Bremerton High School Assistant Coach Joe Kennedy used to run marathons. He compared Friday to finally crossing the finish line. After an eight-year-long legal battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court, the fired assistant coach was back on the field at Memorial Stadium in Bremerton, Wash.
Fans from the opposing team joined the 1,500 in attendance in applauding his return. It is a palpable reminder that there are more of us than there are of them when it comes to believing in God or, at a minimum, believing in the Constitution’s guarantees of freedom of speech and expression.
After the game, Coach Kennedy resumed his routine. He knelt at the 50-yard line for a brief few seconds of silent prayer. There are no atheists in foxholes, and sports in which life and limb may be on the line often draw people to prayer. A jockey might ask for blessing before a race where he may be trampled to death or injured. Or perhaps a NASCAR driver may pray before tearing off in a race in which he may end up hurtling through space engulfed in a ball of fire.
For us mere mortals, it may be a short prayer to our guardian angel as we head onto that highway to work, where a crazed driver may send us to meet our maker sooner than we’d expected.
One hopes that some atheists, agnostics, and secularists who had him fired, St. Paul-like, now joined in celebrating his return. But not all were pleased at seeing Coach Kennedy back. A billboard paid for by the Freedom From Religion Foundation greeted fans with “Wishing Bremerton High School a safe, secular & successful school year.” It is unclear how banishing God and prayer from schools has made them safer or more successful, but refuting that article of the atheists’ faith is an argument for another day.
“We have fought the good fight, and we finished this race. And we kept the faith the whole entire time. And it was absolutely 100% worth it,” said Kennedy. He said his return shows the Constitution still works.
After being fired, Kennedy relocated from Washington State to Florida as part of the great ongoing national migration away from blue states, so whether he will remain in the Seattle area is up in the air at this point. Either way, Coach Kennedy took one for Team America in his 6-3 victory at the Supreme Court and finally removed the unjust gag order Christians have been operating under in the public square for far too long.
As Justice Neil Gorsuch put it in reversing the government’s attack on religious speech, the public high school acted on “the mistaken view that it had a duty to ferret out and suppress religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech.”
Prayer is always worthwhile. A friend from Kenya told me last weekend that no meeting of government or business in his country begins without first stopping and taking a few moments for prayer.
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Coach Joe Kennedy says he’s no holy Joe, just a thankful one, which makes sense. There is no such thing as a ready-made saint. It is a hard-knock struggle where even the best of us play the prodigal son many times a day. The temptation to sin against hope and become inactive, because we aren’t born saints, would lead us into the darkest of despairs and make the world a poorer place.
Prayer is that lifeline that helps us not miss the adventure of life. It helps us play through the suffering and heartache into the destiny God has for each of us. It is one He planned for us before the world began. Such is the mercy and love of a father.
Coach Kennedy has taught us that if we fight, we can win at least some of the games along the way. And oh, by the way, Bremerton, after being tied at the half, won the game 27-12. If this is Coach Kennedy’s last game, he went out on a high note.
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