Why playing football is against god

Football, according to this view, cultivated in young Americans a "morbid appetite for prestige, dominance and superiority" that was essentially unchristian and damaging to American society. In the eyes of these activist college YMCA leaders, football mirrored and bolstered the capitalist status quo that needed to be drastically reformed and Christianized.

A third voice of criticism came from liberal Protestants associated with The Christian Century. Published by Disciples of Christ minister-turned-editor Charles Clayton Morrison, The Christian Century was sympathetic to both the economic reform ideas of left-wing Protestants and some of the traditional moral concerns of conservative Protestants. Yet the journal did not attack college football on those grounds.

Since most big-time football programs already secretly funneled money to football players, why not dispense with the myth of amateurism and pay the players openly? Although there were differences in their line of attack, the Protestant critics of football tended to be scholarly, intellectual types.

Believing they possessed a moral guardianship role in American society, they reacted to the unprecedented national obsession with football by attempting to articulate a sober and responsible Christian approach to the problem.

Meanwhile thousands of Protestants in the pews went about playing, watching, and enjoying the game—and continuing to believe that despite the commercialization of the sport, football could develop Christian character in young men. Support for football existed among some ministers as well.

Methodist minister William Stidger provided perhaps the most direct justification. One of the most famous ministers in the United States by the s, in Stidger took up the topic of football in a message to fellow ministers. Because so many thousands of young boys and girls and men and women are watching football and are fascinated with it. Stidger was not a fundamentalist, but his emphasis on the positive aspects of the sport and on using football to attract a crowd was mirrored by some who were.

Both had backgrounds in football, and they used their past involvement to reach a wide audience and present themselves in hyper-masculine hues.

Women could make the sport useful for evangelization purposes, too. On at least one occasion in the s, popular Los Angeles-based minister Aimee Semple McPherson donned a University of Southern California football uniform as she performed a skit encouraging her congregants to carry the ball for Jesus.

The television-fueled popularity of professional football has replaced the primacy of college football, while racial integration has pushed the sport even further from its earlier association with elite white men. The current CTE crisis represents a new development, too, and may well provide the blow that finally turns the vast American public off from football, as more and more parents steer their kids away from participating in the sport.

Until that happens, however, it is safe to assume that patterns set in the s will continue. Protestant intellectuals will intermittently debate the ethics of the sport and the moral implications of its centrality in American culture. Meanwhile, most evangelical ministers will likely follow the model set by McPherson, Stidger, and Rader, focusing on meeting people where they are and highlighting the positive and useful aspects of the sport.

Because today, as in , so many thousands—or rather millions—are watching football and are fascinated with it. Paul Putz is a PhD candidate in history at Baylor University, where he is completing a dissertation on the blending of sports and Christianity in the United States.

You can read more about his work here. Hunter Hampton is a lecturer in history at Stephen F. Austin State University, where he teaches and researches American religious history and sport history. Sections Home. Bible Coronavirus Prayer. Subscribe Member Benefits Give a Gift. Being a professional football player is more than fame and fortune. The job can be highly stressful, life altering and dangerous. Players suffer head trauma, brain injuries, and paralysis in the profession. I share all this to say it's more than just a game — this is our livelihood, and this is what we do to provide for our families.

I aim to play and work in such a way that pleases him. It means I want to represent power under control. It can be used as a vessel for his glory. I am now going into my seventh year as a player in the NFL, and I'm truly blessed to have a job I love.

I believe we all have God-given gifts and talents, and I know God cares about how we use them. Do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows. If your occupation is a football player or truck driver, God cares and you matter.

Yahweh is none of those things. What football shows us Americans is how dramatically our ethical consciousness is divided.

The religion that most of us follow allows us to be forgiving when we wish to be and retributive when we wish to be. It really is up to us which way to go at any given moment.

For we have sacred sanction for both paths. The Buddhists for instance do not worship any god who deploys violence: they follow the example of Gautama, the Buddha, who claimed to be nothing more than a mortal man. Or they try. When a Buddhist behaves violently and plenty have and will he has no religious sanction for it. For the Christian—or rather the Judeo-Christian—this is not the case. There is a great deal to say about the ramifications of living in a country and a culture that allows so much leeway for ethical behavior.

But for now, one might simply say that the game of football—which has become our national game, the mirror of our national identities—matters for a lot of reasons. One of them is the way it reveals some of the unspoken and unacknowledged dimensions of our lives to us, in compressed form. Though when that happens, we may of course not much like what it is we see. Contact us at letters time. Notre Dame's 'Touchdown Jesus'. By Mark Edmundson. TIME Ideas hosts the world's leading voices, providing commentary on events in news, society, and culture.

We welcome outside contributions. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors. Related Stories. Kid Swap. America Needs to Get Back to Facts. Already a print subscriber?