After Auburn University’s head football coach was seen assisting with a Christian baptism in a video that went viral this past week, an anti-religious organization tried to suppress the practice.
So according to Fox News, the Freedom From Religion Foundation wrote to Auburn University President Christopher Roberts, alleging that Hugh Freeze, the University’s head football coach, had violated the Establishment Clause of the Constitution by assisting with the baptisms.
The statement says, “These continuing and recurring constitutional violations at the University generate a coercive environment that leaves out students who don’t agree with the Christian views that football coaches are pushing on their players.”
The head of the Center for Academic Freedom and senior lawyer Tyson Langhofer of Alliance Defending Freedom, an expert in legal matters, asserted that the anti-religious organization was operating under a “twisted interpretation of the Constitution’s First Amendment.”
Langhofer stated, “The fundamental right of students and their coaches to practice their faith could be destroyed by the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s perverted interpretation of the Constitution’s First Amendment.”
The study says that Alliance Defending Freedom has become one of the nation’s most successful Supreme Court law companies. They have won a lot of cases that have to do with the First Amendment and religious freedoms.
Langhofer also said, “Public universities should be the marketplace of ideas and should protect and encourage free speech as well as the free exercise of religion.”
The event took place this past week and drew about 5,000 individuals, most of whom happened to be students. The event took place on the campus of Auburn University at Neville Arena.
The anti-religious organization declared, “Auburn University represents a public university and not a religious one.”
“Institutional employees should not use their job to plan, promote, or take part in a religious event; doing so is improper and against the Constitution. The coaches at Auburn also can’t try to convert kids to Christianity, do religious events with them, or employ a chaplain to do these things.”
On the other hand, Langhofer declared that the letter from the organization was “unconstitutional.”
“While on campus, religious teachers and students can do religious practices in their own time, as the Supreme Court recently said again in the Coach Kennedy case. ‘You aren’t welcome here,’ is the message that the FFRF wants to convey by silencing religious students. That goes against the Constitution,” Langhofer declared.
Apparently, the baptism happened as part of the “Unite Auburn” event, which also had guests like Reverend Jonathan Pokluda, Jennie Allen, and the lead pastor of Harris Creek Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, as well as music by the Christian praise band Passion.
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