Article by WorldNews.com Correspondent Dallas Darling.

With news that the four F-18 fighter jets cost the Navy a total of $450,000 to fly over Dallas, Texas' Jerry Jones' $1.5 billion stadium for Super Bowl XLV, it is evident that Sportsism has publicly and privately replaced prophetic faith. And with over 100 million people watching grown men beating on each other, including 30-second commercials each costing $3 million, it is obvious Sportsism has even replaced common sense and reason. In some ways, it has also criminalized discussing and debating the public role of prophetic faiths and religions, something that is important for the vitality and maintenance of any civilization. (Remember "isms" are powerful and internalized ideologies.)

President Barack Obama must admit some responsibility for this new Sportsism and the loss of prophetic faith, specifically when he called and praised the professional sports franchise, the Philadelphia Eagles, for giving Michael Vick another opportunity. Obama intervened on behalf of Vick, who had mistreated and inhumanely killed his dogs as part of a gambling and dog-fighting ring, a bloody and cruel animal circus show. Not only was Obama applauded and lauded for phoning the Eagles and thanking them, but for days it made national headlines and consumed the mainstream media. It was another example of how Sportsism is accepted and idolized in the public arena.

Now then, will Obama also phone his long-time spiritual mentor and pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright? For thirty-six years, Rev. Wright was pastor of Chicago's south-side Trinity United Church of Christ. The church itself established faith-based communities and schools, bringing hope, love, peace and spirituality to tens of thousands of people. It also promoted numerous ministries like food banks, homeless shelters, drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs, and visitations and prayers on behalf of the sick and dying. Trinity United Church of Christ also provides job training programs and ministers too and assists those incarcerated in becoming productive and community oriented citizens.

Rev. Wright started the Ministers in Training program. It has encouraged theological education and prepared thousands for seminary training. Meanwhile and year after year, Obama was inspired by Rev. Wright. It was one of Rev. Wright's sermons that actually stirred Obama to write The Audacity of Hope. Based on the GF Watts painting Hope, Rev. Wright proclaimed: "...with her clothes in rags, her body scarred and bruised and bleeding, her harp all but destroyed and with only one string left, she had the audacity to make music and praise God...To take the one string you have left and to have the audacity of hope."

But during the 2008 presidential election, Rev. Wright's sermons and prophetic faith was criminalized by the public arena. This is sad, for the United States of America needs to publicly debate and inquire if it did indeed help cause the attacks on Sept. 11 with its misguided and destructive foreign policies. The United States of America, as a national community, should discuss if the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, weapons that killed hundreds of thousands of women and children, were indeed acts of terrorism. And again, what was the real motivation behind using such deadly nuclear weaponry that led to the Arms Race?

Obama should have encouraged dialogue, but instead he distanced himself from the truth that there is a disproportionate number of blacks imprisoned. Recalling the CIA's drug smuggling operations to raise monies in order to fund the Contras in Nicaragua, clearly subverting the U.S. Constitution and democracy, Obama, like Rev. Wright, should have questioned if the government gives people "drugs, builds bigger prison, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing God Bless America." Obama should have questioned if America killed innocent people, and if America, with its doctrine of Exceptionalism, acts like God and believes it is supreme.

Vick was not the only one that needed rehabilitated. President Obama needs rehabilitated too, along with some Americans. America's foreign and domestic policies also need transformed, as does its un-prophetic thinking and behavior. When a nation spends billions of dollars on a sporting event, at the expense of its poor and oppressed and its jobless and homeless, such a nation is on the verge of moral and theological bankruptcy. The public spheres and arenas must reject the criminalization of prophetic faiths and religions. Such forums should again be used to debate the roles that prophetic faiths and religions can serve.

If America is to survive, it needs to reject a pre-prophetic reality of perpetual wars and militarism. It must learn to embrace post-prophetic realities, or an egalitarian nation that embraces peace with justice. Even George Washington warned in his farewell speech that, "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports...And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion...reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."

President Obama, please phone Rev. Wright and start the process of decriminalizing and liberating prophetic faith.