Fundamentalism Christianity in Sport

This weekend’s Final of the Super 14 rugby showed how extreme people’s view of religion can be. After the game most (if not all) of the winning team members commented that they want to thank God for their victory.

I need to ask the question, what made them think that God decided they should be victorious over their competitors? Were they better men? Did their God favour them over their competitors? Were their competitors’ bad people? Did their competitors sin against this God to favour the winning team? What if they have lost the game? Would they have blamed their God for the loss?

Then a player from the winning team was wearing a white shirt with the words; “Jesus is King” written on it. While the other team members appeared in their rugby jerseys during the trophy presentation, this one team member proudly made sure his white shirt was available for all the TV cameras and photographers to see.

If the same guy was wearing the words; “Allah is the Lord” or “Praise to Mohammed” or “Satan is King” or “911 was an inside job” or “Impeach Bush for the lies told”…etc, would he have been allowed to wear that t-shirt during the televised Super 14 rugby trophy presentation?

Somehow I think if he was any other religion or wanted to make any controversial statement or alternative religious view; he would have been prevented from wearing it. If he had a pro-Islam message, he would have most likely been told not to display his religious views. Some people would most likely then have labeled him as a terrorist with extreme religious views.

Why was this player allowed to wear a t-shirt with blatant pro-Christianity advertising on the field? It made me really sad to see this happening. I can imagine this player having no feelings of empathy or compassion towards anyone else’s view and he felt the need to enforce his own religious view upon others. It was a sad day for sport to see religious “scoring” being used (and abused) by fundamentalist Christians.