A recent public post from Boaz Football thanked Jason McCullars, interim pastor of Beulah Baptist Church, for organizing the team’s Friday morning devotions. According to the post, he spoke to the players from Galatians 6 about accountability, prays with the team on Friday nights, and is supported by a “community of churches” that has made the players a priority.
I disagree with this practice.
A public-school football program should not be used to present Christianity, the Bible, or God as settled truth to the young people under its authority.
God’s existence is not an established fact. The divine authority of the Bible is not an established fact. The claim that Galatians contains a message from God is a Christian belief—not neutral moral knowledge that can be handed to every football player as though no serious question exists.
The Boaz Football post acknowledges none of that. It does not describe Christian players independently organizing a voluntary gathering for students who share their beliefs. It calls these gatherings “our Friday morning devotions.” It thanks a pastor for organizing them and churches for making “our players” a priority.
The language tells us who is acting upon whom. The pastor teaches. The churches reach out. The football program approves and promotes. The assembled players receive.
That is not religious neutrality. It is institutional endorsement of Christianity.
These young men are not pictured inside a church they independently decided to visit. They are assembled as members of a football team—a team structured around coaching authority, discipline, loyalty, playing time, and the powerful human need to belong.
That makes them a captive audience in every meaningful sense.
Perhaps no coach explicitly ordered them to attend. The post does not tell us. But coercion does not require a spoken threat. A player knows that coaches control positions, playing time, discipline, recommendations, and membership on the team. He knows that teammates notice who belongs and who appears different. He knows that Christianity is closely associated in Boaz with morality, respectability, and being a good person.
Now place that player in a room with his team, bring in a pastor with the football program’s approval, serve breakfast, open the Bible, and begin a devotion.
Is he genuinely free to stand up and leave? Is he free to say that he does not believe God exists? Is he free to question whether the Bible possesses any divine authority? Is he free to be Muslim, Jewish, agnostic, atheist, uncertain, or simply unwilling to discuss his beliefs?
Can he exercise that freedom without worrying about what his coaches and teammates will think of him?
If those freedoms are not actively and unmistakably protected, calling the gathering voluntary does not make it free.
I graduated from Boaz High School in May 1972, and I played football under Coach Hicks. I do not remember him conducting team devotionals, arranging for pastors to instruct us, or mentioning God to us at all.
Looking back, I believe Coach Hicks had it right.
He coached football. He taught discipline, responsibility, perseverance, preparation, loyalty, and teamwork without presenting Christianity as the source of those qualities. He did not need a pastor or a Bible lesson to build a team. He left religion where it belonged—with individual players and their families.
His approach was not hostile to Christianity. Christian players remained free to attend church, pray, read the Bible, and believe in God. Players who believed differently—or who were uncertain—were equally free. Coach Hicks did not use his authority to place any of us inside a religious exercise.
That is what freedom of conscience looks like.
The present practice is different. The football program is helping churches place Christian instruction inside the life of the team. The players may be invited to consider how a biblical teaching applies to them, but they are not being invited to examine whether the Bible is authoritative, whether Christianity is true, or whether there is any God behind it.
The conclusion has been protected before the players enter the room.
That is the distinction at the heart of I Dare You, Teacher: Question What You Teach: protected certainty versus honest inquiry.
Honest inquiry does not begin by announcing that Christianity is false. It also does not begin by pretending Christianity is true. It permits every claim—including religious claims—to be questioned. It protects the student who believes, the student who doubts, the student who rejects the claim, and the student who honestly says, “I do not know.”
The Pencil-Driven Life rests on the same freedom. Its practice is simple:
Notice. Question. Revise.
Notice what you inherited. Question it honestly. Keep what survives examination. Revise or release what does not. No pastor, teacher, coach, church, community, or book should make that decision for another person.
The Pencil-Driven Life Reset Guide does not tell anyone what must appear on the page. It leaves room for doubt, silence, disagreement, blank spaces, and “I do not know yet.” It does not supply the required answer and then call the process reflection.
