FIFA's Christianity Surge Leaves Globalist Media Crying "Far-Right"
"The movement is so big that the New York Times, The Guardian and even the Financial Times haven't been able to ignore it."
FIFA 2026 is stirring controversy for all the right reasons.
Soccer players platforming Jesus Christ has the globalist anti-Christ media scrambling to make sense of it.
Dubbed by hardline secularists as a religious revival, they’ve been forced to declare that God has made a World Cup comeback.
The movement is so big that the New York Times (NYT), The Guardian and even the Financial Times (FT) haven’t been able to easily ignore it.
Goal scorers pointing to the Gospel, they’ve been forced to admit, represents a sizeable cultural shift.
As I documented in a series of four articles for the Daily Declaration this week, players putting their faith on the football field have the World Cup overflowing with shouts of Soli Deo Gloria.
From Argentina’s Leo Messi, to German-born ethnic Nigerian, Felix Nmecha, including the USMNC soccer team, and over 30 other nations, the sport’s faith pair-up is proving difficult to process for the relic legacy media.
The rise of FIFA players bringing their Christian faith to the soccer field en masse has the haters perplexed.
For instance, the Financial Times’s Simon Kuper, when trying to make sense of the social shift, accused Christians of bringing the “far-right” into FIFA.
The FT’s piece is soft on Islam, yet highly critical of players glorifying God and bringing the Gospel to part of the game.
Similarly, The Guardian tried to downplay the “radical change in the team’s public engagement with religion, or really with personal beliefs of any kind.”
Although the left-wing bullhorn acknowledged that the contrast between this year’s event and previous World Cups was “remarkable,” they put it down to Trumpian Christian nationalism.
According to The Guardian, FIFA’s Jesus movement isn’t spiritual, it’s political.
This is, they tried to assert, a consequence of the Trump administration empowering Christian nationalists.
As I wrote in the Daily Declaration, despite the whiff of TDS in their sneer, The Guardian couldn’t ignore the sincerity of it all.
“The national team’s leading players’ proclamations on their religious beliefs seem to be sincere. They are very much doing it in, well, good faith.”
They also couldn’t dismiss the observable fact that there has been a tangible change under the Trump administration.
USMNT’s Christians, The Guardian conceded, “are joining a generation of professional American athletes who feel freer to express their views.”
Contrary to The Guardian and the FT’s cranky Simon Kuper, what’s at work here is the transformative power of the cross.
It’s the reason why a perplexed legacy media cannot solely pin it all on Donald Trump.
Although jittery, the NYT was less hostile. Uncharacteristically reverent, they honoured the player’s devotion to God and the game.
Prayer, the NYT reported, is uniting “a group of players and people who, for the past month, and in some ways for the past several years, have been pushing toward a common goal: World Cup success.”
This movement isn’t just uniting players. Their symbolic salutes are inspiring fans.
Players like 25-year-old Felix Nmecha, whose “crown down” gesture puts his 40 million Euro 5-year contract second to his faith in Christ.
Although initially misrepresented by the media as self-glorifying, many clearly saw it as glorifying God. Consequently, “Crown Down” went viral.
So much so that pro-athlete ministry Ballers in God said they’ve been inundated with videos from people joining the footballer in their own Revelation 4:10–11 celebration.
Despite the “here comes the far-right” fearmongering, FIFA’s faith pair-up is undeniably real.
Even though Kuper and the Left’s “God is dead” hegemony might be reluctant to admit there’s a power greater than theirs at work here.
Players are turning goals into gratitude and gratitude into kicking goals for the Great Commission.
To end with a quote from Kuper’s piece, “The tournament’s religiosity is proof that Europe isn’t as secular as it thought.”
Crown Down!
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