The Christian Post, whose format eerily resembles that of the Huffington Post (see below), reports that the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) is pushing back On the Freedom from Religion Foundation’s (FFRF’s) claim that football team chaplains at public universities are an unconstitutional violation of the Establishment Clause. (See a precis of the FFRF’s complaint here.) In other words, the ACLJ thinks that football chaplains are just fine.
But first, what is the ACLJ? Wikipedia describes it as follows:
The American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ) is a politically conservative, Christian-based social activism organization in the United States. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C. and associated with Regent University School of Law in Virginia Beach, Virginia. The ACLJ was founded in 1990 by law school graduate and evangelical minister Pat Robertson. ACLJ generally pursues constitutional issues and conservative Christian ideals in courts of law.
It’s not surprising, then, that the group claims that it’s perfectly all right for public universities to pay chaplains to minister to the spiritual needs of their athletes. As the Post reports:
The American Center for Law and Justice has sent out a legal letter supported by 81,500 Americans defending football team chaplains from the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s claims that they’re imposing their Christian beliefs on players. The ACLJ argued that if atheist professors are not considered to be posing an issue to students’ rights, neither should sports chaplains. [JAC: you can find the ACLJ’s petition here]
“University students understand that they will be exposed to a variety of religious and nonreligious views on campus. Sports team chaplaincies pose no threat to the rights of university students to hold their own religious views, any more than does graduation prayer, or for that matter, a professor’s avowed atheism,” the conservative law group wrote in its letter.
But it’s simply insane to argue that atheist professors are the equivalent of football-team chaplains. Professors in a public university who tried to impose atheism on their students would be violating the Constitution—just as much as if they were proselytizing for a particular faith in class. But that’s exactly what the team chaplains are supposed to do. Exposure to different views does not mean that representatives of the state must provide that exposure as representatives of the state. That, in fact, is illegal.
An additional problem, of course, is that the football chaplaincy is coercive: players don’t get to opt out of team prayers, or, if they can in principle, they’ll still feel coerced to participate anyway. For only religious coaches hire chaplains, and if you don’t pray with Coach, you’re pretty much not going to play. (The title of the FFRF’s report is “Pray to Play”.) As the FFRF said in the letter it sent to 25 offending public universities:
“Chaplains regularly lead the teams in prayer, conduct chapel services, and more. These religious activities are not voluntary, as the universities claim, because, as the report notes, ‘student athletes are uniquely susceptible to coercion from coaches,'” the atheist group added.
The ACLJ further argued that if universities can have chapels and religious chaplains, their football teams can, too.
“The Establishment Clause does not compel the expulsion of sports team chaplains who serve voluntarily to meet the spiritual needs of student athletes, any more than the Establishment Clause requires the razing of university chapels that exist to meet similar needs.”
But that’s also bogus. If a college already has chaplains and chapels (and many do, but the public schools have many denominations on tap to cater to many students), why don’t the football players use those instead? As the FFRF pointed out, 100% of college football chaplains are Christians. The students have a choice; the athletes don’t.
In the end, any organization claiming that the presence of atheist professors on campus is equivalent to the presence of paid football-team chaplains is acting mendaciously.
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By the way, compare the CP’s banner to that of HuffPo. The Christians are copying!
I C PUS. Do you?
b&
The Christians are copying!
Religion is nothing if not syncretic and it never, ever cites it’s sources.
Atheist professors would be comparable to Christian professors, not team chaplains. Either ACLJ is being disingenuous, or they’ve watched waaaay too many screenings of the movie “God Is Not Dead” (meaning at least once.)
Oh, heck — it could be both.
Specifically, Christian professors who never ever express an opinion about religion.
Or to stick with the football theme, atheist professors are comparable to Christian coaches.
That was exactly what I thought too.
As far as the other thing goes, my money is on both, plus a whole lot more nonsense that affirms their position.
Well, the mastheads aren’t all that much alike. Huffpo doesn’t have ‘Church and Ministry’ as a heading.
To the religious, absence of support for their religion is the equivalent of denial of their religious beliefs.
