Last month, Iowa State’s head football coach, Gene Chizik, told a crowd at an Fellowship of Christian Athletes meeting that he wanted to hire a full-time chaplain for his football team. The position would be privately funded.

Earlier this week, Iowa State’s President took the proposal to the ISU Athletics council. He has asked the group to look into the issues and put together a list of recommendations.

The President is concerned with which responsibilities would be appropriate for a chaplain and which would not be appropriate. He would like these to be spelled out before a chaplain is hired.

In the meantime, 126 faculty and students have signed a petition that opposes the hiring. It was organized by a music professor at Iowa State. The ISU Athletics Council is reviewing the petition but has been warned by the professor that legal action is not out of the question depending upon their hiring decision.

Here’s the problem: Some members of the faculty and students don’t want a chaplain hired because they view it as violation of the separation of church and state.

First, lets consider how having a team chaplain violates the separation of church and state.

Did you know the words “separation of church and state” are not found in the Constitution? In fact, it was not until a letter by President Thomas Jefferson that the words appeared in a letter to the the Danbury Baptists in 1802. These Baptists were not a part of the Congregationalist establishment in Connecticut, and believed they were being left out of civic affairs. They wrote Jefferson because he had defended their rights as Baptist when he was in Virginia. They also wanted President Jefferson to explain what the Constitution said about religion. The feared that if the Constitution meant that the free exercise of religion came from the state (and not from God), that the government might take away or restrict their freedom in the future.

Here is what Jefferson wrote:

“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God; that he owes account to none other for this faith or his worship; that the legislature powers of government reach actions only and not opinions. I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”

It’s helpful to keep the context of this statement in mind. Remember, many of the Founding Fathers emerged from the Reformation where they witnessed the corruption by the state when the church is controlled by political power. The Federalist Papers make it clear that the Founding Fathers were concerned with one Christian denomination using the state to exercise power over the other. This was the case with the Danbury Baptists, not the restriction of the Christian faith from the public square.

Tom Berg, a nationally known constitutional law professor weighed in by saying there is a place for chaplains in government, like the military or prisons, especially for religious council for those who want it, but he claims government is deeply involved in those situations. He said it can be viewed as suppressing religion if prisoners and soldiers don’t have access to chaplains.

Coach Chizik’s plan for a chaplain on government property is not a new idea. Some of the first legislative action taken in the history of the United States involved chaplains. The Continental-Confederation Congress of 1774-1789, the first governing body of the United States of America, created chaplains for both the Congress and the military and even sponsored the publication of the Bible for the masses.

There are thousands of military chaplains serving today and many communities around the country have police chaplains. Even the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate have chaplains. So what case could a group of faculty and students make against a chaplaincy program for the Iowa State football team? It’s going to be privately funded so it’s hard to understand whey they would oppose a program that will help support the spiritual lives of many students.