If you were asked to write a script for a hostage scenario involving schoolchildren, whom would you cast as the villains? Obvious choices would include Middle Eastern radicals, urban gang-bangers, or demented misfits like the killers from Columbine, Colorado.

A recent police training exercise at a high school in Burlington Township, New Jersey, featured ?a right-wing fundamentalist group called `The New Crusaders' who don't believe in the separation of church and state [and who] went to the school seeking justice because the daughter of one had been expelled for praying before class.?

Casting of this kind is, to put it mildly, somewhat counter-intuitive. Fundamentalist Christians generally school their children at home, which is the most sensible way to provide for their education. And it should be remembered that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who carried out the Columbine massacre, made a point of hunting down and murdering Christian students.

The Burlington Township scenario says more about the entrenched prejudices of its creators than the potential dangers confronting schoolchildren.

Let us stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.