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.
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