SHUTDOWN CORNER
Benjamin Dueholm attempts to make a Christian case against going to football games:
NFL football has arguably become the central liturgical act of American civic religion. The Super Bowl, its winter festival, commands more participation than a presidential inauguration, a midterm election or an Oscar broadcast. It opens with at least one sung anthem to the nation. Prime-time broadcasts are introduced with military images, and games often include recognition of the state’s military personnel and the sport’s emeritus legends. Football is not adorned with the statues of officiating divinities, but it is adorned with the symbols of commerce and power. It draws people together into groups of loyalty that cross boundaries of race, religion, class and even region, and it binds these competing groups into a common sabbath observance with its own distinctive rituals. (Who makes or eats nachos apart from football viewing?) The spectacle even re-creates the hierarchy of American life, from the skybox seats of magnates and politicians (now even at the blue-collar temple of Lambeau Field), to the equestrian ranks in the all-inclusive scout seats, to the relatively privileged ticketholders elsewhere in the arena, all the way down to the groundlings watching on television.
The spectacle of football has a useful and perhaps necessary role in American life, so Christians should critique it with some care. There are few enough public events and spaces at which a diverse nation can gather to participate in a comparatively low-stakes communal ritual—low stakes, that is, for everyone who is not playing the game.
There are many examples of pastimes that have fallen out of favor with the culture that once nurtured them. Boxing and horse racing were preeminent sports in the 20th century, and they have declined for some of the same reasons that bearbaiting and gladiatorial combat declined.
Some of football’s defenders point out that the players know the risks of the sport, and they argue that lawsuits should founder on this point. But how can anyone know and understand what it will mean to live in chronic pain and perhaps mental disability for decades? Social ethics, especially Christian social ethics, does not wait upon the letter of the law or defer to the judgments of 22-year-old men when deciding which things should be embraced and which things shunned.
I grew up pounding my snowy backyard into ice with games of pickup football. So I find it hard to accept that the time may have come for Christians to exercise what remains of our culture-shaping power by turning away from a game whose dangers are grave even as their extent is not fully known. As Tertullian wrote, no one dilutes poison with gall. It is by definition difficult to turn away from an entertainment—as history shows, even entertainments that come to shock the conscience of a later age. Christians, too, need pastimes and diversions. The question is which ones honor the image of God and the call to justice and equity.
Mr. Dueholm sets the bar awfully high. If it is simply a question of the danger of the game, that leaves out just about every sport imaginable. The fact of that matter is that in just about all team sports, players have suffered injuries that have either gravely affected their future health, cut their lives short or even killed them.
Baseball fans of a certain age may recall the name Tony Conigliaro. An outfielder for the Boston Red Sox in the 1960′s, Conigliaro was destined for greatness, perhaps even the Hall of Fame. In 1965, at the incredible age of only 20, he led the American League in home runs, becoming the youngest player ever to do so.
But any hopes Conigliaro may have entertained about Cooperstown ended in 1967 when he took a pitch right in the face. That pitch shattered his left cheek and severely damaged his left eye.
Conigliaro made it back a year and a half later and managed to put up respectable numbers for the rest of his career but he was not the same player. He stayed in baseball until 1975 when it became clear that the damage to his eyesight was permanent.
For those who don’t know Conigliaro’s story, his end was a sad and a terrible one. Seven years after he retired, Tony Conigliaro suffered a heart attack, suffered a stroke soon after that and fell into a coma. For the next eight years, Tony Conigliaro lived in a persistent, vegatative state, cared for by his parents, until he died in 1990.
Eleven years younger than I am right now.
Herb Score of the Cleveland Indians was another player who seemed destined for baseball’s Valhöll until he took a line drive to the face off the bat of the Yankees’ Gil McDougald. Score’s major-league baseball career lasted only seven years.
In 1920, Ray Chapman of the Indians was hit in the head by a pitch and died 12 hours later. And in 2007, Mike Coolbaugh, the first-base coach of the minor-league Tulsa Drillers, was struck in the head by a hard foul ball and was dead within an hour.
Hockey’s had its moments. This hit that Todd Bertuzzi of the Vancouver Canucks put on the Colorado Avalanche’s Steve Moore ended Moore’s career right then and there.
And those are just a few of the major-league highlights. To recount all the non-football and non-major-league stories such as these would require me to quit my job and write a rather long book.
Stuff happens, Mr. Dueholm. During football games and during real life, for that matter.
And it’s not like football can’t be fixed. Boxing gloves protect the hand that throws them, not the face at which they’re thrown so going back to the leather helmets of the 30′s and 40′s, the glorified baseball gloves players wore in the 20′s or even no helmets at all(a practice which persisted into the 1930′s, if memory serves) would greatly reduce NFL short-term or long-term head injuries.
And what do we do about movies, Mr. Dueholm?
In your lifetime, how many movies have you seen that “honor the image of God?” I can count them on one hand. But there’s a reason why I can’t remember the last movie I intentionally paid to see.
Actors aren’t physically damaged by appearing in movies, now are they, Chris? No. But that’s not to say that they’re not damaged. Consider a Christian who has always wanted to become an actor.
Obviously, porn is out of the question. But if our actor wants to, well, act, he/she will act in a lot of movies in which his/her Christian faith is either ignored or openly derided.
Appear in enough of those movies and it’s not too far-fetched to believe that our Christian actor will become convinced by the lines he/she is made to say and become an atheist or will “grow” spiritually and start attending an Episcopal Organization outlet, which is pretty much the same thing.
Don’t get me started on television.
Apply Mr. Dueholm’s standard universally and his “pastimes and diversions” will be pretty much reduced to documentaries and cooking shows. Granted, that would be heaven for someone like me but just about everyone else in the world might have a difficulty or two.
