Religious Liberty Commission hears from teachers, coaches, school leaders
Caroline MolloyTeachers, coaches, and other public and private school leaders said their religious liberty was threatened in American schools at a hearing conducted by President Donald Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission on Sept. 29.
Speakers said there must be a fight for schools to bring back the “truth” to protect students and religious liberty. Joe Kennedy, a high school football coach; Monica Gill, a high school teacher; Marisol Arroyo-Castro, a seventh grade teacher; and Keisha Russell, a lawyer for First Liberty Institute, addressed the commission led by Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.
“There has to be a call to action,” commission member Dr. Phil McGraw said. “The most common way to lose power is to think you don’t have it to begin with. We do have power, and we need to rally with that power.”
Teachers and coaches describe experiences
Kennedy said he was suspended — and later fired — from his position as a football coach at Bremerton High School in Washington for praying a brief and quiet prayer after football games.
“After the game, I took a knee to say thanks,” Kennedy explained. “That’s all. If that could be turned into a national controversy, it says more about the confusion in our country than the conduct of the person performing it.”
Kennedy told the commission the law is “cloudy and muddy” and they “have the power to clarify it.” Kennedy also said some lawyers “need to be held accountable” for actions taken in religious liberty cases.
Kennedy said: “I don’t know a lot about law and liberty, but I know that you’re supposed to advise people on the truth and the facts, and they’re not. They have an agenda, and their agenda is well set and in place and is working very well, keeping prayer out of the public square. They’re still doing it. That needs to be exposed.”
“Being a teacher has been one of the greatest blessings of my life,” Gill said to the committee. “God really gave my heart a mission … to show all of my students every day that they are loved. No matter what they’re going through, no matter what their grades are, no matter what their status is with their peers, I love them.”
“But in the summer of 2021 … Loudoun County Public Schools adopted a policy that forced teachers to deny the foundational truth of what it means to be human, created as male and female,” Gill said.
“This policy forced teachers to affirm all transgender students,” Gill said. “My employer gave teachers a choice: deny truth or risk everything … I knew that I could not stand in front of my Father in heaven one day and say: ‘My pension plan was more important than your truth.’ I also knew that if I say that I love my students, the only right choice would be to stand in love and truth for them.”
