The Church of England is divided over its official World Cup prayer, with written questions to its parliamentary body calling the wording religiously illiterate and theologically thin, even as a senior bishop stood by its light-hearted tone.
The questions were lodged ahead of a meeting of the General Synod, sitting in York this week, according to The Sunday Times.
Members faulted the prayer for its religious illiteracy and for its failure to name Jesus anywhere in its 22 lines.
The church's communications team issued the prayer on June 11 to mark the start of the FIFA World Cup, The Telegraph reported. It appeared on the church's social media channels and opened by naming the “God of glory.”
The text asked worshipers to see “the hand of God in the creativity of every curving free kick, silky pass or impossible save,” and to keep compassion and perspective over miskicks, missed penalties and muddled decisions by video assistant referees, known as VAR. It closed with a wish that the road to victory serve more than the winning nation, calling for a gathering of every people who share God’s glory.
The reference that drew the most comment was the phrase “the hand of God.”
Among football fans, it recalls the goal Diego Maradona scored against England in the 1986 World Cup quarter-final, when he punched the ball past the goalkeeper as Argentina beat England 2-1. The referee failed to spot the handball despite protests from England’s players, and Maradona added a second goal after a run through the defense rated among the finest in the sport’s history. He later said the first had been scored partly with his head and partly with the "hand of God."
The Rev. Jeremy Moody, a priest in the Oxford diocese, wrote that online readers mocked the prayer for "religious illiteracy" and seized on its unlucky nod to Maradona’s infamous handball. His written question asked what sign-off process governs such messages and whether staff who write prayers are required to be practising Christians.
Bradley Smith, a lay synod member from the Chichester diocese, argued that while the prayer opened by naming God, it never presented itself in or through Jesus, and asked whether the omission was deliberate or an oversight. He also pressed for the names of whoever commissioned, wrote and approved it.
The Bishop of Lichfield, the Rt. Rev. Michael Ipgrave, answered for the Church as chair of its liturgical commission, the body that oversees forms of worship. He said prayers written for social media may look and sound unlike texts formally authorized for public worship, using a tone and wording the Church’s formal liturgy would not.
“Prayers shared in Church of England digital communications are prepared by theologically trained staff and are subject to a process of internal review and sign-off," Ipgrave said, according to The Telegraph.
Moments of national importance, he added, open a chance to reach people beyond the church’s usual audiences, which accounted for the informal tone.
“The communications team produces a wide range of content in support of the Church’s mission, including evangelism, discipleship and engagement with the wider public, with material tailored to different audiences and platforms," he said.
On the absence of Jesus, Ipgrave said the text sat in a format different from a formal collect, a short general prayer, which he would expect to end with an invocation of Jesus Christ.
The Rev. Jamie Franklin, on his “Irreverend” podcast, called the prayer "poorly written, theologically shallow, embarrassingly unserious, and a perfect symbol of the institution’s current woes."
