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Fifa bans religious symbols at matches and now it also bans God at press conferences. Stephen Tomkins reports in The Guardian: 'Mark Whittle, the FA's head of media relations, stopped Wayne Rooney talking about his cross, rosary and Catholic faith in a press briefing, with the calculated Campbellism, "We don't do religion".' So Fifa bans God but not the vuvuzela. Some might regard this as another sign of the advancing secular agenda, or even as Fifa protecting the 'new religion' of football against threats from more established faiths. I'm calling it a 'praywall'. And instead of blaming Richard Dawkins or any other secularist, or secularism in general, we in the religious world should look to our souls to work out why God and religion should need to be excluded from something so central to life on earth as international football. The World Cup has, temporarily at least, taken the focus off the own goals of my professional spectator sport, the Anglican Communion. The God ban appears to be pragmatic. The BBC's World Service programme, Heart and Soul, reports Fifa's belief that football must remain secular if it is to retain its power to unite. I am writing this before England's game against Slovenia but so far there is little evidence that prayers from believers of any faith have helped England in the slightest. Liverpool supporter Nick Baines, Bishop of Croydon, this week wrote a new prayer: 'Oh God.' I go along with that.




A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault.

John Henry Newman