The theme of this public school marching band's halftime show? A Christian Tent Revival.
An atheist group is asking Lake Hamilton High School in Arkansas to end this kind of "religious coercion"
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There are plenty of ways Christians typically push their religion in public schools, whether it’s football coaches coercing kids into praying with them, putting the Ten Commandments on classroom walls, or saying Christian prayers over the intercom.
But you don’t see this one very often.
At Lake Hamilton High School in Pearcy, Arkansas, the award-winning marching band performed a halftime show this season centered around… a Christian tent revival.
You can see the full show at the 1:46:00 of this football game from November. Additional pictures are below:
It’s typical for high-caliber marching bands like this one to have a theme for the season, but using the halftime show as a vehicle to spread Christianity is just egregious if not illegal.
The show featured several religious spirituals with students holding up banners reading “Repent Now,” “Sinners Beware,” and “The Path to Righteousness.” The girls were dressed up like stereotypical fundamentalists, with skirts going down to their ankles. The boys had vests or suit jackets. The flags of the color guard appeared to resemble fire. The “pews” later came together in the shape of a cross.
(It’s worth mentioning that the gendered clothing may have posed a problem for any queer kids. With a band of this size, there are bound to be some who don’t comfortably fit into a gender binary but don’t feel comfortable speaking up about it.)
On TikTok, one man expressed shock that this performance was featured at the Bands of America Grand National Championships in Indianapolis (a.k.a. the Super Bowl for marching bands).
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Now the Freedom From Religion Foundation is getting involved.
In a letter to the Lake Hamilton School District, Kat D. Grant, FFRF’s Equal Justice Works Fellow, calls on the district to ensure all future performances will be “free from religious coercion.”
Religion is a divisive force in public schools. Choosing a religious theme and props for marching band performances alienates those non-Christian students, teachers, and members of the public whose religious beliefs are inconsistent with the message being promoted by the school, including the nearly one in three Americans who now identify as religiously unaffiliated. These students certainly should be commended for their hard work that led them to the semi-finals of Bands of America Grand Nationals, but there are plenty of appropriate secular alternatives that the band director could select that would utilize their clear work ethic and talent more appropriately.
Grant told me this isn’t the only religious-themed marching program they’ve seen—and not even the only one titled “Revival.” There’s obviously a place for religious music to be incorporated in any music program, they pointed out, but that’s a far cry from the explicit Christianity being promoted here.
As a former marching band member herself, they stressed how close-knit these kinds of high-performing groups can be, and if you watch the video, you can tell how much work went into putting this show together. That makes it all the more important to maintain religious neutrality because kids won’t want to rock the boat and jeopardize scholarships or close relationships with directors (that might result in recommendation letters).
“And they shouldn’t have to,” Grant added. “The adults in charge should know better and do better.”
One final note: I mentioned that this school competed in the Bands of America Grand Nationals. If you go to the competition website, you can see that BoA’s parent organization is called “Music For All.” The irony of this school’s “Revival” theme at a competition intended to be inclusive shouldn’t be lost on anyone.
It comes as no surprise this happened in a small southern town. The brains of most of those kids in the marching band are still developing, and they lack the ability to put things in perspective. Come graduation day most will know better, and there will be an exodus of young people who go running for the cities as fast as they can. It is this exodus that keeps concentrating religion in small towns. Few people want to move to these towns, and those who do seldom stay. Thus, religious sentiments keep getting more conservative.
And the people who are made uncomfortable by these overt displays in a public school setting will rarely say anything out of fear of retaliation. Life in a small town.