Here Comes the (Catholic) Boom

I regret that I have yet to see Here Comes the Boom.  I’ve been excited since I first read reports about it, but between writing my Full Connection papers and getting writing for Charge Conference, I’ve been stuck in the purgatory of bureaucratic minutiae. Alas, had I taken the time, I would’ve known about what is apparently a strong faith element in the MMA-themed film.  Kevin James, of King of Queens fame, is a faithful Catholic who made it a point to show Christianity in a prominent and positive light in the film.  Via the United Methodist Reporter by way of Patheos:

Was there a deliberate decision to include scenes where faith is organic to the lives of the characters?

Yes, absolutely. There are so many movies out there that go the opposite way. There’s so much negativity. To show faith and prayer as positive things was important to me. You’re right in that it’s difficult. You don’t want to beat people over the head. They’re hip to it, and they know when you’re just banging them over the head to get them to believe it. So that was important to me, to make it organic, and to have it be in the main stream of this movie.

I’ve written a couple of times (here and here especially) about the intersections between Christianity and MMA, and I’m glad to see a devout Christian so public with his MMA fandom (I often get blank stares and agape mouths when I name my favorite sport in a room full of preachers).  Fighters, like other athletes, are complicated people – driven, often superstitious, and more faith-oriented than one might think.  So says James:

Faith plays a HUGE part for the fighters I’ve met, following the sport. I became a fan of the sport back in 1993, and as I grew to know these people and these fights, to see them and work out with them, it wasn’t even the fighting so much that impressed me. They seem like gladiators going at each other in a cage — but they’re real people…In the fighting world, I see it all the time. I know how much prayer and a strong relationship with God is needed, and they rely on it.

Loving Thy Neighbor With Fisticuffs

Recently in Las Vegas, another violent would-be criminal was foiled by empathy and warm feelings.

All Religion is in Trouble…Even Atheism

It is commonplace in the rubble of the mainline denominations these days to drone on and on about the sorry state of the church in the West.  We go to workshops, blog, read books, and wallow in anxious conversation all with the same subtitle: “How do we not die?”  Not exactly a vivifying conversation.  We think the non-religious forces are winning; that secularism is successful and popular “New” Atheism is ascendant.  But is atheism doing so well?

If you actually listen to the things that atheists are saying, there is little here that is a challenge to faith of any brand, much less that of Christians.  Indeed, atheist literature and public discourse tends to be just as vain as popular Christian discourse.  So laments Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart:

…it seems obvious to me that the peculiar vapidity of New Atheist literature is simply a reflection of the more general vapidity of all public religious discourse these days, believing and unbelieving alike. In part, of course, this is because the modern media encourage only fragmentary, sloganeering, and emotive debates, but it is also because centuries of the incremental secularization of society have left us with a shared grammar that is perhaps no longer adequate to the kinds of claims that either reflective faith or reflective faithlessness makes.

Yes, reading Hart for long periods of time will hurt your brain.  He is as acerbic as he is brilliant, which is a feat.  Nonetheless, I think his premise is hard to argue against.  Case in point: an interview I read over on MMA Weekly with Seth Petruzelli, an MMA fighter (most famous for knocking Kimbo Slice off of any serious fan’s radar) who happens to be an outspoken atheist.  He explains how his first conflict with religious members of the MMA community came on the set of the reality show The Ultimate Fighter:

The first time it actually came up was in season 2 of The Ultimate Fighter in the house. Marcus Davis, he’s a pretty hardcore Christian and a lot of the guys in the house were the same way, especially with Matt Hughes being one of the coaches. There’s a scene actually in The Ultimate Fighter house where me and Matt kind of get into an argument for about 15 minutes or so about the bible, and obviously I think the bible [sic] is a bunch of BS, and that obviously struck a nerve with him.

To be an atheist is to – “obviously” – believe that the Bible is “BS”?  That is a stronger claim than many Christians would make about the holy books of other communities.  I have certainly never taught my people that the Koran or the Vedas are “BS,” even though I would not say that these words are inspired of the Triune God.  And yes, if you dismiss the word of God as BS, them’s probably going to be fighting words (unless you’ve been reading a lot of John Howard Yoder).  Petruzelli further describes the conflict with an outspoken Christian fighter:

We kind of had an argument back and forth, with me coming out on top obviously cause you can’t argue with science. Science trumps faith in all aspects of everything. But they had group bible sessions in the house and I just kind of had a little dialogue obviously with Marcus Davis too about it, all kinds of stuff in the bible [sic].

