The recent news of the Florida legislature's support for prayer in school is enough to make any secularist's skin crawl. There is absolutely no constitutional reason that public prayer should be allowed in school. Christians can lament "oppression" all they want, but the fact is, prayer is something that is impossible to stop unless we become capable of prosecuting thought crime. No one sane, theist or otherwise, would support that.
I think most theists can agree that prayer is something that does not have to be done in groups, nor does it have to be done audibly, nor does it have to be "lead" by someone. It is something that can be done alone, silently, which is often preferable since not everyone likes to broadcast the intimate details of what's in their minds and hearts. So, Christians, let me as you something, and I mean this as a sincere question: even without pre-planned, lead prayers on the morning announcements and before footballs games, what is stopping a student from praying?
Even when I was Catholic, I somehow got the impression that no one could stop me from praying because I could do it without anyone knowing. In fact, I used to try to say the rosary WITHOUT a rosary....I always lost count and started over and then fudged the whole thing, but the fact remains, I didn't have to make any kind of public display out of it. Any student of any religion at any school in any time in history is now, always was, and always will be perfectly free to pray. No one can stop a person from praying. It's something you can do in your mind and heart that doesn't require being done out loud or in a group. If you want people to know, you can, but if you don't, you don't have to.
If you think someone can stop you from praying, then I hate to tell you that your faith isn't as strong as you claim it is. The second you claim someone has stopped you from praying is the second you become a performance artist, a show boater and a village idiot, which is what this is really all about, isn't it?
It's not that you can't have your faith, it's that you can't advertise it in the laziest way possible and be guaranteed not to stand out. No one said you couldn't pray to yourself, pass out Bibles and brochures, wear crosses, invite people to church, lead private prayer circles of your own, or even tattoo scripture on your forehead. But, those things would all take initiative and personal responsibility, which, if you had any of, you wouldn't need some poor, hippy Jew to die for you so you can just live however you want so long as you say, "Thanks," once in a while.
What you really want is anonymity behind yet another sacrificial lamb. You're afraid that, if during the "moment of silence," someone sees you appearing to pray, they might make fun of you, point fingers at you, roll there eyes at you, etc. However, if the quarterback "leads" the group in prayer, you won't be singled out. You'd rather see a bunch of your peers reciting insincere incantations, or at least go through the motions of such, than be thought of as a "freak" for your faith. You're the worst kind of coward. You're a moral crusader as long as someone else leads you in battle, but if your fellow soldiers were all struck down, you'd pee your pants and cry until someone either killed or rescued you.
Let me ask the religious folks another question. Assuming you're not Catholic, and if you are the answer will be, "Yes, some asshole in a hat," can any other living being talk to God for you about what's in your mind and heart better than YOU can? If the answer is yes, I'm sorry to reveal yet again that your faith isn't what you thought it was. So, go ahead, let someone else "lead" you in prayer since you apparently need to "follow" someone else's ideas of what God needs to be begged for. I'm sure the quarterback knows what's best for you, more than you do. Hey, maybe that's why he's the quarterback!
If you're going to believe in God and prayer, is it too much to ask that you believe in yourself? If you have this personal relationship with the Lord, why do you always have to txt him from somebody else's iPhone? If I were God, I'd be kinda pissed to keep getting prayers preceded by "Fwd:" from all my followers. I'd not give them what they asked for just to spite them for being lazy. Maybe that's why, despite Gisele Bundchen's mass prayer emails, the Patriots lost the Superbowl.
Just sayin....
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