The Daily Wire has an exclusive first look at the trailer for “Average Joe,” the story of a high school football coach who took his fight for the right to pray on the field all the way to the Supreme Court — and won.
WATCH: Exclusive first look at “Average Joe,” the true story of how coach Joe Kennedy won at the Supreme Court after he was fired for praying at games. In theaters October 11: pic.twitter.com/CYsfq2AFvV
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Directed by award-winner Harold Cronk, (“God’s Not Dead,” “Unbroken: Path to Redemption”), the film stars Eric Close (“Nashville,” “American Sniper”) as Joseph Kennedy, assistant football coach of Bremerton High School in Washington. After seven years on the job, school officials asked Kennedy to stop praying with players on field after games. Kennedy refused, saying he had the right to pray quietly in public. The school placed him on administrative leave in 2015, and later fired him for his refusal to stop praying.
Kennedy sued the school on religious freedom grounds, and took his case all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in a 6-3 decision that Kennedy’s rights had been infringed upon.
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“I’ve been fighting my whole life,” Kennedy says in the trailer, over a montage of him getting in scrapes and serving as a Marine.
“So, if you told me that saying a prayer on the 50-yard line was a thing that was going to get me in the biggest fight of my life, you can not tell me that God doesn’t have a sense of humor.”
In addition to recounting Kennedy’s battle, “Average Joe” also pulls back the curtain on its subject’s life, giving viewers a glimpse at private moments between Kennedy and his wife, Denise, played by Amy Acker (“Person of Interest,” “Alias”).
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“I made a promise to God. I can’t let him down,” Kennedy tells Denise, who responds, “God doesn’t need you to defend him.”
“I’m not defending God. I’m defending the people of this country,” Kennedy says.,
Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority ruling in Kennedy’s case in June 2023, seven years after the coach began his fight to pray on the field.
“Here, a government entity sought to punish an individual for engaging in a brief, quiet, personal religious observance doubly protected by the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment. And the only meaningful justification the government offered for its reprisal rested on a mistaken view that it had a duty to ferret out and suppress religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech,” Gorsuch wrote. “The Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of discrimination.”
“Average Joe” hits theaters nationwide on October 11.
Related: Fired Football Coach To Be Reinstated After Supreme Court Win
