There was a lively debate at the Waterloo Region District School Board meeting Monday night, but in the end trustees ratified an earlier decision to hand out the Bibles.
Mike Ramsay, chair of the Waterloo Region District School Board says "No instruction takes place in our schools. All that happens is the permission slip goes home, and if the parent or guardian requests one, then the Grade 5 student would take that Bible home."
The school board has a policy that allows faith groups to request the ability to hand out non-instructional documents, a practice that has been ongoing for 20 years.
Ramsay says "Essentially it allows for the distribution of non-instructional religious material and all faith groups do have access to provide their religious text with the permission of parents and guardians."
So far, Guelph-based Gideon International of Canada is the only faith group that has asked permission to have school boards distribute its New Testament to families who ask for a copy.
Brice Balmer works with Interfaith Grand River, and is also an associate professor of practical theology at Waterloo Lutheran Seminary.
He believes Waterloo Region is changing, "We are going through a transition where we now 20, 30 per cent of the students in the public school system are part of other cultures and other faiths, other ethnicities. And so we need to change to adapt to a culture that is diverse.
But, he says, the distribution of the Gideon Bibles is leaving out those other faiths, possibly even trying to convert.
"We're concerned that it looks like it's authorized by the school system, this literature. If they were passing it out after school and were not using staff and extra stuff, we wouldn't object."
