What about a coach praying on a football field? There’s a lot at stake in this case

Why do we pray? The U.S. Supreme Court asked this question last week in the case of Joseph Kennedy, a football coach who was fired after praying with players on the 50-yard line. The court’s inquiry raised deep questions.

The main issue is about competing First Amendment values. On the one hand, the coach has the right to freely practice his faith. On the other hand, school officials should not violate the “establishment clause” by coercing students into praying or by appearing to endorse a particular faith. Americans have the right to freely express their religious beliefs. But public institutions ought to refrain from establishing a state-sponsored religion.

Some of the court’s questions involved thought experiments about prayer. Does it matter whether a prayer is audible or silent? Does it matter whether there are overt gestures during the prayer, such as kneeling or stretching out your arms? Does it matter whether the prayer occurs on the sideline or the middle of the field? And so on.

This prayer parsing would be funny, if it were not so important. At one point, Paul Clement, the coach’s attorney, made the tongue-in-cheek suggestion that a private “prayer booth” might solve the problem. When players or coaches want to pray, they could go into the prayer booth, do their thing, and then get back to the game.

Clement’s little joke was meant to show how weird it would be to remove prayer from the public sphere. But Jesus suggested something similar to what Clement was joking about. He suggested that it is best to pray in a closet or private room (Matthew 6.6). He said that those who make a big show of praying in public are often hypocrites (Matthew 6:5).

Justice Amy Barrett raised a provocative question during the proceedings. She asked who the coach is communicating with when he prays. The coach’s lawyer said he is presumably communicating with God.

But is prayer only about communicating with God? I think not. Prayer also has lots of other functions. A prayer is a “speech-act.” It is a way of doing something with words.

In addition to communicating with God, prayers can serve to bring people together (or drive them apart). Many people find it rewarding to engage in communal prayer. Public prayer is an act of solidarity. But those who do not join a public prayer may feel excluded.

It seems pretty obvious, as the coach’s lawyer suggested, that most prayers are directed toward God. But this idea is complicated by the question of what we mean by God. Depending on what you think about God, you might pray in different ways. Some religions link prayer to certain gestures, postures or movements. Some make the sign of the cross. Others kneel. Some bow. And so on.

It makes one wonder whether God really cares about those gestures and postures. I remember as a child asking why Protestant kids like myself did not make the sign of the cross when we prayed. The answer was that Jesus didn’t pray that way. And so it goes. We disagree about the movements involved in prayer, as well as the texts and traditions that explain these movements.

The example of the sign of the cross directs us back to the public function of prayer. One reason for the overt gestures involved in prayer is to signal to others which faith or sect you belong to. Those who make the sign of the cross are different from those who do not. And those who kneel are different from those who bow. Prayers are public signs and ways of communicating identity. Religion is not only about God. It is also about who we are and which community we belong to.

The Supreme Court will rule on this case soon enough. But the questions opened by the case are perennial. We should be discussing them in our classrooms, around the dinner table, in our houses of worship. What is prayer for? What are we doing when we pray? And how, in our diverse secular democracy, are we supposed to balance the free exercise of religion with the need to avoid creating an establishment of religion?

This story was originally published May 1, 2022 at 5:00 AM.