Texas Ranked Worst And Highest
It’s like putting tooth paste back in the tube.
Just as there are certain words that, once you’ve heard them, you can never forget. (“Onomatopoeia” comes to mind.) there are life-moments so deeply imbedded in our neurological makeup that generations will carry them to their graves: President Kennedy’s assassination, 9-11, the murder of MLK, Barrack Obama’s speech on the night of his first presidential election, January 6.
And there are experiences that are uniquely personal and equally perduring:
Way back when, inmates first assigned to the Florida prison system [The “Department of Incorrections”] received a six-digit identification number; with each new commitment a letter – A, B, C, D… prefixed the number. In the early ‘90s, I looked in on a raucous evangelical “chapel service” being conducted by an outside “prison ministry.” Perfect timing for one of those “you’ll never forget this” moments. An inmate built like an NFL tackle stood near the back of the room waving his bible over his head: “I don’t know how it happens. I don’t know how it happens. Every time I come to prison this Good Book ends up in my hands and I get saved.” In my office, I reviewed the prison roster. His number began with an “M.” He was on his fourteenth tour of the prison system. Prison – 366 days or more following a felony conviction.
Late one Friday afternoon during a temporary assignment at a prison in the Orlando area, I walked to the parking lot with the evangelical/ fundamentalist chaplain. I was going to collect the chalice, wine and hosts needed for Mass; he was heading home. “The Jews are supposed to break their [Yom Kippur] fast on Sunday. But I’m not coming in for them. They’ll just have to wait until Monday,” he sneered. (That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. After Mass, I began to plan my exit.)
On Wednesday, May 24, at almost precisely the same time that - one year ago - an 18-year-old former student, clad in black and a tactical vest for carrying ammunition and armed with an AR-15-style rifle, massacred nineteen students and two teachers and injured seventeen others at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, the Texas legislature passed a bill allowing the state’s public schools to hire their own unlicensed chaplains.
The legislation was part of a legislative wish list – one that dealt with school prayer and one requiring classrooms to hang donated Ten Commandment signs failed – sponsored by an alliance of right-wing activists, Christian groups and conservative lawmakers championing forms of Christian nationalism.
Senator Nathan Johnson, a democrat, expressed his concern that, while the bill did define the faith of a chaplain, the positions are likely to be filled by Christians:
“I still have great concern that we are continuing to break down this wall the framers of our Constitution insisted on having between church and state.”
To which the bills’ co-sponsor Senator Mayes Middleton countered that separation of church and state “is not a real doctrine.”
Middleton also co-authored a bill allowing school districts to require local campuses to set aside time for staff and students to pray and read religious texts. Although that measured failed in the House, upon its passage by the senate, he published a statement asserting:
“Our founders certainly never intended separation of God from government or schools, despite the left’s attempt to mislead our people on this fact.”
Middleton’s statement claimed that pastors were among those who have “asked that prayer be put back in our public schools.”
The proposed Ten Commandments bill would have required that the Commandments be taken from the King James Version of the Bible and appear on posters at least 16-by-20 inches and legible “to a person with average vision anywhere in the classroom.”
Cantor Sheri Allen, co-founder of the Fort Worth’s Congregation Malcom Shelnu and a hospital and hospice chaplain, told Religion News Service (RNS) “As a chaplain, I’m the first to admit, I’m not qualified to play the role of the school counselor.” She added, “I read and I chant the Ten Commandments in Hebrew – the original language – every year” and pointed out that Jewish traditions typically do not number the edicts in the same way as Christians. (Christianity also has multiple ways of numbering the commandments that vary by tradition.) Allen contended that the proposed bill would effectively “endorse Protestant Christianity.”
Senator Middleton, serving his first term in the Senate and previously a member of the Texas House, told The Washington Post, “There is absolutely no separation of God and government, and that’s what these bills are about.”
Texas Democrats had attempted to add an amendment to the chaplains bill that would require school chaplains be endorsed by an organization recognized by the U.S. Department of Defense, the Federal Bureau of Prisons or the Texas Department of Criminal Justice – all of which require a minimum of a four-year college degree and ordination or certification by recognized religious authority, e.g an Anglican/Episcopal or Roman Catholic diocese, the office of the [Catholic] Military Ordinate [i.e. supervising bishop for all Catholic military chaplains] or the Southern Baptist Convention. The amendment was stripped from the bill after passage, potentially clearing a path for individuals certified by the National School Chaplains Association to be the primary source of personnel for Texas schools.
