I once heard a Christian leader venture the idea that NFL football—along with its farm system made up of hundreds of college football teams—comprises America’s biggest pagan religion.
As a big sports fan in my younger days, I thought that was an exaggeration. Since then, having matured in Christ (and as the sports environment has changed over the decades), my perspective has changed. Just think about what the NFL offers:
- Weekly gatherings on game days (“holy days”)
- Temples (stadiums) built at enormous expense
- Worshippers (fans) in religious attire (team colors)
- Chants, anthems, and songs of worship
- Heroes treated like demigods
- A priesthood (coaches, owners, TV) that profits from it all
For many people NFL football really does function less like a sport and more like a religious movement. It tells stories of glory, struggle, redemption, and belonging—the same longings that true religion is meant to address. The danger is that sports can replace higher loyalties rather than simply entertain.
Think about the headlines on the sports pages, increasingly filled with articles about big paychecks and lawsuits based on greed. And look at the results in the lives of the worshippers: adults and children learning to revere athletes more than people of substance and virtue. With vast fortunes spent on spectacle, and half-time shows all too often displaying sexuality and values that Scripture identifies as degeneracy. The result is the quiet displacement of worship by endless “holy days” of sport.
Augustine said the human heart is restless until it rests in God. When a culture loses that center, it will anoint something else—politics, celebrity, entertainment, and, yes, sports, in this instance, football—to take its place. None of those things are evil in themselves, but they become distorted when they carry the weight of worship.
Jesus said a tree is known by its fruit. If the fruit is distraction from God, coarsening of conscience, and the shaping of a generation around appetite rather than character, then calling it pagan is not exaggeration—it is diagnosis.
By the way, where do you worship on Sundays?