To Pierre de Coubertin, a French baron who founded the modern Olympic Games, the Olympics were all about faith.
While the competitions transcended a single religious denomination, he believed they embodied a variety of religious values, including the spirit of unity, diversity, acceptance and the sanctity of the body, according to The Conversation.
“‘Olympism,’ as he coined it, was a new type of religion — one shorn of gods, yet transcendent all the same,” the article said.
How the modern Olympics link sports and religion
De Coubertin, a French pacifist and Catholic, lived in tumultuous times.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, industrialization, rebellions and wars rocked the globe. De Coubertin saw danger in what he called an “atmosphere of jealousy, envy, vanity and mistrust” and believed that “unbridled competition” was the source of such evils, per The Conversation.
He was well-positioned to find a remedy. He was well connected to Catholicism and had enjoyed sports, including rugby, as a child.
De Coubertin revered what he called “muscular Christianity,” according to Thinking Faith, a thought system that saw religious value in athletic achievement.
De Coubertin had also grown up on a classical education that covered Greek ideals exhaustively. He believed that, by linking together the ancient Olympic ideal of peace with appreciation for the balance and fair competition that the ancient Games prioritized, a relaunched Olympics could bring a rebirth of global unity, according to The Conversation.
“The first and substantial element of the old as well as of the new Olympic movement is: to be a religion,” de Coubertin wrote, per Thinking Faith. “Hence I believe I was right when I tried from the beginning to awaken religious feelings by the renewal of Olympic movement ... The sport-religious thought has entered only slowly into the awareness of the sports men and women ... But little by little it will be taken quite seriously by them.”
Faith at the Olympics right now
Among other things, de Coubertin was right about the Olympics’ ability to bring people together.
This summer’s Games has featured several unifying moments, including when American gymnasts Simone Biles and Jordan Chiles bowed to Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade after she won gold in the floor routine competition.
And although the Paris Games got off to a rocky start with an opening ceremony that offended some Christians, as the Deseret News previously reported, religion is playing a key role in the Games.
As the Deseret News previously reported, official chaplains from major world faiths attend to the needs of tourists and athletes. Evangelists unaffiliated with the Games roam the streets of Paris trying to spread the Christian message.
Athletes have also expressed their faith in interviews and on Instagram.
Brazilian skateboarder and bronze medalist Rayssa Leal told the cameras through sign language that “Jesus is the way, the truth and the life,” per La Croix International; hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone has posted about her faith in God at the Olympics on Instagram; and basketball player Jimmer Fredette, who suffered a disappointing injury during the second of his team’s seven games, said he found solace in an eternal perspective in an Instagram post.