The Sarasota County Schools (Fla.) system must immediately stop an outside adult from the Fellowship of Christian Athletes from serving as a religious chaplain to a public school baseball team, asserts the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

FFRF has learned that North Port High School is permitting an adult representative from the fellowship to minister to the baseball team. A Feb. 8 post from the official Sarasota County Fellowship of Christian Athletes Facebook account tagged the high school’s team, writing that they “are praying over each coach and player by name.” 

Allowing an outside religious adult to serve as a chaplain in connection with a public school athletic program violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment and exposes students to unconstitutional religious coercion, FFRF warns in a letter to the district’s legal counsel.

“A public high school allowing an outside adult to act as a religious adviser to other people’s children is unconstitutional and particularly troubling for those parents and students who are not Christians or do not subscribe to any religion,” FFRF Staff Attorney Sammi Lawrence writes to the legal counsel for the school district. 

Student-athletes are especially susceptible to unconstitutional coercion. Students know their coaches control their playing time and positions, directly affecting their opportunities for scholarships and recruitment. When coaches and the school allow a Fellowship of Christian Athletes representative to serve as team  chaplain as part of official baseball team activities, student-athletes will undoubtedly feel that going along with religious activities, interacting with the chaplain, or at least appearing to agree with the chaplain’s religious beliefs is essential to pleasing coaches and being viewed as a team player. Making such coercion even more untenable is the fact that  nearly half of Americans born after 1996 have no religious affiliation. Nearly a third of Florida adults have no religious affiliation, at 27 percent of the population far surpassing any specific religious denomination, and 7 percent belong to non-Christian religions. .

FFRF is urging the district to stop violating students’ First Amendment rights and dismiss the chaplain.

“Public school sports are spaces for student-athletes to grow and learn the values of dedication and teamwork. There should be no ‘pray to play’ operating in our public school athletic programs,” says FFRF Co-President Dan Barker. “The district must end the chaplaincy at once — and stop privileging Christianity over nonreligion and all other religions.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with about 42,000 members and several chapters nationwide, including more than 2,000 members and a chapter in Florida. FFRF’s purposes are to defend the constitutional principle of separation between church and state, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.

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