There will always be an England

June 23, 2007 By

BlairBigBenI picked up one of the local newspapers this morning and there, across the top of page one, was a London Daily Telegraph story with a lede that the Brits have been expecting for some time now.

Prime Minister Tony Blair is to announce that he will convert to Roman Catholicism soon after his planned meeting with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican tomorrow, according to church sources and his friends.

Mr. Blair, an Anglican, may even inform the pope of his intentions and seek his approval at the audience, which he is expected to attend with his wife, Cherie, a devout Catholic, and their daughter Kathryn.

The story covers almost all of the basics.

Let’s see. There’s the historical perspective (with the Anglican-state angle thrown in there for good measure):

There has never been a Catholic prime minister in Britain, although there is no longer a formal constitutional bar. However, Mr. Blair would have been aware that to convert while at 10 Downing Street could have caused a potential conflict with his role in choosing bishops for the Church of England.

The personal, what-happens-next angle:

It is likely that Mr. Blair would begin a private course of instruction with a spiritual director and would be expected to be formally received into the Catholic Church at a special service. His audience with the pope … will be his third visit to the Vatican in four years and reflects his growing fascination with Catholicism.

And finally, the section that has to leave the reader — especially a traditional Catholic reader — wondering, “Does reporter Jonathan Petre realize just how bizarre the words he is typing sound?”

Hang on for this:

Rumors that Mr. Blair intends to convert have been circulating in Catholic circles and in Westminster for years, but have grown increasingly strong as his departure from office nears. Friends say that he studies both the Bible and the Koran daily, and much of his political philosophy has been influenced by the social teachings of the Catholic Church. He is a particular admirer of the maverick German theologian Hans Kung.

Uh, that would be the liberal Hans Kung of Germany? The one who has never been known as a supporter of traditional Catholic teachings, the kind advocated by another German theology professor — that would be Pope Benedict XVI?

Methinks there is a very important angle in this story that has been buried.

But to Petre’s credit, the elephant in the Catholic sanctuary is finally mentioned — near the end — in material from an interview with Father Timothy Russ, the Blair family’s parish priest.

Three years ago his parish priest at Chequers, the Rev. Timothy Russ, disclosed that Mr. Blair had discussed becoming a Catholic with him.

But Father Russ added that Mr. Blair, whose views on a range of issues from abortion to stem-cell research are at odds with traditional church teaching, had “some way to go” on important moral issues.

In a new book, Father Russ also reveals that Mr. Blair even discussed the possibility of becoming a Catholic deacon, a position below that of a priest, which can be held by lay people.

In 1996, Cardinal Basil Hume, the late archbishop of Westminster, wrote to him demanding that he cease taking Communion at his wife’s church in Islington, although he added it was “all right to do so in Tuscany for the holidays … as there was no Anglican church nearby.”

Mr. Blair made it clear in a response that he did not agree, asking in a letter to Cardinal Hume: “I wonder what Jesus would have made of it?”

In other words, Blair disagrees with the Roman Catholic Church’s teachings on a host of crucial issues and has, in the past, even clashed with the local cardinal on whether he needs to become a Roman Catholic in order to take part in the sacramental life of the Catholic Church? I mean, is this man an Anglican or what?

Has anyone seen a good quote or two somewhere — this story could have used one — in which Blair offers insights into why he wants to convert into (and perhaps even be ordained in) a church with which he has such profound disagreements? Just asking.

Print Friendly

Filed Under: Anglicanism, Catholicism, Journalism, Politics, World Religions

A ghost in the Buddhist bowl

June 22, 2007 By

gr1962If you were a traditional Muslim parent, how would you feel if teachers in your public school brought a “Tibetan singing bowl” into the classroom and taught your child how to “meditate,” drawing on techniques found in Buddhism?

How would you feel if you were Buddhist?

How would you feel if you were an Orthodox Jew? Would it be different if you were active in Reform Judaism?

