The Freedom From Religion Foundation is urging the Broadview Elementary School in Winchester, Tenn., not to allow prayer at the end of official gatherings.
A concerned parent informed FFRF that the school principal concluded a parents, teachers and students meeting with Christian prayer on Aug. 2. The complainant recorded audio of the prayer, which was addressed to the Christian god and ended, “we pray to you father in heaven for your wonderful blessings and we ask those things in God’s name. Amen.”
FFRF has written to the district in hopes of bringing it back in line with the constitutional principle of state/church separation.
“Government officials may not deliver an official, sectarian prayer to a captive audience,” FFRF Patrick O’Reiley Legal Fellow Hirsh M. Joshi writes to Franklin County Schools Director Cary Holman. “We ask the district to investigate and ensure that administrators and teachers are counseled against praying with students during the course of their official school duties.”
Students, their families, and school staff all have the First Amendment right to be free from religious indoctrination when participating in school-sponsored events, FFRF is insisting. It is a basic constitutional principle that public schools may not show favoritism towards or coerce belief or participation in religion — and this includes official prayer at any school event, to a room of students, teachers and parents.
Furthermore, imposing prayer on students and staff violates their religious rights. The district serves and employs a diverse population with diverse religious beliefs, including Jews, Muslims, atheists and agnostics. As much as 37 percent of the American population is non-Christian, including the almost 30 percent who are nonreligious. At least a third of Generation Z (those born after 1996) has no religion, with a recent survey revealing almost half of Gen Z qualifies 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 students, families and staff. District staff must be made aware that including prayer in school events is unconstitutional.
“School districts exist to educate, not indoctrinate into religion,” FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor says. “No public school employee has any right to use a meeting with community members as their personal church. The district needs to ensure these meetings focus only on policies impacting students and their parents.”
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.
