And the Solution Is?

Published on by D. G. Hart

Prizes and Consumables: The Super Bowl as a Theology of Women
Seminar Speaker: Dr. Matt Vos, Professor of Sociology, Covenant College

The Superbowl is the most watched event in American culture. Along with millions of other Americans, Christians make elaborate plans for watching the event. Despite its popularity, the Superbowl—both the action on the field and in the surrounding activities and advertising—sends the message that American culture is for men only. The roles for women are limited to those that serve the interests and desires of men. This seminar will consider the ways that the Superbowl reinforces and extends an American understanding of the value of women. It will also ask what role the church should be playing in counter-narrating the convictions and values advanced by this central event in American life.

How about two services on the Lord’s Day, and no employing professional football players on Sundays for a Christian’s amusement?

36 thoughts on “And the Solution Is?”

  2. It’s just a bunch of talk. To simply tell women to be “empowered and well-fed” is live a life of faith without deeds. If Dr. Vos wants to truly love his sisterns he’ll put a team together and join the Inependent Women’s Football League:

    The IWFL is currently accepting new team applications.

    “Since the league began back in 2000 we have always taken great care in awarding memberships only to those teams that meet the highest level of ethical standards both on and off the field,” stated IWFL Chief Operating Officer Kezia Disney, “That quality can be found in all markets regardless of size. We welcome new applications from positive organizations.”

    So, is Covenant College a positive organization or not?

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  3. But the Super Bowl isn’t for football fans.

    It’s a hyped event and millions of men who don’t watch a regular season game, or place a wager on one of them, start acting like this is some way to verify their toughness through phony keen interest.

    And watching them from 1972 to the mid-90s, most SBs were massacres and clearly over at halftime.

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  4. I miss the days of the ‘NFL Championship Game’.

    Little hype. Usually two hard nosed teams battling it out to see who can claim the title.

    Superbowls are circuses. The Stanley Cup Series is much more pure.

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  5. By the way, what is the difference between a Presbyterian and a Baptist?

    A Baptist admits he watched the Super Bowl

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  6. Even as a Canadian I cannot get interested in the Stanley Cup Final.

    If I can’t have a rooting interest in a hockey fight, hoping some goon finally gets his head caved in, as he rightly deserves, it’s not much fun.

    As we say in Toronto, I’m a Leafs fan, I don’t care much about hockey.

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  8. Yeah, I have a snowball’s chance for my team to get far into the NHL playoffs…

    It is kind of strange to realize there are hockey fans in Los Angeles, maybe even some who aren’t at the game on a given night.

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  9. Back in my days of wandering in the evangelical wilderness I attended a congregational business meeting on a Sunday afternoon. The church only had one service (on Sunday morning) so this was a common practice. The need arose at the meeting to schedule the next meeting. Someone suggested an upcoming Sunday and someone else pointed out that it was Super Bowl Sunday. A guy spoke up and suggested that anyone who would place the Super Bowl before a church activity had a serious case of misplaced priorities. Awkward silence ensued and the man was viewed as a semi-pariah in the church from that point on.

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  12. Kent,

    I’ve been a hockey fan (in L.A.) for 45 years. The same with many of my friends, growing up. We’ve had some great players and great announcers (Bob Miller – makes a big difference in watching a game on t.v.)…and we had to wait a LONG time for the Cup. I honestly thought I would never see it happen.

    But the Lord (Stanley) is good. And he brings good things to those who work hard, have a coach that makes funny faces (Sutter), good forechecking, and a good goalie.

    Hang in there, friend. Next year could the Leaf’s year.

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  15. Thanks Steve, good to run into hockey fans all over the world. Those were lean years in your neck of the woods, were you a Golden Seals fan at times?

    My travels have been to 32 MLB parks, 100+ Buffalo Bills games (Lions and Browns less so) and years of Wolverines football.

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  17. Saturday was the Sabbath, but that was in a covenantal economy which has now expired. Of course mono-covenantalists can’t live with that conclusion, and so they maintain that the essence of “the covenant” remains changed. So which day is the “ceremonial aspect” but we have continuity of the “principle”. (Of course the death penalty as sanction is also ceremonial aspect, at least for most). And the water is the “accidental ceremonial” aspect (as was the bloody sacrifice of ethnic inclusion), but infant initiation into the external conditional “covenant” remains essentially unchanged.

    But yesterday was a good day. Not only Genobili and Spurs won, but D Wade and his imported “team” lost. And Phil Michelson’s children got some more tears for father’s day.

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  18. Mark
    Neither marriage or the sabbath are creation ordinances, so yeah. Stupor Bowl Parties any day of the week are fine. Did you go to JJS’s in Woodinville?
    And you are going to be cool with the Supreme’s upcoming Dred Scott decision on marriage, right?
    But for my money, the whole idea of professional entertainment is suspect.
    Call me a neanderthal.
    ciao

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  19. Kent,

    Wow…you really are a sports fan!

