Transcript: "How Are Sports and Religion Interconnected in America?" with Rebecca Alpert
Chris: Sports is everywhere in America as we all know. The Super Bowl, the Masters, the World Series, the Stanley Cup, the US Open, the Olympics, the NBA, MLB, NFL, Youth Travel leagues, High School sports, and the list goes on and on and on. So maybe if we understand sports better we can understand America better. For this podcast series “Religion in the American Experience”, we want to learn about the relationship between religion and sports which it turns out is a deep and meaningful one. This discussion will help us better understand what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion. We trust that as a result, listeners will see how indispensable the idea of religious freedom, as a governing principle is to the United States and its ability to fulfill its purposes in the world.
Chris: Today, to discuss religion and sports, we have with us Rebecca Alpert, professor of religion at Temple University in Philadelphia and author of, Religion and Sports: An Introduction and Case Studies, which we will use as the basis of our interview today. Her research interests include religion and sport, religion and sexuality, and American Judaism in the 20th century. She is also the author of Out of Left Field Jews and Black Baseball, and co-editor of God's games and Globalization: New Perspectives on religion and Sport published in 2019. Professor Alpert also was among the first women in America ordained as a rabbi. We encourage listeners to visit story of American religion dot org and sign up for future podcast notifications under the sign-up tab.
Chris: Rebecca thank you so much for being with us today.
Rebecca: It's a pleasure, Chris.
Chris: First and I think our listeners will want to know how in the world did you become interested in the relationship between sports and religion, and then become an expert in regards to it? Tell us your story.
Rebecca: So it's a story that starts with an oral history of a friend of mine who made connections for me between a person who was writing an oral history of people who were Baseball fans. He didn't have enough women so he was looking pretty hard to find a woman or two that he could interview. I went and sat in with him and we had a great conversation. Bill Friedman is his name and when I read back what I wrote or what I had said after he published it, I realized that the connection between my Jewishness and my experience as a baseball fan as a child was actually very close. I wound up thinking this is an interesting place to pursue my research as I was sort of looking for a new research topic.
I guess my first article was about Jackie Robinson. Growing up as a child my mother really believed that the Brooklyn Dodgers were Jewish which they weren't. Cal Abrams I think was their only Jewish player and there really wasn't much connection except for all of the diehard fans in Brooklyn who really embraced the Dodgers as a gritty working-class team. Unlike the Yankees who represented US steel at that point, represented the industry and money. The Dodgers had a working-class ethic and they were the first to integrate baseball. They were the first to say that we don't think these separate leagues are really making any sense. African-Americans or I guess whatever they were called that point in time, have a right to play, and the owners and leaders of the Dodgers made that so. They couldn't have done it without the ethnic fans in Brooklyn; it wasn't just the Jews, It was the Italians, the Irish, and the Chinese actually it turned out, who were still living in Brooklyn and we're committed to coming to the ballpark because that's what all of these other owners were really afraid, that the white fans would desert what desert baseball if it became a black sport.
So that felt like a connection between my Jewish values and Sport. As I investigated Robinson's story I discovered that I certainly wasn't the only one. I discovered hundreds of stories and memoirs and musicals on Broadway, and all kinds of things supporting this idea that there was this connection. That's really what got me going in terms of my interests. I'm actually a bigger basketball than baseball fan, but I started writing about baseball and discovered that there is a whole world out there, of people thinking about baseball as a religion and the connection between baseball and various religious practices.
Chris: That's a great backstory so let's get into the details here. I want you to help us unpack something that you wrote at the beginning of the chapter called, "Why study religion and sports anyway"? I'm going to quote you here. "Studying the interconnections between sports and religion gives us an opportunity to understand how these key aspects of society, influence our political and cultural lives and provide ways to understand human experience and its meaning and purpose". That's pretty deep stuff for sports, some of our listeners are going to say that “this lady's taking herself way too seriously. She's taking sports way too seriously.” Can you try to convince us, Rebecca, that you are not taking it too seriously and that this is significant and important to America and Americans?
Rebecca: So I taught this course on Sports and Society for a number of years and I've actually had to spend a lot of time convincing my students of that. Then last year happened, where Sports became the focal point of some of the most important questions particularly about race but also about gender in our society. Then I think people began to pay more attention to how we understand Sports and why Sports is so important.
Chris, you said it yourself, right, at the beginning. It's the Super Bowl is probably a bigger holiday time in the United States than many of our other holidays. We take it really seriously as there are all kinds of rituals associated with it. If people stop and think well, what do I eat on Super Bowl Sunday? I eat special foods. Why is that any different from our Thanksgiving holidays, right? I get together with my family, these are my people and we connect through the Super Bowl. We pay attention to sports and even though we've been told that it's just the protesters who are making sports important. In fact, sports has been militarized if you take a look at the logo of the National Football League, you'll see that it's an American flag in the shape of a shield. What's going on there? That's not just about sports, that's intrinsic to our society, it's how we see ourselves. We can't live as a society without these events.
Many people are not that interested in sports but then, of course, there are many people who are not that interested in politics, there are many people who are not that interested in religion. I mean, it doesn't mean that those elements of our culture are not important. I have memories of being in the airport during the Olympics when our women's soccer team was winning and there are hundreds of people gathered around the television sets watching. What is that social experience but a way of binding ourselves as a community and feeling part of something? This is central to the idea that the way we use religion in society as well. One of the recent headlines was that Bill Belichick the least likely person in the world, who is the coach of the New England Patriots turned down the president's offer of a medal. He made an important statement and his statement was carried by the news media in the same way politician's statements and other people's statements were. We take our sports figures seriously, they are our heroes. They're important people in society and they make a difference, convincing enough, I don't know?
Chris: It is, you didn't have to convince me. I think you've convinced our listeners or at least a lot of them and I think they'll be convinced as we go through the questions here. You state, Rebecca that sports is, "One of the most popular and significant dimensions of Human Experience". How does it compare with religion? Not in the details, but in a statement like that.
Rebecca: Curious to me is that in ancient times the worlds of sports and the world of religion were actually directly connected. The rituals of the religious traditions of ancient Greek society, ancient Mayan Society, and ancient Japanese society were all expressed through sporting events. They seem to have a similar function in the life of us as a society. Sports and religion are ways that people use to make meaning and to enact rituals and to make a connection to what is Ultimate Reality. So I would say they have a very close connection in terms of most cultures actually and certainly ours.
Chris: Right. You admit that the definitions in the religion of religion and sport do not overlap much and instead you write this, "While religion has never been thought to be a sport many have written eloquently about their perception and experience of sports as a religion". Tell us how this is done?
