Category Archives: Social Studies

NPR: Baseball teams woo Christian fans to games

So when do I get my “Flying Spaghetti Monster Night”?

National Public Radio: Baseball Teams Woo Christian Fans to Games

Faith Night has long been a popular promotion for minor league baseball parks — particularly in the South. Looking to capitalize on local church-going fans, more than 40 teams in minor league baseball and football have added Christian rock concerts and bobble-head dolls of biblical characters to their game-time entertainment.

The formula has worked well in Nashville, where the concept first started, and it’s now being called up to the majors.

Rev. Ryan Bennett is director of Faith Night for the Nashville Sounds, a Triple-A baseball team. On Faith Nights, he also offers sermons outside of the team’s Greer Stadium. One recent sermon featured a parable drawn from former Red Sox infielder Bill Buckner’s infamous error, when a ground ball rolled between his legs just as the long-suffering Sox were on the verge of winning the 1986 World Series.

“I think we have all been there,” Bennett tells his flock. “I think we have all been at a time in our life, at some time or another, where we felt alone. Well, hear the good news. Jesus promised that when you feel alone, you’re actually not, because ‘my promise to you is that I will always be with you.'”

But Faith Night fans aren’t just in it for the baseball allegories. These events feature special performances by Christian rock groups. There are also raffles for bobble-head dolls in the image of Moses and Jonah. Later this season, there will be a stadium-wide Bible giveaway. And the events often include a team player, in full uniform, offering testimonials about their faith.

And of course, there’s the game.

A Big Draw for Fans

Since the Nashville Sounds started up five years ago, their program Faith Night games have been among the top-10 most-attended each season. Organizers say it’s because of people like Methodist pastor Jacob Armstrong, whose church group on one night was 80-plus strong, taking up most of the section behind home plate.

“In some ways, it’s icing on the cake, because the majority of the night is spent at the baseball game,” Armstrong says. “I know several families [who] have invited friends, and it’s a non-threatening way to come to a church group. And then maybe they will come to church again.”

This summer, at least two Major League Baseball teams are working on adding a Christian Faith Night to their rosters. But will a Bible Belt, minor league promotion work at big-league prices? Baseball fan Jack Crawford of Talahoma, Tenn., says it will be a tough sell.

“It’s a bigger deal to go to a major league game and see the stars,” Crawford says. “While some people may think that a faith-based night would be very nice in some circumstances, others may not. And they feel like other people’s faith may be shoved down their throat.”

That’s exactly what Faith Night founders are trying to avoid.

‘Beer Today, God Tomorrow’

“As much as I think it would be great for the kingdom-building aspects of what we do and the ministry side, you are not going to see a preacher down on home plate with a Bible, preaching to the crowd,” says Brent High.

High is the CEO of Third Coast Sports, which contracts with more than 40 other minor league teams on similar promotions. He says it’s not just baseball clubs; two NFL football teams and another three NBA basketball clubs have contacted him about holding Faith Night programs.

“I just don’t anticipate it offending a non-Christian fan at any point,” he says of the Faith Night promotions. “It hasn’t happened yet, and I don’t see us adding anything that would do that. Because ultimately, as soon as we do that, the teams lose interest.”

That’s why Faith Night performances are scheduled before or after the official game, held off to the side or on stadium concourses. Bible giveaways are handled through a redeemable coupon system at the gate. And if you don’t want a Moses bobble-head doll, just say no. Nashville Sounds General Manager Glen Yaeger says it’s a balancing act.

“We do ‘Thirsty Thursday’ on Thursday nights. Its beer today, God tomorrow,” Yaeger says. “It’s managing the expectations of your fan base.”

Big League Debut

The Major League baseball teams working with Third Coast Sports are taking vastly different approaches.

Derrick Hall, executive vice president for the Arizona Diamondbacks, says his team has “shied away from a Faith Night.”

“That’s not something we think is appropriate for us,” Hall says. “But we absolutely have no problem selling group-discount rates to a [faith-based] group.”

The Diamondbacks have booked just one game with Third Coat this season, which Hall calls nothing more than a group sale opportunity.

Meanwhile, the Atlanta Braves have set up several dates with appearances by Christian pop-groups such as The Afters, and their own pitcher, John Smoltz, as a guest speaker.

Derek Schiller, a senior marketing executive for the Braves, says research shows many of his team’s fans are religious.

“This is just a way to apply ourselves and create an experience that would be good for those types of fans,” Schiller says.

Both teams say they have dabbled in marketing group sales to churches, but nothing as elaborate as the original “Faith Night” model. These summer games are just a test, says Schiller, because in the end, it’s all about the ballgame.

Re: Dude, You Must Renounce the Braves. This is too too much

From: rgibson@pipeline.com
Subject: Dude, You Must Renounce the Braves. This is too too much
Date: June 1, 2006 7:38:39 PM PDT (CA)
To: wayne.ross@mac.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/02/sports/02faith.html?hp&ex=1149220800&en=a3d44512c857dd8e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

From: wayne.ross@mac.com
Subject: Re: Dude, You Must Renounce the Braves. This is too too much
Date: June 1, 2006 7:43:12 PM PDT (CA)
To: rgibson@pipeline.com

Yeah I read about this on the Braves website the other day.

