There’s an enormous misunderstanding regarding the U.S. Constitution as it relates to religion and it’s causing all sorts of trouble for folks that just want to pray. The misunderstanding is being intentionally propagated by an atheist group that wants to ban religious expression in public.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) has a notion that government and religion are mutually exclusive. Their mission is “to protect the constitutional principle of separation between church and state.”

The problem here is that there is no such “constitutional principle.”

Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, or the Declaration of Independence is there a word about keeping religion out of public life; or the so-called “separation of church and state.” In fact, what the U.S. Constitution does say is that the government has no authority to make any laws pertaining to the free exercise and expression of religion.

But that doesn’t stop this atheist group from demanding that coaches not take part in team prayers.

One of the latest cases comes from the western suburbs where a high school football coach is under fire for simply being present with his players during team prayers. (Click here to read the local article.)

The complaint came after a picture of the Naperville Central High School football team, including the coaches, was sent to the FFRF. They sent a letter to the school district demanding the action cease immediately.

Now, first of all, I want to know why the school district didn’t tell the FFRF to take a hike. The FFRF has no legal power and very little influence. In fact, when schools or other groups stand up to the FFRF they tend to back down and slink back into the shadows. So I can’t help but wonder why the school district didn’t simply dismiss the letter. I will applaud their response though, in letting the FFRF know that what takes place is voluntary and student led, and does not force anyone to participate. In other words, it’s none of their business.

But let’s consider the larger issue here.

Are we really ready to concede that school employees have no religious freedom? Just because someone works for a school doesn’t mean their religious rights are thrown out the window. I’m not suggesting that teachers or coaches can demand their class or athletes attend a Bible study, but the idea that they can’t attend a student led prayer is absurd.

The FFRF says that school employees taking part in a student led prayer is the government supporting religion and a form of coercion. Such a notion is so preposterous it almost doesn’t deserve a response. By the way, why doesn’t the FFRF get upset and send angry letters when our president mentions God or tells Americans to pray? That’s odd.

This shows that the FFRF doesn’t know the history of our country and the intentions of our Founders. History is rife with what our Founders thought of the Bible and faith. Not only were they themselves Christians, but they worked tirelessly to create a country where faith was not relegated to a Sunday ritual but was integrated into every facet of daily life. (Click here to read quotes from our Founders regarding faith.) The idea that public prayer by school employees would be considered wrong would be foreign to them.

In an update to this ongoing story I was impressed to read the statement released by the football team. In response to the attack from the FFRF they wrote:

“The players will continue this tradition of praying before our games, and would like to extend an invitation to all members of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, to come out next fall and watch us pray and play the game we love…We, as a football team and a family, give Coach Stine our full support…[Coach Michael Stine] “is the best coach in the state, and cares about each and every one of us more than any other coach cares about his players.”

That sounds like a well-reasoned, mature response from a group of athletes that have a great deal of respect for their coach. The response of the FFRF to the football team’s statement sounds like a spoiled-child that couldn’t bully someone to get their way. They said of the football team’s statement:

“It’s not the fault of these students that they do not understand the legal principle being violated when a coach leads, encourages or participates in prayer with student players.”

The FFRF appears to think the football team is too dumb to understand what’s going on. I think they understand perfectly. I think what is going on before and after games reflects the heart of this community and that both students and parents are supportive. And what the FFRF is unwilling to recognize is that a majority of people in America are supportive of moments of silence and even prayers before and after sporting events. They understand these voluntary exercises of religious freedom as being necessary and healthy.

What this really comes down to is the FFRF’s contempt for Christianity and wanting to impose their “religion” of secularism on our society.

Jesus said, “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.” John 15:18

They hate the One to whom we pray. They don’t want to see any Christian religious expression in public places or as part of anything associated with the government. But they are perfectly content to allow and support expressions of atheism. This hypocrisy is contemptible because atheism itself is a religion with tenets as any other religion.

There is no “constitutional principle” that gives them the right to impose their religion of atheism while Christianity is banned.

The FFRF doesn’t like anything religious. As secular humanists they believe that this world is all there is. So they are happy to help develop someone physically and mentally. But when it comes to spiritual development they see that as a waste of time. And they think a coach that cares enough to develop his players physically, mentally, and spiritually is misusing his position.

I’m reminded of a high profile coach that was targeted by the FFRF for his voluntary spiritual development activities. Mark Richt, the famed coach of the Georgia Bulldogs (now with the Miami Hurricanes) made it clear that he and his staff care about every aspect of their players, including their spiritual well-being. When he was attacked by the FFRF he responded:

“I think we’re made of our body, we’re made of our mind, we’re made of spirit. We work hard on our bodies as far as getting them in shape. We’re working on schemes, plays, lifting, running, nutrition, sleep. When we work on the mind, we care very much about them getting their degrees, tutoring, academic appointments, classes and all, meetings. All those things are mandatory. But anything that has to do with growing spiritually, which I encourage our guys to grow spiritually, I believe our spirit is going to live beyond our body. I encourage them to grow spiritually but I don’t tell them what to believe in. Everything we do is strictly voluntary in that regard.”

Coach Richt and Coach Stine represent what the Founders envisioned of America. A place where people could freely take part in spiritual development and expressions of their religious beliefs without coercion. That includes the right to abstain from such expressions as well. The support that both of these coaches have been given shows that Americans continue to see value in such voluntary expressions. Those who disagree should exercise tolerance and be reminded that the Constitution ensures the government can make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion.

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Take ACTION:  If you know anyone who goes to this Naperville high school (teacher or student) who would like to challenge this feckless mandate, please contact us by email at contactus@illinoisfamily.org.

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In a May 28, 2011 Wall Street Journal article, Bari Weiss said this about David Mamet, one of America’s foremost contemporary playwrights, who in the last few years has experienced a conversion to political conservatism of sorts.