What if you were a traditional Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Christian?

Would your feelings be different if you were a progressive Episcopalian, Lutheran, United Methodist or Presbyterian? What if you were part of a conservative church in any of those traditions?

What if you were Unitarian, or simply a parent who considers herself a “spiritual” person who is not part of a specific religious tradition? Would you feel in any way threatened or concerned?

In other words, would you feel different about this classroom emphasis on “mindfulness” if the religious tradition practiced in your home was highly specific and orthodox, as opposed to open-ended, evolving and, well, universalist?

You probably would. And this is the ghost floating through a recent New York Times story focusing on efforts to promote a kind of vague form of meditation in inner-city schools in Oakland, Calif. The story is very careful never to use the word “prayer,” and that is the big problem (in my opinion, as a guy with a graduate degree in church-state studies).

It’s safe to say that reporter Patricia Leigh Brown knew about the ghost in the story. After all, the story does say:

Asked their reactions to the sounds of the singing bowl, Yvette Solito, a third grader, wrote that it made her feel “calm, like something on Oprah.” Her classmate Corey Jackson wrote that “it feels like when a bird cracks open its shell.”

Dr. Amy Saltzman, a physician in Palo Alto, Calif., who started the Association for Mindfulness in Education three years ago, thinks of mindfulness education as “talk yoga.” Practitioners tend to use sticky-mat buzzwords like “being present” and “cultivating compassion,” while avoiding anything spiritual.

Sticky-mat buzzwords? Of course, the entire story has a strong “spirituality” theme to it. I would say that the novelty of drawing on Buddhist techniques in a school classroom was the essential news “hook” in the first place.

Brown also makes it clear that this is not a tax-funded program, even if it is taking place in regular classroom time in a tax-funded school.

During a five-week pilot program at Piedmont Avenue Elementary, Miss Megan, the “mindful” coach, visited every classroom twice a week, leading 15 minute sessions on how to have “gentle breaths and still bodies.” The sound of the Tibetan bowl reverberated at the start and finish of each lesson.

… The experiment at Piedmont, whose student body is roughly 65 percent black, 18 percent Latino and includes a large number of immigrants, is financed by Park Day School, a nearby private school (prompting one teacher to grumble that it was “Cloud Nine-groovy-hippie-liberals bringing ‘enlightenment’ to inner city schools”).

But Angela Haick, the principal of Piedmont Avenue, said she was inspired to try it after observing a class at a local middle school. “If we can help children slow down and think,” Dr. Haick said, “they have the answers within themselves.”

I want to stress that I think this is a very good and solid news story, whether you are interested in the church-state separation angle of it or not. I simply think it raises more questions about people thinking that “vague spirituality” is acceptable in the public square, while specific, doctrinal forms are not. This raises questions, for me, about the establishment of some forms of religion by the state over others.

Could you use classroom hours to teach Islamic prayers, complete with mind-calming prostrations? How about lessons in the rosary? A charismatic pastor teaching about “private prayer languages” and spiritual warfare?

I imagine that a story about any of those news “hooks” would be quite different.

Print Friendly

Filed Under: Academia, Godbeat, Politics, World Religions, Worship

What is an ‘evangelical Roman Catholic’?

June 19, 2007 By

Merry Go RoundNow this is going to be tricky. Let’s see if I can tiptoe into another post on media coverage of the Mitt Romney campaign without setting off a new tsunami of comment-board warfare about Mormonism.

That’s going to be hard, since The Washington Post‘s story on which I would like to comment ran with this headline: “Romney’s Mormonism Attracts More Scrutiny … and a Whisper Campaign.” The second half of that headline refers to a dumb move by an Iowa staffer for Sen. Sam Brownback.