Rebecca: Sure. Those of us who do religious studies have been trying to figure out what religion is. That's been a very important dimension of the study of religion these days because we don't all mean the same things when we say religion. My handy dandy religious definition is that it includes what I call the Three B's which are believing, behaving, and belonging. So when you're looking for what is religion in society you look for what do people believe and hold the most direct as a concept, usually, that has something to do with God but not always. How do they behave? What are their rituals? What do they do? Do they go to church? Do they construct altars in their houses? Do they go to synagogue or mosque? Do they do family rituals at home? What is it that people do that makes this connection to their beliefs? Then how do they understand themselves belonging? Christians see themselves belonging to church communities, Jews see themselves belonging to sometimes ethnic communities, but always related to Jewish practices. Belonging to a synagogue or to a Jewish Community Center, same with Muslims belonging to mosques, or Buddhists and Hindus making their connections to their temples. So it's behaving, belonging, and believing, and if you take that framework and put it in a context of sports then it becomes very clear. Sports, politics, patriotism, and other phenomena in our society also function in this quasi, in this same way that religion functions.
Rebecca: Say you're a fan of the Washington National football team, it was very, very hard to give up their name. Why was it hard to give up their name? Who cares about the name that they had? Well, it was hard to give up their name because that was a means of connecting for them. It's almost like saying to a Jew or Christian, “stop calling yourself Jewish” and call yourself by some other name. We don't like your name anymore. We don't think that you should have that name anymore. That power of connection, the power of feeling like you belong to something, looking at a symbol. When a Jew looks at a Jewish star they feel something special, they feel some kind of connection. When a Christian looks at a cross they think this is a powerful symbol that's part of my tradition. The fans of the Washington team also felt that same way they looked at those symbols and they didn't see what I see, which was a kind of pejorative of the experience of Native Americans. They saw their special symbol, something that may be holy or not in the full meaning of that word, but certainly powerful in a way that evoked a sense of connection to a group. Belonging to a group, believing in a certain set of values and not values that I happen to agree with, but values that really matter to them. I probably don't even have to mention when people think about how people behave around Sports. Not this year but in other years all you have to do is to drive to a stadium when there's a football game happening and just look around. You don't even have to go in. You see what's happening, people are eating together in parking lots and having a whole set of rituals that define who they are as a group. Again this is where those parallels exist and this is why some people think of sports as a religion. If something is the most important value to you, that's probably what your religion is, or at least that's what Paul Tillich says.
Chris: Okay, I think listeners would love to hear some examples from some of these similarities between religion and sports. You mentioned some of the book: ruling Patriarchs, these are all religious terms but you're suggesting that there are analogous Sports terms, or Sports individuals, ruling Patriarchs, Saints, high councils, and ritual and material. Can you give us a few examples of those similarities?
Rebecca: Yeah. Well, that wasn't mine actually, that was another author was making that suggestion. Actually, I don't think a lot in terms of Christian symbols, that seemed to me like what he was saying was that it's just like Christianity where they have Patriarchs and they have high councils and so on and so forth. I'm not sure I buy into that particular framework. I was kind of using that example as a way of saying different people have taken this idea of Sport as religion and used religious use their religious understandings to explain that relationship.
Chris: Fair enough.
Rebecca: Yeah, but again in terms of material culture all you got to do is look for those baseball caps and sweatshirts. People spending tons and tons of their money to buy Little Filly Fanatics, bobble-head dolls, books regarding sports, or whatever it is. What does it mean to have Pete Rose's bat? Like, why are these things valuable and why they become holy objects?
Chris: Okay. What would you tell us that we need to know about Michael Novak's 1976 book, "Joy of Sports: End Zones, Bases, Basketballs and Consecration of the American Spirit". For the purposes of our discussions today about the interconnectedness between religion and sports in America?
Rebecca: Yeah. I mean Novak actually was a great scholar of religion and that book was really a very important book for the beginning of this analysis of sports as a religion. He looked at these the three, the Trinity, baseball, basketball, and football. And began to talk about it. I mean his language was precisely the language that I've been using here. He's the one that really made these definitions. Even more importantly this whole idea of the joy of sports, this whole idea that one can really experience something outside oneself, a real connection to Ultimate Reality which is the argument I think that he was really making. That sport brings you to the same place emotionally that religion can take you.
Chris: Okay now I think it's important to bring up that some scholars do not see sports as a religion or as religion and in fact one author you quote labeled, "Sports as religion narrative a version of semantic abuse". Can you elaborate a bit on these scholars' perspectives?
Rebecca: Well, that's a sensible other side of this argument. They want to keep the word religion for those particular, to keep those phenomena that we define as a religion as only those historical religions, only those historical religions. These Scholars reject any notion that you can have religion be anything except Judaism, Christianity, Taoism, and all of the historic religions that redefined us. So anything else is just blasphemy. I mean, they don't just see it as something that's not good they really see it as blasphemous. That somehow you are saying that religion is something broader than that concept that historic religions are.
Chris: Well, it's good to see that perspective and understand it so we have this in context. I'm going to go back to the whole discussion of your book on religion and sports and their interconnectedness. You quote a 1993 book called, "Religion and Sport: The Meeting of the Sacred and Profane", this statement, "It is both proper and necessary to call Sport itself a religion. It is also reasonable to consider sport the newest and fastest-growing religion far outdistancing whatever is in second place". What do you think about that statement Rebecca?
Rebecca: Again these are these are people who feel very passionate about sports and I guess if you count the numbers of people who go to attend sporting events versus the numbers of people who actually go to church, synagogue, or mosque; sports would win hands down, especially since sports is televised and interviewed. If you start just looking at that numerically, that's a sensible argument. Whether or not Sports has replaced religions, Sports in that place in people's lives. I mean again, we're looking at that particular place in people's lives. What's the most important thing to you? What do you value the most? I would say probably most people would say that Sports is not really their religion, that it's not that essential to them.
Chris: Well and I think Scholars looking at the historical record have helpful things to say to us, Right?
Rebecca: Indeed and challenging too. I think what a lot of Scholars like to do is put out new ideas and let people think about them, learn about them and decide for themselves. That's the most important thing.
Chris: Yes. We are talking about the interconnections between sports and religion with Rebecca Albert, Professor of Religion at Temple University in Philadelphia and author of Religion and Sports: An Introduction and Case Studies. If you have not done so yet, please visit story of American religion dot org and sign up for the future podcast notifications under the sign-up tab.
Rebecca in the section of the book entitled, "Does religion have a place in sports or Sports and religion", you give a history of their interconnectedness. What was the attitude towards Sports when Europeans landed in the Americas up to the mid-19th century, give us that historical detail?
Rebecca: So in that earlier period we were dominated by a group called the Puritans, pretty much in terms of the way the people understood their religious obligation. We had religious freedom in theory but in practice, they were very powerful. I mean, we never established religion, but if you were not Protestant, if you were not in the North Puritan and in the South Episcopalian, you probably weren't going to get anywhere. You weren't going to be tolerated I guess as opposed to having equal rights. That mindset was actually not in favor of Sports at all. That particularly Puritan mindset and the Puritan way of looking at Christian Living said Sports is a waste of time. Maybe they actually knew that Sports could become the most important religion if they didn't watch out, but they were not pro-religion in any way. I mean people bowled and they certainly did sports but they couldn't do it on the Sabbath. There were strong prohibitions against Sports on Sundays and a lot of tension for people who were interested in sports and liked sporting activities, they were considered not exactly taboo, but certainly not a value.
