What is it with the connection between football and conservative Christianity? For that matter, with sports in general? How many times have we seen this happen with football coaches who think their job is to turn their players into Christians? Here’s yet another story:
Mooresville High School’s head football coach has been ordered to stop baptizing players and leading them in prayer.
A national organization that says it promotes the constitutional separation of church and state contacted the Mooresville Graded School District last fall to request that coach Hal Capps stop the practices.
“It is a violation of the Constitution for the Mooresville High School football coach to organize, lead, or participate in prayers or other religious proselytizing before, during, or after games and practices,” Patrick Elliott, staff attorney for the Wisconsin-based nonprofit Freedom from Religion Foundation, wrote last fall to school district attorney Kevin Donaldson.
“It is well settled that public schools, and by extension public school officials, may not advance or promote religion,” Elliott wrote…The foundation wrote the district after it said it received a complaint from a parent of a Mooresville High School student “who objects to religious endorsements” by Capps.
“Students have reported that Coach Capps frequently prays with football players at team events and encourages them to go to church and to become baptized,” the letter says.
Hope he actually stops.
