By James Bemiller, JD; Lars Dzikus, PhD; Robin Hardin, PhD; Steven Waller, PhD
Author Note: James Bemiller, Lars Dzikus, Robin Hardin, and Steven Waller; all: Department of Kinesiology, Recreation, and Sport Studies, The University of Tennessee.
Sport chaplains have become increasingly common in college athletics during the past two decades at both private and public institutions as hundreds of individuals serve as chaplains within collegiate sports. The Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) had at least 24 full-time chaplains affiliated at public colleges and universities in 2009. Dzikus, Waller, and Hardin (2011) found 64.4% of 149 sport chaplain research participants worked within public institutions of higher education. This article examines the use of sport chaplains at public universities in the context of the First Amendment Establishment and Free Exercise of Religion Clauses.
The individual responsible for the spiritual care of teams in intercollegiate athletics is generally referred to as the chaplain, team chaplain, or sport chaplain. Sport chaplains provide “pastoral care for the sports person and the broader sports community including coaches, administrators and their families” (Lipe, 2006, p. 4). The duties of team chaplains include leading team chapel services, providing personal care to players, coaches and support staff, assisting in crisis management, developing life skills and praying for and encouraging players and staff. The most common departments from which sport chaplains operate are the Office of Student Life, the athletic department or a campus office of a parachurch organization such as Athletes in Action (AIA) or FCA. With few exceptions, the team chaplain represents a Christian based faith.
Waller, Dzikus, and Hardin (2008) first noted potential legal issues related to the prominent access some athletic departments at public universities provide for team chaplains. These appointed team chaplains are present during practices and competition, are allowed access to athletic facilities and offices, may have an office in the athletic facility, travel with the official team party to games, and are featured with other coaches and staff in university media guides for promotional and recruiting purposes. Based on a legal opinion by the Alliance Defense Fund, FCA (2009) maintains that its chaplains do not violate the law, as long as they do not receive any funding from public institutions and the institutions, team chaplains, and coaches follow other specific guidelines. These guidelines include that the FCA chaplains work with teams at the invitation of the coach and therefore are seen as other invited guest speakers and volunteers. FCA maintains that chaplains have no formal relationship with the university, are not paid by the university, and do not speak on behalf of the institution.
Constitutional concerns regarding public university sport chaplains focus on the appropriate level of involvement and interaction of the team chaplains in the university sponsored athletic department. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The Fourteenth Amendment transfers these limitations to the States and their appointed political agents. The first clause – “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” is commonly referred to as the Establishment Clause. The second clause – “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” is known as the Free Exercise Clause. “The principle that government may accommodate the free exercise of religion does not supersede the fundamental limitations imposed by the Establishment Clause. It is beyond dispute that, at a minimum, the Constitution guarantees that government may not coerce anyone to support or participate in religion or its exercise, or otherwise act in a way which establishes a (state) religion or religious faith, or tends to do so” (Lynch v. Donnelly, 1984, p. 679). Balancing the religioun clauses serves the common purpose of securing a citizen’s religious liberty. The Supreme Court has not confined its reasoning in these cases to a single test or criterion. The Court has employed a fact-based examination of the individual history and context of the community and forum in deciding its lineage of First Amendment religion cases. In Santa Fe Independent School District v. Jane Doe (2000), the Court most recently addressed the intersection of religious expression and sport in a public education setting. Santa Fe involved a challenge to a school district policy of student prayer prior to home football games. The district policy structured a procedure by which students voted to allow a pregame nonsectarian, nonproselytizing prayer over the public address system at home football games. The Court relied primarily on precedent beginning with Lemon v. Kurtzman, (1971) and Lee v. Wiseman (1992) in finding the school policy an unconstitutional infringement of the First Amendment Religion Clauses. The Lemon test protects individual religious liberty by assessing the sponsorship, financial support and active involvement by the state or its actors in religious activity. Lemon looks at state action to ensure: 1) a secular legislative purpose, 2) the primary effect of the state policy neither advances or inhibits religion, and 3) the state policy does not foster excessive governmental entanglement with religion. In Lee, the Court endorsed a “Coercion Test” examining school sponsored religious activity which may have a coercive effect on students to support or participate in religious exercises indicating a violation of the Establishment Clause. The Supreme Court also presented an “Endorsement Test” in County of Alleghany v. ACLU (1989) in which the Court examined whether the government appears to take a position on question of religious belief, in other words, when the state conveys a message that a religion is favored, preferred, or promoted over other beliefs the Establishment Clause is violated. The court reasoned in Santa Fe that the policy allowing a student vote for a statement or invocation preceding the football game in accordance with Lee was an unconstitutional infringement on students’ First Amendment rights. The Court reasoned because the policy was intended to endorse student-led public prayer prior to a government sponsored school event/game, authorized by a government policy, on government property the degree of school/state involvement was such as to give the “imprint” of the state in violation of the Establishment Clause. Such a policy, which a reasonable person may find as endorsed or stamped with the schools approval, results in a coercive message of state sponsored religious endorsement.