Is this the kind of reflection that the supposedly super-rational New Atheism is producing?  At what point will the hackneyed ‘science vs. faith’ thesis be done with?  Granted, there are Christians that still have not gotten the memo that science is not something to fear.  But we’re working on it.  There are plenty of Christians working in scientific fields who are faithful people.  Christians need not shun the search for truth in whatever form.  Thoughtful atheists should see the dialogue not as science vs. faith but atheism vs. various kinds of theism, Christianity among them.  The scientific method, which, if my high school biology class was right, deals with observable, verifiable, and repeatable phenomena, can neither confirm nor deny the presence of a deity.  Even psuedo-scientific work that purports to “prove” a divine intelligence can only get us to a vaguely theistic being, not the Triune God revealed in the Bible.  Neither faith nor non-faith should claim to be provable by science.  Doing so, whether one is a Christian or an atheist, belies a fundamental perversion of what faith actually is.  To whit:

Faith to me is intellectual bankruptcy…I have faith in my fighting ability because there’s facts to back it up and that I can fight. Blind faith? Like I said, it’s intellectual bankruptcy, it’s a cop out. Tim Minchin has a great quote about this. ‘Science adjusts its views on what is observed, and faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved.’

Intellectual bankruptcy?  Ouch.  That aside, Petruzelli confuses confidence with faith.  “I have faith in my fighting ability because [there are] facts to back it up.”  If there are facts to back “it” up, then what you have is not faith.  As Hebrews 11:1 makes clear,  “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  There may be evidence of faith, indeed, fruits of the Spirit, or the inner witness so important to Wesley and other spiritual writers, but this is not the kind of evidence that will be observable under a microscope.  It’s also just barely worth pointing out that there is no monolithic “science,” and that the work of Thomas Kuhn and others shows how often scientists disagree on, willfully distort, and ignore supposed facts.  Scientific revolutions often only occur after a long, hard fight about what indeed the science is saying.

It seems somewhat unfair to criticize Petruzelli, who, as far as I know, has no theological training.  I don’t mean to be unnecessarily harsh, and I like to think that I’m equally critical of poor arguments made by Christians.  He is, however, making some striking claims in a very public space, and I think that makes confrontation both fair and necessary.  The Church must have answers to such arguments, for in the years to come they will only get louder.

If only a serious dialogue with atheists was possible.  When I read folks like Nietzche, I am challenged to think about my faith, to really question its basics.  This is a service to the faithful, for our critics really are our friends.  To return to a fighting metaphor: if Nietzche’s arguments are useful sparring partners, then, by comparison, the shallow vitriol of the New Atheists can only be described as the vain thrashing of an infant fighting off a clean diaper.

We’ll let a more skilled combatant fight the closing round.  Hart expresses disdain for such a-thinking (see what i did there?) with adroitness, arguing that today’s atheists

 …lack the courage, moral intelligence, and thoughtfulness of their forefathers in faithlessness. What I find chiefly offensive about them is not that they are skeptics or atheists; rather, it is that they are not skeptics at all and have purchased their atheism cheaply, with the sort of boorish arrogance that might make a man believe himself a great strategist because his tanks overwhelmed a town of unarmed peasants, or a great lover because he can afford the price of admission to a brothel. So long as one can choose one’s conquests in advance, taking always the paths of least resistance, one can always imagine oneself a Napoleon or a Casanova (and even better: the one without a Waterloo, the other without the clap)…A truly profound atheist is someone who has taken the trouble to understand, in its most sophisticated forms, the belief he or she rejects, and to understand the consequences of that rejection. Among the New Atheists, there is no one of whom this can be said, and the movement as a whole has yet to produce a single book or essay that is anything more than an insipidly doctrinaire and appallingly ignorant diatribe.

May God grant us the blessing of able conversation partners, and save us from shallow faith, whether it is our own, or that of others.

P.S.  For the record, I think Damon Martin’s piece drastically overstates the place of religion in the fight game.  Atheists may be offended that there are so many nods to Jesus in the cage, but beyond post-fight shout-outs and mildly offensive clothing, I don’t think there is much substantive Christianity there.  More likely is that, in an increasingly secularized world, many folks in the media are frankly caught off guard when someone like Benson Henderson (or Tim Tebow) makes public statements of faith.  Rather like the pagans of bygone (?) eras, cultural observers and elites are surprised to find a small cadre of men and women who will not sacrifice to the official cultus and, rather offensively, talk about God beyond the privacy of their own closet.

