Sports

Roundup of World Cup religion coverage

July 15, 2006 By dpulliam

Last week found me stumbling around trying to write about religious issues in the World Cup. The event is one of the most significant worldwide. Certainly there were more religious issues than merely an immature head-butting, we thought.

Here in America, we struggle to understand the significance of the World Cup. International rivalries go deep, and there is less of the East vs. West theme that we are so used to seeing at the Olympics.

GetReligion reader Discernment sent us a bevy of stories dealing with religion at the World Cup.

I’ll start with this New York Times article from June 24. It’s nothing special but I am impressed that the Times ran it:

The message at yesterday’s lively service at the Full Gospel New York Church in Flushing, Queens, was essentially, Know Christ through soccer — specifically, World Cup soccer.

”We support Christ and we love soccer,” said the Rev. Ben Hur, an assistant pastor.

About 700 fervent fans in red T-shirts streamed into the church yesterday to watch South Korea take on Switzerland on two large screens in a cavernous worship space. Mr. Hur, 46, led them in a pre-kickoff prayer in Korean. Then, traditional Korean drummers stoked the cheers, and Promise to Praise, a female dance troupe, gyrated to songs praising both Jesus in heaven and South Korea on the field.

Actually, yesterday’s service was more like a full evangelical production with soccer as its basis.

Mr. Hur and the other pastors at the church are big soccer fans, and in their quest for new missionary methods, they have organized the viewings of games in this year’s tournament in the hope of drawing new members to the church, and to Christ. Some of the games have drawn more than 1,000 fans, they said.

”All the world is watching the World Cup, and God will use this opportunity to grow his kingdom,” Mr. Hur said in English. ”I prayed that God will use this opportunity to accelerate the evangelism around the world.”

If the line between religion and sports is blurred in the parts of America where the Church of Football holds dominion, the same was true yesterday at the Church of Soccer in Queens.

This Religion News Service article deals with the church aspect within Germany and this article from The Vancouver Sun deals with the all too familiar issue — for sports fans at least — of whether it is right to pray to God for a given team’s success. It’s somewhat more serious than the Times piece, and digs into the issues:

The triviality of calling on divine intervention for a win for your team instead of praying for world peace or an end to child hunger isn’t lost on religious fans.

“We don’t pray for one team to win,” said Father Firmo Mantovani of Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church with mainly Portuguese-language masses, including one this morning at 11:30, a half-hour before Portugal is scheduled to play the Netherlands in a quarterfinal.

“If we ask God’s assistance to pray for one team, it’s not important. We have more important things to pray for,” he said.

Mantovani follows a strict separation of church and sport.

“During the celebration [of Mass], we don’t mention soccer at all because religion and soccer are separate,” he said. “And we cannot mention [a specific team] because people are from different countries.

On the flip side, here is a most enjoyable Telegraph article dealing with the unique Christian/Muslim dynamic of the tiny African country that had amazing success at the tournament:

On Friday, the English-language Ghanaian Chronicle carried a fascinating report of the country’s hysterical celebrations following the national team’s 2-1 victory over the United States, describing how the triumph had broken down religious barriers and brought together the different faiths in a spontaneous “explosion”.

The same is true of the 23 players on duty in Germany, four of whom are Muslims and the rest practising Christians. Ratomir Dujkovic, the team’s Serbian-born coach, is convinced that his players’ deeply held religious beliefs have become an important psychological weapon, fostering a unity within the ranks that makes motivational team talks redundant.

“This is something special,” he said. “In this group of Ghana Black Stars we have Christians and Muslims and both groups pray together. One player leads the prayers and the rest follow him. If it’s a Muslim who is leading the prayer, all the group will pray with him. If it’s a Christian, they do the same.”

So Muslims are praying with Christians and Christians are praying with Muslims, all over a soccer match? There is certainly something special about soccer if it has the ability to bring people of different religions, religions that often clash violently, together spiritually.

Tomorrow, I will write a post on Germany’s legalization of prostitution and how that played in the media during the World Cup.

Much thanks to our friend Discernment for sending these articles to us. Feel free to leave us comments on your favorite World Cup story dealing with religion.

