AP Jesus Camp

It's hard to say what's more disturbing about this story about an 11th-grade AP history teacher in New Jersey: that he spends the school day proselytizing -- or the fact that when a student complained about it the majority of the students and community sided with the teacher: David Paszkiewicz told his sixth-period students at Kearny High School that evolution and the Big Bang were not scientific, that dinosaurs were aboard Noah's ark, and that only Christians had a place in heaven, according to audio recordings made by a student whose family is considering a lawsuit claiming Paszkiewicz broke the church-state boundary. "If you reject his gift of salvation, then you know where you belong," Paszkiewicz was recorded as saying of Jesus. "He did everything in his power to make sure that you could go to heaven, so much so that he took your sins on his own body, suffered your pains for you, and he's saying, 'Please, accept me, believe.' If you reject that, you belong in hell." He is also accused of saying that a specific Muslim girl in class would go to hell.

The student, Matthew LaClair (above), described in The New York Times as a thin, articulate 16-year-old with braces and a passion for politics and the theater (mmm), said that he felt uncomfortable with Paszkiewicz's statements in the first week, and taped eight classes starting Sept. 13 out of fear that officials would not believe the teacher had made the comments. Since Matthew's complaint, he has been the subject of taunts and has even received a death threat. According to Greice Coelho, who took Paszkiewicz's class, said in a letter to The Observer, the local weekly newspaper, that Matthew is "ignoring the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gives every citizen the freedom of religion." Yeah, Greice. That's it. (God help us all.) (NYT)