Religion, Race and Damar Hamlin

Monday night when Damar Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest during the NFL game between the Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals two things happened that revealed something illuminating about our society:

1. Despite being inculcated with the message that our society is growing increasingly and irreversibly secularized the word "prayer" was on a lot of lips during Hamlin's struggle for life, and many actually turned to it, both on and off the field.

People who never heard of Damar Hamlin before his collapse prayed for him. Despite what people say and how they live, more people seem to actually believe in the existence of a personal God who answers prayer than will admit to it.

Secularism offers no hope to people, and the prayers for Hamlin were, in fact, a repudiation of a worldview that has nothing to offer but hopelessness.

2. Counting hospital staff, team doctors, trainers and EMTs probably a couple dozen people worked feverishly to save the life of this black man. Most, if not all, of them were white as doubtless were a significant portion of the hundreds of thousands who prayed for him.

Will the media note that? They should even though it doesn't fit the prevailing progressive narrative of a deeply racist country filled with whites who are inherently racist just by virtue of being white.

Perhaps our society is not as far gone as some of us have feared and others have hoped.