Photo by Seeding-Chaos on Flickr.

Filed Under: Journalism, Politics, Religion, Social Issues, Sports, World

Head-butter: Christian or lapsed Muslim?

July 12, 2006 By dpulliam

Molly Moore wrote in Tuesday’s Washington Post that France’s national soccer team captain Zinedine Zidane, banished in the final minutes of Sunday’s World Cup final for head-butting an opponent in a moment of rage, is the “son of Christian Algerian immigrants.”

But other news reports have described him as a “non-practicing Muslim,” as stated in a Wikipedia article and backed up by this article in The Hindu.

Here’s the Post‘s summary of events:

PARIS, July 10 — French soccer captain Zinedine Zidane — voted the World Cup’s top player — should have been reveling in a hero’s welcome Monday afternoon.

Instead, he stood on a balcony overlooking a crowd of cheering fans at Paris’s Place de la Concorde a day after a game that ended with not only disappointment but also disgrace.

[The Post has corrected a mistake, which appeared only in its online story, that said Zidane was "sobbing uncontrollably and breaking into tears at Paris's Place de la Concorde." His teammate David Trezeguet was the player seen crying.]

One of France’s few modern-day heroes and one of the greatest soccer players of his generation, Zidane — in a startling show of rage in the 110th minute of Sunday’s World Cup final — transformed a night of patriotic pride into a morning of national shame and despair across France. Having announced his intention to retire from the sport after the tournament, his head butt of Italian defender Marco Materazzi resulted in a red card and thus likely was the final on-field act of his career.

So is Zidane a lapsed Muslim with Christian parents? There’s a story to be told here. His parents are from Algeria, which according to the CIA is 99 percent Sunni Muslim and 1 percent Christian and Jewish.

Why does this matter? Some have speculated that Zidane slammed his head into the chest of Italian footballer Marco Materazzi because Materazzi called Zidane “the son of a terrorist whore,” in addition to other not-so-nice words.

Materazzi has denied using these words, saying that he “categorically did not call him a terrorist. I’m not cultured and I don’t even know what an Islamic terrorist is.”

Materazzi maintains that he engaged in the typical taunting that goes on in nearly all sports, but I find it hard to believe that a player like Zidane could flip out and harm his spectacular World Cup football over a few silly taunts. I guess we’ll find out soon when Zidane gives an interview to France’s Canal Plus.

So while our friends cover the simmering controversy that is Zidane’s head-butt, I’d like to point you to Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, which did some research and discovered the roots of the France/Italian football rivalry: an attempt to resolve the ancient score between the two countries over Pope Clement V’s decision to move the papacy to France. The Daily Show knows its religion history.

Filed Under: Islam, Journalism, Religion, Social Issues, Sports, World

Seventh-inning sermon

July 12, 2006 By mollie

baseball As far as All-Star games go, this year’s was pretty exciting. The National League was leading for most of the game until some American League player (sorry, I don’t follow that league enough to know names) batted a couple of runners home in the top of the 9th with a triple. I believe Bud Selig showed what a bad commissioner he is when he made homefield advantage for the World Series dependent not on the merits of the teams who got there but, rather, on the outcome of this game. How long, Lord, will we be under his reign? How long?

Anyway, I don’t want to be one of those people who goes overboard in defense of her favorite game, but like many folks, I find similarities between baseball and religion. The liturgy of the games; the smells, bells and whistles; the deliberate pace; the standing and sitting. So I was inclined to appreciate John Dickerson’s piece in Slate.

Dickerson is the chief political correspondent for the online magazine owned by the Washington Post. He wrote a first-person account of his visit to Camden Yards Sunday to hear Billy Graham preach. Even though it’s written informally, it’s newsy. He paints a vivid picture of the experience, from the sinfully-priced sodas to the lusty Christian band that got things going. His artful style is engaging and sassy without being terribly judgmental. Cal Thomas — a friend of Dickerson’s mother — takes him to meet Franklin Graham:

He spoke with perfect diction and a whiff of a Southern accent. He is not a man in doubt. His positions on abortion, condoms, and immorality are just what you’d expect, but his weightless charm isn’t. There was no smiling at the wrong time or obsequious fawning or theatrical whispering. He’s selling salvation to be sure, and he is less diplomatic than his father, but he has such an even keel that for a moment you forget that he’s just condemned to eternal damnation all those who don’t enter into heaven through Christ.

