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Playing With God
In the 1950s, young Catholic ball players would quickly bless themselves as they came to bat. Basketball players stepping up to the free throw line went through the same motions.
Today, expressions of religious faith are much less subtle. Sweaty players huddle for a prayer of thanksgiving on the field. At post-game interviews, stars thank their “Lord and savior Jesus Christ” or ‘the big man upstairs’ for their good fortune. Going even further, Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis recently compared the heat he was taking in the press over his involvement in a double murder case to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. He said the Lord was testing him by putting him through this ordeal. The invocation of God and Christ in the world of sport has reached epidemic proportions - not at all by accident. Indeed, there is a rich history to this curious union. Race, gender and national (as well as international) politics intertwine as various religious individuals and causes have used the public space of sports to preach their message. Sport, on the other hand, has used religion to sanction and solidify its various reputations. Two parallel developments in the second half of the 19th century contributed significantly to this linkage of sport and religion. The separation of the work place from the home transformed the father into the sole breadwinner and stripped the family of its primary economic role. This left young boys in a state of prolonged childhood, lacking the proper character building qualities of work and without the father as constant role model. In the urban-industrial world of the late Victorians, many feared this was leading to a feminization of society, a softness of character, and effeminacy among young men. Around this time, a religious movement known as “Muscular Christianity” emerged, and an itinerant evangelical preacher and former baseball player named Billy Sunday became a central figure. Sunday described the movement as an attempt to ’strike a death blow at the idea of being a Christian takes a man out of the busy whirl of the world’s life and activity and makes him a spineless effeminate proposition,” according to Michael Kimmel, a sociologist and author of Manhood in America. Sunday offered his followers a “hard muscled, pick-axed religion, a religion from the gut, tough and resilient” - and not some ‘dainty, sissified, lily-livered piety.” Also during the middle of the 19th century, Thomas Hughes wrote Tom Brown’s Schooldays (Alexander Macmillan, 1857), a novel about a boy who was molded into a man on the playing fields of Rugby School. It was one of many “boys books’ written during this period that extolled the virtues of sport as builder of manly character and Christian morality. Luther Gulick Jr., an instructor in the International YMCA Training School in Springfield, Mass. and an advocate of the "sound mind in a sound body philosophy," promoted this version of Muscular Christianity within the YMCA in the 1880s and 1890s. From this point forward, the link between Christianity and sport has never been broken. In the more secular settings of the university and secondary schools the connections remained strong if understated, with "character building" (as a euphemism for "Christian values") touted as an essential ingredient in sport. As intercollegiate athletics emerged in the second half of the 19th century, building high moral character was part of the rationale. At Catholic institutions such as Georgetown and Notre Dame, athletic competition was seen as an entr”e into the forbidden world of the American Protestant establishment - Catholics were viewed with suspicion and trepidation in many quarters of America; they were outsiders looking for acceptance in mainstream American life. Both schools viewed competition against secular universities as extremely important: Scheduling the Ivy League schools, as well as University of Virginia, was viewed as a necessity at Georgetown, while admission to the Big Ten took on the dimensions of a quest for Notre Dame. The football rivalry that developed between Notre Dame and Army early in the 20th century took on a religious dimension as well. It was Catholics vs. Episcopalians, as military academies adopted what Robert Higgs, author of God in the Stadium, calls a combination of militarization and "Christification," with the predominantly Episcopalian student body drawn from the establishment’s prep schools. Knute Rockne’s custom of taking his football players to morning mass on game day is now legendary, as are images of nuns across America praying their rosaries for Notre Dame victories. In fact, major Catholic institutions had a great advantage over their secular counterparts as priests and nuns in parishes nationwide served as scouts and recruiters of athletic talent. Another dimension of the sport-religion nexus stemmed from the need for churches to keep in touch with the youth of the community, especially young boys who seemed void of any interest in religion. As sport became a major social activity in society, religious leaders turned to athletics as the way to bring youth into the tent. The YMCA was not alone; the Catholic Youth Organization, Christian youth groups and clubs, and Jewish youth groups all turned to sport as a means of proselytizing by organizing teams and leagues for young boys. These activities became a permanent part of the urban sports scene in the first half of the 20th century. Then, in the 1950s, with the coming of the Cold War, there was another significant religious shift. The government enlisted churches in its crusade against godless communism, and God appeared on the American currency and in the “Pledge of Allegiance.” Sporting events became occasions for patriotic rituals and, with the emergence of the Soviet Union as an Olympic power, a venue for Cold War rivalry on the international scene. Within this triangular relationship - sport, nationalism and religion - the sport and Christian connection was