Separation of church and football

Football is religion in the American South.

Though metaphorical, this aphorism is actually lived out on a weekly basis when the South -- along with the rest of the country -- ensconces itself in stadiums, on sofas and virtually in fantasy leagues, eyes riveted and mouths agape.

In Georgia, the phrase “football is religion” has of late morphed into “football and religion,” as the melding of the two at a public high school -- where a monument inscribed with explicitly Christian verses from the New Testament is the centerpiece of the football program -- has reinvigorated the debate over whether freedom from religion or the free exercise thereof should be the principle to govern our education system.

Romans 8:31 and Philippians 4:13, the verses in question, invoke “God” and “Christ” respectively. They presume the existence of God and Christ, if not the Holy Trinity, thereby associating victory in football necessarily with belief in the Godhead. The logical conclusion to this line of thought is that if Christ does not “strengtheneth me,” I cannot expect to “do all things” (Phil. 4:13); similarly, if I do not believe in God, I am conquerable, whereas if I do believe in God, I am endowed with invincibility (Phil. 4:13). These two passages contain an implicit compulsion in Christianity, which denigrates, intentionally or not, adherents of other (read: lesser) faiths and non-faiths.

As a Jewish player at Madison County High School, I could not tolerate partaking in a tradition grounded in a tradition or a set of traditions that historically has oppressed my people. Even if I were not to partake, merely being cognizant of this blatant Christianization would bring my status as an outsider, a near-universal truth, into starker relief.

The question, however, is not whether any Bible verses are permissible, but rather whether these particular verses are. Not all Bible verses make such explicit reference to the divine -- most don't; in fact, there is a plethora of verses that, once decontextualized, read nondescriptly save for their antiquated diction. It is eminently feasible for religiously motivated texts not to infringe on constitutionally guaranteed freedom from them.

Let us test a hypothetical. Romans 11:18 reads, "You do not support the root, but the root supports you." This quote contains nothing immediately unsavory to non-theists -- except, perhaps, for anti-environmentalists -- and would thus have passed the separation litmus test.

Or maybe not.

David Niose is a board member and former president of the American Humanist Association (AHA), one organization, among others, that has demanded that the county “remove the monument immediately,” a demand in keeping with its religiophobic track record. He asserts that “[the monument] sends a clear message that the school favors Christianity, despite the fact that it is a public school that must welcome all students” – the operative word here being “favors.”

There has yet to emerge any evidence of a missionary conspiracy among the school board -- the law of averages dictates that it is probably not populated exclusively by Evangelical subversives -- and that the monument was erected still does not point to favoritism.

If the football program was otherwise utterly devoid of Christian references and was it not to incorporate Christianity beyond the lettering on the statue, what would stop the monument from surrendering its religiosity? Myriad traditions, not only in sports, were formerly steeped in some religion or other and have lost that aspect, yet retained their primary significance. Naive though it may be, the school board could have believed this to be its precise trajectory. After all, the monument was a gift, paid for by a private donor. How it graced the stadium!

Niose and his ilk make no distinction between creeping Christianity and Christianity lite. In purging public education of the former, the AHA and its counterparts -- who are absolutely right in this case -- must not essentialize the latter.