Chris: Okay, but then we hit mid-19th century and some things begin to change, you explain a concept or a phenomenon called “muscular Christianity.” It came into vogue, I guess first in Europe about that time. When it became a phenomenon in the United States, how did it influence the relationship or the intersection of sports and religion here?
Rebecca: Well “muscular Christianity” was the essence of the intersection between sports and religion. There was again this growing sense among Protestants that there was this competing set of values. Sometimes it's better to join them than try to beat them.
So very smart concept, the idea that Jesus and Paul, really were strong muscular figures. I mean, the Christian leaders saw in sports an opportunity to really make religion more powerful and recognize that you didn't have to be sissy if you wanted to be Christian. That you could in fact embrace being a powerful person and being someone who was athletic, and that could be part of your Christian identity and they didn't have to be separate phenomena. So that really was the essence of muscular Christianity that there's a muscular Catholicism as well that began to develop. Being Catholic was very different from being Protestant and being Jewish was very different as well. Catholics and Jews also found ways to assert that their religions were also compatible with sports.
Chris: Okay. You write about that. Now, I found it interesting and fascinating that at that time churches began to build gymnasia and sponsor that their own teams. Then you mentioned a particular Church in New York, St. John the Divine, how it commissioned stained glass windows with figures in sports poses. What other examples are there of the ramifications of muscular Christianity in the United States?
Rebecca: Well, I just think about the YMCA. The YMCA was really and ultimately the YWCA and then ultimately the YMHA, the young men's Hebrew Association as well—that was a way of saying that gyms and sporting activities were in fact under the umbrella of religious organizations. The YMCA was that young men's Christian Association and yet most of what happens in Ys were basketball, swimming, and other sports. That was a way of bringing these things together and that movement was very powerful. Then mostly the game of football was played in colleges and it was mostly played in Ivy League colleges, which were not that strongly associated with religions. Then Notre Dame decided it was going to get into the sports activities and other religious institutions that were affiliated with different religious denominations also started having Sports as a central part of their programs.
The connection between sports and religion grew, the evangelicals were actually the last to get on board, but there were people like Billy Sunday who was a former baseball player and Evangelical preacher. He began to talk about why those connections were really important and why being a religious person meant being a strong person, Making the Connections. I think as you know in Catholicism, Judaism, and Protestantism, between the body and the mind, a strong body mental strong Spirit, and a strong body meant to a strong mind. If you got involved in doing sports then you would be strengthening your connection to God.
Chris: It sounds like just from this perspective, Sports had quite an effect on American religion.
Rebecca: For sure, there's really no question that Sports just became a very important part of understanding how one was able to express oneself as a religious person.
Chris: Right. You detail the development of a new version of muscular Christianity in the mid-twentieth century which Frank Deford labeled, and I may be getting the pronunciation wrong as I've never heard it, but I've seen it written, "Sportianity". Can you tell us about this and its ramifications including what we learn from De Ford's 1976 three-part essay, "Religion in Sport" in Sports Illustrated?
Rebecca: Well, I think basically what he was saying is, he like Novak, they were beginning to stretch out what it meant for sports to become so central to the religious project. The fact that it went overboard, the fact that people made these connections to strongly perhaps, and maybe we're beginning to do that thing that people got really scared about which was substituting sports for religion or turning their sports connections into the center of their religious practices. Also, the opposite, which was the effort of Christian groups to make Sports so much a part of what they were doing, that they changed the nature of their own message.
Christen: So in a word, what was Frank Deford saying in that three-part essay?
Rebecca: “Maybe this isn't so good.” I mean, maybe there's too big a connection between sports and Christianity to the point where it became "sportianitty". It's like Christianity was being taken over by these connections to sports.
Chris: Okay, so Rebecca, we're now going to turn to religion and sports and how they don't get along, for lack of a better phrase in the United States. You write that "One of the major sources of friction between sports and religion in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam has been when the times for religious observance conflict with sporting events". Tell us what we need to understand here.
Rebecca: So, I think I mentioned this a little earlier The Puritans were very clear that on the Sabbath you do holy things and you don't do sports. But the world of sports has taken over Sundays, hasn't it. So the choice between going to church and going out to do sporting events was problematic for many Christians for a long time. Until they actually had a move the times of the football games and the baseball games and make sure that they weren't in conflict.
People say, how do you spend your time? How do you make enough time for both Sports and religion, something has to give. So they had to make compromises. It's harder actually, when you think about Muslims during Ramadan, how do they manage to observe their fasts and play sports at the same time? I mean we see that some of them do. But it's very difficult and it can certainly cause conflicts. How about an Orthodox Jewish team that won't travel on the Sabbath, how do they get to their games? When their Sabbath is on Saturdays? How can they participate? So there's always this tension of like what's more important? What comes first? I remember as a child the Jewish High Holidays are always during the World Series. So technically, Jews are not supposed to be paying attention to other things during a holiday like Yom Kippur which is the most solemn day of the year, but you know the Yankees were playing so what do you do? How do you resolve that conflict? You make a decision for your religious practice, or do you make a decision for your sports practice? A lot of kids go to Sunday School and if they have soccer practice at the same time as Sunday school, what do we choose? These are hard questions for sports enthusiasts who also want to keep their religious practices.
Chris: Well said. You explain that one point in this section of your book about public displays of religious commitment and sport, that "Manufacturers have also been working on modest clothing that is suitable for swimming and other sports and special hijabs have been created for sportswear". Since the printing of your book, I think this has actually happened. Can you share some stories about this? This does not conflict now of “time” but this is “displays of one's religiosity” and the problems that come with that, and sports.
Rebecca: This is actually a complicated question in terms of hijab, people don't think of the connection between Islam and sports. But in fact, Islam has a very positive attitude towards Sports. Positive attitude towards women in sports as well, but that women have to be separated from men because modesty is extremely important. So how can a woman dress modestly and still perform her Sports? Well, we live in a world where things change and people think about these things and there have been hijabs created modest clothing for women created for just about every Sport. Muslim women are now very actively involved, in you'll see that they've won fencing titles. The first woman in the Olympics for Saudi Arabia was a woman who was wrestling in her hijab, doing Judo I mean, I'm sorry sometimes I get these Sports confused. There has really been an effort to make sure that women can both observe their religious practices that are dressed modestly and at the same time be involved in sports practices as well.
I guess it's not just a question of wearing modest clothing because a lot of sports figures who are religious themselves also want to have their religious affiliation emblazoned on their body. So I don't know if you know and it may be old news now but Tim Tebow used to write John 3:16 under his eyes when he was playing sports particularly playing football in college and they made him stop doing that. Why? Because there was too great a connection between sports and religion and sports really was a venue for him to exercise his free exercise of religion. Although it came in conflict with other values related to freedom of religion, which is freedom from being oppressed by someone else's religion. So there was a decision at a secular university that he couldn't have those kinds of displays of religion.
