This is Sunday, when we usually go to church. But while your church is there regardless of the weather, church doesn’t take place if the priest can’t get to church due to the winter weather.

This is also Super Sunday, with Super Bowl XLIX kicking off after 5 p.m. I still haven’t decided if I’m watching, because I care for neither team, and don’t expect a good game.

Both subjects, however, merge in this Christianity Today story:

A majority of Americans—53 percent—believe God rewards faithful athletes with good health and success, up last year’s 48 percent, according to a new study from Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI).

Confidence in God’s favor rose among every religious group but one. Growing numbers of minority Protestants (68%), Catholics (65%), mainline Protestants (44%), and the unaffiliated (27%) believe that God blesses Christian competitors. The only group whose numbers dipped: white evangelical Protestants, with 60 percent agreeing, down slightly from last year.

One of them is Seattle quarterback Russell Wilson, who threw four interceptions before the Seahawks squeaked out a win against the Green Bay Packers to clinch their Super Bowl berth. “That’s God setting it up, to make it so dramatic, so rewarding, so special,” the Christian player told Sports Illustrated’s TheMMQB.com, latertweeting, “Yesterday wasn’t just about the game…. It was So Much Bigger than just a game.”

“I think God cares about football. I think God cares about everything he created,” Wilson said to reporters Tuesday. Fellow Christian QB Aaron Rodgers, of the Packers, disagreed. About 1 in 4 Americans believe that God plays a role in determining which team wins a sporting event, according to PRRI, compared to 19 percent in 2014.

For this Sunday’s Super Bowl XLIX, more viewers will start their day in church before watching Wilson and the ‘Hawks face the New England Patriots.

About a quarter of Americans say that on a typical Sunday they go to church and watch football, up from 21 percent last year. On the other hand, the number of those who are more likely to watch football than go to church is down, from 21 percent last year to 18 percent this year. White evangelical Protestants’ preference to spend Sundays in church (46%) over watching the game (6%) stayed about the same, with about a third saying they’ll do both.

According to LifeWay Research, only about 1 in 7 church-goers would skip services to watch their favorite team. Men are much more likely to schedule Sundays around the game; about 1 in 4 church-going men say they’d skip to watch football, but only 1 in 10 women.

Another study from LifeWay found that more Christians report praying for their team to win a game than for government leaders, celebrities, or others in the public eye.

I find this to be an example of dubious logic as well as dubious theology. Why would God reward Wilson (and by extension Seahawks fans, based in one of the most irreligious cities in the U.S.) and not Aaron Rodgers (and by extension Packer fans), known to be a Christian too?

The suggestion that God rewards Christian athletes sounds suspiciously like the “prosperity Gospel,” of which Christianity Today wrote before Super Bowl XLVIII:

Americans are divided on whether “God rewards athletes who have faith with good health and success,” according to a recent survey ahead of Super Bowl Sunday.

Almost 5 in 10 agree (48%) with this echo of the prosperity gospel, while slightly fewer disagree (47%), reports Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). However, 62 percent of white evangelicals believe that God rewards faithful athletes in this manner, compared to only half of Catholics, 44 percent of white mainline Protestants, and 22 percent of religiously unaffiliated Americans believe. …

Football fans are more likely than other sports fans to say they pray to God (33 percent versus 21 percent). In addition, they are more likely to believe their team has been cursed (31 percent versus 18 percent), and partake in rituals before or during games (25 percent versus 18 percent).

“As Americans tune in to the Super Bowl this year, fully half of fans—as many as 70 million Americans—believe there may be a twelfth man on the field influencing the outcome,” said Robert P. Jones, CEO of PRRI. “Significant numbers of American sports fans believe in invoking assistance from God on behalf of their favorite team, or believe the divine may be playing out its own purpose in the game.”

Kevin Dougherty, sociology professor at Baylor University, is not surprised by the number of Americans who pray about the outcome of games. In a 2010 Baylor Religion Survey, he found that half of American adults pray daily.

“While our survey didn’t ask about the content of American prayers, we know from other research that people pray about what is important to them,” Dougherty said. “To a segment of Americans, sports are very important. Not surprisingly then, sports become a topic for prayer in the lives of these individuals.”

“Evangelical Protestants believe in a God who is present and engaged in human life,” he said. “Thus, all human efforts in every realm have a sacred dimension to them, including sports. Working hard and doing your best is a sign of honor and obedience to God, in the theology of evangelicals.”

Meanwhile, among Protestant fans, more than 1 in 5 white evangelicals (22 percent), minority Protestants (22 percent), and white mainline Protestants (30 percent) believe their team has been cursed before. Among those who have prayed for their team: 38 percent of white evangelicals, 33 percent of white mainline Protestants, and 29 percent of minority Protestants. Only 15 percent of religiously unaffiliated fans say they have also prayed for their team.

Concerning the outcomes of games, 22 percent of all Americans say God plays a role in determining them. Among those who believe this, more than half (52 percent) say they have “prayed to God to help their team.”

In addition, Baylor professor Greg Garrett shared his views of praying on the Super Bowl:

I’m going to pray—not that my team will win, although that would be a refreshing change. I’m going to pray that no one would be badly hurt for my entertainment. I’m going to pray that the NFL and its fans might press, in the days and years to come, to see the right thing done for all those who have been or will be hurt. I’m going to pray for those players and their families, and for all those who suffer, because that’s what my tradition calls me to do daily.

Consider the conundrum here. If you root for the Seahawks today, you’re rooting for a team followed by a bunch of, to use the old term, heathens. If you root for the Patriots today, you’re rooting for a bunch of cheaters. And if you think God really cares about the result … that is a subset of the Christian tradition that I do not follow.

People prayed for the results of the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections. Assuming that more Republicans prayed than Democrats, most people who prayed for the result didn’t get the result they wanted. So does that mean God favors atheists (who are more often liberals and Democrats — see People’s Republic of Madison — than conservatives) over the religious?

Though I don’t specifically remember it, I’m sure I did pray for the results of a sporting event. As a lifelong Badger and Packer fan during the Gory Days of each, you can imagine that, as with Cubs fans, my prayers were not usually answered the way I wanted them answered. (Except, perhaps, in 1982.) So I stopped. I will believe it is improper until someone explains to my satisfaction why, for instance, God should have favored Bronco fans over Packer fans (who were rooting for a team that included, remember, Rev. Reggie White) during Super Bowl XXXII.

There is also the issue of what a “blessing” is. In addition to being something like winning the Super Bowl, it could be the absence of something — say, bad disease in your family. It would fit our idea of justice that bad people had bad things happen to them, but good people have bad things happen to them too, and bad people have good things that appear to be us to be unwarranted (see Obama, Barack) happen to them too.

This would have been a bad sermon this morning, because sermons should end with an explanation better than that the world is a bad place full of bad people.