I’ve posted from time to time about the growing incursion of religion into American sports: especially football. And it’s often an illegal incursion, for in public universities and high schools, it’s a violation of the First Amendment—the one mandating separation of church and state—for a coach to enforce religion on his/her players, or to act in an official capacity to advance a religion.
And, as shown by the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) in a new report, “Pray to Play,” that’s exactly what many public universities are doing. Most of the offending schools are, of course, in the South, where the Venn diagram of religion and sports has substantial overlap, especially for football. Not only do coaches conduct prayer sessions with athletes, but universities regularly violate the law by hiring chaplains for their football teams and giving the “chaplains”, their families, and their wives substantial benefits (including free season tickets and travel), all funded by the taxpayers.
The FFRF’s document is long (35 pages) but fascinating—and absolutely damning. It has extensive documentation, and paints a dire picture of how respected major universities regularly flout the law, permitting coaches to impose their faith (always Christianity) on the players. In fact, some coaches view their main job as bringing players to Jesus, with football itself a secondary aim. Further, although only 44% of players are Christians (and thus the proselytizing is divisive for teams), 100% of all chaplains sussed out by the FFRF are Christians. The FFRF also found several examples of non-Christian athletes (both Muslims and nonbelievers) who felt excluded or offended by the endless prayers and pressure to go to church. Such participation isn’t really optional, because coaches determine not only who gets to play, but how recruiters for professional football interact with their students. This pressure forces students to conform.
The pdf of the FFRF report is here, the two-page executive summary is here, and the press release is here. Kudos to FFRF lawyers and law clerks Andrew Seidel, Patrick Elliott, Neal Fitzgerald, and Chris Line, who worked a year on this report. Before I put up a list of their conclusions, let me add two things.
The FFRF requested records from 18 public universities about the involvement of religion in football (these are mostly southern schools, but include the Universities of Washington, Wisconsin, Illinois, as well as Oregon State). They got almost no response despite the fact that universities MUST respond. Auburn is still holding on to the FFRF’s $500 check to pay for getting records, but hasn’t provided any. That’s reprehensible.
Second, the FFRF’s proposal is also constructive: it gives, at the end, a one-page “model policy” (p. 23 of the full report) that sets out Constitutional guidelines to public universities on how to deal with religion in sports. (Private universities, of course, are exempt from First Amendment requirements about not putting religion into sports.)
Here are the main points lifted from the report:
Research for this report was conducted over the past year and included inspecting hundreds of pages of university records. The report examines:
1. The unique position student athletes occupy and their susceptibility to religious coercion by coaches and chaplains.
2. The extensive public financing of these chaplaincies, including direct payments to chaplains, paying for the chaplain and his family to travel, and using the university’s influence and resources to fundraise for the chaplains’ religious organizations.
3. Schools portraying chaplains as legitimate, official members of the coaching staff.
4. The use of religion and chaplains in recruiting players, often to skirt NCAA rules.
5. The recent history of chaplaincies, most of which can be traced to Bobby Bowden, Tommy Tuberville, and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
6. The true purpose and actual effect of the chaplaincies, which is to promote the coach’s personal religion and to convert athletes to that religion.
7. The legal problems these issues raise for universities.
8. A model policy for public universities to adopt and a discussion of the misconception at the heart of this issue: that religion, and specifically Christianity, is required to be a complete or good human being.
Below are a few blatant examples of church-state violations taken from the full report.
First, we have a Clemson player being baptized in his uniform, surrounded by the team, on the 50-yard line of the school’s football field! (Clemson is a public university in Clemson, South Carolina, and its team is called the “Tigers”). The FFRF notes:
Clemson University went so far as turning its football field into a baptismal font. Former Tiger DeAndre Hopkins was baptized on the 50-yard line of the Clemson practice field, in football pads, surrounded by teammates and coaches, by local pastor Perry Noble. Noble also baptized Sammy Watkins at his church, NewSpring [sic] Church, the church head coach Dabo Swinney attends. Incidentally, Noble believes that “[w]e’ve bought into the lie that there’s a line between the secular and the spiritual. Jesus is Lord of ALL. And that means ALL.”
