Faith for the Long Run - Extra Time!

A bonus Faith Hope and Sport episode where Drew reflects on the interview we've just heard with Professor Gladys Ganiel.  How can Christians involved in sport really promote reconciliation in our communities?

Produced by Commission Christian Radio

Transcript

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Faith, hope, and sport, extra time. In our conversation, Gladys spoke about sport and reconciliation in Northern Ireland, and I'd like to think a bit more about that, especially how the Church uses sport for community reconciliation or peacebuilding. Here's the question. Has the Church used sport to help bring about community reconciliation? Or has it actually hindered peacebuilding? Sport in Northern Ireland reflects the divided nature of the community. While some sports such as football or boxing are supported equally across the sectarian divide, clubs at all levels are often completely or largely populated by members of one community or the other. This is simply because clubs naturally draw from their local areas, and in many parts of the province, the two communities tend to live in informally segregated areas. Curiously, boxing enjoys a good reputation for cross-community relations, and similarly athletics, cycling, gymnastics, and many other sports generally operate well across the two communities. On the other hand, some sports such as hockey or rugby are identified as unionist or Protestant, while others, most obviously the Gaelic Athletic Association, the GAA, are identified as nationalist or Catholic. So let's look at the Protestant churches in sport, the Catholic Church in sport, and the various independent Christian organizations that are involved in sport. Protestant churches have a long history of founding sports clubs, both to support fellowship and for evangelism. Most of the older clubs have either died out or have now become secular, but a few more recently formed clubs retain their Christian ethos. Many local congregations continue to have sports such as Bowles or Badminton as part of the fellowship, with the hope that if members invite their friends along, evangelistic opportunities might ensue. The province has quite a few independent Christian organizations, both local and international, that are not primarily sporting organizations, but which have sport as an important element in their makeup. The Boys Brigade, Script Union, for example. And then there are Christian organizations in the province that use sport for evangelism. Sport is actually at the heart of what they do, and without their specific sport, they wouldn't exist. I'm thinking of the likes of salt factory sports and coaching for Christ. In practice, using sport for evangelism can actually act as a barrier to community reconciliation or peace building, and here's why. Because many fundamentalist Protestants believe that Catholics cannot be Christians, it's difficult to avoid the nationalist community getting the impression that it's being attacked by evangelical Protestants when they evangelize. Therefore, evangelism in Northern Ireland, by its very nature, can have an exclusivity that greatly inhibits efforts to bring about reconciliation. Now, let me be clear, I'm not hostile to evangelism. Actually I'm the very opposite. But in this context, evangelism and social reconciliation cannot easily happen together. Now, given the choice between evangelizing and reconciling, many evangelical Protestants choose to evangelize rather than reconcile. Evangelism is eternal, they claim, while social reconciliation is, at best, merely temporal. The relationship between Protestant Christianity and sport in Northern Ireland is unexceptional, at least throughout the English speaking world. While the, as it were, Protestant pattern above is to some extent replicated in the Roman Catholic Church, the dominant historic relationship of the Catholic Church to sport is quite different. When the Gaelic Athletic Association, or GAA, was formed in 1884, its first president was Archbishop Croak, after whom its headquarters in the National Stadium is named. Both the GAA and the Church sought to contribute to a sense of Irishness based in the local community. While the closeness between the Church and the GAA has diminished significantly, both are inherently nationalist. For many people in the province, the Catholic Church and the GAA are simply two aspects of what it means to be Irish. Now there are two problems with the GAA being used to promote reconciliation in Northern Ireland. First, if every club or local governing body is faithful to its cultural roots, then to be a full member, you have to buy into an Irish nationalist identity. Obviously, unionists will feel ill at ease with this. The second problem is that during the Troubles, GAA members, especially young men, were on the receiving end of harassment, and worse, from the security forces, and were targets for assassination by loyalist paramilitaries. Now, understandably, this has led to much hurt and deep suspicion, and these are clearly barriers to the GAA welcoming Unionists as a whole. More