"Football is not a matter of life and death, it is more important than that."
Touchdown for Jesus and other signs of apocalypse
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Marcia Mount Shoop, Eugene, Oregon, Cascade Books, 2014. ISBN 13:978-1-62032-919-1
There were many things I liked about Touchdown for Jesus. The major issue with the book is knowing by what criteria to judge it. The author’s introduction says: “This book, originally conceived as a theology of sport… is still very much a theological project, it is more apocalypse, less apologetics than it would have been in its original conception”. Yet two of the commendations published in the book describe it in quite different terms: “A must read for anyone concerned with the sexism, racism, and institutional power and abuse that plagues big time sports in the United States.” (Cheryl Cooky) and “a classic for everyone, from fans to scholars, looking to frame collegiate sports in a way that offers tangible ideas and inspiration for refashioning this billion dollar industry so that it insures student-athletes are accepted, nurtured, and prepared for the championship we call life.” (Emmett Gill) – neither of which seem to have much to do with “theology of sport”. Anyone looking for a theological understanding of sport will be disappointed.
The author is an ordained minister and theologian, married to an elite American Football coach, which gives her unique – but very subjective - insight into American sport. I loved the way she sees sport as allowing us to behave in ways “we do not often have permission to fully express in other facets of our lives. Excitement, disappointment, anger, joy, frustration, and delight are authorized as full-bodied experiences in sports. We can jump up and down, we can yell when people make us mad, we can scold people when they disappoint us, and we can lift them up when they give us joy and make everything work. For many, the world makes sense in the confines of a stadium in a way it does not anywhere else” and “people who are otherwise polite, polished, moderated adults can enter emotional abandon at the drop of a pass".
A further issue for the non-American reader is how unintelligible to the outsider the whole college sports scene is with the issues of sports scholarships, eligibility etc. The book also has a long section the North Carolina Football investigation which is likely to mean nothing to a non-USA reader.
The main content of the book addresses the perceived materialism, racism and sexism in big-time sport. The author writes of “institutionalized white supremacy” in American sport. Writing of the North Carolina issue she states: “In a country where white ways and mentalities have dominated, it is never a coincidence when so many people of color are on the losing end of a situation like the one at UNC” adding “we Americans are hard of hearing when it comes to the testimonies of the long-term deficits created by slavery and racism in all of our systems of merit and achievement”. In commenting on racial imbalance in sports it is noted that owners, presidents of colleges, athletic directors and coaches are overwhelmingly white. Specifically on the college scene she asserts: “The NCAA is the ultimate bully when it comes to keeping this dysfunctional system intact”.
In one sense there are theological undertones throughout the book. She states: “Theology searches for God’s fingerprints in human life”. Two theological touchstones to help in the “apocalyptic exercise to see hard truths and to embrace the redemptive possibilities in sports” are offered: divine dependence and demonic distortion.
The author is clearly unhappy with the evangelical influence in sport describing the involvement of FCA and AIA in American elite sport as “not accidental: it is the result of the years of hard work and relationship building”. She is critical of the consequences, referring to coaches misusing their position to pressurize players to accept evangelical Christianity and the aspiration of spiritual conformity resulting in players without the dominant faith being marginalized. She comments superficially on praying to win and the issue of whether God wants one particular team to win. Curiously she refers to an occasion when she was asked to leave a coaches’ wives’ Bible Study (or rather “kicked out of”). This has clearly rankled as she includes in three times in the book!
Her theological approach to sport is perhaps summed up in the following comments and questions: “Christians have failed to let Christianity in its most life-giving incarnations find a home in big-time sports… Why have so many Christians failed to engage such an iconic symbol of American culture with the prophetic voice that Christianity brings to all kinds of injustice? Why have all the different kinds of Christians who occupy the world of big-time sports failed to push back against things like racism, materialism, dishonesty, and violence?”
The weakness of her theological approach is that she nowhere attempts to understand sport theologically but focuses much more on the ethical issues which exist in sport as in society.