Posted on 09/08/2009 11:02:37 AM PDT by JoeProBono
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
Imagine if it were a Muslim Soccer player.
As I Christian, I find the coaches actions troubling.
I’m sure he meant well, but you just can’t do that.
AS the first judge in my divorce said “I would not presume to tell a 16 year old anything what to do.”
Since when is Baptism a bad thing?
‘Do not suffer the little children to come to Me’....
Why would this mother be upset? Unless she’s a Muslim of course....eh?
When I think of all the things that kids can do, to imagine suing someone for this????
Now unless that woman is a passionate atheist, Jew, or belongs to another religion, what is her beef really?
The kid is 16. They think. Maybe she doesn’t know that.
The media would celebrate if the son was a daughter and she had an abortion (without parental consent) instead of a baptism.
It seems there was no school involvement at all. The coach and super were acting as private citizens.
When she allowed her child to go to a baptist revival camp, what did she think would happen?
I think parents should be involved in a young child’s religious life. If this was a pre-teen I would say the mother has a case. But 16 is old enough to make a decision to be baptised or not.
If she's an atheist, why does she care? If there's no God, then it's just water.
The story is singularly uninformative and we're left to guess why she's so torqued.
Or a Muslim coach making them go to a mosque?
i would love to see what would happen if some baptist kids were brought to a temple and bar-mitzvah’d!
So you won't mind if I hoodwink your child into participating in one of my religous ceremonies?
What...does he melt in water? Get over it lady, at 16, your son is old enough to make those decisions on his own.
Seems to me 16 is plenty old enough to chose to do it.
I think the broad would be just as upset if he did it when he was 21 or 25...
At 16, I don’t think he was “hoodwinked” and she apparently did let him go to the Baptist revival. What did she think would happen at a religious revival?
"Thanks, I've already been baptized" would be the answer in that case.
Or the same thing I always said as a teenager at Pagan ceremonies, Buddhist devotions, or Unitarian-Universalist services -- a smile and "No, thanks." (I had a pretty wide-ranging circle of friends. Everybody was cool. I was pushed pretty hard once at an altar call at a revival, but a smile and a gentle refusal was sufficient.)
By the time a kid's 16 -- unless he's mentally handicapped -- he knows his own mind and knows how to say no. Any parent worth the name who takes religion seriously will make sure that a kid is well grounded in his faith and knows how to gracefully refuse while still being polite.
This woman sounds like a torqued-out secularist to me. Unfortunately, if you don't educate your kids in any religion at all, they'll pick one of their own. Friend of mine's father was an atheist, mother an agnostic, she decided to become a Third Degree Wiccan Priestess.
Of course, sometimes you do your best and they pick something you don't approve of anyhow.
It is not apparent from this story that the players knew they were going to go to a "revival" and be asked to undergo religious rites.
The story does say that both the football coach and the superintendent of schools were present.
Don't you think that involves a bit of both peer pressure (from the fellow students) and the threat of repercussions from authority figures if they did not go along?
Just unseemly and amazingly tacky for grown adults to prey on children like that.
If this had been a Muslim, Sikh, Jewish or Wiccan coach people would be screaming bloody murder, especially if their child was welcomed into the aforementioned religions by performing some sacred ritual on the kids. This is beyond the pale, and these coaches should be fired, without question. Teachers and coaches are there to teach and coach, not to proselytize.
I understand that he is 16, but we are all born with inalienable rights. As an American, he has the right to freedom of religion.
I would have freaked out if this had been done to my child.
The sacrament of Baptism is a very personal thing and that coach had no business taking that action by himself.
16 is not legally considered to be an adult in most (if not all) states.
16 is old enough to make up his own mind. Maybe my family is just particularly stubborn, but I just can't see anybody being forced to receive a baptism against his will at age 16. Taking a sip of beer, yeah --
He's probably sick and tired of his mom's anti-religious harangues.
And I do wonder where the dad is in all this.
Even worse, imagine the outrage if this had been some Catholic thing.
You beat me to it. :-) I was just about to post: Suppose this boy had been a Baptist, and the coach took him to a Catholic church where the boy was baptized.
Nonsense. The coach is putting undue pressure on the kids.
As a teenager I visited a lot of different religions, including Wiccan ceremonies, Catholic Mass, synagogue, Buddhist ritual, Church of Christ Bible study, a Hindu wedding, and pulpit-thumping full-bore Baptist revivals. I never got (re)baptized, became a Wiccan, answered the altar call, made a bat mitzvah, or affirmed whatever it is the Unitarians believe.
His mama may be upset that her atheist/agnostic beliefs didn't "take" with her son, but that's between them.
Sorry coach, you can’t do that. It would be another thing if it was your kids’ friends, but the coach is an authority figure and one can’t erase the shadow of possible coercion.
Yes.
Because any parent that would object to the unconsented religious indoctrination of their children must, absolutely, be muslims.
Sheesh.
>> Muslim, Sikh, Jewish or Wiccan
>>>Catholic
Whaddabout the Hindus and the Buddhists, what do they have to do to get noticed? Play football?
