Sport, Religious Belief, and Religious Diversity

Abstract

In this paper I examine some issues raised by conspicuous displays of religiosity in sports. In particular, important questions have been occasioned by the relatively recent pronouncements and behavior of a celebrated evangelical Christian athlete in American professional football. I explain reasons why some find such conspicuous piety worrisome. I raise concerns related to the nature of sport, consistency, divisiveness, trivialization, and religious diversity. After discussing objections to exclusivist forms of religion, especially theistic religions, I focus on how religious beliefs should be held. I present what I call the Basic Argument from Religious Disagreement, whose conclusion claims that religious beliefs ought to be held fallibly, rather than confidently or with certainty. Fallible religious belief has important and valuable consequences, overall and in the specific context of sports. Celebrated athletes have strong reasons to hold religious beliefs fallibly and, if they claim to be role models, they may have epistemic responsibilities as well as moral responsibilities.

Notes

1. Robert Higgs, God in the Stadium: Sports and Religion in America (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1995).

2. This article may be found at the archival website of Sports Illustrated, “SI vault.”

3. Tom Krattenmaker, Onward Christian Athletes: Turning Ballparks into Pulpits and Players into Preachers (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010).

4. Ibid., 6.

5. Ibid., 6.

6. John Hick, “Religious Pluralism and Salvation,” The Philosophical Challenge of Religious Diversity, eds. Quinn and Meeker (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 65.

7. Krattenmaker, Onward Christian Athletes, 3.

8. Ibid., 3.

9. Randolph Feezell, Sport, Play, and Ethical Reflection (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 30–31.

10. Peter Heinegg, “Philosopher in the Playground: Notes on the Meaning of Sport,” Sports Ethics: An Anthology (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 54.

11. Ibid., 54–55.

12. See the website for The Pew Forum on Religion and the Public Life. The most recent “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey,” based on more than 35,000 interviews with Americans age 18 and over, reports that 78.4% of Americans identify themselves as Christians, among whom 26.3% identify themselves as evangelicals. In addition, the “survey finds that religious affiliation in the U.S. is both diverse and fluid.”

13. Marcus Cederstrom, “What if Tim Tebow were Muslim?” Salon.com.

14. Of course, the issue of acting consistently, as a central feature of Kant’s ethics, is more complex. See Onora O’Neill’s excellent essay, “Consistency in Action,” Universality and Morality: Essays on Ethical Universalizability, eds. Potter and Timmons (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1985), 159–86, for a deeper treatment.

15. Diana Nyad, “Tim Tebow: Separation of Church and State,” huffingtonpost.com. See Craig Clifford and Randolph Feezell, Sport and Character: Reclaiming the Principles of Sportsmanship (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2010). “Respect for Teammates and Team,” 48–57, for an explanation and defense of this aspect of sportsmanship. In the following, Nyad’s comments are from her essay on the separation of church and sport. Also, see Krattenmaker’s description of the divisive behavior of a former major league baseball player. “More recently, multiple non-Christians endured difficult interactions with Chad Curtis, a proselytizing outfielder who played for a half-dozen major league teams from 1992 to 2001.” Onward Christian Athletes, 96. Also, 99, 184–85.

16. Krattenmaker, Onward Christian Athletes, 3. The book is full of trivializing comments by evangelical athletes. See, for example, 117–120, and comments by an NBA executive, 64.

17. Ibid., 201.

18. Ibid., 64–65.

19. Ibid., 191.

20. Ibid., 205.

21. Ibid., 207.

22. See Philip Quinn and Kevin Meeker, The Philosophical Challenge of Religious Diversity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), for an important collection of articles on religious diversity. The “Introduction” offers a helpful discussion of exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism. William Rowe offers a helpful discussion in Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction, Fourth Edition, Chapter 11: “Many Religions,” including criticisms of exclusivism that I will examine.

23. See Randolph Feezell, “Religious Ambiguity, Agnosticism, and Prudence,” Florida Philosophical Review, Vol. IX, Issue 2, Winter 2009, 60–88, for a further explanation and critical examination of John Hick’s pluralism.

24. John Hick, God and the Universe of Faiths (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973), 122.

25. I offer an extended defense of what I call the “agnostic wager” in “Religious Ambiguity, Agnosticism, and Prudence.” I criticize Pascalian wagering and claim that, if the theistic God exists, then, provided we are reasonable inquirers, it doesn’t matter whether we believe that God exists.

26. For an explanation and defense of religious ambiguity, see John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989); Terence Penelhum, Reason and Religious Faith (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995); and Robert McKim, Religious Ambiguity and Religious Diversity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). I offer an extended discussion of religious ambiguity in my paper, “Religious Ambiguity, Agnosticism, and Prudence.”

