A Tennessee high school let a Christian preacher lead the basketball team in foot-washing
Pushing Jesus on public high school students is coercive, immoral, and illegal
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Here’s a quick tip for Christians who want to proselytize in public schools: When you get away with it, don’t brag about it publicly. Because even when you think all the evidence has been scrubbed from the internet, some people (*waves hello*) may have saved screenshots.
Speaking of which...
On Wednesday, Andrew Fortner, the leader of a Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapter in Tennessee, posted about how students at White House Heritage High School (a public school) ended their practice in an unusual way.
They held a free-throw shooting contest and five players on the team “won”… the chance to wash their teammates’ feet just like Jesus. The FCA leader shared pictures and explained how he told team leaders to “chase the TOWEL over the TITLE.” Fortner also included an image of himself reading the Bible to the kids.
That post is no longer online. Fortner deleted it. But not before it was shared on TikTok by a concerned woman (who also deleted her video to avoid local backlash).
Still, it happened. And now the Freedom From Religion Foundation is getting involved. In a letter, legal fellow Samantha F. Lawrence calls on the Robertson County Schools to investigate the matter:
We ask that RCS investigate this matter and ensure that the White House Heritage HS basketball program ceases infusing the program with religion. The basketball program and its coaches cannot be permitted to invite and allow an outside adult to proselytize student athletes and require them to engage in religious activities.
…
… When coaches promote their personal religion to students and invite an outside adult, such as Mr. Fortner, to instruct students to act out a biblical story while reading them scripture, the student athletes will no doubt feel that agreeing with their coach’s religious viewpoint and participating in the religious activities is essential to pleasing their coach and being viewed as a team player. It is unrealistic and unconstitutional to put student athletes to the choice of allowing their constitutional rights to be violated in order to maintain good standing in the eyes of their coach and peers or openly dissenting at the risk of retaliation from their coach and teammates.
As Lawrence points out, the Supreme Court’s Kennedy decision (where a football coach wanted to pray at midfield after games despite the coercive effect) is irrelevant here. This was a direct attempt to merge church and state. There was very clearly coercion. Fortner isn’t even a coach. He’s just a random guy whose Christianity gave him access to the team.
No representative from a different religion, or an atheist, would be given the opportunity to push their beliefs on the basketball team in the name of self-described morality. And they shouldn’t be! But Christian privilege is a hell of a drug.
The coaching staff at this school had no right to invite a Christian preacher to a practice in an effort to convert children. It’s appalling that the adults involved here were so comfortable with what was happening that they allowed photos to be taken and posted online… at least until, perhaps, they realized they were doing something wrong.
Fortner did not respond to a request for comment.
I want to say something that might get someone here’s attention. We see these stories all the time, some school district allows some egregious violations of the separation of church and state violating our children’s constitutional rights, how do we respond? We ask the FFRF or ACLU or other legal organization to utilize the law in appropriate and meaningful ways, and we win most of the time, and sometimes the corruption of our system gets exposed when we lose. Or the Satanic Temple tries to turn the tables by introducing their own version of what the Christians did. But through it all, we are civilized. Even in the comment section, we get angry and throw out the f-word or maybe get a little belligerent out of justified frustration. What we don’t do is call for folks deaths, threaten or intimidate, verbally or physically, the folks who crossed the law.
Now, someone will come here and say some dribble about, “it’s not right to force it, blah blah blah.” But on the next article about how the Christians in a community reacted violently, death threats online or phone messages, overrunning school board meetings with threatening rhetoric, to some other religion’s perspective. This school has a unit on Islam, or that school had a class on yoga in gym, or the Satanic Temple tried organizing an after school program to counter a Christian after school program that was illegally promoted by the school. And this same person will be here blaming the other religion for existing in the view of Christians, defending in a roundabout way the violence of the Christians by saying things like, “Christian’s believe Satan is bad, what did they expect.” Or “they should change the name of the organization and they won’t get the outrage.”
Here’s the deal. We’re outraged by this school’s actions. We’re looking at ways to correct the situation, and keep it from happening again through legal channels, and arguing in good faith for the law that best serves the entire population. We don’t threaten the preacher with violence, we don’t terrorize the school administration or student body. We may sound angry but we’re never cruel. Not even random atheists in the community are getting that worked up. But time and again the Christians are there, being terrorists to get their way. Or lying about what happened, what damage was caused or even being expected to be tolerant. Kennedy wasn’t fired, he lied about what happened. The cake people weren’t being forced to be a part of a wedding they didn’t believe in, they lied about the damage. And the website lady was never asked to make a get wedding website, she lied about being forced into tolerance. A Minnesota district had to reinstate the pledge of allegiance at Al school board meetings after credible death threats were made, that isn’t civilized behavior, that is straight up, the very definition of, terrorism. And yet atheists always painted as villains, just because we don’t let your unconstitutional behavior slide. I’m saying we need to be more clear about who the villains are, and keep calling them what they are, terrorists. And remind some that they’re defending terrorism.
I’m pretty sure I’ve made this point many times before.
The problem as I see it is that they are getting more bold with their bizarreness. They think acts like this win them points but it doesn’t. I feel bad for the kids