I look on the bright side, if all those folks are Braves fans and they pray for the Braves to win, it can’t hurt. Lord knows the Braves need some help with their pitching (I hope).

Wayne

From: rgibson@pipeline.com
Subject: Re: Dude, You Must Renounce the Braves. This is too too much
Date: June 1, 2006 8:03:39 PM PDT (CA)
To: wayne.ross@mac.com

Well, that does it.

I cannot stand it anymore, and I am sacrificing my next door neighbors small dog to the Flying Spaghetti Monster in order to place a curse on the Braves. THIS WILL BE MORE POWERFUL THAN THE GOAT CURSE< THE CURSE OF THE BAMBINO>>>and the Braves are doomed. AIDS will spread throughout the team, and the entire Atlanta region. Frogs will rain on them all. Ted Turner will marry Elizabeth Taylor who will dump him for Eddie Fisher, who is dead. The first born of all Atlanta pitchers will spontaneously combust. Fungus will infest the Braves lunch table. Locusts and bats will descend on all fans doing the tomahawk chop, which will do them no good in fending off the bloodsuckers, and the rats that eat their eyes.

OR else you can email this slime agent of the Bravos and tell her off. And send me a copy. If you do, I will spare the dog.

beth.marshall@turner.com

best r

From: waross@interchange.ubc.ca
Subject: Faith Nights at Turner Field
Date: June 1, 2006 10:09:44 PM PDT (CA)
To: beth.marshall@turner.com

Dear Ms. Marshall,

As a long time Atlanta Braves fan, I’m writing to express my profound disappointment and extreme displeasure after discovering that the Braves will be sponsoring a series of so-called “Faith Nights” this season (http://atlanta.braves.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/press_releases/press_release.jsp?ymd=20060518&content_id=1459708&vkey=pr_atl&fext=.jsp&c_id=atl).

While I understand the Braves motivation to tap into the Christian entertainment market—a crass money-grab—the nature and scale of the planned events amount to a corporate endorsement Christianity. And perhaps more importantly, the limitation of “Faith Night” activities to Christian music and testimony implies that “faith” is a concept that only applies to Christians!

Will the Braves be holding “Judaism Nights,” “Islam Nights” or for that matter “Flying Spaghetti Monster Nights”? (I might be tempted to attend the latter.)

I certainly understand the long tradition of the baseball clubs providing special ticket prices and other amenities to groups, including church groups, but “Faith Nights” is really beyond the pale.

The Braves hold a special place in my heart, I have been a devoted fan of the club since they were in Milwaukee. I saw my first Major League game in Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium (Braves 4, Reds 3—April 12, 1968).

I attended many Braves games while living in Atlanta in the late 1970s-early 1980s—often I was the only person sitting in my row—but I never lost faith in the team.

I now follow the Braves religiously from my home in Vancouver, British Columbia. But, I must say “Faith Night” is an abomination and should be abolished immediately!

I would much prefer the Braves emulate the attitude Mr. Ted Turner has expressed in his assessment that Christianity is a “religion for losers” and that employees who show up for work on Ash Wednesday with smudged foreheads are “Jesus Freaks” (The New York Times, May 28, 2006, p. 11, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/27/opinion/28opquiz.html).

The Braves were losers for a long time and old-time, hardcore Braves fans, like me, already know what it feels like to be part of a “religion for losers,” we made our commitment to the Braves long before all those Division pennants. We don’t need another religion interfering with the one we’ve got.

Yours truly,

E. Wayne Ross, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Curriculum Studies
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4
Canada
604-822-2830
wayne.ross@ubc.ca

From: rgibson@pipeline.com
Subject: Re: Faith Nights at Turner Field
Date: June 1, 2006 10:19:20 PM PDT (CA)
To: waross@interchange.ubc.ca

Hey Dude

This is a great classic. Can I put it on the www page?????

Wonderful. Heartfelt. Funny. True. Nailed em (well, maybe that is not a good term). best r

Washington Post: For Iraqi Students, Hussein’s Arrival Is End of History

In Iraqi schools history officially ends in 1968…

For Iraqi Students, Hussein’s Arrival Is End of History

By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, April 15, 2006; Page A01

BAGHDAD — The two-year-old modern history textbook used at Baghdad’s Mansour High School for Boys doesn’t mention the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq in 2003.

There’s not a word about Iraq’s annexation of — and subsequent expulsion from — Kuwait in 1990 and 1991, or its grinding eight-year war with Iran in the 1980s that took the lives of a generation of young men.

Perhaps most conspicuously absent from the book, earlier versions of which were packed with florid praise for Hussein, is any reference tothe former dictator. For the purposes of instruction at Mansour High, and most schools across Iraq, history ends in 1968, before the bloodless coup that swept the Baath Party to power.

