Religious freedom wins at the Supreme Court
Praying on a public football field doesn't violate the establishment clause, no matter how many outlets bemoan the 'erosion' of the separation of church and state
“The Supreme Court Dealt A Big Blow To The Separation of Church And State,” declared FiveThirtyEight. “The Supreme Court is eroding the wall between church and state,” proclaimed the Washington Post Editorial Board. “U.S. Supreme Court takes aim at separation of church and state,” announced Reuters.
Judging from these breathless headlines, one would think the United States is marching steadily toward a Christian theocracy akin to Gilead, the fictional country from Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale. But by examining the case at hand — which centers on a praying football coach — and thoughtfully considering the history behind the separation of church and state as a concept, it becomes clear that worries of its “erosion” amount to nothing more than fear mongering.
The case that has the media bent so out of shape is Kennedy v. Bremerton. In 2015, Joe Kennedy, an assistant football coach at a high school in Bremerton, Wash., was fired for praying with students after football games. The Bremerton School District claimed that by firing Kennedy, it was protecting students from being coerced into engaging in religious activity.
Kennedy had initially started kneeling in prayer by himself at the 50-yard line after games, inspired by the Christian film, Facing the Giants. Other students began joining Kennedy of their own accord, and as participation in the post-game prayers grew, students even began inviting members of opposing teams to join them.
When the school district found out about the prayers, it asked Kennedy to stop, and he was eventually fired. Kennedy sued the school district, and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in Kennedy’s favor on Monday.
To bolster its case, the school district cited a parent who said their child, an atheist, felt coerced into participating in the prayers, lest he feel left out or receive less playing time as retaliation. But just because the student felt coerced didn’t mean he was coerced. No evidence was presented to substantiate the student’s concerns, such as Kennedy making a threat — implied or otherwise — of reducing the student’s play time if he didn’t participate. In the absence of such evidence, the student’s claim of coercion doesn’t carry much weight. It is, if anything, speculative.
Much of the outrage over the court’s decision in this case stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the so-called separation of church and state. The phrase “separation of church and state” never appears once in the Constitution, but people use it as shorthand for the establishment clause, which states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
The phrase “separation of church and state” comes from an 1802 letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury, Connecticut, Baptist Association, to assure them that the First Amendment offered protection from government interference in the free exercise of their religion:
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.
Jefferson’s letter was clearly meant to reassure the association of the Constitution’s constraint of government power over religion, not the other way around; there is no hint he intended to imply that the First Amendment constrained religion from having any influence over government. And yet, that’s how many people interpret this so-called separation — as implying the existence of an impenetrable firewall that prevents the religious sphere from ever interacting with the public sphere in the slightest, forever separated like oil and water.
But that’s an overly broad interpretation. To be clear, the establishment clause does place restraints on religion’s influence over government. The Supreme Court has held that the establishment clause means governments cannot favor one religion over another, for instance. But Kennedy’s prayers did no such thing — not even close.
If a student had, say, insisted on praying to Allah beside Kennedy, and Kennedy had then disciplined him for doing so, that would be an example of Kennedy, as a public school employee, favoring one religion over another in a way that would violate the Constitution. But based on what actually occurred, Kennedy plainly did nothing more than put his own, personal faith on display. That his actions inspired many of his players so much that they decided to join him was no fault of his own.
Even if one accepts the claim that Kennedy inadvertently pressured students into participating in the prayers, it’s important to note that once the school district asked him to stop praying with students, he agreed to do so. He only insisted on continuing to pray at the 50-yard line by himself, to fulfill a commitment he had made to God. The school district prohibited him from doing so, insisting that if he were to pray after games, he would have to do so out of sight of any students. The claim that merely praying in public view of a student constitutes Constitutionally prohibited promotion of religion is patently absurd, and yet that’s exactly what the school district argued.
It also bears consideration that by insisting students could not join Kennedy in prayer, the school district actually violated the Constitutional rights of the students. Remember, the establishment clause states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” If students are not allowed to engage in public prayers they want to engage in, that’s an illegal curtailment of the free exercise of their religion. The school district’s violation of the students’ Constitutional rights was far more egregious than Kennedy’s alleged violation.
The news media sees the court’s decision in Kennedy, along with another recent SCOTUS decision — Carson v. Makin, which held that states can’t keep parents from using state aid to pay tuition at religious private schools — as part of a larger trend of the courts dismantling the separation of church and state.
But the media has it backward. For too long, the left has built up the separation of church and state into something it isn’t: a total banishment of religious expression from the public sphere. Joe Kennedy’s victory doesn’t bring us closer to a dystopian theocracy. It actually bolsters the separation of church and state by making it clear that a governmental entity — in this case, a school district — can’t prohibit personal religious expression. It brings us closer to a more sensible society where non-coercive religious expression can thrive in every area of our society. That’s a good thing.