Patriot's Pen

Authors Note: This is my Patriot's Pen piece about the joint football team of Shorewood-Messmer and their controversial logo.

When the founding fathers created the declaration of independence, they wanted to form a country where everybody can praise their own religion and express their freedom of speech. In the time before the founding fathers, England’s government picked the church of England to be the only religion allowed. The people who opposed the church of England left for America, where they could have some religious freedom. People seem to misinterpret the main meaning of freedom of religion, taking the separation of church and state to the most extreme places.

In Shorewood, the local high school combines with Messmer Catholic High School, to form a football team. Every few years they have their students create the logo for the team, and this past year a design won that had the Shorewood greyhound and Messmer’s bishop hat with a cross on it. It was approved by both schools and was used throughout the 2012 season. Then close to the end of the season, some parents and students spoke up against the logo, saying that the cross on the bishop’s hat shouldn’t be there. Those people say that it needs to be removed because it is an issue of separation of church and state. I think the founding fathers would have believed those people interpreted the concept of separation of church and state incorrectly.

I think the founding fathers meant the separation of church and state to mean, that the church could not rule the state, or the state could not pick one religion either. Having the state pick a religion goes against the first amendment, freedom of religion. The parents and students interpretation was that logo was ruling over the public school. The Messmer football players have the right to express their religion on their football helmets, even though they are combined with a public school.

I think the founding fathers would find this wrong and would of let the Messmer football team play with the Bishop’s hat on their helmet. Just because there’s a cross on the helmet, doesn’t mean that the government is making them become Christians.