(Weekly Column)
In 1984, I was placed on the varsity basketball team as a high school sophomore – a team that held a daily Evangelical Christian prayer after practice. Even though it was a public school, we were forced to gather in a circle near center court and offer pleas to God that always ended “in Jesus’ name we pray,” although not all of us were Christians.
This intrusive ritual was student initiated and well intentioned, yet there was a high degree of coercion. As a scrawny 14 year old playing with muscle-bound eighteen-year-old men, I was too intimidated to speak up and challenge the appropriateness of such unconstitutional, sectarian prayers.
To get along, those like me, learned to go along and violate our consciences. Unfortunately, similar situations are happening every day and highlight why prayers and showy displays of team piety should immediately be excised – from grade school to the professional ranks. That means no more team prayer circles or Bible studies. Team chaplains should be dismissed, and faith should take a backseat to football and bibles to basketball.
Now, I’m not saying that individual athletes should refrain from expressions of religiosity in games. Let Tim Tebow do his “Tebowing,” if he ever again gets into an NFL game. Allow athletes to point to the sky if they actually believe God helped them score a touchdown or sack a quarterback. There is even room for Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis to exonerate himself from a double murder he was allegedly involved in 13 years ago because, as he told interviewer Shannon Sharpe, it was God’s will.
SHARPE: “A couple of weeks ago, the family of the incident in 2000, and I’m paraphrasing, but it goes something like this: While Ray Lewis is being celebrated by millions, two men tragically and brutally died in Atlanta. Ray Lewis knows more than Ray Lewis
ever shared. What would you like to say to the family?”
LEWIS: “It’s simple. God has never made a mistake. That’s just who he is. You see? And if our system, this is the sad thing about our system — if our system took the time to really investigate what happened 13 years ago, maybe they would have got to the bottom line truth.
Such unchristian views from the football faithful are not unique to Lewis. Sports Illustrated has an article this week, “In the Fields of The Lord,” where they interviewed Les Steckel, CEO of Christian Athletes, who was known for promoting cheap shots when he was an NFL coach. According to the article:
Les Steckel, a longtime NFL offensive assistant and the coach of the Vikings for one season, was a proponent of cut blocking, the dangerous tactic of aiming at an opponent’s knees downfield. When his players balked at cut blocking, he told them to man up. “I’d say, ‘Go cut ‘em,’” Steckel recalls, “and they’d say, ‘But they have a career like me.’ And I’d say, ‘Well, they’re trying to take your career away from you.’”
There is also the scriptural hypocrisy of injecting religion into pro sports. For example, the Bible clearly says, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” Yet, the SI article points out, “The [New York] Giants lot is filled with expensive cars and SUV’s.”
The larger problem, however, isn’t the glaring hypocrisy. It is that players may feel, as I did as a sophomore, compelled to worship or face consequences. Giants player/evangelist Justin Tuck, for instance, boasts that over half the team participates in prayers, a curiously high percentage of worshippers. It is easy to see how a non-religious player might feel pressure to join the prayer circle to please certain coaches who control his livelihood.
Indeed, pro sports are a hypercompetitive industry where a contract can mean millions of dollars and family security. Think about it — if you walked up to strangers on a street corner and offered them a million dollars to hold your hand and pray, you’d be amazed to find how many people were suddenly born again Christians. Don’t tell me that similar machinations and calculations aren’t occurring among players in pro sports every day.
This week, Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo penned a beautiful op-ed for USA Today where he urged a gay player in pro sports to come out and be the LGBT community’s Jackie Robinson, who was the first African American Major League baseball player.
Just like Jackie, the breakthrough gay athlete will be a courageous individual going it alone in uncharted territory. But, also like Jackie, he will have backup — and hopefully more of it.
Surely, this historical breakthrough is impeded, to some extent, by the infiltration of outspoken Christian fundamentalists in pro sports. How comfortable would an out player be on the Giants?
There is a place where devout Christian players can pray on their own time as individuals – it’s called church. The stadium is no place for Scripture and prayer isn’t a team sport.
