The Origins of the Mormon Moment; or, How to Generate Your Own Such Moment

Christopher Jones

As a follow-up to Paul's post last week on "the Mormon moment in scholarship," and in an attempt to answer the questions posed by Elesha and Curtis in the comments of that post, I'll simply point readers to a post today ("2011: The Year of the Mormon") over at the Mormon blog By Common Consent. Embedded within that post, which surveys a number of individuals, events, and trends in pop culture, politics, sports, and scholarship that kept Mormonism in the spotlight all year long, is what appears to me to be a basic (if slightly complicated) formula for those interested in generating a similar moment for their respective religious movement/scholarly-subject of study/etc. With a giant tip-of-the-hat to the fine folks at BCC, then, here is my formula:

1. Aim for an election year (preferably a presidential election), and ensure that at least two of the candidates are of the specific faith community. If they represent divergent approaches to said faith, and maintain a personal and/or political rivalry dating back several generations, even better.

2. Politicians alone, of course, cannot create such a moment. They need to be buttressed by likeable star athletes that inspire hip-hop songs and videos, rock/pop music sensations that publicly proclaim their faith without coming across too condescending or annoying and incorporate elements of the religion's founding theophany in their music videos, and television programs portraying the more controversial elements of the faith tradition. For scholars of religion, it is particularly important that these figures not only be members of the religion, but also that their respective talents can be explained by alluding to, for example, Thomas Aquinas's theory of scripture. Landing these public figures on the cover of several prominent national publications doesn't hurt, either. Oh yeah, and if the guys behind South Park create the Broadway hit of the year about the religious community, that's just icing on the cake.

3. While loads of publicity may generate a "moment" for the religion, they do not automatically lead to a corresponding "moment" for scholarship on the subject. The key there, of course, is to keep researching and writing. The sheer amount of scholarship focused on Mormons and Mormonism over the past year (or that forthcoming in 2012) really isn't all that unique---historians, sociologists, and others have been generating volumes and volumes of scholarship on the subject for decades now. The key here, as I see it, is that the younger generation of scholars---folks like Pat Mason, Matt Bowman, John Turner, and Spencer Fluhman---are building on the work of their predecessors but also more directly engaging trends in larger fields (American religious history, religious experience, religion and politics, etc.) and demonstrating what the Mormon experience uniquely reveals about those larger subjects, trends, etc. It also helps if the institutional church in question decides to take an active role in that scholarship by expanding and publishing archival collections.

Looking forward to 2012, Paul may be right in wondering if "another mainline moment in being born." But just to be sure, someone may want to put in a call to the South Park guys.

Baseball, Heartbreak, and the Absurd

Happy today to post this from my colleague Jeffrey Scholes, the Director for the Center for Religious Diversity and Public Life at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Jeff sends up a cry shared by all Texas Rangers fans, after this last World Series, about the absurdity and cruelty of the universe.

by Jeffrey Scholes

We have been told that baseball is a religion by movies, scholars, players, pastors and especially fans. Whether this equation draws on either an over-romanticization of the sport, as we get in films such as Bull Durham and Field of Dreams, or from a stripping of religion of its transcendent objects, at the very least, it’s safe to say that baseball is religious for many. As a life-long baseball fan, I’ve known this generally and intuitively. But as a life-long Texas Rangers fan, I now know this specifically and viscerally.

The loss in the World Series at the hands of the St. Louis Cardinals late last month in game 7 was painful enough, but the Rangers lost last year in the final game of the season too. You’d think the collective fan memory wouldn’t be that short or own coping skills wouldn’t atrophy that quickly so as to leave Rangers fans with no psychological protection. Ask a current Cubs fan or a White Sox fan six years ago or a Red Sox fan seven years ago about reconciling short memories with 100 year-old ones. Thankfully (mercifully?) the wounds incurred by fans of the Rangers are superficial by comparison. And no doubt, the charge of superficiality is likewise made by those who wonder how on earth religion and a game in which millionaires hit a leather ball with a wooden stick can even be mentioned in the same sentence. I understand the reaction of both the long-suffering fan and the sports critic alike, but as the little girl in John Feinberg’s example of the futility of rational arguments in the face of pain, I say to both, “Yes, but it still hurts!”

The pain that requires some kind of religious medication is not there by virtue of the fact that the Rangers lost in the World Series for the second time in a calendar year. It is the pain that comes from reflecting on how the Rangers lost—specifically in game 6. With a 3-2 series lead and needing one more game to win their first championship in 50 years of franchise history, the Rangers blew five leads in last Thursday’s game.

