|
 |   |
|
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Multimedia Central Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities Work in Sports
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE
|  |
Pray by play
Many Christians are angered that the Supreme Court has banned official prayers at football games. In response, some fans in the South have started saying The Lord's Prayer spontaneously together before games -- or those in attendance bring radios and turn them on full blast, playing a prayer recited by a preacher over the air. While this group prayer would seem to contradict the spirit of the ruling, it also appears to be protected by the First Amendment. Can you stop Americans from standing up and praying any more than you can stop them from standing up and cheering or booing? The passion which this matter invokes surprises a great many people, but football has always been our sport most connected with religion. In the late-19th century, football was the centerpiece of what was called "Muscular Christianity," the creed of which proclaimed that young men -- especially educated, young Protestant men -- could be strong of faith and body alike. Whereas Muscular Christianity sprung up in the prep schools and Ivy League colleges of the Northeast, the notion flowered in Dixie, where the message of the 104th Psalm remains strong: The young lions roar after their prey and take their meat for God. Baseball was always more the patriotic game -- the National Pastime -- Yankee and heterogeneous. We associate The Star-Spangled Banner with baseball, don't we? But it seemed natural for football to be paired more with religion. This begins with the simple fact that games are held once a week, like a Sunday service. Especially in the small towns of the South, the football crowd has always been very much congregational. The reality that people get hurt playing football cannot be dismissed, either. There is much praying for safety. Even now, at the conclusion of the most violent NFL game, groups of players from both teams gather together, hold hands, and give thanks for their deliverance from danger. It has been common for years now for all pro teams to have official chaplains to minister to the soul, no less than each has team doctors for the body. Theologians have even posited that the football team training meal bears some analogy to the communion. And: Onward Christian Soldiers. As far back as the 1940s, General Maxwell Taylor, then the superintendent at West Point, called off Army's hugely popular series against Notre Dame, because it seemed to him that the annual game was taking on the ugly overtones of a religious war, Protestants vs. Catholics. For those Americans who have been disturbed at the prohibition against prayer in the public schools, the ban on football prayer is not just another malign extension. After all, in many respects, football is more inclusive -- and symbolic -- than school. It is not just that a school's success is measured by its football record in so many American minds, but whereas school is only attended by children, a football game attracts family, the whole community. It is one thing to tell my child not to pray, but it provokes a much more visceral reaction when you are told not to pray yourself. Religion and football together form a strong emotional combination, and for the people who care deeply about both and are used to having team spirit and soul spirit served up together, they do not want to hear what St. Paul said, that "exercise thyself rather unto godliness." They want to praise the Lord and pass for the touchdown. No, prayer in the American stadium is not an issue that will fade gently away. These commentaries, which appear each Wednesday on National Public Radio's Morning Edition, are posted weekly by CNNSI.com. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
| ||||||||||||||||||||
