"...a known christian might say something religious..."

I don't believe that this represents progress:

Mr. Staver said the district also agreed to forbid senior class President Mary Allen from speaking at the school's May 30 graduation ceremony on the chance that the young woman, a known Christian, might say something religious.

I'm not that old. I didn't finish school that long ago. It's hard for me to imagine that the preceding paragraph is actually being written in, and about, the United States of America. It's not the America in which I grew up...