The World and Everything in It: April 14, 2025

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Religious identity, charity, and tax law collide at the U.S. Supreme Court, challenging what it means to be “religious enough.”

RASSBACH: The Wisconsin Supreme Court got it wrong when it held that helping the poor can't be religious, because secular people help the poor too. …By that measure, Mother Teresa might not qualify.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Legal Docket.

Also on the Monday Moneybeat dispatches from the trade war. David Bahnsen is standing by.

And the WORLD History Book, today the story of a small town that banned jumping and jiving.

ROLLINGS: It was aginst the law to dance publicly.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, April 14th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

REICHARD: It’s time for the news. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Trade: Debate and deals »  Some Democrats in Washington are pushing for Congress to challenge President Trump’s emergency declaration, which allowed him to impose sweeping tariffs.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren told ABC’s This Week:

WARREN:  That will mean we can go back to having actually a real tariff policy. Congress will have its position in place, and then we can negotiate where we need to negotiate, but we gotta stop this craziness.

Warren said there is no real tariff policy, adding that all we have right now is—her words—“chaos and corruption.”

But Republican Sen. James Lankford says President Trump has a plan and it’s working.

LANKFORD:  So many countries have come at the administration and said, remember all those things that we blocked out for a long time? Just kidding. We want to be able to actually fix some of those things now.

White House advisor Peter Navarro says many countries across the world have been reaching out to strike new trade agreements. He added—quote— “We’ve got 90 deals in 90 days possibly pending here.”

President Trump last week announced a 90-day pause on most wide-ranging tariffs for 90 days, replaced by a 10% tariff on all imports.

China trade war » While the White House says it’s making progress on new trade deals with many countries, China is another matter. Both sides are digging in their heels.

But Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick says China is finally being taken to task for its trade abuses.

LUTNICK:  They are the ones who've been playing hardball all along. You know, president Trump said we have a $1.2 trillion trade deficit. This is the largest trade deficit of any country in human history.

The Trump administration says China has a long history of gaming the trade process, cheating, and flat out stealing.

The U.S. has hiked up the tariffs on China to 145-percent, while Beijing responded with 125-percent tariffs.

Hegseth on Panama Canal »  Speaking of China, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Sunday again touted progress on beating back what had been growing Chinese influence at the Panama Canal.

HEGSETH:  China's influence cannot control our own backyard, especially a critical waterway, key terrain like the Panama Canal.

The U.S.-built canal holds great strategic importance for the United States both commercially and militarily.

HEGSETH:  Two historic agreements, one with the Panama Canal authority that our ships, uh, our, our military vessels and auxiliary vessels will travel first and free through that Panama Canal.

He said the U.S. also signed a memorandum of understanding with the government in Panama, establishing a robust and growing U.S. presence there.

Ukraine attack » Russian missiles struck the heart of the Ukrainian city of Sumy as people gathered to celebrate Palm Sunday. Officials say the strike killed at least 34 people.

It was the second deadly, large-scale attack on Ukraine in just over a week.

ZELENSKYY: [Speaking Ukrainian]

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is calling for a tough international response.

President Trump over the weekend showed frustration with Russia for dragging its heels in peace talks.

TRUMP: There’s a point at which you just have to either put up or shut up. We’ll see what happens.

He expressed some muted positivity saying he thinks it’s going to be “fine.”

Iran talks » The president also took questions from reporters about nuclear negotiations with Iran.

American and Iranian negotiators gathered in Oman over the weekend for the first round of talks.

Trump said so far, he believes nuclear talks are going “okay,” but he would not offer much beyond that.

 TRUMP: Nothing matters until you get it done. So I don't like talking about it, but it's going okay. The Iran situation's going pretty good.

Iran said the talks were “productive,” adding that they took place in a “calm and positive atmosphere.”

Mediators in Oman said the two sides are far apart, but added that this is only the beginning, and that’s normal for this stage.

