Christian Athlete Circles provides alternative space in sports
Georgia McKee excelled at sports throughout childhood and played Division I college softball, which enabled her to know some of the nation’s best athletes. But she also encountered what she recognized as some of its most dysfunctional religious attitudes, practices, and personalities.
McKee, now a second-year student at Wake Forest University School of Divinity and an intern at the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, said she and other athletes who identify as both Christian and LGBTQ know all too well the struggle of playing sports in a culture overshadowed by White evangelicalism.
“The brand of Christianity that dominates all of sports promotes toxic masculinity, purity culture, transphobia, and homophobia. And it makes no room for wrestling with questions of faith,” said McKee, 22, who grew up Southern Baptist in Dallas and now attends an Alliance of Baptists church.
