A high school lacrosse coach in rural Virginia is under fire after prompting student athletes to engage in prayer sessions after their games, according to recent a press release from the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), a gang of Wisconsin-based atheists and agnostics who frequently target Christians.
The FFRF release claims the coach is “coercing” the student athletes into prayer and includes an image — seemingly from the coach’s social media account — which depicts his lacrosse team kneeling on the field for prayer.
“This is why as a coach I could care less about the scores of our games,” the coach wrote on social media. “And thank you to Manchester High School for joining us.”
As stated in a post on X, “The Freedom From Religion Foundation is insisting that Chesterfield County Public Schools in Virginia stop a high school lacrosse coach from coercing student athletes into prayer.”
The institution at hand, Matoaca High School, has not responded to FFRF on its school website or social media platforms.
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“[The coach] has clearly crossed the constitutional line by directing and encouraging student athletes to engage in prayer while acting in his official capacity as a district employee,” said a FFRF lawyer.
“This coach needs to quit abusing his authority in order to promote his personal religious views to what is essentially a captive audience of students,” added FFRF co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor.
The FFRF has a history of pushing for the removal of prayer and Christian activities in public schools.
In 2023, the group worked to strike Bible quotes from a classroom in Oklahoma, according to local news. And in the same year, after an Auburn University football coach baptized a student, the FFRF claimed the school committed “repeated constitutional violations” and created a “coercive environment that excludes those students who don’t subscribe to the Christian views.”
Gaylor, 68, has participated in many pro-abortion conferences and organizations that push Christianity out of public entities. And as Todd Starnes wrote in his new book, the FFRF is one of the most virulent anti-Christian hate groups in the nation. Click here to read “Twilight’s Last Gleaming: Can America Be Saved?”