More on "The Tebow Thing"

Art Remillard

Isn't Friday a perfect day for some shameless self-promotion?  I think so.

A while back, I blogged about my "Religion and Sports" course and mentioned Tim Tebow--the quintessential "Sportian" and "superhuman" cult of personality.  Somehow this caught the eye of Sean Gregory, a sportswriter at Time.  So the other evening we had a delightful conversation, and here's the result...

...while some guys wear religion on their sleeves, Tebow literally covers his body with faith. He writes out bible verses on his eye-black [the face paint athletes wear to reduce glare]. Tebow is an unabashed believer, who views the world in black and white. He once told a group of prisoners: "If you have Jesus Christ in your heart, you are going to spend eternity in heaven. If you don’t, you’re going to spend eternity in hell."


Before the 2010 Super Bowl, Tebow threw himself, headlong, into one of the country’s most divisive and deeply personal debates — abortion — by appearing in a pro-life Super Bowl ad for Focus on the Family, the prominent Evangelical organization. (One touchstone of Tebow lore: his mother, Pam, suffered from pregnancy complications with Tim, and a doctor told her that an abortion might save her life. The devout Pam gave birth to Tim anyway, and many of Tebow’s supporters view his success as a message from God.)

Tebow seems to have crossed a line that most athletes have respected. They’ll celebrate their own faith, but won’t challenge yours. “This is a sticking point,” says Arthur Remillard, a religious studies professor at St. Francis College in Loretto, Pa., who teaches a course on sports and religion, and starts it off with a Tebow discussion. “It’s one thing for an athlete to say 'Thank you, Jesus,' on a Sunday afternoon. It’s another for him to make what amounts to a declaration that ‘I am morally superior to you.’ There’s a segment of the fan base that’s not too keen on hearing that.” Continue . . .

An Amish Paradox That Isn't All That Paradoxical

Art Remillard

It seems that the only time I ever see the Amish here in central Pennsylvania is when I'm running late for an 8:00am class.  It's predictable.  Buzzing along the backroads, fretting the inevitability of time, I round a bend and there plods a horse and buggy.  "Shucks!"  I shout (or, if I'm really late, it's "Drat" and "Fooey").  So I wait impatiently for a straightaway, then zoom along in a triumph of twenty-first century technology.  Oh, if only my better angels would quell my road rage.  Then I might take this opportunity to think about my slow moving neighbors' religious distinctiveness.

From their horses and buggies to their clothes and quilts, the Amish identity is among the most recognizable in America.  But their backward march along technology's trail occasionally detours into the modern world.  Many farmers around here hire Amish men who cannot drive themselves to work or Wal-Mart, but don't hesitate to ask their employers for rides.  It's all part of what Charles E. Hurst and David L. McConnell call the “Amish paradox,” characterized by an ongoing negotiation between avoiding the modern world and working within it. Drawing upon their ethnographic research done in Holmes County, Ohio, the authors reveal the differences and tensions existing among the Amish over the uses of technology.  In some communities, for example, prosperous families might hire drivers.  Elsewhere, vehicle travel is banned except for emergencies.

The authors also address Amish attitudes toward sports, and in particular, softball.  For the unbaptized youth, softball is all the rage, which causes some concern.  "Softball requires a considerable outlay of money and time for equipment and travel," Hurst and McConnell explain, "and it calls for uniforms and even haircuts that do not sit well with church members.  The custom of playing under the lights or even on Sundays also runs against Amish beliefs, and there is the fear that exposure to argumentativeness and showmanship that characterize non-Amish sporting events will undermine the Amish emphasis on cooperation and humility."

Who knew that softball could have such perilous consequences?   Maybe they could try running.  That seems far less complicated, particularly if you have the right clothes...and shoes.  A friend of mine recently ran the “Amish Country Bird-in-Hand Half Marathon” in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and forwarded me some pictures.  On this hot and humid day, a crowd of scantily dressed runners mingled with Amish men who wore their standard attire.  That is, except for one participant, who deviated from the footwear norm.  Look closely at this picture and you'll notice on his feet a pair of Vibram Five Fingers. It all makes sense.  As I've said before, these "barefoot" shoes are marketed using Edenic imagery that tells athletes, "You Are the Technology."  In other words, don't believe the shoe companies.  Your feet are the anti-modern solution to fast times and injury prevention.  Maybe we should just call them "Amish shoes"?  After all, this curious image represents a meeting of old and new, where the lines become indistinguishable.  Put another way, as far as shoes are concerned, the march of progress has come full circle, where an unshod Amish man was waiting all along.  I just hope that when he gets back into his buggy, he won't make me late for class.

