COMING SOON from gnd media group

After twenty years in the US Marines, football coach Joe Kennedy thought his fighting days were done until,
after taking a knee to pray on the high school football field, he was fired.

averge joe is the story of one ordinary everyman’s fight for religious freedom that would take him all the way to Supreme Court.

Joseph Kennedy has always been a fighter. From fighting to survive in and out of foster care and in a state-sponsored Boys Home to fighting in the Marine Corps in the Gulf War, by the time he retired from the military to become a high school football coach, Kennedy thought his fighting days were finally behind him. Little did he know that his previous fighting days were all in preparation for the fight of his life.

When Kennedy was fired by the school where he coached after taking a knee on the fifty-yard line after each football game to pray, Kennedy sued the school for infringing on the first amendment rights he had put his life on the line to protect. Hoping that the case would be settled quickly and his job restored, the school board fought back, beginning a legal battle that would last eight years.

As the case worked its way through the legal system, Kennedy gained national notoriety while his relationship with the love of his life, Denise, became strained to the breaking point. Put in the impossible position of standing with her husband and being ostracized daily by her coworkers and colleagues on the school board that fired him, Denise could not understand why Kennedy was willing to turn their lives upside down for this case. Always the fighter, Kennedy found it difficult to articulate the calling God was placing on him to stand for his faith. Willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to protect the rights of every American through his military service, Kennedy did not understand why his own rights were in jeopardy because of his private expression of faith.

Facing unfathomable strains in his public life and his private life, a text message from Christian filmmakers, the Kendrick Brothers, producers of the football film ‘Facing the Giants,’ sent Kennedy to his knees. As Kendrick shared words of encouragement with Kennedy and Denise, Denise finally understood the bigger purpose behind Kennedy’s personal fight. Making the decision to stand by her husband’s side, Denise and Kennedy fought the Bremerton, Washington school board all the way to the Supreme Court not once, but twice, with the aid of pro-bono legal team First Liberty. The final ruling and the fate of America’s right to freedom of religious expression hangs in the balance thanks to the most unlikely couple answering the call of God to fight one last great battle.