The Gospel of the Olympic Games

Part 1 of 2 on the Olympics, Homelessness, and Religion

A couple years ago, an LA-based faith blog asked me to write about the Olympics, homelessness, and faith. I jumped at the opportunity and set to work, even as I was still finishing my book. I conceived of it as a three-part series, but I only finished two—the book became too much, and my time in LA came to a close. The pieces did publish but to not much aplomb, as the timing wasn’t great and my promotional priorities were elsewhere.

Nonetheless, I’m really proud of them. And since I just had a new baby (!!!!!), it buys me a couple weeks to slow down my writing while still bringing you something new to read. They are a little LA-centric due to the original intended audience, but since LA is the host of 2028’s Olympics it remains broadly relevant.

Hope you enjoy, and please tell me what you think in the comments! This is a hot topic for many, and welcome conversation and disagreement.

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The ritual of the Olympic games, marked by lofty language, sacred symbols, and symbolic ceremonies, all bear the markings of people yearning for transcendence–in short, they are religious. While they may not pay tribute to a particular deity, there is undoubtedly a spirituality to everything about the Olympics, organized and manifested by governing bodies, statements of belief, and codes of conduct. This is not an evolution–it is the very nature of the Olympics as it was imagined and instituted. For as long as they have existed, the Olympics have been religious–and a key tenet of that religion is the marginalization of the poor.

In 2028, these same realities will come to bear on Los Angeles, as the Summer games settle into “the City of Angels,”—which boasts one of the largest GDPs in the world alongside one of its highest concentrations of people experiencing extreme poverty and homelessness. As I begin this three-part analysis of the impact of the Olympics on LA from a theological perspective, it will serve us well to understand the religious and socio-economic history of the Olympic games, from their earliest iterations to their present-day manifestation.

The original games of ancient Athens were held as part of a religious ceremony paying tribute to the god Zeus. Writes historian Paul Cartledge, “The sports component was only one part, and not the most important, of the five-day festival, held at the second full moon after the summer solstice. The festival began with a swearing-in and oath-taking. It was punctuated by religious rituals and communal singing of victory hymns. And it ended with a religious procession to the Temple of Olympian Zeus, where the victors were crowned, followed by the sacrifice of many animals, feasting and celebrations.” The select athletes, especially the champions, were held in such high esteem that they were adorned with riches and wealth and a status of celebrity that bordered on deity. The festival was ultimately doomed by the confluence of politics and Christianity: after the Roman empire adopted Christianity, the games were banned. 

Fast forward to 1889, they were resurrected by a man with his own theological trajectory, Pierre de Coubertin. Though he was educated by Jesuits, a tradition known for their commitment to social justice and alignment with the poor, this was an ill fit for the burgeoning French aristocrat. De Coubertin pursued education and history as an academic, and became obsessed with the history of the Olympics in ancient Greece, especially as he embraced the theology and practice of Thomas Arnold. Arnold was an educator in the Church of England known for promoting “muscular Christianity,” which combined (and conflated) religious piety and physical achievement.

Though “muscular Christianity” appealed to De Coubertin, his interest never lingered on the “Christianity” part; athleticism and sport were religion enough for him. In an award winning poem that could easily be confused for a Psalm, he waxed,

You appeared suddenly in the midst of the grey clearing

which writhes with the drudgery of modern existence

like the radiant messenger of a past age

when mankind still smiled

O Sport, you are Beauty!

O Sport, you are Justice!

President Theodore Roosevelt wrote to De Coubertin applauding, “I think that you preach just the right form of the gospel of physical development.”

When he dreamt up the resurrection of the Olympic Games, it was not simply from a desire to see good sport, athleticism, or fun. It was out of a vision of a world saved from war and strife by engaging in the saving, purifying religion of competitive Olympism. He wrote about the Games as a “sanctuary reserved for the consecrated, purified athlete only, the athlete admitted to the main competitions and who became, in this way, a sort of priest, an officiating priest in the religion of the muscles.”

Inseparable from De Coubertin’s religion was his socio-economic elitism—both ingredients are baked-in to the Olympics in equal measure. De Coubertin, being born into the aristocracy, was able to engage scholasticism in history and education without ever having to labor, a quality that he came to elevate in his Olympic framework as “amateurism.” No-one who was not considered an “amateur” was allowed to participate in the Olympic games. At first glance, this might seem like a way to prevent the notion of “professional athletes” from having an unfair advantage. (An idea that would be preposterous in the modern Olympics.) This was not De Coubertin’s intent. Instead, this definition was designed and implemented to exclude anyone employed doing any form of physical labor from competing. The Olympics were only for people for whom physical activity was leisure, not survival—they were for people like him.

In their modern iteration, the Olympics continue to embody these essential characteristics. Brimming with iconography (the Olympic rings,) ritual (opening and closing ceremonies,) saints (former champions,) and artifacts with symbolic value (the torch,) the Olympics globally remain a religious undertaking. And beneath the bread and circuses, they have continued their tradition of ignoring or outright oppressing the poor and marginalized, as host cities spend billions to welcome the eyes of the world while displacing the poor out of sight. 

A short dig into the history of preparations for the Olympics in any of its hosts for the last 50 years would inevitably highlight the willingness of host cities to displace indigenous communities, whether they be indigenous populations, low-income neighborhoods, or tens of thousands of people experiencing homelessness. While uprooting and terrorizing the poor, the same cities will spend billions in new infrastructure, including stadiums, luxury housing, and police. This is to say nothing of the money transferred “under the table” to secure a city’s bid to host, as has been uncovered countless times.

The 2016 Olympics held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, provide us a recent and devastating example of the toll the Olympics take. In order to host the Olympics, Rio spent somewhere between 7 and 12 billion dollars, ($2b of which went to security alone,) broadcasting it as an opportunity to provide new forms of infrastructure in transportation, buildings to serve the public good, and an economic boost. Very few of these promises were kept. Transportation projects remain incomplete; the monstrous stadiums and training facilities have not been converted to schools and community centers. The only facility that did see transformation became an “olympic museum”--cementing that the legacy of the Olympics in Rio served only the Olympics, and amounted to, in the words of one of the thousands of displaced residents, “The destruction of lives.”

As the 2022 Beijing Olympics drew the most public controversy in recent memory, ESPN Senior Writer Sam Borden echoed the hesitation of many: “For most of us… the feeling about this Olympics is something in the middle. Our love for sports and competition, passion and glory is deep and abiding ... but is also not enough to completely divorce a spectacle from its surroundings.” While television ratings were the lowest they’d ever been for the Olympics, it’s difficult to account for the way most Americans consumed them via social media and YouTube highlights and recaps. Tens of millions of Americans still took in the Games. 

With respect to Borden, to believe that love of sports and glory is in tension with oppression is a fallacy. As we have seen, from their very onset the Olympics held these ideas not in tension but in synchronization. Celebrating and uplifting the wealthy athlete while displacing and excluding the poor is the legacy—indeed the Gospel—of the Olympic Games.

We are left with a simple choice, whether that gospel is in harmony or at a dissonance with our own. 

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