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Billy Epperhart, pastor of Trinity Christian Center, said, "I understood where the [critics] were coming from. I didn't disagree with anything that was said or represented at the service, but I might have disagreed with the timing."

Friends and family made hundreds of memorial tiles, and about 160 were put up in the hallways, many of them with Christian symbols. Authorities then did another turnaround, refusing to put up new tiles with religious messages and chiseling out about 80 of those already installed. In October 1999 seven families filed suit against the Jefferson County School District through the Rutherford Institute, contending the district had violated their right of freedom of expression. "Only religious symbols and/or religious messages were excluded," the suit said.

This dichotomy between healing and faith in the public square was particularly onerous to many—some churchgoers, some not—because of the overt and intense role religion had played during the massacre and afterward.

Kevin Parker, a school volunteer who also works for Young Life, said that right after the shooting, "The administration of Columbine was much more open to me than ever before. Some people in the administration came up to me and said, 'Kevin, we need Young Life now more than ever.'" Columbine teacher Shirley Hickman said that as faculty members met in the days after the tragedy to set the next course, "We opened the faculty meeting with prayer—something you don't do very often."

One of the first appointments I had in Littleton that January was with a group of Columbine students affiliated with St. Francis Cabrini Catholic Church, which three of those killed—Matt Kechter, Kelly Fleming, and Dan Mauser—had attended. When the invitation went out for students and families to craft the memorial tiles, many youths from St. Francis Cabrini participated.

"I made a tile that had a religious symbol on it, and it's not up in the school," said Matt Bruce, who was a sophomore when the shootings took place and had been a good friend of slain student Rachel Scott. "I never got it back, and I never have seen it again."

Sarah Arzola, a junior when the shootings took place, said she made a tile with an angel on it. "It didn't have anything else, just an angel, and it's not up. I never saw it. It discourages me."

Said Ben Schumann, a junior when we met, "I put a cross with a crown of thorns on my tile, and I've looked around the school during my off hours, and I haven't found mine. I think it's really wrong, because that's an expression of us. They told us to put what we want on them, and they told us that they were going to put them up."

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April 2 2001, Vol. 45, No. 5