Olympic madness

increasingly we draw lines

The Olympic Games’ kick off Friday night was the usual extravaganza to start the next fortnight.. Sometimes fans respond to the shows with rapt enthusiasm but, as so happen in our contemporary world, a number of criticisms arise.

My column is meant to be observing rather than prescriptive today so please do not take offense! That is not my intent at all.

Beijing’s 2008 use of an army of people beating drums in unison provoked some of the earliest public questions about China’s intent in the contemporary environment. I suspect many people have forgotten the CCP’s bitter disappointment at Sydney hosting the 2000 games so I had absolutely no doubt the Party intended to send a message to its population that the Party would redeem the respect the country “craves” (By that, I mean the CCP definitely desires the respect but the average citizen wants to pay the bills, eat, get their single child educated, and the like). Additionally, CCP sought to remind everyone that China’s modernization (and increased position in 2008 as the Middle Kingdom) because of that same Party. I have actually seen a couple of comparisons between the 2008 Opening Ceremony and Paris Friday night but I see little real comparison other than discomfort they both created.

The fascinating part to me is the seeming naïveté—or downright ignorance—of those who are complaining about what the organizers showed in Paris. From what I see online, some commentators found the ceremony rather avant gard, to put a any sort of positive on it, or downright odd. Perhaps I don’t get out enough but I haven’t seen anyone who lauded it at all. If Parisians or French generally liked it, I guess that is really all that matters since it represented their nation to the world.

It was an opening ceremony. It was an event intended to begin a fortnight focus on Paris and thousands of athletes. Paris was showing off to those coming for the event, whether in person or remotely.

That was its point. The Opening Ceremonies were not cosmic events nor were they intended as such. They did not interest me but many things don’t so that was hardly surprising.

Instead, many Christians found this show as aimed at humiliating, denegrating, and undermining their faith. They saw the extended show along the Seine as offensive.

What I take from those reactions is that some had a set of assumptions that are not born out: the rest of the world embraces the same views as most devout Christians, or more accurately, those in the United States.

I can’t imagine a less accurate understanding of the world. None.

This is a case where assumptions truly lead to a radically different position than the other side’s views.

Let’s start with those who created the show: if they intended to change minds about Marie Antoinette, history, art, transsexual presentations, or anything else, that was never in the cards. Let’s move on.

On the other side, Muscular Christianity—I don’t know how else to phrase it— in the United States is fairly unique today’s world though it originated in Britain 170 years ago when patriotism, athleticism, and Christianity bound together. It is also clearly tied to a narrow interpretation of patriotism intertwined with the Christian faith to the exclusion of other religious beliefs.

In the United States where we have had multiple religious revivals over our history, Muscular Christianity became associated with sports, primarily U.S. football and basketball. James Naismith, often cited as the major proponent of basketball, believed that sports offered a better, more accessible path for men to show their commitment to patriotism and their Christian faith than even the preaching to congregations. In the subsequent years, a close association between this view of Christianity and football or basketball definitely developed.

It’s the most modern manifestations of these links that fascinate me. When is the last time you saw a football team where someone did not bend on a knew, lower his head, then obviously say a prayer? Even across town at the Naval Academy where that line of separation between Church and State ought be in place as a federal institution, I saw ever more bended knees in the end zone over the fifteen years we held season tickets.

Muscular Christianity seems to have morphed beyond sports, however. It seems, from what I read, to be a closer bond between patriotism and Christianity than it might have been in the earlier generations. The assumption that every thing occurring in one’s life depends on Divine Intervention in an on-going, constant basis transcends sports and the winning spirit that endeavor creates.

If I understand it correctly, this view erases individual rights of action or responsibilities for actions. But perhaps I am not grasping it correctly, though I do try.

It is that expanded sentiment that perhaps leads to some of the discontent heard since Friday night.

I doubt too many Parisians, much less those in this event Friday, have ever knowingly met a devout Christian.

The problem is that Europeans, and most definitely the French, do not care. The populations there became overwhelmingly secular decades ago. In the French case, as I noted to my husband Saturday following the ceremonies, it dates back to the French Revolution which is almost two and a half centuries ago. Even our closest “cousins”, the British, largely excised religion from their lives after the two World Wars as if to ask how the nation could have lost two whole generations.

Catholic countries like Italy, France, or Spain have their historic memories of the centrality the Church played in the nation five hundred years back en lieu of strong Church power but even these places where the Reformation did not take hold do not have the abiding faith most U.S. Christians hold so dear.

Yet those in the United States seem blissfully unaware of these realities. In about 2005 when I was still teaching at the National War College, I had an Estonian International Fellow in one of my seminars. When several of the U.S. students began discussing the importance of replacing Islam with Christianity in Iraq or Afghanistan (I can’t recall which), this fellow asked to stop the conversation. He said that he could not understand why Americans were so fixated on religion elsewhere as Estonia had no tradition of the Armed Forces having religious officers. His statement met stunned silence on the part of twelve U.S. personnel around the seminar table. I suspect most British, French, German or any other officers from Europe would respond precisely the same, though they might not interject this truth directly into a seminar discussion.

There are, of course, places where Christianity thrives in a link between Church and State but that tends to be in Latin America, Africa or perhaps the Philippines.

Christians in the United States who support evangelizing probably saw everything in the Paris show as blasphemous because their assumptions so firmly dispute what they saw. That is their privilege.

The problem is when they seek to impose their views on others. Anyone who abhors the generalized French views on religion can accept or reject the games but she or he cannot control anyone else’s actions directly.

Those who conceptualized, then executed show last week had the privilege to do so as well. I doubt that the rest of the world entirely embraced them more than Americans (even some of whom probably did not identify as deeply Christian), but the point is that visions of art, culture and how to open Olympics may differ substantially. That is the nature of our world.

The Games are on some level a feeble attempt, ironically, to bridge those differences.

The world is not always about us nor are we entirely the world.

The unity, hopefully, in watching the competitors at the Games is an outcome probably most everyone shares. While commercialism and art nouveau come into the ceremonies at the beginning (and likely at the end), the athletic competition is the heart of the activity. May be best men and women athletes win!

Thank you for reading Actions create consequences today—or any other day. Thank you as an occasional reader or, espeically, at financial supporter through a subscription. My goal remains to expand measured, civil conversation on the complexities we face. I do not have all of the answers to any questions on this or any other topic so please provide feedback.

It was a quite walk this morning but I loved this photograph I took about two blocks from home.

Be well and be safe. FIN