27. If we believe the main character in Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s remarkable and illuminating novel, we may have to extend the range of our inquiry beyond the standard arguments. See 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction (New York: Pantheon Books, 2010). If we primarily bought our books at the local brick-and-mortar store, I’d tell you to run, don’t walk, immediately to buy this book. Now? Go to your computer, type in Amazon.com, and buy this book – immediately! It’s amazing.

28. Elizabeth Anderson, “If God is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?,” Philosophers Without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and Secular Life, Ed. by Louise Anthony (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 227.

29. Robert McKim, Religious Ambiguity and Religious Diversity, 131.

30. Robert McKim, “Religious Belief and Religious Diversity, Irish Philosophical Journal, 6 (1989), 275–302. This article is difficult to access. For convenience, I will refer to the article as it appears in Self, Cosmos, and God, eds. Kolak and Martin (Fort Worth: Harcourt & Brace Jovanovich, 1993). The book I am referring to is Religious Ambiguity and Religious Diversity.

31. McKim, “Religious Belief and Religious Diversity,” 687.

32. McKim uses this language: “intellectual integrity” and “relevant expertise.”

33. McKim, “Religious Belief and Religious Diversity,” 676. Later I’ll claim that Tim Tebow is a “privileged person,” in McKim’s sense.

34. McKim, Religious Ambiguity and Religious Diversity, 133.

35. Ibid., 137.

36. McKim, “Religious Belief and Religious Diversity,” 679.

37. Ibid., 679.

38. McKim, “Religious Belief and Religious Diversity,” 156.

39. Ibid., 155.

40. Ibid., 156.

41. See Feezell, “Religious Ambiguity, Agnosticism, and Prudence,” 62 for a further discussion of these two elements of agnosticism.

42. Louise Antony, “For the Love of Reason,” Philosophers Without Gods, 52.

43. McKim, “Religious Belief and Religious Diversity,” 680.

44. Ibid., 680.

45. Ibid., 680.

46. Ibid., 680.

47. McKim, Religious Ambiguity and Religious Diversity, 159.

48. This comment comes from the Wikipedia article on Tim Tebow.

49. McKim, “Religious Belief and Religious Diversity,” 676.

50. Ibid., 686.

51. For a discussion of intellectual humility, see Robert Roberts and W. Jay Wood, Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology (New York: Clarendon Press, 2007), “Humility,” 236-256.

52. See Louis Pojman’s analysis of hope in “Faith, Hope, and Doubt,” Contemporary Classics in Philosophy of Religion, eds. Loades and Rue (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1991), 183-207.

53. McKim, “Religious Belief and Religious Diversity,” 177.

54. Ibid., 177.

55. Ibid., 177.

56. Tim Tebow, with Nathan Whitaker, Through My Eyes (New York: Harper Collins, 2011).

57. Ibid., 57.

58. Ibid., 28.

59. Ibid., 205.

60. Randolph Feezell, “Celebrated Athletes, Moral Exemplars, and Lusory Objects,” Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, Vol. XXXII, Issue 1, 2005, 20-35.

61. Frank Deford, Over Time: My Life as a Sportswriter (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2012), 28.

62. I would like to respond briefly to two possible criticisms of my arguments. Both are important and serious but it would require much more space in order to develop an adequate response. First, some might worry that my arguments about religious belief, diversity, and the importance of external reflection are religiously insensitive, akin to a tone-deaf critic responding uncharitably to a piece of music. Such philosophical reflections are remote from the way in which people experience the religious aspect of their lives. Faith requires profound commitment, not merely assent to propositions that fall out at the end of philosophical inquiry. In response, I can only reiterate what I suggest in parts of the paper. I realize that Tebow and others feel that they are called to evangelize and that taking an external reflective perspective on their faith convictions may seem alien, even impossible. Yet it is not impossible, even for someone like Tebow, to reflect on the effects of public expressions of religiosity, given a religiously diverse audience, including teammates and fans. Facts about religious diversity are at least relevant for how an enthusiastic believer treats others, even if such facts are not taken as relevant for how one holds one’s own religious beliefs. I argue that such consideration involves attitudes and behaviors expressing tolerance, respect, and a recognition of the dignity of other persons. Of course, I am also claiming that facts about religious diversity ought to be relevant for how one holds one’s religious beliefs. I don’t believe this claim is religiously insensitive, but a deeper defense of it would require a further discussion of intellectual virtue. Second, some might worry that the paper isn’t really about sports per se. It’s really about celebrities of all kinds who might use their public status as a platform to proselytize. Is there something specifically inappropriate about athletes doing this? In response, I do think that such proselytizing is particularly troublesome, given my isolationist sensibilities and sport-specific responsibilities that athletes have to their teammates and team. I believe that other public figures should at least be wary of using their “platform” to proselytize, religiously, morally, or politically, given the diverse audiences to which they might communicate their beliefs, and in light of the kinds of problems that I have raised for the jock proselytizer. I wish to thank the reviewers of this article for the acute critical comments.