Football Crazy? David Beckham & the World Cup

We live in an age when asking and finding answers to the deepest questions of life are frowned upon.

It was my turn to do the school run. Usually the journey into the city center is just one traffic jam after another. On this particular day, the streets were eerily deserted. Was it an alien invasion? The beginning of a nuclear war? An outbreak of the plague? No. It was the morning of England's World Cup clash with Brazil.

The headlines said that Britain would 'grind to a halt' for a couple of hours. They were right. My children's school gave up the unequal attempt to impart wisdom and knowledge, and set up large screen televisions all around. The pubs were doing great business - packed to the doors since they opened at 7 in the morning, with people there to watch the match. Two hours later, it was all over. We had gone down 2-1 to Brazil, and our hopes were dashed for another four years.

It is not the World Cup per se that concerns me: it's the massive public reaction to it; the St. George's flags draped on car aerials and people, the vicars who changed the times of their services so they would not clash with the matches.And it is not just England: In France and Argentina national pride took a bitter blow. In riots in Moscow after Japan defeated Russia one man was murdered.

Is sport a new kind of spirituality?

One of the points we talk about in 'Facing the Challenge' is the rise of different kinds of 'spirituality', often reflected in phrases such as 'I'm not religious, but I am quite a spiritual person.'

But has sport become the latest substitute spirituality? Spirituality is about whatever ultimately concerns us. So when the fans spoke of England's World Cup victory of Denmark as the most important day of their lives, you have to start wondering. A recent advertisement puts it like this:

Happy to draw?
Go buy some crayons.
Sport. It's not a game.

When the late Bill Shankly, of Liverpool Football Club, was asked whether football was a matter of life and death, his response was:

It's more important than that!

And the Revd. Dr Francis Bridger, writing in the Church of England Newspaper, says that:

In football we find offered a kind of transcendence and ecstasy which were once regarded as the province of religion

As C. Prebish, of Penn State University, says:

Church and stadium alike are places of renewal, recreation and sanctity

Where else do people gather today in large crowds to sing and worship?

'Shallowness is the new depth'

If this is true, does it it say something about how shallow we have become? Columnist Mary Riddell captures this brilliantly in an article in The Observer on Sunday 16th June 2002:

When the game is over and the flags furled, there will still be a vacuum in the national soul

Writing about England captain David Beckham's role as a cultural icon, Riddell says:

Beckham is the creature of public imagination, a blank screen refracting other's dreams. We can make him up as we go along. A one-size fits all attraction, Beckham is a shrine-filler for Prime Ministers, monarchs, fashion designers and the entire schoolgirl population of Japan

Francis Bridger takes up the same idea in an article in Church of England Newspaper:

Beckham perfectly represents the current age because he is a curious mixture of technical ability, pleasant personality, and philosophical emptiness... when we look at him, we see our culture reflected back

This is not a negative comment about David Beckham. Rather, it is a comment about all of us who watch him. Bridger says:

What should make us afraid is the lack of substance implied by society's readiness to run after the latest celebrity, whoever he or she might be. We live in an age when asking and finding answers to the deepest questions of life are frowned upon. Shallowness is the new depth. Far better to be transported into the magical world of sporting success or entertainment.

What can we do about it?

Strange as it may seem, this current shallowness in itself provides a positive opportunity to the Church, if we do not lose our nerve. As Bridger comments:

The preoccupation with ersatz ecstasy provided by sport and pleasure-consumption proves itself incapable of generating an ethic of virtue. It can only generate an ethic of temporary emotion which will not withstand the collapse of the virtues that have bound our society together.

But people cannot live with this kind of shallowness, or with its consequences - what Bridger calls the 'collapse of the virtues that have bound our society together.' We are made in the image of God, whether we admit it or not - and this means that we will always look for something more meaningful and substantial than that provided by sports stars and pop stars. As long as we turn away from it, the virtues will collapse, and society will crumble, as we are seeing today. Here is both the danger, and the opportunity for the Church to say something decisive and worthwhile. To cite Bridger again:

We have a long and profound tradition of moral reasoning based upon Scripture and human experience that has the resources to address every major question thrown up by postmodernity.

But if we are going to make anything of this, it is time for the church to stop playing politically correct games, lose its fascination with management technique, and return to its core business - the truth of the Good News, and the intellectual defensibility of this truth in a postmodern age. Nothing less than that will carry conviction to people who have seen through the shallowness of the contemporary world.