Following up on last Sunday’s post, Super Bowl Leadership Lessons for Coaches, Players, Deans, and Professors:
Washington Post Op-Ed: Christianity at the Super Bowl Defies a Trend, by Paul Putz (Faith & Sports Institute, Baylor Truett Seminary; Author, The Spirit of the Game: American Christianity and Big-Time Sports (2024)):
In many ways, America has grown more secular over the past century. Fewer Americans belong to a church or attend regularly. Prayer is no longer part of public schooling. Commerce doesn’t stop on Sundays. One area of American life, however, has bucked the trend. Major sporting events such as the Super Bowl have become more, not less, religious over time — changing how Americans see both faith and sports.
Today athletes are some of the most prominent Christians in public life, far exceeding any pastor or priest. And the interviews offered at the end of sporting events may be the only time many Americans will hear a proclamation of faith. …
Christians [were] prominently featured during the biggest sports Sunday of the year. Seahawks receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Patriots quarterback Drake Maye … used the run-up to the game to share their faith in Christ. …
It is a remarkable shift over the course of a century. Christian athletes have successfully turned pro sports — and football in particular — from a space in which Christians were rarely present into one of the most prominent arenas in American life for Christian witness and self-assertion.
This transformation did not happen by accident. It is the result of a Christian sports movement that has been growing since the 1950s, as evangelical sports ministries like the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Pro Athletes Outreach, and Athletes in Action have built a network of Christian athletes and coaches who find spiritual meaning in and through their shared sports experience. …
The Christian embrace of sports reflects broader changes in American Christianity. Over the last hundred years, Christians have developed strategies of adaptation and accommodation with mass culture. Rather than avoid worldly pursuits like sports, they have set out to transform their meaning from within.
To be sure, for all the success of the Christian sports movement, it remains a subculture within the larger ecosystem of pro sports. Christian athletes and coaches must collaborate and cooperate with teammates of all faiths and no faith at all; they must work within a pluralistic public space that they do not control or direct.
Their ability to do so has given them a voice within one of the few shared cultural spaces left in American society. Last year sporting events made up 96 of the top 100 telecasts, with the Super Bowl at the top. Amid broader secularization, the Christian sports movement testifies to religion’s continuing resonance.
- America Magazine, For 2026 Super Bowl, Controversial ‘He Gets Us’ Ad Goes More Personal, Less Political
- Crosswalk, 7 Players in Super Bowl LX Who Are Bold in Their Christian Faith
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