{"id":1088,"date":"2012-07-22T18:06:38","date_gmt":"2012-07-22T22:06:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/?p=1088"},"modified":"2012-07-23T12:44:25","modified_gmt":"2012-07-23T16:44:25","slug":"evangelicals-sports-and-worship-the-statue-of-joe-paterno","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/2012\/07\/evangelicals-sports-and-worship-the-statue-of-joe-paterno\/","title":{"rendered":"Evangelicals, Sports, and Worship — The Statue of Joe Paterno"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This weekend we saw the sad removal of the Joe Paterno statue that was outside Penn State’s football stadium.\u00a0 I had mixed feelings, understanding both the many good things that Paterno had stood for and, along with many others, the new revelations of Paterno’s conduct in the Sandusky sexual abuse scandal.\u00a0 Last September I had gone to a game at Penn State when my own team, the Alabama Crimson Tide, was visiting.\u00a0 I\u00a0was able\u00a0to see the statue, many of us taking pictures.\u00a0 This was before everything became public.\u00a0 I am glad that I got to experience the statue as it was meant to be.\u00a0 One of the problems that some have discussed on talk radio and elsewhere is the worship of a man that comes with such adulation that a statue is made of him–especially in the field of sports.\u00a0 There is also the worry that there is too much power in\u00a0one individual without proper checks and balances in the institution.\u00a0 Nonetheless, I still had mixed feelings as they carted the statue away, wondering if it was not overkill.\u00a0 We must pray for those in authority at Penn State as they try to walk through the difficult maze they find themselves in at the present time.\u00a0 I would not want to change places with them.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

My\u00a0fellow Crimson Tide\u00a0followers have struggled with temptation to worship Paul “Bear” Bryant, the great coach of years gone by.\u00a0\u00a0The\u00a0football stadium has\u00a0his name on it and there is\u00a0a statue to him as well.\u00a0 There are some factors that help to dilute the worship, however.\u00a0 The stadium also has someone else’s name on it — Byrant-Denny Stadium.\u00a0 Dr. George Denny was\u00a0the highly respected President of\u00a0the\u00a0University of Alabama from 1912 to 1936 who led\u00a0the University into a program of great expansion\u00a0bringing it\u00a0to the level of one of\u00a0the\u00a0great\u00a0universities in the South.\u00a0 So, the stadium’s name has some administration and academic background that is not just sports worship.\u00a0 The same could be said of the statues.\u00a0 Bear Bryant’s statue outside of the stadium does not stand alone.\u00a0 Every coach who has won a national title\u00a0as coach at Alabama has a statue:\u00a0 Wallace Wade, Frank Thomas, Paul “Bear” Bryant, Gene Stallings, and Nick Saban.\u00a0\u00a0 Nonetheless, the rabid nature of Alabama fans ( I count myself one) lends itself to the flavor of unwarranted worship if one is not careful.\u00a0\u00a0 Go to this link and read an interesting article by a reporter on the power that Nick Saban, the current Alabama football coach has on campus:\u00a0 http:\/\/www.al.com\/sports\/index.ssf\/2012\/07\/nick_saban_disputes_that_he_ha.html<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is a major predicament for evangelicals.\u00a0 College football seems to be by far the most popular sport in the South, where the\u00a0 largest number of evangelical Christians live.\u00a0 I have joked that in the Fall season, down South we have two weekend worship services — at the stadium on Saturdays — at church on Sundays.\u00a0\u00a0 Although I want my team to win and am a strong fan, I will never replace Jesus with Alabama football.\u00a0 Jesus is the One who died for my sins and was raised from the dead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This weekend we saw the sad removal of the Joe Paterno statue that was outside Penn State’s football stadium.\u00a0 I had mixed feelings, understanding both the many good things that Paterno had stood for and, along with many others, the new revelations of Paterno’s conduct in the Sandusky sexual abuse scandal.\u00a0 Last September I had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[26],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1088"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1088"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1096,"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1088\/revisions\/1096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}