Again, this is a pretty complicated set of stories and it comes up fairly often. How do you express your religious beliefs in the context of a secular sporting event?
Chris: Right, which some people see as very religious.
Rebecca: That is the religion of sport.
Chris: Yes, exactly. Rebecca, when addressing religion and ethical dilemmas in sports, which was an interesting section, you begin by saying this, "Modern sports were founded on the idea of the fostering of good values, including healthy lifestyles, teamwork, sportsmanship, and equal opportunity in the form of a level playing field, But that in recent years this great “sport’s myth” (which you have in quotes in your book) ‘the great sport’s myth’ has begun to crumble". This is a pretty important statement in your book, covers a lot of ground here. What are the manifestations of this and the ramifications for the country?
Rebecca: So we've seen incredible cheating scandals in sports. Had the pandemic not taken over, the fact that the Houston Astros lost their title because they were cheating during the World Series. The New England Patriots deflating the footballs, people bending the rules, has given the lie to this myth that sports are all about fairness or fair play and equal opportunity. The fact that gambling has always been very closely associated with sports; the fact that sometimes sports less in our country, but certainly around the world, fans die at soccer matches by being trampled to death. There's a lot of things that happen in the context of sports, the kind of racism that we've seen on display. The kind of unevenness between men and women's opportunities and experiences in sports. The fact that poor people have a very hard time getting to getting to achieve things because it's so expensive. Children's sports are so expensive for families to engage in. These are the kinds of negative elements of the sport that sports fans who believe in the great “sports myth” - that it's the best thing in the world are not really willing to come to terms with.
I'm not saying that religion is not also riddled with all of these things. We've seen so many instances of sexual violence, corruption, gambling, and all kinds of things in every realm of every religion in the United States. We often associate these evils with the Catholic Clergy, but in fact, they are broad. But religion again makes a claim to certain sets of values that may be the realm of sports is not always amenable to. So they've there have certainly been tensions and very often religious leaders, if you listen to their sermons, you hear them talk, they will be very critical of the kinds of evils that take place in sports.
Chris: Thank you. You write, Rebecca that while, "Sports have been understood as a safe arena that has replaced religion as a location for ritually enacted violence that provides a necessary catharsis for society, some argue that violence and sports give permission for violence in society". Can you talk to us a bit about violence in sports and religion?
Rebecca: Yeah, the last time I taught my sports and society class I had a wonderful student who decided to tackle this question in youth hockey because he had played youth hockey and he saw the kinds of violence that is permitted. I mean hockey is a terribly good, terrible/good example of the kind of violence that exists in sports and there are you know, he was looking at youth Christian hockey leagues and the way that they tried to come to terms with the fact that their sport was very violent. He actually discovered some Christian Youth Hockey Leagues that eschew the violence, that don't permit the kind of fighting that exists in hockey in mainly the United States but also Canadian Hockey. And tries to teach anti-violence in sports.
But anybody who's sat under the basket at a basketball game or watched a melee in a baseball game or watched any play in professional football, realizes that violence in sports not only is an intrinsic part of sport, but has also, as we become more aware of concussion and more aware of the kinds of physical harm that particularly professional but even lower levels of athletes have done to their bodies because the sport is so violent - it gives us pause and makes us wonder how Sports can be held up in the kinds of ways that it is, as again the great “sport myth.” So particularly religious organizations that sponsor sporting events have had to come to terms with this whole question of how violent sports are and how to help that along and how to make it better.
Chris: So have religiously affiliated schools ever made statements regarding the violence of saying hockey and football, which seemed to be sort of the most violent perhaps, in religious terms?
Rebecca: I don't think you find that in official circumstances, but I'm very aware of, again particularly for youth trying to make sure that the kind of message is that we don't want to harm our bodies, we want to strengthen our bodies. That's muscular Christianity. Right? It's the strengthening, empowering, and making people feel connected. Connecting their bodies and their spirits and not hurting others. It's possible that there are official pronouncements that I actually don't know. I haven't seen any though.
Chris: Well as we conclude here Rebecca, you know an hour is definitely not enough time to cover this area of sports and religion and I think in my mind that we could have a whole series about sports and religion. That would be of great interest and I think as we discussed before, there's a lot to learn about the country when we look at sports because it's so pervasive and so popular. As we conclude this, I would say first deep dive into religion and sports, do you want to share any lessons or takeaways from the book or from this topic either in terms of important historical transformations, you were charting? Or even just in terms of helping us better understand the country's present moment?
Rebecca: In terms of the present moment, I was unbelievably inspired and again, these are my particular politics and I know everybody wouldn't necessarily agree with them. But the Women's National Basketball Association, of all of the different groups that had to contend with the police brutality issues, they stood up and they spoke out and made a difference in our society. The fact that one of the owners of the Atlanta Dream, the women's NBA team in Atlanta was defeated for her Senatorial race in Georgia. Just this week or so. I give those women of the NBA a lot of credit, they really stood up to her and they express their feelings and because they were public figures they got attention. Because they were willing, and the men of the NBA as well, willing to financially they put their money where their mouths were. Along with work very hard to make a change and work very hard to be very public about their political views. This is not new, there was Muhammad Ali, there was Jackie Robinson. There were figures in American Sports history who stood up and said this is what's right, and I'm going to try to change things. I'm going to make things right and I think that we need to give our sports figures a lot of credit for being willing to say, "I don't just play basketball". "I don't just play football". "I don't just coach a football team". "I'm a public figure and I have a right to make public statements".
That has changed drastically. I think everybody kind of understands now that to get back to religion and sports, when Colin Kaepernick took a knee, he wasn't doing anything different from what Martin Luther King did on the bridge, right? They were both expressing their Christian beliefs, that their obedience was to God and not to another authority. That God in their understanding of God, God wanted peace, God wanted integration, God wanted to make sure that everybody in this country had a fair opportunity to do well. To live in peace and not be brutalized or murdered by police in this particular case and actually in the case of Martin Luther King as well. So I like making those connections and I like seeing that these things are happening and that Sports isn't only an opportunity as it has been for military planes to fly over stadiums at the Super Bowl. But it's also an opportunity for individual sports figures to stand up and say, "In my belief, this is my firmly held belief, this is not right and I want to make a change".
Chris: Okay. You had the last word. We have been talking about the interconnections between sports and religion in the United States with Rebecca Alpert, Professor of Religion at Temple University in Philadelphia and author of, Religion and Sports: An Introduction in Case Studies. If you have not done so yet, please visit storyamericanreligion.org and sign up for future podcast notifications under our signup tab.
At the conclusion of this episode, we trust that listeners understand more about what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion and have a deeper appreciation of religious freedom as a governing principle in the United States. Seeing to its protection as an indispensable part of the fragile American experiment in self-government.
