Sports is my Religion. Rather
soccer is, but for the purpose of this entry I will generalize it under sports.
I live, breathe, watch, and play sports. I practice it so often that it
basically is my chosen religion. It
is the passion, identities, dedication, and ritualistic actions that allow me
to identify sports as my religion. However, other athletes will argue religions
such as Christianity, Hinduism, or Judaism. But is ones religion necessarily
the result of the outcome? What really is the appropriate relationship between
sports and one’s religious beliefs? 
I
have never physically kneeled on the sideline, (similar to the infamous Tim
Tebow stance “Tebowing”) praying to the man above for a victory in my favor or that
the play produces the outcomes intended. I have, though, stood anxiously at the
halfway line on the soccer field in the nerve-racking situation of penalty
kicks during one of the most important games to many of the girls on the team’s
athletic careers, as well as my own—the state cup championship. Tightly
clenching the hands of teammates, heads bowed, and eyes shut, I willingly joined
them in their silent prayer, while the anticipation of uncertainty stroke upon
us. No one told me, nor forced me to join them in their ritual; it was almost
second nature.
I have participated in the pre-game rituals
and superstitions evoked by the connectivity and unity of the team atmosphere
and their deep beliefs in religion winning the game. And I did so just because.
Whether it was standing on a certain half of the field to do our cheer, or
wearing matching blue underwear on Sundays, was it upon me to believe that we
produced undefeated seasons and two state cup championships because of those ritualistic
practices? No. But to those that brought the habit amongst the team, maybe more
so. I partook in these rituals, because really, I had nothing to lose—if we won
we won, if we lost then we lost. But by partaking in these practices, does that
necessarily mean that by doing as my team members did, that they were forcing their
religious beliefs on me? Again, I answer, no.
Today,
I think we are at the stage where religion has become a big part of sports,
almost as if they go hand-in-hand with one another, as if they are one of the same.
We watch televised professional games, such as the National Football League
(NFL), and see athletes silently participating in individual prayer and
rituals, and teams coming together to pray aloud in pregame huddles. According
to athletes, prayers before sport events are a sign of asking God for guidance,
direction, and inner strength in times of uncertainty. Players today, more than
ever, are expressing their religion on and off the playing field, by kneeling
to the ground or pointing to the man upstairs, participating in silent talks
with God asking for the results he has intended for them. Winning is not all
about the answers from God; it, too, is accredited to the individual physical
capabilities pursued to accomplish the desired tasks at hand. But, maybe because
of the answers and help from God, it is that these athletes produce the
physical abilities and strengths to answer their own prayers thinking that they would not have been
able to without Gods assistance.
I, personally, do not believe that
religion is always the answer to the victories and accomplishments within
sports. I do, though, believe that religion and sports have an interconnecting
relationship. Although certain individuals want to dismiss religion from the sports
realm, according to JasonW. Lee, “it should be apparent that the two have various common bonds”. Coakley’s
Sports in Society: Issues and Controversies,
states that it is the competition that initially evokes the prayer or religious
rituals to sports. There is a growing connectivity between sports and religion,
with sports using religion as a means to:
2. To
stay out of trouble
3. To
give meaning to sport participation
4. To
put sport participation into a balanced perspective
5. To
establish team solidarity and unity
6. To
reaffirm expectation, rules, and social control on teams
7. To
assert autonomy in the face of power
8. To
achieve personal and competitive success
9. To
market games and sell tickets
Although there may be challenges in mixing the two,
sports and religion have similar commonalties that make them so alike. As
Coakley lists in the text, they both:
1. Have
places or building for communal gatherings and special events
2. Emerge
out of a disciplined quest for perfection in the body, mind, and spirit
3. Are
Controlled through structured organizations and hierarchical systems of authority
4. Have
events to celebrate widely shared values
5. Have
rituals before, during, and after major events
6. Have
heroes and legend about heroic accomplishments
7. Evoke
intense emotions and give meaning to people’s lives
8. Can
be used to distract attentions from important social, political, and economic
issues and thereby become “opiates” the masses
According
to Neil Stacey
in an interview with Pete Nicholas, Nicholas believes:
“That faith is
an integral part in the make up of an athlete…Christian players have far
greater motivation to apply themselves 100%. They seek their abilities as a God-given
gift to be used as an act to worship and in recognizing their abilities, and
using them correctly they are bringing glory to God”.
As in the recent “Tebowing”
phenomenon, through the words of Tebow himself, he has emphasized time and time
again how his accomplishments are accredited to his Lord
and Savior, Jesus Christ. In the clip, you can hear him continuously recognizing
and applauding his faith for his successes, and even hear him praying at one
point before a game: “please put a wall of protection around me and my teammates
today, as we go out there and honor you with everything we do and say. Love you
Jesus, amen”.
Similarly, in Coakley’s
reading, Andrew Corsello makes the point “that religion enables a player to
establish an identity outside of the rigid, hierarchical structure of organized
sports and therefore resist the power of coaches and team owners who control
their lives”. Like Tebow, athletes use religion to escape the control of
coaches and owners and rely more on the control of God for their perspective outcomes.
As mentioned earlier,
religion provides a means for controlling the outcome as a source for guidance,
inner strength, and direction. Each athlete has their own choice to partake in
their religious beliefs so much that it does not override the beliefs of
others. In my opinion, sports and religion are compatible with one another. You
see it every day with athletes bringing religion to the sports environment, and
in turn, religions incorporating sports in their daily practices. I would
argue, however, that there needs to be some sort of balance in the sense that
religion can only go so far in the sports environment—to the extent that
athletes can still be comfortable with their beliefs and not feel forced to
practice or convert to other religions. Essentially, the relationship between
sports and religion must have a happy medium—not too much but not too little.
