God vs. The Saints

Aaron M. Sprecher / Getty Images Men are abandoning church, and desperate pastors are using Super Bowl parties and pro-athlete preachers to bring them back. But is it still God's house if they worship the quarterback?

The people of New Orleans have a lot to thank God for. After a devastating flood, their city is rising again. Mardi Gras season has begun, with no less than 20 parades this weekend. And the beloved New Orleans Saints have finally, after 40-plus years, made it to the Super Bowl with a chance to hoist the Vince Lombardi Trophy.

Now the question is: Will fans show their gratitude by watching today's game from a pew?

“If you get the young men, you win the war. You get everything. You get the families, the women, the children, the money, the business; you get everything."

It's become an annual tradition—American churches opening their doors on Super Bowl Sunday, not just with a sermon, but with hoagies, chips, and a big-screen TV to broadcast the game. The tradition has gained such steam that two years ago the NFL cracked down on the trend, alleging that the church Super Bowl parties amounted to violations of the league's copyright.

Step foot into one of these parties and you'll soon realize you’re in God’s house, not your own. You won’t find any beer to wash down that plate of nachos, and you might not find any beer commercials either. Most churches are quick with the remote during game breaks to censor the occasionally racy ads companies have paid millions of dollars for. Some will even share a mini-sermon during halftime in lieu of the televised musical performance. Why settle for The Who when you can have “Who are You Living For?”

Because churches don't throw Super Bowl parties out of love for the sport. Many do it with a singular—if unspoken—goal: to bring men back to the flock. Any good sports fan knows that stats don’t lie, and for churches across America, the numbers on male attendance are grim. The average U.S. congregation has been shedding men for years, and now skews 61% female and 39% male. The gap between has become so pronounced that women now outnumber men in every single Christian denomination.

But if a soul is a soul, does it matter whether that soul belongs to a man or a woman? The answer, according to clergy, is a resounding yes. Even in this day and age, many pastors see men as the religious trendsetters for their families, and feel that to get their attention is to get the attention of everyone under their roofs.

“A 1996 Focus on the Family statistic says that when the man comes to Christ, his family follows 93 percent of the time,” Pastor Don Wilson of Christ’s Church of the Valley said in a 2006 interview with the Christian Standard. Pastor Mark Driscoll of Seattle’s highly influential Mars Hill church agrees. “If you get the young men, you win the war. You get everything. You get the families, the women, the children, the money, the business; you get everything. If you don’t get the young men, you get nothing.”

With that mindset it’s no wonder churches are seeking new methods to reach men these days. Instead of appealing to their hearts and minds, many places of worship now target their jerseys, hoping that by mixing enough sports into church, guys will find renewed interest in God.

The Super Bowl viewing parties happening all over the country tonight are great examples of this. Designed to be a non-threatening environment focused on something other than spirituality, the idea is to draw in men who wouldn’t otherwise ever step foot in a church and let them connect with other churchgoing guys. It’s sports as a Trojan horse, only instead of sneaking an army into a city, they’re trying to sneak a Bible into a sports lover’s hands.