Praying After A Football Game Is Not Taking A Stand For Your Faith

(Credit: KATV News)

Last week, Bremerton High School assistant football coach Joe Kennedy was placed on paid administrative leave by the school district which employs him.

If you only read the news headlines or the sensationalized versions of this story that were popping up in your Facebook news feed, you might be lead to believe that this was an attack by an evil Christian hating school district against a humble Christian coach who just wanted to pray with his team.

That’s certainly the spin that presidential candidates like the suddenly and conveniently Christian Donald Trump and the shockingly fundamentalist Ben Carson used to try and score a few cheap political points.

But contrary to all the indignant religious rhetoric, this story isn’t exactly what it seems, or I should say, what some political-religious pundits would have us believe.

For starters, Coach Kennedy was not suspended from his job simply for praying after a game. He was placed on administrative leave for continually violating repeated requests from the school district – his boss – to stop what they rightfully worried could seen as “as district endorsement of religion in violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.” Something which very easily could lead to a successful and costly lawsuit.

In other words, Coach Kennedy wasn’t singled out for practicing his Christian faith. He was reprimanded for refusing to do what his boss told him to do.

That’s a big difference.

Had it been a Muslim or a Buddhist or person of some other faith doing the same thing, the school district would have reacted in the same way.

Secondly, this is not an act of Christian persecution. Coach Kennedy can still pray elsewhere whenever he likes – in fact he could have prayed privately after the game without making a scene in the middle of the field and probably not faced any sort of suspension or pushback at all. However, we live in a secular country based on a founding principle which declares that the government is not allowed to endorse any particular faith. The public school Coach Kennedy works for is an agent of the state. If the school district allowed Coach Kennedy to continue his post-state-sponsored-event ritual, it would be an implicit endorsement of Christianity by the state – a clear violation of the First Amendment.

Of course, Christian prayer in public spaces at state-sponsored events has been happening for decades without much protest. So, to some extent it is true that we are witnessing more pushback against moments like this that a century or so ago the government probably would have turned a blind eye to. But it’s important to remember that that’s exactly what they were doing – turning a blind eye to something that was and is unconstitutional.

What has changed are the demographics of our country (both in population and in leadership) and our government has responded appropriately (given the First Amendment) to ensure that in such a pluralistic society, we are living out our country’s founding principles. Though some folks will never accept the truth, the simple fact of the matter is we live (and always have) in a secular state (not a Christian one) that tries to make space for people of all faith and no faith. That’s why when given the opportunity to establish a state religion like their English cousins across the pond had, the Founding Fathers instead wrote the First Amendment establishing a secular state and ensuring religious freedom for all.

Contrary to Fox News dogma, when folks like Coach Kennedy try to make Christian prayer a public ritual at a state-sponsored event, they thumb their nose at the Constitution and the principles our country was founded on. Moreover, Coach Kennedy’s actions are fundamentally self-centered in that they center the post-game events completely around what he wants to do, his faith, and what he believes is right to the exclusion of anyone and everyone around who doesn’t share his Christian convictions.

To reinforce this point, one need only look to the rhetoric of those outraged by Kennedy’s suspension and notice the glaring silence when times to demanding the state make equal space and time available for Muslim prayers or Buddhist meditation after the game. That those demands never come doesn’t speak to the absence of Muslims or Buddhists or another faith tradition (or no faith tradition) in Coach Kennedy’s community. Rather, it points out the clear desire of some for Christianity to have a privileged place in American society – which the Constitution explicitly forbids.

Which is something the school district clearly recognizes, but Coach Kennedy seems unable or unwilling to acknowledge.

But what concerns me most about this particular story is the notion that public prayer in the form of an attention grabbing stunt is somehow “taking a stand for your faith.”

It’s not.

At least, not if that faith is Christianity.

You see, Coach Kennedy practicing his piety before others in order to be seen by them can’t be taking a stand for the Christian faith because Christ explicitly forbade this sort of thing.

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 others. Truly I tell you, 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.

It’s strange to me how so many evangelicals have turned attention-grabbing public prayer stunts into the height of Christian virtue. I suppose it’s appealing to many conservative Christians who see such actions as fighting back against perceived persecution by an increasingly secular society. Perhaps it is, but losing a place of privilege you never should have enjoyed in the first place is not a personal attack on one’s faith (nor is the changing of laws that plenty of other Christians support).

More bizarrely, how can you prooftext your way through the culture wars, condemning everything from same-sex marriage to feminism with an arsenal of verses and yet turn a sanctified public stunt into your primary means of defense when Christ explicitly and in no uncertain terms condemned that very thing?

My guess is that this ironic phenomenon stems from a combination of a misunderstanding of sole fide (salvation by faith alone) and evangelicalism’s oddly placed hyper focus and exaltation of publicly proclaiming “Jesus is Lord.” I say misunderstanding and oddly placed because just as Jesus was clear about public prayer, he was also clear that “Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in Heaven.” But, sadly, the misperception that salvation depends solely upon agreeing to and articulation the right proposition (i.e. faith alone), has created a Christian culture in which living like Jesus is of far less importance than believing things about Jesus and telling other why your beliefs about him are right and theirs are wrong.

In this way, Christianity has become a faith of power and exclusion, of control and focus on the self. For when our faith is primarily about what we believe, then we have the power to control who’s in and who’s out and no incentive or call to care for those in need, especially if they’re on the outside.

That’s a big part of the reason Jesus condemned the attention seeking public prayers of the hypocrites of his day, particularly the religious leaders to whom he directed so much of his criticism. It was a self-centered expression of power meant to remind everyone on the outside who was in control of who gets to be on the inside. Their prayers may have been eloquent and beautifully performed, but ultimately they were about the people saying the prayers, not the One to whom those prayers were ostensibly being said and certainly not about those on the fringes who were desperately in need of those prayers (and a whole host of other help).

When folks like Coach Kennedy turn prayer into a public stunt, they’re not taking a stand for their faith.

They’re following in the footsteps of the hypocrites Jesus so adamantly condemned.

When they practice their piety before others in order to be seen by them, they get no reward in our Father in heaven. Their only reward is a few minutes in the spotlight and the assurance that their non-Christian neighbors will have any interest in the faith they’re so “boldly” taking a stand for.

Despite what many of us have been led to believe by our evangelical subculture, taking a stand for Christ doesn’t look like forcing your will onto others in a public bid to get attention to the fact that you think your religious beliefs are right and everyone else is wrong.

Taking a stand for Christ looks like feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, ministering to the sick, caring for the poor, visiting the incarcerated, and welcoming the stranger so they may will see your good works and praise your Father in heaven.

This is how they will know we are his disciples.

This is how we take a stand for our faith.

By our love.

Not by our public stunts.