    The Golden Seals were too far up North for us in those days. For us it was Dodgers, Angels (less so), and Rams (until they left town), and UCLA Bruins (football). Never too much of a basketball fan.

    I never missed a Wolverines/Buckeyes game when I growing up (t.v). A little kid, by himself, in front of the tube. Always rooted for Michigan.

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  20. Steve, so Mike Lantry wasn’t a childhood hero from the 70s for us…

    I get to 20 Leafs games and about the same number of Jays games. Stubhub is great for single tickets when I work a block from the stadiums.

    Dodgers were my team through the 70s, until the Jays got good around 1983.

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  22. Thanks Steve, it’s hard to judge a FG if it is close. It’s hard to capture that third dimension on a TV screen, I thought the first of those 3 Boise choke misses was good at first glance, but not even close when reviewing and comparing it to the upright and the field position.

    Ohio Stadium is sort of 2 tiered, so the noise levels are echoed within the lower tier of the stadium. I have never heard anything as loud as that stadium when Ted Ginn Jr ran back a punt for a TD in 2003 (or so), I could almost taste the noise and tears started streaming down my face from the sound.

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  23. The Seventh day Sabbath was “creation law”? Or is the seventh day the ceremonial accidental “positive” (not of the essence) part? I guess it’s whatever you have to say to keep seeing only one covenant in the Bible.

    I suppose you can drop the Saturday “administration” , leave out the polygamy “administration”, and omit the judicial penalties (in the visible church, and outside the visible church) for sabbath-breaking, and still not be a “Marcionite”. Just so you keep the one covenant and infant initiation into that covenant! And while some of you worry a bit about the possibility of greater negative sanctions, you take comfort in the placebo effect of “the promise”, whatever that is, even if you don’t have all the answers on what the promise is

    —is it that they were in for now, even before the water? Is it, if you and your infant do your part then God will do His part? Is it, I will not be God for those on the outside but i will be God for the inside?

    One promise mono-covenantalism can’t be about is….election to the forgiveness of sins and eternal life, Some are elect and some are not? If that’s it, why limit the water? The efficacy (delayed or not) is God’s….

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  24. I think you are right, Kent. There’s no substitute for being right there.

    I have never had the experience of being at one of those big, packed stadiums such as they get at Ohio State or U of M.

    I doubt that I ever will. I’ll just have to glean as much of that excitement as I can from guys like you who have actually lived it.

    Thanks, friend.

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  25. Mark-
    Putting aside for a moment the issue if whether or not the Fourth Commandment remains binding (it does), why are you and your like so eager to not observe one day in the week as a day of worship and spiritual exercise? Why do you feel the need to cram this day with secular activities? Is it so hard to give just one day to God? Can you not go without your godless sports and your shopping for one day?

    Why do you observe the first day of the week as your day or worship? Is it mere tradition? It’s not enough to say you don’t believe it’s a binding requirement. Explain why you so passionately refuse to give one day to God.

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  26. Providentially, my becoming theologically reformed (very) roughly coincided with me moving from the West to the East coast… where the Super Bowl starts after sundown. Ding.

    Of course, it also coincided with me subscribing to the Heidelberg Catechism, Q&A 103 of which clearly teaches that I may fulfill the requirements of the fourth commandment AND watch the Superbowl… unless doing so is an inherently evil work.

    Before you Presbyterians snoot at us Continentalists, RE: Alexander: “Is it so hard to give just one day to God?” Yes, it is so hard for us sinners. Which of us has ever fulfilled the Fourth Commandment, even for a moment? For it requires “that all the days of my life I rest from my evil works, let the Lord work in me by His Holy Spirit, and thus begin in this life the eternal Sabbath.”

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  27. Brian, fair enough on the sabbath and time zones. But do you think a Christian can play (as opposed to watch) in the SuperBowl. Eric Liddell didn’t think so.

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  28. Dear Alexander,
    As a matter of fact, I am NOT very concerned about being non-sabbatarian. You don’t know me very well if you think two posts prove that I am “passionate” about a thing. I was merely asking some questions (which have not been answered). These answers would be more helpful than any speculation about me as a person or my focus. (my mom is pretty strange also).

    Years ago I spent quite a bit of time with some “new covenant baptists” whose preoccupation was not being sabbatarian. These same folks were (and are) as militaristic as anybody else, using “natural creation” as a justification for their patriotism. Even at that time, I thought it was silly to spend so much time on something if it only amounted to “we like to eat out on Sundays”. Apart from the debate about theological paradigms, it seems to me not a bad thing at all to take one day (or three) for more rest and for public and private worship and prayer.

