Manly Prayers at Penn State

[rug]

November 14, 2011
By Sean S. O'Neil

If sexual abuse evokes religion for all the wrong reasons, it also the kind of horror that still turns many people to prayer. On Saturday, when the Penn State football team took the field for the first time since the scandal broke—and since their iconic coach, Joe Paterno, was fired along with University President Graham Spanier—Nebraska and Penn State players met on the field for a very public prayer of healing and justice.

The sight of athletes huddled in humility in the face of what is now a national crisis moved many in the stands to tears before a prayerful word had even been uttered. More than one hundred thousand fans grew briefly silent as Nebraska’s Assistant Coach Ron Brown, an evangelical who often leads prayers before games, but never before such a large audience, prayed with the aggressive cadence of a preacher trying to exorcise demons. Every word seemed a defiant strike against the shame, abuse, and evil of this scandal: “May the truth be known, may justice be known, may You protect the victims!” Ron Brown seemed poised for this moment, prepared to lead an evangelical assault against moral turpitude and to champion grace and healing in the process.

“There are a lot of little boys watching this game”

Brown’s prayer could not be heard in the stands, but the AP picked up both the visuals and audio of the prayer, and the video is now making rounds. Likewise, the prayer has been the subject of article headlines about the game. Many called it a “touching moment.” In the past, though, Brown’s faith has come under more negative scrutiny. He claims to have been passed up for a head coaching job at Stanford University because he, like many conservative evangelicals, believes that gay sex is sinful.

In his prayers at Penn State, Brown did not mention sexuality; he was railing against sexual abuse. Nevertheless, besides the weighty matters of truth, justice, and protection, Brown prayed for something much less obviously connected to the alleged sexual abuse: a restoration of masculinity to the game of football:

“There are a lot of little boys around the country, today, who are watching this game. And they’re trying to figure out what the definition of manhood is all about. Father, this is it right here. I pray that this game will be a training ground of what manhood looks like.”

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/culture/5396/manly_prayers_at_penn_state

[aquart]

1. Whitewashing complicity with religion?

TOUCHING.

[rug]

2. That was the problem in the first place.

[NMMNG]

3. Oh barf

In his prayers at Penn State, Brown did not mention sexuality; he was railing against sexual abuse. Nevertheless, besides the weighty matters of truth, justice, and protection, Brown prayed for something much less obviously connected to the alleged sexual abuse: a restoration of masculinity to the game of football:

Translation: Pedophile=Gay=Girly


“There are a lot of little boys around the country, today, who are watching this game. And they’re trying to figure out what the definition of manhood is all about. Father, this is it right here. I pray that this game will be a training ground of what manhood looks like.”


Translation: Real Men knock each other around until they're bruised and battered.



Nothing like telling young boys that they have to fit a narrow ideal of "manhood" (tough, musclebound, hypermasculine, definitely NOT GAY) so they can please God. :puke:

[laconicsax]

4. I notice that, as with pedophile priests, rape is called "abuse."

Time to call serial child rape what it is instead of "child sexual abuse."

[bbdad]

5. Coach Ron Brown said ...

“There are a lot of little boys around the country, today, who are watching this game. And they’re trying to figure out what the definition of manhood is all about. Father, this is it right here. I pray that this game will be a training ground of what manhood looks like.”





two profiles in courage:


1) During World War II, Swedish businessman Raoul Wallenberg is sent by his government under diplomatic cover to conduct rescue operations in Hungary to save the lives of Jews from the Holocaust. Instead of sitting behind a desk, he repeatedly risks his life to save the lives of others, often coming into contact with Nazi SS officers and Hungarian fascist thugs. Surviving several assassination attempts, he is forced to sleep in a different location every night. He manages to save the lives of more than 10,000 people. When the Red Army drives the Germans out of Hungary, Wallenburg is abducted by agents of Stalin’s brutal secret police to Moscow, where he disappears in the notorious Lubianka prison and is never seen again as a free man. Decades later the Soviet dissident Solzhenitsyn claims Wallenberg refused to bargain with his captors to secure his freedom in exchange for denouncing the West. He may have languished for years in the Soviet gulag before he eventually died. By the way, Wallenberg was a slightly built man who shunned sports.

2) At Penn State University, Coach Mike McQueary witnesses the (alleged) anal rape of a ten-year-old boy by Coach Jerry Sandusky in the athletic showers on the Penn State campus. Instead of physically intervening to stop the rape from continuing, he leaves the young boy at Sandusky’s mercy and goes home to tell his father. By the way, McQueary is a big, strapping guy who had played football at Penn State.