More Friday Night Lights

I watched the next installment in this new series. I guess I'm intrigued and what to see how the writers will continue to weave together the stories of this team and the hopes and dreams of Dillion, Texas, as a kind-of religious exploration of life's meaning.

The show opened last week with parallel scenes of the community in church - two different churches. The African-American players and their families are in one church; the Anglo-American players, their families, and the coaches are in another church. The topic of that Sunday's reflections are Jason Street and the likelihood of his ever walking again. As the show continues, we see the apparent president of the quarterback club, and owner of the local auto dealership, suggesting to the head coach that he must win or lose his job. "What this town needs is a 'W', he says in his Texas drawl.

In an 1979 essay, Michael Novak suggested that sports in the United States creates a kind of civil religion and that sporting events are about half political rally and half religious worship service. He writes about sports that "They feed a deep human hunger, place humans in touch with certain dimly perceived features of human life within the cosmos, and provide an experience of at least a pagan sense of godliness" ("The Natural Religion," in Sport in Contemporary Society: An Anthology, St. Martin's Press, 335-41). In this show, I see deep longing on the part of a number of the characters to belong. Hope is a dominant theme here as well. Finally, I see played out the theology of Deuteronomy through 2 Kings - the righteous win and the unrighteous lose. You get what you deserve.

The end of 2 Kings tells us that this theology leads the people of Judah down a path that ends in destruction. I think it will be interesting to see where the writers lead the audience as we continue move through these stories lines.