President Trump has threatened military action if necessary to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran but stresses that he very much prefers peace.

The two sides are expected to meet again next weekend.

A governor fire » Police in Pennsylvania say a person is in custody after a suspected arson fire at the governor’s mansion.

Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro and his family woke up to police banging on his door at around 2 a.m. Sunday morning to evacuate them as firefighters doused the flames.

Police say the fire caused significant damage, but no one was injured.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: how religious does a non-profit need to be in order to receive religious freedom protections? Plus, the Monday Moneybeat with economist David Bahnsen.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s The World and Everything in It for this 14th day of April, 2025. Thanks for listening, and good morning! I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s time for Legal Docket.

A major religious liberty case is now before the U.S. Supreme Court. This one is unusual.

Most of the time, these cases involve religious groups asking the government to respect their religious freedom. But here, the dispute is different: the state is claiming that a Catholic charity is not religious enough to qualify for a key legal exemption.

REICHARD:  The case involves the state of Wisconsin and a Catholic social services agency — part of the broader Catholic Charities network.

This particular agency operates in the Diocese of Superior, covering 15,000 square miles of Northern Wisconsin. It has served anyone in need, regardless of religious affiliation, for more than a hundred years.

EICHER: Bishop James Power leads the diocese. He spoke outside the court:

POWERS: Wisconsin is punishing Catholic Charities Bureau for following the example of Christian love. We do not help the needy because they are Catholic. We help them because we are Catholic.

Catholic Charities paid into the state’s unemployment insurance system for decades. But it recently sought a religious exemption so it could participate in a church-run plan more in alignment with Catholic teaching.

Wisconsin law permits that, but restricts it, in the words of the law, to organizations “operated primarily for religious purposes.” You ask: Who’s to say?

REICHARD: And there’s the rub.

The state and the Wisconsin Supreme Court both say Catholic Charities doesn’t “operate primarily for religious purposes.” They say feeding the hungry and caring for the disabled is secular work, not religious work—no matter the motivation to do the work.

EICHER: Eric Rassbach is a lawyer with Becket Fund and represented Catholic Charities in court. He said the state crossed a line.

RASSBACH: This case is not complicated. The Wisconsin Supreme Court got it wrong when it interpreted a state-law religious exemption to favor what it called "typical" religious activity and when it held that helping the poor can't be religious, because secular people help the poor too. …By that measure, Mother Teresa might not qualify.

The justices pointedly questioned each side. Justice Elena Kagan pointed to the danger of the government evaluating religious doctrine.

KAGAN: But it might be a matter of religious doctrine that we don't require people to say the Lord's prayer with us before we give them soup. I mean, what's --what's -- what's --what's problematic about this --I mean, there are lots of hard questions in this area. Vegan restaurants, hospitals, lots of hard questions. But I thought it was pretty fundamental that we don't treat some religions better than other religions. And we certainly don't do it based on the content of the religious doctrine that those religions preach.

REICHARD: Arguing for Wisconsin was Assistant Attorney General Colin Roth. He didn’t dispute that charity is an essential part of the Catholic religion. But:

ROTH: When the employee is simply performing the corporal work of mercy without expressing and inculcating religious doctrine, this is the point. This is an an anti-entanglement statute. And so if they're not expressing and inculcating religious doctrine, they are not going to create the entangling problems.

If that sounds upside-down—a U.S. state saying Catholics aren’t religious enough to count as religious—you’re in good company. Justice Neil Gorsuch thought so, too. Here’s how he put it:

GORSUCH: Are you going to go --is Wisconsin going to go around and --and this soup kitchen, you know, you have to go -- you have to go to the service before you get your soup, they're good to go. But that one, they just invite you to the service after the soup, and they're bad. I mean, is it really that's the --I would have thought this would entangle the state in --in religion a whole lot more than a non-discrimination rule between religions.