The football devotion supplies the answer before any questioning begins. God is assumed. The Bible is treated as authoritative. The pastor interprets it. The football program supplies the audience. The pressure of team belonging helps hold that audience in place.
Even the appeal to Galatians deserves examination.
Galatians is not a statement spoken by God. It is an ancient letter written by Paul to particular Christian communities during a religious dispute. Paul claimed that the gospel he preached had come to him “through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Galatians 1:11–12).
We know that Paul made that claim because it appears in his letter. We do not know that the claimed revelation occurred. Paul’s assertion cannot prove its own divine origin.
Calling Galatians “God’s Word” therefore adds a religious conclusion to the historical fact. The historical fact is that Paul wrote—or dictated—a letter and claimed divine authority for his message. Whether Jesus actually revealed anything to Paul, whether any god inspired the letter, and whether Paul possessed authority to speak for such a god remain questions of belief.
Even the description of Galatians 6 as being “about accountability” is an interpretation supplied by the pastor. The chapter addresses members of an early Christian community who already accepted Paul’s religious premises. It speaks of restoring someone caught in transgression, bearing one another’s burdens, examining one’s own conduct, and fulfilling “the law of Christ.”
It was not written to American public-school athletes, and it does not arrive in their football facility as neutral moral knowledge.
Before a football program presents this letter to its players as religious authority, honest inquiry would ask: Why should these young men accept Paul’s claim? What evidence establishes that his experience was a revelation rather than a vision, conviction, psychological event, or story through which he asserted authority? How did one man’s letter to ancient Christian communities become “God’s Word” for everyone? What place is protected for the player who examines the evidence and concludes that Paul was mistaken?
The Boaz Football post asks none of those questions. It moves directly from “Galatians says” to the unspoken conclusion “God says.”
That movement is not knowledge. It is faith presented as fact.
Anyone is free to believe Paul. But a public-school football program has no business assuming that every player should.
The post describes the pastor and churches as “pouring into our players.” That pleasant phrase should not prevent us from asking what is being poured, who decided that the players need it, and whether each player is genuinely free to refuse it.
Christianity is being poured. Churches and football authorities have decided it belongs there. The players are expected to receive it.
A church has every right to teach Christianity to people who freely enter its doors. Christian students have every right to pray, read the Bible, and organize their own voluntary gatherings. A football player has every right to believe in God and speak about that belief.
But the football program itself should not become an instrument of Christian formation.
A team is not a congregation. A coach is not a spiritual gatekeeper. Players are not a mission field supplied to local churches.
Character does not belong to Christianity. Honesty, courage, discipline, responsibility, compassion, loyalty, and perseverance are human values. Christians may practice them. So may atheists, agnostics, Muslims, Jews, and people who claim no religious identity. A football program can teach those values without attaching them to supernatural claims.
Freedom of religion does not mean that the Christian majority may use a public-school football program to reinforce its beliefs. It means that every player’s conscience belongs to him.
Respecting Christianity does not require treating its claims as facts. Respecting Christians does not require remaining silent when churches use institutional authority to reach a captive audience. And respecting our community does not mean protecting its inherited assumptions from honest examination.
Coach Hicks respected the proper boundary more than fifty years ago.
Boaz Football should respect it now.
Continue with The Pencil’s Edge
If this reflection gave you something to sit with, here are three simple ways to continue.
A Pencil Practice
Take a pencil and divide a page into three sections.
At the top of the first section, write:
What is known?
List only what can be established by evidence.
At the top of the second section, write:
What is claimed?
List the religious, cultural, or institutional conclusions you have been taught to accept.
At the top of the third section, write:
What remains unknown?
Leave room for uncertainty. Do not rush to fill it.
Then choose one religious or moral belief you were presented as fact when you were young. Ask:
Who taught me this?
What authority did that person hold?
What evidence was offered?
Was I genuinely free to disagree?
What might it have cost me to say, “I do not believe that”?
Do not force yourself to reject the belief. Do not force yourself to preserve it.
Notice the difference between what you know, what someone claimed, and what remains uncertain.
That distinction may be one honest mark.
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No noise.
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Just the next honest mark.
The Pencil-Driven Life 