On Jews and Black Baseball: An Interview With Rebecca Alpert

Art Remillard
I can't say enough good things about Rebecca Alpert's new book, Out of Left Field: Jews and Black Baseball (OUP, 2011).  I'll be reviewing it soon for a local radio program.  You can read Professor Alpert's thoughts on the book over at Religion Dispatches, along with an interview.  And then there's my conversation with her below.  Enjoy!

-----------------------------  

AR: Please begin by giving us some background on this project, and particularly how this is both a continuation of your previous scholarship and a new direction.

RA: I have been interested in twentieth century American Jewish history I wrote my dissertation on American reform rabbis from that era many decades ago. Later in my career I became interested in the intersection of sport and religion, and began to write about Jews and baseball. Writing about racial identity and secular Jewish concerns are the newest parts of the puzzle, and these interests all coalesced around I began to discover about the role Jews played in black baseball.

AR: Your book is as much about race and religion as it is about baseball. Would you discuss how you balanced writing about the game and addressing these broader issues?

RA: An historian friend who read the manuscript in draft complained that there was too little baseball in it. Although I do enjoy the game, I was really interested in how Jews related to the world of black baseball mostly from the perspectives of business and entertainment, so I probably erred on the side of focusing on broader issues.

AR: With a topic like this, I imagine that it was difficult locating sources. Was this the case? And could you talk generally about your experiences in the archives and sorting through newspapers?

RA: I began with secondary materials that would mention the tensions between black and Jewish Negro League owners and the role of the communist sportswriters but didn’t go into detail. I was lucky to meet Rabbi Curtis Caldwell who introduced me to the Belleville Grays, the black Jewish team run by his community. From there, I began to read the African American press. Access to digitized versions of Black Historical Newspapers (rather than the dizzying and eye straining microfilm versions) through my university library made all the difference in the world in terms of being able to do this project. I relied heavily on the observations of the many fine newspapermen in the black press who were writing social commentary on the sports pages. Archives that I consulted proved spottier, but there were gems tucked away in many places; not uncommon in archival research. I also cannot overstate the kindness (and curiosity) of the sundry librarians and archivists who came to my aid, either via email or in person.

AR: Complimenting your impressive assortment of primary sources are your interviews with former Negro League players. How do you feel your book benefited from these interviews? Do you have advice for anyone planning to do interviews for their own projects?

RA: While I loved talking to many of the former players (and reading the oral histories other researchers compiled), I found that the players were mostly reluctant to talk about the Jewish owners I was interested in. There are many possible reasons for that reluctance, but I didn’t really want to speculate about that.

As far as advice is concerned, the website of the Oral History Association is very useful in getting started. It’s really important to do your homework--know as much as you can about the person you want to talk to before contacting them. That will help you craft interesting questions which make good answers possible.

AR: You talk extensively about the Jewish entrepreneurs of black baseball, such as Ed Gottlieb, Syd Pollock, and Abe Saperstein. I felt like their motivations were difficult to pigeonhole. Sometimes they seemed to have noble intentions. Other times, profit won the day. Is this accurate? And what conclusions did you reach about the motives of these businessmen of black baseball?

RA: I think that when good intentions and profit were in sync the entrepreneurs were quite noble. But I also tried hard not to impose the ideas about race and racism that we hold today on them anachronistically.

AR: In contrast, it seemed like the Jewish communists writing for The Daily Worker were much more ideologically driven. That is, they drew from both their Jewish and political rhetorical toolboxes to devise arguments favoring baseball’s integration. Is this accurate? And were these writers coming to the conversation from an entirely different place than the businessmen? Or did they share some common ground?

RA: The communists and the businessmen lived in different worlds. I like to think that it was the communists who were expressing Jewish values rather than the businessmen, but both groups’ behaviors were the product of the experience of second generation immigrants. They just expressed different dimensions of that social situation.

AR: I have always admired Hank Greenberg, but do now even more after reading about his relationship with Jackie Robinson, which began after a collision in 1947. Did you gain a deeper appreciation of any particular person? Similarly, was there anyone who you found to be utterly dislikable?

