Religion, Sport and the Olympic Games

The summer Olympics starts next week in Brazil. If we can forget the scandals, corruption and politics of the Olympic movement, we could appreciate and enjoy some fine athletic (and hopefully doping-free) performances by competitors.

Speaking of competition, religion and sports has a long history, especially Christianity, where the Bible uses athletics as a metaphor for spiritual life.

For example, the writer of the book of Hebrews used the image of a long-distance race to encourage the early Christians. "Run with endurance the race that is set before us," the writer said, suggesting spiritual life was a marathon, not a sprint.

In the first book to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul suggested that merely running wasn't enough—winning was the goal of the Christian life.

"Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize?” he wrote. “So run that you may obtain it."

In other places, Paul indicated his only aim in life was to "finish the race." But at another point, when he seemed to deal with some doubts, he worried that "I was not running, and had not been running, my race in vain."

Sportsmanship was also important to Paul, too—something athletes today could keep in mind when tempted to cheat.

"If anyone competes as an athlete, they do not receive the victor's crown unless they compete according to the rules," he wrote in the book of Second Timothy.

Of the major faiths, Christianity seems to have made the most of the sports-faith connection; think of all the athletes who point to the sky when they score a touchdown, take a knee in the end zone or when they hit a home run.

Publishers of the Bible have noted this affinity for sports, publishing the Athlete's Bible, the Sports Devotional Bible (helps you "get in great spiritual shape") or the Extreme Sports Bible.

The latter "contains 20 full-colour action photos of extreme sports, combined with verses about courage, bravery, faith, and adventure."

Other faiths also promote good health and exercise, but not to the same degree.

One Buddhist commentator notes that sport can help develop the mind, including positive states like team spirit, friendship, alertness and even a degree of detachment through gracefully accepting defeat.

Another suggests that athletes have a chance to experience a "meditative state worthy of a Buddha" through single-minded devotion and exertion.

"Sport becomes a form of meditation when you engage it with your full attention," he writes, suggesting this phenomenon can be called "sportsamadhi" -- "Samadhi" being the Sanskrit term for intense meditative concentration.

For Islam, most of the attention has been focused on restrictions on female participation in sports. But one Muslim commentator notes that the Prophet Mohammed recommended physical fitness to his followers, and that he participated in camel races.

Of sports in general, the prophet is reported to have said "any action without the remembrance of Allah is either a diversion or heedlessness excepting four acts: Walking from target to target (during archery practice), training a horse, playing with one's family and learning to swim."

Since sports in Greek and Roman times were associated with idol worship, ancient Jews were critical of sporting activities. The Talmud, for example, condemns Roman sports, especially gladiatorial combat.

More recently, however, sport has been seen as a way for Jews to enter mainstream North American society, particularly through boxing and baseball.

The connection between religion and sports isn't restricted to playing fields; it has also found its way into the stands. American baseball teams often host religiously themed nights at their ballparks. Some have also held theme nights for atheists.

I don’t expect to see much in the way of religious observance at the Olympics this year, which is OK by me. Personally, I don’t think God has much interest in who wins in shot put or any other sport.

Unless it’s the winter Olympics, and we’re talking about hockey and Canada playing for the gold medal. That’s about as close to a religious experience as many Canadians will get.

For more on the religious roots of the Olympic games on this blog, click here.

Sermon on the Mound: Baseball as a Road to God

(I'm not a huge baseball fan, but I do enjoy the game. I've written a couple times about its religious dimensions. With the new baseball season almost upon us, I thought I'd resurrect an old column and add some new information. With the boys of summer in spring training, what better way to forget about the cold weather that's still outside?)

Baseball is almost back!

Opening day for 2014 is March 31, although a few northern ballparks might be a little chilly.

Baseball’s return suggests that winter, at long last, has really been vanquished, even if the evidence outside our windows in Manitoba suggests otherwise.

Its return inspires a sense of hope, renewal and new beginnings for many—which sounds sort of religious, in a way.

In fact, for many people, baseball is a religion. It has all the religious elements: A creation story (replete with dissenting views about how this “faith” really started), falls from grace, redemption, prophets, heretics, deities, icons, rituals, holy books, temples, worship, miracles, sacrifice, miracles, saviours and sinners.

There’s even a Vatican-like place called the Baseball Hall of Fame, where “worshippers” can view holy relics, venerate the saints and re-live the great moments of the faith.

As Susan Saradon’s character said in the movie Bull Durham: “I believe in the church of baseball. I've tried all the major religions and most of the minor ones . . . and the only church that feeds the soul, day in, day out, is the church of baseball.”

