Photo by Paolo Aldrighetti on Unsplash
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is urging that the Robertson County Schools system in Tennessee put an immediate stop to coach-led prayer and religious proselytizing in its football program.
A concerned parent has reported to FFRF that football coaches at White House Heritage High School and Middle School regularly lead players in prayer, including recitations of the Lord’s Prayer, at practices and before and after games. Some students reportedly fear that they could be penalized for refusing to participate and therefore feel compelled to recite the prayer against their conscience.
The parent also reports that the high school football coach has brought Christian speakers to official team events on a weekly basis and that coaches regularly encourage players to attend Fellowship of Christian Athletes meetings.
FFRF is urging the district to investigate this situation and ensure that coaches immediately stop proselytizing and leading football players in prayer and promoting participation in Christian religious activities.
“Student-athletes have the First Amendment right to be free from religious indoctrination when participating in their public school’s athletics program,” FFRF Patrick O’Reiley Legal Fellow Charlotte R. Gude writes to the school’s legal counsel.
Here, the football coaches seem to have crossed the constitutional line by leading students in the Lord’s Prayer while acting in their official capacities as school employees, bringing in outside adults to proselytize players, and promoting attendance at a Christian club. Student-athletes are especially susceptible to coercion, and the relationship between student-athletes and their coaches is inherently coercive. Students know that their coaches control their positions on the team, including who plays in each game.
When coaches lead students in prayer and direct or encourage them to pray or engage in other religious activities, student-athletes will no doubt feel that participating in that prayer is essential to pleasing their coach and being viewed as a team player. Students are unlikely to speak up against coach-led prayer and proselytizing even if they do not feel comfortable. It is unrealistic and unconstitutional to make student-athletes choose between allowing their constitutional rights to be violated to maintain good standing with their coach and peers or openly dissenting at the risk of retaliation. By allowing coaches to lead students in prayer and foist their personal religious beliefs onto student-athletes, the district needlessly marginalizes students among the 24 percent of Tennessee residents who are religiously unaffiliated, including the 43 percent of Generation Z members who are nonreligious.
To protect students’ First Amendment rights, Robertson County Schools must investigate the situation and ensure that football coaches refrain from leading students in prayer and promoting religion.
“Public school coaches have enormous authority over their players, and they cannot use that authority to pressure students to pray or attend religious athletic clubs,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “There should be no ‘pray to play’ practices or other overstepping of the professional boundary between coaches and vulnerable public school students. Robertson County Schools must ensure that participation in athletics does not come with a religious test.”
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 40,000 members and several chapters across the country, including nearly 500 members and a chapter in Tennessee, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
