{"id":1223,"date":"2009-02-09T17:51:52","date_gmt":"2009-02-09T17:51:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2009\/02\/la-prison-agrees-to-strip-monu.php"},"modified":"2009-02-09T17:51:52","modified_gmt":"2009-02-09T17:51:52","slug":"la-prison-agrees-to-strip-monu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/02\/la-prison-agrees-to-strip-monu","title":{"rendered":"La. Prison Agrees to Strip Monument of Bible Reference"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>BATON ROUGE, La. (RNS) Officials at a Louisiana prison, already under fire for allegedly denying Catholic and Muslim inmates access to religious materials, have agreed to remove a biblical reference from a monument outside the prison gates.<br \/>\nCathy Fontenot, a spokeswoman at the maximum-security State Penitentiary at Angola, said officials submitted work orders to have what was known as the &#8220;Philippians Monument&#8221; stripped of the religious references after a complaint was lodged last year by the Louisiana arm of the American Civil Liberties Union.<br \/>\nThe monument featured a verse taken from Philippians 3:13 dealing with &#8220;forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead.&#8221;<br \/>\nFontenot said the language will remain, but the verse&#8217;s citation will be removed.<br \/>\nOn the opposite side of the book-like monument, there was a &#8220;Prayer of Protection,&#8221; which the ACLU complained about and is being removed.<br \/>\nThe prayer reads: &#8220;The light of God surrounds you\/The love of God enfolds you\/The power of God protects you\/And the presence of God watches over you;\/Wherever you are, God is.&#8221;<br \/>\nFontenot said that side of the monument will be filled with artwork or a more secular inspirational message.<br \/>\nAngola Warden Burl Cain said he chose the location by the prison&#8217;s entrance gates to help with the &#8220;moral rehabilitation&#8221; of new inmates &#8220;arriving at Angola to see that their past stopped when they entered the gates of Angola &#8230; It advises them we are not going to look at the past; to let it go and begin change for the better.&#8221;<br \/>\nMarjorie Esman, the state ACLU&#8217;s executive director, told Cain that the ACLU &#8220;supports you in your efforts to encourage prisoners to look forward toward changing their lives for the better; we expect those efforts to be conducted in a way that will not endorse one religion over another or religion over non-religion.&#8221;<br \/>\nThe ACLU last week filed suit against Cain and other officials after two inmates &#8212; one Catholic, one Muslim &#8212; said they were denied access to worship services and religious materials.<br \/>\n<em>By Ed Anderson<br \/>\nCopyright 2009 Religion News Service.All rights reserved.No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BATON ROUGE, La. (RNS) Officials at a Louisiana prison, already under fire for allegedly denying Catholic and Muslim inmates access to religious materials, have agreed to remove a biblical reference from a monument outside the prison gates. Cathy Fontenot, a spokeswoman at the maximum-security State Penitentiary at Angola, said officials submitted work orders to have&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>La. Prison Agrees to Strip Monument of Bible Reference<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/02\/la-prison-agrees-to-strip-monu\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"La. Prison Agrees to Strip Monument of Bible Reference\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"BATON ROUGE, La. (RNS) Officials at a Louisiana prison, already under fire for allegedly denying Catholic and Muslim inmates access to religious materials, have agreed to remove a biblical reference from a monument outside the prison gates. 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Prison Agrees to Strip Monument of Bible Reference","og_description":"BATON ROUGE, La. (RNS) Officials at a Louisiana prison, already under fire for allegedly denying Catholic and Muslim inmates access to religious materials, have agreed to remove a biblical reference from a monument outside the prison gates. Cathy Fontenot, a spokeswoman at the maximum-security State Penitentiary at Angola, said officials submitted work orders to have&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/02\/la-prison-agrees-to-strip-monu","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2009-02-09T17:51:52+00:00","author":"nsymmonds","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/02\/la-prison-agrees-to-strip-monu","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/02\/la-prison-agrees-to-strip-monu","name":"La. Prison Agrees to Strip Monument of Bible Reference","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-02-09T17:51:52+00:00","dateModified":"2009-02-09T17:51:52+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/02\/la-prison-agrees-to-strip-monu#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/02\/la-prison-agrees-to-strip-monu"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/02\/la-prison-agrees-to-strip-monu#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"La. Prison Agrees to Strip Monument of Bible Reference"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2","name":"nsymmonds","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","caption":"nsymmonds"},"description":"Nicole Symmonds is Beliefnet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Prayer editor and also covers Christianity. A New Yorker by birth but a Floridian by tenure, Nicole graduated from Florida A&M University with a B.S. in Public Relations and a minor in Sociology. She moved to NY to pursue a career in journalism which started at In Style magazine. There she learned the ropes of magazine reporting, researching, and writing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand became exponentially more stylish. But what seemed like a deep interest in fashion and entertainment would soon be revealed as merely the vehicle that moved her closer to discovering her purpose, writing and covering matters of the Christian faith. While in her purpose-driven vehicle she can be found traveling between Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens for life, work and worship, respectively. From fashion to faith and the journey isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t over yet\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/nsymmonds"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1223\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}