BOSTON (ABP) — The federal government will stop funding a teen-abstinence program that bills itself as an “evangelistic ministry” and gives teenagers silver rings inscribed with a Bible passage.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which in May sued the Department of Health and Human Services to cease grants to the Silver Ring Thing program, announced the out-of-court settlement Feb. 23.
“We are pleased that the government has agreed to stop using taxpayer dollars to fund the Silver Ring Thing's religious activities,” said Julie Sternberg, an ACLU attorney, in a statement. “The ACLU supports the right of Silver Ring Thing to offer religious programming, but it may not do so using government funds.”
Sternberg and her colleagues had contended in court filings that the program violates the Constitution's ban on government establishment of religion.
According to court papers, the program received over $1 million in federal funding in the past three years. Also known as the John Guest Evangelistic Team, the group's newsletter said the program's mission is to “call our world to Christ,” and that one way to do that is “to saturate the United States with a generation of young people who have taken a vow of sexual abstinence until marriage and put on the silver ring. This mission can only be achieved by offering a personal relationship with Jesus Christ….”
According to the ACLU's announcement, Health and Human Services officials agreed to decline further grants to the group unless they prove they are not spending government dollars on religious activities and agree to ongoing monitoring to ensure compliance.
In August, the agency suspended its grant to the program pending an internal investigation. In September, Silver Ring Thing agreed to terminate the grant.
Denny Pattyn, the president of the Silver Ring Thing, told Associated Baptist Press Feb. 28 he is “pleased, ecstatic” with the settlement and suggested the program will continue to receive federal support.
“We did not lose one penny. We're fully able to get a grant in the future,” he said. “We never wanted to become dependent on the federal government…. We've worked with the federal government to look at some ways to more clearly show the public the separation between the federal dollars and the private dollars.”
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