GOD IS NOT DEAD; HE LIVES IN THE STADIUM

Everyone from theologians to televangelists, from philosophers to the Pew Opinion Center, are slicing and dicing America's faith and/or failure with traditional religion. They have pretty much dismissed western Europe as a lost congregation, but obsess over America's once-thriving religious allegiance. Is it still here? still growing? still real?

Regardless of what Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Sartre told you, God is not dead. The scholars have just been looking in the wrong places. He no longer dwells in churches, temples and mosques. At least not in America. Here you will find him, alive and well, hovering over the sports stadiums of the land.

Fellas like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris tell us there is such a thing as a God Gene, which pre-disposes some of us to believe in deity. I don't know about that, but I do know 100,000,000 worshipers gather every sporting event to believe and share their belief with their fellow congregants. To believe just the way traditional believers have always believed. In a higher power outside themselves which gives their life meaning, purpose, destiny.

If you've ever been swept up in the mass hysteria of team belief in those stands, then you know this to be true.

The god here is the great deity victory...the liturgy here is the precise way in which the service is divided into quarters or innings...the vestments here are as spectacular as any traditional worship service, from specially designated shoes to uniforms to helmets....the catechism here is bristling with heroic tales from the broadcasters in the booth to the high-fivers in the pews.

Talk about the faithful...! These stadiums pack 'em in like the Gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages once did. Fans -- pilgrims, really -- trek here for hours or even days just to catch a glimpse of the great deity victory. And his acolytes, the stars on the playing fields. It's not simply the greatest show on earth, it's the greatest adulation since Moses came down from that mountain with The Word.

Here The Word is "victory," and we gather in prayerful throngs to see it, smell it, share it. God is good...! God is here...! God is victory in which I can share for about 50 bucks and a couple beers....!