Bible Quotes in Yearbook Beget Ruckus in O.C.

The yearbook adviser at Buena Park Junior High School has been suspended for inserting biblical references into the school’s yearbook, allegedly without approval, district officials said.

The adviser, Phillip Fivgas, an art and physical education teacher who was suspended with pay from his $27,000-a-year job Friday, admitted Wednesday that he inserted passages from the Old Testament and New Testament on many of the yearbook’s 76 pages.

But he said two of the school’s vice principals reviewed the yearbook--with the biblical passages--before it was published.

“I study the word. It means a lot to me,” said Fivgas, 37. “We have been beaten over our heads not to include anything biblical in our teachings. There’s something wrong about that.”

Buena Park Junior High Principal Ronald L. Barry said two assistant principals reviewed the yearbook, “Perceptions,” before it went to print and found no Scripture quotes.

“We believe they were inserted after the fact,” Barry said.

The yearbook, he added, “caused great embarrassment” when the printed copies were delivered to the school last week.

Buena Park School District Supt. Jack Townsend said school officials brought the book to three different law firms, which all deemed it unacceptable for distribution.

Legal advisers at the Orange County Department of Education agreed.

Geraldine Jaffe, an attorney at the Orange County Department of Education, said the First Amendment’s establishment of religion clause “prohibits a government agency such as the school district from endorsing any particular religion, or even favoring any particular religious viewpoint.

“The verses in the yearbook were from the Old and New Testament,” she said, “and had the effect of conveying a religious message. The Buena Park School District did not allow the yearbook to be distributed because it is unconstitutional for a school publication to contain numerous references to the Old and New Testaments.”

Based on the legal opinions, school officials returned 400 copies of “Perceptions” to the publisher and asked for reprints, at a cost of $6,000, Townsend said. The new books are to be distributed today, the last day of classes.

Fivgas, who began teaching at the school a year ago, disputed the argument that publishing the passages violated the First Amendment and said that his and the yearbook staff’s constitutional right to free speech is being abridged.

“Right now, I’m not upset with my own plight,” said Fivgas, who said he often jotted down biblical verses on his class chalkboard at the beginning of each week. “The kids are being denied something that belongs to them. These kids are getting a raw deal.”

Students at the school were told that the yearbook had been withdrawn during a Monday assembly. On the same day, the district sent a letter to parents informing them that the yearbook distribution had been delayed. Some reacted angrily when they learned the cause.

“It’s discriminatory of them to take the yearbooks away from us just because there are biblical passages in them,” said parent Joe Flynn, whose daughter, Debbie, is graduating from the school.

“We feel that if quotes had been placed in the yearbook from Chaucer or Jack London or Martin Luther King, there would not have been any problem,” he said. “The Bible is also a master literary work. Why couldn’t it stay?”

Fivgas said he chose the biblical references because they fit different themes in the book.

He said the references, which are not quoted with chapter and verse, are “words of wisdom that deal with morality.”

“They were not included to teach religion,” Fivgas said. “They were about morality.”

Among the passages was a quote on Page 74 under the awards section from Galatians 5:19-23: “The wrong things the sinful self does are clear: being sexually unfaithful, not being pure, taking part in sexual sins, worshipping false gods, doing witchcraft. . . . Those who do these things will not be in God’s Kingdom.”

Under the leadership section on Page 8, Fivgas inserted from Matthew: “And do not be called teachers; for One is your Teacher. . . . But he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whoever exalts himself will be abased, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Fivgas, a “born-again” Christian who attends an evangelical church based in Costa Mesa, said he wanted biblical references in the yearbook because “they are in my heart all the time.”

Times correspondent Lynda Natali contributed to this report.

Biblical Quotes in Buena Park Yearbook

Faculty adviser Phillip Fivgas was suspended for adding these and other biblical passages into the Buena Park Junior High annual.

* Page 8, next to photos of superintendent and school board:

“And do not be called teachers; for One is your Teacher. . . . But he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whoever exalts himself will be abased, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

--Matthew 23:8

* Page 58, next to photo of two students declared “Most Athletic”:

“No one can serve two masters: for either they will hate the one and love the other, or else they will be loyal to the one and despise the other.”

--Matthew 6:24

* Page 76, above group photo entitled “The Big Picture”:

“But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather that lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away!”

--Second Timothy 3:1