The intersection of prayer and sports has been especially prominent in the aftermath of Damar Hamlin’s frightening collapse during an NFL game this past week.
All 32 NFL teams have included “Pray for Damar” on their Twitter avatars. ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky prayed for the 24-year-old Buffalo Bills safety on live TV. Countless fans and other concerned observers said on social media they were praying, and dozens linked arms outside the Cincinnati hospital where Hamlin is being treated.
“In commemorating life or death in sport, people say pray, pray, pray a lot,” said Julie Byrne, chair of the Religion Department at Hofstra University. “I don’t think it reaches the pitch that you have here because of the incredibly dramatic circumstances. But it’s a pretty go-to response.”
It was amplified in Hamlin’s case partly because people now can offer instant expressions of prayer or any other reaction on social media. Plus, it was a high-profile “Monday Night Football” game between Hamlin’s Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals with millions watching or getting alerts about the alarming incident on their phones.
Hamlin’s heart stopped after making what appeared to be a routine tackle in the first quarter. The second-year pro went into cardiac arrest and was resuscitated on the field before being taken by ambulance to University of Cincinnati Medical Center.
Doctors described Hamlin’s neurological function as “excellent” Saturday, and in providing their daily update on Hamlin, the Bills said he continues to breathe on his own but remains in critical condition. Hamlin took a major step forward in his recovery Friday when he was taken off a ventilator and showed an ability to speak — including briefly to Bills staff and teammates via videoconference that day.
On Saturday evening, there was a post on Hamlin’s verified Twitter account saying that any love put into the world comes back three times as much and thanking all who have “reached out and prayed.” It also said that the response to his injury will make Hamlin stronger and requested “keep praying for me!” The tweet was followed by a heart-shaped emoji and “3,” his jersey number.
A couple hours after the first, there was another tweet that read: “The love is felt, & extremely real. No matter race or religion everybody coming together in prayer!”
Five days earlier, players from both teams knelt on the field in prayer, not an uncommon scene in a sport that has produced plenty of scary injuries. Each week after every game, many players from both teams join together in a prayer circle, holding hands and kneeling; 63% of adults in the United States identify as Christians, with 45% saying they pray daily, according to the Pew Research Center.
The expression of faith has been carried out very publicly in Hamlin’s case.
“It is new in terms of the scale and the scope,” said Paul Putz, assistant director of the Faith & Sports Institute at Baylor University. “It’s not common to see someone on a national television network who opens in prayer or just issues a prayer during the broadcast. That certainly is something that’s new, but it also does reflect this broader Christian subculture in the NFL.”
Orlovsky, a former pro quarterback, prayed for Hamlin during Tuesday’s “NFL Live” broadcast as his two co-hosts bowed their heads and said “amen” when he was done.
“If we didn’t believe that prayer (works), we wouldn’t ask this of you, God,” Orlovsky said in the prayer. “I believe in prayer. We believe in prayer. We lift up Damar Hamlin’s name in your name.”
Afterward, Orlovsky told AP in a text: “It was on my heart. The more we pray, the more Damar may come out of it.”
Bills coach Sean McDermott and general manager Brandon Beane both thanked God in separate news conferences.
“I’m a Christian man to begin with and I’m not afraid to say that, and I know when you are trying to do good things or great things, sometimes you come across opposition,” McDermott said when asked about the team’s ability to respond to adversity.
NFL executive Troy Vincent, a five-time Pro Bowl cornerback during his 15-year career, praised God in an emotional news conference.
“My greatest fear flashed in front of me in the moment but for the goodness and grace of God, Damar is still here,” Vincent told the AP in a text.
The Tennessee Titans and Jacksonville Jaguars came together at midfield before their showdown for the AFC South Division title Saturday night and knelt down in prayer.
On Sunday, the NFL Players Association will share a prayer by Reverend Dr. William J. Barber for Hamlin and the entire NFL community.
“Reverend Barber has been a voice for equality, justice, faith and hope for millions of Americans,” NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith said. “When we connected in the aftermath of the traumatic injury suffered by Damar Hamlin, we were both moved by the unity on display not only by Bills and Bengals players, but by NFL players across our league and everyone in our community. His prayer is in the spirit of that unity and how our membership — also working Americans — brought our nation and our world together in the most challenging moments.”
Jeffrey Scholes, an associate professor of religious studies at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, said he hasn’t seen such a public outpouring of prayer in any sport.
“Dan Orlovsky breaking out in prayer was just kind of stunning,” said Scholes, who has written several books on religion and sports. “I’ve never seen anything like that. It looked more like the ‘700 Club’ than it did ESPN for a bit there.”
He said football has always been more closely tied to faith than other major sports. Plus, it was a big game between two of the top teams in the AFC, and it was far from a standard injury.
“I think that the amount of prayer around this event makes a little more sense in that this event was so rare, disturbing, traumatic for those watching, for the players, for the coaches,” Scholes said. “I think a call for divine intervention via prayer is more expected.”
Chuck Hughes is the only NFL player to die on the field. The 28-year-old Detroit Lions wide receiver had a fatal heart attack late in a game against the Chicago Bears on Oct. 24, 1971. Putz said later newspaper accounts wrote of the players praying in their locker rooms.
“We didn’t have the public processing of (Hughes) in real time,” the Baylor professor said. “It wasn’t something millions of people were engaged with at the same time.
“In 1971, Chuck Hughes — people were responding with prayer. In 2023 when this happens with Hamlin, people responded with prayer again. But now it’s amplified and scaled up because of the way social media works.”
Putz himself focused on praying and not trying to analyze the overtly prayerful response from a historian’s perspective.
Time will tell if it’s a new normal in the social media world.
“I think over time then we’ll come to realize what this signified,” Putz said, “what it highlighted about the ongoing connection between religion and sports, which have been going on for a long time.”
Updated with more information at 1 a.m. on Jan. 8, 2023.