William Herzog and Christopher Evans, who teach at Colgate Divinity School in Rochester, New York, seem to agree. The two are editors of the book The Faith of 50 Million, a collection of essays that “plumb how baseball illuminates significant patterns of faith and meaning.”

“People are incurably religious," said Herzog in an interview. “We have to have some form of religion, and for some people its baseball. It's only a game, but it has elements that point beyond.”

The book’s foreword is by theologian Stanley Hauerwas, a baseball fan and professor at Duke Divinity School.

He really brings it home for this Mennonite church member when he notes that “being a Cubs' fan and a pacifist are closely linked; namely, both commitments teach you that life is not about winning.”

Someone else who sees a link between baseball and religion is John Sexton, President of New York University and author of the book Baseball as a Road to God. 

Sexton, a Yankees fan, decided to combine his interest in religion and baseball into a course at NYU.

Also called Baseball as a Road to God, its a way to “get students to think about things that they see as mundane in a rich and nuanced way, and to do that through the trigger of something they see as an oxymoron.”

By using something familiar—baseball—he hopes to help them see the world in a different way, a way that “adds to the richness of your experience of everything in the world.”

As for baseball itself, Sexton sees that as a metaphor for a rich spiritual life—in baseball, time passes more slowly than in the real world, and since it doesn’t use a clock, it could go on forever.

Books on the reading list for the course include Shoeless Joe by W. P. Kinsella, The Natural by Bernard Malamud, The Iowa Baseball Confederacy by Kinsella, and The Universal Baseball Association Inc. by Robert Coover.

For Sexton, "baseball evokes in the life of its faithful features we associate with the spiritual life: faith and doubt, conversion, blessings and curses, miracles, and so on. For some, baseball really is a road to God."

Sexton admits that, for many—especially for those who aren’t religious—baseball is not a spiritual experience. “But if given sensitive attention, it can awaken us to a dimension of life often missing in our contemporary world of hard facts and hard science,” he says.

“We can learn, through baseball, to experience life more deeply."

Faith and Sport

Since the Sochi Olympics are taking place right now, here's another column that looks at faith and sport in general.

The New Testament writers use many metaphors to describe the Christian life, including sport. 

"Run with endurance the race that is set before us," said the writer of the book of Hebrews, using the image of a long-distance race to encourage the early Christians in their new-found religious life.

In the first book to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul suggested that merely running wasn't enough -- winning was the goal of the Christian life. 

"Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it."

In other places, Paul indicated his only aim in life was to "finish the race." But at another point, when he seemed to be dealing with doubts, he wrote that he wanted to be sure he had "not been running my race in vain."

Sportsmanship was also important to Paul -- something today's athletes could keep in mind when tempted to cheat. 

"If anyone competes as an athlete, they do not receive the victor's crown unless they compete according to the rules," he added in the book of Second Timothy.

Of the major faiths, Christianity seems to have made the most of the sports-faith connection -- think of the controversy over former Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow, who regularly thanked God following late-game heroics, or the many athletes who point a finger skyward after scoring a touchdown.

Publishers of the Bible have noted this affinity for sports, publishing the Athlete's Bible, the Sports Devotional Bible (helps you "get in great spiritual shape") or the Extreme Sports Bible. 

The latter "contains 20 full-colour action photos of extreme sports, combined with verses about courage, bravery, faith, and adventure."

Other faiths also promote good health and exercise, but not to the same degree.

One Buddhist commentator notes that sport can help develop the mind, including positive states like team spirit, friendship, alertness and even a degree of detachment through gracefully accepting defeat. 

Another Buddhist suggests that athletes have a chance to experience a "meditative state worthy of a Buddha" through single-minded devotion and exertion.

"Sport becomes a form of meditation when you engage it with your full attention," he writes, suggesting this phenomenon can be called "sportsamadhi" -- "Samadhi" being the Sanskrit term for intense meditative concentration.

For Islam, most of the attention has been focused on restrictions on female participation in sports. But one Muslim commentator notes that the Prophet Mohammed recommended physical fitness to his followers, and that he participated in camel races.

Of sports in general, the prophet is reported to have said "any action without the remembrance of Allah is either a diversion or heedlessness excepting four acts: Walking from target to target (during archery practice), training a horse, playing with one's family and learning to swim."

Since sports in Greek and Roman times were associated with idol worship, ancient Jews were critical of sporting activities. 

The Talmud, for example, condemns Roman sports, especially gladiatorial combat. More recently, however, sport has been seen as a way for Jews to enter mainstream North American society, particularly through boxing and baseball.

The connection between religion and sports isn't restricted to playing fields; it has also found its way into the stands. 

American baseball teams, for example, often host religiously themed nights at their ballparks. Some major league teams hold Jewish heritage nights and faith and family days.

