Joseph Kennedy was a typical American high-school football coach. Assigned to position groups, he coached running backs on offense and defensive linemen on defense. He principally worked with the junior varsity, though, as will be discussed, it was his activity on the varsity sidelines—amidst the so-called “Friday night lights”—that turned him into a cause célèbre. For his efforts, Kennedy was not paid much. He received a modest stipend of a few thousand dollars from his employer—the Bremerton School District, located directly across the Puget Sound from Seattle, Washington.
If Kennedy’s coaching duties were banal, his legacy is not. Kennedy started coaching at Bremerton High School in 2008, and, after watching the Christian film Facing the Giants (2006), he inaugurated a tradition: after each game, he would pray at the 50-yard line. Initially, Kennedy prayed alone; it was his way of giving “thanks [to God] through prayer.” Yet, when students began joining him, controversy ensued. Kennedy used the opportunity to deliver short, “inspirational” talks to those gathered around him. Known for their “religious references,” Kennedy’s talks eventually drew the attention of the Bremerton School District. In 2015, Bremerton officials asked Kennedy to limit himself to private prayer, contending that Kennedy’s postgame displays of piety actually rendered him derelict of duty. When Kennedy refused to comply, the school district placed him on administrative leave
The resulting legal snafu took years to sort out, making it all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States. At last, in July 2022, the Supreme Court sided with Kennedy. Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch (1967-) delivered the opinion of the Court:
Respect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse Republic—whether those expressions take place in a sanctuary or on a field, and whether they manifest through the spoken word or a bowed head. Here, a government entity sought to punish an individual for en- gaging in a brief, quiet, personal religious observance doubly protected by the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment. And the only meaningful justification the government offered for its reprisal rested on a mistaken view that it had a duty to ferret out and suppress religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech. The Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of discrimination. Mr. Kennedy is entitled to summary judgment on his First Amendment claim.
Interestingly, in her dissent, Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor (1954-) included black-and-white pictures of Kennedy praying after games. This is not regular juridical practice, but Sotomayor wanted to underscore that Kennedy’s postgame prayers were anything but quiet affairs:
In closing, Sotomayor argues that the Court’s decision has diminished the preventative powers of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution: “[The Court] elevates one individual’s interest in personal religious exercise, in the exact time and place of that individual’s choosing, over society’s interest in protecting the separation between church and state, eroding the protections for religious liberty for all.” To protect Kennedy’s individual right to pray, in other words, is to risk the freedom of those who would prefer not to participate in such religious gatherings.
Time will tell whether or not this landmark decision was correct. It is a story, after all, that continues to be written. On September 1, 2023, Kennedy finally returned to the sidelines for Bremerton, helping lead the hometown Knights against the visiting Mount Douglas Rams of Saanich, British Columbia. When the game ended, with the Knights prevailing 27-12, Kennedy knelt alone at the 50-yard line. He prayed for a moment, receiving “some scattered applause from the stands,” and headed for the locker room. Yet, just a few days later, he resigned from Bremerton for reasons personal and professional. With regard to the latter, it was reported that Kennedy was not “provided with a play card or given a specific assignment during [the] game.” In short, he was there for legal purposes and nothing more.
That Bremerton opted for this route is, at the very least, ironic. American football is a sport that treats religious devotion as integral to both team culture and individual performance. For example, championship-winning coaches such as Tony Dungy and Dabo Swinney have situated faith at the heart of their respective teams. This approach is frequently embraced by players as well. While it is not uncommon to see a baseball player make the sign of the cross before an at-bat, or a basketball player to gesture skyward after making a big shot, those sports have never ritualized team prayer in the manner of football. The trope of a football team gathered around a coach or a leader, who encourages the players to compete fairly yet fiercely and who asks for God’s favor and protection, has become almost obligatory in any story about the game:
Similarly, football players tend to manifest their religious beliefs more openly than other athletes. Yes, baseball players such as Bryce Harper and basketball players such as Steph Curry (just to mention two) are known to be practicing Christians. Yet, while they might attribute their athletic gifts to God, it would be unusual to see them credit a home run or a three-point shot to God’s providence. Football players, however, make such statements with regularity. This phenomenon is even embedded in the game’s language of “Hail Marys” and “miracle” plays. At times, players such as Tim Tebow and Russell Wilson have implied that God directly intervenes in the outcomes of games—a proclivity that was famously parodied on Saturday Night Live in 2011:
To be sure, it is easy to criticize or mock such expressions of faith, particularly given the financial liquidity and social prominence of professional athletes and coaches. Still, they raise profound questions all the same. If God is omnipresent and providentially involved in human affairs, then isn’t God, in some sense, immanent in all aspects of human life…yes, even in football games? In fact, it would seem that, from a Christian point of view, the real question is not if but how God is related to football. And yet, inasmuch as this is true, then perhaps the impulse to pray before a sporting event is appropriate for a person of faith.
