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Chaplains to the Olympics athletes

This year’s Olympic Games are being held in Paris, France – an already-contentious space for religious expression. France’s law –laïcité, loosely translated as secularism – bans ostentatious displays of faith and religious culture in public sectors like schools and government institutions. Established to separate the Catholic church from French politics, laïcité encourages its citizens to not distinguish themselves by their faith traditions. This rule primarily isolates those of faith traditions that require certain attire, such as some branches of Islam.

Numerous official Olympic chaplains from five major global religions – Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, and Buddhist – have been preparing a chaplaincy center in the Olympic and Paralympic Village. They plan to create a safe, supportive, positive and respectful spiritual environment for athletes and all involved that is both respectful of different faith traditions and sensitive to France’s regulations. Muslim and Jewish chaplains are intentionally placing themselves next to each other as a model of peaceful coexistence.

The Olympics first enlisted official chaplains in the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea. Following the terrorist attack against the Israeli Olympic team at the 1972 games, the International Olympic Committee recognized a need for care beyond the physical body, and began to put together a team of official chaplains to provide spiritual care to athletes. Olympic chaplains of all faith traditions are seeing to it that athletes are prioritized and cared for, with a focus on familiarity, relationality, and overall spiritual care.

Olympic chaplaincy comes in many forms: through prayer, consoling a losing athlete, offering a listening ear, or sometimes it is, as 2012 chaplain Frankie Mulgrew framed it, “the ministry of hanging around.”

Stuart Weir, the secretary of Major Sports Events Chaplaincy Committee, told Religious News Service that chaplaincy is a critical point of care for Olympic athletes.

“If an athlete understands that they are significant because God created them and loves them, they are free to compete and use the gifts they have been given. They do not have to be successful to prove themselves worthy of God’s love.”

And who better to provide spiritual care to athletes than former athletes themselves? One of the most notable things about Olympic sports chaplains is that some were once athletes, and even Olympians. Madeline Manning Mims won the 800-meter dash in 1968. She was one of the first official chaplains to be invited to the Olympics in 1988. She described, from personal experience, the natural woes of being an athlete and how spirituality can help.

“[I]n competition there is a lot of fear and pain. It’s a part of who an athlete is. And to get through that, to break through that, so that you can produce at your highest level, many of them pray for God’s help”.

American high jumper, Jesse Williams, credits chapels held by chaplains as the driving force behind calming his mind before a competition.

“It’s easy to get lost in the world that we live in and put something like sports before God,” he told Charisma News. “When you go to chapel, you’re humbling yourself and understanding that God needs to go first in everything you do.”

Other athletes may request prayer before an event, attend a chapel service the night before, or simply sit alone in a quiet moment by themselves.

Let the games begin.

Edited from an article by Sara Augustin, an opinion writer for the Spring 2024 Sojourners Journalism Cohort.

Further reading: Associated Press

Australian chaplain to the Olympics – David Smethurst

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A map of the future?

Kamala Harris is the first US presidential candidate with a diverse personal religious and spiritual history that is now far more representative of America’s multi-faith makeup. It’s been suggested her multi-religious identity is a map of the future.

An article by Yonat Shimron published on Religion News.

Harris would be the first Black woman to be nominated by a major party for president and the first South Asian. She also has a diverse personal religious and spiritual history that is now far more representative of America’s multi-faith makeup.

Raised Hindu by her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, a native of Chennai, India, she was often taken as a girl to 23rd Avenue Church of God in Oakland, California, by her neighbor, Regina Shelton, along with Harris’ sister, Maya. As an adult, Harris joined a Black Baptist church.

Meanwhile, the man who would become Harris’ husband, Los Angeles lawyer Douglas Emhoff, grew up in New Jersey attending a Reform synagogue.

Harris’ faith connections have frequently played themselves out in her past four years in office as the Second Couple inaugurated a tradition of lighting Hanukkah candles at their residence, as well as celebrating Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights.

Every past U.S. president has identified as Christian, and that will not change if Harris is elected in November. But as she runs for president, her religious biography will be not only history-making but will connect her to how many Americans practice and encounter faith.

Anthea Butler, a professor of religion at the University of Pennsylvania notes, “Nobody grows up in a straight line with religion in America anymore. Few younger Americans have only one religious lineage that they carry on from their parents. Increasingly, Americans choose a different religious identity for themselves and may change course again as they intermarry and interact with, and support, a partner of a different faith.

