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Does football need God?

For some reason, God and football have always gone together. Whenever a football player talks about his greatness on the field, he always attributes it to the grace of God.

God must love football.

But the U.S. Supreme Court is about to decide whether the two really belong together. A small public school district in Texas is challenging a federal appeals court ruling that prohibits religious invocations before football games. The 4,000-student Santa Fe Independent School District near Galveston has defied their federal judge's 1998 ruling, continuing student-led prayers before every football game.

Though it deals only with football games, the case is significant because it implicates prayer during all school-related events, including graduation ceremonies. Upholding prayer before football games could splash the slope for the whole principle of keeping religious activities out of public school-sponsored events. Clearly, the Court must uphold the Federal Appeals Court ruling and prohibit all prayer during school-sponsored events.

What the Santa Fe school district argues is that, unlike graduation, you don't have to attend a football game - it is a voluntary event, therefore reciting a religious prayer before the game is legit.

Um, no.

Do all football fans believe in God? No. Does football involve God in any way? No. An audience during a football game is technically defined as a "captive audience" that has no choice in the production of the event they are about to see. Buying a ticket to a football game should not include a church service.

Lawyers for the district may argue that both football and God are cultural values of this great nation, therefore a prayer before a game is appropriate. These lawyers forget that, more importantly, a constitutional value of this great nation is to separate the spheres of church and state. The principle has not been easy to uphold given the propensity of so many religious organizations to impose their values on the people at large. A small public school district defying the principle is not helping the matter.

A public school should not have prayer on its campus unless the prayer is being held by a private campus club whose sole purpose is to pray together - not before any athletic events, certainly not before a graduation commencement - nothing that involves a captive audience that has no choice but to sit and listen to the prayer.

Campus Crusade for Christ's recent ad campaign for God, for example, is an entirely legitimate activity. Though we were a captive audience in that we were forced to stare at neon green shirts for a week, there was nothing inherently wrong with their propaganda on this campus.

However, the greater issue is that schools and other entities that have nothing to do with religion feel they have a right to be legitimizing religion.

A bill that the U.S. House and Senate tried to push through in September would have allowed students to have prayers at high school graduations and football games.

Arizona's own Gov. Jane Hull signed a Bible Week proclamation last year, making the celebration of the Bible an official government-sanctioned activity.

Faith, in itself, is beautiful, and it ought to be preserved - as the personal choice that it is. It does not have to be validated by a government-sanctioned Bible Week proclamation or a bill by Congress.

And it certainly does not have to be a football pregame show. The only exception might be for the Wildcat football team who could use a little divine intervention. But even their prayer ought to be a private, voluntary, locker-room activity.

Bottom line is, the spheres of church and state need to be kept separate. The U.S. Supreme Court has the chance to help achieve this. Thank God.