The First Amendment to the Constitution "both prevents the government from establishing religion and protects privately initiated religious expression and activities from government interference and discrimination," the U.S. Department of Education says in its 2003 Guidance on Constitutionally Protected Prayer in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools.
So the government can neither promote nor inhibit religion. The U.S. Supreme Court has wrestled with that conundrum, and the federal education agency derived rules of thumb, including these, from decades worth of decisions.
Prayer During Noninstructional Time: Students may pray if it doesn't disrupt instructional activities. For instance, they may read Scriptures, say grace at meals or pray during recess.
Organized Prayer Groups and Activities: Students may organize religious groups, clubs and gatherings to the same extent that other non-curricular activities are permitted and must be given the same access to school facilities.
Teachers, Administrators and other School Employees: When acting in their official capacities, they are prohibited from encouraging or discouraging prayer, and from participating in such activity with students.
Accommodation of Prayer During Instructional Time: Schools may dismiss students for off-campus religious instruction, provided they don't encourage or discourage it. For example, Muslim students may be excused briefly from the classroom to pray during Ramadan.
Religious Expression and Prayer in Class Assignments: Students may incorporate their beliefs in school work, which teachers should grade "by ordinary academic standards," such as literary quality.
It’s a new football season in Georgia and an ongoing investigation into a recent baptism by some high school football players on their field has reignited an ongoing debate about the role of religion in youth sports and in schools.
It’s a debate with no resolution in sight, as disagreements and confusion persist about the legal line schools shouldn’t cross and complaints keep being raised. Activities criticized by some raise no alarms at all for others, and in the South, where religion and school sports are strong threads in the cultural fabric, separating them can be tricky.
The Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation sent a letter to the Carroll County School District objecting to 18 Villa Rica High School football players being baptized in a Rubbermaid tub filled with water before a team practice last month. Carroll County school officials said last week the district was investigating.
The foundation, which describes itself as a free-thought and agnostic organization, said it fired off about 500 letters to schools last year objecting to what it believes were violations of federal guidelines on religion and schools. Federal guidelines released in 2003 say “teachers and other public school officials may not lead their classes in prayer, devotional readings from the Bible, or other religious activities.”
Other recent complaints on the church-school issue included the foundation’s charge last month that pep talks by team chaplains at the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech are illegal, and a demand by another group for the West Laurens High School band to cease playing “Amazing Grace” and other hymns during football games.
In Villa Rica, a coach approached the Rev. Kevin Williams, senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Villa Rica, about an on-field baptism after a recent church service. This past weekend, Williams told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he checked the school rules and found no prohibition on baptisms so long as the activity was neither school sanctioned nor during school hours and no student was compelled to participate. “I was just following the rules,” he said.
Williams defended the church’s actions, but said that if he had it to do over again, he would have obtained permission from the school board. He said he didn’t think the principal was told beforehand.
Williams' son shot a video of the baptisms, which was posted online. The foundation saw it and wrote the letter to the school district.
“I had never seen anything like that before,” said Annie Laurie Gaylor, the foundation’s co-president and co-founder. “It’s not only unconstitutional, but it’s unhygienic.”
In Villa Rica, a nearly two-century-old city of 15,000 residents along I-20 near the Alabama-Georgia border, many residents and business owners believe the players did nothing wrong.
“It doesn’t bother me,” said Lauren Petett, 26, owner of Custom Threads Screen Printing, which is a few football fields away from the school and has done work for the school’s booster clubs. “Everyone has their own religious beliefs. If that’s what they choose to do, that’s what they should do.”
Mike Johnson, who said he is the barber to several students on the Villa Rica team, said he has no objections unless the students were coerced.
“I don’t think they ever should had taken the Bible or Jesus out of schools,” said Johnson, 42, owner of Anointed Heads Barber Shop who also has three children who attend the school.
The possibility that students involved were coerced is one of the problems with what happened at Villa Rica, said Emory University Law School senior lecturer Mark Goldfeder. He said it crossed the line because faculty members were involved. Goldfeder said one problem with religious activities like baptisms on school property is students of different religions may feel peer pressure to get involved.
“Once the coach is there, that changes things,” Goldfeder said. “The coach has influence over playing time. You are more likely to indirectly do things the coaches like.”