Sheesh.
Hence the hypocrisy. Imagine if these kids had been invited to light a prayer candle. People would be complaining about indoctrination of kids with some Roman/Pagan rituals.
Well, if the Catholics used grape juice instead of wine, what’s the beef?
I think if anybody's putting undue pressure on anyone, it's this mom trying to force her kid into an atheist mindset when he wants no part of it.
Welcome to Free Republic, where "whose ox is gored" morality reigns.
This isn't about baptism. This is about parental rights. The adults involved absolutely should have informed the parents exactly what was happening.
For one thing, if you've already been baptized in the name of the Trinity, they won't do it again.
For another, if you're not an infant you have to go through weeks and weeks of religious instruction. And if you're an infant, your parents and godparents have to!
For someone who is “confused” you seem to have hit this particular nail right on the head.
I'm guessing you've never played high-school football. And as such, you have no idea the power and influence the coach holds over the student-athletes. If the coach "suggests" it's beneficial that the kids shave their heads, they shave their heads. If the coach thinks it's beneficial that his lineman pack on an extra 10 lbs, they pack on an extra 10 lbs.
This is why religious proselytizing has no place in our schools. Teachers, and especially coaches hold sway over the kids that's really unique and exceptionally powerful. In this case, you think it's just fine because I'm guessing you happen to be a born-again Christian. I'm also guessing that you wouldn't be so keen if your son's Muslim coach decided to play a "call for prayer" during your son's football training camp - four times a day.
Right.
The person who has legal custody and a duty that that 16 year-old is the one putting “undue pressure” on the child.
Go figure.
HER RIGHTS as a parent were violated by a coach who, it seems, abused his powers by moving from the football field to the pulpit.
It’s amazing to see the number of people who try to justify the coach’s actions.
I concur, wholeheartedly.
Bingo.
The coaches abused their power.
Fire them and leet others learn the lesson, too.
You’re missing the forest for the trees. We all know Catholics don’t hand out sacraments willy-nilly. That’s not the point.
The point is that any person of conscience should object to authority figures using their position to proseltyze.
If the Baptists and born againers on this thread don’t care about rules because they “earned” one more soul, that’s to their own disgrace.
Maybe this story is about different Christian denominations.
I was raised Catholic, and if I’d been taken to any type of Protestant event by a coach and then baptized there, my parents would’ve hit the roof. If a Protestant child were taken to a Catholic church and baptized there, his parents would hit the roof, too.
OTOH, I remember two fathers, both atheists, talking on a forum once. Both were married to Christian women. One gave this advice to the other: “Just let her take the baby to be baptized. My wife did it with our child. She called it baptism; I called it splashing water on the baby. But if it makes her happy...”
A retreat is what it is. It is one way Baptists and some others recruit to their faith. I would be stunned if most parents did not know what this retreat was.
Sounds to be like ignorance is the issue here with this complaint. The parent simply needs to decline any more invitations to retreats for her son and use her parental authority to forbid the kid to attend any other religious gatherings that she does not approve of.
I would be interested to see how that works out. She may be well along in the creation of a fine Baptist preacher.....or not...
I agree. You don’t take kids under your influence, as are athletes under a coach, and have them get baptized without any forethought. It’s easy, especially for teens, to get swept up in the emotion of the moment.
If the kid had taken a course of study on Christianity and made a solemn commitment over time, it would be quite different - and more meaningful - than a baptism after a single revival meeting.
The team-building aspect of football is pronounced. But everybody knows that, and if his mama was worried about it she needed to pull him off the team or else prepare him to "just say no." I would prefer the latter course, which is what I did with my kids.
I'm a Catholic, raised Episcopalian, Presbyterian high school. That was a bit entertaining, because to old time Southern Presbyterians we Piskies were just Rome Light. We were definitely outliers in the prevalent Christian culture, and since it was a church school there was plenty of pressure to conform -- required Bible study, Christian Emphasis Week, Young Life rallies, etc. But there's no way anybody could have forced me into doing anything I didn't believe in.
The idea of a Muslim-majority football team in this country is just ludicrous, by the way. This country is still overwhelmingly Christian, mostly of the white-bread Protestant variety, and you simply can't divorce the culture from its Christian roots. You can disagree with it, you can prepare your child to deal with it, but you can't wipe it off the map. Efforts to do so have NOT borne good fruit.
In ObamaWorld, it is a crime to witness your Christian faith to others, because a young man may accept Jesus, but your daughter can get an abortion that murders a innocent baby without your even being aware of it. What a Brave New World.
It didn't "take". And it won't "take" if a kid is properly educated in his own faith, whatever that happens to be.
Or ... imagine what they'd said if this coach had exposed the kid to (gasp!!!) Obama's televised Obama speech to school kids!
Indeed. I suspect many of the same people screaming about Nobama addressing school students with some drivel are now giving the school & coach a free pass on something I find far more offensive.
Likewise, the same people who constantly talk about how public schools get everything 100% wrong are more than happy to look the other way when the school wants to promote their religion.
Or, if you have an open enough mind, your brain may roll out.
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