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When Faith and Football Teamed Up Against American Democracy

The U.S. Supreme Court will soon decide the case of a football coach at a public high school who was told he wasn’t allowed to pray on the field in front of players. The expected result is a win for the coach—and the further erosion of the separation between church and state.

The shriek of a whistle sounded an end and a beginning.

On an October night in 2015, reporters, curious out-of-towners and even satanists assembled at, of all places, a high school football game in suburban Washington state. They were all stoked for an impending collision, the crescendo of a fight that, over just six weeks, had ballooned into a spectacle.