Former Football Coach-Turned-Activist Tackles Public Education Problems
by Allie Martin
September 1, 2004
(AgapePress) - A former high school football coach is helping equip Christians in Ohio to take a stand for Christ in a secular society.In the late 1990s, Dave Daubenmire was a successful football coach at London High School in Madison County when he was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union for leading his players in pre-game prayers. The coach eventually won that lawsuit, but says he felt God was calling him into full-time ministry.
Today Daubenmire runs Pass the Salt Ministries and Minutemen United, two ministries that encourage believers to take a biblical stand on moral issues of the day. He believes Christians in America must raise their voices before it is too late. But instead, he says, all too often believers who should be confronting their culture are cowering in their churches.
"We go into our fortresses with stained glass windows and hide there," Daubenmire says. "We go and we pray, and we go to church, and we turn the culture loose just to run rampant. We all know what's going on in America. We know the moral slide that's taken place in this once great Christian nation."
In an effort to lead the charge, the former high school football coach recently announced his candidacy for a seat on the Ohio State School Board. He feels the growing numbers of parents seeking alternatives to government schools is proof that public education reform is long overdue. Public education officials are "crying for more and more money," he says, and they are complaining about "losing so many tax dollars with the charter schools and with private schools and with home schools."
To Daubenmire, all this begs a question long overdue to be addressed. "Why are these people fleeing the public schools," he asks. "Why are they doing that? And that's the question that I want to bring to the table at the State Department of Education. We'd better take a good hard look at what it is that's causing people to pay their taxes to fund the schools and then still dig in their pocket to send their kids to private schools."
The Ohio school board candidate says he hopes by putting his hat in the ring to encourage other Christians to run for public office, or to otherwise speak out and get personally involved in the culture war. A staunch pro-family activist, he believes in bringing values into public debate and recently led pro-life advocates on weekly demonstrations at an abortion clinic in Columbus.
