Pro: Students should have the right to prayer during athletic events
May 20, 2022
It’s game day and everyone is getting ready to warm up. Legs are trembling, players are pacing, rapid breathing can be heard throughout the bench. Performing in front of a crowd where your mistakes are displayed for all to see is not easy for anyone, especially high school athletes who already have low self esteem. Some athletes choose to listen to music and block everything out to focus and boost their self confidence. Nobody frowns upon that.
That leads to the question, why can’t prayer be used as a sense of security for players who need it? While it varies based on people’s beliefs, typically teens are praying to someone that they trust will help them through their hard times and keep them safe. If they know someone will be watching over them, nerves calm down. It would be unjust to take away that feeling from students.
Not only does prayer make certain individuals feel more comfortable before games, but some teams who share religious passion enjoy worshiping together. Before each match, the school’s girls varsity soccer team would huddle together and bow their heads to speak to the Lord. One player would lead the team in prayer and ask for the players to stay free of injuries and be led to a victory. While not everyone on the team shared the same views, they all participated with no opposition as it gave the team a sense of unity. The soccer team was like a family who respected each other and understood why they were in a prayer circle.
Sophomore Emily Purgason is an advocate for expressing religious belief in sports. Purgason was a member of the Varsity soccer team and in addition to the team prayer, had her own pre game ritual. Before each match she would draw a cross on her wrist to remind herself that God would be with her no matter what happened. She says it gives her comfort and allows her to play to her full potential. While she believes it should be allowed she thinks players should be allowed to opt out if they aren’t comfortable.
The prayer wasn’t always the same, but it was a general discussion, nothing too intimate. “We prayed over the game beforehand that our spirits would stay high, nobody got injured, and things worked out the way we wanted to,” Purgason said.
Along with boosting players’ confidence, it can promote tolerance among the team. It gives the team an opportunity to come together for something they believe in and teach players of other religions to be accepting of their teammates.
Mark D. • Jun 27, 2022 at 7:19 pm
It is ironic that the world of youth sports has created a societal competition regarding the religious act of prayer during sports events. When one considers the beleifs that underlie the act of prayer, one wonders why there is not an impetus to avoid the public prayers at sporting events.
For instance, as these atheletes and coaches are primarily Christian it is worthwhile to consider what Jesus instructed concerning prayer. He lived in a day when public demonstrations of religious devotion had become a form of grandstanding and self righteousness. Therefore Jesus said NOT to pray before men but instead to go in your closet and pray in SECRET so that what you do in secret would be openly rewarded by God. On the other hand he said that those who pray in order to be seen of men will receive no other reward than the attention they crave.
If prayer is something that is intended for an audience of one, namely God, then there is no overriding reason to pray on the feild versus the locker room. Do these teams think God can only hear prayers offered under an open sky? Do concrete walls interfere with Gods reception? Or is there something far more fundamentally human at the heart of this fight for the right to pray and seen by all? Is it that modern American Christians are using public prayer as a way to plant thier flag and lay claim to the territories of society? Is it because Christians have a creeping sense that they are being swallowed up by a world that is increasingly secular?
Something of the true power of Jesus life and example has been lost from modern Christianity when we are so unnoticable in our witness that we must take to the worldly courts in order to force society to watch us be religious.
Perhaps we need to go back to a private place of prayer and stay there until our daily lives are so illuminated with the love of Jesus we no longer need to prove we are Christians with court enforced displays of religion.