Anti-Christian Animus in the Sports Pages
I spent the first 33yrs of my life in Ohio. I often say that my blood is not red, it’s scarlet! I love my Buckeyes! Thankfully, living in West Virginia that works out just fine. I can still be a Buckeye and a Mountaineer with little conflict. Being a Buckeye does carry with it some added baggage though. When people find out I’m from Ohio they usually follow up with, “You know the definition of a buckeye don’t you?” Obviously, they feel they are the only ones privy to this information. (If you don’t know-good for you). The hardest time to be a Buckeye though is when they lose. Especially like they did this year in the tournament to a number 15 seed Oral Roberts University.1
Oral Roberts is no stranger to most of us. I remember as a kid seeing him on our local religious channel. Though he has been gone several years, you still hear of his money-seeking charismatic personality in different settings today. Preachers often called out his false teaching and financing campaigns in sermons I heard.
Obviously, the whole nation is familiar with him now as the college, which bears his name, has moved on to the Sweet 16 in the NCAA basketball tournament.
While many love “Cinderella stories,” the USA Today’s Hemal Jhaveri2 wrote an article titled “Oral Roberts University isn’t the feel good March Madness story we need.” In the article she says, “While the school has been soundly mocked on social media for its archaic standards of behavior and code of conduct that bans profanity, ‘social dancing,’ and shorts in classrooms, it is the school’s discriminatory and hateful anti-LGBTQ+ policy that fans should protest as the Golden Eagles advance in the tournament. This is not necessarily the most shocking verbiage in the article. She goes on to say, “The Christian school upholds the values and beliefs of its fundamentalist namesake, making it not just a relic of the past, but wholly incompatible with the NCAA’s own stated values of equality and inclusion … Oral Roberts wants to keep its students tied to toxic notions of fundamentalism that fetishize chastity, abstinence and absurd hemlines is a larger cultural issue that can be debated. What is not up for debate however is their anti-LGBTQ+ stance…”
Did you notice a certain word she uses to describe this University? Some of you might have even chuckled that she considers ORU a “fundamentalist” institution.
The term fundamentalist is one that has caused much conversation in our circles over the past decade. You can read recent P&D articles about it here. Hemal Jhaveri makes it clear that no matter which side of the pendulum you find yourself on, chances are, those outside the church see you as a fundamentalist.
Even though Oral Roberts and I are not on the same page theologically (even in the same book for that matter), it is alarmingly clear Jhaveri’s article that it is not doctrine that makes someone a fundamentalist in the eyes of the world. It is your acceptance or lack thereof of the LGBTQ+ lifestyle that defines you. What she is saying is that anyone who believes the Bible is toxic and has no place in the activities of this nation.
So how should we respond?
We should not be surprised (John 17:14).
Jesus says we should not be surprised if the world hates us. We cannot expect the lost to understand our beliefs and what the Bible says. The natural man cannot receive the things of the spirit of God (1 Cor. 2:14).
We must hold to the truth (John 17:6-8).
We cannot cancel our Christian culture. We must hold true to the teachings of God’s Word. We must unashamedly stand for what we know is right. In the spirit of love, yes, but stand.
We need to pray for protection (John 17:11-12).
We are not on the same page with some of these other churches and universities, yet we need to lift them up in prayer. We need to pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ who are in the spotlight for what they believe. We need to ask God to protect our freedoms and theirs.
We are going to continually find ourselves increasingly ostracized from the world, and that is ok. May we never condemn them, but remember that the world can be saved through Him (John 3:17).
Treg Spicer is pastor of Faith Baptist Church – Morgantown, WV. Follow his blog here. We republish his articles by permission.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
- By the time we published this piece, the NCAA crowned Baylor University as the tournament champion. Oral Roberts University lost by two points to Arkansas in the “Sweet Sixteen,” or third round of the tournament. [↩]
- Ironically, USA Today fired Hemal Jhaveri for her insensitive tweet concerning another story, the Colorado mass shooting. [↩]