The Chicago Bears should be all over sports talk shows today as they hold the No. 1 pick in tonight’s NFL Draft. In Chicago, the Bears have dominated the headlines for months in anticipation of the draft and while they were the topic of conversation recently on 670 The Score with Dan Bernstein and Laurence Holmes, it had nothing to do with the draft. This Bears news is about a strange happening at a press conference the team held Wednesday to ask for public funding for a new stadium.
Bernstein & Holmes addressed what happened as Bernstein explained, “Before everything happened, they trotted out a Pastor…Pastor Dates began their big road show asking for taxpayer dollars for their football building…” He then introduces the clip of Pastor Dates and the prayer he led. The prayer included the Pastor asking God, “I don’t know that you play football, but I am asking you to help us. Help us to win some games, help us to get a Super Bowl here, help us to play in the Super Bowl, and bring back the 1985 roaring, cheering fans we had for your glory and for our good.”
Laurence Holmes was angry and offended at what the Bears did. “I don’t like any of it. If you’re in a position to be a prayer leader and you would like to ask for God’s grace on behalf of the city of Chicago, I can think of countless better ways and things to ask for God’s grace for the city of Chicago than a stadium. Like the blasphemy of it is galling. It’s absolutely galling.”
“The neighborhood where his church resides is the neighborhood that I grew up in. There are plenty of people in that neighborhood and neighborhoods around Chicago that need prayer. And you chose to ask for God’s grace today for a stadium? You should be ashamed pastor and your congregation should be ashamed too that they follow you….Shame on you…I’m offended as a citizen of Chicago…What are we doing?…I am so tired of people using God to put their hands in someone’s pocket. This is the worst possible example of this…You are using the word of God to try and fleece the flock for billionaires. You are standing right there with a family worth billions of dollars and proselytizing to try and get the people who have nothing to put their hands up and say ‘Yes, I want my money that I am paying in taxes to go towards this.’ It is the most publicly ungodly thing that I can think of, and everyone involved with that today should be ashamed of themselves.”
Later in the day, Danny Parkins said it was the “single weirdest thing I have ever seen at a press conference. Still can’t believe it happened. It should be parodied on SNL. He’s thanking God, in prayer, saying I don’t know if you play football?…It’s completely absurd that if God is a higher power, supreme being, who is going to help with the things going on in the city of Chicago, maybe not a dome stadium on 14 acres of parkland on the lakefront. Maybe not the biggest issues.”