Here’s the news hook, providing yet another sign that the Mormonism story is — sadly — not going to go away until Romney finds a way to satisfy the questions of many (but never all) of the evangelical leaders yanking strings connected to the GOP machine:

In an e-mail obtained by The Fix, former state representative Emma Nemecek, the southeastern Iowa field director for Brownback’s presidential campaign, asked a group of Iowa Republican leaders to help her fact-check a series of statements about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, including one that says: “Theologically, the only thing Christianity and the LDS church has in common is the name of Jesus Christ, and the LDS Jesus is not the same Jesus of the Christian faith.”

Clearly, if a staffer wants to fact-check statements about Mormon doctrine he or she should ask Mormon leaders in Iowa and experts in the Romney campaign. The staffer can also seek information from mainstream religious bodies — check seminaries and missions offices — that have serious, informed, hopefully respectable debates with mainstream Mormon leaders.

But what is a campaign staffer doing getting involved in that kind of issue in the first place?

However, most of this is — sadly — another trip on the same political and journalistic merry-go-round.

What caught my eye in this story by reporters Chris Cillizza and Shailagh Murray was the following linguistic innovation, which I sure hope is not a sign of things to come:

… Brownback has publicly taken on Romney over the abortion issue — insisting that Romney’s conversion to an anti-abortion-rights position is more political positioning than personal evolution. (Both men spoke to the National Right to Life Convention in Kansas City, Mo., late last week.)

But Romney’s faith has not been a topic of contention for Brownback — a former Methodist who has become an evangelical Roman Catholic — until now.

Say what?

What, pray tell, is an “evangelical Roman Catholic”? I assume that this is not the same thing as a Roman Catholic evangelist, a combination of words that makes sense.

And, while we are at it, shouldn’t the story have said that Brownback is a former United Methodist? Last time I checked, that was a mainline Protestant denomination that contained millions of evangelical Christians, but certainly would not, as a whole, be called “evangelical” by most outsiders.

I realize that the word “evangelical” is very hard to define, and this is a topic that comes up here at GetReligion from time to time. Click here for a helpful essay on this topic at Wheaton College’s Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals, a place where you will find evangelicals who know plenty about their own history.

I also realize that Time earned jeers from the GetReligionistas and many others when the editors included Father Richard John Neuhaus, a Roman Catholic priest, and Rick Santorum, a Catholic layman who was in the U.S. Senate at that time, in their list of the 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America. It seemed that they were political evangelicals, whatever that means.

So here we go again. Perhaps this is an issue that will have to be settled by the committee that governs The Associated Press Stylebook. It’s bad enough that “fundamentalist” has become a meaningless word that gets tossed around by journalists who do not know what they are talking about. Now we have people writing about “evangelical Roman Catholics”?

The last thing we need is yet another journalistic merry-go-round on the religion beat. So let me ask this again: What in the world is an “evangelical Roman Catholic”?

Print Friendly

Filed Under: Catholicism, Evangelicals, Politics, World Religions

Will Romney upset … the Mormons?

June 12, 2007 By

SLCTemple 01The Los Angeles Times recently ran a commentary piece that perfectly captured in a single word the reason that Mitt Romney will — sadly — continue to face questions about his Mormon faith.

I say “sadly” because there may be a very good reason that Romney cannot give the speech that he needs to give in order to put this controversy to rest, which needs to happen if Mormons are going to play the role that they have every right to play at the highest level of national politics.

The article by Sally Denton, author of American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, September 1857, ran with this double-stacked headline: “Romney’s cross to bear — Questions about his religion could doom his campaign. He needs to face them head-on.” Here is the crucial background paragraph, as far as I am concerned:

To understand Romney and the unique political obstacle his religion imposes, and to determine if the Mormon vision for America has relevance in a 21st century presidential campaign, one must explore the fundamentals of the religion — both where it’s been and where it is today. The Mormon Church — officially, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — is perceived as a fringe religion by many Americans, yet it is perhaps the most homegrown of American faiths. Founded in 1830 in upstate New York by a charismatic farm boy named Joseph Smith Jr. — the sect’s “prophet, seer and revelator” — the religion was not Judaic, Christian or even monotheistic, at least not in any traditional sense.