EICHER: Roth replied that some ministries outright worship and proselytize. Those would be an exception because those things express and inculcate what the state must avoid. But Catholic Charities isn’t like that. Again, Justice Gorsuch, with Roth caught in a misunderstanding pointed out by Justice Amy Coney Barrett:

GORSUCH: Really, there are no nuns and priests and deacons at the soup kitchen?

ROTH: I --I'm not saying that at all, Your Honor. But if they are not --when they --when they are deliberate --

GORSUCH: The bishop, you know, is overseeing it? I mean, come on.

ROTH: It's --right. Your Honor, it's not about who --who the employees are. It's about --

GORSUCH: Okay --

BARRETT: You said they were.

GORSUCH: Yeah, you just --

ROTH: It's about what they do.

BARRETT: You said ministerial exception, it was about who they are.

ROTH: Well, sure, yeah, but --I apologize.

The justices grappled with how to draw lines between a church and an affiliated ministry. Justice Clarence Thomas:

THOMAS: If the function is exactly the same, but it's a separate entity, what's the difference? Religiously?

REICHARD: Roth answered that churches get special exemptions. But separate, incorporated ministries might not, depending upon what they do.

That set off alarms in several justices. Justice Brett Kavanaugh addressed the lawyer for Catholic Charities Eric Rassbach. Kavanaugh wondered: what might be a limiting principle to distinguish religiosity from non-religiosity?

KAVANAUGH: Sincerity is one limit -- -but what else? Is there any other limit to the Chief Justice's….

RASSBACH: I would say that's probably the main limit, is is it sincere.

KAVANAUGH: Is it the only limit?

RASSBACH: Well, I would say also religiosity, but in the sense of religion versus philosophy. So this is the thing that actually comes up in the Yoder case….

Pardon me. Hold that thought—the Yoder case needs a quick footnote.

That was a 1972 decision where the Court said the Amish couldn’t be forced to send their kids to high school—because their objection was a sincere religious belief, not just a personal philosophy.

Counsel, back to you:

RASSBACH: So this is the thing that actually comes up in the Yoder case, where the Court makes a big distinction between what the Amish were doing and what Henry David Thoreau was doing. And it said, well, you know, there is special solicitude under the First Amendment for religion, and the Amish get that, but Thoreau doesn't, even though he felt very strongly about his opinions.

Their First Amendment rights outweighed the State’s interest in compelling school attendance beyond that. So, Rassbach’s point is a much bigger question the court should consider in this case:

RASSBACH: It's --and it's a fascinating one. I think if you go back even to the Virginia Declaration of Rights, you know, it says "the duty which we owe to our creator and the means of discharging it." And then…--Professor McConnell, you know, sort of extended that a little bit more broadly to just this idea of transcendent binding truth. Because the problem that comes up in these issues for the religion in the law and why it is important what religion is for the law, is conflicting obligations. So if you go to Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance, you see there's this conflicting between the obligations of the --of God and the obligations of the --the --the government. And, you know, Madison says, you know, you have to --you have to navigate that. So I think that --I think you have to be able to see that things are religious or not because you look at whether there's a --a transcendent truth added.

EICHER: Chief Justice John Roberts asked Roth for Wisconsin what would Catholic Charities have to do differently in order to qualify:

ROBERTS: What is the simplest thing that the Catholic Charities would have to do to qualify for the religious exemption in Wisconsin?

ROTH: I think…

GORSUCH: Would they -- should they have one sign in the dining hall saying: ‘This meal provided by Catholic Charities. If you want to find out about the church, here's a brochure?’

ROTH: No, Your Honor…. We're looking for activities that express and inculcate religious doctrine: worship, proselytization, religious education. And it's precisely because it's those activities that create the entangling problem in the state –

GORSUCH: What --what is -- what is proselytization?

ROTH: "Proselytization" would mean when the --if Catholic Charities, when it's delivering services, says, you know, please repent, essentially. You know --

In other words, just being Catholic isn’t sufficient. An organization has to act religious enough according to the state. Justice Gorsuch bore down again:

GORSUCH: Repent. They have to say "repent"?