But enough about Franklin. Like the crowds at Camden, we’re waiting for the main event. Here’s his description of Rev. Billy Graham’s sermon and altar call:

Then he said we’re all going to hell. It was very literal. There was no windup or the verbal padding I’m used to from Catholic Church, where the priest talks in parables and inference that usually obscure the starker messages of sin and redemption. “You are going to die,” he said. “I’m going to die. And after that, there will be a judgment. ‘Every idle word that man shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the Day of Judgment,’ the scripture says. When you break a law, you pay the price. You’ve broken God’s law. We’ve broken the Ten commandments. If you’ve broken one of the commandments, you’ve broken them all. And we’re all sinners. And we’re all under the threat of judgment.” It was spare and simple. He did not raise his voice. It was as if after all that rock, Woody Guthrie had hooked up his battered
acoustic to the sound system. “Are you ready to die? You’d better decide for Christ here and now.”

But Dickerson doesn’t just give the one side of Graham’s well-known work. It’s not all Law:

This was where the incongruity of the venue worked so powerfully. Graham’s message wasn’t just for Sunday or weddings or funerals. What he was offering was the promise of grace at any moment, including in left field under an Esskay hot-dog sign. Too frail to walk, the old man left the stage as he arrived, driven across the field on a golf cart. It’s the same way they bring relief pitchers from the bullpen. He was departing after one more save.

Some might say that last line is a bit much but I thought it worked well. And it kind of makes me wish Dickerson were writing more about religion.

Filed Under: Evangelicals, First Person, Journalism, Sports

X marks the spot for today’s England

July 11, 2006 By TMatt

Saint George Icon On one level, this post is a shout out to my teenaged son, Frye, whose patron saint is St. George.

So it is no surprise that he was a bit miffed when he heard the news — I believe the Daily Mail broke the story — that the modern Church of England is considering dropping St. George (the soldier lancing the dragon in all of those Eastern icons) as England’s patron saint. As reporter Steve Doughty wrote:

His dragon-slaying heroics have kept his legend alive through the centuries. But the Church of England is considering rejecting England’s patron saint St George on the grounds that his image is too warlike and may offend Muslims. Clergy have started a campaign to replace George with St Alban, a Christian martyr in Roman Britain.

The scheme, to be considered by the Church’s parliament, the General Synod, has met a cautious but sympathetic response from senior bishops. But it clashes with the increasing popularity of the saint and his flag in England.

I was in Oxford when this story broke in the British press and, of course, the tabloid’s timing was fantastic because the flag of St. George was flying everywhere during the World Cup.

I had a chance to talk with several friends of mine about the proposed swap, including a trained Anglican theologian or two. They all agreed, interestingly enough, that the change made sense and that St. Alban, as the nation’s first Christian martyr, would actually be a more appropriate choice. Several people said something like this: “I’ve never understood what the deal was with St. George in the first place.”

The link is a bit strange and there are, meanwhile, historians who claim that St. George never actually existed. Here is how the original Daily Mail story handled that background material, including a nod to the fact that the flag with the huge red cross has become identified with some nasty elements of English life.

The image of St George was used to foster patriotism in 1940, when King George VI inaugurated the George Cross for civilian acts of the greatest bravery. The medal bears a depiction of the saint slaying the dragon. However, George has become unfashionable among politicians and bureaucrats. His saint’s day, April 23, has no official celebration in England, and councils have banned the St George flag from their buildings and vehicles. …

The saint became an English hero during the crusades against the Muslim armies that captured Jerusalem in the 11th century. An apparition of George is said to have appeared to the crusader army at the Battle of Antioch in 1098. His dragon-slaying legend is thought to have begun as an allegory of Diocletian’s persecution of Christians.

englandstgeorge However, my friends from various locations in the old British empire made one other point that I have yet to see underlined in the tabloid press. Is it safe to say that this change is all about getting the blood-red symbol of the cross off the flag in an era — especially after the cartoon crisis and its flag-burning riots — in which people are a bit tense?