Did you catch the key word?

The land-mine word is “was,” in that last sentence. In other words, Mormonism once held beliefs that were clearly heresy to traditional Christians in Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant sanctuaries. But are there beliefs in Mormonism that have changed, yet the church’s leaders cannot openly discuss those changes?

And there is another reality at work, I think. All churches contain people who no longer hold the doctrines that are “on the books” in their faith. Anyone who reads headlines about the wars in various Christian flocks knows this. Every time that one of the GetReligionistas writes about this topic, the comments pages soon include puzzling comments by Mormons who, clearly, do not agree with one another about some of the church’s most controversial teachings. Search this weblog for the word exaltation and you’ll see what I am talking about.

Meanwhile, you may remember that strange Time encounter between religion writer Richard Ostling and LDS President Gordon Hinckley, back in the mid-1990s.

“At first Hinckley seemed to qualify the idea that men could become gods,” according to Time, “suggesting that ‘it’s of course an ideal. It’s a hope for a wishful thing,’ but later he added, ‘yes, of course they can.’”

On whether the LDS Church holds that, “God the Father was once a man, he sounded uncertain, ‘I don’t know that we teach it. I don’t know that we emphasize it … I understand the philosophical background behind it, but I don’t know a lot about it, and I don’t think others know a lot about it,’” Hinckley told Time.

This issue is at the heart of the tension between Mormon believers and traditional Christian believers — the doctrine of God itself. Is this a doctrine of God or Gods or gods? It will be hard for Romney to say anything about this issue if the leaders of his own church are reluctant to discuss it on the record, with tape recorders rolling.

I bring this up, yet again, because of a new piece — “Romney’s Run Has Mormons Wary of Scrutiny” — by one of the mainstream media’s top religion reporters, Laurie Goodstein of The New York Times. Let’s look at two crucial sections of the piece:

At the core of these tensions is that Mormons consider themselves to be Christians who believe in Jesus Christ and the Bible, but many of their tenets and practices have been denounced by other churches as heretical.

Some Mormons have watched with concern how Mr. Romney has responded to grilling by interviewers about his church’s distinctive doctrines.

Mr. Romney has been questioned about the Mormon definition of God, polygamy, the location of Jesus’s arrival when he returns to earth, and even a mysterious saying attributed to Joseph Smith Jr. called the “White Horse Prophecy,” which some interpret as a prediction that when the American Constitution is hanging “by a thread,” a Mormon will rescue the nation.

Mr. Romney’s tendency to gloss over Mormonism’s history and distinctive tenets has upset some fellow Mormons.

Second Coming2Fear not, the question here isn’t whether there are mainstream Mormons who still believe in polygamy, because that is a non-issue. The question is whether Romney has gone too far to repudiate his own family’s past.

And that is not the only issue discussed in this piece. Here is one that has not received much ink, until this article in the most powerful newspaper in the world. Note the reaction of Tom Grover, a Mormon who is a talk-radio pro.

Another case arose when George Stephanopoulos of ABC News asked Mr. Romney about a Mormon teaching that Jesus will come to the United States when he returns to reign on earth. Mr. Romney responded that the Messiah will return to the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, “the same as the other Christian tradition.”

Mr. Grover said some of his radio listeners were astounded.

“They were just in disbelief, saying that’s not true, Jesus is coming back to Missouri,” Mr. Grover said. “It’s the L.D.S. Church’s 10th article of faith that Zion will be built upon the American continent.”

Attention Romney staff members: Now there is a question with legs in evangelical and charismatic megachurches in South Carolina.

Goodstein’s article raises several crucial questions for Romney and for the journalists who cover him. Question No. 1: Is there unity among Mormons on some of their most controversial doctrines? Question No. 2: Have some of these doctrines been quietly changed or “modernized,” making them hard for leaders to discuss in public?

