Pictured above are the Bell County Bobcats and many fans in prayer following a football game.
(Photo submitted)
The Foundation alleges that a student within the school district complained about the tradition.
A letter sent from the Foundation is reported to have instructed the school district to stop the prayer, that was always said over the intercom by a local pastor. The letter went on to allege that the school district had committed a “serious and flagrant violation of the First Amendment.”
This has concerned local fans. A Middlesboro Daily News Facebook friend expressed her outrage, “I wanna know who is behind not letting Ray say a prayer before the game... without God we are all in trouble.”
Upon receiving the letter, Superintendent George Thompson took it to the school board’s attorney, Shea Yoakum. She then submitted the letter to Amy Peabody, Kentucky Department of Education Attorney.
Peabody recommended that the district stop the tradition and cited previous court cases in which the court ruled that prayer on public school property is in violation of the First Amendment.
“As distressing as this is, we chose to follow her (Peabody) recommendation at this time. Our hard-held Christian belief in Bell County is the fabric that makes our community special,” said Thompson.
George Thompson went on to say, “I have always taken the position that we will continue the prayer until someone makes us stop.”
According to Thompson, instead of the prayer, a pre-game moment of silence may be the new tradition at Bell County high school athletic events.
According to their website, FFRF is “a state-church watchdog based in Madison, Wis., is the nation's largest group of atheists, agnostics and freethinkers.”
The group touts that they have over 16,000 members and was founded in 1978 with the purpose of keeping religion and government separate.
"If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land." -2 Chronicles 7:14
PRAYER IS THE KEY!!!!! WE WON'T IMROVE IN AMERICA UNLESS WE PRAY!!!!!!
http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/religionandschools/prayer_guidance.html
I was relieved by the book title, Bloggy. I just assumed you'd recommend Atlas Shrugged. I'd suggest you read This Land Is THEIR Land. real eye-opener.
Re-elect Obama in 2012.
Actually the 'experts' are very divided on the whole 'stimulus' thing. Hopefully after the experience of the past few years Keynesian economics will be dead and buried. The whole idea of printing money and flooding the market on pet projects and political paybacks that will somehow magically heal the market is dead. Pick up a copy of 'The Road to Serfdom', long live Hayek!
Did I miss where the school was forcing people to participate in a prayer? Hmmm, I thought they simply had a prayer where one could bow their head and participate or do nothing at all. What happened to people to failed to 'participate'? I went to games and don't recall anyone being thrown out or identified in any way if they chose not to bow their heads.
What I don't understand is why religious people want to force everyone else to take up their religion. That's a recipe for civil war. That's why we have the First Amendment, because the official religions in the colonies were almost at war with one another.
Your statements about the ACLU are preposterous. The ACLU is a major defender of free speech. Just ask any Muslim in New York City. I have never heard of any student's speech being censored with deity references removed forcibly. That would be overturned by the courts. That charge sounds like something coming out of Fox "news".
As for the players, coaches and anyone else having a group prayer watch what happens if it occurs. The ACLU and this other group will file suit or threaten to. If they can intimidate, harass, threaten, bully and ban valedictorians which are students and not employees of the school system from mentioning God in their speeches during commencements you actually think they will allow voluntary public prayer without again trying to impose their will on the community.
I don't think the Constitution has been the same since Griswold v. Connecticut. Don't see how it can be. Clarence Thomas feels the same way. That's why I think the Supreme Court's verdict on the Affordable Care Act will be a major, major crossroad.
My friend, if you think Mr. Obama is causing problems, you have not read The Economist's recent article on the depth of the disaster the Bush crowd left. The experts in that piece said the stimulus, to be effective, should have been three times bigger than it was.
The mega-rich and their sponsors in Washington will learn, as we did in September 2008, that you can rig the system in your favor only so much before it implodes of its own warpings. Think of this: General Motors and Ford, extremely profitable, both heavily unionized. Reminds me of 1946-57, America's golden age of responsible capitalism, before the Mob took over the unions and the Buckley-Goldwater crowd started having serious hallucinations while the Military Industrial Complex stole the national treasury.
Keep the faith, Bloggy. Just don't have any mandatory prayers!
I was responding specifically to your posts that stated that the Founding Fathers and the Constitution prohibited the activity in question. Obviously, that is false. 200 years of maniacal twisting have definitely shredded major portions of the Constitution and I know it's the vogue liberal argument of the day that the constitution is irrelevant now, but I will stick with the original intent and work toward restoring the country to some rational, sane policies.
There were numerous good reasons, that are still valid today, that the Founders set up a representative republic with strict limitations on the power of the federal government. The pendulum has swung way too far in that direction and we are in desperate need of a swing back toward sanity. As Justice Scalia said:
Like some ghoul in a late night horror movie that repeatedly sits up in its grave and shuffles abroad, after being repeatedly killed and buried, Lemon stalks our Establishment Clause jurisprudence once again, frightening the little children and school attorneys.
Gotta love that!
As the law now stands, permitting a religious expression by one group clearly opens the door to similar expressions by other groups, and we have seen that the courts WILL protect the rights of religious minorities. The Westside Baptist "church" people have a fully protected right to desecrate military funerals.
I don't want teachers talking about their religious beliefs any more than I want them to talk about their sexual preferences. Both topics are not the province of education.
Good to see you back, Bloggy. This site is mighty vapid in your absence.
Yes, the Founders did not want to create a national religion.
No, they did not intend to remove faith or religion from the public arena.
If you do a little research you will find that the state sponsored church in Massachusetts continued until 1833:
Massachusetts retained an establishment of religion in general until 1833. (The Massachusetts system required every man to belong to some church, and pay taxes towards it; while it was formally neutral between denominations, in practice the indifferent would be counted as belonging to the majority denomination, and in some cases religious minorities had trouble being recognized at all.)
If the Founders had intended for the Constitution to prohibit such activity, please explain why it was still being done 50 years after it was ratified? The reason is because the constitution was very specific in what it was trying to accomplish. It had no problem with individual states having religous requirements or even collecting taxes for churches - in fact, most states at that time required membership in a church to serve publicly. It was specificly to prohibit the establishment of a national Church of the United States - not to prohibit a school teacher from telling a classroom about his or her faith or shielding students or the public from hearing a prayer.
No one is saying the coaches and players can't pray before the game. That's not illegal. What's illegal is for the principal or superintendent to require everyone in the stadium to be a part of it. I'm sorry, but the Constitution is anti-majority. Otherwise we'd still have segregated schools and Jehovah's Witnesses would have to salute flag. You got a problem with that? Tell it to the Founding Fathers.
One person---ONE PERSON has now imposed their entire belief system on everyone.
How is this fair?