School Defends Teaching of ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ After Atheist Group Complains

Sep 15, 2017 by

by Samuel Smith, Christian Post:

A Tennessee school principal and superintendent have defended a teacher’s right to teach her class a portion of George Frideric Handel’s historic classical composition “Hallelujah Chorus” after a local branch of the nation’s largest secular legal organization complained that it was a form of proselytizing.

Roger Ward, the principal of Linden Elementary School in Oak Ridge, responded to a complaint issued by the the president of the the East Tennessee chapter of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which is headquartered in Wisconsin and advocates for a strict separation of church and state.

“Our music teacher uses a historical basis in her classroom and as a part selects a composer of the week,” Ward wrote in response to chapter President Aleta Ledendecker, according to OakRidger. “Handel has been the composer that students are studying for the past three days and will continue to be the composer for the next two.”

Ledendecker previously wrote to Ward after being contacted by two concerned parents to argue that the music teacher’s teaching of Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus,” which was a part of Handel’s 1742 oratorio, “Messiah,” was inappropriate considering its religious overtones.

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