Alabama GOP Gov. Kay Ivey was not having it when the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation chastised Auburn University sports coaches for helping with a spontaneous mass baptism event that happened on campus earlier this month.
The governor’s response was on solid constitutional grounds, strengthened by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Washington high school football coach Joe Kennedy’s case last summer.
On Sept. 12, the nonprofit Unite Auburn held a Christian worship gathering at the school’s Neville Arena, NBC affiliate WSFA reported.
About 6,000 students showed up, and afterwards about half of them went to a lake on campus where about 200 students were baptized, according to CBN News.
A revival is happening tonight in Auburn. People are getting baptized at Red Barn with hundreds of people cheering them on. The baptisms started following an event at Neville arena tonight called Unite. @TheAUPlainsman @AUFAMILY pic.twitter.com/PzEza1UWKz
— Kristen Carr (@kristencarrau) September 13, 2023
Auburn head football coach Hugh Freeze waded into the water to help baptize one of his players, who wanted to make a public profession of his faith in Jesus, according to WSFA.
GOD is moving in Auburn!!!
Students, athletes, and whoever are giving their lives to Jesus and getting baptized at the Red Barn🙌🏾🔥 pic.twitter.com/XfRN23aquE
— AUBURN SUPERFAN #2 (@MichaelFloyd_AU) September 13, 2023
This was all too much for the Freedom from Religion Foundation, which shot off a letter on Sept. 19 to Auburn University president Christopher Roberts.
“Auburn University is a public university, not a religious one. It is inappropriate and unconstitutional for university employees to use their university position to organize, promote or participate in a religious worship event,” FFRF staff attorney Christopher Line wrote.
“These ongoing and repeated constitutional violations at the university create a coercive environment that excludes those students who don’t subscribe to the Christian views being pushed onto players by their coaches,” he said.
The lawyer recounted that the FFRF had received numerous reports that Freeze, as well as Auburn’s basketball coach Bruce Pearl and Auburn’s baseball coach Butch Thompson were involved in promoting Unite Auburn.
Further, Auburn’s assistant men’s basketball coach Chad Prewett and his wife Tonya Prewett helped organize the event.
“Auburn University must take action to protect its students athletes and to ensure that its coaches understand that they have been hired as coaches and not religions leaders,” Line said.
“We request that all three coaches be educated in their constitutional duties as University employees,” he continued. “They may not lead or encourage any religious activities in their capacity as coaches and cannot participate in any student-led religious activities.”
Ivey, in her role as president of the board of trustees of all of Alabama’s state universities, responded to the FFRF letter on Friday.
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Ivey assured the atheist group that she takes seriously her responsibility as governor to faithfully execute the laws of the state “and that includes safeguarding the religious freedom of all Alabamians.”
She noted that event involved adults interacting with other adults in an after-hours worship service, and “no one faced any threat of adverse consequences for declining to participate.”
“What is more, requiring college officials to entirely remove faith from their lives could well violate those officials’ own religious freedom. After all, the First Amendment protects the ‘free exercise’ of religion just as much as it prohibits government establishment of religion,” Ivey added.
I am proud to stand in support of religious liberty at Snead State Community College and Auburn University.
As governor, I can assure you Alabama will never be intimidated by out-of-state interest groups dedicated to destroying our nation’s religious heritage. #alpolitics pic.twitter.com/VrHDUlZ0GB
— Governor Kay Ivey (@GovernorKayIvey) September 22, 2023
She concluded, “As governor, I can assure you that we will not be intimidated by out-of-state interest groups dedicated to destroying our country’s religious heritage.”
Amen!
The Supreme Court in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District upheld the right of high school football coach Joe Kennedy to pray at the middle of the field after games.
“The Constitution neither mandates nor permits the government to suppress such religious expression,” the justices determined.
Coaches, in the free exercise of their religion, can certainly attend a worship service or assist in baptisms that players freely also choose to engage in as students and free Americans.
The mass baptism was a spontaneous event that happened after the worship service, Jennie Allen, one of the leaders involved in Unite Auburn’s “Night of Worship,” told CBN News.
“That night, we finished and you could feel the Spirit in the room, and it was just such a powerful night,” Allen said.
When she got off stage a pastor from one of the local churches showed her a text of a student saying she wanted to be baptized that night.
“I go up on the stage, it was that fast, and I said, ‘Hey, there’s somebody that wants to get baptized tonight. Would anybody else want to trust Christ and be baptized tonight?’ And dozens of hands were raised all over the arena,” Allen told CBN News’ Abigail Robertson.
“There is something very special happening right now…I think they are they are hungry for God and they want God in a very real way.” – Jennie Allen discusses @UniteAuburn event that led to spontaneous mass #baptism & how God is moving in #GenZ https://t.co/Rbe6BlfIG2
— Abigail Robertson (@AbigailCBN) September 20, 2023
After over 200 students were baptized the organizers finally decided they needed to shut it down.
“I don’t know how long we would have been there,” Allen recalled.
“We didn’t just baptize them. We got to hear their stories, and they got to tell us why they wanted to do this tonight,” she explained. “So many of them were just tired of the darkness that they were living in, and they wanted Jesus, and they wanted a different way to live, and it was so sincere.”
“They are coming from a pretty dark environment, and most of them have lived a pretty non-God existence prior to these moments,” Allen said.
Despite, and maybe in part because of their lack of exposure to the Christian faith growing up, Generation Z is prime for revival, she believes.
Allen related that many coming forward for baptism have a deep desire to be clean and start anew, as the Gospel promises: Forgiveness of sin, new life in Christ.
“I think the symbol of [baptism] is different than an altar call. It’s different than just a simple prayer in your heart. It’s a public profession, ‘I want to follow Jesus,’” she said.
All this sounds like something right out of the Jesus Revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
That marked the last great spiritual awakening in American history that swept the country, bringing millions to faith in Jesus Christ.
It was the younger generation’s response to the harshness, godlessness of that era.
God appears to be stirring revival fires again, so that America can be saved!