ROTH: Anything like, you know, please join our religion. We would like you to become Catholic if you're going to receive this service.

GORSUCH: So --

ROTH: Because when --I'm sorry, your Honor.

GORSUCH: So --so they -- they have to say --I just want to know what the test is. So ‘repent your sins.’ You get the exemption. Not requiring you to repent your sins, you --you don't --I guess you don't get the exception.

ROTH: No, the --

GORSUCH: Or --or what was the other one? What was your other test for proselytization? Join their church? You become --you know, become a member, as opposed to we welcome you to attend our services if you want, here is some information about them? What's the line there?

One friend of the court brief echoed the worries the justices expressed that Wisconsin’s test invites intrusive government inquiry into theology. Something the First Amendment was designed to prevent.

REICHARD: More than forty states have similar religious exemption laws as Wisconsin, as does federal law. So however the court decides, it’ll set a wide precedent.

If Catholic Charities prevails, religious groups that express faith via service could gain more protection from taxation. If Wisconsin wins? Then the government will nose into the inner workings of religious systems and decide what it thinks is religious, or not religious enough.

EICHER: One more quick case, and if you think the justices had the legal teams needing to loosen their ties in the last case, this one is way worse.

So imagine you’re one of the top lawyers in the country, standing before the U.S. Supreme Court, when suddenly, you realize mid-argument that you’ve boxed yourself in.

So you try to change your legal strategy — right there, in real time — while the justices watch it happen.

REICHARD: That’s what happened to Carter Phillips in a case called CC/Devas v. Antrix. It’s a half-a-billion-dollar international dispute that hinges on a narrow but powerful exception in U.S. law.

The case began when India canceled a satellite contract with Devas, an Indian media startup. Devas won big in international arbitration, and came to U.S. courts to collect.

EICHER: That’s allowed under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act — the FSIA — if the foreign government agreed to arbitration. But India argued the case doesn’t belong in U.S. courts … for the simple reason that there’s no real U.S. connection. The companies are Indian, the contract was carried out in India, and the arbitration happened in India. No “minimum contacts,” as the legal term goes.

REICHARD: But now to that dramatic moment.

Carter Phillips had originally conceded that the FSIA arbitration exception did apply. But during oral argument, he tried to walk it back—and Justice Kagan called him on it:

KAGAN: Have you given up on that?

PHILLIPS: I have given up on that, Your Honor.

KAGAN: So why isn’t the right thing to do just to say everybody agrees that the Ninth Circuit was wrong, we toss it back for the Ninth Circuit for everything else?

EICHER: Phillips backtracked a bit, asked the high court to rehear the case, with the requisite touch of respectful humor.

REICHARD: And now what you’ll hear is a lawyer’s nightmare! An exchange that makes me happy I just report on these things rather than be reported on! Yikes.

PHILLIPS: ….And --and, look, if the Court --if the Court thought --I think the Court, rather than remanding, if --if --if you take my argument seriously, which I think you have to, then you ought to ask the case --you know, reset the case for argument, rebrief that issue, and then we'll argue that preferably next month because it's fresh in my mind. I'd rather not have to renew all of this stuff. (Laughter.) That’s for you all to decide….--this is not lint on a sweater that you can knock off and move away. This is --this is attached to the fabric of the sweater…

There you have it: A top-tier lawyer trying to pick off a bit of lint, only to realize he’s tugging at the hem.

Proving that even the best can get snagged, especially with complex laws and hundreds of millions of dollars on the line.

The justices seemed inclined to let that thread alone—siding narrowly with Devas and holding that the arbitration exception applies, no matter how little U.S. fabric is in this particular garment.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket!

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: The Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Time now to talk business, markets, and the economy with financial analyst and adviser David Bahnsen. David heads up the wealth management firm The Bahnsen Group. He is here now. Good morning to you, David, and glad you’re here.