Still, as Kennedy v. Bremerton demonstrates, one might retort that the issue of “football and prayer” is not about sports or theology. It is about politics. I would not altogether disagree, but I do wonder if there is something particular about American football that presses theological issues to the surface. My hunch is that football’s rugged physicality—a physicality that can result in violence and suffering, both intended and unintended—encourages and even predisposes its players to pray and to make professions of faith. This claim is not meant to sentimentalize a sport that, as with other professional sports, has its fair share of complexities and corruption. But I do want to suggest a corrective to the supposition that religion in football is merely ad extra, that it is possible to legislate religion out of the sport. On the contrary, as another controversy in Alabama has demonstrated, it seems that the two are stubbornly conjoined—not because of some backwoods cultural conservatism, but because football presents a spectacle that has become almost alien in the contemporary West: that of actual physical risk.
Football has often been compared to war. It is not hard to see why. Led by coaches (generals), two teams (armies) square off against one another in an attempt to conquer the opponent’s end-zone (territory). In a sense, the sport’s violence is accidental; it is theoretically possible to play football without the shedding of blood or the shattering of knees. What is essential, however, is that a player be willing to risk his bodily health for the sake of them team’s objectives. When a ballcarrier and a linebacker collide just a few yards from the goal-line, the ensuing ferocity is, above all, self-sacrificial. It is also chaotic. Oftentimes players emerge from such a skirmish with little more than bruises, but sometimes, seemingly at random, the results can be devastating. And yet, even when the worst happens, players have to dust themselves off, get back in the huddle, and risk themselves anew.
No wonder that, under these circumstances, players seek to find order among mayhem, courage among pain. Recent surveys suggest that roughly 75 percent of NFL quarterbacks are evangelical Christians, and, while the percentage is not as high for the league as a whole, the ratio of evangelicals in the NFL is significantly greater than that among the American population writ large. Football players, it seems, understand that their success requires risk and that risk implies trust—not a naive trust that nothing bad can happen to them, but a trust that if and when evil comes, it is neither meaningless nor insurmountable with the help of a higher power.
Football, then, is religiously instructive in at least two ways. First, the game shows that genuine physical risk often entails psycho-spiritual changes. If it’s an exaggeration to say (following the adage) that “there are no atheists in foxholes,” perhaps it is fair to say that there are fewer atheists in foxholes. There is something about bodily danger and self-sacrificial action that seems to open one up to the divine or, at least, to a sense of destiny. Consequently, when a coach such as Colorado’s Deion Sanders—the coach du jour in college football—situates brotherhood and faith at the center of his program’s ascent, he is tapping into the very essence of the sport.
But herein lies a second point. Football is not only a kind of religious exercise; it is also entertainment. Thus to be a football fan—and it remains the most popular sport in America today—is to be entertained by a dangerous and spiritually stirring phenomenon. This aspect of football is often overshadowed by its sheer spectacle (the vicious tackles, cheerleaders, and celebrity players), and both fans and critics alike tend to treat football as an amusement to be applauded or censured as they see fit. “It’s only a fun game,” one might say. “The players are just overgrown brutes,” another might conclude. In this way, the sport becomes fodder for social media “content” and talk-show debates, its deeper meaning thereby obscured.
