Wednesday, October 05, 2011

Crowd says prayer at Bell County football game

This from the Herald_Leader:

A few weeks after Bell County Schools stopped its practice of having public prayer before high school football games, the crowd who came recited the Lord's Prayer.

Several people showed up at Friday night's game wearing T-shirts that said "Let Us Pray," according to WYMT-TV (http://bit.ly/n7Hvic). When a moment of silence came right before kickoff, the crowd prayed.

The school district stopped having a local pastor prayer over loudspeakers in August after it received a complaint about the practice.

Court rulings have held school-sponsored prayer violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Participant Rebekah Harris said many in the community wanted to "stand up for what we believe and pray to God."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm big into the divisision of church and state, but I have to say:the crowd did nothing wrong here. As long as the prayer is not led by public school teachers or the principal, it's fine with me.

Richard Day said...

It's OK with me too. The crowd is not the government and such expressions are fine.

Richard Day said...

I will add however, that a visiting coach from another county told me that they still use the PA to pray at the middle school games. That's asking for trouble, it seems to me.