Rebecca, thank you so much for being with us and doing the really hard work of researching and writing a book that helps us all understand America better. It's been very enlightening for me and our listeners, I'm sure and I hope you've enjoyed the time with us as well.
Rebecca: I very much enjoyed it, Chris. Thank you for reading my books.
Chris: You bet, it was great. I have to read your others now. All right, Rebecca. Thank you.
Rebecca: Take care, Chris.
Chris: Today, to discuss religion and sports, we have with us Rebecca Alpert, professor of religion at Temple University in Philadelphia and author of, Religion and Sports: An Introduction and Case Studies, which we will use as the basis of our interview today. Her research interests include religion and sport, religion and sexuality, and American Judaism in the 20th century. She is also the author of Out of Left Field Jews and Black Baseball, and co-editor of God's games and Globalization: New Perspectives on religion and Sport published in 2019. Professor Alpert also was among the first women in America ordained as a rabbi. We encourage listeners to visit story of American religion dot org and sign up for future podcast notifications under the sign-up tab.
Chris: Rebecca thank you so much for being with us today.
Rebecca: It's a pleasure, Chris.
Chris: First and I think our listeners will want to know how in the world did you become interested in the relationship between sports and religion, and then become an expert in regards to it? Tell us your story.
Rebecca: So it's a story that starts with an oral history of a friend of mine who made connections for me between a person who was writing an oral history of people who were Baseball fans. He didn't have enough women so he was looking pretty hard to find a woman or two that he could interview. I went and sat in with him and we had a great conversation. Bill Friedman is his name and when I read back what I wrote or what I had said after he published it, I realized that the connection between my Jewishness and my experience as a baseball fan as a child was actually very close. I wound up thinking this is an interesting place to pursue my research as I was sort of looking for a new research topic.
I guess my first article was about Jackie Robinson. Growing up as a child my mother really believed that the Brooklyn Dodgers were Jewish which they weren't. Cal Abrams I think was their only Jewish player and there really wasn't much connection except for all of the diehard fans in Brooklyn who really embraced the Dodgers as a gritty working-class team. Unlike the Yankees who represented US steel at that point, represented the industry and money. The Dodgers had a working-class ethic and they were the first to integrate baseball. They were the first to say that we don't think these separate leagues are really making any sense. African-Americans or I guess whatever they were called that point in time, have a right to play, and the owners and leaders of the Dodgers made that so. They couldn't have done it without the ethnic fans in Brooklyn; it wasn't just the Jews, It was the Italians, the Irish, and the Chinese actually it turned out, who were still living in Brooklyn and we're committed to coming to the ballpark because that's what all of these other owners were really afraid, that the white fans would desert what desert baseball if it became a black sport.
So that felt like a connection between my Jewish values and Sport. As I investigated Robinson's story I discovered that I certainly wasn't the only one. I discovered hundreds of stories and memoirs and musicals on Broadway, and all kinds of things supporting this idea that there was this connection. That's really what got me going in terms of my interests. I'm actually a bigger basketball than baseball fan, but I started writing about baseball and discovered that there is a whole world out there, of people thinking about baseball as a religion and the connection between baseball and various religious practices.
Chris: That's a great backstory so let's get into the details here. I want you to help us unpack something that you wrote at the beginning of the chapter called, "Why study religion and sports anyway"? I'm going to quote you here. "Studying the interconnections between sports and religion gives us an opportunity to understand how these key aspects of society, influence our political and cultural lives and provide ways to understand human experience and its meaning and purpose". That's pretty deep stuff for sports, some of our listeners are going to say that “this lady's taking herself way too seriously. She's taking sports way too seriously.” Can you try to convince us, Rebecca, that you are not taking it too seriously and that this is significant and important to America and Americans?
Rebecca: So I taught this course on Sports and Society for a number of years and I've actually had to spend a lot of time convincing my students of that. Then last year happened, where Sports became the focal point of some of the most important questions particularly about race but also about gender in our society. Then I think people began to pay more attention to how we understand Sports and why Sports is so important.
Chris, you said it yourself, right, at the beginning. It's the Super Bowl is probably a bigger holiday time in the United States than many of our other holidays. We take it really seriously as there are all kinds of rituals associated with it. If people stop and think well, what do I eat on Super Bowl Sunday? I eat special foods. Why is that any different from our Thanksgiving holidays, right? I get together with my family, these are my people and we connect through the Super Bowl. We pay attention to sports and even though we've been told that it's just the protesters who are making sports important. In fact, sports has been militarized if you take a look at the logo of the National Football League, you'll see that it's an American flag in the shape of a shield. What's going on there? That's not just about sports, that's intrinsic to our society, it's how we see ourselves. We can't live as a society without these events.
Many people are not that interested in sports but then, of course, there are many people who are not that interested in politics, there are many people who are not that interested in religion. I mean, it doesn't mean that those elements of our culture are not important. I have memories of being in the airport during the Olympics when our women's soccer team was winning and there are hundreds of people gathered around the television sets watching. What is that social experience but a way of binding ourselves as a community and feeling part of something? This is central to the idea that the way we use religion in society as well. One of the recent headlines was that Bill Belichick the least likely person in the world, who is the coach of the New England Patriots turned down the president's offer of a medal. He made an important statement and his statement was carried by the news media in the same way politician's statements and other people's statements were. We take our sports figures seriously, they are our heroes. They're important people in society and they make a difference, convincing enough, I don't know?
Chris: It is, you didn't have to convince me. I think you've convinced our listeners or at least a lot of them and I think they'll be convinced as we go through the questions here. You state, Rebecca that sports is, "One of the most popular and significant dimensions of Human Experience". How does it compare with religion? Not in the details, but in a statement like that.
Rebecca: Curious to me is that in ancient times the worlds of sports and the world of religion were actually directly connected. The rituals of the religious traditions of ancient Greek society, ancient Mayan Society, and ancient Japanese society were all expressed through sporting events. They seem to have a similar function in the life of us as a society. Sports and religion are ways that people use to make meaning and to enact rituals and to make a connection to what is Ultimate Reality. So I would say they have a very close connection in terms of most cultures actually and certainly ours.
Chris: Right. You admit that the definitions in the religion of religion and sport do not overlap much and instead you write this, "While religion has never been thought to be a sport many have written eloquently about their perception and experience of sports as a religion". Tell us how this is done?
Rebecca: Sure. Those of us who do religious studies have been trying to figure out what religion is. That's been a very important dimension of the study of religion these days because we don't all mean the same things when we say religion. My handy dandy religious definition is that it includes what I call the Three B's which are believing, behaving, and belonging. So when you're looking for what is religion in society you look for what do people believe and hold the most direct as a concept, usually, that has something to do with God but not always. How do they behave? What are their rituals? What do they do? Do they go to church? Do they construct altars in their houses? Do they go to synagogue or mosque? Do they do family rituals at home? What is it that people do that makes this connection to their beliefs? Then how do they understand themselves belonging? Christians see themselves belonging to church communities, Jews see themselves belonging to sometimes ethnic communities, but always related to Jewish practices. Belonging to a synagogue or to a Jewish Community Center, same with Muslims belonging to mosques, or Buddhists and Hindus making their connections to their temples. So it's behaving, belonging, and believing, and if you take that framework and put it in a context of sports then it becomes very clear. Sports, politics, patriotism, and other phenomena in our society also function in this quasi, in this same way that religion functions.