Witnessing to our faith in Christ is what we are called to do, but coercing others isn’t, and more importantly as made fairly clear by your article, coercion makes for a poor witness. My apologies for your teammates misguided behavior.
You’re actually “called to” (to use that ridiculous phrase) to stop praying in public altogether.
Thank you for speaking out to what many non-believers have to go through to get along in life. I stopped playing that game a while ago. I enjoy being of the age (53) where I feel like I can speak my mind as an “out” Atheist. My children, however, had to endure the backwards small town thinking since I had told them I do not believe in “god” as most people do.
I bought them many, many books on religion and urged them to make up their own minds, but during grade school, they only knew what they heard at home. From me, they heard that I didn’t believe in “god” but that it was my own personal belief and everyone has a right to believe what they want as long as they don’t impose their beliefs on others. At school, they got called Satanists by some kids because their parents were telling them that if you didn’t believe in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior and didn’t believe in God, then you must follow Satan – it was their only logical conclusion…
well said, jeffrey…
i was one of those kids in grade school that wouldn’t pray. same thing for BSA, but the last straw, as far as i was concerned was when the knights of columbus twisted enough arms to have “under god” inserted into the pledge of allegiance.
i am okay with, if not enthusiastic about, pledging allegiance to one’s flag and country, but from that time forward i have refused to participate, being the contrary cuss i was and am.
i will post this on my facebook and solicit opinions. i may get a chance thereby to weed out some of my less simpatico followers…
Great commentary Wayne. You were also a very cute young basketball player by the way!
Analogous to the sporting world is the military world, where today there is tremendous evangelistic pressure by fundagelical christianists put on non-adherants to conform in belief and practice to Jeebus. Like the professional sporting world, it can be very hard to say “no” when your commanding officer is “called” (Thanks Jeffrey for that christospeak) to lead you to the Lard.
The Christian Bible also admonishes those who pray loudly and in public to show how pious they are. In fact their scriptures accuse “the Jews” of doing this very thing, when we have the exact same admonishment in our own scriptures.
Unbelievable that those who claim they are the most pious, and those who scream on TV that they’re being “oppressed” for having people point out how ridiculous they look. And they are the ones who pray loudest and most publicly – probably to make up for their own glaring lack of actual piety and knowledge.
Excellent article, as usual, Wayne.
Bandanajack: The day “under God” was inserted in the Pledge of Allegiance, I recited it but never once said those two words. They absolutely do not belong there.
I was a junior high music teacher in Minnesota at the time. Normally, we put on a “Christmas Program,” consisting of the usual Christmas carols. I had some Jewish kids in my chorus and EXPECTED them to sing the carols! Until the “pugnacious” mother of one made an issue of it. I was angry as hell at first, then suddenly realized how right she was. After that, we put on a “Winter Program,” with popular songs of the day—Winter Wonderland, Jingle Bells, etc.—but nothing religious.
It was many years before I kicked religion out of my life, but that was the beginning.
Seems peculiar to me that those, who would have you think they are religious by “praying” on the field, don’t realize that they are going against the teachings of the one they profess to follow:
Jesus taught: “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” Matt. 6:5f.
When I was a teacher, I had a born-again evangelical colleague who coached the 1st XI cricket team and who once talked in morning assembly about all the matches that they had won by praying. What he never told us was this: What if the other side prayed too? What was God’s criterion for deciding which team was going to win?
see what these guys don’t realize is their own faith does not permit them to force nonbelievers to pray, nor does it say God gives a crap about who wins a sports game
[...] we are nowhere near a tipping point. Though, we have progressed to a “tripping point,” where athletes who used to [...]
Thanks for pointing out this problem. I think that prayer in public schools or public institutions should be allowed, but never in ways like we read in this article.
Several religions demand there followers pray three to five times a day, Any individual should be allowed to take out a small amount of time to pursue their religious beliefs this way. Individual athletes should be allowed to make any religious statements they like.
But intimidating others into joining in should not be allowed anywhere.