Hamilton County Elementary School in Florida has agreed to stop using athletic activities to pressure young children to convert to Christianity.
The Hamilton County Elementary School had been using a Fellowship of Christian Athletes club to hold religious rituals during the school day, taking time and resources away from other instructions. No other religions besides Christianity were allowed to engage in such coercive activities at the school.
The school’s administrators had at first tried to claim that the Fellowship of Christian Athletes club was a student-run club. That argument quickly fell apart.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation wrote in a letter to the school, “Elementary students are too young to truly run a club entirely on their own initiative with no input from school staff or outside adults. The Establishment Clause prohibits school employees from organizing or leading a religious club for students and therefore prohibits religious clubs in elementary schools. Likewise, a public school cannot legally allow outside adults to run a religious club for children at an elementary school. Any claims that the Hamilton Elementary FCA club is ‘student led’ are at best naive and at worst dishonest. Young children cannot practically initiate, organize, and run an FCA club on their own, meaning adults are the ones truly behind the club.”
FFRF further explained, “The school’s actions needlessly alienate and exclude students and families who are not Christian, including those who are nonreligious. At least a third of Generation Z (those born after 1996) have no religion, with a recent survey revealing almost half of Gen Z qualify as “nones” (religiously unaffiliated). Hamilton Elementary should strive to be welcoming and inclusive of all students, not just those who subscribe to a particular brand of Christianity.”
Supporters of placing Christian organizations into public schools have never been able to explain why a religion that supposedly already has the support of the all-powerful ruler of the entire universe needs to use government resources to spread its beliefs to children.
