Choose Your Poison
This post is a response to the article in The Atlantic this week called: American Religion: Complicated, Not Dead
Religion may not be dead, but it's dying, and if Americans were given a certain ultimatum, religion would get a bullet faster than Seabiscuit with a broken leg.
The parallels between religion and sports are uncanny: the varieties, the tribalism, the dogmas, the societal alleyways that make one sport more accessible than another, parents brainwashing their kids into being Mets fans (which is a form of child abuse, if you ask me). Some sports, like soccer or lacrosse, just never catch on in some areas, but thrive in others. Rabid fans have rioted violently and some have even killed game officials. We'll call those fans "extremists." Those people who have the box score pads on their laps at baseball games, they're fundamentalists. And throughout life we shift either from one sports team to another, or we switch from football to basketball, when we become dads we start watching golf; perhaps some of us stop watching any sports. We become sports atheists! We end up having nothing to talk to strangers about but the weather; unless Dancing with the Stars isn't a sport, then we'll still have that.
Americans have replaced religion with sports. It has all the comforts and takeaways of religion: community, worship, idols, emotion, tithing (i.e., merchandising), the constant letdowns during the playoffs. 38% of Americans say they attend religious services weekly. This figure is a bit skewed, because people want to sound more pious than they are, so let's say that 35% of Americans go to services once a week. That's not just Christians, that's all faiths. What are the other 201.5 million Americans doing on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday? If it were put to a vote today, that Americans had to abolish either religion or sports, would religion stand a chance? Maybe. You know how well churches can organize and get people to the polls. So let's make sure that every voter gets some cheap plastic freebie, like a tiny batting helmet or rally towel when they cast their ballot. That will boost turnout.
Religion (and later spirituality) was introduced to distract us from feeling hopeless about life's problems. It wasn't introduced to solve them. The Vatican has had 1500 years to accomplish something and has come up short, aside from hoarding priceless art and building things out of gold. Your local Rotary Club has helped to get close to eradicating polio from the planet in just the last 100 years of effort! And the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is making ground against malaria and HIV in Africa. Sports can distract us just as well as religion. A lot of people wouldn't even notice.
Religion may not be dead, but it's dying, and if Americans were given a certain ultimatum, religion would get a bullet faster than Seabiscuit with a broken leg.
The parallels between religion and sports are uncanny: the varieties, the tribalism, the dogmas, the societal alleyways that make one sport more accessible than another, parents brainwashing their kids into being Mets fans (which is a form of child abuse, if you ask me). Some sports, like soccer or lacrosse, just never catch on in some areas, but thrive in others. Rabid fans have rioted violently and some have even killed game officials. We'll call those fans "extremists." Those people who have the box score pads on their laps at baseball games, they're fundamentalists. And throughout life we shift either from one sports team to another, or we switch from football to basketball, when we become dads we start watching golf; perhaps some of us stop watching any sports. We become sports atheists! We end up having nothing to talk to strangers about but the weather; unless Dancing with the Stars isn't a sport, then we'll still have that.
Americans have replaced religion with sports. It has all the comforts and takeaways of religion: community, worship, idols, emotion, tithing (i.e., merchandising), the constant letdowns during the playoffs. 38% of Americans say they attend religious services weekly. This figure is a bit skewed, because people want to sound more pious than they are, so let's say that 35% of Americans go to services once a week. That's not just Christians, that's all faiths. What are the other 201.5 million Americans doing on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday? If it were put to a vote today, that Americans had to abolish either religion or sports, would religion stand a chance? Maybe. You know how well churches can organize and get people to the polls. So let's make sure that every voter gets some cheap plastic freebie, like a tiny batting helmet or rally towel when they cast their ballot. That will boost turnout.
Religion (and later spirituality) was introduced to distract us from feeling hopeless about life's problems. It wasn't introduced to solve them. The Vatican has had 1500 years to accomplish something and has come up short, aside from hoarding priceless art and building things out of gold. Your local Rotary Club has helped to get close to eradicating polio from the planet in just the last 100 years of effort! And the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is making ground against malaria and HIV in Africa. Sports can distract us just as well as religion. A lot of people wouldn't even notice.
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