reinvigorated. Around the same time, many evangelical Protestant groups on the political right turned to sport as a means of proselytizing youth. Both the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which began in the 1950s, and Athletes in Action, which was started in 1966 by a member of Campus Crusade for Christ, connected athletes and coaches to, as the Fellowship describes, ‘the challenge and adventure of receiving Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.” They have grown into large and active evangelical organizations with a worldwide scope and are a significant presence in nearly all intercollegiate athletic programs. Athletic teams increasingly turned to team prayer before and after games, even within public schools. Teams at both the amateur and professional level took on ministers, priests and rabbis as chaplains and team chapel services became routine. Members of “America’s Team” - the Dallas Cowboys under the pious leadership of Tom Landry - appeared in many Baptist and Methodist Churches across the land. Landry himself was a frequent celebrity guest in the Crusades of Billy Graham. Quarterback Roger Staubach, by emphasizing his background at the Naval Academy and as a Naval Officer, mixed patriotism with religion and sport during his appearances at various religious services. By the early 1960s, professional athletes were part of a growing religious literary effort. Star players’ biographies and autobiographies described in rich detail how they found Christ and won the big game while saving their life and soul. One of the first and most prolific was Cleveland Browns defensive end Bill Glass. His 1963 bestseller Get in the Game (Word Books) went through eight printings in hardcover before appearing in paperback in 1973. With a foreword by Billy Graham, Glass’ life story became a model for the hundreds of inspirational stories over the years. Both religious and commercial publishers have found a seemingly insatiable market for this genre. While it never seemed out of place to see someone in a Roman collar on the bench or sideline at a Catholic high school or collegiate game, when the Roman Catholic chaplain of the Miami Dolphins started giving invocations on the field in the 1970s, it did seem more than a bit odd to some. No doubt the prayer was endorsed by Coach Don Shula, a devout Catholic; the Dolphins practiced at St. Thomas College in the Miami area and Shula was a daily communicant at morning mass. The invocation quickly became common practice, however, and always preceded the national anthem. The intrusion of religion, as long as the religion was Christianity, was seldom criticized. But when the non-Christians sought a place on the playing fields, the reaction was less sanguine. Sandy Koufax’s famous decision not to pitch on Yom Kippur in the 1965 World Series provoked significant criticism, as did a similar decision more than two decades earlier by Hank Greenberg. When the Muslim religion broke into sport, especially the Black Muslim variety, the air was considerably more tense. When Lew Alcindor changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar upon his conversion to Islam, some sports writers refused to acknowledge the change and continued to refer to him as Lew Alcindor. Journalists apparently never understood that Abdul-Jabbar was Sunni Muslim and not a member of the Nation of Islam. Similar reaction followed Cassius Clay’s conversion and the adoption of his new name, Muhammad Ali. Ali not only publicly advocated the Nation of Islam, but also refused military service on religious grounds. This mix of sport and religion didn’t sit well with the white sports establishment and, as a result, Ali was stripped of his heavyweight title. After these initial negative reactions, the public accepted these conversions and open signs of religion. However, the change may have more to do with the fact that the public’s reaction was driven more by race than religion in the heated atmosphere of the 1960s. Certainly by the mid-1970s the controversy had receded to the margins. Religion has at times played an extremely important role in sport, especially for high-profile athletes whose celebrity lives are shattered in the face of the unlimited amounts of money, sex and drugs. In the highly materialistic world of fame and decadence, the need for some spiritually satisfying experience can be overpowering. Whatever some may think of the motives of those bringing the message to the playing fields, it is apparent that for many confused young athletes, these athletically based religious movements have provided help. For some, the help has literally been life saving: Cris Carter of the Minnesota Vikings attributes his recovery from drug addiction to his religious conversion, which he says saved both his marriage and his life. Darrell Porter, former Kansas City Royals catcher, went through severe alcohol and drug problems and attributes his long climb out to his "born again" experience. From there it seems only natural that players at all levels would invoke the name of the Lord, Jesus, God, and even Allah in those post-game victory interviews. In the latest variation of church-state sporting connections, players point to the heavens after a touchdown, while circling the bases on the home run trot, or after the slam-dunk. No player has ever been flagged for taunting, nor has a more direct statement - say, a strike of lightning - ever come from the heavens. As battles over the blurring of the lines between church and state (particularly on Texas football fields) frequently make their way to the courts, it would appear the sports arena has become the most shared and sacred public space in American culture. Although many would argue that religion in America has been in a continuous decline for the past 200 years, quite possibly it has simply found another venue. Richard C. Crepeau is a professor of history at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. He is the author of Baseball: America’s Diamond Mind (click here to purchase). Enter the Culture Clash Related Sites |
