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It doesn't happen everywhere, and it doesn't automatically continue where it does happen. The people of Pittsburgh are fortunate to have on their side a powerful local family, the Rooneys, who have owned and operated the team since patriarch Art Rooney bought the team for $2,500 in 1933. Holding doggedly to their ideals for sport and community amid the torrent of the past half-century, the Rooneys have sought, often with painful compromises, to foster a team that even in the financially driven maelstrom of professional sports is bound to its community, in body and spirit. Embodying fidelity, they have sought players and coaches who not only excel at the game but who also love Pittsburgh, "the tough, sweet city of workers," in poet Maggie Anderson's words.

These Pittsburghers love the team—and the Rooneys—right back. And in loving, they gain a taste of life—or, better, a rich sampling of a deeper, truer life. In a faith-starved world, in a land being slowly emptied of meaningful ritual and intimate human ties, they, like modern folk the world round, turn to sport as a means of participation in the friendship, the laughter, the play, and the joy that lie at the heart of any healthy and flourishing human world, a place of which God can say, "It is good." In doing so, they become responsible bearers of traditions that make such vital experiences possible.

But football, for all the good it may bring to a people and a place (but not every people or place), is not the final good, whatever the pretensions of the NFL or its devotees. The spirit of truth must always check the spirit of the age. And, truth be told, in this age our spirits settle for way too little. Football, cell phones, vacations, careers: These tantalize with the promise of plenty, yet leave us hungry for more.

To the starving, a piece of bread looks like a meal. The healthy know that it's not, that we in our deepest parts hunger and thirst for something more, and that if this hunger isn't augmented by more nutritious fare, the suffering will, in some form, go on. More, much more, is needed for true health.

At its best, sport may lead us more fully into an experience of health, an experience of community, play, joy—all good gifts of the Creator. But this happens only if it is enfolded within a grander, richer participation in life, in which another set of rites and symbols and songs takes us more deeply into gratitude and grace, sourced in the Creator and centered on the Cross.

I describe, of course, the way of the church, the beautiful dance of God's own family, whose existence in this age is centered on the hope of welcoming into its way hungry people, distressed people—yet people who, for whatever else they may yet lack, have already come to know grace in rich, concrete, and satisfying ways. Christians concerned to love their neighbors could do worse than to join them in the stands come fall, cheering for all they're worth. Grace, after all, goes both ways and touches down in highly improbable fashion—even, I'm guessing, through face paint and cutting boards.

Eric Miller is associate professor of history at Geneva College.

Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

"God on the Gridiron," and "Sacramental Football" (from Re:generation Quarterly) also address idolatry in sports.

Play Ball is an occasional Christianity Today column that examines the relationship between sports and faith.

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September 2007, Vol. 51, No. 9