I was an atheist in the classroom (as a professor of literature) for more than four decades. Never do I recall a student asking me about my personal attitude toward religion; nor did I bring the topic up independent of course content. This is not to say that some few of our texts, especially novels, didn’t represent an atheistic/materialistic worldview. But far more had theism at their hearts, whether represented as good or bad (I think of ‘The Scarlet Letter’ and even ‘Huckleberry Finn,’ [where Huck describes a country preacher’s ‘ornery’ sermon as all about ‘preforeordestination’]).
The point of our literary analyses was to identify and understand the ethical universes of our readings. The hoped-for honing of critical thinking skills and the broadening of cultural literacy were our goals–the attainment of which would help students think their way into (or perhaps out of) atheism, without the word ever being attached to the professor.
The Manichean and Machiavellian behavior of groups like ACLJ towards college professors is a disgusting insult–as well as further proof that many Christians will tell any order of lie to have their way in our society.
Every chance I get, I proselytize for Atheism using the Atheist bible, the Atheist gospels, the Atheist Sutras, the Atheist Vedas, the Atheist Talmud, Midrash, Tanach, Mishnah and the Atheist Quran & Hadith.
I’m known to do Atheist spells while hitting a good rhythm on my Atheist drum. Also, the Atheist entheogens are the best, try our peyote!
With logic like theirs, I’m not sure how the ACLJ expects to win any cases. As Sastra said, atheist professors are the equivalent of Christian professors.
The ACLJ are just vexatious litigants. If this is the best they can do, it won’t be long before they’ll develop an uncomplimentary reputation, and they won’t be able to attract any decent lawyers to work for them.
The Chief Counsel for the ACLJ is Jay Sekulow, from the faculty of Regent University. In addition, the ACLJ has offices on the Regent campus. That’s pretty much all you need to know about the quality of their lawyers. They are basically in business to defend Christian privilege.
Yeah. I noticed Kim Davis’s lawyer is from Liberty University. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s in the same category isn’t it?
Oh, yeah, Liberty is much bigger, but they’re both run by Christian wackos, for Christian wackos.
Yes, Liberty University was started by Jerry Falwell, a competing grifter to Pat Robertson. Whenever I hear about Liberty University I think of Christopher Hitchen’s quote: “If you gave [Jerry] Falwell an enema he could be buried in a matchbox.” A statement that is undoubtedly true of the lawyers that graduate from both Liberty University and Regent University.
Well, as PZ Myers, as militant an atheist as one will find, says the subject of religion never comes up in courses he teaches.
errrrr…..How does one “impose” atheism exactly?
Hypothetical situation:
Christian student proclaims the Christian God exists. The atheist professor asks for evidence. Student can provide none. And the professor asks how can it exist when you can’t provide sufficient evidence for its existence?
Is that “atheistic evangelism”?
That is the “war on Christianity!” For shame!!
It is very not surprising that some christian rag no one ever heard of would try to mimic the Huffington Post in appearance. Modern christianity, having no creative spark whatsoever, often apes what it sees around it, in either a pathetic attempt to look sophisticated, or a merely nauseating attempt to fool people.
Of course, the most notorious example of this is probably Conservapedia, but all christian rock music fits nicely into this analysis, and the reader will find it a trivial exercise to extend this list ad infinitum.
Call me crazy, but I’ve never found the argument from 81,500 lunatics very compelling.
Football is enough of a meritocracy that if you can run the 40 in 4.3 seconds, or toss the seed 70 yards downfield, or just knock down the dumb sumbitch on the other side of the line of scrimmage, you’ll still play — but you’ll be labeled “selfish,” not a team-player.
“American Center for Law & Justice”
I just _love_ these high-falutin’-soundin’ contrafactual names that these organizations come up with. These names always seem to have a slimy undertone to them, or maybe I’ve just gotten accustomed to sussing them out as hypocritical by the arrogance in the wording.
The truculent Right has coopted and corrupted “liberty”; now their sights are set on “justice.”
I too was startled at the pretension of the name. But, they were nice enough to allow for the possibility of other Law & Justice institutions, just not at the center. For example the “New American Periphery for Law & Justice”. They just want you to know the center is already taken.
In that case, Yeats was right, the center cannot hold.
Also note that it is one letter away from “ACLU”, the acronyum for an organization which is from what I understand regarded as “liberal” by some of the extreme elements in the US.