Suspended: How This Praying Football Coach Is Fighting Back

In the United States, a boy who “feels” like a girl can use girls’ restrooms and changing rooms, without regard to how the girls feel about it, but a Christian football coach praying on the field at the end of a game is worthy of suspension.

The Christian in question, varsity team assistant head coach (and junior varsity head coach) Joe Kennedy of Bremerton High School in Washington, is fighting back. The school district suspended Kennedy in October after he continued to pray on the field despite being ordered to stop. He filed a religious discrimination complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. From the Christian News Network:

Kennedy said that he began offering brief prayers on the field in 2008, then praying on his own. He was subsequently approached by several team members who asked what he was doing.

“I was thanking God for you guys,” Kennedy recalls responding. “Then a couple said they were Christians and asked if they could join. I responded, ‘It’s a free country, you can do whatever you want to do.’”

He said that he never asked students to pray with him, but some desired to, including those from the opposing team.

“They just all showed up one day and the next thing I know, the other team was showing up with us,” Kennedy said.

The superintendent claimed Kennedy privately praying with Christian students was unconstitutional. There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution barring a Christian government employee from praying with students on government property, especially voluntary prayer.

Kennedy’s lawyer at First Liberty Institute said the complaint “is the first step toward holding the school district responsible for its needless and shocking religious discrimination against one of its own coaches.”

Image credit: Q13Fox screenshot