“Sports & Religion in the U.S.”
by Kelvin Chin
Life After Life Expert
Many have commented on the decline of organized religion in the United States. It is a fact. Fewer people go to church or follow the religious beliefs of their childhoods or their grandparents.
Some would say that decline has led to a society that is “rudderless” when it comes to moral values. That even though religions often motivated “kindness and good behavior” by invoking undesirable fear in their flocks (fear of punishment, fear of being shunned, etc.), at least there was some source of moral guidance in our American culture.
I would say that erosion of religion — as a way that Americans identified with “who they are” (especially as a Catholic, Jew, Protestant, Muslim or other specific religious group) — started in the 1970s.
People, I think, started to move away for two reasons. A realization that some of the basic underlying foundational beliefs did not make sense. And a nonacceptance of fear as a primary motivator.
I think over the past 50 years a new “religion” has emerged in America.
Sports.
I use the word “religion” loosely. But sports in the U.S., especially professional football, has taken on such a powerful grip on most Americans’ minds as to arguably be the significant influencing force on the masses.
Whether you like it or not. I think that’s a fact.
And with that powerful platform, speakers from the podium of the NFL have become examples of moral behavior. Good and bad.
Again, whether you think that is appropriate or not. It has become a fact.
Power tends to make that reality happen. And in America, power is associated with money. And no other multibillion dollar corporation in the U.S. has a more constant grip on millions of American minds and hearts than sports in general and the NFL in particular.
Example: the Jon Gruden emails.
Again, whether you think they should have been revealed to the public or not is irrelevant. The fact is they were. And they have stirred a great deal of conversation from “boardrooms to water coolers,” from “schools to kitchen tables.”
And yes. Within sports itself. Just yesterday the first NFL coach spoke up about it. A rarity in the NFL that in the past has often seen coaches be resoundingly silent on the off-field behavior of other coaches or former coaches.
On Wednesday, Los Angeles Chargers coach Brandon Staley weighed in on his now ex-AFC West rival. He spoke candidly and at length on his thoughts. Watch the clip if you haven’t yet: https://youtu.be/ZxkVCHsxOAw
So, some of us may still be thinking, “Just shut up and play the game. I’m not here to hear your moral opinions on life. I’m here to watch the game and disengage.”
Like it or not, I think those days of putting our heads in the sand may be over.
With the power and influence that sports and the NFL have gradually gained over the recent decades, they may have unintentionally graduated to become our new religion. And with that may have come a new level of expectation of their leaders, an expectation to be examples of kindness and respect for those they are leading.
With the level of worship of money, “winning at all costs” (including sometimes misplaced ethical values (read: cheating)), and whitewashing of child abusers and wife-beaters who can run a 4.2 (second) 40 (yard dash), the NFL is still what some might call a place of “moral rot.”
But I pose this alternative view of sports as food for thought. And as hope for our cultural redemption.
Kelvin H. Chin is a Meditation Teacher, Life After Life Expert, and Author of “Overcoming the Fear of Death,” “Marcus Aurelius Updated: 21st Century Meditations On Living Life” and “After the Afterlife: Memories of My Past Lives.” He learned to meditate at age 19, and has been teaching Turning Within Meditation and coaching others in their self-growth for 40 years. He helps people understand their life challenges through their individual belief systems, and helps them find their own solutions. His past life memories reach back many centuries, and he accesses those memories in his teaching and his coaching in the same way all coaches draw on their own available experiences for perspective and effective analogies. He can be reached at www.TurningWithin.org.