RA: In the course of this work I became fascinated by the life and career of Buster Haywood, who seemed to crop up in all the stories I was telling. He played both for the Belleville Grays (the team of Hebrew Israelites) and the Indianapolis Clowns (owned by Syd Pollock) and was friends with Jackie Robinson. I felt like he accompanied me through the research and writing process, and I ended up writing a separate article about him. Through Buster Haywood I was able to gain some perspective on the difficulties and joys in the life of an ordinary African American player in the era of segregation.

Although the Jewish entrepreneurs often behaved in ways I didn’t always appreciate, I actually found them rather sympathetic characters. I think it’s important not to demonize (or idolize) people you’re writing about.

AR: If I had a time travel machine, I’d go back to 1926 and watch the game between the “Hebrew All-Star Nine” and the Ku Klux Klan that you mention. Are there any games that you wished you could have witnessed too?

RA: I would love to have been at an East-West All-Star game. These games took place in Chicago each summer from the 1930s through the 1950s and featured all of the outstanding Negro League players that I came to admire as I was doing this research. I would have appreciated seeing them in action and also being among the fans who gave them the accolades they deserved.

AR: What do you hope that general readers (i.e., John and Jane Q. Sports Fan) will take away from this book? Likewise, what should American religious historians take from your book?

RA: I hope general readers appreciate the complex role Jews played in segregated baseball. I hope American religious historians see the value of using baseball as a way to understand the intertwining of race and religion in twentieth century America.

From Muscular Christianity to Tim Tebow

Paul Harvey

Just a quick note to a post by our contributor Art Remillard, whose book Southern Civil Religions: Imagining the Good Society in the Post-Reconstruction Era will be out this December with the University of Georgia Press.

Art's has posted here many times before on his current research interests in religion and sports (no, Sutton, fantasy football does not count). Over at the Historical Society blog, Art has reflected on "Building Bridges from 'Muscular Christianity' to 'The Tebow Thing,'" which stems in part from his current research and work in religion and sports in the South from the Civil War to World War II. A little excerpt, and then click the link for all of it:

So on "opening day," I invite students to cross a bridge from their hometown YMCA to "muscular Christianity." I cite Luther Gulick, his efforts to institute athletics at the Y, and his lifelong quest to understand "the relation of good bodies and good morals." I then turn to his colleague, James Naismith. On January 20, 1892, the Presbyterian minister gathered eighteen young men at a YMCA gym in Springfield, Massachusetts, to play his newly invented game called "basketball." Practically, Naismith hoped that basketball would give restless young men a suitable indoor activity for the long winter months. More importantly, as theologian Michael Novak summarizes, "The idea behind the game was moral, Christian, and hygienic: active clean living through vigorous exercise." Right from the gun, then, students discover the religious roots of a familiar game. Later in the course, drawing mostly from Bill Baker's Playing With God, I locate Gulick, Naismith, and other "muscular Christians" within the social gospel tradition, and discuss how they sought to Christianize all corners of society, from the schoolhouse to the gymnasium.

Continue . . .

Joe Price's Anthem Tour

Art Remillard

"When baseball functions as a civil religion," observes Joe Price in Rounding the Bases, "its true believers--the passionate fans and players who shape their worldviews and daily routines around their devotion to the game--experience a kind of sacramental rejuvenation in the game itself." Joe makes it no secret that he is a "true believer." The book concludes with a thoughtful recollection of his own baseball "conversion" narrative. And this summer, as research for his next book, Joe will sing the national anthem at over 100 minor league baseball parks across the nation.

If you're interested in following along, check out his website , Facebook page, and blog. Joe's wife is also coming along for the ride (they're traveling in an RV), blogging on her side of the story.

Here's one of Joe's dispatches from Florida...

At St. Lucie, a twin pillared sculpture made from remnant steel at Ground Zero graces the entry to the ballpark and pays tribute to the victims of the Twin Towers’ attack. Created by Patrick Cochrane, the piece was donated by retired New York City firefighters who live in the St. Lucie area.

As I entered the ballpark to sing for Florida's Mets, the relic reminded me of the consummate performance of the national anthem by Daniel Rodriguez, then a New York City policeman, at Yankee Stadium shortly after the 9/11 tragedies.

