Religious Things of New York: Gym Rats and the Rabbi's Shabbat

I always arrive to everything thirty minutes early; this ensures I am always on time but also means I usually have twenty minutes to waste before I go into either a party, or work, or class without upsetting some unsaid rule of attendance. While walking around 18th St. waiting for an appropriate time to walk into work, I came across the newest American church. From behind it seems like your average Protestant church from maybe the 19th or 20th century. A sturdy, brown stone building safely kept private by an iron wrought fence. As I turned the corner I came to the entrance, the face of the building. Instead of finding "Church of the St. Paul" or "Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow" like I was excepting, I read "Limelight Fitness". I actually laughed to myself. This was not a church (not a place of worship) but a gym, stationed within a repurposed church building. This juxtaposition of the gym inside the church allowed for the pontification of what role does the gym have in American society and what role does religion have in American society.

My mother is a devote Irish-Catholic woman. Every Friday, while I am at a Shabbat dinner, you can find her at an evening church service. This weekly activity is a ritual for us. Once a week, driving to our respective places, taking two or three hours out of our week to be among those who share similar beliefs to us and to think about the week that has past and the week that is yet to come and escape from the stresses of our more secular realities. For many Americans the gym is their Shabbat dinner or church service. A weekly (more often 3-times or even daily) ritual that grants them refuge from the secular world. The gym is a space for them to focus their mental and physical energy away from business, school, or other worldly stresses.

Since 2000, the average rate of people who claim to belong to a church or synagogue has declined and continues to decline while the average number of people who claim to belong to a gym or sports club has increased and continues to increase[1][2]. Perhaps Limelight Fitness, in the old church, and the Gallup poll trends are telling us that there is a new American religion?

If we think about religion, religion is defined as the ways in which people explain aspects of our relative that defy explanation. Religion brings comfort in death and reassurance that even in the vast expanses of the infinite universe, you are alright. Is the gym really a complete replacement of this? It seems as though the gym is replacing the ritualistic aspect of religion, but not the metaphysical aspect. Many Americans are religious, but do not attend services. What could this trend mean? Perhaps it shows that the modern American religion isn’t necessarily the gym, but a personal religion. A religion that does not require weekly attendance but, inward reflection allowing for that ritualist gym attendance and the betterment of one's body.