On Culture and Change

In England, the Football League (real football, that is, with a round ball) has just launched a new survey for supporters. The League wants to know what fans like or dislike, how the 'beautiful game' might be improved. I came across a blog by Paul Fletcher, who recommends this new survey, then goes on to give details of a similar exercise undertaken in 1962. At that time, football in England was experiencing something of a decline. League leaders were concerned about falling attendances and commissioned a report to find out what could be done.

Over four thousand people were canvassed for their opinions. These were then evaluated and the findings compiled by one A.D. Bannatyne. Until recently, the results were kept confidential. This is not surprising when you read them.

For example, there is a section headed "Women," which asserts "On the whole women do tend to resent their men going out of the home to enjoy themselves - and this applies to football matches too. Women themselves do not display much interest in football." Bannatyne's suggestion is priceless: "...attempts might be made to encourage the wives and girlfriends of football supporters to be a little more self-sacrificing by letting their menfolk out to watch League matches." Of course, the relative absence of women could also have been caused by another set of problems picked up in the report: out-of-date facilities, poor seating, primitive toilets and woefully inadequate parking.

In other sections the report blames poor attendance on a general increase in the standard of living, with an attendant rise in the number of alternative leisure activities, such as "cameras, do-it-yourself equipment, cars, gramophone records and players, paper-backed books, etc." In particular, television comes in for criticism, despite the observation that "in general television only becomes an attraction when people become dissatisfied with football itself." The report advises that football should never be televised. Games should never be floodlit, in fact they should only take place at the traditional time of three o'clock on a Saturday afternoon. Football should never be played on Sunday.

How the world has changed! The 1962 report opens a window onto a society that has changed beyond recognition. Fletcher is right to identify Bannatyne's work as, at best, a commentary on social history. But I wonder whether the report has anything to say to the community of the church?

Frankly, the 1962 report reads very much like some of the navel-gazing studies done to examine the problems of falling attendance in mainline churches. We've read a great deal about the lure of alternative forms of entertainment. Television has been blamed for the demise of evening services. Poor facilities have often been cited as one of the problems facing those who want to attract younger people to attend church. Awful bathrooms, nasty nurseries, antiquated central heating systems, poor acoustics, and non-existent parking have all received their share of criticism. Increasingly, nowadays, we are hearing that the message must be packaged in more palatable ways, that our services are too slow and ponderous, that the preacher doesn't seem to relate to the modern world, and so on. No doubt there are good points to be made, even though sometimes it does feel like we should be congratulating people for having made it through the sanctuary door.

What concerns me is that the authors of the 1962 football report seem so blind to their cultural context. They want faster, more exciting play, but they also want to be able to tell women to stop nagging their menfolk. They want a higher skill level on the pitch, but they don't think that new technology has any place in football. Yet, today, international football largely dances to the beat of television's drum. Thousands of matches are televised every year. Games are scheduled for the benefit of the broadcast companies, including on Sundays. Without the income generated by television, the top teams would not be able to afford the ridiculous salaries now paid to the best players, or to build their fantastic new cathedrals of sport.

Are we similarly blind, in the church? Do we fail to understand how we are conditioned by our cultural expectations? Do we also fail to recognize those forces that will shape the future, whether we like them or not? Will a future generation look back at our dusty reports and smile at our parochialism and our lack of vision?

We, too, have experienced decline, and have not been slow to ascribe blame. But, in our longing for a world now past and gone, have we failed to see how God is still at work?