While the crowd’s response to my anthem rendition in St. Lucie was enthusiastic, the most expressive gestures and comments came from Mets players and a vendor. As I walked the gauntlet past the Mets dugout right after I had sung, manager Pedro Lopez gave me thumbs up and said “Good job,” followed by third-baseman Richard Lucas reaching over the dugout railing to shake hands with me. A short time later, the vendor who was roasting pretzels over a charcoal fire near the backstop breezeway expressed great appreciation for the anthem itself. He offered that his wife, Laura Mercado, had auditioned a couple of days earlier to sing for the Mets and hopes to sing soon for one of the games.

A similar connection took place the following day in Jupiter while I was eating a delectable lunch at Le Metro in the Abacoa Town Center. Tiara, the waitress, recommended the broth-based mushroom soup and, as an entrée, grilled scallops, presented over tabouli, sliced tomatoes, and a fan of avocado slices dressed with an herbed balsamic vinegarette. I still savor that meal. When she asked what business had brought me to town, I indicated that I’d be singing for the Hammerheads a few hours later. “Wow!” she exclaimed and then recounted how some years ago when she had been living in Newport Beach, California, her daughter Nicole Gero had sung the national anthem for the Freedom Bowl game.

It’s quite simple: Anthem performances bring people together.

Pole Dancing for Jesus?

Art Remillard

"Pole dancing for Jesus." Seriously? OK, there's something wrong here. I mean, "Jesus Didn't Tap" is one thing. But this? It must be an April Fools joke. After all, it's posted on April 1. And Mr. "Wisenheimer" himself, Mark Oppenheimer, authored the story.

Alas, a quick Google search shows that, indeed, the former-stripper-turned-born-again-Christian Crystal Deans has in fact Christianized her pole dancing classes. And predictably enough, there are plenty of critics. "Pole dancing has transcended from strip clubs," blasts one blogger, who admits that it has become a more mainstream form of exercise, but objects to the lingering "sexual aspect."

Ah sex. Oppenheimer theorizes that this is the story's initial draw. "People are reliably called to attention by the promise of a little skin. And there is something extra naughty when the skin belongs to a Christian, presumed to be a good girl gone bad--the kind of girl who, to quote the old blues song, goes to church on Sunday, then cabaret all day Monday." Yet, in talking with Deans, Oppenheimer discovers someone who simply wants to redefine herself and others. "This has helped a lot of people," Deans explains. "It’s helped people with weight. It’s helped people spice up their marriages. It’s done a lot of good things."

As for the stigma of pole dancing? "I go to church every Sunday and I pray," says Deans . "I talk to God things like that I think there’s nothing wrong with what I do. I teach women to feel good about themselves, to feel empowered and we get in really good shape. God is the only person that judges so anybody who wants to judge me, feel free to but I'm good with God, so that’s what’s important to me and I really don’t care what people think."

So this curious case becomes an example of one person's effort to empower bodies and souls. No joke.

Yes, Researchers Do Know Something About Teaching

Art Remillard

On the final day of FSU’s Graduate Symposium, I had the pleasure of joining Kelly Baker, Betsy Barre, Howell Williams, and Joseph Williams to talk about, "Life after Graduate School." A recurring theme was the difference between teaching and research schools. We outlined strategies for interviewing at such schools, and gave insights on what daily life is like as a teacher or researcher. We also emphasized that, despite outward appearances, folks at teaching schools take research seriously, and folks at research schools take teaching seriously. This point--that researchers strive to excel in the classroom--could use some publicity. Many of the best professors I've known are also productive scholars. They have an infectious enthusiasm about their subject, and give as much thought to their course designs as they do to any article or book. They are also creative, always looking for something new to enliven the classroom. Take our own Paul Harvey, for example. UCCS's Teaching and Learning Center featured Paul and his use of blogs in undergraduate courses. He also elaborated on his jazz-inspired teaching philosophy. No "teacher-centered" or "student-centered" approach for the good Professor Harvey.

I focus on a theme-and-improvisation model, that allows for the discipline and intellectual rigor of a theme while also encouraging soloing and improvisation. I find this model best fits the notion of learning as an active and dynamic process, that occurs for different students on varying levels. I have also found it works to make students feel they have a voice and that their participation is valued and drawn upon in course preparation, even while assuring them that discipline and intellectual rigor have not been sacrificed.

