{"id":51360,"date":"2022-04-25T14:29:17","date_gmt":"2022-04-25T14:29:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=51360"},"modified":"2022-04-25T14:29:17","modified_gmt":"2022-04-25T14:29:17","slug":"let-the-coach-pray","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=51360","title":{"rendered":"Let the coach pray"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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This is one of those issues that makes my public-policy heartburn flare up, so here goes a shot at trying to make sense of something.<\/p>\n

Joseph Kennedy was a football coach at Bremerton (Wash.) High School. He once knelt in prayer at the 50-yard line, thanking the Almighty for keeping the players safe. A few players then joined him, voluntarily. The players and the coach would pray after games.<\/p>\n

Then word got out that he was doing it. News spread around the school district. I guess someone took issue with it, contending it violated the First Amendment prohibition against Congress establishing a state religion.<\/p>\n

Now the case is going to the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

What a crock!<\/p>\n

I do not understand why this case even is being discussed. The coach lost his job over his praying on the field. He moved to Florida.<\/p>\n

“It seems so simple to me: It’s a guy taking a knee by himself on the 50-yard-line, which to me doesn’t seem like it needs a rocket scientist or a Supreme Court justice to figure out,” he told CBS News. “I didn’t want to cause any waves, and the thing I wanted to do was coach football and thank God after the game.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Then we have this response: “When a coach uses the power of his job to be in a place and have access to students at a time when they’re expected to encircle him and come to him, that’s an abuse of that power and a violation of the Constitution,” Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, told CBS News’ Jan Crawford. “Religious freedom is not the right to impose your religion on others. We all need to have it, so that’s why the free exercise and establishment clause work together to protect religious freedom for all of us.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Imposing religion? Wow!<\/p>\n

After losing his job for praying on the field, ex-high school football coach Joe Kennedy brings case to Supreme Court – CBS News<\/a><\/p>\n

As I understand it, the coach didn’t demand<\/em> players pray with him; it was strictly voluntary. Nor do I believe he preached New Testament Gospel lessons. Which makes me wonder if Jewish, Buddhist or Muslim students could pray to “God” in the same fashion as their Christian teammates.<\/p>\n

There is no “sanctioning” of a religion occurring in these prayers. Is there?<\/p>\n

Well, the SCOTUS is going to hear the case. My hunch is that the court’s 6-3 super-conservative-majority is going to find that Coach Kennedy violated no constitutional prohibition.<\/p>\n

I am OK with that. Let the coach pray.<\/p>\n

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n

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This is one of those issues that makes my public-policy heartburn flare up, so here goes a shot at trying to make sense of something. Joseph Kennedy was a football coach at Bremerton (Wash.) High School. He once knelt in prayer at the 50-yard line, thanking the Almighty for keeping the players safe. A few … Continue reading Let the coach pray<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[1738,3883,6363,5043],"class_list":["post-51360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religious-news","tag-first-amendment","tag-religious-freedom","tag-scotus","tag-us-constitution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51360"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51362,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51360\/revisions\/51362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}