Brian Pennington, director of the Center for the Study of Religion, Culture and Society at Elon University in North Carolina and an expert on South Asian religion, notes that his students “have multiple influences that inform their spiritual ideas and identities”.

The term DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) is already being weaponised to disparage Kamala Harris. The implication is that she got where she is only because of her race and gender, not because she earned it. “DEI” is increasingly being used as a harmful, hurtful, and hateful descriptor.

Interesting also to note that the Republican Party vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance, is a Protestant turned atheist who married a Hindu woman (Usha Vance) before converting to Catholicism in 2019. He has spoken of how she has made his Catholic faith stronger.

Eboo Patel, founder and president of Interfaith America, said the two couples offer, in their own ways, what may be an ascendant view of interfaith marriage. “It’s a positive diversity story for people from different religious backgrounds to be married to each other and to say, my experience with the other person’s faith strengthens my own and makes me a better person. It’s a display of identity being a source of pride and a display of faith being a bridge of cooperation. I think that those are all very important.”

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Placemaking – and Places of Worship

These thoughts from Social Life Project relate to ‘placemaking’ and in particular fostering community connection in public spaces. You might be interested in the short documentary, The Place Man.

The ideas may be a catalyst for conversation about the place of churches and faith communities and the use of their property, and ecumenical cooperation and collaboration.

The social life project identifies three crises:

  1. The climate crisis that has grown out of a dependence on the cars we use to get around our spread of societies that have drifted away from the human scale;
  2. The severity of the loneliness problem that has largely risen out of this sprawling, disconnected planning and a lack of great public places;
  3. The divisive politics that reign because we have a hard time seeking things from others’ point of view, since we have no place to interact with those who are different from us.

These crises invite a different way of thinking and planning – one that is focussed on togetherness and the human experience. So many moments are converging and there is a growing realisation about how urgent it is to focus on the places we share and the people we share them with.

[Here’s an article reflecting on ways that places of worship have embraced the public space mindset with their property].

For reflection

=> what might this ‘placemaking’ movement have to say to the ‘placemaking’ that happens in church buildings/on church property?

=> in what ways are church buildings ‘public space’, and in what ways are they not?

=> how are (or may) church spaces used to build social cohesion, and flourishing community connections?

=> what might this idea mean for ecumenical activity, and churches working together – whether ‘same same’ congregations or those that are different from one another.

=> what might this idea of placemaking mean for fostering social cohesion and building relationships that are intercultural and interfaith?

=> Physical spaces – buildings and property – remain some of the greatest resources that churches possess. How does the use of our physical space demonstrate a love for our neighbour? What would it look like if community needs were considered as part of church priorities in terms of use of the property?

=> what theological imperatives underpin discussion about placemaking? (including incarnational ministry)

Further reading
BUV – Blessed are the placemakers

For further reflection
Theologian Willie James Jennings recounts the ways in which the white European church operated on what he calls a “diseased imagination,” building the church and its theological systems on the displacement of people from land and community. These practices were grounded in a misreading of the doctrine of creation, which saw dominion, mastery, and manifest destiny for the elect people of God as the catalyst for exclusion, racism, and mistreatment of both land and people. A redeemed sense of place must both lament this historical past and re-assess the theological ideas upon which it was built in order to establish a more just placemaking practice for the future.

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July – a month of women saints in the Orthodox calendar

Traditionally, the Romanian Orthodox Church honours Christian women on the “Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women.” During a patronal feast of the Romanian community in Türkiye, His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew suggested that July could also be designated as a “Month of Holy Women.”

“We could call July the Month of Holy Women, whose lives show us how much Christian women can achieve when their hearts are filled with warmth, living faith in Christ, and love for their neighbour,” said Patriarch Bartholomew.

July draws attention with its extensive list of holy women mentioned in the Orthodox calendar. Among them are Saint Mary Magdalene, Saint Veronica, Great Martyr Marina, Saint Anne, the mother of the Theotokos*, and Saint Paraskevi of Rome, the protectress of the Romanian community in Turkey.

This abundance of female saints provides a unique opportunity for all women to reflect on the lives of those who transcended human frailty and acquired Christian virtues. Holy women are examples of faith, courage, and devotion, serving as spiritual models for today’s women.

A month dedicated to holy women can be seen as an opportunity for the entire ecclesiastical community to highlight appreciation for women.

“The vocation of Christian women today is to witness the faith in Christ crucified and risen, to give and protect life, to promote merciful love towards neighbours, and to bring peace and communion through their presence and work in the Church and society,” emphasized His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel of Romania.