Blogging, jazz, intellectual rigor--very nice. How about some one-upmanship from Mike Pasquier, who has been collaborating with LSU’s Coastal Sustainability Studio to have his students conduct oral histories in Bayou Lafourche. Take a minute and listen to this podcast where Mike and his students discuss the project. The description:

Today’s show is an interview with one of the Center’s partners, Dr. Mike Pasquier, a professor here at LSU in the Religious Studies Department. Dr. Pasquier is working with the Center to establish the Bayou Lafourche Oral History Project. He and his students collected oral histories to gain a better understanding of the role of religion in everyday life among Bayou Lafourche residents. He’s also partnering with the Coastal Sustainability Studio here at LSU, and is using this material to garner a better understanding of how south Louisiana culture is being affected by wetland loss. He teaches courses in U.S. religious history, Christianity, and world religions and his research focuses on the history of Roman Catholicism in the American South, Catholic devotional culture, and religion in colonial Louisiana.

In this episode, the director will speak with him about his ongoing project in Bayou Lafourche, how he uses oral history in the college classroom, and how this research will be useful to a larger, interdisciplinary study assessing the impact of land loss on residents of the area. We’ll get to hear some clips from interviews recorded by some of his students with Bayou Lafourche residents. So join us today as we hear about men murmuring the rosary during Hurricane Betsy, about school children being punished for speaking French on state property, and about how the land and waters where people fish, work, and live is disappearing before our eyes.

What do Puritans, Shakers, Food, Beer, and Running Shoes Have in Common? Eden, of Course!

Art Remillard

“There was this idea that we are the new Adam and the new Eve,” remarks Stephen Prothero in the opening scenes of PBS’s God in America. For Puritans, Eden served as a narrative anchor, a place defined by God's law, which if followed to the letter offered untold heavenly promises. And so the story goes...and goes, and goes. I haven't finished watching the documentary, so I will take Paul's word for it that there wasn't enough attention given to the “brutal” underbelly of this mythology.

Indeed, the voices of power have used Eden to coerce, exclude, and alienate. But from the margins, Eden has also emerged in contests with conventional wisdom. For example, Mother Anne Lee theorized that the real sin of Adam and Eve was sexual intercourse. Lust was the root of all evil, she insisted, and human purity required celibacy. So celibacy it was. Shakers didn't have much luck replenishing their ranks, but they did develop a countercultural way of life from an assumption that God's sexless plan appeared first in Eden.

Jump ahead to today's countercultural movements, and where might we find Eden? Documentaries like Food, Inc. and Beer Wars take aim at corporate giants and cheer the local farmer and brewpub owner. But it's a tough road for the little guy. The machine will manipulate the laws, pressure politicians, exploit workers and vendors, and create an illusion that their cheap food is safe and that their tasteless beer will make baseball interesting. To protest, I might buy my food from Eden Organic, “a principled natural food company.” Or maybe I would join a co-op run by someone like the libertarian food prophet Joel Salatin, who one admirer paraphrased as saying, “if [the United States] had invested the same resources we used to transform the plains into corn and soybeans into building thousands of ponds, we would have Eden.” And if I was in Middletown, Connecticut, I'd enjoy a microbrew in the "beer garden of Eden," at Eli Cannon’s Tap Room Restaurant.

After all of this eating and drinking, I would need to burn off some calories. I'd leave my shoes at home, though, since in Eden, everyone runs barefoot. Christopher McDougall’s Born to Run has become the bible of barefoot running. While telling of the superhuman running abilities of the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico, McDougall also investigates the promises of running shoe companies. He concludes that their products aimed at preventing injuries have done the exact opposite. Cushioned heels, arch supports, springs, and the like. All of it weakens muscles in the feet, ankles, knees, and hips. Moreover, the downward slope of shoes forces the heel to strike first rather than the forefoot, thereby creating a heavier impact.

So, says McDougall, toss your shoes aside! And if your feet aren’t tough enough to handle the roads and rocks, you can fork over $90-$120 for a pair of Vibram FiveFingers. Sure these glorified aqua socks will garner quizzical looks from non-runners. But the payoff, according to the Vibram website, is “a more natural forefoot strike during running.” To make this whole "natural running" thing really evident, Vibram pulled the Eden card.

Open the microsite, http://www.youarethetechnology.com/ and you will see the names of various shoe technologies, all mashed together. Slowly the names disappear, behind a ghostly, echoing beat. Then two bodies appear, a man and a women, Adam and Eve, naked except for a pair of Vibrams. Printed about their bodies are slogans, “we’ll never out-engineer the human body,” “the natural running movement grows stronger by the day,” “you know how to run just like you know how to sneeze."