A line between church and state is necessary to protect those who aren’t part of the majority, said Arjun Singh Sethi, a member of the Sikh religious minority.
Schools that condone mass baptisms or display other preferences for majority religion "stigmatize those who don't participate," said Singh Sethi, policy director of the Sikh Coalition, a national advocacy group that has documented widespread bullying of Sikh children, including a case in DeKalb County. "This stigma often leads to bullying and discrimination," he said.
Williams, the pastor, said all of the students decided to get baptized on their own. He said there was no stigmatizing of non-participants and noted that kids who were baptized were white, black and Hispanic. “This was a unifying thing,” he said.
Kyjuan Royster, 16, was among those baptized, and said it was something he’d been thinking about doing for a while when the opportunity presented itself.
Justin Rich, the team chaplain who baptized Kyjuan and the other students that day, said several of the youths are members of Williams’ church, and on Aug. 9, the team’s defensive coordinator, Andy Szatkowski, attended “gridiron day” with them, a service that marks the beginning of the football season. On the spur of the moment, Szatkowski decided he wanted to be “saved,” Rich said.
After one of the following practices, head coach Chad Frazier announced that Szatkowski had decided to be baptized on the field. About 70 boys from the team were present, Kyjuan recalled. “And if anyone wants to get baptized, you can get baptized, too,” he recalled the coach saying.
“I went home and told my mom and she said, ‘Yeah, that’s a good decision,’” Kyjuan said.
Michelle Constantinides, an Atlanta mother, said the consternation over the incident is overblown.
“Are they complaining because it’s government property? Well then, we don’t need to be holding weddings at Piedmont Park,” said Constantinides, a Greek Orthodox Christian whose kids attend elementary and middle schools in the Grady High School cluster. She said she has no problem with religion on school grounds so long as it isn’t during school hours.
On-field baptisms are not new. In 2012, for example, then Clemson University star wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins was baptized after a team practice. Hopkins now plays for the NFL’s Houston Texans.
“In the South, it’s a very important part of people’s lives,” Goldfeder said of faith and football.
Religion also makes an appearance in various ways at some metro school board meetings. In Gwinnett County, a religious leader from a different house of worship does an invocation before each school board meeting. In Fulton County, there’s no prayer or moment of silence before its school board meetings. In Cobb County, each school board member is assigned a particular month in which to present an invocation. It is up to each member’s discretion as to what sort of invocation is presented.
The deep intertwining of school and church surfaces in other ways. Churches raise money for schools and drum up volunteers. Schools use church facilities for teacher training and other meetings. Students in DeKalb County used to hold graduation ceremonies in churches, until the school district banned that practice a couple of years ago.
Marlon Longacre, a former football team chaplain in Cobb County whose son plays on the North Cobb High football team, said he doesn’t agree with the separation of church and state but does respect it.
As associate pastor of Piedmont Church outside Marietta, he says he’s worked hard to develop a relationship with local school leaders and believes that if he raises money and volunteers for the schools without imposing his religion, it will both enrich the community and sow good will, reaping more congregants down the road.
“I wouldn’t just bring my baptismal waters up there,” he said.
The Villa Rica dispute is not the first time the foundation has raised objections to a religious-based activity in the Carroll school district. The foundation wrote a letter to the district in late April complaining that a planned baccalaureate ceremony at Mount Zion High School that was to include several Christian songs and remarks by a pastor. The school district agreed with the foundation, said Gaylor.
In February, the foundation sued the Emanuel County School District on complaints that a kindergarten student and a first-grader were forced to wait in a hallway while their classmates prayed. The case hasn't been adjudicated.
Goldfeder doesn’t believe this is the last time there will be a dispute about religious activities on school grounds.
“Because football teams, and team sports generally, create the kind of environment and relationship between players and coaches that naturally lends itself to the imparting of moral instruction and the teaching of life lessons,” Goldfeder said.
Williams said that he’s gotten a handful of threatening emails but has mostly heard from well wishers. He holds no animus for the foundation.
“I need to send these people a thank-you letter because what they’ve done is ignited the base,” he said.
At his service on Sunday, Willaims told church members that he’d been interviewed by Fox News, USA Today and other media outlets.
“I’m telling you it is astounding,” he said of all the publicity. “There’s no way that we could have orchestrated such a thing. To God be the glory.”
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