Rebecca: Say you're a fan of the Washington National football team, it was very, very hard to give up their name. Why was it hard to give up their name? Who cares about the name that they had? Well, it was hard to give up their name because that was a means of connecting for them. It's almost like saying to a Jew or Christian, “stop calling yourself Jewish” and call yourself by some other name. We don't like your name anymore. We don't think that you should have that name anymore. That power of connection, the power of feeling like you belong to something, looking at a symbol. When a Jew looks at a Jewish star they feel something special, they feel some kind of connection. When a Christian looks at a cross they think this is a powerful symbol that's part of my tradition. The fans of the Washington team also felt that same way they looked at those symbols and they didn't see what I see, which was a kind of pejorative of the experience of Native Americans. They saw their special symbol, something that may be holy or not in the full meaning of that word, but certainly powerful in a way that evoked a sense of connection to a group. Belonging to a group, believing in a certain set of values and not values that I happen to agree with, but values that really matter to them. I probably don't even have to mention when people think about how people behave around Sports. Not this year but in other years all you have to do is to drive to a stadium when there's a football game happening and just look around. You don't even have to go in. You see what's happening, people are eating together in parking lots and having a whole set of rituals that define who they are as a group. Again this is where those parallels exist and this is why some people think of sports as a religion. If something is the most important value to you, that's probably what your religion is, or at least that's what Paul Tillich says.
Chris: Okay, I think listeners would love to hear some examples from some of these similarities between religion and sports. You mentioned some of the book: ruling Patriarchs, these are all religious terms but you're suggesting that there are analogous Sports terms, or Sports individuals, ruling Patriarchs, Saints, high councils, and ritual and material. Can you give us a few examples of those similarities?
Rebecca: Yeah. Well, that wasn't mine actually, that was another author was making that suggestion. Actually, I don't think a lot in terms of Christian symbols, that seemed to me like what he was saying was that it's just like Christianity where they have Patriarchs and they have high councils and so on and so forth. I'm not sure I buy into that particular framework. I was kind of using that example as a way of saying different people have taken this idea of Sport as religion and used religious use their religious understandings to explain that relationship.
Chris: Fair enough.
Rebecca: Yeah, but again in terms of material culture all you got to do is look for those baseball caps and sweatshirts. People spending tons and tons of their money to buy Little Filly Fanatics, bobble-head dolls, books regarding sports, or whatever it is. What does it mean to have Pete Rose's bat? Like, why are these things valuable and why they become holy objects?
Chris: Okay. What would you tell us that we need to know about Michael Novak's 1976 book, "Joy of Sports: End Zones, Bases, Basketballs and Consecration of the American Spirit". For the purposes of our discussions today about the interconnectedness between religion and sports in America?
Rebecca: Yeah. I mean Novak actually was a great scholar of religion and that book was really a very important book for the beginning of this analysis of sports as a religion. He looked at these the three, the Trinity, baseball, basketball, and football. And began to talk about it. I mean his language was precisely the language that I've been using here. He's the one that really made these definitions. Even more importantly this whole idea of the joy of sports, this whole idea that one can really experience something outside oneself, a real connection to Ultimate Reality which is the argument I think that he was really making. That sport brings you to the same place emotionally that religion can take you.
Chris: Okay now I think it's important to bring up that some scholars do not see sports as a religion or as religion and in fact one author you quote labeled, "Sports as religion narrative a version of semantic abuse". Can you elaborate a bit on these scholars' perspectives?
Rebecca: Well, that's a sensible other side of this argument. They want to keep the word religion for those particular, to keep those phenomena that we define as a religion as only those historical religions, only those historical religions. These Scholars reject any notion that you can have religion be anything except Judaism, Christianity, Taoism, and all of the historic religions that redefined us. So anything else is just blasphemy. I mean, they don't just see it as something that's not good they really see it as blasphemous. That somehow you are saying that religion is something broader than that concept that historic religions are.
Chris: Well, it's good to see that perspective and understand it so we have this in context. I'm going to go back to the whole discussion of your book on religion and sports and their interconnectedness. You quote a 1993 book called, "Religion and Sport: The Meeting of the Sacred and Profane", this statement, "It is both proper and necessary to call Sport itself a religion. It is also reasonable to consider sport the newest and fastest-growing religion far outdistancing whatever is in second place". What do you think about that statement Rebecca?
Rebecca: Again these are these are people who feel very passionate about sports and I guess if you count the numbers of people who go to attend sporting events versus the numbers of people who actually go to church, synagogue, or mosque; sports would win hands down, especially since sports is televised and interviewed. If you start just looking at that numerically, that's a sensible argument. Whether or not Sports has replaced religions, Sports in that place in people's lives. I mean again, we're looking at that particular place in people's lives. What's the most important thing to you? What do you value the most? I would say probably most people would say that Sports is not really their religion, that it's not that essential to them.
Chris: Well and I think Scholars looking at the historical record have helpful things to say to us, Right?
Rebecca: Indeed and challenging too. I think what a lot of Scholars like to do is put out new ideas and let people think about them, learn about them and decide for themselves. That's the most important thing.
Chris: Yes. We are talking about the interconnections between sports and religion with Rebecca Albert, Professor of Religion at Temple University in Philadelphia and author of Religion and Sports: An Introduction and Case Studies. If you have not done so yet, please visit story of American religion dot org and sign up for the future podcast notifications under the sign-up tab.
Rebecca in the section of the book entitled, "Does religion have a place in sports or Sports and religion", you give a history of their interconnectedness. What was the attitude towards Sports when Europeans landed in the Americas up to the mid-19th century, give us that historical detail?
Rebecca: So in that earlier period we were dominated by a group called the Puritans, pretty much in terms of the way the people understood their religious obligation. We had religious freedom in theory but in practice, they were very powerful. I mean, we never established religion, but if you were not Protestant, if you were not in the North Puritan and in the South Episcopalian, you probably weren't going to get anywhere. You weren't going to be tolerated I guess as opposed to having equal rights. That mindset was actually not in favor of Sports at all. That particularly Puritan mindset and the Puritan way of looking at Christian Living said Sports is a waste of time. Maybe they actually knew that Sports could become the most important religion if they didn't watch out, but they were not pro-religion in any way. I mean people bowled and they certainly did sports but they couldn't do it on the Sabbath. There were strong prohibitions against Sports on Sundays and a lot of tension for people who were interested in sports and liked sporting activities, they were considered not exactly taboo, but certainly not a value.