Sports, Steroids, and Grace

Lots of sad news in the world of sports (and sports entertainment) lately.  One of my favorite fighters, Chael Sonnen, may be getting more than the proverbial slap on the wrist from the California State Athletic Commission.  It’s been a rapid ascent and and even more rapid decline for the former No. 1 Contender for Anderson ‘The Spider’ Silva’s middleweight title.  After beating up Silva for all but 2 minutes of their five-round affair, Sonnen was submitted in the closing minutes.

Since then, things have just gotten worse.  The Cliff’s Notes version: he popped positive for banned substances after tests showed abnormal testosterone levels.  He claimed he had a doctor’s note, and that he had told other officials.  Some of these claims were disputed.  In the meantime, he was convicted in a real estate fraud case and lost his real estate license (which also forced him to stop his bid for Congress).

Initially, the CSAC was prepared to lift his suspension, but this week they took a mulligan at a special hearing and changed their minds.  Disagreements over the honesty of Sonnen’s statements – if anything, he is a talker – and other concerns caused them to vote 4-1 to suspend his license indefinitely.  The problem: not only does this shelve Sonnen in California until 2012, but because most athletic commissions honor such decisions across state lines, it is likely he could only get fights in states without such regulatory bodies.  Even with that, it is doubtful that the UFC, which is continually seeking to improve its image, would back a fighter against the wishes of a state commission.

In light of the wrist-slapping that goes on in virtually all other professional sports, Sonnen’s penalty seems unnecessarily harsh.  It seems like a personal vendetta more than a pragmatic penalty. “This will teach those fighters,” I hear them sneering in the boardroom, “to make public comments about officials and judges.”  Methinks Chael is being made and example of.

We give grace to our athletes all the time.  Yes, Sonnen broke the law, but he also owned up to it and faced the music.  He’s been punished.  Performance-enhancing drugs?  It’s an open secret that many, if not most, professional sports are rife with them.  Does it make it right? No.  But it should temper our righteous indignation when someone tests positive.  In Matthew 18 we find the following exchange:

 ²¹ Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”  ²² Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.

Seventy-seven?  Surely we can find room for 2, or 3.  Jeff Sherwood over at Sherdog sums it up nicely:

We have to be honest with ourselves: PEDs exist in professional sports. Somewhere in the world, a curling sweeper is probably using steroids. It’s against the law, but so many athletes do it just to be able to compete in today’s sports. Pro athletes are pushed year after year to tackle harder, hit longer home runs, jump higher and knock more people out. Then, when they’re caught doing things that will help them perform to the standards set, everyone turns against them.

Most MMA fighters have a hard enough time buying food to feed their bodies properly with the money they make; being forced to sit out for a year is a huge blow. Four games to an NFL player is the equivalent of a parking ticket.

Look, I get it: these players have broken the rules. But commissioners, judges and referees in MMA — not to mention the millions working in or around the NBA, NFL, MLB and NHL — are able to feed their families because of what these professional athletes do. Let’s give them a little bit of love.

Update:  Apparently the CSAC made a mistake, and Sonnen is eligible to apply in CA and everywhere June 29 for licensure.  Time will tell, of course.  Perhaps if he doesn’t talk too much about it between now and then, the commissions will cease to unduly punish him.  The timing seems suspect to me; there has been a good deal of disappointment over the handling of this case.  Oh well.  Hope he gets back in the cage this year, especially if it is against Michael Bisping.

Bin Laden’s Death: A Variety of Reactions

These last few days have been a study in contrasts.  Many are overjoyed (emphasis on the ‘over’) at the announcement that Bin Laden was recently killed in a firefight with US forces.  Others have been horrified at such reactions.  I sat with a group of pastor friends this morning and we wrestled with it together.  Scriptures such as Ezekiel 33:11 were invoked: “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked,” says the Lord.  We wondered at the intersections of state and church, of faith and citizenship.  This is one of those issues where there may well be a collision between the two.

Yes, Paul is clear is Romans 13 that the ‘sword’ of government is God’s instrument to punish the wicked.  But Jesus is also clear that we are to pray for enemies and bless our persecutors.  There is a clear role for the government – I am not one of those neo-Anabaptists that thinks Christians should have nothing to do with the government – but the necessary confrontation with evil ought not make us triumphalistic or compromise Christian charity.  I’m not a pacifist, nor am I against the death penalty; I do, however, believe that deaths resulting from just wars or proper executions ought to be mourned.  Each person – even a Hitler, Pol Pot, or Bin Laden – is a person made in the image of God (however corrupted), a person that Jesus went to the cross for, and a life that ultimately was designed for fellowship with God.  Even with a ‘good’ death, such as when a love one has been suffering greatly and death comes as a relief, remains something that ought to be saddening.

