Two groups that promote religious secularism are taking aim at Republican Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville’s inaugural Senate floor speech in which the former college football coach advocated bringing “God and prayer back into schools.”
Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation, and the Washington, D.C.-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State issued statements Tuesday condemning the freshman senator for wrongly suggesting that prayer had been removed from U.S. public schools. They also blasted him for not taking what they believe is a more serious approach toward educational improvement.
Rachel Laser, president and CEO with the Americans United for Separation of Church and State, called Tuberville’s speech an “aggressive attack” on the constitutional principles of church-state separation, and the guarantees of religious freedom.
She said that Tuberville’s speech was aimed at appealing to his supporters in Alabama, where more than three-quarters of the state’s residents said in a Pew Research Center survey that religion is “very important” to their lives.
“If Senator Tuberville is serious about improving education, he should channel his energy toward ensuring that all children have access to adequately funded, high-qualify public education,” said Laser. “Rants about school prayer may play well with his base of supporters back home, but they do nothing to help our children.”
The FFRF, in a news release, called Tuberville a “newly-elected Christian nationalist” who is “wrong on school prayer.” The group also accused Tuberville of instituting unconstitutional chaplaincies at four of his coaching stops: Mississippi, Auburn, Texas Tech and Cincinnati.
Tuberville, in a statement to AL.com, said “faith and moral values are foundational to our great country. I’ll always stand up to those who try to diminish the positive influence of prayer and morality on America’s young people.”
Prayer in schools
Tuberville, during his first Senate floor speech, pledged to support instituting “moral values” and prayer into schools, although he did not elaborate. He said kids need structure, and they “need to learn right from wrong.” He then said the country’s low scores in reading, science, and math proficiency relative to other countries is “unacceptable.”
The FFRF, in its news release, said Tuberville “is laughably wrong” for suggesting that more religion is the solution to low science scores.
“Religion has historically inhibited scientific progress, insisting that gaps in our scientific knowledge must be filled with dogma rather than by reason-based evidence,” the news release states. “From the heliocentric model of the solar system to evolution, religion has always been there to condemn the quest for scientific truth and progress.”
The organization then criticized “politicians like Tuberville” who reject science.
“Tuberville should reflect on the fact that the countries that have outpaced the United States in terms of academics are, on the whole, much less religious,” the statement reads.
FFRF and Americans United for Separation of Church and State both agreed that Tuberville’s comments misconstrued reality over prayer inside schools.
Said Dan Barker, co-president of FFRF, “So long as there are pop math quizzes, there will be prayer in public schools.”
Michael Altman, a religious studies professor at the University of Alabama, said the FFRF is correct in that students are “free to pray,” noting the existence of numerous student-led prayer groups in school across Alabama and throughout the U.S.
The U.S. Supreme Court, nearly 60 years ago, ruled organized prayer by a public school as unconstitutional.
“There really isn’t anything Tommy Tuberville can do to change that, but I don’t think that’s the point,” said Altman. “The argument that somehow taking prayer out of schools has led to poor academic performance is a canard (unfounded rumor) put forward by conservative lawmakers who don’t want to point out the real culprits like systemic inequality and cuts in state funding. But it’s a canard that works with Republican voters, so it persists.”
He added, “The idea of ‘God and prayer’ in schools, in my view, is more a symbol than an actual policy. It’s a phrase that symbolizes a return to the way the country and the state were in the 1950s.”
He said that Tuberville was tapping into the desire for a return to an era before the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings in the 60s on teacher-led prayer and Bible reading in school.
“For voters, especially conservative white voters, ‘God and prayer in schools’ symbolizes a time when they were in the social, economic, and cultural ascendency,” Altman said.
Past FFRF criticism
The FFRF has been critical of Tuberville in the past and cited him as among an “unholy alliance” that pushed for university-sponsored chaplains “preying on student athletes.”
The group, in a report released in 2015, said Tuberville and former Florida State University head football coach Bobby Bowden, along with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, “spawned many of the modern, college football chaplaincies” that are present today at most of the Southeastern Conference’s schools.
The organization said the spread of the chaplaincies at publicly funded institutions was a “disrespect for the Constitution.” According to the report, one of Tuberville’s “first moves” after he was hired at Auburn in 1999 was to bring in a team chaplain that led to players getting baptized, carrying around Bibles and wearing wooden crosses. Under Tuberville’s guidance, the report also notes, a training camp for team chaplains and an internship program for them was hosted at Auburn.
The FFRF, in its news release, accused Tuberville of wanting to “inflict his brand of religious rituals” on all public school students, “as he demonstrated when he was a football coach.”
The FFRF’s criticism of Tuberville isn’t the first time the group has been forceful against an Alabama lawmaker, coach, or school when it comes to prayer in a public setting.
In early 2020, the group and former U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne, who was running for the Senate at the time, butted heads over the FFRF’s request for an investigation by the Tallapoosa County School District into a baptism that took place on a high school football field. The baptism was attended by a head football coach and other school staff members, while parents and students looked on.
Byrne said he was not going to let FFRF “bully” the high school’s football coach and called the organization a “radical atheist group.” The FFRF responded by calling Byrne’s reactions as “egregious” and “un-American.”
In 2019, the FFRF repeatedly called out religious rituals that occurred at public schools throughout Alabama, including other football field baptisms and a “back to school worship service” at Fyffe high School.