Applying these precedents to the collegiate sport chaplain phenomenon would make for an interesting debate. Although FCA attempts to distance its sport chaplains from being considered state actors because they are not on the university payroll, chaplains are encouraged to utilize the head coaches and university affiliations to facilitate fundraising to support their programs. With office facilities in the athletic department and daily access to provide support for collegiate student-athletes and staff they are imbedded into the athletic program to a higher degree than other invited speakers or volunteers. Team chaplains at many schools are part of the university travel party to competitions and travel and lodging expenses may be provided by the institution. Their appearance in media and recruiting guides alongside university staff and coaches is used as a recruiting tool to extol the lengths to which the social and spiritual needs of student-athletes are being met. These facets of interaction give the distinct impression of a high- degree of involvement between the institution and the chaplain. Reasonable observers might easily construe that the chaplain’s activities are endorsed or favored by the athletic department. FCA also attempts to work within the First Amendment by instructing its chaplains that they must not give the impression to student-athletes that the university or its staff is sponsoring or endorsing FCA, and religious discussions should be student-athlete initiated. This is problematic since FCA and the vast majority of sport chaplains are Christian based, thereby promoting a specific religion by their presence. Further, activities such as team prayers and Bible studies should be student-athletes initiated, but common observance indicates that chaplains and university coaches and staff appear to initiate, encourage or participate on a regular basis. The argument could be made that by their extensive involvement a chaplain has an unduly coercive effect on students to support or participate in religious exercises. Although sport chaplains publicly assert a “hands-off” approach to direct religious intervention the realities of the situation involve both perceived and actual endorsement of religion. The “degree of school involvement” of team chaplains with the support of the institution “bears the imprint of the state” and puts athletes “who object in an untenable position.”(505 U.S. at 590). Non-Christian team members are cast as “outsiders” and may perceive a threat to their relationship with their coaches or teammates. Christian believers may be perceived as “insiders” or having favored status. This type of social coercion has the improper effect evidencing a state orthodoxy of religious preference.
The Free Exercise Clause ensures student-athletes the fundamental right to engage in individual prayer and religious study, team initiated prayer and self-organized group religious meetings as well as other individual religious expressions. Conversely, team chaplains that are endorsed and supported within the context of the institution appear to bear the imprint of the state and may be a violation of the Establishment Clause.
A detailed analysis of the intersection of the Religion Clauses in sport settings is discussed by Batista (2002) in Balancing the First Amendment’s Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses: A Rebuttal to Alexander and Alexander.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to James Bemiller, Department of Kinesiology, Recreation, and Sport Studies, The University of Tennessee, 1914 Andy Holt Avenue, Knoxville, TN 37996. Email: jimb@utk.edu
References
Batista, P. (2002). Balancing the First Amendment’s Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses: A Rebuttal to Alexander & Alexander. Journal of Legal Aspects of Sport, 12(2), 87-116.
County of Alleghany v. ACLU, 492 U.S. 573 (1989).
Dzikus, L., Waller, S. N., & Hardin, R. (2011). Collegiate sport chaplaincy: Exploration of an emerging profession. Journal of Contemporary Athletics, 5(1), 1-22.
Fellowship of Christian Athletes. (2007). Chaplain training manual. Kansas City, MO: Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
Fellowship of Christian Athletes. (2009, June 1). Character coaching: FCA’s chaplain packet. Retrieved February 11, 2011, from http://fcaresources.com/files/Chaplain_Character Coach_Brochure.pdf
Lee v. Wiseman, 505 U.S. 577 (1992).
Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971).
Lipe, R. D. (2006). Transforming lives in sport: A guide for sport chaplains and sport mentors. Kearney, NE: Cross Training.
Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668 (1984).
Santa Fe Independent School District v. Jane Doe, 530 U.S. 290 (2000).
Waller, S., Dzikus, L., & Hardin, R. (2008). Collegiate sport chaplaincy: Problems and promise. Journal of Issues in Intercollegiate Athletics 1, 107-123.
