The Christian Club organized a group of representatives to sit at a table in the quad during lunch on Friday to answer questions regarding their lack of involvement in anti-hate week.

“A lot of rumors have been going around about the Christian Club and the purpose of this table is to set the record straight,” said senior Tim Chang, a core leader of the Christian Club.

The club representatives sat at a table by the deck handing out flyers containing Bible verses that they believed clarified their feelings such as “be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love” from the book of Ephesians, chapter 5, verse 1. They also handed out copies of Maya Angelou’s poem “Christian” which included such lines as “When I say … ’I am a Christian’, I’m not holier than thou, I’m just a simple sinner, who received God’s good grace, somehow.”

At a table adjacent to the Christian Club’s representatives, members of the Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) as well as avid supporters of anti-hate week organized an activity designed to “dissolve stereotypes,” according to Magdalena Rivera, one of the main organizers of the activity.

“We’re getting rid of our discriminatory thoughts,” said another teacher participating in the activity who wished to remain anonymous. “It’s like a cleansing process, we write our stereotypes down on a piece of paper and then we throw them into [a miniature pool filled with water on the deck] and watch our stereotypes disappear.”

The Christian Club also participated in the activity, writing down such stereotypes as “all Christians hate gay people” and throwing them into the pool.

“A lot of people have friends who do things they don’t believe are right to do,” said senior Jeremy Lin, a member of the Christian Club. “That’s the way it is with us and homosexuality, we don’t hate gay people, we just don’t agree with homosexual behavior.”

“Hate the sin, but love the sinner,” said Paly senior Shaikh Hammed, a member of The Christian Club.

Despite The Christian Club’s attempts to clarify and rationalize their actions regarding anti-hate week, many students remain confused.

“So many things in the Bible are considered dated,” said junior Sam Margevicius. “There are tons of ridiculous and petty Christian laws on the same page as the quote about homosexuality being wrong, but for some stupid reason modern Christians decided that they didn’t need to follow any of those rules except for the one against gay people."

Many who support Christianity are disappointed about the message that the Christian Club’s lack of participation may have sent.

“I feel they have the right to not participate but I feel that if they had [participated], they would have sent an important and positive message about their beliefs,” said senior Naomi Shiffman, a long time member of the GSA.

Other students agree.

“I think they’ve lost the real Christian message and changed something that’s about peace and love into being something about hate and intolerance,” said junior Lee Domenik.

Some members of the Christian Club responded to this saying that homosexuality is too vague an issue in the Bible to make a resolute decision about.

“Homosexuality is a huge gray area in the Bible” said Christian Club member junior Paula Wu. “We want to communicate to everyone that us Christians love everyone unconditionally and believe that no act of hate should ever be committed against anyone. That’s the message we wanted to get across today.”

At the end of lunch the members of the Christian Club felt that they had gotten their message across.

“We made our message clear,” said sophomore Jonathan Shan, another Christian Club member.

The organizers of the stereotype dissolving activity also felt successful.

“We’ve made progress in doing away with stereotypes in our community,” said Rivera.

To many, the most important achievement was a lessening of the antagonism between the Christian Club and the anti-hate week advocates.

“It seems as though the Christian Club is supporting us,” said an anonymous Paly junior participating in anti-hate week. “They won’t join us simply because of inherent aspects of their beliefs.”