Philadelphia, USA - Imagine working in an office where volunteer Christian chaplains maintained a steady presence, meeting one-on-one with your co-workers, organizing Bible studies and chapel services on the premises, reaching out - sometimes subtly, sometimes not - to the unconverted with the imperative to accept Jesus. Such is the state of affairs in major league sports, which has become conspicuously religious in this generation.
It is certainly no coincidence that pro athletes often gesture to God during play and frequently credit the Lord for their touchdowns and home runs. These displays go hand in hand with the efforts of the evangelical sports ministries that have been hard at work to Christianize the sports world. The aim: to cater to players' distinct spiritual needs and, more important, to use the tremendous influence of sports to bring the evangelical Christian message to the public.
The evangelical outreach is particularly well-organized in baseball, where a ministry based in Pennsylvania called Baseball Chapel provides chaplains for all 30 major league teams, for all their minor league affiliates and for many communities in baseball-loving Latin America.
As Major League Baseball moves into its offseason, however, it is revisiting Baseball Chapel's status as the lone religious organization operating in major league clubhouses and ministering to players. Prompting the review is a recent incident that reveals the not-so-positive side of the relationship between baseball and the sports-minded evangelical movement.
In case you missed it, a small furor erupted near season's end after the appearance of a Washington Post feature on Baseball Chapel. The story included a vignette in which Washington Nationals outfielder Ryan Church mused about the sad certainty of Jews going to hell for not accepting Jesus, a notion Church said was taught by team chaplain Jon Moeller. Upon publication of the piece and protests by a Jewish leader, Nationals President Tony Tavares suspended Moeller and issued a public apology.
Shortly thereafter, Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig announced his support for the chaplain's suspension and said baseball would re-examine the arrangement with Baseball Chapel. "I was deeply offended by what happened with Ryan Church and Jon Moeller," Selig said in a letter to another concerned rabbi.
With baseball taking the unprecedented step of reviewing its relationship with the group - never in recent years has a major sports league publicly questioned its ties to the chaplains' networks - now is a good time to take stock of the evangelical movement in pro sports, an important and under-explored chapter in the ongoing story of Christianity's increasingly forceful presence in public life.
Given the stress and dysfunction that plague many American workplaces - sports very much included - religion might seem like a good thing to have around. One can understand why league and team management would want spiritual resources available to players, whose off-field behavior often bespeaks a need for moral guidance. As a practical matter, travel and games make it difficult for Christian players to get to church on Sundays, which was the initial impetus for Baseball Chapel gaining access to major league clubhouses in the early 1970s.
But to see the sports ministries merely as a resource for athletes would be to miss a major part of their purpose. Since the founding of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes more than a half-century ago, sports world Christianity has been decidedly evangelical, coming straight from the conservative end of the religious and cultural spectrum and dedicated to promoting the faith.
The chaplains are not on hand to support a Jewish player's Torah study or to counsel a Muslim in his daily prayers to Allah. The ministries' message is strong and exclusive: Accepting Jesus as your lord and savior is the one and only path to salvation. As Baseball Chapel proclaims on its website, "Our purpose is to glorify Jesus Christ."
After the recent episode with the Nationals, Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, a prominent Orthodox Jewish leader in Washington, complained that the team's clubhouse was being used to "preach hatred." That's probably an exaggeration. In my experience, team chaplains tend to be good-hearted men with genuine concern for the athletes, Christian and non-Christian. Even so, it is undoubtedly true that baseball, like the National Football League and National Basketball Association, has allowed itself to become a prime proselytizing vehicle for the evangelical sports ministries. No similar privilege is enjoyed by other religious movements.
That is inherently problematic for leagues trying to maintain the widest possible appeal. The Ryan Church incident was hardly the first in which a fervent Christian athlete made remarks condemning one group or another. What must baseball's marketing department think when a Christian player voices his belief in a manner likely to alienate Jews or, for that matter, other Christians or non-believers?
Upon completion of Selig's review, baseball could conceivably kick out the chaplains, as the Nationals did with Moeller. A better solution? Let them stay, but put them and the players they serve on notice that major league sports do not exist for the chief purpose of promoting Christianity. Tell them that disparaging other religions will not be tolerated. Provide chapel services that are devoted to inclusive prayers respectful of a wider range of religious beliefs. Give representatives of other faith traditions equal access.
Don't kick out the evangelical chaplains. Just give them some company - and competition.