Before he moved to California, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet had never talked to a self-described conservative.

Mamet said, “I realized I lived in this bubble.”

Weiss also reported that one of the basic truths Mamet realized is that “Real diversity is intellectual.”

Both the image of a person who has never talked to a conservative and the notion that real diversity is intellectual reminded me of one of the more pressing problems affecting public high schools: the absence of intellectual diversity on controversial topics.

A recent event at Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois offers hope that public schools may someday demonstrate a genuine commitment to diversity without which they cannot foster critical thinking.

Stevenson High School’s school-sponsored club, Truth Seekers, hosted a debate between AP Biology teacher Brett Erdmann and AP Calculus teacher Neal Roys on the competing theories of Neo-Darwinian Evolution and Intelligent Design. This debate was followed by a lively Q & A. Approximately 70 adults, including both district employees and community members, and 250 students attended the debate.

Not only did administrators not place any obstacles in the path of club members who sought to hold this event, but they supported and facilitated the students’ efforts. In an email correspondence with IFI, Principal John Carter wrote that “We want students to be as prepared as possible to collect information from a variety of sources, critique that information, and come to their own educated conclusions.”

Superintendent Eric Twadell wrote:

The debate received great response from our students and was a wonderful reflection of the hard work, dedication and passion of our teachers …. we do believe that students should have the opportunity to learn and study a diversity of topics including those that some might consider “controversial.” In fact, as a teacher in the Social Studies Division here at Stevenson, for many years I taught students intelligent design every semester in my World Religions class. Our Stevenson High School Vision Statement calls us to create a culture of inquiry and engagement with challenging academic material, the recent debate was a great opportunity to engage students in important and relevant dialogue.

Dr. Carter and Dr. Twadell expressed important sentiments that all schools endorse in words but many teachers ignore in practice. Instead of presenting students with the best resources from scholars on both sides of disputed topics, many teachers present resources from only scholars whose views line up with theirs and then when challenged about the imbalance, say, “Well, students are free to disagree.”

How can students intelligently disagree when they’ve studied works that espouse ideas from only one perspective? Students are entitled to have their views informed by the best thinking on both sides of controversial or disputed topics.

Stevenson’s website offers this description of the Truth Seekers Club which is as remarkable as the event it sponsored:

Truth Seekers explore topics that matter to students. So we start each semester with student nominations of topics. In a typical semester, students nominate 70 topics. Then we vote to narrow the list to the top 10. During a typical meeting, we explore the topic for the week through any of the following activities: Group Discussion, Video Clip, Guest Speaker, Informal Friendly Debate, Formal Debate, Hot Seat. Once per year, we organize a large venue event to which we invite all interested students, staff and community members.

The first requirement is to keep an open mind to the possibility that truth exists and can be found by those who diligently seek it out. The second requirement is that students agree to form a view of reality that is free from contradictions. Views of reality that contain contradictions will not hold water. Some students attempt to avoid rejection of a cherished yet contradictory world view by separating their beliefs into two non-overlapping realms: public and private. However, the contradiction, like acid, will burn a hole in the world view causing it to leak once again.

Naperville Central High School also has a Truth Seekers Club that is described “as a place for students to tackle hot-button issues that are often touched on in the classroom but unable to be given a full treatment due to lack of time, curricular restraints, or overall reticence to air out an issue deemed too controversial.”

The club has tackled controversies regarding world population; feminism; same-sex marriage; abortion; universal health care; global warming; “gay” rights; evolution, Intelligent Design, and the origin of life; and academic freedom and censorship of “politically incorrect” speech.

On the topic of global warming, students watched both Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and the BBC documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle. Students watched the film Demographic Winter, which challenges the dominant view that our world is threatened by overpopulation, and the films Indoctrinate U and Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, which examine whether American universities are truly bastions of intellectual freedom and diversity.

Now, if only we could get all teachers to value intellectual diversity more than they value the promulgation of their own philosophical and political ideologies:

• Perhaps students could study the unproven, unprovable assumptions embedded in a materialistic or naturalistic world view that claims that all that exists is the material universe.
• Perhaps social studies teachers who use The People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn could also have students read some of the criticisms of Zinn’s polemical revisionist history, including those of Sol Stern. And maybe social studies teachers could include excerpts from some of Paul Johnson’s works as companion pieces to Howard Zinn’s.
• Perhaps librarians could be inspired to abandon their de facto censorship protocols (aka Collection Development Policies) and purchase books by Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, John McWhorter, Christina Hoff Sommers, and Christopher Wolfe.
• And the subject about which students remain the most ignorant and on which teachers engage in the most vigorous censorship, that is, homosexuality, needs a good shot of real intellectual diversity. For example, those who teach the plays The Laramie Project and Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, and Tony Kushner’s essay “American Things,” could also teach essays by Robert George, Francis Beckwith, and Anthony Esolen. Students could read the work of scholars who challenge the deeply flawed comparison of homosexuality to race; or who challenge the idea that moral propositions about behavior constitute hatred of persons; or challenge the idea that strong, enduring feelings render behaviors inherently moral; or who examine how we determine morality.

Intellectual diversity is the lifeblood of academia without which there can be no culture of inquiry or critical thinking. Without intellectual diversity, there is no education; there is only indoctrination.

Every high school would be well served by having a Truth Seekers Club. Parents, if you have a teen who may be interested in a club like this, share this article with them. If either you or your child has more questions about Truth Seekers Clubs, contact the clubs’ advisors:

Neal Roys, Stevenson High School Truth Seekers Club advisor: nroys@d125.org

Dan Tompkins, Naperville Central High School Truth Seekers Club advisor: dtompkins@naperville203.org