NFL football has arguably become the central liturgical act of American civic religion. The Super Bowl, its winter festival, commands more participation than a presidential inauguration, a midterm election or an Oscar broadcast. It opens with at least one sung anthem to the nation. Prime-time broadcasts are introduced with military images, and games often include recognition of the state’s military personnel and the sport’s emeritus legends. Football is not adorned with the statues of officiating divinities, but it is adorned with the symbols of commerce and power. It draws people together into groups of loyalty that cross boundaries of race, religion, class and even region, and it binds these competing groups into a common sabbath observance with its own distinctive rituals. (Who makes or eats nachos apart from football viewing?) The spectacle even re-creates the hierarchy of American life, from the skybox seats of magnates and politicians (now even at the blue-collar temple of Lambeau Field), to the equestrian ranks in the all-inclusive scout seats, to the relatively privileged ticketholders elsewhere in the arena, all the way down to the groundlings watching on television.
The spectacle of football has a useful and perhaps necessary role in American life, so Christians should critique it with some care. There are few enough public events and spaces at which a diverse nation can gather to participate in a comparatively low-stakes communal ritual—low stakes, that is, for everyone who is not playing the game.
There are many examples of pastimes that have fallen out of favor with the culture that once nurtured them. Boxing and horse racing were preeminent sports in the 20th century, and they have declined for some of the same reasons that bearbaiting and gladiatorial combat declined.
Some of football’s defenders point out that the players know the risks of the sport, and they argue that lawsuits should founder on this point. But how can anyone know and understand what it will mean to live in chronic pain and perhaps mental disability for decades? Social ethics, especially Christian social ethics, does not wait upon the letter of the law or defer to the judgments of 22-year-old men when deciding which things should be embraced and which things shunned.
I grew up pounding my snowy backyard into ice with games of pickup football. So I find it hard to accept that the time may have come for Christians to exercise what remains of our culture-shaping power by turning away from a game whose dangers are grave even as their extent is not fully known. As Tertullian wrote, no one dilutes poison with gall. It is by definition difficult to turn away from an entertainment—as history shows, even entertainments that come to shock the conscience of a later age. Christians, too, need pastimes and diversions. The question is which ones honor the image of God and the call to justice and equity.
Mr. Dueholm sets the bar awfully high. If it is simply a question of the danger of the game, that leaves out just about every sport imaginable. The fact of that matter is that in just about all team sports, players have suffered injuries that have either gravely affected their future health, cut their lives short or even killed them.
Baseball fans of a certain age may recall the name Tony Conigliaro. An outfielder for the Boston Red Sox in the 1960′s, Conigliaro was destined for greatness, perhaps even the Hall of Fame. In 1965, at the incredible age of only 20, he led the American League in home runs, becoming the youngest player ever to do so.
But any hopes Conigliaro may have entertained about Cooperstown ended in 1967 when he took a pitch right in the face. That pitch shattered his left cheek and severely damaged his left eye.
Conigliaro made it back a year and a half later and managed to put up respectable numbers for the rest of his career but he was not the same player. He stayed in baseball until 1975 when it became clear that the damage to his eyesight was permanent.
For those who don’t know Conigliaro’s story, his end was a sad and a terrible one. Seven years after he retired, Tony Conigliaro suffered a heart attack, suffered a stroke soon after that and fell into a coma. For the next eight years, Tony Conigliaro lived in a persistent, vegatative state, cared for by his parents, until he died in 1990.
Eleven years younger than I am right now.
Herb Score of the Cleveland Indians was another player who seemed destined for baseball’s Valhöll until he took a line drive to the face off the bat of the Yankees’ Gil McDougald. Score’s major-league baseball career lasted only seven years.
In 1920, Ray Chapman of the Indians was hit in the head by a pitch and died 12 hours later. And in 2007, Mike Coolbaugh, the first-base coach of the minor-league Tulsa Drillers, was struck in the head by a hard foul ball and was dead within an hour.
Hockey’s had its moments. This hit that Todd Bertuzzi of the Vancouver Canucks put on the Colorado Avalanche’s Steve Moore ended Moore’s career right then and there.
And those are just a few of the major-league highlights. To recount all the non-football and non-major-league stories such as these would require me to quit my job and write a rather long book.
Stuff happens, Mr. Dueholm. During football games and during real life, for that matter.
And it’s not like football can’t be fixed. Boxing gloves protect the hand that throws them, not the face at which they’re thrown so going back to the leather helmets of the 30′s and 40′s, the glorified baseball gloves players wore in the 20′s or even no helmets at all(a practice which persisted into the 1930′s, if memory serves) would greatly reduce NFL short-term or long-term head injuries.
And what do we do about movies, Mr. Dueholm?
In your lifetime, how many movies have you seen that “honor the image of God?” I can count them on one hand. But there’s a reason why I can’t remember the last movie I intentionally paid to see.
Actors aren’t physically damaged by appearing in movies, now are they, Chris? No. But that’s not to say that they’re not damaged. Consider a Christian who has always wanted to become an actor.
Obviously, porn is out of the question. But if our actor wants to, well, act, he/she will act in a lot of movies in which his/her Christian faith is either ignored or openly derided.
Appear in enough of those movies and it’s not too far-fetched to believe that our Christian actor will become convinced by the lines he/she is made to say and become an atheist or will “grow” spiritually and start attending an Episcopal Organization outlet, which is pretty much the same thing.
Don’t get me started on television.
Apply Mr. Dueholm’s standard universally and his “pastimes and diversions” will be pretty much reduced to documentaries and cooking shows. Granted, that would be heaven for someone like me but just about everyone else in the world might have a difficulty or two.
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