Targeting the Faithful in the Stands: UT Knoxville’s Controversial Prayer Tradition

Well, they’re at it again. The ‘Freedom from Religion Foundation’ is once again attempting to keep the minds and ears of Americans safe from the assaults of those horrible prayers. Their latest target is our own in University of Tennessee Knoxville, which has a custom of opening their football games and other sporting events with prayer.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation would like that custom to come to an abrupt end, “this is a public University, not a Christian club,” wrote FFRF co-president Annie Gaylor. “When you’re not religious or are of another faith and you get prayed at during events, it’s really very grating.” Fortunately, the Volunteers have vowed to stand firm for their faith traditions.

Annie, not to be indelicate but you are not the one being prayed at. God is being prayed at or prayed to as it should more properly be. That’s the issue isn’t it? It seems that tiny activist groups like the Freedom from Religion Foundation have somehow got the idea that the freedom “of Religion” guaranteed them in the constitution equals a right for them to eradicate religion from the public square entirely. Freedom of religion means we have the freedom to pray or not to pray. To join in when we go to the UT Football game or to just sit there and smirk at all these simpletons talking to some big man in the sky. That is the freedom of religion and with the way UT Played against Oklahoma and Georgia, they need more prayer at their games not less.