Football on Sundays. Heaven forbid. Or should that be Sunday trading laws?

The question or issue I'm talking about here is 'Football-free Sundays'.

Over the recent row over Easter Sunday football, the Archbishop Vincent Nichols weighed in opposition to live football on Easter Sunday.

Now, the ever famous Desmond Tutu lookalike (John Semantu, Archbishp of York) has weighed in, too.

Using Sunday trading laws or not to prevent games on a Easter Sunday, for a footballing neutral, I would have to say more has to be done to stop games being played on a Sunday as it is.

Historically, games are played on a Saturday at 3PM. With the advent of Sky and tv football, games are moved from 3PM to earlier on a Saturday or on a Sunday/Monday (or any day, take your pick) so that the ones played at other grounds, for the smaller clubs, don't lose out. That is the idea - on the one hand small clubs don't lose out, but also more people watch the tv games too.

If the first argument for tv football is the case, and should we accept Sunday trading laws; should it not be at all possible to prevent games being played on a Sunday at all? Sky have a choice of channels to choose from and are no strangers to interactive "match-choice" via the red button when it comes to the UEFA Champions League. This could be easily acheived by 7-8PM kickoffs on a Saturday and 11AM kickoffs on a Saturday respectively, so no matter what the case is TV football and the traditionalists will win in the end.

Super Sundays (as Sky love to call them) will become Super Saturdays. What is there to lose?
 1) Tradition will be somewhat restored - for football and religion
 2) Clubs can rest in the knowledge that fixture schedules are in sync with the rest of their league so they cannot gain an unfair advantage or be at a disadvantage.
 3) More fans will be able to travel to the games with public transport BETTER on Saturdays than Sundays.

I can't see where the great advantage is for Sundays - other than filling in blanks in the tv listings. Sky could easily throw on repeats of 'Hold the Back Page', WWE, 'Boots 'n' All', etc. Nobody will miss out.

The argument to agree with what Semantu and Nichols are saying, is not a religious argument as the media paint out. It's more one of tradition, heritage to the British nation.

Like the campaign to 'Save the Coachmakers', I'd feel only one party in the political system would be in favour - the BNP.

Heaven forbid!

Sociology and Religion: Belief in the Supernatural

A Theos survey found:
27% believe in reincarnation
39% believe in ghosts
55% believe in Heaven
53% believe in life after death
70% believe in human soul.

Comparing with 1950s:
22% believe in astrology or horoscopes & 15% believe in fortune telling
1950s: 10% believe in ghosts (2% seen one), 7% in fortune telling, 6% in satrology.

Comparing with 1998:
18% believe in fortune telling
38% believe in astrology
40% believe in ghosts, 15% seen one.

"The results indicate that people have a very diverse and unorthodox set of beliefs. Our research may point to a slight increase in scepticism about aspects of the supernatural over the last 10 years." (Wooley)

Source: BBC

So what does this tell us?

True that results indicate a diverse and 'unorthodox set of beliefs', and I would like to refer back to my last blog in a mention of a 'Civil Religion' - and that for some, even a sports game can be followed somewhat religiously. So perhaps given this, the results are not all that suprising.

But, what is really meant by a belief in... heaven, or life after death, or reincarnation, or astrology, or fortune telling? We can't by any stretch of the imagination draw anything conclusive other than the very obvious: There is a degree of an increase in such diversity of beliefs. Yet also, we cannot ignore there are degrees within these beliefs. For example, just what IS heaven? Also, what kind of life after death are we talking about? Something along the lines of John Hick's philosophy of a physical existence in the next world, or Christian resurrection, or that we move on to a higher mental plane after our physical death?

I would also like to make the suggestion that some beliefs could well be interlinked: consider the soul, life after death, and ghosts. One person may believe that when we die, our soul continues after death and is reconstituted in the form of a ghost. Another may feel the soul dies with the body, or that it carries on after death and there are no such thing as ghosts.

So there are many different (and interesting things) we can draw from the sociological survey, and importantly that while people may seem to be less religious (consider church attendences), that does not mean that people are any less spiritual and searching for this fulfillment in other ways.

Religion, Faith, Spirituality, Belief... all this smacks of a DIY ethic on the one hand, and a more critical, open-minded and considerate ethic on the other.