Chris: Okay, but then we hit mid-19th century and some things begin to change, you explain a concept or a phenomenon called “muscular Christianity.” It came into vogue, I guess first in Europe about that time. When it became a phenomenon in the United States, how did it influence the relationship or the intersection of sports and religion here?
Rebecca: Well “muscular Christianity” was the essence of the intersection between sports and religion. There was again this growing sense among Protestants that there was this competing set of values. Sometimes it's better to join them than try to beat them.
So very smart concept, the idea that Jesus and Paul, really were strong muscular figures. I mean, the Christian leaders saw in sports an opportunity to really make religion more powerful and recognize that you didn't have to be sissy if you wanted to be Christian. That you could in fact embrace being a powerful person and being someone who was athletic, and that could be part of your Christian identity and they didn't have to be separate phenomena. So that really was the essence of muscular Christianity that there's a muscular Catholicism as well that began to develop. Being Catholic was very different from being Protestant and being Jewish was very different as well. Catholics and Jews also found ways to assert that their religions were also compatible with sports.
Chris: Okay. You write about that. Now, I found it interesting and fascinating that at that time churches began to build gymnasia and sponsor that their own teams. Then you mentioned a particular Church in New York, St. John the Divine, how it commissioned stained glass windows with figures in sports poses. What other examples are there of the ramifications of muscular Christianity in the United States?
Rebecca: Well, I just think about the YMCA. The YMCA was really and ultimately the YWCA and then ultimately the YMHA, the young men's Hebrew Association as well—that was a way of saying that gyms and sporting activities were in fact under the umbrella of religious organizations. The YMCA was that young men's Christian Association and yet most of what happens in Ys were basketball, swimming, and other sports. That was a way of bringing these things together and that movement was very powerful. Then mostly the game of football was played in colleges and it was mostly played in Ivy League colleges, which were not that strongly associated with religions. Then Notre Dame decided it was going to get into the sports activities and other religious institutions that were affiliated with different religious denominations also started having Sports as a central part of their programs.
The connection between sports and religion grew, the evangelicals were actually the last to get on board, but there were people like Billy Sunday who was a former baseball player and Evangelical preacher. He began to talk about why those connections were really important and why being a religious person meant being a strong person, Making the Connections. I think as you know in Catholicism, Judaism, and Protestantism, between the body and the mind, a strong body mental strong Spirit, and a strong body meant to a strong mind. If you got involved in doing sports then you would be strengthening your connection to God.
Chris: It sounds like just from this perspective, Sports had quite an effect on American religion.
Rebecca: For sure, there's really no question that Sports just became a very important part of understanding how one was able to express oneself as a religious person.
Chris: Right. You detail the development of a new version of muscular Christianity in the mid-twentieth century which Frank Deford labeled, and I may be getting the pronunciation wrong as I've never heard it, but I've seen it written, "Sportianity". Can you tell us about this and its ramifications including what we learn from De Ford's 1976 three-part essay, "Religion in Sport" in Sports Illustrated?
Rebecca: Well, I think basically what he was saying is, he like Novak, they were beginning to stretch out what it meant for sports to become so central to the religious project. The fact that it went overboard, the fact that people made these connections to strongly perhaps, and maybe we're beginning to do that thing that people got really scared about which was substituting sports for religion or turning their sports connections into the center of their religious practices. Also, the opposite, which was the effort of Christian groups to make Sports so much a part of what they were doing, that they changed the nature of their own message.
Christen: So in a word, what was Frank Deford saying in that three-part essay?
Rebecca: “Maybe this isn't so good.” I mean, maybe there's too big a connection between sports and Christianity to the point where it became "sportianitty". It's like Christianity was being taken over by these connections to sports.
Chris: Okay, so Rebecca, we're now going to turn to religion and sports and how they don't get along, for lack of a better phrase in the United States. You write that "One of the major sources of friction between sports and religion in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam has been when the times for religious observance conflict with sporting events". Tell us what we need to understand here.
Rebecca: So, I think I mentioned this a little earlier The Puritans were very clear that on the Sabbath you do holy things and you don't do sports. But the world of sports has taken over Sundays, hasn't it. So the choice between going to church and going out to do sporting events was problematic for many Christians for a long time. Until they actually had a move the times of the football games and the baseball games and make sure that they weren't in conflict.
People say, how do you spend your time? How do you make enough time for both Sports and religion, something has to give. So they had to make compromises. It's harder actually, when you think about Muslims during Ramadan, how do they manage to observe their fasts and play sports at the same time? I mean we see that some of them do. But it's very difficult and it can certainly cause conflicts. How about an Orthodox Jewish team that won't travel on the Sabbath, how do they get to their games? When their Sabbath is on Saturdays? How can they participate? So there's always this tension of like what's more important? What comes first? I remember as a child the Jewish High Holidays are always during the World Series. So technically, Jews are not supposed to be paying attention to other things during a holiday like Yom Kippur which is the most solemn day of the year, but you know the Yankees were playing so what do you do? How do you resolve that conflict? You make a decision for your religious practice, or do you make a decision for your sports practice? A lot of kids go to Sunday School and if they have soccer practice at the same time as Sunday school, what do we choose? These are hard questions for sports enthusiasts who also want to keep their religious practices.
Chris: Well said. You explain that one point in this section of your book about public displays of religious commitment and sport, that "Manufacturers have also been working on modest clothing that is suitable for swimming and other sports and special hijabs have been created for sportswear". Since the printing of your book, I think this has actually happened. Can you share some stories about this? This does not conflict now of “time” but this is “displays of one's religiosity” and the problems that come with that, and sports.
Rebecca: This is actually a complicated question in terms of hijab, people don't think of the connection between Islam and sports. But in fact, Islam has a very positive attitude towards Sports. Positive attitude towards women in sports as well, but that women have to be separated from men because modesty is extremely important. So how can a woman dress modestly and still perform her Sports? Well, we live in a world where things change and people think about these things and there have been hijabs created modest clothing for women created for just about every Sport. Muslim women are now very actively involved, in you'll see that they've won fencing titles. The first woman in the Olympics for Saudi Arabia was a woman who was wrestling in her hijab, doing Judo I mean, I'm sorry sometimes I get these Sports confused. There has really been an effort to make sure that women can both observe their religious practices that are dressed modestly and at the same time be involved in sports practices as well.
I guess it's not just a question of wearing modest clothing because a lot of sports figures who are religious themselves also want to have their religious affiliation emblazoned on their body. So I don't know if you know and it may be old news now but Tim Tebow used to write John 3:16 under his eyes when he was playing sports particularly playing football in college and they made him stop doing that. Why? Because there was too great a connection between sports and religion and sports really was a venue for him to exercise his free exercise of religion. Although it came in conflict with other values related to freedom of religion, which is freedom from being oppressed by someone else's religion. So there was a decision at a secular university that he couldn't have those kinds of displays of religion.
Again, this is a pretty complicated set of stories and it comes up fairly often. How do you express your religious beliefs in the context of a secular sporting event?
Chris: Right, which some people see as very religious.
Rebecca: That is the religion of sport.
