God and sports

More and more these days, I’m seeing athletes making visible signs of faith. Sunday night, ESPN aired the ESPY awards in a lenthy, televised event that was fun for sports fans, even if it was on in the background while the fan was….er…multi-tasking.

This fan was pretty busy, but caught a few fine moments. Like when Chicago Bears’ Devin Hester won the Breakthrough Award and accepted the trophy saying “First, I want to thank God…”, followed by his family. Then, Charger Ladanian Tomlinson won an ESPY, came to the stage and said “First of all, I’d like to thank God. Without him I’d be nothing.”

A while later, the show aired a dramatic short film featuring the work Dave Collin and Trevor Ringland are doing in Northern Ireland, North Belfast to be exact, in trying to bring Catholics and Protestants together through sports. This was a colossal test of the human spirit, demanding a Catholic man and a Protestant man who were deeply wounded from their youth to reach across the severe line of bitter separation between their people and find a way to touch the other’s hand in order to shake it. And then, play ball together.

Their group is called Peace Players International.

Peace Players International was founded in 2001 on the premise that “children who play together can learn to live together.” Peace Players International effectively blends together proven theories of social modeling, conflict resolution and public diplomacy to operate basketball and life-skills programs in historically divided regions that bring together thousands of children from different religious, racial, and cultural backgrounds. The programs attract children to participate in basketball and life-skills activities that enable them to learn leadership skills and how to live as friends and neighbors. A key component to Peace Players International’s effectiveness is that the programs target children aged 10-14. These are the children old enough to pick up the basics of the sport, but young enough wherein many prejudices have not yet been cemented. Through the power of sport and education and the strategic integration of public diplomacy, Peace Players International is altering the pattern of preconceived prejudice and equipping children with the skills and education needed to address the serious social and health issues they face.

When the founders stepped up to receive their award to a standing ovation, Collin said “If you get a chance to build a friendship, you’ve destroyed an enemy.” Ringland laid down a challenge to all the powerful celebrity athletes present at the awards. “You all have enormous influence.” Use it, he said, because we’re all responsible for peace.

The Pan American Games opened in Rio today, and it was no surprise to see this:

Even sports can lead people to God, says a Brazilian archbishop, who wrote the faithful on the occasion of the Pan American Games being held in Rio de Janeiro.

Retired Archbishop Eugenio de Araújo Sales of Rio de Janeiro recalled that St. Paul exhorted Christians in their spiritual life with imagery of a race.

And he reiterated words from Pope John Paul II on the occasion of the Jubilee of Athletes in 1984: “Through the metaphor of holy athletic competition, [St. Paul] highlights the importance of life, comparing it to a race toward a goal that is not only earthly and passing, but eternal. It is a race in which not only one but all may be winners.”…

According to the prelate, sports should correspond “without distorting themselves, to the demands of our times — sports that tutor the weakest, exclude no one, and liberate young people from the insidiousness of apathy and indifference, awakening in them a healthy spirit of competition, sports that are a factor in the emancipation of the poorest countries and help to eliminate intolerance and build a fraternal and unified world; sports that contribute to a love of life, teach sacrifice, respect, responsibility, leading to the valuing of every human person.”

Which reminds me of Champions of Faith, an outstanding film just out this summer about some big major league baseball players admitting to their true source of power.

How inspiring.