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I have a confession to make: I don’t necessarily believe what I write about sports or religion.
Sometimes a cynical thought crosses my mind as I follow stories like an NFL star giving credit for his accomplishments to God or an Olympian discussing a Bible verse in a prime-time interview. I wonder if they really mean what they say or if it’s just some clever PR.
Those thoughts were running through my mind last week as I prepared for an interview with Paul Emory Putz, author of a new book on sports and religion called The Spirit of the Game: American Christianity and Big-Time Sports. It occurred to me.
Although the book covers a wide range of cultural and historical topics, from 19th-century evangelists to the rise of the Christian Athletes Federation, I focused the conversation on athletes’ comments on religion and asked Putz to share with me I decided to ask if anyone had asked a similar question. What he hears in post-game interviews.
I was relieved to learn that Putz, associate director of the Institute for Faith and Sport at Baylor University’s Tuett School of Theology, didn’t think I was stupid. But he thinks I could benefit from the same approach he took while researching his book: meeting religious campaigners with grace and curiosity rather than criticism. .
Here’s a conversation about what athletes are thankful for to God.
Kelsey Dallas: How do today’s athletes compare to athletes of the past when it comes to religious expression?
Paul Emory Putz: When I recently saw the news that NBA player AJ Griffin was retiring after several years in the league as a “Jesus full-timer,” I realized that we don’t see that kind of decision very often anymore. I was shocked.
100 or 150 years ago, it was much more common for Christian evangelists to talk about sports as something they gave up to demonstrate the strength of their faith. For example, Billy Sunday, one of the most famous evangelists of the 20th century, retired from the Chicago White Sox to become a full-time evangelist.
But change isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Today’s situation, where faith permeates the daily experience of sport, is in many ways a positive development.
Conversations about religion are now more common in the sports world, with athletes not only openly talking about their faith in interviews, but also speaking out about their religion when struggling with injuries, marriages, or performance anxiety. You can also access resources.
KD: What bothers me as a fan, reporter, and cynic is that comments about faith have become so commonplace in the sports world that they seem to have lost their meaning.
PEP: I think it’s a good development to see faith infiltrating the sports experience of Christian athletes, but when it becomes too common it cheapens comments about faith.
But we approach athletes’ expressions of faith with grace, with the feeling that we don’t know everything about what’s going on in their hearts and spiritual lives. I think it should.
It’s good and healthy for athletes of all faiths to be able to share that part of themselves. In a pluralistic country that encourages religious freedom, religion is an important part of our identity.
KD: What would you say to people who are concerned about athletes appearing to attribute their team’s victories to God?
PEP: It’s good for faith to be part of everyday life, including victory. If you are a Christian, it is natural to think that God was with you in victory.
But Christian athletes, and all of us, need to realize that God is present when we make a bad play, when we get hurt, when our team has a bad season, and even when we lose. .
Sports can implicitly send the wrong message because we often only hear about the faith of the winners.
KD: Should Christian parents tell their children that God is with athletes whether they win or lose?
PEP: I had never thought of using scenes of athletes thanking God as a teaching opportunity.
My own childhood experience was being taught to start rooting for athletes who say the name of Jesus. Because that means they are Christians.
But I think you’re onto something. As a Christian parent, I can say more than, “Oh, that person is a Christian athlete.” You can say, “Whether you win or lose, God will use you.” You can help your children not only see God’s presence in their successes, but also think of God’s presence in their sufferings.
KD: I am uncomfortable with the growing cynicism towards sports and religion. How should we respond when athletes talk about their faith?
PEP: Early on in graduate school, when I started learning about sports and religion, I saw athletes praying and felt the urge to joke about and criticize them. “They have the theology wrong,” I think.
But I moved away from it. That doesn’t mean we can’t criticize or analyze these statements. What Christian athletes need to remember is that they are trying to put into words something that is incredibly difficult to express. They are not experts in articulating what their faith means.
I’m willing to give them more grace, even if what they’re saying sounds superstitious. I’m not trying to be the theological police. I want to celebrate athletes who are trying to express their beliefs.
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This week’s controversy: “No one wants this”
If you’re a Netflix user, you’ve probably seen or watched an ad for a new series called “Nobody Wants This.” Starring Adam Brody and Kristen Bell, this funny, romantic drama tells the story of an agnostic woman who falls in love with a rabbi and learns a lot about Judaism in the process.
‘Nobody Wants This’ was inspired by a real-life love story between the show’s creator and her husband, who is now Jewish, so some viewers were caught off guard by its depiction of Jewish women. . The showrunners faced criticism for appearing to embrace Jewish stereotypes rather than subverting them, with nearly all the women in the synagogue played by Brody appearing rude, vain, and manipulative. I am doing it.
“I wanted to be engrossed in a romantic comedy. Instead, I was faced with the reality that the show might actually hate me,” one Jewish female viewer wrote in Time magazine.
According to USA Today, the show’s creator, Erin Foster, defended the project in an interview, saying that overall, “No One Wants This” challenges people’s assumptions about Jews, and that He argued that it was a positive story for the world.
What I’m reading is…
Social media sites and smartphones have made pornography more accessible than ever, and this proliferation of explicit content has coincided with a decline in moral objections to its use. “In a 2022 survey, only 42% of young people said porn is morally wrong,” American Storylines reported.
Have you ever wondered what you want the opposite sex to know about you? The Washington Post asked and published the results.
When I started following golf closely about a year ago, Kyle Porter quickly emerged as one of my favorite golf reporters. I loved the angles he chose to emphasize in the story and the faith-related storylines he often pointed out in X. Last week, Porter left CBS Sports to focus on his newsletter, Normal Sports. I loved his essay about what it’s like to quit your dream job and aim for an even bigger dream.
Probability and outcome
He was only able to get seven or eight questions correct on the New York Times’ latest news quiz, but within a few weeks he had scored 10.5 out of 11. Can you beat me?