Jeff Scott, a university (and therefore a state) employee, is a co-offensive coordinator for the team’s wide receivers; and he tweeted this:
It gets far worse. Auburn University in Alabama is also a public school, and yet “Rev. Chette Williams” is listed on the football team’s website as “Team chaplain.” It’s illegal, of course, to even have a team chaplain.
The FFRF report shows, as noted above, that many of these chaplains (all Christians) are paid with taxpayers’ money, and get to travel with the team and get free lodgings, food, seasons tickets, and sideline passes, also on the public dime. Their wives and children often get these paid perks, too! The amount subsidized by citizens runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Below are two videos that Andrew Seidel sent me showing the (unconstitutional) chaplain of the University of South Carolina’s (USC’s) football team (the “Gamecocks”) engaging in illegal activity—using his official state position to advance religion. Seidel’s notes:
Gamecock Football team Chaplain Adrian Despres is joined by Gamecock football players Marcus Lattimore, Nick Jones, Dylan Thompson, and Brandon Davis, as they share their personal testimonies of Faith at the First Baptist Church of Spartanburg, SC. What an inspiring and fun-filled evening of worship, testimony, and evangelism.
Two things I’ll briefly point out.
(1) He gave a series of sermons to the team called “The Christian Man Laws” to teach them “to stop being sissies for Christ.”
Here’s the video:
(2) He claims to have debated the “top evolutionists” in the country. I think it was actually a couple of high school teachers, but haven’t been able to confirm anything.
I haven’t confirmed those debates, either, so I suspect Chaplain Despres is lying. At the very least, he’s certainly NOT debated the “top evolutionists” in the country, for I’d know about that, and Googling reveals no debates at all. I, however, hereby offer to debate Chaplain Despres about evolution, violating my policy not to do it! Here’s the video, with the creationism coming right at the start, and Despres spews all the familiar creationist tropes. How embarrassing this must be to the more rational people at USC!
Now I wonder if the Department of Biological Sciences at USC knows that their official football chaplain is preaching creationism at church, and probably also to his players as well. Perhaps I’ll let them know.
Jesus Christ and Mohammad(PB&J) Dr. Coyne.. Despres just got out the hospital and you are calling him a liar? Dude.. I wish I could post this on my fb but I would get fired..
Then post the link of the debate, or at least some report of it. Just the little bit of dislogic he tries to pass off in this talk shows he could not win a debate with a top evolutionist. And just because he recently got out of the hospital, and I hope he recovers or has recovered from what it was that put him in there, doesn’t mean he can’t be called to task for untrue claims he is making to young adults. Your dismay should be turned toward Despres and the school that promotes this sort of thing. It’s beyond unlawful, but being unlawful should be enough to never have considered providing this disservice.
Do you have a point to your comment? If you think he’s telling the truth, find one reference to him debating a famous evoutionist.
I’m sorry that he’s had heart problems, and don’t wish that on anyone, but that doesn’t exculpate him from his unconstitutional behavior and for promoting ignorance in the form of creationism.
And don’t call me “dude.”
It’s a well established fact that all people who are admitted to hospitals are henceforth unable to lie. Christopher Hitchens spent considerable time there in his end days, and poof! With a puff of acerbic wit, God disappeared…
I’m glad that the FFRF issued this report. However, to any observer of sports (on any level), the report confirms what is obvious. In America, there is an “unholy alliance” between sports, religion, the military and business. The goal is to maintain and perpetuate a right-wing ruling class. In any society, not just the U.S., what better way is there to maintain power than to have people emotionally vested in the success of their favorite teams than to be concerned about the real ills of society? And if people are convinced that their chosen deity supports their teams, all the better.
Some years ago, when Tim Tebow was going through his antics (and subsequent persecution crisis when he was criticized for it) I came up with this comment:
If God was helping Tim Tebow complete passes, he did a really bad job of it.
When Tebow was in Denver, he played an entire game at QB for the Broncos and completed exactly two more passes that day that you or I. Tim Tebow gets shot after shot (he’s in camp with the Eagles right now despite being out of the NFL for over a year) because he’s an icon and the reason for that is mainly attributable to his christianity. Winning the Heisman trophy and a National Championship doesn’t guarantee you anything in the NFL.