And, finally, question No. 3 is political: What happens if Romney, in his quest to pacify evangelical Protestants in the Republican Party, waters down his beliefs so much that he ticks off other Mormons and is exposed as a “liberal” or a compromiser?

In the end, the problem may not be what tradititional Christian believers think of Romney’s pronouncements on his faith, or lack thereof, but what Mormons think of what he has to say. What a twist that would be. Once again, please focus your comments on the issues raised in the New York Times piece. Doctrinal warfare is out of bounds.

Print Friendly

Filed Under: Evangelicals, Godbeat, Politics, World Religions

Hollywood idealism, in brief

June 10, 2007 By

portada1 01Ah, Hollywood.

It is good when the rich, the powerful and the attractive decide to do some good in the world.

But there is a part of me that wants to ask a question. It is very, very good that the horrors of Darfur in the western Sudan are attracting so much attention. Any good that can be done there must be done.

However, I have to admit that, as I read this page one piece (“Hollywood Stars Find an Audience For Social Causes”) in The Washington Post, I could not help but ask a question or two or three. Where were all these people a decade ago, while thousands were being massacred in South Sudan? Was that even larger and more hellish confict not as worthy? Or was there something wrong with that political and social cause, some reason that it was harder to embrace?

What think ye, readers?

The late Abe Rosenthal of The New York Times certainly had an opinion or two on that matter.

However, I must say I was happy that reporter Nora Boustany did include one gentle stab when dealing with this issue. I daresay that we, as a culture, deserved it:

While commending celebrity activism, Payam Akhavan, a scholar on genocide at McGill University, said, “The fact that it takes movie stars to make people care about pressing human rights struggles reflects a self-absorbed culture where compassion and empathy is awakened through glamour rather than human conscience and duty.”

And all the people said, “Amen.”

Although, I must say, religious activists — left and right — have had a more consistent record as of late when it comes to pouring time, money, prayers and tears into these causes. But you knew I would say that, didn’t you?

Print Friendly

Filed Under: Film, Islam, Politics, World, World Religions

The elephant in the room in Istanbul

June 9, 2007 By

armenia 447 genocidememorial4There is no way to come to Turkey to talk about issues of journalism and religious freedom without realizing that, the whole time you are here, there is a very large elephant in the room, a subject that is hard to talk about openly.

This issue has a name — Hrant Dink.

Who was this man? Reporters Without Borders tells us this:

Turkey’s journalists are mourning the death of Hrant Dink, 52, a newspaper editor of Armenian origin who was gunned down on 19 January. The barbaric action of Ogun Samast, a 17-year-old Turkish ultra-nationalist, silenced an advocate of peace and democracy. Throughout his career, Dink fought passionately for acknowledgement of the Armenian genocide, and was awarded the Henri Nannen Press Freedom Prize in recognition of his efforts. His death has exacerbated the divisions between nationalists and the more progressive sectors of Turkish society. Tirelessly committed and always controversial, Dink never lost faith in the possibility of national reconciliation.

“I have the right to die in the country where I was born.”

I cannot begin to even hint at all the layers in this story. It is, of course, a story about religious freedom for a minority here in Turkey. It is, of course, a story about the freedom of the press. It is a story about the tensions here between a global tide of Islamist power and Turkey’s unique, fragile and flawed (ask the Armenians) concept of a “secular Muslim state.” It is a story about those who deny that the Armenian genocide took place.

But, more than anything else, the death of Dink is the headline on another story — the fact that there are still people, Muslims and Christians and Jews, who dream that they can all be Turks, that this can be one nation.

Who am I to try to talk about that?

So, as I pack up to leave the old city in Istanbul, let me point you to a remarkable column by Orhan Kemal Cengiz in the Turkish Daily News that ran with the headline “We Cannot Afford to Lose Our Armenians!”

You must read all of this column. But here is a long, long quote, one that is very hard to edit. You have to read it to believe it.

