Editor: CB Scott needs no introduction.
All over the United States young men and small boys are getting ready for the first of the season game of America’s greatest sport, FOOTBALL. Old men are cleaning B-B-Q grills, buying pork ribs, chops, and butts, and all the while checking to make sure their favorite team shirts and jerseys from last season still fit for when they go to the first game of the season so they will look trim and athletic for their tailgate debut. They are also making sure their wives ordered all the right tickets to the right games. No self respecting FOOTBALL fan wants to wind up in the bleachers, watching girls Soccer because his wife ordered the wrong tickets to the wrong sport. (Is soccer a sport?)
Yes, it is America and America in the fall means FOOTBALL. Americans get involved in FOOTBALL one way or another, even churches get involved. That has always been the case and it has been a great ministry opportunity for many….at least up until now.
According to Todd Starnes of Fox News, that might not be allowed for some local churches in the state of Georgia. Starnes reported that the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), sent a letter to the superintendent of Walker County Schools demanding an “immediate investigation” into Ridgeland High School football coach, Mark Mariakis. It seems that the “good Americans” associated with the FFRF believe that it is a breach of the principle of separation of church and state for Coach Mariakis to allow local churches in the surrounding area of the high school to prepare pre-game meals for the Ridgeland High football team before they play games. The FFRF folks are also upset because Coach Mariakis “prayed with his team, used Bible verses in motivational speeches and on team shirts and participated in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.”
“Taking public school football teams to church, even for a meal, is unconstitutional,” wrote FFRF attorney Andrew Seidel, according to the report by Starnes. Starnes went on to report Seidel as having said, “This program is an egregious violation of the Establishment Clause and must cease immediately…taking school children to churches and having ministers present the Gospel of Jesus Christ and having the food blessed ‘shatters the protections the First Amendment put in place.”
The Walker County School system is giving the concerns of the FFRF consideration.
Well, I don’t know about the rest of you Sports Fans out there in the Baptist Blog World, but this old Southern Baptist Sabanite believes that what the Walker County School system needs to give attorney Andrew Seidel and the FFRF is a good old fashioned Crack-Back Block and let the devil take the hindmost parts with the rest of it.
Let them church ladies feed them young’uns and play FOOTBALL! And ROLL TIDE, Y’ALL!