The NSCA web site specifically defines the organization as “a Christian chaplain ministry… providing a bridge between the secular and spiritual environments of community life throughout the United States.” The site explains the organization’s “Core Principles”:
“We display Christ in what we say and do. We meet people where they are, no matter the circumstance, to show compassion and love just as Jesus would.
NSCA Chaplains are defined as “godly servants to others”
A map on the site claims “22,378+” schools in 23 countries and “20,147,051+ people served by chaplains.” The site explains:
“The scale of transformation and spiritual renewal resulting from the school chaplain program might be best described as revival. Millions of young people and adults in their lives are being won to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and discipled in the name of Jesus. Discipleship involves training to win and disciple others.”
Simply stated, the Texas legislature has chosen as a primary accrediting agency for its K-12 chaplains a program designed to have students “discipled in the name of Jesus.”
The site lists two levels of training - offered through Oral Roberts University:
Level 1, available for “$700 (non-refundable)” requires fifty hours of training and is open to “certified teachers, ordained or credentialed ministers, certifications, with student experience.” [If you think “That’s difficult to understand,” you’re right.]
Level 2 certification is open to “People with no experience, ordination, credentials, or education or youth experience with a minimum of a high school [sic] or high school equivalency.” It comes at a whopping “$10,500 (non- refundable).” [We hope they meant “minimum of a high school diploma.”]
ORU – the certifying institution for NSCA – is defined on its website as “a Christian university” and a “Holy Spirit-empowered university.”
On May 10, Austin-based KXAN reported on a newly released Forbes study that “ranked Texas as the worst state for mental healthcare in the U.S…. Texas also ranked highest for the ‘highest percentage of adults with a cognitive disability who could not see a doctor due to cost’ and ‘highest percentage of youth who had a major depressive episode in the past year and did not receive treatment.”
In October 2021, Greg Hensch, Executive Director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, told Austin’s ABC affiliate KVUE, “We simply don’t have enough trained mental health professionals to provide care for everyone who needs it. Two-thirds of the counties in the state don’t have a single psychiatrist.”
On May 9, Verify, a fact checking organization/division of TEGNA, one of the country's largest owners of local television stations, cited Rice University political scientist Mark P. Jones, who noted:
"[Texas Republicans] haven't expanded mental health care services, but they haven't cut them either. The biggest critique of Texas Republicans would be their continued opposition to expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act."
Verify reported:
“Texas is one of only 10 states that has not expanded access to Medicaid. Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that if it did – a move that would be mostly funded by federal dollars under Obamacare – more than 1.4 million Texans would gain access to coverage, including for mental health resources.”
In other words, Texas legislators have now agreed to place Christian chaplains – including some who lack even a high school diploma, any training in mental health, and any experience in dealing with the emotional struggles and challenges facing today’s K-12 students – in the state’s schools as pseudo counselors.
David Donatti, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, pointed out that the counselors bill does not define chaplain. Had it passed, the Commandments legislation might have put public school teachers in a position to have to explain to young students the meaning of commandments such as “Thou shalt not covet they neighbor’s wife, not his manservant, nor his maidservant.”
Donatti also noted that the chaplains bill – which passed both houses of the legislature – will likely leave public schools in the position of struggling to serve all faiths adequately.
“We have not financed our schools in a way to make it possible to have truly non-sectarian, religiously pluralistic moments of meditation. In practice, I think what’s going to happen is you’re going to have a particular religious tradition very well represented, while others are not very well represented.”
Exactly one year before the chaplain’s bill was passed by the Texas legislature, a single 18-year-old gunman murdered nineteen students and two teachers and injured seventeen others at Robb Elementary School and the best response the Texas legislature could come up with is a corps of chaplains – some of whom will almost certainly lack even the most minimal of college educations.
The day after the shooting, while American politicians offered the same tired platitudes of “thoughts and prayers,” Pope Francis told the world:
"My heart is broken over the mass shooting at the elementary school in Texas. I am praying for the children and adults who were killed, and for their families. It is time to say enough to the indiscriminate trafficking of arms."
To say enough to the indiscriminate trafficking of arms!
To establish long-term – ten to twenty years – plans for the education, real life training and placement of large enough numbers of highly qualified and highly dedicated licensed clinical social workers, licensed mental health specialists, school counselors and school psychologists, psychologists, and psychiatrists to service all of Texas’s and the nation’s schools
Enough with thoughts and prayers.
It’s time for a national Marshall Plan for mental health.