congregational Church in Oklahoma City for the past 15 years, Walke said her advocacy for the separation of state and church stemmed from her Southern Baptist upbringing.
Her church, which is aligned with the United Church of Christ, counts many queer parishioners, and Walke said she is worried St. Isidore will discriminate against LGBTQ+ students.
“They explicitly state that they are going to be part of the evangelizing mission of the church. … Of course, they mean their particular flavor and brand of Christianity, which does happen to be homophobic, not to mention misogynist,” she said.
She said she also fears that support for St. Isidore will siphon funds from Oklahoma public schools.
