A volunteer football coach at a Clarksville, Tennessee high school has been removed from his position for praying on the field, sparking renewed debate about what role the Bible and prayer have in public school athletics.
Northwest High assistant football coach Trey Campbell reportedly brought a Bible and gathered his team in prayer around him during a recent football game.
Fearing that Campbell was blurring the line between personal faith and his official duties, he was asked to leave by school principal Brandi Blackley – an order he initially refused, before being escorted out at halftime.
Now, the coach is on leave and under investigation. So where exactly is the line between faith and football?
Does Prayer Belong on the Gridiron?
The school says that it has no problem with Coach Campbell praying privately at work. But they say that some interpreted Campbell’s prayers – surrounded by students – as coercive.
“It’s my understanding that the concern was not with private prayer, but that the principal received a concern that an employee was proselytizing in their official capacity,” wrote the district communications officer Anthony D. Johnson in a statement.
Campbell, however, doesn’t dispute that he was proselytizing to the players – just that it is legally wrong to do so.
“I stood by my faith because that’s what I told my boys they needed to do,” said Campbell of his football field prayers. “I told them I love them, but this was just the beginning of their journey with Christ, and that this is what it looks like when you are doing right by the Lord: The enemy does whatever he can to draw you from the Lord.”
Was it Coercive?
Exactly what unfolded that night remains contested. There are accounts that Campbell was leading students in prayer, and there are pictures from previous school events of Campbell doing as much.
However, one student says that the students joined the coach in prayer voluntarily. “He was just reading to himself, and then people tried to come up to him, and he’s never gonna deny spreading the word of God… “I think that’s being misinterpreted that he was leading a group prayer, which he was not.”
Private Faith or Public Pressure?
You may remember the case of Joseph Kennedy, a Washington state football coach who prayed with students on the 50-yard line.
In 2015, his school district asked him to stop praying, fearing that the very public nature of his prayers could be interpreted as a school endorsement of his Christian faith. Some of his players reported feeling pressured to join him and their teammates in prayer, fearing their position on the team could be at risk if they didn’t.
When he refused, Kennedy was fired. He took his case all the way to the Supreme Court, which eventually in 2022 ruled 6-3 in his favor. The Court decided he did nothing wrong and that it was a private display of faith that students just so happened to join in on.
That is the same argument being used today in defense of Coach Campbell. But is it truly private when a coach – the authority figure players depend on for approval – is the one praying?
And is all of this a privilege reserved only for Christians? As Ian Smith, an attorney for Americans United for Separation of Church & State, put things, “if this man had been Muslim and engaged in teaching Muslim religious teachings, these people would be going out of their minds.”
What’s your take? Should a high school coach be allowed to pray on the field, or can such actions coerce impressionable students?
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