In Texas, They Shall Not Want for Pregame Prayer

There was no pinpointing where the Lord’s Prayer started--from kids in the bleachers, from the cheerleaders or from parents of the high school football players lining the field. But many spectators swiftly joined in Friday night at Santa Fe High School, carefully sidestepping the U.S. Supreme Court ban on school-sanctioned prayer.

Similar gestures were planned in dozens of Texas towns Friday, but the group prayer held special resonance in Santa Fe, where a five-year legal battle over student-led prayers before football games had reached the high court. The Supreme Court ruled against the school district in June.

Friday was the first high school football game here since that ruling. In recent weeks, however, religious and conservative groups across the region have organized a grass-roots movement to get around the ban, holding stadium “prayer huddles” and bursting into “spontaneous prayer” before football games--that is, with no official leader.

On Friday night, the prayer took place under a theatrical sky spiked with occasional lightning. In a crowd of about 4,000, with many people already standing for the national anthem, spectators began reciting the Lord’s Prayer. The prayer was picked up in pockets across the stadium.

But for many in the crowd, perceptions were startlingly different.

“It started near the bandstand and spread like a wave with the thunder and lightning in the background,” said Esther Urbina, the wife of a local pastor. “God provided all that.”

But Charles Tombrella, another spectator, said: “You couldn’t tell they were praying,” adding that the people around him did not join in.

The prayer in Santa Fe, about 30 miles southeast of Houston, culminated weeks of organizing by a Christian group in Temple called “No Pray No Play.” More than 100 churches around the state have joined the effort, the group’s founders said, and in Santa Fe, a local group of ministers held a news conference Wednesday to voice support.

In a few places this summer, pregame prayer has appeared calculated to defy the court ruling. In South Carolina, for instance, the American Civil Liberties Union said it will go to court to stop a repeat of a student’s pregame prayer over a school microphone in the community of Batesburg-Leesville last week. But many of the recent pregame devotions, including Santa Fe’s, seem carefully planned to meet the letter of the law.

“This is simply our response to the [school] board: that this is something we can do,” said the Rev. Eugene Easterly, president of the Santa Fe/Hitchcock Ministerial Alliance.

To some civil libertarians and local residents, that’s not necessarily enough.

“I think the district still has the attitude of wink your eye, say you have nothing to do with it and still be actively involved,” said attorney Anthony Griffin, who argued for the ACLU against the Santa Fe school district in the Supreme Court case. “It may have the feeling of being voluntary at first, but I think what you’ll see is the school giving them more and more access.”

But Jay Jacobson, the ACLU’s Texas legal director, applauded Friday’s pre-football gesture.

“I think it’s fair to say, ‘Thank God--they finally get it,’ ” Jacobson said. “The ACLU’s only concern is whether there is an activity that the public can perceive is government-sponsored. People can get up and scream and shout and do whatever they want at a football game, as long as it’s not the school that’s [sponsoring] it.

“That’s what democracy is all about. That’s what free speech is all about. We would probably go to bat for them if the school said they couldn’t do it.”