Early American Culture

The early American Christian attitude of limited tolerance for other religions is still apparent today with the issue of NFL players not standing for the National Anthem. Football is so meaningful to American culture, that it has become a segment of many people’s religion, so when an athlete decides to sit during the National Anthem, fans view it as a slight to their religion and their country at the same time. Football fans are a part of one large community where people come from all different backgrounds, but share a common characteristic. There is a certain decorum of how a football game is meant to go, similar to a religious service, so when someone interrupts this normalcy, the community turns on them and deems it offensive. A similar
Football is similar again in this way. Football fans have more loyalty to their own team than you can find almost anywhere else. No matter the result, if you are a football fan you will always cheer hard for your team, and against the other team and fans. When a team finds success, instead of their fans celebrating the success, often the first thing they do is find fans of the team they beat and rub it in to them. Similar to this, when religiously persecuted people finally found “success” in America, they wanted to establish their authority over the other religions. Years of persecution in Europe built up tension that the persecuted finally got a chance to avenge when they got to America. One can see this early authoritative intolerance when looking at Anne Hutchinson and her relationship with her fellow Puritans. She had a disagreement with the Puritan hierarchy and the leaders saw her as a threat to their religious community so she was banished. Ideally, the Puritans would have listened to Anne’s viewpoints and respectfully disagreed. However, the intolerance of other viewpoints caused an overreaction. Some might argue that Colin Kaepernick is a modern day Anne Hutchinson. Religious intolerance clearly appeared again in America around the same time as the birth of the country. In Massachusetts, only Christians were allowed to hold public office, and Catholics were allowed to
The same thing is true for football fans. If the majority of other football fans think one way, it is not socially acceptable to be the one person to disagree. This was evidenced in the Colin Kaepernick debate when a writer on the popular website Barstool Sports took the side of Kaepernick, writing an article titled “Colin Kaepernick Refused to Stand During The Anthem and That’s Ok”. This website is full of football fans, and predictably the response to this article was very negative. People took offense to a football fan taking the unpopular view. Reactions like these to unpopular opinions reinforce the idea of conformity. People are encouraged to take the agreed upon viewpoint on the issues and if they don’t, they are ridiculed for it. This forced conformity is not a new idea. It has been around for hundreds and hundreds of years, demonstrated in early America with the forced Christianity on Native Americans. When the early Americans came to the New World, they met the Native Americans and one of the first things they attempted to do was convert them to Christianity. Forced conformity has been around in America since the inception of the nation, often with harmful effects. These religious groups only make the forced conformity worse, as shown with football fans and the Colin Kaepernick situation, and with the early treatment of Native