Screenshot courtesy of Christian Broadcasting Network
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is insisting to the Walton County Sheriff’s Office that a recent event where it baptized inmates was a grave constitutional violation.
A Christian Broadcasting Network article reports that the Sheriff’s Office (headquartered in DeFuniak Springs, Fla.) recently partnered with First Apostolic Church of DeFuniak Springs and New Life Church of Santa Rosa Beach with the apparent purpose of baptizing inmates at Walton County Jail and encouraging them to convert to Christianity. According to the July 15 article, 69 inmates were baptized at Walton County Jail in the coordinated “mass baptisms” organized by the Sheriff’s Office and the two churches. Furthermore, these churches have partnered to hold mass baptisms at other jails before, indicating that the Walton County Sheriff’s Office was aware of the churches’ intentions. The baptisms appeared to have taken place on jail property. Inmates are photographed in the article being baptized by Walton County Sheriff’s Office employees.
The sheriff’s office public information officer, Corey Dobridnia, told reporters that part of the office’s “mantra” is “trying to make men and women who are incarcerated in our jail better people, and introducing them to the Lord. And then being baptized is sort of a rebirth for them.”
FFRF is demanding that the Walton County Sheriff’s Office immediately put a stop to this unconstitutional promotion of religion.
“By organizing and hosting inmate baptisms, the sheriff’s office is unconstitutionally favoring religion over nonreligion, and Christianity over all other faiths,” FFRF Staff Attorney Sammi Lawrence writes to Sheriff Michael A. Adkinson Jr.
A correctional facility is an inherently coercive environment and inmates and detainees are literally a captive audience. When the Walton County Sheriff’s Office entangles itself with religion and makes it clear that it’s encouraging inmates to convert to Christianity, inmates will no doubt feel pressured to convert and participate in religious activities to be seen as cooperative and well behaved. Inmates and detainees who are aware of the Sheriff’s Office’s promotion of Christianity will not genuinely feel free to refuse to participate in its religious activities. This is constitutionally impermissible.
Law enforcement must be even-handed and avoid any appearance of bias towards some citizens, and hostility towards others, the FFRF letter emphasizes. Walton County Sheriff’s Office employees can practice their personal religion any way they wish when acting in their personal capacities. However, they are not permitted to use the machinery of government and taxpayer money to promote their personal religion to inmates or the wider community. The Sheriff’s Office’s promotion of religion and conversion to Christianity needlessly marginalizes the 38 percent of Americans who are non-Christians, including the nearly one in three adult Americans who are religiously unaffiliated.
To comply with the First Amendment and to protect the rights of all inmates held in Walton County Jail, FFRF is asking that the sheriff’s office halt inmate baptisms.
“First Amendment violations in incarceration facilities are particularly egregious, given the abuse of a literal captive audience,” FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor says. “The right to be free from religious coercion is not stripped from a citizen when they are in prison. These baptisms must stop immediately.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With more than 41,000 members and several chapters across the country, including nearly 2,000 members and a chapter in Florida, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
