NASCAR Prayer: Pastor Joe Nelms' Prayer Shines in the Spotlight of Controversy

NASCAR prayer has become a tradition, and now it has become a controversy.

Frankly, I am surprised it took this long for controversy to find this subject—is there a quicker path to controversy than religion?

I can certainly see how the tradition was started.

Let's face it—when the activity you are about to partake in involves traveling around a tight circle in steel beasts weighing tons and traveling at speeds usually reserved for planes, a little reaching out to give props to a higher power is probably not a bad idea.

These prayers seldom make headlines or merit a replay. The prayer prior to Saturday night's Nationwide Series race at the Nashville Speedway is an exception.

Pastor Joe Nelms of Family Baptist Church of Lebanon, Tennessee offered a prayer that not only gave props to the higher power of his choosing, but also to the sponsors, manufacturers, the track, the drivers, Darrell Waltrip, his children and his smokin' hot wife (the true higher power of any married man).

Here is the quote from the prayer that cracked a smile on almost everyone's face.

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"Lord I want to thank you for my smokin' hot wife tonight, Lisa, my two children, Eli and Emma, or as we like to call them the Little E's."

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This is a prayer comically familiar to Will Farrell’s famous lines as Ricky Bobby:

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"Dear Lord baby Jesus, we thank you so much for this bountiful harvest of Dominos, KFC and the always delicious Taco Bell. I just want to take time to say thank you for my family. My two sons, Walker, and Texas Ranger, or TR as we call him. And of course my red hot smokin' wife Carley, who is a stone cold fox."

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Nelms then signed off on his group-led chat with Jesus by quoting NASCAR legend Darrell Waltrip:

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“In Jesus’ name. Boogity, boogity, boogity. Amen.”

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As you can imagine, this was not a big hit with traditionalists. Some consider this another black eye for NASCAR. Like David Newton of ESPN:

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"As funny as it was, it was another black eye for a sport trying to distance itself from the hillbilly image that 'Talladega Nights' played to the hilt. It was worse than having NFL wide receiver Golden Tate say that NASCAR drivers aren't athletes."

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I would not go that far.

Nelms managed to produce something memorable without being disrespectful. And it is impossible to argue that Nelms didn't honestly feel thankful for all of the things he mentioned.

He celebrated his family and the event that had brought everyone together. That message is only going to reinforce that "hillbilly" image in people's minds where that image was already strongly reinforced.

And maybe—just maybe—it will cause a few to think about NASCAR that had never bothered contemplating it all.

Critics are also saying that it distracted from the race and the prayer by putting the spotlight on him.

But all it did was increase the spotlight for the the reasons he was there. Practices that become routine often lose meaning in the drone of repetition.

Nelms' break from the norm sparked thought and conversation.

I leave it with Nelms' thoughts on the subject himself. He summed this point up after his prayer as he addressed criticism while on Sirius Radio's "Tradin' Paint:''

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"I don't want to do the cookie-cutter prayer, not that we don't need to thank God for our military men and women. Absolutely, we wouldn't be here without them. Not that we don't desire safety for all of the officials, workers and drivers. We certainly don't want anything to happen to anybody out there. We need a safe race.

"But it's the same prayer week in and week out, and I'm not sure anybody is even listening to it anymore. So I said, 'I want to get somebody's attention' … try to make an impact on the fans and give them something they'll remember and maybe they'll go home on a Friday night or a Saturday night and say, 'Maybe I ought to get up and go to church in the morning.'''

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