God's Muscle

When God created man he set him up to score big in life. He put Adam on first base and gave him a choice: he could run with God and never get thrown out--or he could try it on his own. Adam chose to go it alone and was nailed. In fact, the attempted steal failed so miserably that the team still hasn't recovered. God never meant for it to be so difficult. He sent a pinch runner, Jesus Christ...

However inelegant that sweat-soaked version of the Gospel according to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, muscular metaphors are nothing new to Christianity. St. Paul wrote, "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race." What is new and startling is that hundreds of prominent athletes are practicing locker-room piety alongside the swingers of sport. In a year when many church agencies are promoting evangelism, harnessing the hero worship of athletes is a clever way to make religion attractive to the young.

THE FELLOWSHIP OF CHRISTIAN ATHLETES, started in 1955, has a mailing list of 55,000 and a staff of 36. Its purpose: "to confront athletes and coaches--and through them the youth of the nation --with the challenge and adventure of following Christ." The high point of its easygoing program is a series of week-long summer conferences, which 9,500 athletes, coaches, and their families will attend this year, starting May 27 at Arkansas Tech. The F.C.A. sponsors groups at 1,400 high schools and 215 colleges, and schedules banquets, golf tournaments, and pre-Bowl breakfasts for adults.

ATHLETES IN ACTION, a newer, more specialized group, follows the hard-sell evangelism of its parent organization, Campus Crusade for Christ. It has a staff of 200, and sponsors eleven amateur athletic teams and other special events, drawing campus crowds to hear evangelistic messages.

The two organizations field a growing number of clean-living Christian headliners, such as Dallas Cowboys Coach Tom Landry (who this month becomes F.C.A. president), U.C.L.A. Basketball Coach John Wooden, baseball's Brooks Robinson, and basketball's Bob Pettit, the first man to score 20,000 points in the N.B.A. Retired Cleveland Browns Defensive End Bill Glass has even become a full-time evangelist.

Pro football becomes a substitute American religion on many a fall Sunday, but most of the teams now have their own weekly prayer meetings. This spring, while teammates are spending the off-season selling insurance or filming lucrative deodorant commercials, dozens of pro football players are on road trips for God, free of charge. Athletes in Action currently has a pickup team on a nationwide tour of 23 military bases and various cities. When they hit Atlanta this month, Miami Tackle Norm Evans and other stars fanned out to speak to 65,000 students at 74 high schools.

At Henderson High, Atlanta Falcons Linebacker Greg Brezina told of thrice-a-week drunks and endless fights with his wife before his conversion. "Now that I'm right with God, I can accept myself. What else does it do? It makes me able to stand here today and say 'I love you' to a black man, where two years ago I couldn't have done that." Brezina grew up in rural Texas; his suburban audience was all white. (Like athletics in general, Christian athletics has quietly broken down racial barriers over the years.)

Meanwhile, the lure of four football Cardinals and a weekend of sports had drawn 110 high schoolers to a Kiwanis-owned camp south of St. Louis, sponsored by the local F.C.A. chapter. The F.C.A. schedule promotes small-group discussions, reasoning that even Jesus formed a "huddle" with his disciples. But the boys were more anxious to break from the huddle and get to the playing fields. Still, after lights-out that night, one cabin of boys had an intense discussion ("Can God make a rock so big he can't pick it up?")

The spiritual Olympics are disarmingly ecumenical. Both F.C.A. and A.I.A. are Evangelical Protestant, but they do not ask many questions, and feature many Roman Catholics including 1971-72 All-Pro Quarterback Roger Staubach. The F.C.A. has actively sought Catholic participation for years and schedules daily Masses at its conferences.

Some critics find a basic conflict between the aggression and ego worship of sports and authentic Christianity. Sports evangelism tends to worship success, although F.C.A., at least, also seems geared to the bench warmers of the world. Beyond that, most of the heavyweight preachers are theological lightweights, as adept at presenting the complexities of Christian belief and biblical interpretation as most pastors would be at quarterbacking the Detroit Lions `a la George Plimpton. But if F.C.A. and A.I.A. teach a theologically thin, no-sweat Christianity, so do many churches these days.

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