Humansville School Superintendent
terminated for acknowledging God
By Allen Palmeri
Staff Writer
August 31, 2004
CAMDENTON – Kerry Messer, lobbyist for the Missouri Baptist Convention’s Christian Life Commission, has been drawing a distinction lately in his public speaking about two kinds of public school workers.
“There is a difference between a Christian public school employee and a public school employee who is a Christian,” Messer said. “Which comes first, the paycheck or the witness? The priority will determine the level of ministry that actually occurs with the school children.”
When told that a Christian public school employee named Greg Thompson had just lost a $70,000-a-year superintendent’s job in Humansville because he chose to acknowledge God as opposed to complying with federal law, Messer reacted with joy.
“Praise the Lord,” Messer said. “He stood up for his convictions.”
Thompson served as Humansville School Superintendent from July 1998 to Aug. 16 of this year, when he was terminated by the school board for fear that his Christian beliefs would cost the school district thousands of dollars. On July 28, the school district settled a federal lawsuit over the hanging of a Ten Commandments plaque in the high school, agreeing to pay plaintiff, Carrie Roat, $45,000. Thompson was not required to sign the settlement, but St. Charles-based Missouri United School Insurance Council (MUSIC), which has been in existence since 1985 and has provided the Humansville schools with insurance, indicated that it was uncomfortable with his religious beliefs blending with his professional responsibility — a condition that could lead to another lawsuit.
Thompson technically has 60 days of leave with pay as he potentially decides to return to work, but seems unlikely because Thompson said he will not comply with the conditions being placed for his return. To do so would be to deny who he is as a Christian, Thompson said.
Thompson said that Tom Mickes, an attorney for MUSIC’s 375 members, including Humansville, told him that the list of ways that he could not acknowledge God while serving as superintendent was “exhaustive.” Thompson was told not to have his Bible on his desk and to take down a cross in his office as well as a glass Ten Commandments plaque on his shelf. Thompson and Donna Parke, the lone school board member who voted to retain him as superintendent, said a MUSIC employee, Phyllis Galbreath, instructed Thompson to “not acknowledge God in any way” in order to minimize liability. This included a ban on praying for students and their families at school functions.
“It was a money issue to the insurance company,” Thompson told The Pathway in an interview in Camdenton two days after his firing.
Messer called it “a ridiculous edict that goes beyond the law.” The Preamble to the Missouri State Constitution in 1845 established that “We, the people of Missouri, with profound reverence for the Supreme Ruler of the Universe, and grateful for His goodness … establish this Constitution.”
Thompson felt his actions were in accordance with the state Constitution and that the acknowledgement of God is the first unalienable right as stipulated in the Declaration of Independence.
The school board voted, 6-1, Aug. 11, to suspend him without pay. On Aug. 15, Thompson said he cleaned out his office and handed his office key to the school board president. Thompson was let go the following day.
“I have to say that the Good Lord had put me at peace,” Thompson said, referring to his Aug. 11 appeal to the school board that encouraged everyone to stand for God for the sake of the children. “He gave me the strength to stand there and hear basically an appeal to resign rather than make us fire you, and I said, ‘I can’t do that. I can’t do it for the children. I’ve told them to stand up for what’s right, even if they stand alone.’”
School board members expressed personal support for Thompson, a superintendent who had earned perfect evaluations his last three years, according to Parke. But professionally, they concluded his behavior was unacceptable. In the end, Parke, a member of First Baptist Church, Humansville, was left standing alone among her fellow board members.
“This is not an issue of religion,” she warned them. “It is an acknowledgement of God.
“Each of us will stand before God one day and give an account for what we say and do. Basically, by making that decision, they were denying God.”
Thompson said he is not bitter.
“I put them (the board) at risk with the insurance company who said they would not cover another First Amendment issue,” he said. “I was basically telling them that that’s going to happen. That’s who I am.”
Thompson added fuel to the fire that had already been burning over the issue in Humansville once the settlement was announced in late July when he stated that as superintendent, he was going to put up another Ten Commandments plaque in the school to take the place of the one that Roat’s lawsuit had successfully removed. Legally, under the case law system, such an action would contradict rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court and 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, but Thompson stood on his rights as a freeman.
When a freeman chooses not to follow public policy in a litigious country like the United States, the Bible teaches that suffering is to be expected. The Springfield News-Leader editorialized that Thompson was issuing “a call for anarchy” by standing on his right to acknowledge God. Thompson said he is opposed to the rulings of federal judges that contradict his right to acknowledge God by upholding the principle that government gives us rights. As a result, he lost his job. Messer called that harassment.
