I Guess Not All Quakers are Pacifists

My buddy Chris turned me on to this article the other day,

Palestinian Students Beaten and Called ‘Terrorists’ by Football Players at N.C. College

“The five-minute attack involved “at least 15 members of the football team,??? some of them drunk, the newspaper said, citing a police report and college statement, and the Palestinians were called “terrorists??? and insulted with racial slurs. Two of the three victims are students at Guilford, a Quaker institution, while one was visiting from North Carolina State University; two were severely injured.”

This is all pretty ridiculous if you ask me, no it’s really ridiculous.

But to be fair my guess is these guys aren’t really Quakers at all, and further more have little interest in developing Quaker practices, from my experience I’d assume they are there on athletic scholarships.

But this raises a number of questions, are college sports for Christian institutions really all that helpful?  And if so, all sports, or just some?  And how do we create athletes that embody the virtues of our given traditions?  And what about a screening process or better discipline by coaches who take seriously the Christian faith?  These are serious questions – are some sports anti-thetical to the Christian faith?  How about the nonviolent traditions within the Christian faith?

And honestly I am not sure.

It does seem like when small schools decide to make a move toward becoming an athletic institution they have to make a number of compromises in order to make that happen, from finances, to grades, and the kinds of people the accept into the school.

This is not always the case, and I know many Christian football players, but I can’t help but wonder how useful this really is?

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