Religion Goes to the Games
July/August 2024The more than 10,000 Olympic athletes competing in the Paris Olympic Games this summer will have access to more than just sports doctors, physiotherapists, and masseuses. They’ll also have the option to receive spiritual care. The Paris Games organizing committee has credentialed some 120 chaplains representing Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism. In a large tent structure in the Athlete’s Village, these faith leaders have created space for chaplains to minister to athletes’ spiritual needs—whether its anxiety before competition, bad news from home, or simply loneliness. Each major world religion has been given just over 500 square feet within the tent. Jewish and Muslim leaders chose to set up their spaces next to each other to show their commitment to peaceful relations, despite the conflict in Gaza. Buddhist and Hindu chaplains, who expect fewer athletes of those religions, donated half their spaces to the Christians to help accommodate some 100 chaplains who will serve Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant athletes.
But not all religious issues at the Olympics are being resolved harmoniously. The French sports minister has banned female French athletes from wearing sports hijabs, which are specially designed athletic wear that complies with conservative Islamic dress requirements. The minister cites France’s strict separation of church and state, known as laicite, for the ban. France is home to the largest Muslim population in Western Europe and for the past two decades has banned the wearing of headscarves by public employees, such as school teachers. Bans on the wearing of hijab in public enjoy widespread popular support in France, but have long attracted criticism from religious liberty advocates. Several international organizations, including Amnesty International, have protested the hijab ban to the International Olympic Committee, saying it discriminates against female Muslim competitors on the French Olympic team.
In Brief
In a landmark case, the Supreme Court of South Korea has ruled in favor of a Sabbath keeper’s request for religious accommodation. The Court said that it was unlawful for Chonnam National University law school to refuse to reschedule an interview for a Seventh-day Adventist student. According to a Supreme Court spokesperson, this is the first decision by either the Constitutional Court or the Supreme Court of South Korea “to explicitly acknowledge a Seventh-day Adventist’s request for a change in the test schedule. It clarifies the obligations of administrative authorities to prevent Seventh-day Adventists and other minorities from facing undue discrimination due to their religious beliefs.” The decision comes after decades of hardship for students and professionals in South Korea who keep Saturday as Sabbath.
The United Nations General Assembly has approved the first-ever multilateral resolution on artificial intelligence. The resolution says the nations of the world must work together to make sure this new, quickly evolving technology is “safe, secure, and trustworthy” and upholds human rights. The resolution was co-sponsored by 123 countries, including China, which is accused of using AI facial recognition technology as a tool of oppression against Uyghur Muslims.
Schools in the 25 largest school districts in Texas have rejected a controversial state-funded chaplaincy program, created by state lawmakers last year. Many feared that the initiative would prove divisive in Texas’ religiously diverse public schools. School boards in these 25 districts, however, voted not to install state-funded chaplains as school counselors. It appears that politics was not the deciding factor; these districts represent both politically conservative and liberal areas.
Hate acts in America rose in the wake of Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said it recorded 2,031 antisemitic incidents nationwide between October 7 and December 7 last year. This is a more than four-fold increase over the same period in 2022, when only 465 similar incidents were recorded. The ADL says this represents the highest number of any two-month period since it began tracking antisemitic incidents in 1979.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations says it also tracked complaints of bias incidents or requests for help in the two months following October 7, 2023. It received some 2,171 complaints, amid what it called ”an ongoing wave of anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian hate.”
Religion’s role in America’s public life is shrinking—at least that’s the belief of 80 percent of adults in the United States, according to a recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Center. The same survey also found that about half of U.S. adults say it’s “very” or “somewhat” important to them to have a president who has strong religious beliefs, even if those beliefs are different from their own.