This Week in God

July 29, 2006

First up from the God machine this week is an unusual trend in the field of religion and sports.

Hand fans waved in southeast Atlanta on Thursday afternoon as they do at so many summer worship services in the South.

Only this revival was at Turner Field, and Atlanta Braves pitcher John Smoltz preached on the same field where his team lost by five runs less than an hour earlier to the Florida Marlins.

This was the first Faith Day promotion in major league baseball, and boosted the Braves’ attendance by 15 percent over the other weekday matinee this season.

That was below the 60 percent increase such promotions have produced in minor league baseball games. Beyond filling extra seats, though, the Braves benefited from national media exposure.

Several network news shows, CNN, ESPN and the 700 Club covered baseball’s pitch to evangelical Christians — the bloc of society credited with helping elect President Bush and making the “Left Behind” books into bestsellers.

The Church of Scientology gets a NASCAR team; the Colorado Rockies have “become an organization guided by Christianity“; and now the Braves’ Faith-Day promotion is a hit. There’s a master’s of divinity paper in here somewhere.

Next up is the TV preacher Christianity Today labeled the “latest Christian media darling, getting truckloads of press clippings from reporters eager to profile a Christian leader who sounds gleeful over war in the Middle East and ties current events to apocalyptic premillennialism.”

Given a lengthy profile of televangelist John Hagee and his “Christian Zionism” worldview in the Wall Street Journal this week, that sounds like a fair description. (via Kevin Drum)

Last week, as Israel’s armed forces pounded Lebanon and worries of a wider conflagration mounted, Mr. Hagee presided over what he called a “miracle of God”: a gathering of 3,500 evangelical Christians packed into a Washington hotel to cheer Israel and its current military campaign. […]

President Bush sent a message to the gathering praising Mr. Hagee and his supporters for “spreading the hope of God’s love and the universal gift of freedom.” The Israeli prime minister also sent words of thanks. Israel’s ambassador, its former military chief and a host of U.S. political heavyweights, mostly Republican, attended. […]

The following day, [Hagee] mobilized evangelicals representing all 50 states in a lobbying blitz through the Capitol. Armed with talking points scripted by Mr. Hagee and his staff, they peppered senators and congressmen with arguments for Israel and against its enemies, particularly Iran. […]

When addressing Jewish audiences, Mr. Hagee generally avoids talking about Armageddon. But his books, whose titles include “Beginning of the End” and “From Daniel to Doomsday,” are filled with death and mayhem. “The battlefield will cover the nation of Israel!” he writes in “Jerusalem Countdown,” his recent work, describing a “sea of human blood drained from the veins of those who have followed Satan.”

Well, it’s good to know the fire-and-brimstone stuff hasn’t left the evangelical mainstream entirely. It’s been ages since I’ve heard a major mainstream figure make serious public references to “seas of human blood” drained from anyone.

Damn, isn’t there something else in the bible that would get their interest away from Israel, like glaciers drying up and leaving civilizations to dry up in desert climates?

We will meet our fate the good old biblical way — building our foundations near rivers … in this case rivers of oil and coal.

  • more than a decade of first place finishes in their division and only one world series to show for it. the braves need much more than prayer.

  • Amen, Lou. Why is it that the very worst parts of an ideology are the most useful for the hucksters and their ignorant activists?

  • Talking about shearing the sheep. Today’s #1 con-game must be go on tv and be a preacher

  • “And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are; for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets that they may be seen of men. Verily, I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou has shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly…”
    – Matthew 6:5-6 (KJV)

    Oh, I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to offend anyone. I was quoting the New Testament. Few so-called Christians are aware of it, apparently.

  • I grew up in Milwaukee during the fifties, attending Milwaukee Braves games with my father along with, up until then, unprecedented numbers of wildly enthusiastic, adoring, and childlike fans.

    The Braves officially became Satan’s team when they became the first sports team in history to completely abandon an entire city of supportive fans like these in order to worship Mammon – the more lucrative Atlanta market. They tried to slink out of town in 1965, but the courts forced them to play out their commitment in Milwaukee for that year.

    They lied all of us naive children when rumblings of this pending business deal began to surface, answering these rumors in the manner of today’s Republican crop of disingenuous capitalist criminals by saying, “We’ll be in Milwaukee today, tomorrow, and as long as we are welcome.” While at the same time, the deal to effect the move had already been signed.

    In an unfortunate set of terminology for this site, Bill Bartholomay, the agent of the devil who effected this move (just after he made the above statement) and the other Braves officials at the time became known in Milwaukee as “The Carpetbaggers.” (Or, the “Rover Boys”).

    The Milwaukee Braves were the first sports franchise to draw over 2 million fans in a season and the only professional sports team (that lasted more than one year) to never sport a losing season.

