Dixie May Face End of Ritual Pigskin Prayer

For as long as most residents of this northwest Georgia community of 7,461 can recall, the home football games at Douglas County High School have been opened with a prayer.

It is a custom as steeped in tradition here--and elsewhere in the South--as sopping biscuits in gravy or eating black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day. At Douglas County High, the prayer is said just before the playing of the “Star-Spangled Banner” and the opening kickoff.

A clergyman selected by the county ministerial association steps into the press box at Tiger Field and, over the public address system, as the spectators in the blue-and-white bleachers bow their heads, invokes the blessing of the deity on the contest.

Now, however, that time-honored ritual is under serious assault. It will be tested in a federal court trial opening today.

Douglas Jager, an 18-year-old senior science major at the sprawling red-brick high school, has filed a lawsuit, along with his father, William, a retired Army sergeant, contending that pregame prayers should be banned because they violate the separation between church and state mandated by the U.S. Constitution.

“The prayers really irritate me,” said the younger Jager, who attends the games as saxophonist in the school’s marching band. “I’m basically an agnostic, a humanist. I’ve got nothing against people who want to pray at the games. I just think they should do it on their own, without all that amperage on the PA system.”

Wide Repercussions

The case, in federal district court in Atlanta, 25 miles due east, is the latest legal skirmish in a battle below the Mason-Dixon Line over what role prayer should play in public school life. The outcome is expected to have repercussions for high schools and colleges not only in Georgia but throughout the Deep South.

If Jager is successful, said Herman Scott, executive director of the Alabama High School Assn., then “some nut will certainly try to do the same thing in Alabama to seek recognition and notoriety. Prayer is good for the sport and good for the image.”

Jager has already won one important round in the suit.

Restraining Order Issued

In late September, with three games remaining in the Tigers’ 10-game football schedule, U.S. District Judge G. Ernest Tidwell granted Jager’s request for a temporary restraining order barring the school-sponsored prayers until full arguments could be heard and a decision rendered.

That set off a firestorm of reaction in Douglasville, a town dominated by conservative Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians.

Jager has been harassed at school and besieged by threatening phone calls at home. Last Sunday, he says, the left rear tires of both his 1971 sedan and his mother’s new car were slashed as the automobiles sat in the family garage. One woman, who called her minister to complain about Jager’s lawsuit, was reported to have said: “I believe in prayer, but I think somebody ought to beat him up.”

Spontaneous Prayer

At the first home football game after the judge’s decision, many in the crowd wore T-shirts and carried banners with slogans such as “Pray today” and “I feel a need for prayer.” One man broke into a recital of “The Lord’s Prayer” and was joined by part of the crowd of 3,000.

David Hill, principal of Douglas County High, which has a student enrollment of 1,400, said that the tradition of praying before home football games goes back at least to the 1920s.

“We don’t think that this is an issue that involves religion and government,” he said. “People go to the football games voluntarily, and no particular religion or religious viewpoint is being pushed in the prayers.”

He said also that, up to the time of the temporary ban on the prayers, the Tigers had a 7-0 record, but, afterward, the team lost the remaining three games. But he hastened to add: “I certainly wouldn’t want to say there was any connection.”

Jager, meanwhile, appears to be taking the controversy stoically. His closest friends are behind him, he says, as are his parents and his 14-year-old brother, who attends one of the other two county high schools.

‘A Lot of Flak’

“I knew I was going to get a lot of flak over this,” said Jager, who was born in Denver and moved to Douglasville with his family in 1976. “I’ve been living with these people for the last 10 years.”

Bryan Barnett, one of Jager’s friends, says Jager has shown tremendous courage. “I have the same views as him, but I don’t think I would have the guts to go through what he has,” he told a reporter after Judge Tidwell imposed the temporary restraining order.

The depth of passion aroused by Jager’s case is not unusual, given the special place of prayer and football in Southern life.

Even the Pigs Pray

“Southerners pray before just about everything. It’s a social ritual,” said William Ferris, director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. “There’s a farmer in Mississippi who has even taught his pigs to pray before they slop at the trough.”

“Football,” Ferris said, “is part of a regional ethos that unifies Southerners each fall in a way that no other force can. Coaches like (the late) Bear Bryant (of Alabama University) are not unlike such Civil War heroes as Stonewall Jackson or even Robert E. Lee in the reverence paid to them.”

The Rev. Woodrow Hudson, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Douglasville, which has the largest congregation in town, says that the county ministerial association goes out of its way to invite clergymen from across the religious spectrum to give the pregame prayers. He adds that the prayers usually are stringently nondenominational.

“They are basically words invoking God’s blessing upon all those participating and asking that the game be a time of enjoyment and satisfaction and for establishing friendships, not only for those on the field but in the stands,” he said.

Arguments Called Specious

But Gene Guerrero, executive director of the Georgia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing Jager in the case, contends that such arguments are specious because “there is a clear religious purpose” behind the prayers.

“The real tradition in this country is the separation of church and state mandated by the First Amendment,” he said. “Some people in our society want to do away with that and have their religious views sanctioned by governmental bodies, particularly schools.”

The presentation of evidence and testimony at the nonjury trial, over which Tidwell is presiding, is expected to take less than two days. Closing arguments will be given 8 to 10 days afterward.

Among the colleges watching the case closely is Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, one of the many institutions of higher learning in the state at which prayers are offered before football games.

Colleges Studying Issue

“We don’t believe it is a violation of the separation between church and state,” said Georgia Tech President Henry C. Bourne Jr. “But we have it under advisement, as does the University of Georgia, and are looking into the legal ramifications.”

In a strange twist, Georgia Tech is one of the two universities to which Jager, who wants to become an astrophysicist, plans to apply.

“I hope I can get in,” said Jager, who will be graduated this June. “Maybe they won’t take me, knowing who I am.”