Admittedly, the difference between wins and losses in baseball often comes down to a pitch moving one centimeter higher than it should be or a fielder standing one foot to his left before a ball is hit. Hence leads can change and games can be won or lost in “butterfly effect” fashion that can’t really be applied to football or basketball. Yet in game 6, the micro became macro in a hurry as the butterfly’s wings flapped one foot away from a drunk with the nuclear codes.

The Rangers had a two run lead, two outs on the Cardinals with two strikes thrown to the opposing batter in the “last inning” of the game—TWICE. The Cardinals reducing both of these leads to zero in do-or-die moments for them before hitting the winning homerun—well that simply doesn’t happen in baseball. On pitching to the Cardinals’ Lance Berkman in the 10^th, Rangers’ pitcher Scott Feldman sums it up: "I was one strike away. That pitch there, I didn't quite get it in enough and he was able to get enough of the bat on it to knock it into center field." An inch more inside to Berkman, and who knows. We can only be left to wonder.

Every team that loses in the World Series can point to reasons for the result, some more sound than others. And yes, Rangers fans should be happy with a more successful season than 28 other teams this year. But the way game 6 was lost, all of the appreciation for a great season or the giving of an obligatory “we’ll get ‘em next year!” does not heal. Nor do counterfactuals used as rationales (“If Cruz had a slightly better read on that ball, he would have caught it!”).

I know that Red Sox fans have their “Buckner moment” and Cubs fans have their Steve Bartman; both of which punctuate as well as scapegoat their decades of heartbreak. But both teams also have a religious infrastructure to explain the inexplicable and to comfort, at least partially, the extremely discomforting losing seasons year after year. Heart-attacks as well as heartbreaks demand diagnosis and when the pain is chronic, failed yearly treatments will move the most skeptical fan into the transcendent for the cure. But what about acute pain that occurred at a time when no attack was imminent nor had one happened before?

Absent a history of devastating losses and the ability to experiment with a host of religious palliatives, Rangers fans are left to deal with a kind of absurd occurrence. They may never have to experience something like this again with a championship next year or another unending World Series appearance drought. Or they may be dealt another trauma sooner than they’d like. Either way, game 6 stands alone with no history and no future. In religious terms, the isolated, seemingly pointless—yes absurd—can shove you into a Kierkegaardian leap of faith that next will be different or into a Nietzschean resignation to a nihilistic world or into something in between.

Even in the case of the historically forgotten Texas Rangers, baseball, yet again, draws on religious ways of thinking to do the work of interpretation. Though game 6 has nothing to do with romanticizing baseball or the kind of moralistic didactics that show how one can learn from such seemingly random events. The game is just there to do some damage for the time being. And while fans of the Texas Rangers have no recourse to their own pantheon that can intercede on their behalf to explain the pain away or be manipulated so that this doesn’t happen again, this may be the only time in which I wish we did.

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 . . .

Meta #Metta; or, If You Want World Peace, Pay Your Parking Tickets

Paul Harvey

It's official: Ron Artest (forward for the Los Angeles Lakers) has changed his name to Metta World Peace. I do not find it quite as clever as the 1970s classic change of Lloyd Free, who proclaimed himself "all-world," to "World B. Free," but it's certainly more effective than Prince changing his name to something that no one could say, and then changing it back.

"Metta is going to be the first name and it means like friendship, love and kindness," Artest told Stephen A. Smith on 710 ESPNLA earlier this month. "World Peace is going to be the last name, so everybody can get ready to buy their World Peace jerseys."

Hidden in this story, however, is a far more important moral, and indeed a lesson for us all:

"Artest's initial request to change his name last month was delayed because of a failure to pay an outstanding parking ticket."

No word yet on whether Matt Sutton was involved in getting that parking situation rectified as quickly as it was.

Live long and prosper, Metta. And let us all remember that lesson about life's priorities. Pay your parking tickets, and then you may exercise your rights of religious freedom. (Might add, it also helps to avoid going into the stands to punch fans of the opposing team; just saying).

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.

Miami Vice: College Sports, the Amateur Ideal, and Sports as Religion

by Elesha Coffman

Tales of naughtiness in big-time college sports have become commonplace, but this week’s allegations about long-term and widespread NCAA violations at the University of Miami still managed to shock. According to Yahoo! Sports investigative reporter Charles Robinson (who also broke last summer’s story about improper compensation paid to Reggie Bush and O.J. Mayo at USC), for nearly a decade a Miami booster named Nevin Shapiro used money he made in a Ponzi scheme to curry favor with some 72 Hurricanes players and half a dozen coaches. Shapiro bought booze and high-end gifts, secured the services of prostitutes, threw parties at strip clubs and on his yacht, entertained recruits, paid athletes for big plays and hard hits—all of the now-familiar stuff, albeit on a staggering scale—while university officials took his above-the-table checks and granted him VIP access, even naming a player lounge in his honor.

