Football Stadiums - America's New Houses of Worship

How many of you have seen drawings or paintings depicting a time in which a church building was at the center of a town's life? Over the years, I've seen many paintings depicting townspeople converging from all directions upon a church. Whenever I see a painting like this, my interpretation is that the artist is giving us a vision of a church being at the center of the community's life not only geographically, but socially and spiritually as well. It is the place where the whole town comes together to worship in one voice as a faithful community. For some artists, such depictions are not only nostalgic looks at the past (although one wonders how accurate such scenes are), but are also hopeful visions of the future as well.

But in our day, when it comes to discerning what the real centers of worship are in our towns, churches have largely been replaced. Instead of the town embarking on a faithful weekly pilgrimage to a church, the faithful weekly pilgrimage of today is to a very different destination - the football stadium. Whether it be high school, college, or professional, football stadiums are the places to go if one is looking for America's passionate houses of worship today.

This past Sunday after church, I went to FedEx Field to watch my Washington Redskins play host to the Detroit Lions. Along with 90,000 other people, I had a great time as the Skins dominated the game. But for those 4 hours, it was clear to me that I was in a house of worship. People were passionate. People wore jerseys announcing their allegiance to some particular hero on the field. People flocked to the stadium by the thousands from every direction for as far as the eye could see. People cheered with one voice. There was even a marching (praise) band leading the worship after every Redskins score. Instead of people worshipping in community inside a church building, people gathered in the stadium parking lots to experience community tailgating style. People were excited. They were very happy to be there. And the fervency of their loyalty to the Redskins could very fairly be described as a form of worship. FedEx Field has become the great cathedral of Washington DC where the entire town gathers on Sundays to go to worship. And I was among the faithful.

I'm obviously not suggesting that football is bad, and that Christians should swear off football. But I do think we should be paying attention not only to our own attitudes about football, but also to what football has become in our society - and what it has largely replaced. Human beings are built for worship. God made us that way. But as with all things, human beings have largely corrupted this instinct (Romans 1), so that their worship is often misplaced and misdirected. America's Sunday worship ritual in stadiums around the country is an eloquently sad reminder of how far worship has strayed from its proper object. And it is also a sad reminder of how the energy and unbridled passion of real worship that we find in our football cathedrals is largely absent from the Christian cathedrals in our towns. Secular doxology often outdoes true doxology in its passion and praise. And this tells us that something is very wrong.