The Freedom From Religion Foundation has written a letter of complaint to the Jackson-Madison County School System after learning that a recent mandatory event featured Christian worship songs and prayer.
Multiple members of the community informed FFRF that the district turned its mandatory teacher in-service into a religious worship event on July 30, 2024. The district’s official social media account confirms this, posting a video of someone leading the crowd in singing the contemporary Christian song, “Goodness of God,” instructing everyone in the crowd to join in. FFRF was informed that multiple worship songs were sung, and the group was also led in prayer. One teacher even shared the district’s video with the caption, “We had church today.”
“Faculty and staff have the First Amendment right to be free from religious indoctrination, including when participating in school-sponsored events,” FFRF Patrick O’Reiley Legal Fellow Hirsh M. Joshi wrote to the district. “It is a basic constitutional principle that public schools may not show favoritism toward or coerce belief or participation in religion.”
Coercing staff members to sing religious songs and participate in prayer at a teacher in-service, or any school-sponsored event, is unconstitutional. Furthermore, imposing religious worship on staff violates their religious rights. The district serves and employs a diverse population with a multitude of religious beliefs, including Jews, Muslims, atheists and agnostics. Thirty-seven percent of the American population is non-Christian, including the almost 30 percent who are nonreligious. Additionally, at least a third of Generation Z (those born after 1996) have no religion, with a recent survey revealing almost half of Gen Z qualify as “nones” (religiously unaffiliated).
FFRF reminds the district that it must be neutral with regard to religion in order to respect and protect the First Amendment rights of all staff. The district fell short in that duty, and must be aware that including religious worship in its events is unconstitutional.
“The district claims to foster an inclusive environment for teaching and learning,” adds Joshi. “We are merely reminding them that inclusion extends to the nonreligious.”
FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor agrees.
“This mandatory event forced Christianity upon a captive audience of teachers, including some who are undoubtedly non-adherents, in an appalling display of religious favoritism,” Gaylor says. “Jackson-Madison County Schools, which exists to educate, not to religiously proselytize, deserves an ‘F’ for this First Amendment violation.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation serves as the nation’s largest association of freethinkers, with 40,000 members and several chapters across the country, including almost 500 members and a chapter in Tennessee, and works as a state/church watchdog to safeguard the constitutional principle of separation between state and church.
