Last December, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation threatened the US Air Force Academy with a lawsuit if the did not stop players from holding pre-game prayers together on the field. The Air Force launched an inquiry into the matter, and discussed concerns about some players perhaps feeling “pressure” to participate, but found that the volunteer nature of the act, before the game began, was negligible. They decided that players who wished to pray before the game had a constitutional right to do so.
The United States Air Force Academy places a high value on the rights of its members to observe the tenets of their respective religion or to observe no religion at all. Recently, the United States Air Force Academy received a complaint about its football players kneeling in prayer. An inquiry was initiated, which found the football players’ actions to be consistent with Air Force Instruction 1-1 and its guidance on the free exercise of religion and religious accommodation.”
The MRFF is now considering legal action, releasing this statement:
This outrageous internal administrative decision to allow its football team to engage in massive orchestrated sectarian Christian prayers right before kick off for the world to see on television is a monstrous travesty and brutal breach of federal constitutional law and Department of Defense/Air Force regulations.
To me, the modern predilection to prohibit public religious acts that are voluntary flies in the face of “freedom of religion” concepts. On the other hand, I understand the concerns of those who are concerned about some who might feel pressured. But the tone of the MRFF does not convince me. The use of exaggerated adjectives seems unnecessary: “outrageous,” “massage orchestrated sectarian” (a mouthful of an adjectival chain), monstrous (travesty), and “brutal breach.” Such adjectives should be left to terror attacks on innocents, beheadings of Christians, poverty, war, and oppression, not whether someone might feel led to join a prayer group before a football game.
Read more from the Christian Post here and below
http://www.christianpost.com/news/air-force-football-players-pray-game-day-academy-defends-religious-freedom-154059/