Not wanting to miss out on the fun, atheists in Minnesota will have a theme night for themselves on Aug. 10 when the Winnipeg Goldeyes' rivals, the St. Paul Saints, hold a night of "unbelievable fun."

During the game, sponsored by the Minnesota Atheists, the home team will drop its religious moniker and become the "Mr. Paul Aints." 

As well, the letter "S" in all Saints signs and logos around the stadium will be covered, and the game will include references to Big Foot, UFOs and other targets of the skeptical community.

"We want to show that atheists can have fun," said August Berkshire, president of Minnesota Atheists.

The Saints have hosted several religiously themed events before, including Christian concerts and a Jewish Heritage Night. 

It would be "hypocritical" to tell the atheists no, Saints general manager Derek Sharrer said.

To me, it sounds like fun, although I wonder what the crowd will sing in place of God Bless America during the seventh inning stretch -- maybe George and Ira Gershwin's It Ain't Necessarily So. 

Originally published August 4, 2012. If you want to reprint this column, send me a note. You can find my e-mail address in the post labelled About This Blog or in my profile.

God, Silver and Bronze: Religion and the Olympics

Since the Sochi Olympics are taking place right now, I thought it might be appropriate to start off with a column about the 2010 Vancouver Olympic games.

So far, God and religion haven't come up in the media coverage of the Vancouver Olympics, unless you count jokes about praying for snow.

But that doesn't mean there isn't any religious input into these Games. Vancouver's Christ Church Cathedral (Anglican) is staying open 12 hours each day of the Olympics as a sanctuary for visitors,

In a letter to the Vancouver Sun, Rev. Peter Elliott, the dean and rector of the cathedral, wrote that "our intention is to be a sanctuary for people to offer prayer for the peace of the world."

At the same time, a coalition of 65 religious organizations and denominations, including Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Pentecostals, Mennonites, Lutherans, Seventh-Day Adventists and Baptists, are running More Than Gold, an effort "to extend the radical hospitality of Christ" during the Games.

In addition to providing hospitality and programs at 25 different places in Metro Vancouver, the group is also supporting social justice initiatives in the city such as the memorial march for murdered and missing women and raising money for homeless people.

Some Vancouverites are uncomfortable with this mixing of religion and the Olympics. But the two have long been entwined, going right back to the origin of the Games themselves.

Back then, "there was no such thing as secular athletics," says David Gilman Romano, director of Greek Archaeological Projects at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology.

His museum's website notes that the ancient Games were part of a religious festival in honour of Zeus, the father of the Greek gods and goddesses. 

The name of the Games themselves comes from Mount Olympus, the highest mountain in Greece and home to those same deities.

In the ancient Games, athletes weren't just trying to see who was fastest, strongest or best, they also wanted to offer their athletic prowess to the gods.

If religion was part of the ancient Games, it was also the reason for their demise. 

In AD 393, the Christian emperor Theodosius banned the Games, along with other Greek and Roman festivals, for being too pagan, violent and gory. His successor, Theodosius II, went a step further in 426, ordering his army to demolish Olympia's stadium.

It would be 1,500 years later before Baron Pierre de Coubertin would found the modern Olympics. His vision for the Games was infused with a religious sensibility.

In his memoirs, de Coubertin wrote that sports were "a religion with its church, dogmas, service... but above all, a religious feeling." 

Two years before his death, in a 1935 radio address, he asserted that "the first essential characteristic of ancient and of modern Olympism alike is that of being a religion."

De Coubertin didn't set out to create a new religion in the traditional sense. But he understood the power of religious rituals, symbols, rites and ceremonies, and incorporated them into the modern Olympic movement. 

He even included a hymn. In its original version, the first verse is a paean to the "immortal spirit of antiquity, father of the true, beautiful and good." It goes on to plead for this spirit to "descend, appear, shed over us thy light... which has first witnessed thy unperishable flame."

You don't hear much about those religious roots anymore, and religion doesn't crop up in the Olympics very often. 

One occasion when it did was at the Paris Games in 1924, when English sprinter Eric Liddell famously refused to compete in the 100-metre race -- his best event -- because it was held on a Sunday. 

His decision, and his subsequent gold-medal victory in the 400 metres, became the subject of the movie Chariots Of Fire, which is considered by many to be one of the best sports movies of all time.

Today, the Olympics are decidedly secular. No longer do athletes compete for the gods, but for their countries and for the goal of promoting peace across nations and cultures.

And yet, considering how religious tensions fuel some of the world's conflicts, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea if Olympic organizers looked for ways to promote understanding between religions, too.

Originally published February 20, 2010. If you want to reprint this column, send me a note. You can find my e-mail address in the column labelled About This Blog or in my profile.