(originally published on WCC website July 2024)

*As a title for the Virgin Mary, Theotokos was recognized by the Orthodox Church at Third Ecumenical Council held at Ephesus in 431. It had already been in use for some time in the devotional and liturgical life of the Church.

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In an age of militarisation

by Archbishop Philip Freier

2 July 2023

There is little doubt that we are entering a period of increased militarisation in our own country, in our region and generally throughout the world. The cost of military equipment is staggering, as is the failure in many cases of delivering these projects on budget and on time. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is the trigger for a profound re-evaluation of the military capabilities and posture of most European nations. Some have elevated the commitment to military expenditure by one or two percentage points of GDP, bringing these costs to unprecedented levels. There are many examples in our own Indo-Pacific region too, understandable as countries like North Korea strive to assert their military power and geopolitical competitors India and China increase their offensive capacities. Australia, reliant on maritime transport for many dimensions of our prosperity, recognises our vulnerability to events that could impede the free transport of goods at potential conflict points far distant from our shores.

Planning future military strategic posture seems, at least to my reading of history, an inexact science. Just as battleships were replaced by aircraft carriers as the capital ships of navies after the lessons of the Second World War, the effectiveness of some of the incredibly expensive and slow to manufacture commitments of our present day will only be known at a future time when still unforeseen counter measures are faced. Remotely controlled or autonomous aerial or maritime drones have proven to be big disruptors to the conventional military strategic thinking in the Ukraine conflict. But, what about our investments in peace building and peace making?

We know that as tensions increase dialogue reduces unless there are deeply entrenched political, cultural, and personal commitments to go another way. To this list I would like to add “faith”, but I am mindful how often religious sentiments and identity have been co-opted in times of military conflict. It is significant that at the time of the First World War, theologians and church leaders in both Britain and Germany were applying the principles of just war theory to align patriotic duty and Christian faith to their respective conflicting causes.

What are we then to make of Matthew 5:9

“Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God”?

Certainly, the Beatitudes in general confront conventional thinking with a vision of people who are “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world”. There is no doubt that this witness is hard to maintain when Christian faith is co-opted to serve the cause of a patriotic war. The peacemakers are easily dismissed as naïve idealists in the circumstances of existential uncertainty that war inevitably produces. This suggests that the emphasis of “peacemaking” must have action here and now, well ahead of any possible conflicted future, and not be deferred until the eruption of conflict.

International diplomacy is hopefully well used to the processes of peacemaking, but I don’t think that Christian citizens should just leave the initiative there. We need to be asking our elected leaders about their commitment to peacemaking efforts here and now, especially as they align themselves to the militarised decisions about strategic alliances and investment in war-fighting equipment. This could be our “salt of the earth” or “light of the world” opportunity.

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Democracy – and love for neighbour

by Archbishop Philip Freier, first published on Melbourne Anglican 

7 July 2024

In democracy, we express Jesus’ words of love for neighbour

A little more than a generation ago, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 seemed to prefigure the triumph of democracy over totalitarianism. Hopes were embraced that other places would embrace democracy and reject the rule of military or party strongmen. The Arab Spring that started with the forced resignation of the Tunisian president early in 2011 swept through North Africa and the Middle East over the next few years. Responses were complex, with some societies fragmenting into warring groups, others enduring foreign intervention and all causing a massive refugee crisis. Stability has returned to some countries like Egypt as a result of a military coup. The unrest has continued, with great cost to human life, in Yemen, Libya and Syria and most recently conflict has resumed in Sudan. A wider scan across the globe would reveal its own story but the optimism of the triumph of democracy that was imagined in late 80’s and early 90’s seems far less certain now than it did then.

On the positive side for democracy there have been successful elections in Indonesia, India and South Africa. Given that between them they constitute over 21 per cent of the world’s population, that is a weighty counterbalance to the failures of democratic aspiration elsewhere. If the recent elections for the European Parliament are added, 30 per cent of the world’s population have expressed their democratic choice just in these four polls. Democracy still faces headwinds in many places, even in the United States, the country that has long claimed to be its greatest exponent. Time will tell whether popularists make a headway in the forthcoming elections in France and the United Kingdom and what will be the result in the Biden-Trump Presidential rerun. Are the seeds of democratic aspiration only dormant in China, awaiting for the right time to flourish or has the heavy hand of the party eliminated them entirely?