DAVID BAHNSEN: Good morning, Nick. Good to be with you.

EICHER: You’ve already made it clear in your writing that last week’s tariff reversal wasn’t some carefully laid-out strategy. You see it as reactive. So what convinced you this 11th-hour pivot wasn’t part of a long-game plan?

BAHSNEN: Well, for one thing, there was the president of the United States saying that he did it because he could see that people were getting queasy and what was the other word he used? Yippy?

So, the president is the one who's denied that it was part of a master plan.

My own contacts in both the Treasury Department and the National Economic Council denied that it was part of a master plan. And the Occam’s Razor of the whole thing, the simplicity of this, make very clear that it was a reaction to what was happening in markets and the economy—and ultimately the advice he was getting from some people who I think are better advisors than those he had been getting advice from previously.

EICHER: Let’s talk about the bond market—because some are saying bonds, not stocks, applied the real pressure last week. You’ve suggested that wasn’t exactly the case. What was happening in bonds, and what do you think it tells us?

BAHNSEN: Well, I'm not convinced that what was happening in the bond market was necessarily pushing it. Remember, he made this announcement on Wednesday morning, and my belief through the middle of the week was that that investors were having to sell even safe assets to raise cash, because risk assets had dropped so much.

Nick, this is something you and I talked about in our very first few sessions we ever did together back in March of 2020, that we got to reminisce about a couple of weeks ago.

When you have to sell, you sell what you can sell, not what you want to sell. Treasuries are a very salable asset for leveraged financial actors—think of hedge funds and large global players that way, okay? So that was still, I think, the simplest explanation, that there were just people having to go to the treasury market to sell more liquid assets, as everything else had been dropping so quickly.

But by the end of the week, and as we're sitting here talking, going into a new week, I do have questions as to what's going on because it persisted through the remainder of the week.

The bond market didn't crash. It just stayed up there around a 4.5% yield, and it looks to me that there were some foreign investors lightly selling. (I say lightly because they're not a huge portion of the bond market. You know, we have $36 trillion in national debt, and that basically means $36 trillion of bonds. Canada owns only about $300 billion of them, Japan, a decent chunk, around a trillion, China, less than a trillion. It isn't a huge percentage.)

But were foreign investors selling treasury bonds? Does that explain why the Canadian dollar, the Yen, the Euro, were all appreciating against the dollar last week? I suspect some of that was happening, but I really do need this week, Nick, to get a better feel for what's going on.

I think a lot of the story last week in the bond market was misunderstood by the media. You probably hear me say that a lot. But I think it is important for financial markets, and I think that it played in to the story. I just don't think it drove the story.

EICHER: So that leaves China. Those tariffs are still sky-high—even if we’ve backed off the global trade fight. You’ve said this isn’t necessarily a recession trigger, but it could be. What makes the China piece different?

BAHNSEN: Well, it's the pure size of it. And remember, since the Dividend Café was written on Friday, the president announced over the weekend that he's exempting all smartphones, semiconductors, computers, electronics. So, the largest things in American life that we get from China are now excluded.

Yet, of course, small businesses and factories that employ small numbers of people in America are still paying tariffs on their imports. The reason China is such a big deal is not because the tariff is so high. At any level above a 50% tariff, that’ll shut down trade with China.

So, the president exempted all these key things because, obviously, they don't really believe that the tariffs are going to create revenue, and that they are this wonderful thing to protect American jobs. I think that they're petrified of what the impact would be—and there's no greater example of what needs exemption than the most popular successful consumer product in world history, the iPhone. So, it puts the president in a really difficult position politically. He’s exempting multi-trillion-dollar companies like Apple and Nvidia, and now Samsung, but not exempting the mom-and-pop shops that make textiles and widgets.

So you're talking about a country that is the second largest economic power in the world and the largest economic power in the world not trading with one another. That won't last. It already hasn't lasted—because they've exempted the major products that are relevant here and that took just a couple days.

