religious worship in public schools

    Ok, younguns, something about religious freedom in public schools showed up in my email today from Al.com, which used to be The Birmingham News. I typed my thoughts in bold:

Freedom From Religion group complains about Oak Grove’s ‘God, Team, Me’ football motto

Updated: Mar. 20, 2024, 9:46 p.m.|Published: Mar. 20, 2024, 5:47 p.m.

By Greg Garrison | ggarrison@al.com

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has sent a letter of complaint to Oak Grove High School in west Jefferson County, alleging religious coercion on the football team. 

 

The religious motto, “God, Team, Me,” has been posted in the team’s locker room and official team shirts, according to the group’s complaint. 

 

The playoff hoodies in 2023 included a Bible verse, Proverbs 27:17, the group complained.

The article left out the text:

"As iron sharpens iron,
    so one person sharpens another." 

 

The Freedom From Religion group, based in Madison, Wisconsin, sent a letter urging the coach to immediately stop engaging in religious activity or otherwise promoting his personal religious beliefs in his role as a football coach, and for the district to remove the godly motto and make certain that official district apparel no longer includes religious messages or bible verses

“Jefferson County Schools must ensure that this school-sponsored religious coercion ends immediately,” Freedom From Religion Foundation staff attorney Chris Line wrote to Superintendent Walter B. Gonsoulin Jr.

“God team me” and "Iron sharpens iron, as one person sharpens another” look to me like religious boasting, similar to “One nation, under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. Under God was added to the pledge when I was in elementary school, to promote America a godly country versus communist Soviet Union and Red China.

Coach Chris Musso referred requests for comment to Gonsoulin.

“We have received the letter from the Freedom from Religion Foundation, and we are reviewing it,” said a statement from Superintendent Gonsoulin. “However, the Jefferson County Board of Education is on record as fully supporting the right of its students and all members of the education community to pray and engage in voluntary religious expression in school settings.”

Students have the First Amendment right to be free from religious indoctrination in their public schools, the Freedom From Religion group argues. 

 

“The district must see to it that players are not being required to pray to play or otherwise expected to wear clothing with religious slogans or walk past religious signage,” Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of Freedom From Religion, said. “Religious coercion in sports programs unfortunately is all-too-frequent — and these violations against freedom of conscience need to be curbed.”

 

Amendment I, United States Constitution

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment 14, Section 1 

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.  

 

“The district must see to it that players are not being required to pray to play or otherwise expected to wear clothing with religious slogans or walk past religious signage,” Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of Freedom From Religion, said. “Religious coercion in sports programs unfortunately is all-too-frequent — and these violations against freedom of conscience need to be curbed. 

The group earlier this year credited itself for having a biblical verse painted on the side of a dugout removed by the Mobile County School System.

In 2023, the group criticized Auburn University for an event which featured head football coach Hugh Freeze and other prominent Auburn figures baptizing students.

This former Birmingham, Alabama practicing attorney, who grew up in a church-going family, then moved on to not knowing when he ever is not in church, doesn’t see how an outfit in Wisconsin has any standing to challenge anything that happens anywhere in Alabama, which does not directly affect Wisconsin, unless that outfit has been hired by the parents of a child in an Alabama school, who object to their child been subjected to religious proselytizing in the school. 

Even if The Freedom From Religion Group was headquartered in Alabama, I don’t see any way the State of Alabama, though its public schools, could forbid voluntary religious expression by students- if that’s as far as this goes.

However, if public school boards, superintendents, principals, teachers and/or coaches encourage or proselytize a religion on public school property, they become priests and create a church on school property, which is not part of their job description and crosses a line Amendment 1 does not allow.

While the Oak Grove school officials and its football coach and team bask in Amendment 1, they might wish to give serious consideration to what the most famous Jew in world history said about public worship:

Matthew 6:1–34

Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. 2 Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have  received their reward. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. 5 And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. 7 And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 Pray then like this: 

“Our Father in heaven, 

hallowed be your name.

10 Your kingdom come, 

your will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.

11  Give us this day our daily bread,

12  and forgive us our debts, 

as we also have forgiven our debtors.

13  And lead us not into temptation, 

but deliver us from evil. 

13  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. 

14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, 15 but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

    

    When I attended Crestline Heights Elementary School in Mountain Brook, Alabama, during weekly convocations led by school officials, the students, including the Jewish students, were required to recite the Lord’s Prayer out loud. Sometime we all sang it.

    I read once upon a time that the chief author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, and one of its signers, James Madison, the chief author of the Bill of Rights and thus of the First Amendment, led the charge to stop another signer of the Declaration, Patrick Henry, the Governor of Virginia, from getting the Virginia legislature to make Christianity the Virginia state religion. 

    I read another time that Thomas Jefferson so admired Jesus in the Gospels that he cut many pages out of the New Testament about what Jesus said and did and pasted them into a book that became known as The Jefferson Bible.

    The Declaration of Independence contains four references to Deity, from which it draws its authority, and none of those references resemble Christian lingo.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence.

     Religions mean well, but they tend to get twisted and tangled and even lost, as history has proven time and time again.

        The Gospels say Jesus did not baptize in water, but in fire and spirit he lived and baptized others.

    I imagine if Jesus in the Gospels were to show up in Alabama today and talk and behave as he did in the Gospels, he would be crucified by Alabama Christians.

    I closing, younguns, I leave you with something that fell out of me in the spring of 1994 as fast as I could write it down:

“Sacred Prism” 

Earth, 

The sacred prism 

through which souls are refracted 

into their elemental parts, 

Purified in Holy Fire, 

Then one-forged 

and sent on their way 

to not even God knows where, 

Simply because they are all 

Unique Emanations of God, 

Evolving . . .

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com