In the St. Alban’s flag, a diagonal yellow cross is placed on a blue background. In other words, it looks more like a large X than the symbol of the Christian faith. For many, this would be a step in the right direction. The Evening Telegraph in Coventry noted:

Motasem Ali, of the Bangladesh Islamic Society, said: “St George is a concern in our community, especially with the present crisis in the world and the UK.

“All religions should be the same, teaching us how to maintain peace and harmony. The Christian authorities should think about it. The image of St George can create more problems in our community. If he was dropped, that would be one step forward.”

But what will happen when someone tries to step forward and claim the credit, or take the blame, for this change?

My British friends — who all thought the change was logical — thought there was no way it would pass. St. Alban may get bumped up a few notches in the public eye, they said, but there was no way the flag of St. George was going to be lowered for good. That would simply create too much heat among the masses.

What kind of heat? Here is a sample, a rather tongue-in-cheek blast from our friend Rod Dreher over at the Crunchy Con blog:

Lord have mercy. These people. … Look, why don’t these sherry-sniffing buttercups just surrender now and spare their enemies the indignity and tedium of having to beat up a bunch of sniveling jellyfish? I swear, you could arm the choirs of the ten Bible churches closest to where I sit deep in the heart of Texas with pool noodles and bullhorns, and they could run half the marmalade-spined clerics of the Church of England over the White Cliffs of Dover like a herd of shrieking Gadarene schoolgirls.

I am sure that stronger language would be used in pews and pubs.

Filed Under: Anglicanism, Islam, Sports, World

Kicking the bucket through those great goal posts in the sky

June 28, 2006 By mollie

casket I’m a huge baseball fan. If I could have dinner with anyone living or dead, it would be Albert Pujols. If I were ever to launch a political campaign, it would be to abolish the designated hitter rule. And I frequently begin statements with the phrase, “When I become baseball commissioner . . .”

So I had more than a few friends pass along this Reuters story about a deal signed with Major Leage Baseball that allows the Eternal Image company to reproduce the names and logos of all 30 league teams on a new line of caskets and urns:

“Fans incorporate baseball in nearly every aspect of life,” Eternal Image Chief Executive Clint Mytych said, adding that the caskets could appeal to “a market that is just waiting for a way to make team loyalty a final statement of a great passion in their lives.”

The urns and caskets will go on sale next year at prices from about $600 to $3,500, Mytych said.

“Our clubs receive these requests with some frequency. We have really passionate fans,” Major League Baseball spokeswoman Susan Goodenow said, adding that the deal gives the sport’s governing body control of the tastefulness of the product.

The Reuters story was all of a few hundred words and little more than a glorified press release.

Why are so many stories about sports and religion so shallow? The fact is that sports have superseded religion in most areas as the dominant means for communal interaction. Athletes are much more popular than saints or religious figures. Team colors are donned much more fervently than liturgical colors. Sports arenas are viewed by many as places for worship and devotion — and, sometimes, as sanctuaries — more than cathedrals are. Fans may spend more time tracking their fantasy stats than they do studying religious texts. And there’s little question that religious feast days are being displaced by more important days (Superbowl Sunday comes to mind).

These are all aspects of an interesting sociological phenomenon. So when Major League Baseball contracts with a company to use team logos on urns and caskets, I wonder if Reuters’ reporter might get a comment or two from folks who could provide perspective.

Photo via Flickr.

Filed Under: Godbeat, Journalism, Sports

Scott has a wonderful plan for your life

June 22, 2006 By TMatt

microphone sml 01 Time for another rimshot here at GetReligion.

Earlier this year, inspired by a laugh-out-loud correction in Newsweek, I wrote what I hoped was a funny column for Scripps Howard asking why so many newsrooms seem to be a few tacos short of a combination platter when it comes to getting basic religion facts right. Then people started sending me other corrections that were just as funny and that led to a second column — built on the now-infamous “crow’s ear” mistake in the International Herald Tribune coverage of the funeral of Pope John Paul II.

