Naperville Central Football released a statement today in solidarity with Head Coach Mike Stine concerning the complaint over a pregame prayer depicted in a picture taken by David Neesley. The football team’s statement is as follows:

“We, as a football team and a family, give Coach Stine our full support. He is the best coach in the state and cares about each and every one of us more than any other coach cares about his players. We are proud that he is willing to stand up for his faith and for the example he sets for us. He is a role model for every one of us in a world where true male role models are becoming few and far between. The players will continue this tradition of praying before our games and would like to extend an invitation to all members of the Freedom From Religion Foundation to come out next fall and watch us pray and play the game we love. Go Redhawks.”

In response, President Annie Laurie Gaylor of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) sent Central Times the following statement, directed towards members of the football team:

Public high school students are coming to the defense of inappropriate religious conduct by a school authority figure—in this case the coach who makes or breaks their athletic experience. It’s not the fault of these students that they do not participate in prayer with student players. That was the job of Naperville Central High School, and it has failed abysmally.

Public schools exist to educate, not indoctrinate. public school athletes should not be coached to “pray and play the game we love,” as the players put it in their statement. This “tradition” is illegal, coercive and divisive. FFRF fully supports a student’s right to their own personal religious beliefs, and to pray on their own. We are confident a coach who cares about every student on the team will understand why it crosses the line to pray with students.

No student athlete should be pressured to pray, whether to impress a coach or fellow students. The student statement demonstrates there is an atmosphere in which students are subject to expectations of religious conformity and orthodoxy at Naperville Central. This turns believe Christian students into favored “insiders” and everyone else (minority religionists, such as Jews or Muslims, and nonbelievers) into disfavored “outsiders.” Today one in three young persons identifies as nonreligious.

Since 1910, under an Illinois State Supreme Court ruling, bible instruction wisely has been barred in Illinois public schools, with the court noting that “school exercises in which the rest of the school joins, separates him from his fellows, puts him in a class by himself, deprives him of equality with the other pupils, subjects him to religious stigma and places him at a disadvantage in the school.”  People ex rel. Ring vs. Board of Education, 245 ill. 344 (1910).

More than 65 years ago, in a case originating in Champaign, Ill., the U.S. Supreme Court barred religious instruction in our public schools, involving a case regarding stigmatization of a non believing child, noting: “The public school is at once the symbol of our democracy and the most pervasive means for promoting our common destiny. In no activity of the State is it more vital to keep out divisive forces than in its schools, to avoid confusing, not to say fusing, what the Constitution sought to keep strictly apart.” McCollum v. Board of Education 333 U.S. 203, 232 (1948).

More than a half century ago, the Supreme Court first weighed in against government-imposed school prayer (Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421, 1962). The high court has since followed such rulings by barring bible readings and recitations in public schools (Abbington Township School District v. Schempp, 374. U.S. 38, 72, 1985), graduation prayers (Lee v. Weisman, 120 L.E. 2d 467/112 S.C.T. 2649, 1992) and student-led prayers imposed on all students at public school functions, including football games (Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, 530 U.S. 290, 2000).

It’s incumbent on Naperville Community Unit School District 203 to step in, and educate not only staff but students, on the importance of keeping religion out of our public schools. FFRF Staff Attorneys would be happy to offer symposia on the law and why it exists to the District, its staff and students.

UPDATE: Friday, Dec. 11,  1:10 p.m.

Members of the football team still stand by Stine’s actions concerning pregame prayer.

Juniors Jack Simpson and Matt Kribs both said that despite continuing correspondence with FFRF, they will continue the pregame prayer.

“It’s turned into a tradition,” Simpson said. “I think it’s something that’s going to continue for a long time.”

Junior Brady Ullom reiterated the statement from this morning made by Daniel Bumpus.

“Like [Bumpus] said, Coach Stine has been a mentor and a friend to us,” Ullom said. “We all trust him and he trusts us and he was just standing for what he believed in, and what a lot of us believed in, including myself.”

Bumpus followed up his statement from earlier with Central Times as well.

“I am a firm believer in the freedom of religion, for all, not just for Christians,” Bumpus said. “Many of our teammates are not Christian. The atheists and Hindus on the team not only bow their heads when we pray, but actually say the words. There is no pressure to actually say the words as none of the coaches or players can hear the words what each person is saying. All participation is optional. Furthermore, the FFRF’s stance to only support an individual praying alone goes against the free exercise of religion. Fellow believers should not be prohibited from praying together, wherever they are. To argue this is to go against the 1st Amendment rights of the students. Even if the coaches were not around, we would still continue to pray and pray together.”

This story is developing and will be updated as we receive more information.