Going long for Jesus

May 10, 2006 | Fans of the Philadelphia 76ers began to notice it this season. After the final buzzer, superstar Allen Iverson and several of his teammates -- more if Philadelphia has just pulled out an exciting victory -- circle at midcourt in thankful prayer, the players' long arms draped around one another. The Sixers' ritual mimics one that has been taking place in football for more than a decade, when bruised and bloodied players join hands on the 50-yard line after the fourth quarter and give thanks to Jesus for the opportunity to represent him on the grand stage of the National Football League. Baseball players don't pray around second base after the final out but seem to reserve their public thanks to God for post-game interviews. When he shut down the Yankees in Game 6 of the storied 2004 American League Championship Series, Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling declared on national television, "Tonight was God's work on the mound."

Today, more pro athletes than ever are using their respective fields of play as pulpits to express, and promote, their faith. Unknown to many fans, though, there's often a "coach" behind the post-game prayers and testimonies. In the Sixers' case it's Kevin Harvey, the team's volunteer Christian chaplain and, by day, a staff member of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, the oldest and largest Christian sports organization in America. It was Harvey who first encouraged the players to hold the post-game prayers. "I look for ways to challenge the guys all the time -- everyday things they can do with the platform God has given them," he says. "So last season, I told them, 'Guys, I know God is doing good things on this team.' I brought up the way some teams in the NFL gather up after the game and give thanks to God for the opportunity to compete. The guys said they wanted to do it. So now, after all games, they circle up and pray."

Chaplains like Harvey are embedded, with rare exception, inside each of the nearly 100 teams in the Big Three major-league sports: baseball, football and basketball. Coming almost exclusively from the conservative end of the religious and cultural spectrum, the chaplains and their ministries are a main reason for the forceful presence of evangelical Christianity in professional sports. Indeed, it's no accident that fans today are witnessing public proclamations of Christian faith by players through seemingly nonstop religious gestures on and off the field. The players are coached in evangelism, in many cases from their days in high school, by the Kansas City-based FCA, Athletes in Action, based in Xenia, Ohio, and similar ministries. Both AIA and FCA have relationships with political powerhouses Focus on the Family and Campus Crusade for Christ International, which have long crusaded to infuse American society with conservative Christianity, and are perennial backers of the Republican Party.

The Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which claims the Bible is "the only infallible, authoritative Word of God," strives to "see the world impacted for Jesus Christ through the influence of athletes and coaches." Similarly, AIA states that it "exists to boldly proclaim the love and truth of Jesus Christ to those uniquely impacted by sport." Houston Astros third baseman Morgan Ensberg, who has worked with AIA, put it succinctly in an interview with Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network. "The entire reason that I play baseball is so that I get a chance to speak about Christ," he said.

To promoters of sports-world Christianity, faith is a wholesome force that helps players curb the worst temptations in pro sports -- violence and greed, for starters. Chaplains of pro sports teams say their role is to offer prayer services and spiritual counseling to religious players, whose demanding schedules often prevent them from attending church. Today, by most estimates, anywhere from 20 percent to 40 percent of players on a team, sometimes more, participate in Christian Bible studies and prayer services held by team chaplains, a percentage that mirrors Americans who attend church weekly.

But the Christianizing of sports comes at a scarcely examined cost, both to fans who would prefer watching the game without a dose of in-your-face religion and, in the view of some critics, to religion itself. The problem is that the sports-world faith movement isn't only bringing religion to professional locker rooms but a potentially divisive brand of conservative Christianity, replete with a worldview shaped by an intolerance of gays and lesbians, women's rights and other religions. "Knowing there are people of other religions in the league, I don't know how fair it is" that evangelicals prevail in pro sports, says Etan Thomas, a center for the NBA's Washington Wizards, and author of a book of politically charged poetry, "More Than an Athlete." "I'm looking at it from the perspective of being a Christian myself, but not everyone's like that [Christian]."

Former Minnesota Vikings running back Robert Smith, an atheist, says he has no objection to making religious counseling and services available to interested players. But Smith does object to evangelicals working through sports stars to spread their message. "I think it unfairly takes advantage of pro athletes," says Smith. "Spread religion on its own merits. Don't try to sell it with high-profile athletes."

Despite the fans and media members who have grown weary of players pointing to the sky after a big play and thanking God in interviews, the close relationship between church and sports is rarely questioned by teams or league executives. That's because the partnership between pro sports and conservative Christianity is born of mutual benefit, explains Shirl Hoffman, a professor of exercise and sports science at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and a leading researcher on evangelical engagement in sports. Motivating the ministries, he says, is the desire to capitalize on the tremendous popularity of sports to promote the Christian message. The sports industry, in turn, benefits from the implied religious endorsement of the increasingly unholy enterprise of pro sports. Given the recent scandals involving steroids and domestic violence, sports organizations, worried about bottom lines, are grateful for the Christian glow.

"Pro sports have a lot to gain from the ministries in that they keep athletes on the right track, keep them from drugs and living lives that would diminish their competitiveness," Hoffman says. "Never before in the history of sports has there been such a need for professional sports to bolster what they would consider to be the wholesome character of sport. Nothing does that like religion."

Next page: Christian right connections, Bud Selig backslides, and an ex-Viking says football dopes players with religion