Sports metaphor allowed evangelicals to sublimate male violence into winning

Evidence

At a time when evangelicals were striving for greater respectability and relevance, mixing religion with sports made sense. Few had excelled in this endeavor more than Jerry Falwell. At Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist Church, sports served both as training ground and as metaphor for the spiritual life. While talk of sports was ubiquitous, for Falwell and his followers it wasn’t about how you played the game. It was about winning. Upon visiting Thomas Road, Frances FitzGerald remarked that “sports, the oldest of Anglo-Saxon prescriptions for the sublimation of male violence and male sexual energies, might stand as a metaphor for the whole social enterprise of the church.” In Falwell’s words, “God wants you to be a champion.” — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 357

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the sports-masculinity-Trump pipeline thesis across the book; Falwell’s ‘God wants you to be a champion’ anticipates the hyper-competitive, winning-above-all ethos later aligned with Trump.