Teaming up for prayer

There are signs of faith and prayer everywhere you look in sports these days.

Players kneeling in prayer on the field after NFL games. Fingers pointed skyward after home runs, touchdowns and victories. Signs for chapel services in baseball clubhouses. Bible study and Christian fellowship groups at high school and college campuses across the country.

“I don’t think a relationship with the Lord only occurs in church or only in your own private lives,” says University of Washington basketball coach Lorenzo Romar. “Every moment you walk, you want to live in such a manner that you are acknowledging God’s presence. … I don’t think we turn it on and off.”

But not everyone is comfortable getting God into the game. Five years after the Supreme Court reaffirmed a ban on officially sponsored prayer in public schools with a ruling that said students couldn’t lead crowds in prayer before football games, the question of who can pray together — and how — is far from settled.

A New Jersey high school football coach filed suit against his district two weeks ago, asking for the right to pray with his team before games. Marcus Borden had prayed with his East Brunswick players for years until some parents complained this fall and he was ordered to stop.

The family of a former New Mexico State football player plans to file a federal lawsuit citing discrimination because he is Muslim. MuAmmar Ali says he was criticized for reciting a prayer from the Koran instead of the Lord’s Prayer that the rest of the team was saying after practice and was questioned about al Qaeda.

Air Force football coach Fisher DeBerry was told last year to remove a banner from the locker room that displayed the “Competitor’s Creed,” including the lines, “I am a Christian first and last. … I am a member of Team Jesus Christ.”

“A lot of these issues are manifestations of things that are good. Mainly, that we have pluralism,” says Richard Garnett, an associate professor of constitutional law at Notre Dame. “We are committed to two different values: government neutrality and the freedom of speech. I wouldn’t want to give up one for the other.”

But trying to find a middle ground is difficult and sometimes painful.

Mustafa Ali, Ali’s father, used to think that society could use more prayer in public arenas. He and some of his co-workers have moments of prayer at work, and neither he nor his son objected when the team ended practice with a prayer. But Ali says he was criticized when he and two other Muslim players held up their hands to their faces and recited the opening chapter of the Koran.

Ali says coach Hal Mumme later called him into his office to ask about al Qaeda. Ali, the team’s leading rusher last year, lost his starting job after the season opener and later was dismissed from the team.

A law firm hired by New Mexico State to investigate a grievance filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on Ali’s behalf said it found no evidence of religious discrimination. But Ali’s father says the family plans to pursue its complaint in a federal lawsuit. A call to New Mexico State was not returned.

“I think prayer is good. I’m actually for more of it, to be honest,” Mustafa Ali says. “But I also think in these situations, the person should be able to pray how they want to pray. When you have a prayer that is a set prayer, then you alienate others and make them feel uncomfortable. It isn’t as simple as people think it is.”

The separation of church and state doesn’t prevent students from praying at public schools or during school-sponsored activities such as athletics. Equal-access laws have cleared the way for student-led religious groups, as long as they are voluntary.

The Fellowship of Christian Athletes has groups at 8,000 junior high schools, high schools and colleges throughout the country, reaching 350,000 student-athletes, says Dan Britton, FCA’s senior vice president of ministry programs. Eighty percent of the groups are in high schools.

Problems arise when an authority figure such as a coach, or the school itself, is involved. In a 2000 ruling that banned students from leading pregame prayers over loudspeakers, the Supreme Court said the Santa Fe, Texas, school district was giving the impression of sponsorship. Students were using school equipment and were under the direction of a faculty member.

Borden, the East Brunswick High School coach, resigned Oct. 7 after being told that he couldn’t pray with his players or even be present at their pregame prayers. He returned a week later after hiring an attorney.

Former University of Colorado football coach Bill McCartney, whose strong faith is well known, says he never considered a player’s participation, or lack thereof, in team prayers when determining playing time, but he understands that some might think he did.

“It does put the kid in a position because you’re the coach and he could be intimidated by that and not want to incur your wrath,” McCartney says. “So I think that issue does exist.”

Romar’s Washington players have voluntary Bible study, and the coach prays with them before games. But both are done at the players’ initiative, Romar says, adding that he didn’t even know about the pregame prayers at first.

Although teams such as Romar’s seem to have found a balance, the struggle for others will continue regardless of how many lawsuits or complaints are filed. The separation of church and state is a bedrock of American society, but so, too, is the presence of faith. This is a country in which “In God We Trust” is printed on coins and dollar bills.

“We’ve always had this middle ground between established church and an entirely secular public life,” says Mr. Garnett, the Notre Dame law professor. “The only way to really eliminate it is for one side to completely eradicate the other, and I wouldn’t want that to happen.”