U.S.-sponsored reconstruction efforts have renovated or rebuilt nearly 3,000 Iraqi schools, retrained 55,000 teachers and administrators and — under the supervision of the government’s de-Baathification commission — revised or redacted millions of textbooks that glorified 35 years of tyrannical rule. Dozens of schools named for Hussein were reflagged, and once-mandatory courses in nationalism and Baathist ideology were scrapped.

But Iraq’s updated history books now contain no information on the pivotal events of the past three decades and more, a fact some teachers and politicians say will handicap students and delay Iraqi society in coming to terms with a long period of uninterrupted trauma.

Education officials said they decided soon after Hussein fell from power that the wounds of his rule were so fresh — and the potential for retaliatory violence so great — that the subject was best omitted from school texts, at least for now. This year, a committee of experts selected by the Education Ministry will launch an ambitious overhaul of school curricula. The goal is to produce the first broadly accepted history of Iraq’s troubled recent past, a formidable challenge in a country split along ethnic and sectarian lines.

“It will be very, very, very hard to represent all the viewpoints. It cannot be viewed as something imposed by the strongest,” said an Education Ministry official who will head the new curricular development committee and is already reviewing nominations for roughly 40 other positions. He agreed to be interviewed on the condition that he not be named because of the sensitivity of the job.

“The former regime used the curriculum as a mouthpiece for its own political interests,” he continued. “We have to be careful. We have to be tactful. We need to make books that are acceptable for a Kurd from the north, a child from Ramadi and a girl in Basra.”

The committee will begin more or less from scratch. Hussein’s ongoing trial — which is being broadcast in its entirety on local satellite channels — has helped educate a public starved for accurate information about the former government. A private foundation is planning a museum to document the atrocities committed during his rule, but it may not open for years. In the absence of a comprehensive effort to educate young Iraqis, few educators feel such advances are enough.

“This is a part of Iraq that we are denying. Saddam Hussein is in the people’s minds, even if he is removed from the book,” said Yahia Abbas, 53, a history teacher at Mansour High, one of Baghdad’s most respected schools. “You can’t just make 35 years disappear.”

On a recent weekday in a shabby, stone classroom, Abbas lectured to about 35 students on the British invasion of Iraq in the 1940s. Eager pupils strained from their seats, arms extended to draw his attention.

“Why did the British attack Baghdad?” Abbas asked, and hands shot up before the words were out of his mouth.

“Sir, sir, sir, sir,” begged a hefty 15-year-old. “Because the revolution was demanding independence and because it was supported by Germany and Italy, sir,” the boy continued, without pausing for break.

“And remember where the spark for independence came from?” Abbas asked. “Woodrow Wilson, after World War I,” three voices seemed to say at once.

On this day, the discussion never strayed into the modern period. When it does and students ask about Hussein, such as during a class this year in which someone compared him to Adolf Hitler, “I dance around the question,” Abbas said. “It could be trouble for me.”

Jamal Khalid Amin, principal of Mansour High, where about half of the 1,000 students are Sunni Muslims and half are Shiite Muslims, said educators have been intimidated into silence, and not just by government bureaucrats. “This is Iraqi society now — if you say anything good about Saddam, you will be killed. If you say anything bad, you will be killed by someone else,” he said. “We used to be only afraid of Saddam. Now there are many people to fear.”

Some additions to the curriculum have already been made. The Shiite politicians who surged to power after Hussein fell insisted that books on Islamic history be infused with more information about figures revered by Shiites, such as Imam Ali, cousin and son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad. They also removed all references to the “Persian enemy,” the once-mandatory description of Iran, a Shiite theocracy.

But the silence of the history texts on the subject of Hussein’s rule remains a particular concern, educators say. So far, it has meant different lessons taught in different regions, cementing already pronounced fissures.

In the semiautonomous Kurdish region in the north, where Hussein’s army carried out a brutal campaign of killings and forced relocations in 1988, teachers lecture freely on the atrocities committed against their relatives.

But in Tikrit, the hub of the area north of Baghdad where Hussein was born, history teachers take a starkly different approach. “We clarify for them that some of the information they get is incorrect and not precise,” said Khaldoon Yunis, who teaches history at a local boys’ school. “We tell them the reality of how the Persians are the enemy and hate the Arabs. And of how Saddam is a historical leader for the entire Arab nation.”

Mohammed Abdul Rahman, a provincial education official in Anbar province, a restive, Sunni Arab-majority swath of western Iraq, said the different teachings were “the start of separation among the people, especially the youth.”

“You have the Sunni teacher telling his students that the war with Iran was honest and that Iran is the enemy,” he said. “On the other hand, the Shiite teacher tells his students that the war was caused by the Saddam regime against a friendly country and that Iraq lost.”

In mixed areas such as Baghdad, teachers say they mostly follow the letter of the text, sometimes confounding students.

“I have so many questions,” said Ali Muhammad Dawoud, 14, a student at Mansour who will take his history exams in two months. “Right now the only answers I get are from my friends, my parents or on television.”

Special correspondents Omar Fekeiki and Naseer Nouri contributed to this report.