This phenomenon calls to mind Søren Kierkegaard’s “parable of the jewel,” featured in his 1846 treatise A Literary Review (En literair Anmeldelse). According to Kierkegaard, ancient societies understood and appreciated that a special few among them would become heroes by accomplishing great feats. In modernity, however, people who venture everything for the sake of a goal are observed with contemptuous amusement. Kierkegaard illustrates this point by way of analogy. Imagine a precious treasure cast out onto a thin sheet of ice. In an earlier age, people would tremble and cheer for the person brave enough to attempt to retrieve the jewel. Yet, in the present age, people prefer to debate about such a risk-taker. Is he really all that heroic? Perhaps he is a mere stuntman, whose ostensible courage is nothing more than a skillful illusion or blind luck? Notably, Kierkegaard adds that such debates always take place away from the site of danger itself. He pictures a kind of “postgame party,” at which the day’s exploits are celebrated and analyzed:
The celebrators at the banquet would have a shrewd and practical understanding that their hero’s exploit was not all that good, that when all was said and done the party’s being held for him was fortuitous, since any one of the participants could have done almost the same thing with some practice…. In short, instead of being stimulated to being discriminating and encouraged to do the good by this festival of admiration, the celebrators would rather go home more disposed than ever to the most dangerous but also the most aristocratic of all diseases—to admire socially what one personally regards as trivial…[so that] the spirited toasts of admiration had become the secret understanding that they could almost just as well be admiring themselves.
Kierkegaard refers to this attitude as “leveling” (Nivellering). It is a type of envy fostered by the modern media and, therefore, characteristic of contemporary society writ large. When leveling takes root, the difference between one person and another can no longer be acknowledged. Thus all have been rendered subservient to an anonymous and formless “public,” which polices individual distinction and imposes a creeping sense of meaninglessness on the world.
At their best, sports can suggest a way out of modernity’s leveling tendencies. Yet, as our culture’s rampant arguments about football demonstrate, people remain happy to condemn (or admire) what they wouldn’t dream of doing in the flesh. Kennedy v. Bremerton continues to be cast as a struggle for “tribal dominance” over against the tolerance of the liberal state. But this is a superficial analysis, ensuring that the cultural-religious issues nested within the game itself are bracketed off. The upshot is predictable: football cannot teach us how to live, if living has been reduced to leveling.
As usual with your sports theological- phenomenological descriptions, I have a lot to think about as a somewhat athletically adverse (and uninformed) type of person. What I really appreciate is the point here you make about the exposure to physical risk in a community setting and how there's something about that -- of the phenomenon or the essence -- that lends or opens itself to religious interpretations and meanings. I think of the older adults who attend my church and how difficult it is for them to talk about their Christian faith in a personal way. Often times it is related to physical risk, even the kind of story where someone says how much it meant to them that a pastor or other member of the church was physically present with them and prayed before they went under surgery, and how, that experience too can open up into a wider horizon of meaning and recognition.
Your points on the religious aspects of football culture are well taken. The case of Kennedy v. Bremerton, in my opinion, was a gray area of law and human rights. My take on this case is that the problem is not that Kennedy was exercising his right of free speech and the right of assembly, guaranteed under the Constitution. Rather, the issue was exactly the Establishment Clause--that the government should not espouse a given religion. Though the quotes you gave on the dissenting opinion concerned the rights of those who don't believe, I think there's another issue that is far more salient.
So... does this mean that a person now has the right to "quietly" promote their religion on school grounds after a football game (or any other public gathering), whether Jew, Hindu, Muslim, or Christian... or other? Should a Satanist have the right to "quietly" recite magick spells on the football field after a game? Can a cult leader now recruit by making a show of their cause "quietly" standing in the field? This is the issue that is commonly ignored by those who promote prayer in schools. As I recall, the Homewood PTA had a prayer to begin every meeting--I often wondered what will happen when other "religions" want to give their version of a "prayer," demanding equal time. Similarly, when Roy Moore carted his tons of marble into the Alabama Supreme Court to anchor the Ten Commandments in the state justice system, I wondered what he would think about a Wiccan or Moonie demanding equal "weight" in the lobby, as they had every right to do (in my understanding).
The door has been opened, and we will see how long this legal understanding endures.