Hawks Need to Prey

Remember the good old days when we used to wonder if our children could ever pray again in school? The bumper sticker campaign that had emerged every now and then was “Kids Need to Pray”. The drivers of such vehicles fervently believed that the American God listed on our dollar bills as in whom we trust, was anxiously waiting for school prayers to earnestly begin each school day, along with the pledge of allegiance to the flag. We added “under God” to that pledge in 1954 to cover all bets.

When I was a kid in the 50’s, I prayed a lot in school but for lesser reasons than one may be led to think. I discovered that the prayer for better grades did not really work. After one particular Halloween, I prayed that the “trick” we pulled would go undiscovered and never blamed on the actual culprits. That did not work out, either.

I loved the counter sticker to “Kids Need to Pray” that emerged on a few bumpers: “Hawks Need to Prey”. This subtly stated a more practical truth and did not run counter to the United States Supreme Court ruling in 1963 that government mandated school prayer is unconstitutional under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. This might have been when some of us began “Thank You, Jesus” slogans which now seem to populate many front yards here in the South.

When I arrived in the old south as the young minister, this issue of prayer in public schools was in full bloom, and I was conned into many forms of praying that made me feel un-American at times. I recall being asked to pray over bunches of things like the county commissioner meetings or Friday night football games. I was always uneasy when some of my more evangelical counterparts ended such public prayers with hype and fervor “in the powerful name of Jesus who is our only way to salvation…” When the high school principal called to ask me to offer the football pre-game prayer on Friday night, I asked him to invite my friend the local rabbi or the catholic priest. The pregnant pause on the other end of the line spoke volumes.

I remember praying for a breath of fresh air in some restaurants that had ash trays on every table. Before 1964, smoking was a rampant way of life for many Americans, and the tobacco industry advertised heavily in the early days of television until the Surgeon General added his scientific findings on each pack. During the early 1960’s, “Stop Smoking” started with an ad campaign that woke us all up to this other killer that ravaged primary smokers and second-hand smoke inhalers who needed to breathe. And we all know why George Floyd used his final minute to say “I can’t breathe!” for another tragic reason altogether.

Currently, bumpers bear the slogan “Kids Need to Breathe”, counteracting mask mandates and the medical profession’s wisdom that masks reduce the spread of Covid19. [In 50 years those adults might find it difficult to breathe after our nonchalance exhausts the air supply.] Funny, how we use the kids as political pawns in the games we play so that the kings and queens and their diagonally-moving praying bishops may reign forever on the chess board and in realms of the American way of life. Who cares if the kids get sick and die from pandemics or smoking or guns or lies or our many forms of phony faith masks? Maybe the only answer to our prayer is the silence at the other end of the line.