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sports and a megachurch
A thing I have discovered about myself lately: I hate sports, but I really enjoy sports documentaries.
This surprised me, but I guess it shouldn't. My lack of interest in sports has always been about a) my completely disinterest in--actually, often it's stronger than that and becomes outright antipathy towards--competition (I just want everyone to win! Why can't everyone win???) and b) I find it boring to watch people do physical things--even things I can admit are very very impressive--unless those things are artistically-driven (think rhythmic gymnastics and figure skating, both of which are about artistic expression even more than they are about what bodies can accomplish).
If you don't care about competition or watching people do impressive things with their bodies...of course you're going to be uninterested in sports. Add to that the fact that sports are essentially narrative-less until they're over and you know who won (and which point people will construct a narrative around them) and I just get bored.
But sports documentaries are about people! Their relationships to each other! Their relationships to themselves! What you're willing to sacrifice to accomplish something extreme! (Even if I often think that they're crazy to sacrifice what they do, it's an interesting part of the human experience.) They're about society! And what things are important to us! And who we admire! And who we turn on!
All that to say I have watched a few sports documentaries lately and enjoyed the heck out of them.
Untold: Malice at the Palace is about...a riot at a basketball game? I guess? But it's about what caused that riot and how the narrative about it was constructed by the media and how the players involved ended up suffering for it even though they were far less culpable than the fans. I don't even remember this situation though I think it was back in 2004 and presumably it was all over the media at the time. Goes to show you how much I block out sports-related stuff from my mind.
Untold is apparently a 30-for-30 style sports documentary series on Netflix, and I've started one about a mob boss who bought his teenage son a minor-league hockey team (I don't think that's how they describe it? but that's essentially what it is) to run after he hurt himself and couldn't play hockey anymore. It's wild. I haven't finished that one yet, but I'll get around to at some point.
Last night during my dinner (the only time I really watch TV these days except when I'm on my treadmill) I started The Last Dance about the last season where the Chicago Bulls were any good. THE DRAMA, Y'ALL. This is like imperial palace level drama. At least the characters in this one I've heard of--as a kid growing up in the 90s, I of course could not escape Michael Jordan and Dennis Rodman and the Bulls' omnipresence. I had no interest in anything but Space Jam and its soundtrack at the time, but it's interesting revisiting that era.
And then there's Athlete A which is only...kind of a sports documentary. It's much more a systemic sexual harassment/fighting for justice documentary as it's about the girls/women who were abused by Larry Nasser, but it does involve sports. I can't say that I enjoyed it, because it's harrowing. But I appreciate it and was deeply moved by it. I cried a lot while I watched it, is what I'm saying. I do recommend it if you're in a mental space where you can handle something so deeply upsetting.
Here's where my post splits off in two directions.
Direction 1: Rachael Denhollander is prominent in the film as she was the first woman to come forward and accuse Nasser. She's also been making occasional appearances in a podcast I'm listening to called The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. If you were evangelical or evangelical-adjacent in the early 2000s, you instantly know what that podcast is about just by the title. If you weren't, it's about how a sexist, homophobic, egotistical, combative guy started a megachurch in Seattle, became one of the most famous Christians in the world, and then was "brought down" when people came forward and said, "You know what? That whole church culture was really abusive."
I knew a lot of the stuff in this podcast because we were all watching it happen via blogs (the late, great Rachel Held Evans was a major voice pushing back against Driscoll. In essence, it was blogs that held Driscoll responsible and resulted in the pushback against him). But the scope of this podcast is compelling. It's as much analysis of What's Wrong with White Evangelical Culture as it is about this specific church. If you're at all curious about evangelical Christianity, I think it's a great podcast to listen to.
It's also sometimes very frustrating because it's created by Christianity Today, which used to be THE big respected centrist evangelical magazine (think Billy Graham) but, as evangelical culture has shifted so far to the right, it's become increasingly under attack for being too liberal. Even though they are in no way liberal. So sometimes the approach in this podcast could be off-putting to someone who isn't an evangelical Christian. The criticisms from the left are legitimate and understandable. I still think it's worthwhile, and I'm glad it exists.
I'm so glad that CT is tackling this. I'm heartened by how willing they are to say, "Abusive dynamics are really common in evangelical culture today, and we absolutely have to understand why that is and do something about that." What I worry is that no one's going to learn anything from the story they're telling because progressive Christians will say it's too conservative and conservative evangelicals will say it's too liberal (compromised by the world, influenced by the culture, etc.). Which is a shame because I do think that most of the time the reporting is really good. There are moments, as I mentioned, that frustrate me, but the reporters are talking even to people who've left the church entirely and explicitly saying, "We can learn from these people's experiences." Which I so appreciate.
