I'm not sure if they're feeling a bit queasy about the College Football Issue of ESPN The Magazine or what, but this seems to have become the story they've chosen to highlight online. I suppose it could also be taking advantage of the headline coincidence that Arian Foster had surgery today that will keep him out this season.
Anyway, I'm a bit surprised that this is a story. Even I, who gave this blog a title that is the conclusion of a old southern saying that starts "Football isn't a religion, it's...", am a bit flummoxed by this.
I suppose I shouldn't be, though.
After all, as described in the article, Foster's Tennessee college team got taken to church as a team-building exercise. This was Tennessee, as in "University of," which isn't a church-related school as far as I know. Clemson's head coach, Mississippi's head coach, and more than a few others openly do the same thing, and these "exercises" aren't optional.
I'm going to keep this short. There are a whole lot of directions going all over the place from this piece that could provoke reactions from concern to outrage; the non-voluntary nature of the church trips (which tend to be to large evangelical churches instead of, say, the Catholic cathedral), the assumption that everybody is perfectly o.k. with participating in a faith tradition that is not theirs in order to get along with teammates and not get coaches angry at them, the association of Christianity (or would this be Andrew Sullivan's Christianism?) with a sport that seems rather lacking in Christlike graces, so to speak.
Where I get riled, though, is something that seems (to me) a far simpler problem: since when do we get to use Christianity for our own fun and profit?
When does it become acceptable to appropriate the life and death and resurrection, the teaching and healing and walking-on-water, the kingdom of God come near (Mark 1:15), the stuff of faith, as a team-building exercise? What kind of arrogance does it take to pray for a win? Does the church's own rather perverse bent towards militaristic imagery still color its fascination with our most militaristic game?
The Christian faith doesn't make a lick of sense and is extremely pointless if it's not about being Christ-like, as much as any human can be. It is about being transformed instead of conformed (Romans 12), about living into the kingdom of God come near (Mark 1). It's not about being a better quarterback or linebacker, or being molded into a football machine. And it's certainly not about using Christianity in service of football. There's nothing particularly faithful about that.
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