The altar of sport

LIKE almost every other human activity, religion will make its mark at the Rio Olympics. An American evangelist called David Crandall has organised teams of missionaries to propagate his reading of Christianity (one that attaches great importance to the creation story in Genesis) at every Olympics since 1996; in Rio, he has announced, a team of at least 85 people from seven countries will be handing out 250,000 booklets in ten languages. Pope Francis has tweeted his good wishes to all the athletes and sent a particularly warm letter of encouragement to a "refugee team" drawn from the wave of migrants sweeping through Europe. A priest has been named as "father-confessor" to the Russian team. It has been announced that the Olympic village includes a religion space with facilities for followers of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism.         

But the hard fact is that religions in the ordinary sense have never been sure how to respond to the Olympics. Does this vast global festival offer an opportunity to present their spiritual wares, or does it amount to almost unbeatable competition? In a half-desacralised planet, the Olympics fire the world’s imagination in a way that many preachers can only dream of. You don't have be a brilliant sociologist of religion or cultural-studies buff to see the games as one more expression (perhaps the most ambitious, in worldly terms, ever organised) of humanity’s yearning for the transcendent. 

Both the modern contests and their ancient Greek predecessors share many of the features of a giant sacramental feast. People coming from many different places and circumstances lay aside their differences and in spectacular ceremonies, declare their commitment to a single noble ideal. The games are intended to be inspiring, self-denying and uplifting. As all global religions must, the ceremonies affirm both human diversity and human universality. And thanks to television, the entire population of the world seems to join in.