Why is it so hard for those who want to defend the rights of
Christians to infringe on others to understand that when someone acts as an
employee or representative of a public organization, he or she absolutely
cannot wear their religion on the sleeve?
The
latest attempt to assert a new religious right based not on the freedom
to practice but the freedom to make a public display involves an assistant high
school football coach for a public school district who was suspended from his
job for praying at a game. He had done it before and been warned of the
consequences of continuing to promote one religion while in the employ of a
public school district.
But don’t feel sorry that Joe Kennedy has lost his job. He
has a new one—as the latest poster boy for the religious right. He defiantly
has told the news media that he is prepared to take his fight to manifest his
Christianity while on the clock all the way to the Supreme Court. With a little
help from his friends, who include the lawyers of the Liberty Institute, a pro bono law firm
that specializes in helping Christian individuals and groups (and occasionally
Orthodox Jews) use the First Amendment to assert their rights to encroach on
secular institutions. I couldn’t find anything online yet, but it’s only a
matter of time before we learn that donations for Kennedy are pouring in from a
crowdsourcing website or that the religious right is taking care of Kennedy’s
economic needs in some other way.
An enormous photograph of Kennedy
already dominates the Liberty Institute home page less than two days after the
suspension. Either they move quickly or they had already coordinated Kennedy’s
defiance of the school district’s direct order not to continue praying on the
sidelines. I’m thinking the latter.
Call me cynical, but I’m wondering
whether Kennedy has already negotiated his remuneration for serving as the test
case. It would be no different from the hoard of PhDs taking money from
right-wing think tanks to write claptrap against the minimum wage and public
unions.
The self-proclaimed mission of the Liberty Institute is “to
defend and restore religious liberty across America—in our schools, for our
churches, inside the military, and throughout the public arena.” In the past, the Liberty Institute has
defended the right of a student to distribute candy canes with a religious
story attached at his school’s holiday party; filed a lawsuit against the Department of Veteran Affairs alleging it had
censored prayers and the use of the words “God and Jesus”; and established the
“Don't Tear Me Down” campaign to fight challenges against veterans memorials
with Christian symbolism.
The Liberty Institute and other Kennedy
defenders assert that his public prayer is protected by the First Amendment,
forgetting that the First Amendment also protects against the establishment of
one religion over the others. As a football coach, Kennedy is paid to be a
figure of authority. His prayers can make the students who aren’t the same
religion feel very uncomfortable, very left out. Believe me, I know. I was on the football
team of one of the five high schools I attended. (I’d like to say I “played
football,” but I never entered any game for even one play!) We always had a prayer session conducted by a
member of the local clergy before every game, always ecumenical, with no prayer
specific to one religion read nor any particular rite mentioned. We had about
80 kids on the team, all of whom were Christians of various sorts, except for
three Jews, myself and two boys who were all-city. One time, the religious
figure talked about Christ in the pre-game prayer. All three of us felt
humiliated, bullied and unwanted. We told the coach how angry we were, and our
parents probably did as well. The coach apologized immediately and assured us
that it would never happen again. And it didn’t, at least as long as I went to
that high school.
That was 1966 in Miami, Florida,
long before evangelical groups decided that it wasn’t enough to have the right
to practice one’s own religion in peace, but that they had to make sure that
America was branded as a Christian nation that abided by Christian laws.
Even then I questioned the need to
have any sort of prayer before football games, ecumenical or not. I understand
that football and religion tend to go hand-in-hand in many places. It makes
sense, because the same kind of belief in a higher order that helps if one is
trying to follow the many rites and beliefs of an organized religion also can
serve as the personal justification for putting oneself through painful
practices and risking life-threatening injuries on every play. For similar
reasons, military organizations often promote religiosity as a stabilizing and
motivating element. No one stops to
think that perhaps one or more deities are rooting for the opponent, be it an
athletic competition or a war.
Religion is an integral part of
the football mentality. The ideal, of course, would be if everyone on the team were
fighting for the same religion, so that the individual team members would feel
even more bonded to each other and more ready to make sacrifices for victory. Unfortunately,
professional teams, those affiliated with public schools and organizations and
the armed forces are unable to enjoy the benefits of religious unity. There are
just too many different religions around. Plus we have all those atheists.