• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
ChurchPlants

ChurchPlants

Looking to plant a church? Find free ideas on how to get started, church planting tips, and establish a strong healthy church. Browse now!

  • Teams
  • Growth
  • Leadership
  • Strategy
  • Finances
  • Free Downloads
You are here: Home / Articles / How Sports Provides a Spiritual Moment

How Sports Provides a Spiritual Moment

March 31, 2023 by James Emery White Articles, Devotions

As Keener observes, sport is not better than religion. But it is a form of religion. Or as Bart Giamatti once described baseball’s “ethereal effects,” it possesses a “purchase on our souls.” As Keener adds,

This isn’t exactly new. Our long-ago ancestors conceived of sports as having a divine purpose. Often, games were part of religious rituals meant as offerings to the gods or ways to communicate with spiritual powers. Stadium venues have long been compared to cathedrals, and modern-day athletes to modern-day gods. None of that is off the mark.

It brings to mind a scene from one of my favorite sports movies, Remember the Titans, where Coach Boone, played by Denzel Washington, walks onto an empty high school football field with a member of the school board, Dr. Ferdinand Day, turns on the lights, and says: “Yeah, this is my sanctuary, right here. All this hatred and turmoil swirling around us but this, this is always right. Struggle. Survival. Victory and defeat. It’s just a game, Doc, but I love it.”

Yes, we all do.

And one reason is because it is akin to a spiritual moment, and we so yearn for the real thing that we seize any slice of transcendence we can.

So enjoy March Madness. I will. And on Monday, April 3, I will be cheering on one team or another for the NCAA championship. Just not as much as I will be cheering about something a bit more real on Sunday, April 9.

 

This article about the true spiritual moment originally appeared here, and is used by permission.

Pages:Page Previous page Page 1 Page 2
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Twitter

About James Emery White

James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and the ranked adjunctive professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where he also served as their fourth president. His book, The Rise of the Nones: Understanding and Reaching the Religiously Unaffiliated, is available on Amazon. To enjoy a free subscription to the Church and Culture blog, visit ChurchAndCulture.org, where you can view past blogs in our archive and read the latest church and culture news from around the world. Follow Dr. White on Twitter @JamesEmeryWhite.

« Previous Post
Next Post »

Primary Sidebar

Church Planting Jobs

Search Here

Christian News Now

Enter your email for tips on how to have a thriving church!

Footer

Company

  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Advertise
  • Terms of Service
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • Get Email Updates
  • Christian News Now

Copyright © 2025 ChurchPlants

  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Advertise
  • Terms of Service