Don’t you just love the whining morons who complain that a church is doing something even though the whiners won’t do it themselves?
Take the case of churches in LaFayette, Georgia, providing meals to local football teams before games. Here are people (yes, churches are in fact filled with people) doing a great thing (feeding young athletes). I find it bizarre that feeding kids could possibly be deemed “unconstitutional”, yet that’s the word being bandied about by the lunatic fringe, aka the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF).
The FFRF hates God and demands that the rest of the world fall in line with their opinion. It would seem that Freedom of Speech applies only to the FFRF and nobody else.
Sorry… nobody’s buying that crap here.
Freedom of Religion is not Freedom FROM Religion, yet that’s what these idiots constantly promote. Any mention of God or church even in the most distant way is an invitation to the FFRF to sue you.
Obviously these folks don’t have anything better to do, such as making meals for young athletes like those evil church folk do, and must instead mandate that nobody else make meals for the kids either.
“Taking public school football teams to church, even for a meal, is unconstitutional,” FFRF attorney Andrew Seidel wrote in a letter to the district. “This program is an egregious violation of the Establishment Clause and must cease immediately.”
Seidel said 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.”
In other words… How dare churches feed young football players?!?! It oughta be a crime!!!
How very… enlightened of them.
Mark Mariakis, the coach of the Ridgeland High School Panthers Football Team, regularly works with many churches in the area, upholding a longstanding tradition of churches preparing pre-game meals for the football players on game day.
The Chattanooga Valley Baptist Church is one of many churches who fulfill this tradition and that church’s Youth Director, Ritchie White, is surprised that anyone has an issue with churches feeding teenage football players.
“It would be interesting to see what part of the Constitution we violated by simply offering a meal to fellow Americans,” he told Fox News. “These are kids from our area that we do love and we do care about.”
It is a tradition to show support for the players, he said, and since many team members are also members of the church it only makes sense that the church would do what it can to support school athletics.
Robert Jeffress, the pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, got it right when he told Fox News,
“The Freedom From Religion Foundation has dedicated itself to perverting the very real First Amendment freedom of religious expression for an imaginary freedom from religious expression. It is time for all Christians to push back against the attempts of atheistic groups and judicial activists to erase our constitutional right of freedom of religious expression.”
If the Freedom From Religion Foundation is so vehemently opposed to churches feeding children before a football game, maybe they ought to put their money where their loud mouths are and feed the kids instead.
Will they? Of course not.
There’s no national press release in it for them to perform such a humble and decent task.
The term atheist covers a broad and growing spectrum of the population. To use that term to decry what a small subgroup of atheists, who object to this meals for teen athlete program, is an invalid generalization.
Not having a belief in the existence of one or more deities is what being an atheist means. There is no other shared belief that is required to be one. To assume there is amounts to a made up “straw man” argument.
The particular group in question should be questioned on their beliefs and action, no attempt to criticize millions of others who don’t share that belief is justified.
Thanks Larry, for your input. While the net I cast may indeed be too large as you contend, I write from my own personal experience and in that context every atheist I have personally encountered does very much hate God and is willing to expend an incredible amount of energy fighting against a God they insist does not exist. That you are not doing so shows a willingness to “live and let live” that the idiots at the Freedom From Religion Foundation clearly do not share.
In the case of these football players, the tradition of supporting the team by feeding them a pre-game meal dates back generations. Suddenly it’s a crime against humanity and a violation of the Constitution? I think not.
hey chris and larry,
chris, great blog, and larry, while your premise is basically accurate in the literal sense; what is more typically the case is that atheists support this type of crap in general; if only by default… i know, ’cause i know a few.
you could look at it either through the more extreme george bush 2 concept that, “youre either with us or youre against us.” or the obviously more accurate view of Jesus Christ, “if youre not against us, youre for us.”
but even deferring to the 2nd view, atheists are basically against the very fundamentals that founded the united states.
as jefferson said, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.”
and he also said, “[C]an the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed THEIR ONLY FIRM BASIS: a conviction in the minds of the people that THESE LIBERTIES ARE THE GIFT OF GOD? – that they are not to be violated but with His wrath?”
so basically larry, i would have to contend that all atheists, UNLESS they EXPLICITLY support the teaching and promotion of a “just God” being the very foundation of our liberties and our american exceptionalist culture (even though they may personally not believe in God); then they are defacto supporting these fringe and more radical atheist groups(which are also typically zionist israeli funded)… who are in fact nothing more than totalitarians masquerading as supporters of the first amendment while COMPLETELY missing its core and basis.
that said, i thank you for commenting and encourage you to read more of our founding history in the hopes that the wisdom of our founders and THEIR UNILATERAL belief in a Sovereign God will help you come around to a secured belief in same, as they have indeed helped me to be immovably convinced without a shred of doubt that there is indeed a “Great Sovereign of the Universe”(dr benjamin franklin) “that presides over the destinies of nations”(patrick henry).
it was the GREAT wisdom of these God-fearing men that inspired them to create a limited democratic republic and then baptize it with the “blood of patriots and tyrants”(jefferson). so when God-haters expound on their un-american position and other atheists dont come running out of the woodwork to condemn them roundly for attempting to undermine what jefferson called, “the ONLY firm basis [of] the liberties of a nation.” … it is then that we must accuse ALL SILENT ATHEISTS as conspiring to deprive the rest of us believers and followers of our founders, of our nations only firm basis of liberty.
which attack against our rights is indeed a violation of our liberty, which liberty is “not to be violated without His wrath”… or ours.
best regards larry, to truth and liberty !!