The website represents something of an embodied protest, a "country boy salute" waved at the major shoe companies. Of course, it also invites runners back to an injury-free Eden. Sounds good, right? Last spring my knee began bothering me and I thought surgery was inevitable. Luckily, a physical therapist recommended running barefoot in the grass. So I did, slowly at first. Eventually my knee pain went away. Then I became a Vibram convert. In November, I ran a marathon in them. I didn’t run particularly well, but my training had been interrupted three months earlier when I broke my toe. I tripped on a rock, while running in my Vibrams.

I might be "born to run," but I'm also accident prone. Yet here I am, still wearing the Vibrams (when it isn't 14 degrees and snowing), aware that the Eden mythology can't negate the rocky, uneven realities of life. That seems to be the trend. When Eden goes from imagination to the real world, things get messy.

Review: Anetso, the Cherokee Ball Game

Art Remillard

Michael Zogry first learned of the Cherokee precursor to lacrosse, called “anetso,” in a class with Raymond Fogelson of the University of Chicago. The dearth of scholarship on the game surprised Zogry, who saw it as a fascinating blend of athletics and religious ritual. He read carefully the two major treatments of anetso—Fogelson’s 1962 dissertation and James Mooney’s 1890 article “Cherokee Ball Play”—and realized that there was more to the story. So when Zogry began his doctoral work, he aspired to offer a new perspective. This culminated in his innovative, compelling, and thoroughly researched, Anetso, the Cherokee Ball Game: At the Center of Ceremony and Identity.

Zogry spent four years studying anetso before seeing it in person in 1997. He arrived at the fairgrounds in Cherokee, North Carolina armed with a video camera and an intellectual suitcase stuffed with names like Bourdieu, Bell, Grimes, Geertz, Lévi-Strauss, Smith, Turner, and others. Theories raced through Zogry’s head, when suddenly reality struck—literally. As the game progressed, Zogry watched the tiny white ball float toward him and the players following closely behind. Unable to evade the rush, Zogry was knocked to the ground. This collision, the author recalls, “has continued to assert itself as a strong memory. I now think of it as a metaphor for describing my process of grappling with the relevant issues, and frankly, the limitations of my scholarly perspective to apprehend even this bit of culture in anything but a fleeting way” (15).

Specifically, Zogry came to realize that he needed a new vocabulary to discuss this game, which is more than “just a game.” In The Savage Mind, Lévi-Strauss said that a game has a set of rules and ends when one side prevails. In contrast, a ritual, which bears resemblance to a game, aims to produce, in Lévi-Strauss’s words, “a particular type of equilibrium between two sides.” While perhaps a useful point of departure, and certainly still influential, Zogry insists that anetso does not fit neatly within this conceptual framework. It is a game, to be sure. But Zogry demonstrates that anetso connects to the most significant dimensions of Cherokee religious identity. As a result, the game "resists and problematizes" the classifications of Lévi-Strauss and the likeminded (1).

Zogry starts by looking at anetso’s relation to Cherokee cultural narratives. Among the stories he retells is one of a pre-human contest between the birds and animals, where, interestingly enough, two small animals approach the bird team and request to join their side. The team captain, an eagle, accepts the defectors and fits them with wings, making one a bat and the other a flying squirrel. When the game begins, the retrofitted rodents lead the birds to victory. According to Zogry, the Cherokee still recount this narrative, particularly to the youth, to warn against boastfulness and to emphasize the importance of “inclusiveness” and “adaptability” (48). This sense of tribal solidarity was essential during the “Era of Great Change” (1799-1838). Then, missionaries criticized the game for its perceived “heathenish” underpinnings, and calls for removal became louder and louder. Meanwhile, Zogry shows how the Cherokee defiantly played anetso, using it as “a vehicle for expression of Cherokee identity” (105).

In addition to detailing the broad narrative and social meanings of anetso, Zogry also examines rituals directly associated with the game. Preparation begins weeks in advance with public and private rituals. Ball teams hire conjurers, who enlist assistance from “other-than-human persons.” Players avoid sexual contact, while abiding by a strict dietary code that prohibits consumption of young birds, small animals, or frogs. Zogry finds that most of these traditions have carried into contemporary performances of anetso. And while most players are active Christians, few see any conflict between their Cherokee and Christian practices. This is a perspective that has developed with time, just as anetso has changed over the ages. But Zogry insists that the game is still vital, despite claims from informants that it's not. “The ethic of participation,” he retorts, “the way the players carry themselves and acquit themselves on the field, the honor of performing to the best of their ability in a contest that their ancestors once played on the same land, these remain meaningful reasons to participate for Cherokee adults and teenagers” (145).

