Abstract
Athletes, particularly players in the National Football League, have repeatedly invoked God in order to glorify, praise, or even credit the divine with success on the field. This essay examines the ways in which different types of religious language used to bring God onto the gridiron are received and evaluated along racial lines. I seek to show that speech by athletes, in particular black football players, that communicates a God who is partisan and intervenes in action on the field is routinely dismissed by fellow players, the media, and religious authorities who favor a God who either intervenes softly and generally or is above the game altogether. I contend that a double standard is applied to this theological debate due to a disregard of historical African American theology and to hegemonic white evangelical norms that police such discourse.
Highlights
I have attempted to call attention to a racially based double standard as it has been applied to religious expressions of football players
Akin to the uneven treatment of trash-talkers in the NFL, hard providentialism that undergirds some religious talk by black football players is routinely ignored or deemed illegitimate while the soft providential language of white athletes and some black athletes gets a pass
A part of what makes this double standard so pernicious is that much of the discourse involving such talk is trafficked in the abstract that exists above the concrete historical and political forces that have given voice, and communally justified hard providential theology within
Summary
In his book Playing While White, compares and contrasts the ways that trash-talking in sports is digested and interpreted along racial lines. The trash-talk dished out by black athletes such as Muhammad Ali, Allen Iverson, Serena Williams, and Shannon Sharpe is often deemed disrespectful, uncivil, and a sign of societal decline Leonard calls out this glaring double standard for what it is—the amount of melanin in one’s skin determines how your trash-talk is received. I contend that the racialized dual-interpretation of trash-talking is analogous to that of the treatment of religious expressions in the NFL This double standard is predicated on the assumption that most religious expressions, no matter the race of the player, rely upon the premise that God is active in the world and involved in the game of football in some way. It can be upheld only when historical and political circumstances that have molded religious expression are disregarded
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