“If Christians across the board would stand up for Christ, then we would live in a different culture,” Messer said. “They would quit harassing Christians. They only harass Christians like this because they can get away with it.”
Messer lost a job in 1985 when he refused to obey a supervisor who told him to quit trying to shut down the adult bookstores in St. Louis.
“I don’t consider that persecution,” Messer said. “It’s harassment, but it’s not persecution. We have not resisted unto blood. Persecution does not occur until they start torturing you.”
Early in August, Thompson spoke with Messer in Springfield and asked him for some advice. Messer said he should keep his Bible on his desk and the glass Ten Commandments plaque on his shelf.
“If they fire you because they take your Bible off your desk,” Messer told Thompson, “at least you can hold your head high for the rest of your life.”
Thompson said at the time that it was just what he needed to hear. He now notes that getting fired is an affliction (2 Tim. 4:5).
“I think that my pain has been for the children,” he said. “I know it’s taking away what the Good Lord has been able to do through me, work that has been good for the children. I’ve bawled more than once thinking about how it’s going to hurt the children.”
During his interview in Camdenton, Thompson detailed a series of events that led to his termination as well as the birth and growth of his new ministry, Asleep kNOw More. Asleep kNOw More exists, Thompson said, “to have people protecting the souls of the children in every town.”
Around January 2003, he heard that some Humansville teachers were not doing the Pledge of Allegiance. He urged his staff, in writing, to comply, but one teacher refused.
“I brought her in and asked her why, and it was because of the phrase ‘under God,’” Thompson said. “She said, ‘There was a separation of church and state,’ and I said, ‘Don’t you know there’s no such thing?’”
Shortly afterward, he met an elderly gentleman who gave him the book, The Myth of Separation Between Church and State, written by Dee Wampler, an attorney and member of Second Baptist Church, Springfield. Thompson read the book and began to research the connection between Christianity and the founding of America.
In the summer, he knelt in his office and prayed, “God, cover me up with information and resources.” He rose and noticed the David Barton book, Original Intent, on his shelf. It had been given to him by a lady two years earlier and set aside. He now began to read it with passion.
“I couldn’t put it down,” he said. “I was writing on every margin —just a wealth of information.”
On Oct. 22, at 3 a.m., Thompson rolled out of bed onto his knees.
“There were a lot of tears, talking to the Good Lord, and I said, ‘I’ll do this, but I’m going to need a lot of help,’” Thompson said. He was surrendering to the ministry of Asleep kNOw More, an organization that seeks to put God and America’s Christian heritage back into all levels of government and schools.
“It (Asleep kNOw More) is for the children—if you’re concerned about your children’s souls. It was set up for minds to get together to start looking to protect our children, our grandchildren and our neighbors (from the evil of the world).”
In November 2003, Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore lost his job for defying a federal judge’s order to move a Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of the State Courthouse. Moore has repeatedly explained that his case is entirely about a tyrannical judiciary denying his right to acknowledge God. Thompson was so fascinated by both Barton and Moore that he called their secretaries to say he wanted to fly to their offices, but nothing ever materialized.
On March 23, the Ten Commandments plaque — that Roat said caused her “distinct and palpable injuries” — was removed from Humansville High School. Wampler represented Thompson pro bono, and in a span of six days the superintendent met both Barton and Moore, who proved to be “very supportive,” at separate speaking engagements in Branson.
All of those events converged on Thompson as he stood before the Humansville School Board Aug. 11. Wampler said Thompson was fired “because he refused to sacrifice his belief,” noting that we are in a battle to reclaim America’s lost soul.
“The love I’ve given the kids and the community comes from a philosophy that comes from Jesus and His wisdom,” Thompson said.
Messer said he agrees with Thompson 1,000 percent.
“The machinery of the politics is bigger than anybody, but for us as individual Christians who represent Jesus Christ as His individual ambassadors, we’re called to a higher responsibility than to just look at our paycheck and make our decision with that in our hand,” Messer said.
“If the Christian community is silenced in order to maintain their paychecks, then quit bragging about being such a Christian influence in a pagan institution (the public schools).”
In the process of pursuing God as a member of First Humansville, Parke became a part of the Asleep kNOw More ministry. Since January she has been serving on the steering committee.
“I take care of putting meetings together and making contacts with the pastors,” she said. “I do a newsletter and the treasurer’s job. I’m kind of a helper.
“God is going to do wonderful things with this. I feel like He’s going to use this to wake people up, to start people realizing that they are taking away our rights.”
Messer agreed.
“Para-church organizations are very important, because they’re like the prophets standing before the princes of Israel—in this case, the local churches,” he said. “From my visits with Greg, from what I see the Lord doing in his life, I am convinced that the Lord has called him out for a special ministry.”