Should any of this matter to Christians? After all, Christianity found its first legal acceptance in the Byzantine Court, hardly an example of democracy. While Christians have endured and even flourished under all kinds of human social organisation, it is at least arguable that our modern expressions of democracy are influenced by important Christian principles. The link between Aristotle and St Thomas Aquinas is often made to account for concepts like the “common good” and the necessity of the governed to ultimately consent to those who govern them. Reformation thinkers reshaped the social value and thus political importance of the individual with their emphasis on the immediacy between the Christian believer and sacred Scripture.

The words of Jeremiah 29

… seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare”

speaks to a generous theological tradition spanning several millennia. Democracy is part of this generous response of faith-filled people to the world around them, an expression, in Jesus’ words of “Love of neighbour”.

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A reflection for NAIDOC Week by Alison Overeem

A call to krakani (sit) at the patrula (fire)

waranta (we) see the flicker in every flame from our warriors, past, present and future.

Our ancestors’ stories sit with each flame,
waranta (we) are a UAICC takarilya (family)
tapalti (go) to the patrula (fire) and reignite the Covenant,
in every day, in every way as we work, live & pray.

In unity with all that was and is.
All that says ‘this is the gift to the wider church and beyond.
This is not an invitation, it’s a creator bond.

May this NAIDOC week – with the fires burning, be the action for weaving and unweaving, learning and unlearning.

May we hold the ancient stories of these unceded lands, in all we do. May we be warmed by the wisdom, the struggle, and the survival.  May the action be a raising of First Peoples voices, a covenant, a campfire sharing revival.

Creator call us to these ancient stories,
call us to the covenant and keep the fires burning.
Creator, lead us to every campfire, every story, every thread,
a call where the covenant is First Peoples led.

Keep the fires burning.
Creators call us to see, feel and be,
all that is this country’s, true history.

Truth telling campfires,
truth acceptance campfires,
cultural safety campfires,
justice campfires.
self determination campfires

Keep the fires burning

As the anniversary of the Covenant*. Preamble** and this year’s NAIDOC theme, flicker in the flames of the fire together. May the action of truth telling warm our takila (heart)
A way forward,
A way to be,
A way to set this Nation free.

Keep the campfires burning
Be in and with – First Peoples learning.

waranta (we) will lakapawa (see) you all at the campfires

Written by Alison Overeem (Smith)

* On 10 July 2024, the Uniting Church will mark 30 years since the signing of the Covenant statement between the United Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress (UAICC) and the Uniting Church in Australia (UCA).

** It will be 15 years this year since the revised Preamble to the Constitution of the Uniting Church was agreed to at the 12th UCA Assembly (July, 2009). Paragraph 3 recognises that the Creator Trinity was already in the Creation prior to the arrival of the colonisers. It affirms that the Spirit was sent by the inner Trinitarian Community outwards to the creation revealing the economy of God to the people in law and custom, and traditional ceremony. Although the world came to be through Christ, God’s love and grace was not finally and fully revealed until the living Christ, who had sustained the First Peoples, came to live among the people and his ongoing presence continues to give them particular insights to the way of the Triune God.
The Preamble to the Constitution states that “As the Church believes God guided it into union so it believes that God is calling it to continually seek a renewal of its life as a community of all First Peoples and of Second Peoples from many lands”.

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Rupert Neudeck – Cap Anamur

(by Heiko Koenig, German Lutheran Trinity Church)

On June 2nd the German Lutheran Trinity Church in East Melbourne (a VCC Member Church) was able to celebrate a memorial service for the initiator and founder of Cap Anamur, Rupert Neudeck, together with the Vietnamese community. The memorial service was well attended.

In the late 1970s, Rupert Neudeck did not close his eyes to the suffering of the Vietnamese boat people. At first he had no money, no ship and no experience with international shipping. But he was able to get the ball rolling and was ultimately able to rescue over 10,000 Vietnamese refugees from the sea with the ship Cap Anamur.

Many of these refugees came to Australia. Two of the people who were rescued by Cap Anamur attended the church service.

A greeting from the Cap Anamur Society (https://cap-anamur.org/) came from Germany, which was able to be read out during the service.

Marc, whose mother was rescued from Cap Anamur, also spoke.

In his welcoming speech, the President of the Vietnamese Community in Victoria, Duy Quang Nguyen, spoke of the reprisals by the new rulers in Vietnam, the suffering of the refugees and the difficulties of making a new start in Australia.

The word “boat refugee” (boat people) is repeatedly misused by Australian politicians for their own purposes.