Where we go from here, we'll see. That is not something I can predict how it will play out. But I don't really believe it's a stretch to say that the president is quite eager to make a deal.

EICHER: And while all this was going on, the House quietly passed a tax reform framework—just barely, but enough to keep it alive. You’ve called it a “heartbeat,” not a solution. Is that something markets are watching yet, or will they soon?

BAHNSEN: Yes, especially if the trade war issue is more and more subsiding. It isn't over yet, but if it goes from being 100% of the story down to 70% of the story, that frees up 30% to care about something else in markets. This is a huge story, Nick. It's a huge story politically and economically.

Speaker Johnson continues to rack up victories that without them could kill the whole thing. Yet just because he gets another victory, it doesn't mean the thing is over. He still must move on to the next. But each little battle along the way could be fatal, and he's surviving them.

Now the hard part is for some of the fiscal hawks, which, if were in Congress I'd be one of them. They voted for the framework but based on promises that have to be delivered on in conference, where they are going to negotiate the specifics of these spending cuts. Promises made to fiscal hawks in the House go against promises made to some of the senators who voted for their framework.

So, they have wood to chop. It's not over, but they've allowed it to move forward to a place that it can get passed by Memorial Day.

There's still not a lot of margin for error, but I really believe this is a very big story.

EICHER: David Bahnsen, founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group. David writes at WORLD Opinions and at dividendcafe.com … and I will urge a close read of this week’s Dividend Café to dive into the details. But I’ll say, even when the news isn’t great, I do always appreciate your calling the balls and strikes each week. Thanks very much!

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, Nick.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, April 14th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, the WORLD History Book.

The year, 1980, in a town with a ban on dancing. And a group of determined teens ready to shake it up.

Here’s WORLD’s Emma Eicher.

EMMA EICHER: There’s a new kid in town. The town is tiny Elmore City, Oklahoma. And the new kid? Leonard Coffee. He just moved from a much bigger city.

For a kid named Coffee in a sleepy town, he’s like a shot of espresso. Flashy clothes. Unafraid to buck the norms. An outsized personality in the junior high class.

And one day, he asks a question that changes everything.

LISA ROLLINGS: “Why don't y'all dance here?”

Lisa Rollings was a sophomore at the time.

ROLLINGS: You know, he just thought that was weird that we didn't have a prom.

As Rollings told me the story, she remembered that there really was nothing weird about it. Because back in 1980, nobody’s allowed to dance publicly in Elmore City.

If that sounds familiar, it’s probably because it’s the plot of the 1984 hit movie Footloose, starring Kevin Bacon.

BACON: And there was a time for this law but not anymore. See, this is our time to dance.

The movie takes plenty of artistic liberties. But the basic story really did happen. The president of the school board at the time was Raymond Temple. He gave an interview to a promotional website for the community called Chickasaw Country.

RAYMOND TEMPLE: And they asked me, ‘Why can’t we have a prom? Like other schools do?’ and I just … ‘I don’t see why not.’

Now, juniors and seniors from Elmore City High are begging him to let them have a prom. His daughter, Mary Ann, is junior class president. And she’s leading the charge.

She and Lisa Rollings are friends.

LISA: It was the whole entire class getting behind the whole idea of asking for a prom.

Rollings sent me an old school photo of her 15-year-old self. She has a bob haircut, bangs, thick glasses. And even though it seemed normal to her not to have a prom, she didn’t know why. Nobody knows why. So her friend Mary Ann gets to the bottom of it.

LISA: That's when she told me that, you know, that it was against the law to dance.

Lisa can’t believe it. So she asks her dad. He’s the mayor, so he would know.

LISA: I said, Dad, I said, is it against the law to dance? And he said, let me check on it for you, you know. So he checked the ordinance book at City Hall, and sure enough, it was on the books that it was against the law to dance publicly.

