{"id":928,"date":"2014-01-30T17:13:00","date_gmt":"2014-01-30T17:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/01\/super-bowl-civil-religion-and-our-dirty-little-secret.html"},"modified":"2014-01-30T17:13:00","modified_gmt":"2014-01-30T17:13:00","slug":"super-bowl-civil-religion-and-our-dirty-little-secret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/01\/super-bowl-civil-religion-and-our-dirty-little-secret.html","title":{"rendered":"Super Bowl, Civil Religion and Our Dirty Little Secret"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
I suppose I can be accused of being biased on the Super Bowl. I live in Seattle. I\u2019m rooting for the Seattle Seahawks to win the Super Bowl. So be it. I have, however, tried to think about this grand national pastime and wonder, on occasion, should I participate in it? Shouldn\u2019t the\u00a0violence<\/a>, so typical of an NFL game, be a kind of rebuke to my enjoyment of this game? More to the point, why is an NFL football game so central, so absolutely necessary to so many Americans? What is the draw? Is this our national civil religion?<\/span><\/div>\n
I think a lot about American religion, politics and culture. My coming book, now being written, is called\u00a0High on God: How the Megachurch Conquered America<\/em>. It will come out with Oxford University Press in 2015. I\u2019m beginning see some real similarities between NFL football games and megachurches.<\/span><\/div>\n
Here\u2019s why. I use Randall Collins work on\u00a0Interaction Ritual Chains<\/a>\u00a0to compare the two. Collins argues that human beings are Emotional Energy seekers. We are hungry for emotional experience, so every human activity involving social life and energy is always an interactive ritual chain. These chains are pretty simple. They involve feelings of belonging, a sense of co-presence, a moral feeling, membership symbols, and barriers to outsiders.<\/span><\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I suppose I can be accused of being biased on the Super Bowl. I live in Seattle. I\u2019m rooting for the Seattle Seahawks to win the Super Bowl. So be it. I have, however, tried to think about this grand national pastime and wonder, on occasion, should I participate in it? Shouldn\u2019t the\u00a0violence, so typical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nSuper Bowl, Civil Religion and Our Dirty Little Secret<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I suppose I can be accused of being biased on the Super Bowl. I live in Seattle. I\u2019m rooting for the Seattle Seahawks to win the Super Bowl. So be it. 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