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March Madness: Jesus at the Forefront and Faith Under Fire

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March Madness ended on April 5th with the ultimate church league showdown. The game featured teams from Baylor University, the world’s largest Baptist university, and Gonzaga University, one of the nation’s 28 Jesuit Catholic schools, dueling it out for the NCAA title. Baylor’s Bears ended up dominating the #1 ranked and previously unbeaten Gonzaga Bulldogs, 86-70, never trailing thanks to a stifling defense and a hot-shooting offense that tallied 10 3-pointers. Baylor became the third team from a faith-based university to win the big dance in the last five years.

It was Baylor’s first national championship in basketball and its first Final Four appearance since 1950. Scott Drew took over the program in 2003 when it was in complete chaos following a horrible scandal under the previous coach. Drew knew the team’s attitude needed to change. As a lifelong Christian, Drew wanted to implement his faith into his players and make sure they put Jesus first in their lives. He guided the program back to prominance using a culture called “JOY”, which stands for “Jesus, Others, Yourself”. Baylor made the NCAA Tournament in Drew’s fifth season as coach and the Elite Eight twice (2010 and 2012) before this year’s breakout season.

During a post-game nationally televised interview on CBS, Drew mentioned his faith – and the faith of his team – as a key to the team’s success. He began the session by saying, “First and foremost, I want to thank God for blessing us with this opportunity tonight.” Meanwhile his team gathered in a prayer circle on the court and thanked God for their achievement.

The Bears’ Jared Butler was named the Final Four most outstanding player. He gave thanks to the Lord after the game stating, “ Jesus Christ, man, he’s the truth, and He was with us tonight, He’s with us all season, He’s with us wherever we go, and He just sustained us, He brought us together, He brought the team together.”

The inventor of basketball would have been proud. In 1892, James Naismith, a once-aspiring preacher turned gym coach, introduced basketball to the world in an article appearing in The Triangle, a publication of the Young Men’s Christian Association. “We present to our readers a new game of ball, which seems to have those elements in it which ought to make it popular among the associations,” he wrote in the piece.

At the time, Naismith was teaching at an International YMCA Training School (now Springfield College) and was told by his boss to create a game to “hold the attention of a group of unruly men.” Naismith, a proponent of “muscular Christianity,” saw sports and fitness as an essential part of a balanced religious life, where spirit, body and mind all worked together. He put up a pair of peach baskets on the wall, came up with a few rules and invented a worldwide sensation.

Yet, you have to wonder if Naismith wouldn’t be deeply saddened by some of the things that happened during this year’s tournament.

After the #15 seeded Oral Roberts University made a Cinderella run to the Sweet 16 by defeating the #2-seeded Ohio State Buckeyes and the highly favored Florida Gators, many were cheering their achievement while others mocked and ridiculed the team for their biblical beliefs. Some on the left even called for the NCAA to boot ORU from the tournament altogether. A column in USA Today stated, “that there should be no place for them on the court–or anywhere else in polite society.”

Think about that for a moment. A sports columnist writing for a national publication wanted the NCAA to ban a university from competition because it honors the same Scriptures as professed by it’s founder.

Hemal Jhaveri, the editor and columnist who penned the article for USA Today, called the school every nasty adjective in her thesaurus– “toxic,” “morally regressive,” “prejudiced,” “homophobic,” “sexist,” “transphobic,” “fundamentalist,” and “discriminatory.” She then proclaimed, “Christians like these kids shouldn’t even be allowed to compete.”

How horrific and unthinkable. I wonder what she is thinking now that a Christian school has been crowned the champion of all college basketball in front of the whole world?

This is the canary in the coal mine when it comes to religious freedom. The real goal here wasn’t just pushing a Christian school to the exits. It’s about driving all Bible-believing Christians, Christian education, and Christian institutions into some sort of spiritual ghetto– far away from the public square. It’s the idea that religion is something we should keep to ourselves. If Christianity behind closed doors, on private property, in a private school, is now a target of such outrage, what comes next? We have seen this happen in oppressive regimes throughout history and it didn’t end well for people of faith.

How sad that we have come to a point in our society where we cannot just congratulate the players and coaches of Oral Roberts, Baylor and other faith based schools for their great accomplishments on the court and leave politics and Bible-bashing bigotry for another time and another place. Come quickly Lord Jesus!

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