When the NFL Becomes America's Church

The Super Bowl halftime show is our new sacrament. With Bad Bunny at center stage, the question is whether the ritual heals or fractures USAmerica.

Bad Bunny, USAmerica, and the Super Bowl’s Civil Religion: When Halftime Becomes Half-Time in the Culture Wars

Every February, the Super Bowl functions as a civic liturgy. It is not just a football game but the highest holy day of USAmerica’s civil religion. Millions gather for its rituals: communal meals, pre-game anthems, commercials treated as homilies, and the halftime show—our secular cathedral’s central act of worship. The halftime stage is not simply entertainment. It is ceremony, meant to gather the nation in one collective breath, however brief.

In our just-released Gridiron Gospel: Faith That Moves Chains (2025), Chris Eriksen and I argued that football has become the true religion of USAmerica. Stadiums are cathedrals, players are priests, and fans are the faithful that robe themselves for liturgy. The NFL, more than the church, now “owns Sunday.” And the halftime show, strategically placed between halves, is the nation’s high sacrament of spectacle. If ever there is a time meant to symbolize unity, this is it.

Reading the Signs of the NFL’s Pick

So what does it mean when the NFL selects Bad Bunny as its halftime headliner? A semiotic reading reveals layers:

1) Monetization as the New Civil Religion

The NFL increasingly bows at the altar of engagement economics. Social media thrives on outrage: enrage → engage → profit. Choosing a polarizing figure like Bad Bunny ensures a split reception. Some cheer, others jeer, but all react—and reactions translate into revenue. The ritual meant to unite becomes a machine that monetizes division. Bad Bunny means money.

As Chris Hayes writes in his new book The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource (2025), “When attention trumps all, meaningful public discourse dies. Anything resembling democratic deliberation seems not only impossible but increasingly absurd, like trying to meditate in a strip club.” The NFL’s halftime strategy is precisely this: provoke, divide, and profit—even at the expense of communion.

2) Civil Religion Fractured

Where once halftime shows sought broad appeal, now they often sharpen generational, cultural, or political divides. The Super Bowl ritual no longer guarantees a moment of togetherness where the whole nation comes to gather. Instead, it reflects our fraying bonds and weakening glue as USAmericans.

3) The Sign of USAmerica

I deliberately say USAmerica because there are many Americas: Latin America, South America, Central America. The United States does not own the word “America.” Bad Bunny, as a Puerto Rican global superstar singing often in Spanish, reminds us of these other Americas. His presence disrupts the U.S. monopoly on “America” and gestures toward a hemispheric identity. That is a positive sign—a chance for USAmerica to acknowledge its neighbors, its diversity, and the reality that we are all part of a greater whole.

4) Possibility of Unity in Diversity

For Latinx and bilingual communities, seeing Bad Bunny on the biggest stage is recognition: we belong here too. If his performance leans into joy, spectacle, and hybridity—rather than pure provocation—he could embody a new narrative: that unity is not sameness but symphony.

5) From Bread and Circuses to Bread and Wine

In Gridiron Gospel, we traced how football displaced the church as Sunday’s primary ritual. What Rome once did with “bread and circuses,” the NFL now does with nachos and halftime shows. But the gospel insists on “bread and wine”—sacrament, not spectacle.

The danger of the NFL’s strategy is clear: if halftime becomes another culture-war battlefield, we are left with circuses without communion. The show gains clicks but loses sacrament; it amplifies spectacle while diminishing shared belonging.

And yet, if read charitably, the NFL’s choice of Bad Bunny could be

seen as a divine handoff: an opportunity for USAmerica to embrace not only its fractures but its plural identities. To see in Bad Bunny not just division but recognition: that the “America” in Super Bowl Sunday is bigger than the fifty states.

Conclusion: Signs of Hope or Warning?

The semiotic signs point both ways. Bad Bunny’s selection could be a unifying gesture, expanding who is included in the circle of belonging. Or it could deepen divides, serving the NFL’s monetization strategy while hollowing out the halftime ritual of its civil-religious power.

Either way, the NFL’s choice reminds us that football is theology in cleats. It preaches, whether it means to or not. And as we argued in Gridiron Gospel, the question is whether USAmerica will continue to settle for bread and circuses—or rediscover the bread of life.

The halftime stage is once again America’s pulpit. What will the sermon be this year? A message of fracture or hope?