CHURCH HUDDLES
In its obituary the New York Times describes how in 1924 “Coach McCracken earned his spot in football lore.” Aware that Penn State had scouted his Lafayette team’s previous five games and had memorized its offensive signals, he ordered his players not to signal the plays at the line of scrimmage. Instead, he told them to gather behind the line to learn the next play in secret, and the huddle was invented. Now, why should “huddle” be a term in ecclesiology? Here I adduce a comment of Yale professor Jaroslav Pelikan, author of the five-volume The Christian Tradition. At least I believe it was Pelikan who remarked that “many a congregation looks and acts like a football huddle: you know that a very important conversation is going on, but all you ever see are the behinds.” By Martin Marty in The Christian Century, May 1995
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