After the service, many of the members of the Vietnamese community present took the opportunity to take a photo together with Rupert Neudeck’s picture in the church.

The Vietnamese guests spared no effort in providing for the refreshments after the service. The whole congregation was treated to Vietnamese delicacies.

Everyone made the most of the time for conversation.

And many expressed the hope that the service would be repeated in 2025.

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Pacific farm workers

Pacific seasonal farm workers have made a major contribution to the agricultural industry in Australia, including here in Victoria, through the PALM scheme (Pacific Australia Labour Mobility).

Workers from Samoa are experienced in agriculture and horticulture, aged care, meat processing, tourism and hospitality, fisheries and health services, as well as a range of other industries. Samoan men and women are known for being hardworking, strong, and quick to learn.

It is very sad news to hear the news that Pacific seasonal farm workers have been involved in a fiery crash near Mildura, resulting in the death of two Samoan farm workers, with two others in critical condition. The injured were taken to Mildura Base Public Hospital with four trauma teams set up to receive the injured passengers.

The Coroners Court follows cultural protocols and will hold an information session for 30 Samoan pastors. Afterwards, the pastors will be able to recite a prayer and offer Samoan songs for the deceased as would be the cultural tradition.

Heartfelt condolences to the friends and families of the deceased, both here in Australia and in Samoa, who will deeply grieve this loss as a Samoan community. May you find comfort in your Christian faith and the knowledge of God’s loving care.

 

 

 

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Visit of Emeritus Bishop Rt Rev Dr V. Devasahayam

The Right Rev. V. Devasahayam, Emeritus Bishop (retired) of the Church of South India – Diocese of Madras, is in Melbourne for a few days.

Born into the Dalit, or “untouchable,” community – those who fall outside the Hindu caste system – he has experienced discrimination and contempt throughout his life.

He reflects:

As a child, I wasn’t permitted to enter the village shop. The shopkeeper fetched the provisions my mother had asked me to purchase and set them on the ground outside. And before the shopkeeper touched my money, which she also refused to take from his hand, she poured water over it to “clean” it.

Returning by bus to this village years later as a well-respected university professor, Bishop Devasahayam sat down in a row of empty seats. A man sat down next to him and struck up a conversation. As they chatted, the man asked his family name, and when it was given “he moved away, saying he needed some fresh air, and was prepared to stand all the way rather than sit beside a Dalit.”

“Dalits are treated as unapproachable, unseeable. It’s an inherited inequality. You are born into a caste and you die into the caste and even the bodies are not buried together.”

Although discrimination is now prohibited by Indian law, the social stigma lingers, especially in rural areas. So it is perhaps not surprising that Dalits, who make up a quarter of India’s mostly Hindu population, now account for about three-quarters of India’s Christians.

The gospel of Jesus, with its message of inclusion, has found fertile ground in the hearts of India’s untouchables. But it wasn’t always that way: During the British rule, Christian missionaries avoided the Dalit.

“In India, when missionaries came, they recognized a hierarchy. They thought that if they converted the upper caste people, the others would be converted. They shied away from approaching the untouchables, because if the untouchables came into the church that might serve as a deterrent for the upper caste people. More recently, Dalits have taken the initiative to come into the church. They are attracted by God’s mercy to the last and the least. They are untouchables no longer, because Jesus has touched them.”

The recipients of Jesus’ mercy in the gospel stories were outcasts – tax collectors were shunned by the religious establishment, menstruating women were considered ritually unclean, and women and girls were treated as second class citizens, “impure, inferior and ranked little ahead of slaves.” Each was excluded from society, and suffered from shame.

“It is the same in India. The untouchables are considered outcasts and are excluded from society. Jesus was against this ideology that legitimized exclusion, and he spoke of a God of mercy.”

The message of mercy is one that India’s Dalit community is hungry to hear and eager to share.

“This has been the story of the untouchable Christians in India. Because we have been given life, we have a responsibility and honor to propagate life. We take our evangelistic calling very seriously. Many of the dioceses in India will say that evangelism is our first priority: We have experienced the Gospel and therefore we are duty bound to share it. The wholeness, the fullness of life that Jesus came to give us is constantly unfolding. We’re not just here to offer people saving of the soul. We want to give them fullness of life.”

“We were no people, but now we are God’s people,” he said.

This article has been adapted from one that first appeared in Washington Window Vol. 77, No. 7, July/August 2008 as “Touched by the all-inclusive love of Jesus: Bishop-in-Madras describes the power of Christ’s message to India’s ‘untouchables’”