Sam Wells, a protege of Stanley Hauerwas, fellow faculty member at Duke Divinity and Dean of the Chapel at Duke released a statement (why?) about the reaction to Bin Laden’s death that reads in part:

This is not a day for celebration.   A celebration would be due if the perpetrators of those crimes had expressed remorse, regret, and repentance. They have not. A celebration would be due if there had been a conversion of Bin Laden or his followers to a truer practice of Islam. There has been none. A celebration would be due if the overwhelming response from Christians in America had been one that embodied the commandments to love their enemies and pray for their persecutors. There has been no such overwhelming response. A celebration would be due if there had been a proper process of justice, involving arrest, gathering of evidence, trial, defense, and prosecution. There has been no such process… [i]f we assume that killing a suspect without trial, without persuading him of the justice of our cause, and without bringing him to a true expression of his own tradition – let alone our own – is a victory, then it is a sign of how far we have allowed this war to distort the values of our civilization.

I think he’s right to to point out what would have been real reasons to celebrate.  I think he’s naive to sugggest that a preferred outcome would have been some kind of criminal proceeding.  Bin Laden was not a criminal.  He was an enemy; not just an enemy soldier, but the equivalent of a general (a figurehead and a commander of forces hostile to the US, whose tactics were repugnant to the conventions of war).  Arrest may have been preferable, for the potential intelligence that could have resulted, but odds are someone so radicalized did not wish to be taken alive by US forces.  Furthermore, unlike his victims, Bin Laden knew he was a target.  He had a better chance than the victims of 9/11 and other attacks ever had.

Then there is another reaction worth note, this time from pro MMA fighter and active Green Beret (Army Special Forces) Tim Kennedy.  Having served in the War on Terror (I’m not going to put it in quotes, as I think it is disrespectful to the soldiers serving in this conflict) in Iraq and Afghanistan, Kennedy speaks to both his elation at hearing the news of Bin Laden’s death and his disappointment in not being a part of the action:

“So there was a little sense of disappointment that I wasn’t part of it… I’m just totally excited and thrilled to see a really dark, sad chapter of our country’s history — it’s not coming to a close, but that’s definitely a chapter that’s pending…[i]f I was going to design a version of hell for me, that would be it. Where I’m sitting there reading about special operations going in to do a hit on a HVT, on a high-value target, and just having to not be there. It’s absolutely excruciating.”

As Gene Hackman says in one of my favorite films, “A winner always wants the ball when the game is on the line.”  We shouldn’t be horrified that Kennedy wanted to take part in this action.  I’m sure many elite warfighters would want to as well.  Not out of blood lust or uber-testosterone, but because that is what such people are trained for, and, however dangerous or unpleasant it may be, that’s their job.

I think both responses are reasonable given the various vocations of these two men.  A professor of Christian ethics and preacher ought to be the conscience of a community, even when it is unpopular.  And we ought to expect our cloistered academics to have a degree of unreality to their views.  Nothing new there.  The gospel calls us into conflict with the culture around us (and any culture), as well as with our own passions.  He has done the church a service by reminding us of this.

But we need the Tim Kennedys of this world too.  We need people who are willing to step up and face demented enemies in hostile territory, willing and able to undergo rigorous training, sacrificing personal needs for the needs of the larger community.  In the face of such bravery we can only be in thankful awe.

I will continue to wrestle with these issues.  I am not proud of my initial reaction.  I wasn’t running into the streets waving the Stars and Bars, but neither was I reverently praying for an enemy whom I am called to bless.  The work of sanctification goes on, and today I realize, once more, that I have a long way to go.

P.S. Who is the “our” when Wells writes of “our civilization”?  I was under the impression that Wells had little interest in the project of the the modern West.  Generally those who speak of a monolithic Western Civilization are something like crusty paleo-cons who are chafing at multiculturalism.  As ecclesiologically focused as Wells’ theology is, I’m just surprised he would use that kind of language.