In the book's closing pages, Zogry considers the broader implications of his findings. For example, he takes aim at Allen Guttmann, who in From Ritual to Record, argues that in the modern sporting world “the attachment to the realm of the transcendent has been severed.” Guttmann maintains that a priest or minister at a football game does not serve the same function as a shaman at an Indian ball game. Without the minister, the football game will go on. Without the shaman, there is no ball game. Zogry is unconvinced. “Football, like anetso, provides a cultural locus for a range of activities, some that can be termed ‘ritual’ and some ‘religious.’ Preliminary and postgame activities, propitiatory activities, community involvement, even gambling serve to weave the experience of this game into the social lives of players and spectators” (221). To be clear, Zogry does not advocate collapsing religion and sports. Rather, he seems comfortable with ambiguity and open to “rethinking the categories in a manner that hopefully is more accurate” (235).

Specialists in Cherokee religion, ritual studies, and religion and sports will appreciate this book. Zorgy uses an impressive array of sources, from his own fieldwork, to newspapers, manuscripts, personal journals, and travel accounts. The book is thoroughly interdisciplinary, drawing insights from historians, anthropologists, and theorists of religion, ritual, sports, and culture. Additionally, Zogry hints at possibilities for more study. He mentions that women presently play anetso, a new development in the game’s history and “a fruitful area of future research” (184). I hope that Zogry explores this "fruitful" terrain, perhaps making it part of a broader treatment of Native American women and sports. I wonder how female performances of anetso would compare with the Navajo and Apache “Sunrise Ceremony.” In this rite-of-passage ceremony, young women arise early in the morning and run out toward the rising sun and back, thereby recreating the myth of the “White Painted Woman,” a deity who reversed the aging process by moving toward the sun and melding with her younger self. The ritualized running also emphasizes strength and health, in contrast to tribal plagues such as alcoholism and type-2 diabetes. Zogry has done the intellectual work to examine this and other religious/athletic performances, and I'm eager to see where he takes us next.

CFP: Undergrad Conference on Race in America

Friday and Saturday, March 25-26, 2011
Saint Francis University
Loretto, Pennsylvania 15940

CALL FOR PAPERS

We cordially invite undergraduates to submit proposals for the fifth annual North American Undergraduate Conference in Religion and Philosophy. Submissions are encouraged from students majoring in all academic fields.

Although any paper related to religion and philosophy will be considered, priority will be given to those addressing this year’s theme, “Race in America.” As philosopher Cornel West asserted, “A fully functional multiracial society cannot be achieved without a sense of history and open, honest dialogue.” Accordingly, this year’s conference will forthrightly address philosophical and religious questions of race and how these questions relate to politics, culture, society, and history. To begin our conversation, this year’s keynote speaker will be George Yancy, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Duquesne University and author of Black Bodies, White Gazes: The Continuing Significance of Race.

Paper proposals (roughly 250 words) should give a concise description of the presentation. The deadline for proposals is February 18, 2011. Please include your full name, paper title, institution, e-mail, phone number, and the name and contact information of your major professor. Presenters must submit their full paper by March 11, 2011 to be considered for conference prizes. Proposals and final papers should be sent via e-mail attachment to Dr. Arthur Remillard.

The keynote address will be given on Friday evening, with a student-led discussion to follow. All student presentations will be given on Saturday from approximately 9:00am-5:00pm. This conference is open to the public and free for presenters and non-presenters alike. For more information, directions, contacts, scheduling, etc., please visit our website and join our Facebook group.

This conference is organized by Saint Francis University and Westminster College, with support from SFU’s School of Arts and Letters, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, and the Institute for Ethics.

Stuff that Makes Jesus Tap (Or Just Cry)

Art Remillard

I feel like an impostor posting this--it seems so, well, Randall-esque. Alas, here I am, alerting readers to a fine collection of images at The Huffington Post entitled, "The Most Ridiculous Record Covers Of All Time." Indeed, some covers are from Christian musicians. I think it's safe to assume that if Jesus saw these, he would tap--repeatedly. Here's a sample...