And I want to mention Rachael Denhollander again. I find her fascinating. She's still firmly in the evangelical tradition, but she has become a lawyer and committed herself completely to rooting out institutional abuse wherever she can find it including in churches (which is why she's often interviewed in the podcast). I admire the heck out of her work even if I wish she didn't still believe some of the things she does. I don't really understand how she can be so completely committed to protecting women and children the way she is and not go full-on feminist, but people are complicated. Her relentless work will save lives, and white evangelicalism desperately, desperately needs voices like hers. I'm sure she gets unbelievable amounts of hate and death threats, but I think she will make at least some kind of difference.
Direction 2: To pivot back to problems with sports and especially children in sports, I've been thinking a lot over the last couple of months about how absolutely gross it is that we let children participate in high-level and even professional sports. FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLDS SHOULD NOT BE AT THE OLYMPICS OMG. Part of my thoughts about this were prompted by Athlete A, which is a pretty compelling argument that this level of intensity in children's sports is always going to result in abuse. (Why did this go on for as long as it did? Because parents were so desperately for their children to succeed in the world of gymnastics that they trusted an institution they never should have trusted, and that institution was so committed to protecting itself that it was incapable of rooting out abuse.) The other thing that's got this on my mind is all the teenagers winning in tennis lately and also how frank all of them (and older athletes, too, Naomi Osaka in particular) are about the incredible pressure they're under and how their mental health is affected.
I have long, long believed that sports in the US should be severed from education. Schools from kindergarten through university should only have intramural-type sports. The sports complex in our culture is absolutely insane and I hatehatehatehatehatehate the way it warps education, especially higher education. I hate the way all these horrible white dudes are making millions of the work of teenagers (many of whom are black and/or from poor backgrounds). It's disgusting.
But I'm becoming even more radical re: sports and I think that there just shouldn't be these intensely organized sports for kids. They just shouldn't exist. You should have to be 18 to compete at the Olympics or go professional or anything like that. Children should only be playing loosely organized kinds of sports like your municipal soccer program that practices like an hour or two a week and is mostly about having fun.
So I really appreciated Anne Helen Petersen's article against youth sports. There are a bunch of negative things about the professionalization of children's sports that she doesn't even touch on, but what she has to say is good.
I don't know. Maybe elsewhere in the world other cultures have healthy relationships with sports for kids. Maybe it's possible for kids to compete at high levels without it turning abusive. But we certainly haven't figured that out here in the US.
This surprised me, but I guess it shouldn't. My lack of interest in sports has always been about a) my completely disinterest in--actually, often it's stronger than that and becomes outright antipathy towards--competition (I just want everyone to win! Why can't everyone win???) and b) I find it boring to watch people do physical things--even things I can admit are very very impressive--unless those things are artistically-driven (think rhythmic gymnastics and figure skating, both of which are about artistic expression even more than they are about what bodies can accomplish).
If you don't care about competition or watching people do impressive things with their bodies...of course you're going to be uninterested in sports. Add to that the fact that sports are essentially narrative-less until they're over and you know who won (and which point people will construct a narrative around them) and I just get bored.
But sports documentaries are about people! Their relationships to each other! Their relationships to themselves! What you're willing to sacrifice to accomplish something extreme! (Even if I often think that they're crazy to sacrifice what they do, it's an interesting part of the human experience.) They're about society! And what things are important to us! And who we admire! And who we turn on!
All that to say I have watched a few sports documentaries lately and enjoyed the heck out of them.
Untold: Malice at the Palace is about...a riot at a basketball game? I guess? But it's about what caused that riot and how the narrative about it was constructed by the media and how the players involved ended up suffering for it even though they were far less culpable than the fans. I don't even remember this situation though I think it was back in 2004 and presumably it was all over the media at the time. Goes to show you how much I block out sports-related stuff from my mind.
Untold is apparently a 30-for-30 style sports documentary series on Netflix, and I've started one about a mob boss who bought his teenage son a minor-league hockey team (I don't think that's how they describe it? but that's essentially what it is) to run after he hurt himself and couldn't play hockey anymore. It's wild. I haven't finished that one yet, but I'll get around to at some point.
Last night during my dinner (the only time I really watch TV these days except when I'm on my treadmill) I started The Last Dance about the last season where the Chicago Bulls were any good. THE DRAMA, Y'ALL. This is like imperial palace level drama. At least the characters in this one I've heard of--as a kid growing up in the 90s, I of course could not escape Michael Jordan and Dennis Rodman and the Bulls' omnipresence. I had no interest in anything but Space Jam and its soundtrack at the time, but it's interesting revisiting that era.