The Sad State of Journalism: NBC Sports Skewers Dana White and His “UFC Tree Fort”

Just read an ::ahem:: “article” over on the NBC Sports site dubiously titled “Dana White Doesn’t Want Icky Girls In His UFC Tree Fort.” If you don’t know who Dana White is, well, you aren’t even a casual MMA fan.  The foul-mouthed Bostonian (are there any other kinds?) is President and part-owner of the UFC, and the man most responsible for turning around not only his corporation but the entire sport.  He’s not polished, but he is smart, and I like his product.  He has flaws.  These are readily viewable with a simple Google search.  But that is no excuse for this.  The author, Rick Chandler, concludes his short piece – based on a ONE WORD answer White gave to the ever-invasive cameras of TMZ – with the following scintillating analysis:

OK, I think we get the picture. We now take you to the scene of another 6-year-old mentality, via Calvin & Hobbes, already in progress:

Calvin: Our top-secret club, G.R.O.S.S.– Get Rid Of Slimy girlS!
Susie: Slimy girls?!
Calvin: I know that’s redundant, but otherwise it doesn’t spell anything.

Of course, the head of the UFC must be a misogynistic, immature dolt.  Many people, ignorant of the sport, would say the same about us fans.  But this is ridiculous.

The primary reason that the UFC does not have a women’s division (and likely won’t for quite some time) is a relatively low number of female fighters.  The UFC is the major-league, marquee MMA organization.  They will never have a women’s division until there are enough high-quality female fighters (in a particular weight class) to justify its creation in the top-shelf promotion.  This same logic applies to why there will not be (also for a long, long time) a super-heavyweight (265 lbs. +) division: very few – if any -  high-quality fighters in that bracket.

But I didn’t need to tell you all that.  Hopefully, all you needed to see was the title of this article to know that this was a pathetic excuse for sports journalism.  To run to the opposite extreme, where is Ariel Helwani when I need him?

P.S. Sue, if you read this, feel free to correct me!  Aside from college newspaper experience (ha!) I am no expert in this field.  But as a fan, I was offended by this hack piece.

What Sports Would Jesus Watch?

In one of my seminary classes dealing with gender issues and Christian faith, we read Chuck Palahniuk’s remarkable Fight Club.  Interestingly, this was the one male-oriented book we read for the class (like most gender classes, “gender” really means “women”).  I recall the women in the class, including the professor, being horrified at the popularity of the story and the movie.  Many questioned how people could be attracted to such naked violence.  There was poo-pooing all around until I brought up the fact that many people in the room like violence in a form that most of us consider innoccuos: sports.  The point was valid; even ardent pacifists that I know enjoy inherently violent sports like hockey, football, and Mixed Martial Arts (MMA).

Thanks to a post over at Sherdog, I found the following quote in a piece by Adam Groza at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in California (which I’d never heard of until reading this post):

UFC and MMA amounts to violence porn, a term which has been applied to movies with wanton violence such as “SAW,” where violence is not part of the plot, it is the attraction. Violence for violence’s sake, as opposed to instrumental or redeeming violence, desensitizes the viewer to the graphic horror of watching two people pummel each other for the sake of entertainment. UFC and MMA offer exactly the kind of violence condemned in Psalm 11:5. Ezekiel 7:23 decries, “the city is full of violence.” Why are Christians supporting violence in the city?

I think the comparison of SAW is ignorant and egregious.  I can’t stand the SAW franchise, but that is a matter of taste more than morality.  Futhermore, what Groza calls “violence for violence’s sake” I would simply call honest violence.  Much of the attraction of our favorite sports stems from the violent aspects: fights in hockey and wrecks in NASCAR come to mind.  UFC fighter (and compelling wordsmith) Chael Sonnen makes this point about football:

The UFC is the only thing that has violence that isn’t fraudulent. Football…they put up these end zones, but you take the end zones out people will still come. You take the tackling out, and it’s gonna be a ghost town in those stadiums. UFC will tell you what you’re going to get – straight ahead – and you can buy a ticket if you like the ride.

Groza goes on to say that the UFC exploits women because of the ring girls.  I suppose he’s never seen cheerleaders at any other sporting events? Another glaring omission is any mention of boxing.  Anything true about the violence of MMA – if you know the sport – is even more true of “the sweet science.”  And yet, for numerous reasons, people who are horrified by MMA still see boxing as a gentleman’s game.  Such views only showcase a lack of exposure to the emerging sport.

I think Groza has a point when he shares some of the more disturbing examples of churches using MMA to market evangelize.  While some churches host sporting events like Super Bowls and some will have basketball leagues and even karate classes, as a pastor I would not be comfortable making a UFC pay-per-view a churchwide event.  However, I think there are many things an individual Christian can do that a church ought not sponsor (like watch reality TV, for instance).