College sports junkies will revel (or perhaps writhe) in the irony that most of this malfeasance occurred while Paul Dee was Athletic Director, the same Paul Dee who led the USC investigation and defended its stiff penalties by intoning, “high-profile athletes demand high-profile compliance.” Meanwhile, we historians might ponder how the ideal of amateurism became so deeply engrained in college sports that there are such creatures as compliance officers whose job it is to ensure that kids who make their schools millions in TV and NCAA merchandising revenue are not, by golly, treated like professional athletes.

The ideal of amateurism, though entwined with ideas of fair play, was devised less as protection for the integrity of sport than as protection for the privilege of the upper class. The ideal originated in Britain and migrated to the United States through late 19^th century urban athletic clubs, the Amateur Athletic Union (established 1888), and elite New England prep schools and colleges. Barring pay for athletic exploits effectively limited participation to persons with means, as members of lower classes needed to spend their time and energy working. It also saved Brahmins the embarrassment of losing to their social inferiors. After Harvard lost a rowing championship to the Massachusetts Agricultural College in 1871, and then lost again to upstart Cornell in 1875, it withdrew from the Rowing Association of America and refused to row against any team but Yale for the rest of the century. (This was one of my students’ favorite details from Benjamin Rader’s American Sports: From the Age of Folk Games to the Age of Televised Sports, the text I used for Sports in American History last spring.)

Of course, as soon as rules were devised to separate sports and money, Americans started breaking them. Professional rowers peppered college crews as early as the 1860s, faculty and staff competed alongside students, and “tramp athletes” wandered the Midwest and West playing for whatever college football team offered the highest bid. In another early pay-for-play scheme, from 1878 to 1885 the Manhattan Athletic Club offered membership to Lon Myers, a champion runner whose Jewish ancestry ordinarily would have disqualified him, and paid him for several invented jobs. Even with this source of income, Myers reportedly sold some of his medals. It’s a wonder Ohio State didn’t recruit him.

Issues of class, and related issues of race and ethnicity, often arise in discussions of athletic amateurism. The religious aspects of the topic are less overt but still intriguing. Organized amateur sports, and organized youth sports, overlapped considerably with muscular Christianity in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Back when the “C” in YMCA still meant something, figures such as Luther Halsey Gulick, Jr., avidly promoted sport as a cornerstone of moral and spiritual development. Over at the Groton School, Endicott Peabody incorporated sports and cold showers with daily chapel and Bible reading to improve the characters of his previously overindulged students. Amateurism can be viewed as an institutionalization of Christian, even Puritan, values and expectations. The paragon of the student-athlete is not so very far removed from Richard Baxter’s admonition that “lawful sport” must make people fitter for their primary callings, not become an end in itself or “delight a carnal fantasy.”

Then again, it is possible to view athletic amateurism as a replacement for religion, an alternate means of building character and promoting social harmony. When Pierre de Coubertin revived the Olympics, he drew on Greek rather than Christian ideals; the “Olympic Hymn” first performed in 1896 invokes the “Immortal spirit of antiquity / Father of the true, beautiful and good.” Rec leagues and swim lessons long ago displaced religious instruction at the local Y. And I had to nod when I read ESPN travel writer aver, regarding my graduate alma mater, “The school's signature building is the stunning Duke Chapel with gothic spires that pierce the heart of the campus in Durham, N.C. But the campus’ soul resides inside its 71-year-old basketball cathedral.”

Sports commentators are already calling the NCAA investigation of Miami a test of the organization’s power, of the university’s administration, and of the amateur ideal. If the allegations are proven and the NCAA does not hand down a stiff sentence—even, at the edge of possibility, its little-used “death penalty”—the already embattled notion of collegiate amateurism would seem to be destroyed. Were amateurism still a means of maintaining class boundaries, Americans might be glad to see it go, but the visceral reaction to Robinson’s exposé demonstrates that deeper concerns are in play. “The U” will not have many fans after this.

