Pastor Tells Students to Take Failing Grade to Protest Islamic Indoctrination
A pastor is maintaining his stance against Tennessee school curriculum after allegedly posting a video telling middle schoolers to take a failing grade rather than learn Islam.
According to the Tennessean, Pastor Greg Locke said, “You need to tell your kids take an F for the class, because I’d rather fail in man’s class and get an A plus in God’s class, and we need some kids that have some character and stand up.”
Locke reportedly said the teaching is “indoctrination” and “brainwashing.” The original video, he says, has since been deleted by hackers. Locke is the pastor of Global Vision Church in Mt. Juliet.
Locke made the comments after parents complained about their children’s education in Tennessee’s Wilson County Schools, claiming kids were only learning a “watered-down” version of Christianity.
“No one in any Wilson County School is teaching any indoctrination of Islam or of any world religion for that matter,” Director of Schools Donna Wright writes on Facebook. “To imply or state otherwise shows a lack of knowledge about the standards used in our schools.”
The post includes an attachment detailing the middle school’s curriculum.
Wright justified the inclusion of Islam in the teaching by writing: “You cannot teach world history without talking about the influence of a religion on a country’s or region’s people, government, economy, etc. It would be like trying to teach the history of the United States without talking about Christianity and the early settlers [sic] desire to escape religious persecution.”
Locke’s comments are not the first mention of Islamic teaching in public schools. Both Charisma News columnists Todd Starnes and Bethany Blankley have called out the Common Core mandates.