Color me totally unsurprised if Michael Sam is not given the same fourth and fifth chances that Tebow has gotten should he decide to return to pro football.
Michael Sam’s case is somewhat different, as he is at least in a group that is discriminated against. I think that whatever happened to derail Sam’s career is complicated (including a lot of pressure to be the standard bearer for gay football players) and I personally wouldn’t feel it was unreasonable to give him a break if he wants to train up and give football another chance.
I certainly don’t feel it would be unreasonable. There ARE compelling, on field, reasons why Sam did not make either the Rams or Cowboys regular squads and he had a less than illustrious season the CFL last year. My point was exactly what you said in your first sentence, he’s from a group that is discriminated against, while Tebow is from a group that is privileged. Which is why, despite the fact that they are both marginal prospects, Tebow keeps getting invited to camps.
I see that we actually agree completely. I misunderstood your last sentence to mean that you thought Michael Sam *would* be given more chances. My bad. Not enough coffee.
sub
What is ironic is that all this involves the very people who are must unlikely to show the virtues touted by Christianity.
If you asked people “What’s the point of all this?”, I’m not sure they could give you a ready answer. It’s just tradition.
Having played high school football in the south and covered college football in the south, I’m pretty certain that if you asked what the point was, you would get a clear answer and that answer would be to openly proselytize.
A lot of people in the bible belt are completely unaware of, or obtuse to the establishment clause. Those chaplains would be among that group. I’m sure they would explain that they are using the resources of the program and the university to spread the love of Christ, or something to that effect, and then I’m confident that they would explain what a great thing it is to do.
I’m sure you’d get that answer from the Chaplain and maybe the Coach, but I was talking about a random player or parent who accepts the god-talk as normal.
I went to a private high school, but ostensibly a secular one. Still, we had “chapel” twice a week and there certainly was a connection between the football program and religiosity, but I don’t remember how strong it was. Having my environment suffused with religion was just so normal in the South that I hardly thought anything about it. It gives me the creeps thinking about it now.
Ah, yes. I misunderstood your comment. I think you;re very much right about that. I think the players are mostly just going with it because that’s the way they’ve been done.
I hope some athletes read this and realize that, yes, there is a problem here.
I played middle and high school football in East Tennessee in the early 80s. At that time no thought was given to the use of prayer and having pastors come to give a talk about Jesus. Conservative Protestant belief was so inculcated into our community it was an unquestioned part of the football experience. On the collegiate level, I’m sure it helps assure the powerful boosters, the fan base & the parents of the kids coming into the program if they think you are promoting “Christian” values. It doesn’t seem to have any impact on the criminal and unethical behavior that occurs at these university football programs. I remember when Bobby Bowden’s FSU team were constantly having players arrested or found to have violated the rules. Clearly Jesus wasn’t satisfied with the efforts to praise him by FSU. It will be difficult to battle the proselytizing and moralizing in the name of Christian faith as it is so entrenched. We just hired a new basketball coach at Tennessee and he has made it clear that his Christian faith is the most important aspect of who he is as a coach and a mentor to his players.
It’s worth a comment space to note that support for FFRF is important.
https://ffrf.org/donate
Even if you do not give money, you can follow the status of many unfortunate individuals or organizations who are unnecessarily oppressed by faith. In many cases a short, polite email to members within those public or government organizations can help stop religious abuse.
I have found that many organizations that promote religious behavior have members that secrete wish such practices stop. Auburn, for example, is certainly not without a secular minority who are repelled by the infusion of faith into their athletic program(s).
I’m a proud supporter of ffrf, and this report is an excellent example of why. Plus their flier is a good read.
Thanks for sharing this Jerry. George Carlin’s excellent metaphorical take on football-as- military (vs baseball as a kind of ‘pastural home’) comes to mind after reading this. It’s no secret how infected the US military is by the faith virus as well. By the way, an excellent counterpoint to bigotry / discrimination in sport (and society in general) is this group: http://youcanplayproject.org
When Fisher DeBerry, a close personal friend of Bobby Bowden, was head football coach at the US Air Force Academy, he apparently had a plaque or sign on the locker room wall that said “I am a member of team Jesus Christ first.” His players were not just collegiate student-athletes, they were cadets, as in active airmen in the US Air Force.
