Last Sunday saw the worlds of soccer and church in conflict when the opening match of the World Cup in East Asia pitted England against Sweden at Sunday worship prime time: 10:30 a.m. Since millions of Britons were glued to their TV screens, many churches postponed their worship until after the match.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, okayed the changes, though many Anglican priests are adamant that the church should not bow before soccer. The Rev. Geoffrey Kirk of Lewisham told the Times the very idea of moving the service rendered him almost speechless: “If we in the Church of England have actually generated a group of Christians who are so brain dead that they cannot even record the thing on a video and discharge their primary obligation on Sunday morning to go to church, then we might as well pack up and go home.”
Other clergy made the best of things. The Rev Harry Ross in Liverpool – who said, “God must come first, but football is second” — placed his warden in front of the TV in the vestry in order to signal if England scored a goal during the service. That way Ross could keep the congregation up to date from the pulpit. Other churches put up video screens and showed the soccer match live before the worship service. The Rev. John Hartley of Bradford preached to the theme “Make Jesus the center forward of your life.” And he has written a special evangelistic soccer hymn: “Before I met the Savior Jesus, my life was full of holes: I couldn’t do the good I wanted, I couldn’t score the goals.”
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Religion Today, May 30, 2002
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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #30408]