Do you remember Coach Joe Kennedy? The high school coach fired for praying after his team’s games? If you thought his story might make a good movie, you are in good company. The producers of God Is Not Dead and The Blind have announced the upcoming release of a movie about Kennedy called Average Joe (not to be confused with several other productions — including a 2023 television series, a 2021 movie and a 2019 film — by the same name).

GND Media Group and Fathom Events said they will release the film in theaters on Oct. 10. GND Media Group produces faith-based entertainment for audiences around the world, while Fathom Events is a specialty distributor for the big screen.

Average Joe stars Eric Close and Amy Acker as Kennedy and his wife Denise. Close is best known for playing FBI agent Martin Fitzgerald in the CBS drama Without a Trace in the early 2000s. He also has appeared in Nashville, American Sniper and Suits, among other productions, and has directed a number of films. Acker played Winifred Burkle and Illyria on the supernatural television series Angel.

Close is an actor who isn’t shy about sharing his Christian faith. In fact, the media outlet IMDb says he often adds Philippines 4:13 when he signs autographs for fans. The passage says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

The Coach Fired for Praying

Kennedy is an unlikely person to champion religious freedom, as he reportedly was once an atheist. And in pursuing a court case against the school district, he was going against his wife’s employer.

Fathom described the former coach as “a fighter” who was abandoned by his biological mother and suffered neglect and abuse as a child.

“Joe spent his childhood fighting through the cold realities of foster care and group-home life,” Fathom explained. “At 18, he finally found a home for his warrior spirit: in the Marine Corps, where he served in the Gulf War.

“After retiring from the Marines, Joe felt led by God to help coach high school football – where he could pour into a generation of young men the love and guidance he so desperately sought at that age,” Fathom said.

Although Kennedy was a coach, he has said he knew little about football and saw himself more as a “father to the fatherless” — a man who could teach the boys “mental toughness,” according to The New Republic.

Fathom described Kennedy’s situation this way: “Retired, happily married, building into kids as a strong role model… it was finally coming together for Joe. Until he prayed,” according to Fathom. “Yep, Joe was fired. For praying. Silently. By himself. After the games.”

Life Comes Together Until….

The coach fired for praying served in the Marine Corps for 20 years, including a stint in the Gulf War, before becoming an assistant coach at Bremerton High School in Washington state. Everything was coming together for him in civilian life until his prayers became an issue.

Kennedy said he had promised God he would publicly pray at football games. So, he knelt at the 50-yard line and said a prayer after every game.

He wanted to thank God for the players’ accomplishments and express thanks for being part of their lives. The prayers were personal, but he was saying them in a very public place – at midfield after a high school football game.

Bremerton High School officials asked him to “keep any on-field praying non-demonstrative or apart from students, saying they were concerned that tolerating his public post-game prayers would suggest government endorsement of religion, in violation of the separation of church and state,” according to AP News.

When Kennedy continued to pray on the football field, the school district suspended and later fired him. The former coach then sued, arguing that the district infringed on his first amendment right to religious freedom.

A Battle for Religious Freedom

His seven-year court battle went to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington before landing in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which sided with the school.

At issue was how to balance the religious and free speech rights of teachers and coaches versus students’ rights to religious freedom, according to AP News. Was Coach Kennedy coercing students by praying? Was he incorporating his “personal religious beliefs into a school event?”

The U.S. Supreme Court, which had declined to hear the case in 2019, accepted the case in January 2022 and ultimately ruled 6-3 in Kennedy’s favor. The court said the coach’s prayers were protected by the Constitution. It also ruled that Kennedy was praying on his own time, which was after games ended. And it said firing him was akin to firing a Muslim teacher for wearing a headscarf at school or a Christian for quietly praying at lunch.

Opponents feared the court’s ruling would open doors to “much more coercive prayers” in public schools. They also argued that the decision might force states to entangle themselves in religious issues.

They also believed the Supreme Court should have declined to take the case, reasoning that Kennedy’s firing became irrelevant after the one-time coach moved to Florida without informing the court of his move.

Kennedy’s Future

With the Supreme Court’s decision, the coach fired for praying was reinstated as assistant football coach. But he resigned after one game last fall, saying, “I believe I can best continue to advocate for constitutional freedom and religious liberty by working from outside the school system.

“I will continue to work to help people understand and embrace the historic ruling at the heart of our case,” he added. “I never wanted to be the big blasting light that blinds you,” the former coach noted. “But I wanted people to be able to see the light through me and by my actions – instead of through just what I say.”

First Liberty, a nonprofit conservative Christian legal organization whose cases include Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, called the case a “tremendous victory” for Coach Kennedy and “religious liberty for all Americans.”

Kelly Shackelford, the organization’s CEO and chief counsel, said, “Our Constitution protects the right of every American to engage in private religious expression, including praying in public, without fear of getting fired.” Paul Clement, First Liberty attorney and former U.S. Solicitor General, argued the case before the Supreme Court.

Learn more about Coach Joe Kennedy by seeing Average Joe this fall or reading his book Average Joe: One Man’s Faith and the Fight to Change a Nation, which is available now.