The Freedom From Religion Foundation is urging the Shelby County Detention Center in Kentucky to stop baptizing inmates.
A concerned community member informed the state/church watchdog that the detention center has recently been baptizing inmates. FFRF has learned that the detention center has also developed a concerningly close relationship with a church, Awake Ministry, and that the detention center allows the ministry’s representatives to minister and present to inmates on a regular basis. According to an Oct. 12 post from the detention center’s official Facebook account, almost 40 inmates were baptized at the detention center, with the center reportedly facilitating Awake Ministry’s significant presence in the center’s programming.
“In order to comply with the First Amendment, we ask that the center cease its promotion of, and official affiliation with, Christianity and Awake Ministry through its pattern and practice of baptizing inmates and permitting Awake Ministry to have an outsized presence at the center,” FFRF Staff Attorney Sammi Lawrence writes to the detention center.
It is inappropriate and problematic for the center, a government entity, to organize, participate in or promote religion and religious exercises, such as baptisms, especially since the detention center has obvious coercive authority over inmates. By promoting baptisms and encouraging inmates to convert to Christianity, allowing Awake Ministry to influence detention center programming and celebrating inmates’ conversions on its official social media, the detention center is unconstitutionally favoring religion over nonreligion, and Christianity over other faiths.
The detention center’s motive in encouraging inmates to convert to Christianity and promoting inmate baptisms on social media is not to accommodate inmates but instead to favor Christianity and coerce inmates to subscribe to a particular religion, FFRF contends. The detention center environment is inherently coercive given that inmates are literally a captive audience. Additionally, the center’s religious programming and baptisms are coercive because inmates who are aware of the center’s promotion of Christianity and entanglement with Awake Ministry will not genuinely feel free to refuse to participate in the center’s religious activities. This is constitutionally impermissible; the government cannot use a county detention center to convert inmates to Christianity.
The center’s actions also needlessly marginalize inmates and community members among the nearly 30 percent of adult Americans who are religiously unaffiliated, as well as the additional 6 percent of Americans adhering to non-Christian faiths.
FFRF asserts that the detention center cannot constitutionally encourage or promote inmates converting to Christianity or participating in religious exercises. The center must comply with the First Amendment to protect the rights of inmates.
“The Shelby County Detention Center is abusing a literally captive audience to further a religious agenda,” FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor says. “Inmates will feel as though they have no choice but to submit to avoid harsher treatment.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with about 40,000 members across the country, including hundreds in Kentucky. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