This is why I think the FFRFs campaign is vital. Its challenging the bulwark against the seperation of church and state where it is most deeply entrenched.
Even worse, they are proto-commissioned officers. Leadership cadre. The ones making decisions on behalf of us all in the most dangerous situations and under the worst circumstances. Certain religious groups made a determined grab for power and influence within the armed services. The Air Force is, arguably, the branch they were most successful with. The Air Force Academy has been a cesspool of religious fanaticism for the past 15 years or so. It has been really rather scary.
By an unfortunate coincidence, the Air Force built their academy in Colorado Springs, which is pretty much the capital of Evangelicalism. Naturally this means that the churches have a huge pool of impressionable minds to prey on. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has been fighting this influence for years, and some of the horror stories they’ve heard from the Academy are just appalling.
I’m actually in the Air Force, have been for 10 years (I should add that “Snow” isn’t my real last name), but enlisted so I don’t interact with officers much, especially not Academy grads. Nevertheless, it’s impossible not to see how pervasive Christianity is. Every big official ceremony has to open with a prayer.
In my admittedly limited experience, there is a lot of diversity (ethnic, gender, religious, etc.) in the lower ranks of the military, but it seems to me those who are not white, straight, Christian, and Republican tend to simply do their 4-6 years and get out.
Yes, it really has been.
I suppose I be always been a pacifist at heart because I much prefer baseball to football. And safe at home? You better believe I prefer that over unsafe in a war zone.
Comments are disabled on the videos…I’m shocked!
Christianity and football. It is just so weird but maybe football is just another OCD outlet, as I think all religions appeal to the OCD afflicted with their prayers and rituals.
Interesting take. Football may be the most ritualistic / order oriented of all sports too. What does that say about the US population, for whom football is by far the most popular sport!
It is a natural combination. As it says in Matthew: “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the Earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a football…”
Ha ha.
Christianity and white men with beards who speak, in the minds of the faithful, in perfect King James English.
This and football is what Richard Feynman meant by provincial.
Oh Humanity…wait for the cockroaches to rise, then you may not feel so super special.
Surely, this can’t be surprising. Wasn’t the last republican candidate for president a mormon who detests separation of church and state and publically stated so? What a farce!! Of the million republican candidates for president available to the voter, how many would agree to the separation of church and state? We are no better here in canada, where a god fearing conservative pm appointed an evangelical minister to the senate. By the way, said minister Is under investigation for sexual misconduct with a minor. By the way the honourable senator is married.
Anyone, and that should be nearly all who read at this site, should be well aware of the connection between sports and colleges and how corrupt it is. It is extremely sickening even without the religion but this does add another disgusting dimension to that connection.
Besides the FFRF who does anything about this. The schools themselves do nothing, the media does nothing and year after year it gets worse. Since football is practically a religion at most colleges in America, it should not surprise anyone that this stuff goes on.
I personally would not give a dime to the colleges, even the ones I attended. They do keep asking, however, just as they rake in all they can from sports.
If you recall John Oliver’s great piece about the exploitative nature of major intercollegiate athletes, then you’ll also recall that Dabo Swinney, whom has a yearly salary well into seven figures, referred to NCAA athletes asking for compensation for their efforts, which pay Swinney’s prodigious salary, as “entitlement.” All too often, college football coaches at major southern programs live in insulated fiefdoms in which they are never, ever challenged.
Fiefdoms, is the perfect word for these institutions. They had a good one at Penn State and now they must start over again. Should be no problem in the Big Ten, or is it 14 now.
It’s at least 11.
This is pretty important. I think this information should be dispersed to the media to shed some public light on it (where both sides of the public will react strongly, no doubt).
Yeesh, that last video.
If you look in the dictionary under the definition of “Buffoon” it should have a link to that video.
And I admit it, I’d love to see, if only for a minute of cringe-factor, the video of that guy debating…anyone.
Colour me naïve, but I would have thought that a competent coach would realise that an attitude that marginalised non-christians in the team would not be terribly good for team cohesion.