This is another example of a severe bias against MMA in the larger culture, and more evidence that the sport has yet to arrive.  From an ecclesial perspective, it is true that Christians should always hold a critical eye to their society; that much in Groza’s piece is useful.  But if MMA is untouchable because of its violence, so are many other of America’s favorite pastimes.  In other words, if one argues that MMA is anathema for the church, then we can only say that a larger blindspot has been uncovered.

Mormons and ‘Acceptable’ Sports

For the first time in the history of the UFC, they are pulling up and moving a show from one city to another.  The reason: poor ticket sales.  The cities involved: Salt Lake City, poised to host its first UFC event, did not sell enough tickets, and now the event (UFC on Versus II) will be hosted in San Diego.  San Diego, a long-time MMA hotbed, is expected to have no problems selling tickets.

Read the details of the press release here.  What no one is saying, so far at least, is whether or not religion has anything to do with the poor ticket sales.  Interestingly, UFC President Dana White defended the original choice of Salt Lake City based on excellent TV ratings in that market.  But for some reason, that normally reliable indicator did not translate into ticket sales.

I can only wonder, is this because of the heavily Mormon population of Utah?  Granted, I don’t know of any specific rules against viewing fight sports in the LDS community, but there may be other issues.  Bud Light has become a prominent sponsor of the UFC recently, and we all know that alcohol is verboten in Mormon life.  My own suspicion is that many Mormons, whose church cultivates (and, to their credit, practices) an image of squeaky clean,  moral families, were simply afraid to attend.  It’s one thing to watch cagefighting in the privacy of your own home; it’s another to go out with all those beer-drinking, TAPOUT-wearing neanderthals and actually place butt to seat.

In short, my thought is that however fond many Mormon men are of Mixed Martial Arts, the sport itself (thanks to bloodshed, ring girls, beer sponsors, and tattoos) still has too much stigma attached to it for a tight-knit, tea-totaling community like Salt Lake City.  If anyone has a better idea, I’d love to hear it.  And for the record, I have beloved family members who are Mormons, and I have no ill will against the LDS Church.  I’m simply reflecting on what seems to be a logical scenario.  Thoughts?

EDIT: It also just occurred to me that this event was scheduled for a Sunday.  Really, UFC?  Does no one in your planning office know a thing about religious practices in Utah?

“Jesus Didn’t Tap” says the Green Power Ranger

Jason David Frank, a lifelong martial artist most famous as the Green Ranger on the original Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, has recently decided to get into mixed martial arts (“MMA”, or ‘cage-fighting’ for the uninitiated).  He also has a clothing line…about Jesus.  Check out the gloves in the above picture, as well as the t-shirt below:

// <![CDATA[// Seen guys wearing Tapout or Affliction t-shirts? Well, this is the Christian version...whatever that means.  Here is the description from the website:

Jesus Didn't Tap was one of the first Christian based MMA clothing companies to hit the scene. In the sport of Mixed Martial Arts, to "tap" is to quit or give up. The message of the Jesus Didn't Tap line is that Jesus didn't quit after going through unimaginable suffering and pain when he was crucified on the cross. The company aims to represent both the competitiveness of MMA and honoring God in all of their designs and hopes it will help spread the Christian message of salvation to a whole new audience.

First of all: there are more than one Christian MMA companies??  Oh well.  The problem with this is that, in MMA, to "tap" essentially means to submit.  And while they are correct that Jesus didn't give up due to pain, they seem to overlook the fact that Jesus' crucifixion was essentially an act of submission.  Philippians makes this clear:

Philippians 2

⁵Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
⁶ Who, being in very nature^[a] God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
⁷ but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature^[b] of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
⁸ And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!

This plays on two facets of Jesus’ crucifixion, one of which is usually emphasized to the detriment of the other.  One the one hand, the cross did display the power of weakness the shame the strong, the total abandonment of human power and the acceptance of a shameful and common death – the death of slaves and traitors.  This is the Christology seen in Paul, who tells us that God’s power is “made perfect in weakness.”  The cross is the prime example of this.

On the other hand, Jesus’ torture and execution required a great deal of fortitude, will, physical endurance and spiritual strength.  Paul told Timothy that God gave us a Spirit of love and discipline, but also of power.  The Bible is clear that the anointed of the Lord do receive power from on high – they slay Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, administer kingdoms, suffer torture and imprisonment.  And so, while the cross is a display of weakness, it is also an exhibition of spiritual strength par excellence.