I would like to bring to your attention a new kind of threat especially directed towards Armenian schools, which evidently aims at scaring away Armenians from Turkey. I would like to quote from a recent threat letter received by Armenian schools.

The following text was on the first page of the message: “This was sent to all institutions concerned with the matter. This movement was started for the sake of Turkey’s future and its unity.”

The following pages featured a long text, entitled “The Last Warning and Ultimatum,” accusing Turkish Armenians of separatism and efforts to ruin the Turkish state.

The message also mentioned the murder of Hrant Dink: “… exclamations saying ‘We are all Armenians, we are all Hrant Dink’ are examples of extreme chauvinism and summons for revolution. Do not forget that besides the Armenian citizens of Turkey, there are also Armenians from Armenia in our land, and they number over one hundred thousand. Both their addresses and their workplaces are well known. Henceforth we hope to see our Armenian citizens as advocates of truth, concerning the Armenian genocide or any other matter, and as defenders of the Turkish statehood.

“We shall keep an eye on how the Armenians are playing this role. Otherwise, the Armenians shall be those to lie in the grave and count how many Armenians and how many Turks there were in the ‘ages long past’. This land has never pardoned treachery and shall not. Who does not stand for our paradise homeland is against us and shall be vanquished.”

The text ends with the following words: “There is no defense line. That line is the entire territory. Anything else is just a trifle when the fate of the homeland is concerned. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk … This is the last ultimatum. It is not to be repeated.”

… It is also quite thought provoking, isn’t it, that this racist letter threatens Armenians with a total extinction if they talk about the Armenian genocide — “Do not talk about genocide or you may be the victim of a new one!”

What can you say after that?

Photo: Rites at the Armenian genocide memorial.

Print Friendly

Filed Under: Islam, Journalism, Politics, World, World Religions

The view from behind the veil

June 6, 2007 By

turkey12 enlargeI spent most of today walking around in Istanbul, or riding a bus from one part of the city to another. It is impossible to do this without thinking about Islam, secularism, modernity and the paradoxes of this tense nation.

This leads, of course, to meditations on the meaning of the various forms of head coverings chosen, or rejected, by Muslim women.

There is no way around this. There is no way for a journalist to avoid this issue here.

Washington Post op-ed columnist Michael Gerson — yes, that Gerson — is attending the same conference here in Istanbul that I am and he used some gripping language on this subject in the piece that he filed from here a day or so ago. Check this out for a strong metaphor:

ISTANBUL – Here in Turkey, the matter of headgear is taken seriously. An edict in 1925 forbade the wearing of the fez, causing millions of Turkish men to don bowlers, which were seen as more Western and secular. In 1982, the government of Turkey banned the wearing of headscarves by women in university classrooms — a symbolic statement that Turkey would not be taking the route of the Iranian revolution across the border, which mandated the veil. But colorful headscarves are common on the streets here, worn in piety and protest. And the resulting headscarf debate is the Turkish equivalent of the American abortion controversy — heated, culturally defining, admitting no compromise.

I am not sure I would go quite that far. But it is certainly true that this topic seems to come up every time that you talk to a moderate Muslim in Istanbul, whether they live here or are just visiting. The topic is in the air and everyone knows that it is a symbolic issue that stands for larger questions looming in the background.

Secularists care about it. Devout Muslims care about it. Political “secularists” who are also devout Muslims care about it.

To step into this subject even deeper, check out an edgy first-person piece in the Los Angeles Times by reporter Megan K. Stack titled “In Saudi Arabia, a view from behind the veil.” Here is the we-warned-you subtitle: “As a woman in the male-dominated kingdom, Times reporter Megan Stack quietly fumed beneath her abaya. Even beyond its borders, her experience taints her perception of the sexes.” So there.

Obviously, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, is not Istanbul, Turkey.

