SEPTEMBER 13 "IS GOD INTO THE NFL?"
There’s a new book that has come out written by Rob Maaddi , The name of the book: Birds of Pray: The Story of the Philadelphia Eagles’ Faith, Brotherhood, and Super Bowl Victory
It chronicles the exploits of the Philedelphia Eagles and their quest for the Super bowl in 2017-2018 Season.
The annals of football are filled with “God squads,” teams with widely publicized reputations for Christian faith.
As far back as the 1890s, Yale football enthusiasts attributed the team’s success to the number of “praying men” on the squad.
The undefeated 1954 UCLA team, with over half the starting lineup involved with Campus Crusade for Christ, was nicknamed the “Eleven from Heaven.”
And professional football has had plenty of teams with strong Christian contingents, too:
- the Baltimore Colts of the late 1960s,
- the Miami Dolphins of the early 1970s,
- the Washington Redskins of the 1980s and early 1990s,
- the St. Louis Rams 1999,
- and the Seattle Seahawks circa 2013, to name just a few.
It would probably be more newsworthy if a successful football team did not have a handful of outspoken Christians.
Still, despite the commonality of Christianity within football, in recent years the Philadelphia Eagles have stood out, especially after a viral 2016 video of five Eagles players getting baptized in the team’s cold tub. The following year the Eagles’ reputation for conspicuous evangelical Christianity grew alongside their win totals, culminating with a Super Bowl victory and a slew of shout-outs to God in the post-game interviews.
With Eagles’ testimonies already blanketing television, social media, newspapers, magazines, websites, and even Bible apps, it is only fitting that the team receives the evangelical book treatment. Rob Maaddi’s Birds of Pray: The Story of the Philadelphia Eagles’ Faith, Brotherhood, and Super Bowl Victory gives readers an inside glimpse of the latest and greatest of the God squads—and also, although unintentionally, a sense of the troubling way evangelical Christianity and sports have been intertwined in American culture.
And then there are these two questions: Are the Eagles truly a Christian team?
And do they owe their on-field success to being more Christian than other teams?
Throughout the book, the implied answer to both questions is “yes.”
Is God really into the NFL?
Or is it that the NFL have cleverly taken over and filled a Vacuum for many citizens; that has been left, by their mass exodus of the Church!?
The NFL is the one sport that has dared to succeed on Sundays, “Game Day” and it has worked very well for them because folks who used to attend church on Sundays really don’t know what to do with all their free time and are desperately looking for something for the family to do together on Sundays….along comes NFL Sunday!
It took a few years, but today, with women announcers incorporated into the game, slick marketing campaings, the whole family is in!
It’s Game Day, get your game shirt on, let’s order pizza, let’s have church, ughh, I mean Sunday Football, it’s now our new, family tradition.
Is God into the NFL? I would have to say no! He’s into His church which Ephesians Ch 5 says, “He loved the Church and died for her”.
It chronicles the exploits of the Philedelphia Eagles and their quest for the Super bowl in 2017-2018 Season.
The annals of football are filled with “God squads,” teams with widely publicized reputations for Christian faith.
As far back as the 1890s, Yale football enthusiasts attributed the team’s success to the number of “praying men” on the squad.
The undefeated 1954 UCLA team, with over half the starting lineup involved with Campus Crusade for Christ, was nicknamed the “Eleven from Heaven.”
And professional football has had plenty of teams with strong Christian contingents, too:
- the Baltimore Colts of the late 1960s,
- the Miami Dolphins of the early 1970s,
- the Washington Redskins of the 1980s and early 1990s,
- the St. Louis Rams 1999,
- and the Seattle Seahawks circa 2013, to name just a few.
It would probably be more newsworthy if a successful football team did not have a handful of outspoken Christians.
Still, despite the commonality of Christianity within football, in recent years the Philadelphia Eagles have stood out, especially after a viral 2016 video of five Eagles players getting baptized in the team’s cold tub. The following year the Eagles’ reputation for conspicuous evangelical Christianity grew alongside their win totals, culminating with a Super Bowl victory and a slew of shout-outs to God in the post-game interviews.
With Eagles’ testimonies already blanketing television, social media, newspapers, magazines, websites, and even Bible apps, it is only fitting that the team receives the evangelical book treatment. Rob Maaddi’s Birds of Pray: The Story of the Philadelphia Eagles’ Faith, Brotherhood, and Super Bowl Victory gives readers an inside glimpse of the latest and greatest of the God squads—and also, although unintentionally, a sense of the troubling way evangelical Christianity and sports have been intertwined in American culture.
And then there are these two questions: Are the Eagles truly a Christian team?
And do they owe their on-field success to being more Christian than other teams?
Throughout the book, the implied answer to both questions is “yes.”
Is God really into the NFL?
Or is it that the NFL have cleverly taken over and filled a Vacuum for many citizens; that has been left, by their mass exodus of the Church!?
The NFL is the one sport that has dared to succeed on Sundays, “Game Day” and it has worked very well for them because folks who used to attend church on Sundays really don’t know what to do with all their free time and are desperately looking for something for the family to do together on Sundays….along comes NFL Sunday!
It took a few years, but today, with women announcers incorporated into the game, slick marketing campaings, the whole family is in!
It’s Game Day, get your game shirt on, let’s order pizza, let’s have church, ughh, I mean Sunday Football, it’s now our new, family tradition.
Is God into the NFL? I would have to say no! He’s into His church which Ephesians Ch 5 says, “He loved the Church and died for her”.
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