Skip to main content

Pastor: School's Football Field Baptism 'Voluntary'

Share This article

A mass baptism on a Georgia public school football field is drawing the ire of a prominent atheist group, even though the pastor involved in the event says the school was not involved.

The baptism happened Aug. 17 on the field before football practice in Carroll County. Video and photos from the baptism were then posted online.

That move drew complaints from the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Rev. Kevin Williams, senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Villa Rica, said the baptism of 18 students and a coach was voluntary.

"The school had nothing to do with this. It was voluntary; it was after school; it was before practice," Williams told local reporters. "I'd have probably talked to the school board because they had no idea this was happening."

"The question about this story has never been whether these children should have been baptized," Williams continued. "The question is, should it have been done where it was done, with specifically the coach's involvement, which typically the courts don't hold a very high impression of."

The superintendent now says the district is taking "appropriate steps" to investigate the matter.

Share This article

About The Author

CBN
News

CBN News is a national/international, nonprofit news organization that provides programming 24 hours a day by cable, satellite and the Internet. Staffed by a group of acclaimed news professionals, CBN News delivers stories to over a million viewers each day without a specific agenda. With its headquarters in Virginia Beach, Va., CBN News has bureaus in Washington D.C., Jerusalem, and elsewhere around the world. What began as a segment on CBN's flagship program, The 700 Club, in the early 1980s, CBN News has since expanded into a multimedia news organization that offers today's news headlines