About playing the national anthem, offering prayers and reciting the Beatitudes before sporting events at Goshen College:

Before somebody suggests reading the 119th Psalm before a ball game and then there isn’t actually any time left to play the game, the President’s Council might want to consider the singing of “America, the Beautiful.”  This would replace “bombs bursting in air” with the benign “amber waves of grain,” something more in tune with the college’s tradition, and doing it acapella in four-part harmony would provide a Goshen College distinctive.  “God Bless America” would be another possibility, of course, but changing the lyrics to “God Bless All the People of the World No Exceptions” might prove awkward.

Paul Hershberger