March Madness

Not to be the basketball killjoy or anything, but with the brackets in place and the gaming begun, I propose it’s worth pausing for a moment this March to consider the place of competitive sports in our culture and our faith.

I know, you probably don’t want to talk about it. There’s a game on.  But it’s fascinating to me on a number of levels the ways Americans — and in particular evangelical Christians in the U.S. — are obsessed with competitive sports.  From little league to pro ball, we’re on it, and with passion.

If you missed it around Super Bowl time, Christianity Today released a thoughtful article entitled “Sports Fanatics: How Christians have succumbed to the sports culture—and what might be done about it.”  It’s contributed by Shirl James Hoffman, a former athlete and college basketball coach who has authored a new book, Good Game: Christianity and the Culture of Sports. This paragraph in particular is game for good conversation about sports culture in the U.S.:

Variously described by those inside and outside as narcissistic, materialistic, violent, sensationalist, coarse, racist, sexist, brazen, raunchy, hedonistic, body-destroying, and militaristic, big-time sports culture lifts up values in sharp contrast with what Christians for centuries have understood as the embodiment of the gospel. There are simply no easy, straight-faced, intellectually respectable answers for how evangelicals can model the Christian narrative—with its emphases on servanthood, generosity, and self-subordination—while immersed in a culture that thrives on cut-throat competition, partisanship, and Darwinian struggle.

And this is coming from an honest sports-lover!  If you can catch a moment (perhaps during commercials) this week, it’s an interesting read.  I’d love to hear feedback from folks who have read the book; I haven’t.

For me, “big-time sports culture” represents the epitome of cultural abandonment of kids—in this week’s case, the abandonment of 18-21 year old late adolescents who don’t have any idea how to handle us screaming our heads off at them through our TVs or from our place in the stands.   So yes, I do have a hard time reconciling that culture with my faith.  And I’ve very, very rarely heard a thoughtful Christian response beyond referring to a particular player or coach’s outspoken faith (which we gleefully eat up). Perhaps ironically, I’m a spiritual product of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and their high school camp program.  I know all the analogies and reasons to believe in the redemptive and character-building power of sports.  But standing on this side as a youth worker, researcher, and parent, I think it’s worth rethinking the faith we put in “big-time sports culture” in our churches and youth ministries, perhaps especially as it relates to the way we treat guys.  What do you think?

©2010 Fuller Youth Institute