And then there's Athlete A which is only...kind of a sports documentary. It's much more a systemic sexual harassment/fighting for justice documentary as it's about the girls/women who were abused by Larry Nasser, but it does involve sports. I can't say that I enjoyed it, because it's harrowing. But I appreciate it and was deeply moved by it. I cried a lot while I watched it, is what I'm saying. I do recommend it if you're in a mental space where you can handle something so deeply upsetting.
Here's where my post splits off in two directions.
Direction 1: Rachael Denhollander is prominent in the film as she was the first woman to come forward and accuse Nasser. She's also been making occasional appearances in a podcast I'm listening to called The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. If you were evangelical or evangelical-adjacent in the early 2000s, you instantly know what that podcast is about just by the title. If you weren't, it's about how a sexist, homophobic, egotistical, combative guy started a megachurch in Seattle, became one of the most famous Christians in the world, and then was "brought down" when people came forward and said, "You know what? That whole church culture was really abusive."
I knew a lot of the stuff in this podcast because we were all watching it happen via blogs (the late, great Rachel Held Evans was a major voice pushing back against Driscoll. In essence, it was blogs that held Driscoll responsible and resulted in the pushback against him). But the scope of this podcast is compelling. It's as much analysis of What's Wrong with White Evangelical Culture as it is about this specific church. If you're at all curious about evangelical Christianity, I think it's a great podcast to listen to.
It's also sometimes very frustrating because it's created by Christianity Today, which used to be THE big respected centrist evangelical magazine (think Billy Graham) but, as evangelical culture has shifted so far to the right, it's become increasingly under attack for being too liberal. Even though they are in no way liberal. So sometimes the approach in this podcast could be off-putting to someone who isn't an evangelical Christian. The criticisms from the left are legitimate and understandable. I still think it's worthwhile, and I'm glad it exists.
I'm so glad that CT is tackling this. I'm heartened by how willing they are to say, "Abusive dynamics are really common in evangelical culture today, and we absolutely have to understand why that is and do something about that." What I worry is that no one's going to learn anything from the story they're telling because progressive Christians will say it's too conservative and conservative evangelicals will say it's too liberal (compromised by the world, influenced by the culture, etc.). Which is a shame because I do think that most of the time the reporting is really good. There are moments, as I mentioned, that frustrate me, but the reporters are talking even to people who've left the church entirely and explicitly saying, "We can learn from these people's experiences." Which I so appreciate.
And I want to mention Rachael Denhollander again. I find her fascinating. She's still firmly in the evangelical tradition, but she has become a lawyer and committed herself completely to rooting out institutional abuse wherever she can find it including in churches (which is why she's often interviewed in the podcast). I admire the heck out of her work even if I wish she didn't still believe some of the things she does. I don't really understand how she can be so completely committed to protecting women and children the way she is and not go full-on feminist, but people are complicated. Her relentless work will save lives, and white evangelicalism desperately, desperately needs voices like hers. I'm sure she gets unbelievable amounts of hate and death threats, but I think she will make at least some kind of difference.
Direction 2: To pivot back to problems with sports and especially children in sports, I've been thinking a lot over the last couple of months about how absolutely gross it is that we let children participate in high-level and even professional sports. FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLDS SHOULD NOT BE AT THE OLYMPICS OMG. Part of my thoughts about this were prompted by Athlete A, which is a pretty compelling argument that this level of intensity in children's sports is always going to result in abuse. (Why did this go on for as long as it did? Because parents were so desperately for their children to succeed in the world of gymnastics that they trusted an institution they never should have trusted, and that institution was so committed to protecting itself that it was incapable of rooting out abuse.) The other thing that's got this on my mind is all the teenagers winning in tennis lately and also how frank all of them (and older athletes, too, Naomi Osaka in particular) are about the incredible pressure they're under and how their mental health is affected.
I have long, long believed that sports in the US should be severed from education. Schools from kindergarten through university should only have intramural-type sports. The sports complex in our culture is absolutely insane and I hatehatehatehatehatehate the way it warps education, especially higher education. I hate the way all these horrible white dudes are making millions of the work of teenagers (many of whom are black and/or from poor backgrounds). It's disgusting.
But I'm becoming even more radical re: sports and I think that there just shouldn't be these intensely organized sports for kids. They just shouldn't exist. You should have to be 18 to compete at the Olympics or go professional or anything like that. Children should only be playing loosely organized kinds of sports like your municipal soccer program that practices like an hour or two a week and is mostly about having fun.
So I really appreciated Anne Helen Petersen's article against youth sports. There are a bunch of negative things about the professionalization of children's sports that she doesn't even touch on, but what she has to say is good.
I don't know. Maybe elsewhere in the world other cultures have healthy relationships with sports for kids. Maybe it's possible for kids to compete at high levels without it turning abusive. But we certainly haven't figured that out here in the US.