http://minnesotaindependent.com/45902/michele-bachmann-to-fundraise-for-controversial-ministryRep. Michele Bachmann will be headlining a fundraiser in November for controversial ministry You Can Run But You Cannot Hide (YCRBYCH).
Based in Annandale, Minn., the group has made a name for itself as an anti-drug Christian punk rock band that organizes motivational student assemblies to bring Christ to public schools. But over the last several years, parents and school administrators have complained that the ministry misrepresents itself, claiming that the group is not transparent about its Christian mission. And since schools pay using public funds, some are concerned that the group is violating the constitutional principle of the separation of church and state.
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At Pequot Lakes High School in central Minnesota in 2007, the group stirred controversy when students reportedly ran out of the assembly crying after the group showed graphic images of abortion and told the students that God wanted women to be subservient to men. John McDonald, Pequot Lakes High School Principal, told WCCO, “We were expecting something a bit different,” he said. “The thing we apologized to students for is the program wasn’t to the expectation that we thought it would be.”
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“{Public schools} are teaching children that there is separation of church and state, and I am here to tell you that is a myth. That’s not true,” Bachmann said at the group’s 2006 fundraiser in Minneapolis. “And they explain to children in the public school system what a myth that is. And that’s what I love about this ministry … We want kids to come to the truth and that’s why this ministry is so absolutely vital. We need them in every public school classroom across the state to tell young people, ‘You Can Run But You Cannot Hide.’”
Schools pay the group thousands of dollars to put on the assemblies. “On average we ask $1,500 to $2,000 an assembly,” Dean told the Advocate, a paper in Annandale, Minn. (The group’s Web site says a three-hour assembly ranges from $3,000 to $5,000.)
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Dean says that the ministry is being targeted by the government because it tells the truth. On his April 11 radio program, he recalled an incident a week earlier which he claimed an employee of the ministry was chased by a helicopter.
“There was a blue and white helicopter that flew down on top of her van as she was going to this {Wright County} Republican party convention. And then he swooped back down on her again.”
Bradlee said that helicopters frequently dive-bomb their tour bus with “helicopters flying up to the bus and pulling off.” He said, “What they are trying to do is criminalize the righteous.”
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