VeilsMcDonaldsStill there are sections of this story that show — from behind this Western set of eyes — why this is such a hot-button subject. Here, she talks about her arrival a few years ago:

I was ready to cope, or so I thought. I arrived with a protective smirk in tow, planning to thicken the walls around myself. I’d report a few stories, and go home. I had no inkling that Saudi Arabia, the experience of being a woman there, would stick to me, follow me home on the plane and shadow me through my days, tainting the way I perceived men and women everywhere.

I’m leaving the Middle East now, closing up years spent covering the fighting and fallout that have swept the region since Sept. 11. Of all the strange, scary and joyful experiences of the past years, my time covering Saudi Arabia remains among the most jarring.

I spent my days in Saudi Arabia struggling unhappily between a lifetime of being taught to respect foreign cultures and the realization that this culture judged me a lesser being. I tried to draw parallels: If I went to South Africa during apartheid, would I feel compelled to be polite?

Ah, so some cultural values are right and some are wrong? Is that a moral absolute? Does this doctrine apply to other moral, cultural and religious beliefs, in America or abroad?

Read this Times piece and let me know what you think. This issue will come to America, as it has to Great Britain and France. You know that.

How will the press cope? Will multiculturalism apply to this issue and others that grow out of it?

Print Friendly

Filed Under: Godbeat, Islam, World, World Religions

Turks get American religion — our football

June 5, 2007 By

wall1Anyone who knows anything about life in the USA knows that one of our strongest forms of civic religion is Christian football.

As opposed to soccer, which is the Islamic form of football.

What in the world am I talking about?

Well, I arrived in Istanbul yesterday (Monday here) and one of the first things to pop into my email was an interesting first-person piece by writer Mark St. Amant in The New York Times titled “Cheering Section — In Turkey, It’s First Down and Miles to Go.” The faith and football connection shows up pretty quickly.

In reality, however, the piece is about globalization and our small, small world of sports and mass media. However, almost anything in Turkey these days raises questions about people relating to the great power in the West and that, sooner or later, brings in religion. Thus, we learn that “American football” is an “infidel sport” and since the late 1980s has become, with some help from eBay, a competitor to, well, you’ll see.

The how of Turkish football was clear, but I was more interested in the why. After all, these guys had no football frame of reference growing up. No Pop Warner to teach the basics. No high school programs. And certainly no Turkish professionals whom they could dream of being when they grew up. (Gatorade never quite got around to that “Be Like Mehmet” ad campaign.) I got stock answers at first: the camaraderie; going on road trips to games; the hitting; knowing that 40 guys have your back at all times.

But there had to be more to it than testosterone-fueled friendship. They were at an age (18 to 22) when most people are on their own for the first time. So might the attraction have also been about rebellion, defying conventional authority — be it religious or parental — and rejecting what society deems acceptable?

“Yes, some of us are forbidden to play,” said a 21-year-old tailback nicknamed Straw for his lanky build. He slouched comfortably, forearm resting on the shoulder of a defensive end sitting next to him, and seemed to be speaking for everyone.

He scratched his Mohawk haircut as Celtikciolu translated: “Guys sneak to practice and hide their equipment so their parents won’t find out. Our friends don’t like that we don’t play soccer. They act like soccer was invented in Turkey or something, or that it’s the ‘proper’ Muslim sport. They don’t even know what football is … . But them not liking it makes me want to play more.”

Aside from this cultural rebellion angle, it also seems that any help Americans provide is quickly turned into an issue linked to “missionary work” — one of the most controversial subjects in this country.

You see, Turks are Muslim and/or secular Muslims. Americans are Christian and/or secular Christians. It’s a national thing. It’s a cultural thing. It’s a sports thing.

It’s a religion thing.

I didn’t see any football posters coming in from the airport, but I will ask around. Lots of ads for the Beastie Boys concert, however. Are they Christian? No, wait, that’s another kind of religion thing.

Print Friendly

Filed Under: Islam, Sports, World Religions