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Reading this excellent profile of @bethanybalcer by @mattpentz, and thinking about the opportunities for folks on all sides to develop better understandings of religion and the role of faith https://theathletic.com/1902814/2020/06/30/bethany-balcers-nwsl-journey-of-faith-acceptance-and-seizing-opportunities/
This paragraph specifically struck me. A lot of NWSL players are Christian, and not just nominally religious. Prayer groups are common. Players often speak about their depth of faith.
But the queer/feminist roots of women’s soccer run deep, and we have recently seen a significant commitment to anti-racism. And in America in 2020, these are coded in opposition to Christianity.
So it’s worth asking how a given athlete addresses the tension that comes from existing within (at least) two communities – which potentially exert gravitational pulls in very different directions.
One answer, which likely works for many people, is to simply reject the applications of faith with which they disagree. After all, Christianity promises a universalizable articulation of liberation and love.
Faith *has* been integral to justice in many moments of history. Look to black churches, to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, to abolitionists driven by their reading of scripture, to the story of Jesus Christ himself—who was nothing if not a radical agitator for love.
By this reading, the ‘true’ Christianity is the faith which motivates universalizing compassion. And anyone using it to promote bigotry is perverting its essential spirit.
But you can't just wish context out of existence, and Christianity is not an abstract thing that exists only in one's mind. It is a living, active force in the world. One which has organized behaviors, values, and worldviews.
Consider: Trump’s best, most durable, constituency is white evangelicals. The Christian nationalism that drives this support is *not* simply a subject of internal faith but is an outward-facing and interventionist politics.
Scholars like Andrew Whitehead have shown that this strain of white Christian nationalism strongly predicts attitudes toward ‘secular’ symbols such as the flag – certainly an important thread right now https://twitter.com/ndrewwhitehead/status/1004747784342458368
One's individual faith can't be cleanly separated from the larger context, but neither is it wholly trapped. We all engage with multiple communities of meaning, and are constantly negotiating what we will take from them, and what we will make OF them.
I think that as long as one regards their faith not as an *answer,* but as an invitation to ask more and better questions, they will likely make progress in this journey of reconciliation. It certainly seems like many NWSL players have done precisely that over the past month.
I have been wanting to write a longform piece on religion and American women's soccer for a while now. Maybe this offseason is the time. DMs are open if you'd like to share your own thoughts or experiences.
