Sunday Sports Events or Church: What’s Best for Families & Communities?

WHIPPANY: The New Family Policy Council (NJFPC) applauds the efforts of Hanover Township’s churches which are uniting together to restore a day of rest for the families in their communities. For a number of years now, town sporting events have been regularly scheduled not just during week nights and Saturdays – but also on Sundays.  According to a 2006 Rutgers-Eagleton poll, 68% of New Jerseyans are Christian, 30% of New Jerseyans regularly attend church at least once a week, and another 10% say the attend almost every week.  Scheduling sporting events that children want to be involved in on a Sunday morning creates unnecessary conflict in many of these families.

“Families are being assault on all sides,” says Len Deo, Founder and President of the NJ Family Policy Council: increased tax burdens, increased time commitments regarding work, parents’ own commitments and their children’s commitments.  Sunday is supposed to be a time of rest.  When it instead becomes a time of increased stress, we won’t have healthy families.”  According to a 2007 national survey by the American Psychological Association, “Stress is taking a toll on people – contributing to health problems, poor relationships and lost productivity at work.   One-third of Americans are living with extreme stress and nearly half of Americans (48 percent) believe that their stress has increased over the past five years.”

Not only do families need a day of rest, but communities should recognize that while sports involvement is a worthwhile endeavor it should not be made a tool to pull kids away from regular church attendance.  Toni Meyer, Director of Research for the NJ Family Policy Council says, “Communities should make every effort to support the families of young people who wish to attend church. Kids that regularly attend church are significantly less likely to use alcohol, tobacco or drugs, dramatically reduce their risk of committing a crime, have improve attitudes at school and increased school participation, reduce their risk for rebelliousness, dramatically lower their risk of suicide and actually increase their average life expectancy by eight years, and also improve their odds for a ‘very happy’ life.  These are all behaviors that benefit not only families, but communities and the state of New Jersey.

In effect, by scheduling sporting events on a Sunday morning, kids are getting penalized by missing church in order to remain in sports, or visa-versa.  Deo concludes, “There really is no need for towns to force parents to have to choose between church and sporting events on a regular basis, when they can just as easily schedule them later in the day if necessary.”