These are hard to hold in tension.  For instance: Neoconservatives who love Jesus will emphasize power and control, the Pantocrator, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, and the strength that comes from conviction and duty.  Pacifists and many more Christians who trend left will,  on the other hand, emphasize the weakness of Jesus (and the church) and the power of holy defeat to overcome the strength of the world.  They are both theologies of the cross, but of very different varieties.

I respect Mr. Frank for being open about his Christian convictions, and for attempting (in his own fashion) to get “the message” out there.  But here, as usual, popular expressions of Christianity lack both theological substance and intellectual nuance.  Sigh.  These folks mean well, and have given us a good opportunity to think about the meaning and message of the cross.  There are worse things to sell than Jesus MMA shirts.

At any rate, Jesus did tap.  Thanks be to God.

Embraced By a Macho God? The Church/Cagefighting Debate

UFC Middleweight Champion Anderson Silva embraces former champ Rich Franklin (an evangelical Christian and former math teacher) after defeating him for a second time

From The Gray Lady: The story that just won’t go away.  In what can’t be nearly as big a trend as a front-page story in the New York Times would indicate, we learn that some churches are turning to mixed martial arts as a way of attracting the unchurched – particularly young men.  The story kicked off a firestorm of debate in the popular media and the blogosphere, and it’s not hard to see why: the combination of evangelical Christianity, violence, and hyper-masculinity is bound to draw attention.  Let’s parse this perfect storm and deal with it piecemeal:

1) Mixed Martial Arts. There is a reason this is a story about mixed martial arts and church.  A story about Karate and church, or Tae Kwon Do and church, would not be news, because such traditional martial arts are widely accepted in American culture and have been seen in many churches for years.  Such martial arts, though they can be highly dangerous, have the benefit of better PR – most people think that the board breaking, high kicks, and pajama-like outfits make for interesting spectacle and perhaps some valuable self-defense, but nothing anti-social or dangerous.  By contrast, MMA has (rightly) earned a reputation from its early days as a bloodsport or freak show, something only the most barbaric people would enjoy.  The early UFC promoters cultivated this image, but in truth it is a dinosaur.  The explosion of MMA’s popularity and acceptance in the broader culture (seen especially in the number of states that now allow and actively pursue MMA promotions) has been equally well-earned, due to its heavy regulation and increased professionalism (Dana White excluded).  The NYT article wrongly attributes this changed perception to “shrewd marketing,” which is no doubt a factor following Zuffa’s purchase of the UFC; but every informed MMA follower knows that the UFC, and the sport with it, would not have survived to see this moment without drastically changing its practices from those early days.  Thus, much of this controversy stems from an uninformed and outdated perspective on MMA.

2) Violence qua violence. Still others find the association of any kind of violence with the Church to be distasteful (at best) or heretical (at worst).  Many of the loudest and most sustained voices here are an increasing number of Christian pacifists, especially in evangelical circles.  These mostly young men and women, raised by a generation affected temperamentally by the Vietnam War, seem to be finding themselves increasingly attracted to the “radical” ethics of Christian theologians like Stanley Hauerwas, John Howard Yoder, and their disciples.  These folks would (or should) be just as turned off by Karate or TKD as they are the new kid on the block, MMA.  I’m curious, though: would such people see a problem, on the grounds of violence, with showing the Super Bowl?  I’m convinced that most contact sports are just as violent and dangerous as any martial art, MMA included, but merely in less overt ways.  For instance, the UFC since its inception has not seen the kind of career-ending (and life-threatening) injuries that the NFL has seen in the same tenure.

3) The “muscular Christianity” angle. Part of this story’s controversy also has to do with the unabashed Christianized machismo on display in some of the churches mentioned in this piece:

Men ages 18 to 34 are absent from churches, some pastors said, because churches have become more amenable to women and children. “We grew up in a church that had pastel pews,” said [pastor] Tom Skiles.

In focusing on the toughness of Christ, evangelical leaders are harking back to a similar movement in the early 1900s, historians say, when women began entering the work force. Proponents of this so-called muscular Christianity advocated weight lifting as a way for Christians to express their masculinity.

That movement is referred to now as “Muscular Christianity,” a phenomenon best described in a chapter of Stephen Prothero’s excellent book American Jesus.  It is the theological great-grandaddy of current trends in evangelical Christianity like Promise Keepers and the work of John ‘Wild at Heart’ Eldredge.

