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Eight years after the New York Giants and the Buffalo Bills knelt in a huddle for public prayer at the end of Super Bowl XXV, the wall of separation between God and the National Football League has all but washed away. The blend of faith and football has not only attracted fans and foes alike, but put preachers on the playing field and running backs in the pulpit.

Evidence of the relationship between God and the gridiron is everywhere: players such as Deion Sanders, Reggie White (now retired), and Eugene Robinson identifying themselves as born-again believers; chapel services in nearly every NFL club dressing room before games; public, midfield prayers after games; and churches turning to Super Bowl Sunday as a day for halftime evangelistic outreach. It may sometimes be difficult to see where religion ends and regulation play begins.

Players may use public Christianity to enhance their good-boy images, and the church may use Christian players to enhance its message that even tough guys can believe. The blurring of roles, and the suspicion of mutual exploitation by players and their pastors, has raised the question whether sports and spirituality genuinely belong in separate realms, not stirred together.

MYTH OF CELEBRITY? The mass appeal of professional football has attracted the attention of churches trying to make Christianity culturally relevant to seekers. And the power of celebrity in American culture shows no sign of dimming.

A testimony from Christian NFL greats Reggie White or Mike Singletary can draw those who might ordinarily not sit through a Sunday-morning sermon. "Statistics show that young people in horrible numbers have turned away from the church and yet they still watch television and are influenced by newspapers and magazines and the Internet," says Wendel Deyo, former Cincinnati Bengals chaplain and president of Athletes in Action (AIA), a Lebanon, Ohio-based ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ. "If we can capture their attention long enough for them to hear, then we've accomplished our objective. The issue is [the players] have visibility, and that visibility provides an opportunity for more people to hear the gospel."

During the past 41 years, professional football has come from behind as an "also ran" in professional sports to the very top of public interest. The Super Bowl is now broadcast in 170 countries, carried live by the BBC and even is translated into Navajo for tribal fans in Arizona. While stadium attendance has its ups and downs (in 1997 it hit an eight-year low), television interest in the game has never been stronger, with the league raking in at least $17.6 billion under a 1998 pact that gave games to ABC, ESPN, CBS, and Fox over the course of eight years.

In describing the popularity of sports evangelism, Wheaton College sociology professor Jim Mathisen says "the Christian community has bought into the larger cultural myth" surrounding professional athletes.

Mathisen and Tony Ladd, head of Wheaton College's athletics department, are coauthors of Muscular Christianity: Evangelical Protestantism and the Development of American Sports (Baker Book House, 1999). Ladd says the 150-year interaction between evangelicals and athletes has not always been cordial. Ladd notes that pitcher-turned-evangelist Billy Sunday left professional baseball in part because of the culture of the profession.

Things began to change in the early 1970s, when evangelist Billy Graham was named grand marshal of the Tournament of Roses parade, which preceded the annual college football game in Pasadena, California.

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November 15 1999, Vol. 43, No. 13