Loading ...Ky. public school bus hauls students to baptism
flockwoodUse of the school bus wasn’t improper, school officials argue, because the school district didn’t pay for the bus’s gas.
Ky. mother upset by football player son’s baptism
HARDINSBURG, Ky. (AP) — A Kentucky woman says her 16-year-old son was baptized without her consent when he and fellow football players were taken to a Baptist revival by their coach.
Michelle Ammons says she is upset that the school’s superintendent even attended the service last month at a church where the superintendent and coach are members.
The teenager, Robert Coffey, told the Courier-Journal newspaper that Coach Scott Mooney told him the trip would include a steak dinner and a motivational speaker. But parents of two other players say they were told about the revival.
Superintendent Janet Meeks says no one was required to go on the trip and fuel for the school bus was paid for by another coach.
The teen’s mother says she has contacted a lawyer but has not decided whether to take any action.
Information from: The Courier-Journal, http://www.courier-journal.com
September 8th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
I didn’t know you needed parental consent to be baptized. If a 16 year old is old enough to drive and play a game in which people knock each other down, you’d think he’d be old enough to decide whether to be baptized or not. The real question is what the coach of a team who is being paid by taxpayer money and coaching at a public school is doing taking his players to a church as part of an official outing. And the fact that the school system didn’t pay for the gas doesn’t make it any less an official act.
September 8th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
As with so many other cases, see how you feel after changing the circumstances just a wee bit. Imagine if the motivational speaker was the imam of a local mosque, for instance.
Has any other private individual requested use of the school bus for an evening, no questions asked? That might help to clarify what the school officials consider proper.
September 8th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
Sigh. Evangelicals never change, do they? In 1971, when I lived with my mother in Coeur d’Alene Idaho for one very miserable year (I was 11 at the time), I remember seeing a sign advertising a “Valentine’s Day Party” in the rec room of the housing complex we lived in. I and my sister decided to go to this party. Guess what? It turned out to be a bait and switch, and we had to listen to a talk about how we were going to hell if we didn’t accept Jesus. It was very disorienting, and I felt more than a bit threatened. Nice how they craftily circumvented the vaunted parental authority they are always otherwise so concerned with maintaining.
September 8th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
Being a Kentuckian and a coach on the side, perhaps this coach was merely taking the initiative to baptise his team in the event one of them were killed in some sort of unfortunate accident or possibly it was an act to use divine inspiration for some sort of protection.
There have been several deaths with young football players in the last year in Kentucky. The is one coach on trial in Louisville as we speak.
September 9th, 2009 at 5:22 am
To repeat, change the details of the case and see how it looks then. Two key facts in this story are this: the use of school property for a clearly religious purpose, and being intentionally misleading about the purpose of the meeting. If it was a strictly personal invitation and everyone knew it was a revival meeting and they used private transportation then we wouldn’t be talking about it now.
But perplexed does raise another issue. People who hold positions of authority in secular organizations such as governments and public schools need to understand that there is the possibility of coercion or intimidation in personal relationships. I’m glad the coach cares for the members of his team. But take perplexed’s example a step further and imagine this. At the start of the season, Coach announces that some of the team aren’t “real Christians” because they haven’t been baptized properly. Sprinkling and baby stuff won’t do; they need a real dunking. Because these boys haven’t been saved then he can’t allow them to play. They might get hurt and die or something. It wouldn’t be right you know. So all the boys who don’t believe in Jesus just like Coach does, well the door is over there.
September 9th, 2009 at 11:11 am
Jose, that’s about what this has become. This whole scenario offends me. First, I am not a fan of football. This has nothing to do with the fortunes of Kentucky’s ill-fated football squad, or the fact that neither my high school nor college had football programs at all, but from seeing how football programs maim, injure, and kill innocent young people. Perplexed is quite right that in Louisville right now a high school football coach is on trial for some form of manslaughter after a player died at a football practice.
The mother of the boy in this story is whining that they baptized him. Oh, it’s fine that they run him to death without water, hit him and teach him to hit other people, stress his undeveloped joints and muscles far more than they should, and teach him to care more about making points on the field than making good grades in school. It’s okay that they will create injuries to his young body that will come back to haunt him when he’s forty (or younger), which is too bad, because he will not have learned much in school, having devoted all of his spare time to football. All that’s okay. But it’s not okay to baptize him even when he says he wants to be baptized. Once more, parents with the wrong priorities.
Second, as Jose also points out, what were these people thinking, if they thought at all? They allow a coach to take his team to a religious event in the school’s bus. Sometimes I think these evangelicals will never be happy until every school in the country teaches nothing but creationism (people riding dinosaurs, as depicted in the creationism museum), opposition to abortion, opposition to socialized medicine or socialized anything else, and to bow down to the Republican Party in all its glory. This is not education, it’s indoctrination. But hey, they produce good football teams on Friday night.
September 9th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Caleb, it is indoctrination, kids aren’t taught to learn, they are taught to memorize. My kids got so upset with me when it was time to learn to read, we went over and over how to pronounce syllables and how to break down words. Now, they are way ahead in their classes. They see why it was so important to learn as we did. The same way with math, if you can’t think a problem through, how on earth are you going to solve it.
September 9th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
And how does baptism figure in this learning scenario, perplexed, ?
September 9th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
I agree, Perplexed! Our schools have gotten to the point that they only teach conformity, which is a dangerous thing for youth to learn. All I can say is thank the Lord that I was brought up as a hillbilly, one group of people who refuse any form of indoctrination, and have an absolute antipathy to any form of societal control.
September 9th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
Well Naill, I guess if you have to tie this to the baptism, you could say this young was a follower, unlike his coach and superintendent, he was lead to the water instead of pursuing the path of the Lord on his own. His personality was sold on this idea and he bought and went along with it because he couldn’t come up with any objections that could have stopped it. Quite frankly, he may not of had any objections.
September 11th, 2009 at 9:15 am
what about honoring ones mother and father?
As a youth minister who is actively involved in the lives of teenagers in Kentucky, I am offended that a coach and / or minister would allow this to happen. Baptism is not something to be taken lightly, nor is it something to be lightly entered into. Whenever a student of mine expresses an interest to be baptized, there is a several-month-long process that includes the parent(s). All the separation of church and state issues aside, this was bad form from the minister.
September 11th, 2009 at 10:47 am
Well, Jason, you’ve got to look at it from the point of view of the minister. These guys are Baptists. If they’re doing baptisms at the event itself, they’re obviously of the strain of Baptists who believe that faith without immersion is dead, and that if you haven’t been properly baptized, your entry into heaven might not go as smoothly as possible. So, from this minister’s standpoint, he might well have been baptizing someone with the belief that if he didn’t baptize the guy that night, the guy might have gotten into an auto accident on the way home, killed, and been denied entry through the pearly gates for insufficient dunkery.
I’m not saying I buy any of that, but that’s how these folks think, and from their perspective, honoring one’s father and mother pales into insignificance when faced with the loss of one’s immortal soul.
September 11th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Ultimately, one must honor his/her Heavenly Father more than earthly parents,and it is unfortunate if one must ever make that choice, but I feel it entirely improper for an underage child to be allowed to do this without the consent of his parents. I agree with Jason; bad form on the part of the coach and the minister who performed the baptism without consulting the parents.
September 11th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
I agree, David, but remember that the age of 13 has traditionally been considered the age of consent in the Judeo-Christian tradition, and Baptists have been known to baptize people younger than that. We Episcopalians traditionally perform confirmations at age 13, but of course, with the permission and participation of the parents. I’m just suggesting that we look at this from the religious perspective of the coach and minister.