Bible clubs back without restrictions
After a meeting with the Tulsa Housing Authority, Child Evangelism Fellowship will freely resume teaching the Bible to children in government-subsidized housing apartments.
Earlier this month, a spokesman for Youth at Heart, who contracts with the authority informed CEF that it could only hold voluntary Bible clubs in the apartments if teachers agreed to not mention God or Jesus and teach moral lessons rather than Bible stories.
That decision sparked a national outcry that prompted numerous e-mails and telephone calls to the authority and Youth at Heart.
Most protested the decision, citing a violation of freedom of speech.
Foxnews.com carried a story that was repeated all over the Internet. The story first appeared in the Tulsa Beacon.
Larry Koehn, president of CEF, said that in a meeting on June 18 that Chea Redditt, CEO of the THA explained that Youth at Heart either misunderstood the policy or miscommunicated it to CEF. No one from Youth at Heart attended the meeting and they will not be involved with supervising CEF in the future.
“We should have never been told what we were told,” Koehn said.
CEF can use all of the recreation centers for two hours a day, five days a week to teach Bible classes with no restrictions.
“It’s a little bit better situation than we had last year,” Koehn said.