The start of the NFL season is an opportunity to write about gambling-related religious teachings.

Steve Almond is the author of Against Football: One Fan’s Reluctant Manifesto, in which he describes how he decided to give up watching NFL games because of growing concern about brain injury among players. He lives in Boston.

Michael L. Butterworth is director of the School of Communication Studies at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. He is the author of Baseball and Rhetorics of Purity: The National Pastime and American Identity During the War on Terror. He has studied Major League Baseball’s “Faith Nights” and written about them.