Many coaches are proselytizing the non-christian and secular players on the team. They Believe that jeebus is the way and don’t trust those heathens to play up to their ghod-given potential.
These coaches are so godsodden that they either can’t grasp the notion of non-Christianity (whether it’s another religion or nonreligion) or they figure that their players should go with the flow or quit, or they just don’t give a damn. They are guided solely by their ideology.
What a quandary they’d have if a star player turned out to be a Muslim or a Neopagan.
Despres says early on that the cameras were removed from his debate because of the thrashing he was giving his evolutionist opponent (or opponents, unclear what he meant, as with most of what he said!). Why take cameras out of something so groundbreaking! They’re on the verge of having creationism vindicated, and top evolutionists (or just one) annihilated, and they take the cameras away!!
I can’t wait to see it posted….oh no, I can’t….they took the cameras out! Ahh.
Ha!
I’m normally very reticent about using the term “lying,” but I have to say I have no problem thinking that term probably applies to his claims about the debate and the descriptions of the camera crew packing up.
That was hardly a trust-inducing display in that video.
Reminds me of John Haught’s claim that something as important as the Resurrection wouldn’t be able to be captured on film.
There is an intimate connection between American sports and the bible. Baseball is mentioned in Genesis 1:1:
I really think that’s a cricket reference
‘I tend to think that cricket is the greatest thing that God ever created on earth – certainly greater than sex, although sex isn’t too bad either.’
Harold Pinter
Sometime shortly after Adam made it to third base with Eve, humanity was doomed…
Third base, that’s the charm.
I was in a bar last evening, swilling tequila after a long day of grant writing and chatting with the other bar-flies. There was some kind of baseball game featuring young boys playing on the tube. I paid no attention until one of the boys, after a hit drove in a run, kissed his fist and raised his hands and eyes to the heavens. That gesture was replayed more than the hit.
I remarked to the gent next to me that I guessed that ‘their deity was better than the other team’s deity’. I should have waited a few seconds. As it was, he snorted his beer through his nose.
Good one…which inning was this, I would think seventh because it is a stretch.
rats…that was suppose to be for Blair
Jesus obviously comes in during the 9th inning because that’s when the home team needs a save.
I enjoy football, and it sucks that my team (Seattle Seahawks) has a blinkered Christian as quarterback: Russell Wilson. I cringed when they ‘miraculously’ beat the Packers in last year’s NFC championship and Wilson, crying and blubbering gave all the credit to G*d. It is all so very dumb. The omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent creator of the universe happened to want the Seahawks to win that day. Facepalms all the way down.
It starts well before high school. When I lived in Greenville, SC, the main sports teams for kids were run by these guys. http://www.upward.org/about
“Private universities, of course, are exempt from First Amendment requirements about not putting religion into sports.”
Yes, well, Republicans, conservatives and their ilk want as much as possible privatized. This suits religiosos fine with regard to the issue at hand.
All they need is to have a campus chapter of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes whose events are optional for team members and isn’t funded by state money.
I love when people who are chaplaining for a sport where athletic young men clad in delightfully tight pants jump on top of each other, slap each other’s butts, and fumble balls talk about the need to be hyper masculine for Jesus.
If there were a god, I cannot understand why she would give a hoot about which team wins a football game! Surely there would be more important issues for ‘divine intervention’?
American and Rugby football both were born in the “Muscular Christianity” craze of the early 20th century. The proselytizers don’t think there could ever be a separation between religion and football.
http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2015/may/08/muscular-christianity-and-american-sports-undying-love-of-violence
‘The Muscular Christians had particular concerns that America’s men were becoming “soft”’
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Preachers are like rap artists: they conform to an archetypal style rather than have one of their own.
He must be a good preacher, because he has the “style” (never mind the content) and he uses “the voice” (the Weirding Way). He must be a good preacher, because he knows all the clichés and can repeat them like the big name pros.
That second video of the chaplain preacher is SCARY. That man should not be anywhere near people’s minds.
Wow. Just wow. He gets paid?
Utterly contemptible.
The presence of team sports in universities, that is.