But in reality, it is a strand of Christianity that goes much deeper.  Christianity has always been a movement of at least 50% women – drawn in, at least in part, by a spiritual leveling not present in the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean – and so it is no surprise that Christianity, which honored and encouraged the leadership of women, would draw a counter-trend in those societies that expected their men to be forceful and violent (which, to be frank, has been most societies in human history).  So, I’m sure that American men of the 1900′s were not the first Christians to feel the need to reassert the manly virtue of Christ, and these modern-day Christian gladiators won’t be the last.

This particular instantiation is troubling in some ways, and innocent if not endearing in others.  The gender-role angle is not particularly attractive; it represents the invasion of a bygone cultural norm into Christian family ethics.  In truth, some men are the heads of households, others not, and still others share it.  Any such model can be “Christian” (but perhaps not “American”).

But it shouldn’t be troubling that aggressive young men look to see in Jesus a little of themselves.  We all do.  This is what each and every quest for the historical Jesus has taught us (noticed in the first ‘Quest’ by Schweitzer) – when we search for the “real” Jesus, we tend to see ourselves – whether liberal or conservative, American or African, gentle or aggressive.  And certainly these young men are right to see that Jesus has been domesticated.  For most American Protestants, he’s a mild looking Caucasian with untainted robes, who hardly looks like someone who could or would fast for 40 days, chase moneychangers out of a temple with a whip, or endure torture and death for love’s sake.  Is Jesus an MMA fighter? No.  But he’s not a seminary professor, an artist, a writer, a salesman, or a blogger, either.

4) Evangelism as a problem. The fact that anyone is reached for Christ, or that anyone still believes in Jesus enough to tell others about him, is the original scandal of the world, and it remains so.  The world and its journalists will always be confused that anyone is reaching (and finding) God in Christ Jesus, whose cross is a stumbling block and foolishness.  Evangelicals have long been the whipping-boy (pardon the sexist language) for the secular intelligentsia – and no doubt this has a lot to do with why this story made the cover of the New York Times (which isn’t in the habit of running front page stories about churches doing culturally acceptable things like feeding the hungry or clothing the naked).

Concluding reflections: By way of conclusion, let us turn to a simple image: the post-fight embrace. Many, if not most, professional MMA athletes will often hug at the conclusion of a contest, if both are still conscious.  Even more telling, a fighter who knocks out or greatly damages an opponent will, following the stoppage, frequently go over to check on the well-being of his downed opponent.  This is often the case even if the two are heated rivals.

According to Miroslav Volf, an embrace is more than a polite gesture; rather, as “a herald of nonself-sufficiency and nonself-enclosure, open arms suggest the pain of other’s absence and the joy of the other’s anticipated presence.”  Only someone who is vulnerable can embrace, because “open arms are a sign that I have created space in myself for the other to come in.” (Exclusion & Embrace, 141)

MMA promoters and announcers (like comedian/UFC commentator Joe Rogan) like to highlight the post-fight embrace as a sign of the professionalism and respect of mixed martial artists, and they are right to do so.  But perhaps they are even more telling.  The commonality of such embraces would seem to indicate that critics are in fact wholly wrong; that MMA, as a sport is indeed violent, but it does not necessarily create violent young men.  Rather, such individuals are displaying in that moment the respect, discipline, and self-control expected of Christians at all times.  This is paradoxical, I realize, but if the cross tells us anything it is that our faith has a paradox at its very core.

But surely violent sport and Christianity ought not to mix, right?  Volf sees violence as the opposite of Christian self-understanding.  “Violence,” he contends, “is so much the opposite of embrace that it undoes the embrace.” (143)

We may have found a loophole to this otherwise profound insight.  Martial arts have been bringing people – many of them Christian – enjoyment, fitness, and community, for centuries.  Cagefighting may look different, but the effects on the participants are the same.  MMA may strike you as a strange vehicle to those destinations, and perhaps it is less than ideal, but, well – these guys aren’t going to join a knitting circle.  I’m not, of course, defending everything seen in this article, nor saying there are not potential problems (theological, ethical, and medical) with the mixture of fight sport and church.  I simply want to suggest that such difficulties are not unavoidable.  Done under the right conditions, such ministries could bear real fruit.

That being said, let the gospel be proclaimed in the language of the lost, and they will hear; then, just maybe, they will find their home in the embrace of a God big enough to handle something that makes you uncomfortable.  Perhaps Jesus would have us “suffer the cage fighters”?

Side note: Volf is profound, but my favorite Croatian is actually a cagefighter.