    The Braves = Satan’s team. They are the precedent that established without a doubt that professional sports is strictly business and not in any way, just a game – a concept spawned in hell if there ever was one.

  • Curmudgeon (#7),

    I try to be tolerant — open even — toward other religions (I’m a fully recovered former Catholic), but stories like the one you linked to really make my blood boil. It’s not their religion I hate (though I am truly offended by ignorance and superstition); it’s, as you say, their smug intolerance for everybody else. Like most of those born into the establishment they have little knowledge of and absolutely no concern for the harm they do to others. My only consolation is knowing that people like Samantha Dobrich has had enough innoculative learning to last a lifetime — that she, at least, will never be tempted to “go with the American flow”. Most truly “ugly Americans” belong to Christian churches, participate in the Boy and Girl Scouts, proudly say the Pledge of Allegiance, identify with the GOP; they haven’t got a clue how truly vile they are.

  • There is nothing Christ-like in these people, therefore they cannot claim to be Christians. Were Jesus to show up today, he would, I assume, strike out at these people with the anger he showed the moneychangers in the temple (or worse).

    When and if (ever) John Hagee and his ilk start praying for and championing peace, feeding and clothing the poor, caring for the earth and its creatures, etc. etc., then and only then might they consider themselves followers of Christ. IMHO.

    As for “religion”, my pastor preached last Sunday that it’s time to move past it – the dogma, the division, the extremism it spawns in Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and other religions. There is no “us” vs “them” – we are all in this together and we’d better start giving a darn. Well, I’m paraphrasing, but even those of you who don’t ascribe to any faith would agree with the gist of what he said. I can’t begin to do it justice.

  • I heard a piece on the g*d and baseball thing on Marketplace the other day. It was about the minor leagues though. The comment was made that the days on which jesus was being marketed were good days because the beer lines were shorter than on regular days.

    From Curmudgeon’s link:

    “We have a way of doing things here, and it’s not going to change to accommodate a very small minority,’’ said Kenneth R. Stevens, 41, a businessman sitting in the Georgetown Diner. “If they feel singled out, they should find another school or excuse themselves from those functions. It’s our way of life.”

    That is one rock hard, hunkered down, beady eyed, unquestioning lump of simmering hostility to anything but g*d’s law. It’s got to be a genetic thing. We may look the same more or less but I think we’re different species.

    Homo sapiens creditum vs. Homo incredibilus. Inelegant but you get the idea, (Ed, feel free to jump in here). Evolutionary divergence may not always be based on appearance. Of course I haven’t seen this guy Stevens. Maybe it is. Whatever, I sure don’t feel like I’ve got much in common on earth or in this universe with Mr. Stevens.

  • Ed (#5),

    You’ve nothing to apologize for on that front. The entire Reich has shifted into “Faux” mode. The administration wraps it’s hate for the Constitution in a colorful rag (the flag), thus demonstrating “faux” patriotism. The conservative drools over every syllable of the twisted tripe uttered by the Hannity/O’Reilly/Coulter types at the “f*x” network, thus developing an information format known as “faux” news. These Philistines-in-Robes folks who refer to themselves as “evangelicals” create at atmosphere of dominionist theorcratic hatred, run rampannt through the Bible with their holier-than-thou cherrypicking, and become “faux” Christians..

    I seem to recall there being something in the Bible, warning the People about “false” things; prophets, ideologies, leaders, groups and organized churches that would all promote the message of a “false” Messiah. Revelations, I think it was—and isn’t it ironic that “false” and “faux” mean the same thing?

    Clearly, the “enemies of Christ” are the ones who are so-ooooo busy pointing that finger of blame at the rest of the world….

  • The one thing about sports that has always bothered me is when the players start thanking god for winning.

    Drives me nuts. If there was a god, he/she/it’s got more important things to worry about than the outcome of a few games by semi intelligent apes on a distant world.

    God must hate the Braves and loves the Mets this year. All you have to do is look at the atrocious Brave’s bullpen. Looking at their collective ERAs, the Braves Bullpen must be Satanists.

  • Scientology in NASCAR worries me a lot. I’m a NASCAR fan. I’m sure not a fundie, and the fundies are annoying. But it’s not as sinister as that cult/scam.

    And NASCAR has enough problems — not here on this board, but on other progressive sites I often see NASCAR derided. Just remember: some of your fellow liberals are fans of the Nextel Cup series!

    If you’re also a NASCAR fan, I suggest checking out the MySpace page for UNITE HERE’s push against one of NASCAR’s critics: http://myspace.com/thetracksuit

    Yes, a MySpace page. Isn’t that just adorable?

  • “When addressing Jewish audiences, Mr. Hagee generally avoids talking about Armageddon.”

    Would that have anything to do with the fact that anyone who does not take Christ as his savior will be “left behind” after the rapture? It’s probably not something to bring up to Jewish audiences that believe Jesus was only a prophet and not the messiah.

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