An angry face ranted to me after a Sunday morning worship at the church I served between 1994 and 2002 in Knoxville, Tenn. He was railing about a mutual friend who led a student ministry at the University of Tennessee and had offered the invocation at the University of Tennessee’s football game the day before.
He sneered, “I noticed he didn’t end his prayer, ‘In Jesus’ name.’ I know the university has some rule that prayers have to be nonsectarian but come on. Have some guts!”
Brad Bull
Later, as a Ph.D. student at UT, I attended most home football games from 2002 to 2005. I don’t remember any invocation ending “in Jesus’ name.” That seemed to verify a policy of nonsectarianism, acknowledging at least some constitutional responsibility not to establish a particular religion.
These memories informed my recent viewing of a Facebook video showing the conclusion of the invocation offered at the UT vs. University of Alabama football game. The video shows a packed Neyland Stadium with an overlay text proclaiming “102,000 Praying to Jesus! I love the South!!”
The video has nearly 3 million views on Instagram. The prayer ends:
…and fans here today. Protect every athlete on this field. Give them strength, integrity and respect for one another. May they compete fiercely, cheer passionately and honor one another well. More than anything, let us never lose the hope of your grace offered to us freely today. In Jesus’ name, amen.
As someone sensitive to how Christians’ behavior positively or negatively impacts others, I have questions.
- Were there really 102,000 people praying to Jesus? I’ve been at UT games with atheists, Hindus and Muslims. Were they praying to Jesus?
- Would those claiming everyone was praying to Jesus be offended if they were said to be praying to Vishnu if they heard a Hindu priest offering a prayer? (At a Shinto shrine in Tokyo, when a woman beside me started praying, I didn’t have a sense I was praying to kami.)
- Since it’s obvious 102,000 were not, in fact, praying to Jesus, isn’t the claim bearing false witness?
- How is using a state school function to force Christian prayer onto non-Christians consistent with the Golden Rule?
- What did the person making the post mean by “I love the South!!”?
The person who made the original post is Ken Peters, pastor of Patriot Church near Knoxville — a congregation that has made national news for its support of Christian nationalism, including being present outside the Capitol at the January 6 riot. According to the website of the church that meets under a barn roof painted as an American flag, Peters came to Knoxville from the Pacific Northwest where he founded the original church campus.
“Since it’s obvious 102,000 were not, in fact, praying to Jesus, isn’t the claim bearing false witness?”
WBIR-TV in Knoxville did a story on Peters, who “blends faith and politics” and who also started The Church at Planned Parenthood in Spokane, Wash. In 2020 Planned Parenthood sued TCAPP for its alleged interference with patient care, and the church was ordered to pay nearly $1 million in fees and damages.
I sent a message to the church email address and asked Peters for an explanation about what the prayer had to do with the South. So far, I haven’t gotten a response. However, statements Peters gave about the year he lost the lawsuit give a good indication. “I got on Google, and I was tired of living in a blue state like I’ve lived my whole life. So, I wanted to find the most conservative state that I could find. And Tennessee was in the top five.”
While looking for a written policy online, I did find that the UT library’s “Volopedia” has a brief entry about the history of invocations at UT athletic events. It reports that invocations before football games were dropped in 1982 after the campus Catholic Center’s Father Michael Devenney concluded his invocation by asking God to give the Volunteers a hand in reaching the Peach Bowl.
Subsequently, the first three games of the next season started with just a moment of silence. However, in October 1983, the UT board of trustees unanimously voted to reinstate invocations. Then, in 1985 the board rejected a request from the Faculty Senate to discontinue invocations at athletic events.
The issue came up again in 2012 when the Freedom from Religion Foundation asked UT Chancellor Jimmy Cheek to acknowledge that, in 1997, the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against sectarian prayers at state schools. Cheek chose to ignore the court ruling. With a hint that UT attempted nonsectarian prayers, FFRF said nonreligious people are offended by even vague prayers.
I was an undergraduate in the 1980s at a Baptist college down the road from UT. In a political science class, we discussed separation of church and state. My professor said he wondered what impact invocations had and might they even desecrate prayer. He said, “When I go to games at UT, the person offering the prayer says ‘Amen,” and some guy near [me] yells, ‘GIVE ‘EM HELL BIG ORANGE!”
Fair point.
Given the context of who posted the recent video, it seems the video was not celebrating truth or Jesus so much as promoting Christian nationalism. We need to avoid sentimental feeling and embrace the fair-to-all thinking and Christ-like spirituality that leads to doing justice, loving kindly and walking humbly.
Brad Bull grew up in East Tennessee, served as hospital chaplain at East Tennessee Baptist Hospital, and as a pastor, university professor and therapist. He is a gradute of Carson-Newman College, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and the University of Tennessee.