Friday Night Ramadan Lights

Paul Harvey

Today is an unabashedly patriotic "I love this country" post. In "All-Nighters Keep Football Team Competitive During Ramadan," the wacky beauty and deep pragmatism of American religious pluralism (with the countervailing voices of bigotry also present, if muted this time) come through. Friday Night Lights takes on a new meaning in Dearborn, Michigan. A favorite passage:

Some teammates said they would break their fasts on opening day to gain energy and avoid cramping (and make up for it with later fasting.) Leila said he would not eat or drink until sundown, which should occur about halftime. Then coaches will provide water, dates, oranges and other fruit to help refuel their players’ empty tanks.

“You might not have a lot of energy that first half, but once you eat you feel refreshed,” Leila said. “After halftime, I’ll be coming after those guys.”

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.

Stick Your Beer in the Snow: The Theology of the Frozen Tundra

Paul Harvey

I wasn't going to clutter this blog with exultation in the victory of the only Socialist/Communitarian Franchise in professional sports, the Green Bay Packers (whom I have loved since the 1967 Ice Bowl, my young Baptist self not realizing then that Vince Lombardi -- subject of a recent Broadway show -- was a Jesuit-trained coach at Fordham before being brought in to rescue the hapless Packers), but I have to quote just one gem from this piece of seasonal theology, from someone interviewed at the team's victory celebration at Lambeau Field today, where below-zero wind chills. hardly deterred the faithful:

The weather's fine. I can barely feel it," Ken Hampp, 23, of Appleton, said in the Lambeau parking lot as he sipped a Budweiser, before it froze. "That's my favorite thing about winter. You can just stick your beer in the snow.

Word.

Oh, and congratulations to the biggest Cheesehead friend of this blog, Kip Kosek, author of the memorable article "Brett Favre, Catholic Hero" (from 2008, in case you are wondering, before the more recent ugly Favre revelations). Actually the final sentences of the piece are even more appropriate given those revelations: "For every choice, there's a consequence. Wisconsin's Catholics understand this, and weep."

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.

“God Shaped Hole”

by Matt Sutton

While thumping Team Harvey in Fantasy Football last week, I began thinking about the relationships among celebrity, sports, fitness, and faith. My curiosity peaked when I came across reports of three very different athletes.

First, one of the blog’s favorite sports stars, Broncos bench-warming-quarterback Tim Tebow, is now more famous than ever, boasting record-breaking NFL jersey sales. He has recently joined social media. He has a new twitter account, a new Facebook page (which I cannot access because I don’t believe in Facebook) and a website. The website is fascinating, with its repetition of GB2, which stands for “God Bless and Go Broncos!” The website represents the perfect storm of God, celebrity, and the marketing of Nike and Jockey products. Amen.

Next was the story of Ron Artest. He is the NBA player who a few years ago climbed into the stands in the middle of a game in Detroit, started a brawl, and punched out a fan. Now he is a world champion with the Los Angeles Lakers (GB the Lakers!). When he was interviewed at the end of last year’s divinely ordained championship victory over the Celtics, he famously thanked his psychiatrist (who is actually a psychologist, but, as Artest explained, “psychiatrist” was easier to say in the moment).

He too has been making news. As the LA Times recently explained, “The Lakers star lends his fame to a push for funding for mental health programs in schools, using his own story to tell middle schoolers in Montebello it's all right to ask for and receive help.” Appearing before school children, “Artest talked about being in therapy from the time his parents separated when he was 13 years old. He talked about being counseled for anger issues, marriage issues, parenting issues. ‘I'm like, how can a kid in East L.A … get the same help that I got without paying so much?’ he said. Artest acknowledged the stress of being a father at age 16. He talked about growing up in a family with a history of mental illness. He urged the youngsters to seek out school counselors.”

While Artest, unlike Tebow, is never and will never be touted as a role model, I wonder who is doing more for kids? The guy making Focus on the Family commercials for the Superbowl or the screw-up who talks to kids honestly about being a screw-up?

Then a few days later I learned about B. K. S. Iyengar, a one-man yoga phenomenon who has become a hero to one of my history department colleagues. Yesterday I invoked the evangelical rhetoric of my youth in an effort to throw this colleague off of his racquetball game by asking him if he was using Iyengar to fill his “God shaped hole.” The phrase “God shaped hole” was popularized in the 1990s by the Christian band Plumb. However, my colleague did not know the phrase. He interpreted it as the product of too much abstinence-only education. From there the conversation degenerated into a parsing of the theological and Freudian meanings of having a God-shaped hole. Unfortunately he still kicked my hole on the court.

I am not sure what all of this says about our culture and the different idols we have. But this I do know: God loves the Lakers, hates the current Broncos regime, and is probably pretty impressed by Iyengar. Me too.