Separation of What and What?

For a long time, I've known that the whole separation of church and state thing was pretty much for show. I mean, "In God We Trust" is written on our money and "...one nation, under God..." is in our Pledge of Allegience. However, these do not compare to what happened today.

We had a professional development day which usually means that we stay at our school and attend some kind of presentation about literacy. This year, however, all the schools in our "area" meet up at some location to have a professional development day. There are 22 schools in my area, which means about 800 people. Besides some major Chicago venue, such as Soldier Field or U.S. Cellular Field, I couldn't imagine where this event would be held. Lo and behold, the venue was merely 2 blocks from our school...at a church!

This place was immense. I almost don't even want to call it a church. It was more like a compound, which scares me. It was super nice, almost hotel-like...and, like I said, it was huuuuuge, plus they were in the middle of building an addition. The church donated their space, their employees' time, breakfast, and lunch! Obviously, this church as a lot of money. Did I mention that the neighborhood is impoverished? 86% of my schools' student body is low income. It just creeps me out that the church has all this money while the neighborhood around it doesn't.

I guess the fact that our school's professional devlopment event took place at a church isn't that big of a deal since they didn't include anything religious in the professional development activities. It was just...odd. I shouldn't be surprised considering our school pledge ends with the religious affirmation, "I am somebody because God made me." However, nobody else seems to find this inappropriate. It must be me.