People praying over football may not appreciate their luck

People praying over football may not appreciate their luck

As he lies dying in Tennyson’s epic poem, “The Idylls of the King,” Arthur offers encouragement to his knights: “More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.”

We all may hope so. But does prayer influence the outcome of football games or the success of football teams? That’s the implication of the tale of the Bremerton, Washington, high school football coach who the other day won a case at the Supreme Court. The court decided that his school district had violated his constitutional rights by removing him for praying ostentatiously on the field after games.

Reasonably enough, the school administration felt that the coach wasn’t praying privately and individually, as his lawyers maintained, as much as he was using his public school position to encourage his players to pray. Indeed, once the coach began the practice, his players soon joined him in prayer on the field. They well could have suspected that doing so might help them gain playing time. They might have been praying for exactly that.

While the court seems to have overlooked them, old news reports about the coach’s practice quoted him as admitting that with his praying he sought to set an example for the players to help improve their lives. If that was his purpose, his praying wasn’t really private and individual at all but government-sponsored prayer in a public school setting, which has been deemed unconstitutional since a Supreme Court decision in 1962.

Of course prayer won’t kill anyone. In government venues people may feel pressure to pray but no one can be compelled to pray, and the court’s decision in this case isn’t likely to revive the insincere and superficial if not meaningless school prayers of old, in which students could feel coerced.

But since it calls attention to the connection of prayer and sports competitions, the decision invites speculation about the nature of such public prayer and the civic religion behind it.

After all, right now the world is suffering, as it usually is, several wars -- not just in Ukraine but also the Middle East and Yemen -- as well as sharply rising inflation that threatens some poor countries with famine. Meanwhile there is always widespread suffering from disease and natural disasters. In these circumstances who should feel compelled to seek divine help in the context of football?

Occasionally sports may reflect a great cause worth praying for, like the liberation of the oppressed, as when Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers bravely challenged racial segregation in baseball.

Desire for the success of a perpetual underdog might justify prayer as well. People are moved by the locker-room prayer scene in the basketball movie “Hoosiers,” where a player for the team of a tiny rural school competing for the state championship says, “Let’s win this one for all the small schools that never had the chance to be here.”

But such prayer needn’t be offered in a stadium, the sort of spectacle condemned in the Sermon on the Mount:

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men.

Verily I say unto you, they have their reward.

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

Any place that prays over football may not understand just how blessed it already is.

 

* * *

 

BAD POLICY KILLED THEM: While the Supreme Court was ratifying high school football prayer, dozens of illegal immigrants were baking to death in a truck in San Antonio, Texas.

In recent years there have been many such smuggling atrocities near this country’s southern border, and they happen not just because of the desperate economic conditions in Latin America and elsewhere.

Most of all they happen because people contemplating illegal immigration are justifiably confident that if they can sneak into the United States or even just reach the U.S. border, the U.S. government will never get around to enforcing the law against them.

This de-facto policy of semi-open borders is not as humane as its proponents think.

 

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.

The views expressed here are not necessarily those of The Lakeville Journal and The Journal does not support or oppose candidates for public office.

Latest News

All are welcome at The Mahaiwe

Paquito D’Rivera performs at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington on April 5.

Geandy Pavon

Natalia Bernal is the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center’s education and community engagement manager and is, in her own words, “the one who makes sure that Mahaiwe events are accessible to all.”

The Mahaiwe’s community engagement program is rooted in the belief that the performing arts should be for everyone. “We are committed to establishing and growing partnerships with neighboring community and arts organizations to develop pathways for overcoming social and practical barriers,” Bernal explained. “Immigrants, people of color, communities with low income, those who have traditionally been underserved in the performing arts, should feel welcomed at the Mahaiwe.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Living with the things you love:
a conversation with Mary Randolph Carter
Mary Randolph Carter teaches us to surround ourselves with what matters to live happily ever after.
Carter Berg

There is magic in a home filled with the things we love, and Mary Randolph Carter, affectionately known as “Carter,” has spent a lifetime embracing that magic. Her latest book, “Live with the Things You Love … and You’ll Live Happily Ever After,” is about storytelling, joy, and honoring life’s poetry through the objects we keep.

“This is my tenth book,” Carter said. “At the root of each is my love of collecting, the thrill of the hunt, and living surrounded by things that conjure up family, friends, and memories.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Beloved classic film ‘The Red Shoes’ comes to the big screen for Triplex benefit
Provided

On Saturday, April 5, at 3 p.m., The Triplex Cinema in Great Barrington and Jacob’s Pillow, the dance festival in Becket, Massachusetts, are presenting a special benefit screening of the cinematic masterpiece, “The Red Shoes,” followed by a discussion and Q&A. Featuring guest speakers Norton Owen, director of preservation at Jacob’s Pillow, and dance historian Lynn Garafola, the event is a fundraiser for The Triplex.

“We’re pitching in, as it were, because we like to help our neighbors,” said Norton. “They (The Triplex) approached us with the idea, wanting some input if they were going to do a dance film. I thought of Lynn as the perfect person also to include in this because of her knowledge of The Ballets Russes and the book that she wrote about Diaghilev. There is so much in this film, even though it’s fictional, that derives from the Ballets Russes.” Garafola, the leading expert on the Ballets Russes under Serge Diaghilev, 1909–1929, the most influential company in twentieth-century theatrical dance, said, “We see glimpses of that Russian émigré tradition, performances we don’t see much of today. The film captures the artifice of ballet, from the behind-the-scenes world of dressers and conductors to the sheer passion of the audience.”

Keep ReadingShow less