For decades, far-left activists and secularists of all stripes have disparaged prayer as a self-serving placebo. What they were really doing was politicizing it.
Last May, in Uvalde, TX, 19 children and two adults were slaughtered. This was only 10 days after 10 people were gunned down in a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket. I wrote at the time I thought there was something wrong at the core of our morality, a careless disregard for the sanctity of every human life. The Atlantic Magazine had a different spin. “Offering thoughts and prayers after a mass shooting has become synonymous with doing nothing at all,” wrote Abdullah Shihipar, who urged pols to push for gun control. Otherwise, he said, thoughts and prayers are useless, like “asking God to take care of something they won’t.” He seemed to be saying that prayer was a refuge for conservatives who back the 2nd Amendment, who didn’t really care about victims.
In his protest against the National Anthem in 2016, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee to target America’s racial politics. The NFL saluted, painting “Be the Change” on many a helmet, giving millions to the players’ favorite social justice causes, including the since-discredited Black Lives Matter. When, in 2020, George Floyd was murdered by a callous cop who knelt on the victim’s neck, riots erupted, turning our great cities into war zones, fueling a Defund the Police movement that has left the cities permanently scarred by a crime wave.
The fire in the streets was mirrored in our politics — angry, divisive, accusatory. We no longer celebrated the nation together, nor prayed for its heroes in unison. We were a country divided by history, values and aspirations. Neighbors no longer talked to neighbors. Thanksgiving — our shared celebration of gratitude — became fraught.
But then, on January 3, a charming 24-year-old man who plays safety for the Buffalo Bills, Damar Hamlin, went into cardiac arrest during the NFL’s Monday Night game on national TV. The Bills’ assistant athletic trainer, Denny Kellington, gave him CPR for an estimated 9 minutes before ambulance personnel whisked him to the hospital. On the field, players spontaneously knelt in a circle on the field, helmets off, to pray. On the air, ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky, a former player, issued a spontaneous prayer. “If we didn’t believe that prayer (worked), we wouldn’t ask this of you, God. I believe in prayer, we believe in prayer. We lift up Damar Hamlin’s name in your name. Amen.” To which the other two sports commentators on the panel said, “Amen.”
It’s as if Damar Hamlin single-handedly united a nation, even a world, around the idea of prayer, and love. Fans in all 32 NFL stadiums waved “Love For Damar 3” (his uniform number) signs. Josh Allen, quarterback of the Buffalo Bills, said the team’s win Sunday was spiritual, adding, “God is real.” Hamlin, a Christian, a black man, who attended Central Catholic High School in Pittsburgh, embraced the outpouring of affection from an otherwise fractured nation. “Putting love into the world comes back 3xs as much…thankful for everyone who has reached out and prayed,” he said. “This will make me stronger on the road to recovery, keep praying for me!”
Contrast that to Prince Harry, a child of white privilege who married a minor Hollywood celebrity and became a symbol of entitled victimhood. Spare, his just-published memoir, seethes with anger and resentment against his family and his country. British commentator Piers Morgan calls the book “a literary weapon of mass destruction.” From excerpts, apparently Harry calls King Charles a bad father, his wife Queen Consort Camilla a dangerous villain, and trashes his brother Prince William and his wife Catherine. He discloses how he lost his virginity (seriously, was anyone dying to know?) and confesses to drug use that technically could get his US visa revoked. Even more ill-advised, he boasts that he killed 25 Taliban troops while serving in Afghanistan, a claim that has incensed radical Muslims vowing retaliation.
What Harry has done is pathetic, seeking to settle scores with his powerful family while being paid handsomely by Woke media outlets — $150 million from Netflix, $40 million for a four-book deal from Penguin Random House and $7 million from Oprah. In their interview, Meghan told Oprah a member of the royal family wondered aloud what color her first-born child would be. In the book, Harry claims he and Meghan, whose mother is black, never accused anyone in the royal family of racism, blaming the press for calling the comment racist when he thought it merely “unconscious bias.” In a world where crying racism is the weapon of choice for activists, this is self-serving nonsense, uttered to blame the media for his and Meghan’s manipulations.
By contrast, what Damar Hamlin has done is ennobling, raising money for his charity. Originally, his GoFundMe goal was to raise $2,500 for the Chase M Foundation’s Community Toy Drive to help his hometown of McKees Rocks, outside Pittsburgh in western Pennsylvania. Now, said his father, Mario Hamlin, the foundation’s director, said they will be able to meet his goals more generously, to “give back to the people who helped him where he is today and lift up the next generation of youth.”
Simply put, Harry is spewing hate while Damar is spreading love.
Hamlin was released the other day from the University of Cincinnati Medical Center — he was transferred to Buffalo’s General Hospital, closer to his team and his Bills fans. “Grateful for the awesome care I received at UCMC. Happy to be back in Buffalo. The docs and nurses at Buffalo General have already made me feel at home!” Then he reposted the message of his teammate Stefon Diggs.