    At that time, my passion was more against the idea that Christians as private individuals could kill for economic and secular reasons. I am still a pacifist, but my passion now is more about the contrast between the gospel of unconditional election and the competing “one covenant” version which tends to confuse law and gospel. It’s one thing to make a distinction between visible churches and true Christians (none of us knows this infallibly), but it’s quite another to make a distinction between election to the forgiveness of sins and “a covenant conditioned on the enabled sinner”.

    That’s what I care about, Alexander. The gospel. “Limited effective atonement” is good news and it does not fit well with a “say our infants are really in the new covenant and take comfort from that promise but at the same time know that many now in the new covenant are not elect.”. That disconnect bothers me more every day.

    Sure, I can talk about the Spurs. But that won’t last. The truth of the gospel itself is the power of God unto salvation. The Holy Spirit does not use a false gospel to bring salvation.

    Thanks for reading.

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  29. There is a debate between Reformed Baptists about sabbath and confessional revision. The 1689 folks are the sabbatrians; they tend to be as “mono-covenantal” as baptists can be. Sure, they agree to a “covenant of works” but they want to read the various biblical covenants as “adminstrations” of one “the covenant of grace”.

    So people like Jewett and Kingdom tend to give the game away at the beginning, and then attempt to take it back later. It’s the kind of logic that begins by saying that since there is only gospel there must also only be one covenant. And because some of the children of Abraham are the children of Abraham, all of them are, and ask no more questions about the comfort of the promise to Ishmael and Esau.

    What is “rest”? What is “recreation”? Why doesn’t the New Testament answer these questions? Read Gary North on the economics of a modern “sabbath” and ask yourselves if his answers make you look like “pietists” on this question. Should the OP put a little more Banner of Truth puritanism into its mix?

    http://drbobgonzales.com/2011/11/06/updating-and-refining-the-1689-baptist-confession-refining-sabbath-observance/

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  30. Amen! And please, teaching elders, stop with the Super Bowl sermon illustrations, anecdotes, stories, vignettes, reminiscences, etc. during the Lord’s Day divine worship.

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  31. “Sure, they agree to a “covenant of works” but they want to read the various biblical covenants as “adminstrations” of one “the covenant of grace”. ”

    I wasn’t aware that Baptists taught the Covenant of Works, they have erased the term from their copying of WCF 19.

    A few bloggers who went from Ref-Bap to Reformed keep trying to pretend there is no CoW in WCF 19, when it is quite plainly there multiple times….

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  32. not as an advocate but as a reporter, London Baptist Confession, 1689

    19. The Law of God

    God gave to Adam a law of universal obedience which was written in his heart, and He gave him very specific instruction about not eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. By this Adam and all his descendants were bound to personal, total, exact, and perpetual obedience, being promised life upon the fulfilling of the law, and threatened with death upon the breach of it. At the same time Adam was endued with power and ability to keep it….

    Although true believers are not under the law as a covenant of works, to be justified or condemned by it, yet it is of great use to them as well as to others…

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  33. mark, see my post, they erased it from the first sentence… which you willfully ignored…

    and then they twist the rest of 19 around to murder the concept of works in Sinai

    and no, I’m not remotely interested in continuing this boring argument

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  34. I was just reporting. People who start with the WCF and then abridge tend to make mistakes without good explanations. I do find the present call for detailed revision of what to do (and not to do) to be interesting, but confessions tend to be flexible for sake of multiple interpretations.

    Should weddings be on the “sabbath”? Should clergy be agents of “two kingdoms”?

    http://gospeltranslations.org/wiki/The_SBJT_Forum:_Issues_Relating_to_the_Family

    da carson: I would argue that marriage is not a church ordinance. I’m not sure that clergy should be involved in the legal matters of weddings at all. I rather like the practices that have developed in France There, every marriage must be officiated by a state functionary. Christians will then have a further service/ceremony/celebration, invoking the blessing of God and restating vows before a larger circle of family and friends, brothers and sisters in Christ. Similarly, Christians seeking to be married may well undergo pre-marital counseling offered by the church. That is one way of making clear that marriage is not a distinctively Christian ordinance; it is for a man/woman pair everywhere, converted or not, Christian or not.

    In France, all these Christian duties are separated from the legal marriage vows themselves; in the American version of Christendom they are integrated because the clergy are serving two masters and claim to be agents of two kingdoms. One solution would be for clergy to stop being co-opted in that way.

    Go Spurs!

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  35. Westminster Confession of faith work book by G.I. Williamson.

    pg. 66: These sections of the Confession teach us (1) that the word “testament” is a biblical term for the covenant of grace, (2) that the covenant of grace has in all ages been the same in substance, (3) that it has been differently administered (without any alteration in its essence), and (4) that there are only two covenants disclosed in Scripture, the covenant of works and the covenant of grace.

    God Spurs!

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