Sports Illustrated Bashes Coach Kennedy, Christians As Attackers Of Democracy

Sports Illustrated headline: “When Faith And Football Joined Hands Against American Democracy” Now, what did these toxically masculine Christians do? Joe Kennedy, a high school football coach, knelt down in prayer after each game. After he was fired, he brought suit. He is expected to be ruled on by the Supreme Court. 

SI’s Greg Bishop also claims Kennedy’s ongoing legal cause demonstrates the “further erosion of the separation between church and state.” 

Kennedy’s story began in October 2015 after a Bremerton High School game had ended. The assistant coach went to mid-field and knelt down to pray, as was his custom. Bishop writes, “But everything changed that night.” His team members and supporters rushed onto the field to join him. News reporters were there, too, to cover what the ACLU has railed about for years – the non-existent separation of church and state. 

For the previous six weeks, Coach K’s prayers had ignited controversy from lefties unwilling to tolerate a man’s right to pray. The prayers were not allowed by his government school employer, which led to an ongoing dispute that eventually resulted in his dismissal. First Liberty, an evangelical Christian law firm, was already there to help him to protect his religious freedom. It was not easy for him to win at the lower courts, which led to his eventual loss before the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Kennedy, Bishop claimed was trying to draw attention and get support. “His opponents argue he got exactly what he wanted, and skeptics describe his framework as convenient, nifty bits of PR spin.” 

Coach Kennedy’s legal case (Bishop calls it a “circus” and a “political brawl”) is now in its seventh year. It has also “widened into a culture-war cudgel” and that is now case No. 21-418 at SCOTUS.  

The Obama years saw the United States’ worst attack on religious liberty in U.S. History. Bishop insists that Kennedy symbolizes a “religious movement that’s surging with momentum … a powerful right-wing machine many say is employing a timeless division tactic: us vs. Them.” They consider him a symbol of religious freedom. (The First Amendment actually guarantees Kennedy’s right to pray, though Bishop describes this as an attack on democracy and an act of defiance).: 

To them, he’s a hero, David slaying an anti-faith Goliath. To others, he’s a sledgehammer aimed at a bedrock of democracy: the separation of church and state. 

Sports Illustrated also relates how the Bremerton school district lawyer/president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Rachel Laser, is “terrified” because the Kennedy case placed her in “alternate universe of disinformation and propaganda — and, in that world, even democracy is in danger.” 

Additionally, Sports Illustrated interviewed three attorneys who consider a coach who prays “as perilous to foundational American ideals … ” Bishop claims that Kennedy’s opponents are clinging to the Constitution, though the phrase “separation of church and state” appears nowhere in the document. These “white Christian nationalists” are desperately trying to hang on to a country that no longer exists, one that failed to elect a black president until 2008. 

A reinvigorated Christian conservative base owes its revival mostly to Donald Trump’s presidency, along with “his proposed Muslim ban and anti-immigration stances, his border wall and inciting rhetoric; and his appointments of religious conservatives to the judiciary’s most powerful positions,” Bishop wails. .  

Laser tells SI the “white Christian nationalists” are engaging in a disinformation campaign because they “are willing to destroy our democracy to achieve their ends.” That includes the desire to overturn Roe v. Wade. She claims Kennedy is only their pawn. 

If anyone is engaging in disinformation, it’s the man Bishop sees in the mirror. 

Kennedy told NBC News “I was just doing the free exercise of my religion and wasn’t going to go hide it because I work for the government. No one in America should have to hide who they are or that they have faith.” 

In April, oral arguments were held at the high courts. The New York Post reported a Supreme Court decision on Kennedy is expected before the end of the current term, this summer.