Chris: Yes, exactly. Rebecca, when addressing religion and ethical dilemmas in sports, which was an interesting section, you begin by saying this, "Modern sports were founded on the idea of the fostering of good values, including healthy lifestyles, teamwork, sportsmanship, and equal opportunity in the form of a level playing field, But that in recent years this great “sport’s myth” (which you have in quotes in your book) ‘the great sport’s myth’ has begun to crumble". This is a pretty important statement in your book, covers a lot of ground here. What are the manifestations of this and the ramifications for the country?
Rebecca: So we've seen incredible cheating scandals in sports. Had the pandemic not taken over, the fact that the Houston Astros lost their title because they were cheating during the World Series. The New England Patriots deflating the footballs, people bending the rules, has given the lie to this myth that sports are all about fairness or fair play and equal opportunity. The fact that gambling has always been very closely associated with sports; the fact that sometimes sports less in our country, but certainly around the world, fans die at soccer matches by being trampled to death. There's a lot of things that happen in the context of sports, the kind of racism that we've seen on display. The kind of unevenness between men and women's opportunities and experiences in sports. The fact that poor people have a very hard time getting to getting to achieve things because it's so expensive. Children's sports are so expensive for families to engage in. These are the kinds of negative elements of the sport that sports fans who believe in the great “sports myth” - that it's the best thing in the world are not really willing to come to terms with.
I'm not saying that religion is not also riddled with all of these things. We've seen so many instances of sexual violence, corruption, gambling, and all kinds of things in every realm of every religion in the United States. We often associate these evils with the Catholic Clergy, but in fact, they are broad. But religion again makes a claim to certain sets of values that may be the realm of sports is not always amenable to. So they've there have certainly been tensions and very often religious leaders, if you listen to their sermons, you hear them talk, they will be very critical of the kinds of evils that take place in sports.
Chris: Thank you. You write, Rebecca that while, "Sports have been understood as a safe arena that has replaced religion as a location for ritually enacted violence that provides a necessary catharsis for society, some argue that violence and sports give permission for violence in society". Can you talk to us a bit about violence in sports and religion?
Rebecca: Yeah, the last time I taught my sports and society class I had a wonderful student who decided to tackle this question in youth hockey because he had played youth hockey and he saw the kinds of violence that is permitted. I mean hockey is a terribly good, terrible/good example of the kind of violence that exists in sports and there are you know, he was looking at youth Christian hockey leagues and the way that they tried to come to terms with the fact that their sport was very violent. He actually discovered some Christian Youth Hockey Leagues that eschew the violence, that don't permit the kind of fighting that exists in hockey in mainly the United States but also Canadian Hockey. And tries to teach anti-violence in sports.
But anybody who's sat under the basket at a basketball game or watched a melee in a baseball game or watched any play in professional football, realizes that violence in sports not only is an intrinsic part of sport, but has also, as we become more aware of concussion and more aware of the kinds of physical harm that particularly professional but even lower levels of athletes have done to their bodies because the sport is so violent - it gives us pause and makes us wonder how Sports can be held up in the kinds of ways that it is, as again the great “sport myth.” So particularly religious organizations that sponsor sporting events have had to come to terms with this whole question of how violent sports are and how to help that along and how to make it better.
Chris: So have religiously affiliated schools ever made statements regarding the violence of saying hockey and football, which seemed to be sort of the most violent perhaps, in religious terms?
Rebecca: I don't think you find that in official circumstances, but I'm very aware of, again particularly for youth trying to make sure that the kind of message is that we don't want to harm our bodies, we want to strengthen our bodies. That's muscular Christianity. Right? It's the strengthening, empowering, and making people feel connected. Connecting their bodies and their spirits and not hurting others. It's possible that there are official pronouncements that I actually don't know. I haven't seen any though.
Chris: Well as we conclude here Rebecca, you know an hour is definitely not enough time to cover this area of sports and religion and I think in my mind that we could have a whole series about sports and religion. That would be of great interest and I think as we discussed before, there's a lot to learn about the country when we look at sports because it's so pervasive and so popular. As we conclude this, I would say first deep dive into religion and sports, do you want to share any lessons or takeaways from the book or from this topic either in terms of important historical transformations, you were charting? Or even just in terms of helping us better understand the country's present moment?
Rebecca: In terms of the present moment, I was unbelievably inspired and again, these are my particular politics and I know everybody wouldn't necessarily agree with them. But the Women's National Basketball Association, of all of the different groups that had to contend with the police brutality issues, they stood up and they spoke out and made a difference in our society. The fact that one of the owners of the Atlanta Dream, the women's NBA team in Atlanta was defeated for her Senatorial race in Georgia. Just this week or so. I give those women of the NBA a lot of credit, they really stood up to her and they express their feelings and because they were public figures they got attention. Because they were willing, and the men of the NBA as well, willing to financially they put their money where their mouths were. Along with work very hard to make a change and work very hard to be very public about their political views. This is not new, there was Muhammad Ali, there was Jackie Robinson. There were figures in American Sports history who stood up and said this is what's right, and I'm going to try to change things. I'm going to make things right and I think that we need to give our sports figures a lot of credit for being willing to say, "I don't just play basketball". "I don't just play football". "I don't just coach a football team". "I'm a public figure and I have a right to make public statements".
That has changed drastically. I think everybody kind of understands now that to get back to religion and sports, when Colin Kaepernick took a knee, he wasn't doing anything different from what Martin Luther King did on the bridge, right? They were both expressing their Christian beliefs, that their obedience was to God and not to another authority. That God in their understanding of God, God wanted peace, God wanted integration, God wanted to make sure that everybody in this country had a fair opportunity to do well. To live in peace and not be brutalized or murdered by police in this particular case and actually in the case of Martin Luther King as well. So I like making those connections and I like seeing that these things are happening and that Sports isn't only an opportunity as it has been for military planes to fly over stadiums at the Super Bowl. But it's also an opportunity for individual sports figures to stand up and say, "In my belief, this is my firmly held belief, this is not right and I want to make a change".
Chris: Okay. You had the last word. We have been talking about the interconnections between sports and religion in the United States with Rebecca Alpert, Professor of Religion at Temple University in Philadelphia and author of, Religion and Sports: An Introduction in Case Studies. If you have not done so yet, please visit storyamericanreligion.org and sign up for future podcast notifications under our signup tab.
At the conclusion of this episode, we trust that listeners understand more about what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion and have a deeper appreciation of religious freedom as a governing principle in the United States. Seeing to its protection as an indispensable part of the fragile American experiment in self-government.
Rebecca, thank you so much for being with us and doing the really hard work of researching and writing a book that helps us all understand America better. It's been very enlightening for me and our listeners, I'm sure and I hope you've enjoyed the time with us as well.
Rebecca: I very much enjoyed it, Chris. Thank you for reading my books.
Chris: You bet, it was great. I have to read your others now. All right, Rebecca. Thank you.
Rebecca: Take care, Chris.