Well, I can sort of understand someone hearing “a salt ministry” and, if they were inclined to a somewhat negative view of the Rev. Jerry Falwell, hearing “assault ministry.” After all, evangelicals often speak in their own code language and expect outsiders to understand what they are saying. And I can imagine, maybe, someone hearing “crosier” and thinking that they heard “crow’s ear” (although I find it hard to understand that happening with a veteran New York Times reporter who is sent to cover one of the biggest religion events of the decade).

But I’m having trouble understanding what happened with the following puzzler from the Los Angeles Times. The story is about ace pitcher Luke Hochevar of the University of Tennessee (which is, let’s face it, in Bible Belt territory) and his professional agent, Scott Boras. Here is the original passage in the story:

Being selected No. 1 overall affirmed that his decision to shun the Dodgers had been the right move, Hochevar said.

“Scott had a plan in this, and his master plan definitely worked,” Hochevar said. “It was tough through it — you go through it and you fight it — but when it all comes down to it, Scott has a plan for you, and he definitely worked a miracle in my case.”

Now, for the record, here is the correction:

An article in Sports on June 7 quoted pitcher Luke Hochevar, drafted by the Kansas City Royals, as referring to “Scott” — Scott Boras, his agent — when in fact he used the word “God.” Here is the correct quote: “God had a plan in this, and his master plan definitely worked. It was tough through it — you go through it and you fight it — but when it all comes down to it, God has a plan for you, and he definitely worked a miracle in my case.”

For starters, I’m not sure how anyone would hear the word “God,” which is a fairly common word in mainstream American life, and think they heard “Scott.”

But let’s not linger over that. It does appear that the most powerful newspaper on the left coast has a shortage of copy editors who have ever been anywhere near a chapter of Campus Crusade for Christ or any evangelical church youth group in which people learned what millions and millions of people around the world know as the “Four Spiritual Laws.”

After all, spiritual law No. 1 says: “God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life.”

Diversity, folks. Newsrooms need diversity.

Filed Under: Godbeat, Humor, Sports

“You may not win the Super Bowl”

June 18, 2006 By dpulliam

This ESPN.com piece on Indianapolis Colts football coach Tony Dungy is one of the best examples I’ve ever seen of a writer stepping back from a situation and letting the story’s characters drive the narrative. The article is brutally frank about life, death and the importance of faith in this particular father’s life.

While published on Friday, the piece was appropriately placed as a Father’s Day feature. (Dungy’s son, James, was found dead last December. His death was ruled a suicide.) According to the site, ESPN will air an extensive interview with Dungy at 11 p.m. Sunday. It will be interesting to see if the televised interview is much different from this article. Video can be more effective in communicating large themes, but it’s rarely as thorough as print.

For those of you who wonder what an NFL coach and religion have in common, click, here and then here and here. I believe Dungy’s story is one of the most powerful religion narratives of the year, let alone his status as head coach of one of the top teams in the country’s largest sporting associations (disclaimer: I was born and raised in Indianapolis and have been a huge Colts fan since the days of Jim Harbaugh).

I believe it would have been difficult for reporter Michael Smith to write the story any other way. Dungy’s testimony is that powerful, and you cannot write about the man without taking a serious look at his faith:

Day by day, blessing by blessing, Dungy can make more sense of something that seemed so senseless just seven months ago. According to Lutz, Fla., police, James’ girlfriend, Antoinette Anderson, said she’d discovered James’ body and that the 6-foot-7 Dungy, who was attending Hillsborough Community College, had hanged himself from a ceiling fan using a leather belt. James would have turned 19 on Jan. 6.

Listening to Dungy put it into perspective, it’s easy to understand how he’s taken his many difficult professional losses in stride. The man is simply unwavering in his beliefs. He can be calm in even the worst storms. Nothing, it seems, can shake him from his foundation.

“The Lord has a plan,” Dungy says. “We always think the plans are A, B, C and D, and everything is going to be perfect for us and it may not be that way, but it’s still his plan. A lot of tremendous things are going to happen, it just may not be the way you see them.

