The Week in Quotes (Nov. 11 – 17)

Here are some of the week’s most notable quotes.

The U.S. ambassador for religious freedom and former governor Sam Brownback at an event sponsored by the Religious Freedom Institute and Baylor University.

“We need a religious freedom movement in the United States. My thinking is it needs to go specific. It needs to start at Baylor or other university campuses.”

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Richard W. Garnett, a professor of law at Notre Dame University, on the dangers to religious freedom in the United States.

“I always say that the particular problems we’re confronting here are different from those [Christians face] in China, Sudan or Pakistan, as we’re not being decapitated for our beliefs or our churches burned to the ground, but I do think that we have religious freedom challenges in the States. I think our belief in religious freedom is strong, and I’m glad I live here and not somewhere else, but I think that it’s a mistake to be complacent about the situation here just because it’s not as bad as it is in some other places. Grateful vigilance is the correct posture to have. One doesn’t want to overreact, be histrionic or exaggerate or anything, but I also think that one should be clear-eyed and not naive about the challenges.”

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Dan Quinn, TFN spokesperson, on a video a Smithville first-grade teacher shared online showing her class repeating daily Bible verses.

“If this teacher is crossing the line here, the teacher is putting the district at risk of a civil lawsuit. That puts the district and the taxpayers in the district at risk, because the courts have ruled repeatedly that you cannot turn a public school classroom into a Sunday school classroom.”

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TFN President Kathy Miller on maintaining the momentum of the energized voters.

“The only way to find the voters that have for too long been underrepresented in the Texas electorate, like young voters and people of color, is to meet them where they are, in their communities and on their campuses, and engage them on the issues they care about.”

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Carisa Lopez, political director of the Texas Freedom Network, on the State Board of Education’s social studies curricula standards.

“When it comes to writing curriculum standards for our kids’ schools, it’s painfully clear that the personal beliefs of politicians on the state board matter more than what countless historians and teachers have told them is factually true. Rather than teaching the truth, too many board members stubbornly mislead students on fundamental facts from our nation’s history. Texas kids deserve a lot better than a politicized version of history that fuels so many of the divisions in our country today.”