The city ordinance banning public dancing goes back to the 19th century. The city fathers believed dancing could lead to sin.

And in 1980, almost all of Elmore City’s church leaders think so too.

LISA: Me and Mary Ann both went to the Methodist Church, and our pastor was the only pastor in our town who was supportive of the kids at the time.

But Freddie Johnson, pastor of the nearby Pentecostal church—not so much. Here he is in an interview with KOCO5 News, Oklahoma City.

KOCO 5 NEWS: The beat of music, the curves of the body, the display of the outward person, we don’t believe is congruent with the principles of Bible doctrine, especially.

But the kids are determined. And a lot of parents and faculty are too. The school board president sees the prom as a better alternative to how the kids usually sinned every year.

LISA: They would either go to Lindsay … or go out and drink and party in a pasture somewhere.

Hundreds of townspeople show up at a school board meeting to hear the fate of the prom. Four of the five members are split right down the middle, until Temple casts the tie-breaking vote.

MARY ANN & RAYMOND: It was tear jerking, when it got to dad … and dad said, ‘Let ‘em dance!’

RAYMOND: Let ‘em dance!’

MARY ANN: It was one of those moments that was iconic.

The day of the dance, April 18th, 1980, Rollings and her classmates start decorating the school.

But they’re mindful that some kids might have a moral objection. So they offer the option to play ping pong in a nearby game room.

The night begins at 7 o’clock sharp. News crews line the sidewalks and jostle each other inside. They shoulder big cameras and tape electrical cords to the floor. They’ve been following the town’s unusual events and broadcasting them to the rest of the country. Here’s how KOCO5 covered it.

KOCO-5: Boys in rented tuxes. All the familiar earmarks of a high school prom, a traditional piece of Americana just about everywhere … except here.

The kids sit down for dinner first. Chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, bread rolls and strawberry shortcake for dessert. Everyone wolfs it down, eager for the night to start.

LISA: Think everybody was just wanting to get through that first part of the night, just so we could get to the prom part.

The students cram into the bathrooms to put on their dancing shoes. Literally.

LISA: We changed into hard jeans and boots or whatever it was we were going to dance in.

By 9pm, everyone is awkwardly crowded around the edge of the dance floor.

The DJ who drove down from Oklahoma City, plays a famous rock anthem by Led Zeppelin.

LISA: I don't know how anybody dances to that song, but that's what we started off with.

At first, no one is brave enough to step out.

LISA: I think we were feeling very self conscious, because not a lot of us knew how to dance …

But then the DJ switches to Michael Jackson. That’s when everyone seems to gather some courage.

LISA: We were, we were like, okay, we can do this, you know, you'd go, just grab somebody off the wall and dance.

Couples take each other’s hands, and groups of people gather in circles.

LISA: We didn't know any rules when it came to dancing. And so I'm sure we broke a lot of them, but we just, we just had fun.

At one point, Rollings takes a peek inside the game room.

LISA: There was nobody out in the game room. They were all in the prom area.

The dancing finally ends around midnight. It was the first prom most of the students had, and it wouldn’t be the last.

The old city ordinance disappears after 1984. Rollings thinks Elmore City residents have softened a bit. Nowadays, nobody seems to have a problem with dancing.

She says the town started an annual Footloose Festival 15 years ago. Next Saturday will celebrate the 45th anniversary of the prom.

LISA: I just turned 60 this last year, and it's probably the most exciting thing, you know, fun thing that's ever happened, you know, in my life. I have very, very fond memories of it. And just the whole night was just, it was like a dream.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Emma Eicher. 

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: Sugary drinks could start disappearing from government food programs — part of a growing push toward healthier, taxpayer-funded nutrition. And, meet the scientists listening to the land, literally tuning in to the health of our soil one subtle sound at a time. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is Biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible records the Apostle Paul speaking to the Elders at Ephesus: “In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way …we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” —Acts 20:35

Go now in grace and peace.

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