Why Coach Joe Kennedy Believes God Uses the 'Least Likely' in Spiritual Battles
- Milton Quintanilla Crosswalk Headlines Contributor
- Updated Sep 04, 2024
Joe Kennedy, the assistant high school football coach from Washington State who won a victory at the U.S. Supreme Court after being fired for praying on the Supreme Court, says that God uses the "least likely" people to accomplish His purposes.
"I don't know why God does what He does; none of us do," Kennedy, an 18-year U.S. Marine veteran who coached the varsity football team at Bremerton High School in Bremerton, Washington, told The Christian Post reporter and podcaster Ian M. Giatti in an interview as part of a live event for CP's "Politics in the Pews" podcast and article series at Fellowship Church last week.
"And I was the least likely person that I thought God would ever want to do anything with."
Kennedy was fired in 2015 for praying on the 50-yard line on the football field after games. Despite suffering seven losses in the lower courts, he was ultimately victorious in 2022 after the nation's high court ruled 6-3 in Kennedy's favor. The decision upheld the constitutional right of public school employees to engage in brief, personal, private prayer, effectively overturning the 1971 Supreme Court decision in Lemon v. Kurtzman, which had established the three-prong "Lemon test."
The Lemon test permitted the government to be involved in religion only if it served a secular purpose, did not inhibit or advance religion, and did not result in excessive engagement of church and state.
"This is something that I did not want, I did not ask for," Kennedy said. "And this whole entire time, I've been dragging my feet on it and saying, 'God, I don't want to go through this.' But He does the most incredible things with idiots like me."
"So imagine what He can do with you guys!" he continued. "That's how cool this is. If He picks me to do something so great — of changing the nation in our religious liberties — imagine what we could do as just individual families, individual groups, individual companies out there, individual churches."
"We can change the entire United States [...] back to where we were if we just do what we're supposed to do, and it's that simple," he added.
Kennedy also shared that the original complaint against him came from a member of a local satanic group.
As reported by CBS News, members of the Seattle chapter of The Satanic Temple showed up at the football field in protest against Kennedy and argued that the public prayer should also be a reason to invoke the devil on the field after the game.
"It'll definitely be a theatrical production — robes, incense, we have a gong," chapter head Lilith Starr said at the time. "There are a number of students and teachers at Bremerton High who don't feel like they're being represented on the football field."
Kennedy told Giatti that students pushed back against the Satanists by shouting them down with chants of "Jesus!"
"A kid jumped up on a rock, and he had a cross, and the whole entire school district was chanting, 'Jesus, Jesus!" Kennedy recalled. "You can't make that stuff up."
Despite his "victory," Kennedy said he was "terrified" at the prospect of declining religious freedom in the U.S.
Prior to his case, the football coach admitted he "didn't understand how much power was given to the judicial branches."
He pointed out how his case failed seven consecutive times before finally reaching the Supreme Court.
"And that scares me," he said. "That really scared me."
Photo Credit: ©Facebook/Coach Joe Kennedy
