Hope Community Baptist Church

Amen, and a Foul

It is important to distinguish between individuals in sports and the system of sports. Both are broken due to the Fall.

Mark Householder

I found myself saying "amen" more than once to Shirl James Hoffman's well-written appeal. It's both a worthy challenge and a chance to envision a new role for sports.

Still, at times I felt lumped in with evangelicals who are being swept up in the tide of materialism, excess, and moral freefall. When Hoffman says that evangelicals "have been quick to harness sports to personal and institutional agendas," I call a foul. He overlooks the thousands of...

I'm an athlete. I like to run, lift, compete, and win, and I have my very own "fascination with football," as Hoffman puts it. And perhaps I've been blissfully unaware of the fact that sports have historically been considered a little too dirty and a little too lowbrow to be worthy of Christians' intellectual engagement. I guess this explains why...