The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled today that a high school football coach can pray at the 50-yard-line following team games. In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court sided with former coach Joseph Kennedy, who had been put on paid leave for refusing to stop praying after team games.
According to news reports, the former football coach reportedly started praying alone on the 50-yard line after games in 2008, and after that, students reportedly started to voluntarily join him. In 2015, the school district asked him to stop after learning what he was doing. When he continued to kneel and pray on the field, the school sent him home with pay. [1]
The school argued that this was a violation of the separation of church and state. At issue was whether a public school employee praying in the public view of students violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which prohibits the government from making any law respecting the establishment of a religion. The First Amendment of the US Constitution says:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” 1st Amendment
Here, two points are raised. This essentially states that our government cannot create a religion or prohibit citizens from practicing their faith. Is the government establishing a religion by allowing people to pray on federal property? Absolutely not, because paid chaplains lead out in prayer before each session of our federal legislatures in Washington, D.C. Americans love to pray, and they are allowed to do so.
When a group of students decide to pray together at lunch time or at the end of a sporting event, they are not establishing a religion. They are only exercising their freedom to pray. This was the issue, and SCOTUS ruled that public prayer could not be restricted.
SCOTUS ruled that schools cannot forbid students from praying. Praying doesn’t hurt anyone as long as no one is forced to do it. No one may be forbidden from praying as long as this does not obstruct other teachers and students from carrying out their duties or as long as no specific group or person is singled out.
Praying, in this case, was not a violation of the “establishment of religion” because no one was being forced to pray. Students had a choice. In this instance, the high school coach was having a moment of silence for prayer while not obliging anyone else to do the same. A few students decided to join him. And as long as no one is being forced to participate, there is no problem. Everyone has the option to pray or not.
Does offering prayers on government property lead to a theocracy? Not at all. Again, prayer is offered before each session of our federally owned US Congress. US Senate Chaplain Barry Black, a Seventh-day Adventist, frequently prays in private with our senators and in the Senate chambers during senate business sessions. Is a theocracy and a religion being created by this? No. You establish a theocracy when you compel the religious conformity of your citizens through the use of force and the law.
In fact, our Founding Fathers had seasons of prayer while they were gathered in a room writing our Constitution. The framers of the Constitution were not trying to prohibit people from praying. That much is obvious. No theocracy is being established as long as your right to pray doesn’t conflict with the freedom of others to not pray. And if some people choose to protest our flag by kneeling during school sporting events while our national anthem is playing, others can certainly kneel quietly to offer a silent prayer to their God.
The real problem, in my opinion, is that unlike the high school coach who wasn’t imposing anything on his players, we have thousands of radicals who are imposing their woke, leftist ideology on every aspect of society, including our schools and federal government. Our schools are being forced to teach about drag shows, gay pride, climate change, critical race theory, and social justice, but we’re supposed to believe that this high school coach was wrong because all he wanted to do was pray, and some students joined him on their own freewill?
Today, we have students all across the country that are being coerced into becoming social justice warriors and protesters. They are pressured to adopt an agenda by a liberal, woke, secular dictatorship, and those who refuse to support their radical objectives face dire repercussions, cancellation, and ostracism.
We have come to a place where people are afraid to express their faith publicly because it doesn’t go along with the woke-liberal tyranny. Students and teachers should be able to pray if they so choose, or not pray at all. That is what the Supreme Court affirmed today. Americans can pray in public and on federal property, including schools. And neither school districts, states, nor the federal government are allowed to violate our First Amendment rights by requiring you to pray or forbidding you from praying.
Sources
[1] https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-coach-prayer-2981a8073ea82a1a688c367270c941aa
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