(ChurchLeaders) After Pittsburgh notched its first victory of the 2021 NFL season on Sunday, team chaplain Kent Chevalier tweeted a photo of players kneeling midfield. But the group of Steelers, joined by members of the opposing team, the Buffalo Bills, weren’t protesting anything. Instead they were praying together, and Chevalier added the hashtag #DeflectTheGlory.
Comments on social media were overwhelmingly positive. “Now that’s what knees are for,” writes one person. Another notes, “The only reason you should take a knee is to honor our Heavenly Father.” On the Western Journal website, Jack Davis expresses relief that the tweeted photo wasn’t “just one more snippet of the social justice shenanigans that have become a hallmark of the NFL.”
Those comments refer to players in numerous sports who have kneeled during the national anthem, protesting police brutality against black Americans.