encouragingly, the recently formed East Belfast GAA is trying to deal with and to appeal to both sides of the community. Clearly the best way to bring about reconciliation in Northern Ireland is to replace the two current religio-cultural identities with a single identity that brings about a natural reconciliation, under the banner of a greater cause. Can sport do this? Well, superficially yes. Fans of many sports mix happily together for short periods of time, and sectarian divisions are utterly insignificant beside waving one's Manchester United flag or Belfast giant scarf. So can sport be used as a carrier for the church to bring about reconciliation? Well, again, in theory yes. Has it done so in Northern Ireland? In practice no. Is there any hope of sport being used by the church as a carrier for reconciliation? It seems unlikely. However, it's not all bad news. I'm convinced that an important Christian contribution to reconciliation in Northern Ireland is currently being made by individual Christian sports enthusiasts at all levels, from grassroots to elite and international sport. These include players, administrators, coaches, referees, and supporters, whose Christian faith motivates them to reach out to the other side. At this level, the Church's institutional role is simply to support individual Christians as they promote cross community reconciliation. These include players, administrators, coaches, referees, and supporters whose Christian faith motivates them to reach out to the other side. At this level, the Church's institutional role is simply to support individual Christians as they promote cross community reconciliation. Reconciliation or peace building actually can happen when people meet in spaces in which community reconciliation can just happen. It happens in the web of relationships and activities developed by many individual Christians, rather than as a centrally coordinated, well organized program. Sports like badminton, bowls, equestrian sports, golf, course fishing, parkrun, and many others provide spaces in which participants from across the sectarian spectrum find enough common ground to enable people to build relationships without reference to the things that normally raise barriers. And more, the pursuit of sporting success can actually lead to reconciliation, because clubs and supporters don't care in the least which community the best players come from, so long as they produce the goods on the pitch, so a Catholic player can be a hero of a Protestant team, and vice versa. If individual Christians active in sport in Northern Ireland can harmonize winning as an internal good of the sport with the external good of promoting reconciliation, then they will have hit a sweet spot where each can reinforce the other. This already happens to some degree in football and boxing, but it'll take a mighty effort to build on this to make significant progress. Christian churches and parachurch organizations can also provide sporting spaces in which members of the other community are welcome. So long as we can avoid crude evangelism, people can form relationships and build friendships. Hopefully in Christian sporting spaces, the very characteristics that promote an atmosphere conducive to reconciliation with God should also promote reconciliation with each other. If you want four interesting examples of things Christians could get involved with to do this, have a look at these. And for very different reasons, the Belfast Giants. Sport in general, and sport as used by Christians can potentially help to build peace in Northern Ireland, but this must be done consciously, thoughtfully, gently. And here's the rub. Sometimes we have to do it in preference to other things that Christians in Northern Ireland value. So let me sum up. While it would be wonderful to conclude otherwise, it seems to me that the Catholic Church, the Protestant churches, and the parachurch agencies have been pretty unsuccessful in using sport as a vehicle for reconciliation. This is because each of the three groups has its own perfectly legitimate aims. But none of these three has a high place for community reconciliation. Putting it crudely, even provocatively, Catholics use sport to develop an all-encompassing Irishness. Protestants use sport to produce more and better Protestant Christians. Neither in practice uses sport to reach out consistently to the other. In order to pursue community reconciliation in Northern Ireland through sport, ordinary Christian people need to be open to seeing cross-community reconciliation as something to be loved above the mere absence of open conflict, and above the internal flourishing of their own religious community. If we are to find hope for community reconciliation through sport in Northern Ireland, it's in the committed labours of individual Christians. And a big sentence with big words to finish with. Ready? Christians must enable the internal pursuit of winning to be osmotically penetrated by the eschatological victory and the reconciliation of all things in Christ Jesus. Wow. Sometime I really must look up what that means.