“You may not win the Super Bowl. Your kids may not go on to be doctors and lawyers and everything may not go perfectly. That doesn’t mean it was a bad plan or the wrong thing. It’s just like a football season. Everything’s not going to go perfect. You’re going to have some losses that you’re going to have to bounce back from and some things that are a little unforeseen that you’re going to have to deal with. It’s how you work your way through things.”

The article is rich with theology and even concludes with a Scripture reference. Many of Dungy’s words are unrecognized paraphrases of the Bible, and one I’d like to highlight comes from Mark 8:36: What profit is there for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?

That passage, which can apply to the Super Bowl and any other achievements we seek in life, is not often seen in news stories. Typically it is just the opposite. Some of the life lessons gleaned from Dungy are remarkable in their frankness:

Even the strongest among us need consoling. It took a conversation with his friend, Mark Bradshaw, for Tony to realize how selfish it was for him to want James with him rather than in heaven with The Father.

As the links to our past posts on this story show, other mainstream media outlets have been able to get the religion in the Dungy story. Perhaps I’ve missed it, but have Christian publications done anything on Dungy and his faith? For reasons other than my enhtusiasm for the Colts, I know about this World piece, but are there others? If so, I’d like to see them.

Photo courtesy of Flickr.

Filed Under: Godbeat, Journalism, Religion, Social Issues, Sports

The separation of church and sports

June 6, 2006 By dpulliam

To the sophisticated readers of the New York Times, this article acts as a warning: your Major League Baseball games could soon be infiltrated by religion! To others it raises the often-asked question of whether Christians in America will succumb to the “fine and potentially dangerous line” of mixing Jesus and marketing, as a friend said to me recently.

The NYT is more concerned with the former and fails to leave room for the latter. But that’s OK. The separation of church and sports is what immediately jumps out and most appropriately fits into this news story. The article is reasonably fair and sticks largely to reporting the facts, rather than interpreting and predicting. A more thorough and nuanced story is due at some point comparing this trend with the one brewing in Hollywood.

Here is how the story kicks off, at a minor-league indoor football game:

Before kickoff, a Christian band called Audio Adrenaline entertained the crowd. Promoters gave away thousands of Bibles and bobblehead dolls depicting biblical characters like Daniel, Noah and Moses. And when the home team, the Birmingham Steeldogs, took the field, they wore specially made jerseys with the book and number of [B]ible verses printed on the back.

Donnie Rhodes, a children’s minister at Gardendale’s First Baptist Church near Birmingham, took 47 sixth graders to the game by bus and said it was the perfect outing. “It was affordable, safe and spiritual,” he said. “And the kids just thought it was the coolest thing.”

Mr. Rhodes and his students were at the latest in ballpark promotions: Faith Nights, a spiritual twist on Frisbee Nights and Bat Days. While religious-themed sports promotions were once largely a Bible Belt phenomenon that entailed little more than ticket discounts for church and synagogue groups, Faith Nights feature bands, giveaways and revival-style testimonials from players. They have migrated from the Deep South to northern stadiums from Spokane, Wash., to Bridgewater, N.J.

This story is definitely worth telling, particularly the major-league angle. The smaller leagues are significant, but less so from a news perspective. Those organizations will do anything to sell tickets. Fireworks have long drawn a crowd at a baseball game, and if partnering with the local megachurch sells a thousand extra tickets, it wasn’t too hard for team executives to put the two together.

I doubt this will spread to the NFL — it has little trouble selling tickets — but NBA ticket sales have been struggling for years and everyone knows Major League Hockey could use a boost. I’ll be watching for local newspaper coverage or lack thereof.

The best part of the article came at the end, when writer Warren St. John showed a tongue-in-cheek attitude toward the trend and quoted event promoter Brent High, president of Third Coast Sports:

While Faith Nights may be good for the box office and perhaps even the soul, there is one area where all that spirituality does not seem to have much effect: the scoreboard. On Faith Nights over the past two years, the Nashville Sounds have compiled a record of 15-17.

“On Faith Night, God cares a lot more about what’s happening in the stands than about what happens on the field,” Mr. High said.

With that, major-league teams should take note: bringing Christians to the stands does not put God on your side, at least according to the Times’ analysis.

Filed Under: Godbeat, Journalism, Religion, Social Issues, Sports