“For many, many years, I allowed my perceptions to dictate my emotions. Those times were an emotional roller coaster for me. Only in the past few years have I taken my mother's advice and chosen to be happy.
“Once I understood the wisdom of her advice, I was able to create joy in life no matter what was happening around me. I learned to be happy when it rained and happy if it didn't.
“If there's one thing I know for certain, it's that each one of us has plenty that we can be grateful for and happy about this very minute. So why wait?"
Hamlin seems to understand that he is spreading love. “Headed home to Buffalo today with a lot of love in my heart,” he wrote. “Watching the world come together around me Sunday was an amazing feeling. The same love you all have shown me is the same love that I plan to put back into the world n more. Bigger than football!”
Does Harry know he is spewing hate? Probably. Historian Hugo Vickers said Harry “must have gone home (from the Queen’s Jubilee last year) feeling very depressed for what he has given up.” Once he was the delight of the British tabloids, a red-headed child with the smile of his mother, Princess Diana. Now, amid media interviews that slam the royal family, the British public is losing affection. Almost two-thirds (64%) of Britons have a negative view of Harry, up from 58% in May, with just a quarter (26%) seeing him in a positive light, according to a YouGov survey. Harry's net favorability among the British public is at an all-time low of -38, with Meghan recording -42.
There is lots of hate-spewing on this side of the Atlantic too. ABC’s Joy Behar blamed Hamlin’s injury on football, and called for its prideful masculinity to be replaced with the more placid golf. A Duke University cultural anthropologist argued that in the NFL, “terrifyingly ordinary” violence “disproportionately” affects black men. If Tracie Canada were a student of the game, she would know that the league is 70% black. If she were a fan, she would know that hard hits are not designed to perpetuate “a brutal system.” But she is just a radical, looking to score points against masculinity.
There is no evidence that Hamlin’s cardiac arrest was caused by football. The tackle he made on the Cincinnati Bengals’ Tee Higgins was, by NFL standards, routine. Hamlin’s heart issues might have been caused by the COVID vaccine, which the CDC acknowledges can increase the risk of myocarditis. No one in the media talks about this, or even asks Hamlin if he was vaccinated. Some 95% of NFL players were. But we just don’t know, and may never know, why Hamlin was struck to the ground.
We do know Hamlin woke from a coma and asked, “Who won the game?” Told that the game had been cancelled, doctors said, “You won. You won the game of life.”
Secular prayer may not make us whole. Jason Whitlock, a sports journalist and Christian, was outraged by how the secularists on Twitter who once ridiculed his calls for prayer embraced it after Hamlin’s fall. “Twitter is hostile to religious faith and Christian faith and I’m looking at people that never mention God all now (posting on Twitter) pray, pray, pray, pray. We’re all mocked for that, but now the secular crowd is all throwing out this pray, pray — and I’m legitimately asking like, Who do they want us to pray to? Who? Pray — to who, the Fairy Godmother, Santa Claus?”
But even secular prayer, even asking the universe for love, can remind us of our humanity, of what we share instead of what divides us.
Prayer came into my life recently, when my six-year-old great nephew, Booth, was diagnosed with leukemia. I was born and raised Jewish, but I went to Catholic Church to pray. Because Booth is Catholic, and because I thought patron saints, each one earmarked to watch over a different infirmity, offered the most direct route to God. Booth has endured much over the last year, but he also turned 7. And, a great football fan, he is thrilled that his New York Giants are in the playoffs.
I am also drawn to the Catholic Church because it seems to me it is the only institution left in this country that is upholding morality, that teaches children there is a right and a wrong, and embraces family. At a time when the Far Left wants abortion on demand, up to nine months, when secularists like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez preach a gospel of refraining from making or raising children because it would add to the ozone layer, only the religious encourage family. I still have doubts about the church. Some of my closest friends are gay, and it’s not clear they are welcome.
But I have no doubt about the power of prayer. And now I will add Damar Hamlin to my list. Disappointed not to be on the football field, he tweeted the other day, “Nothing I want more than to be running out of that tunnel with my brothers. God using me in a different way today. Tell someone you love them today.”
Damar, you have called a divided nation to God’s love in prayer, and we heard you.
Harry who?
Damar’s recovery was nothing short of an incredible. What a great example of perseverance, resilience and dedication.
I pay little to no attention to the escapades of Harry and Meghan. But even a cursory glance at those two made it clear to me entitlement literally drips off the formerly royal couple. Their entitlement not with standing, like many young people these days , in order to be relevant they must demonstrate their victimhood. It's a bad fit to say the least. Finally, I would be less than honest if I didn't note here what I've said each time I see pictures or vids of Harry and Meghan, "Harry is clearly pu**y whipped...think he'll ever get his ba**s back from Meghan"?