Devout Christians Shouldn’t Support the Olympics

Cuz Ten Commandments say so

With all the shit about displaying the Ten Commandments in American schools, I’d like to expose a wee bit of hypocrisy about devout Christofascists supporting the Olympic Games. The very first of the Ten Commandments is basically yo I’m a jealous as fuck god no other gods except me because fuck all those other gods. Just me. Got it? You don’t got it? Here are two more to drive it home about not saying shit about me and taking one day a week to pray your ass off to my glory.

One god!

Most Christofascists who love to hold up the one book they say they read, but the fact is a lot of them don’t read any books. Even Hillbilly Elegy. They almost certainly didn’t read any books about the origin of the Olympic Games and how they were deeply religious in nature, with the competitions meant to celebrate the Greek Pantheon of gods.

The first Olympic Games were believed to have been held in 776 B.C.E., and a lot of the events held in the earliest Games are still competed in today. There is a myth that the Games became so important to Greek culture that they would temporarily stop any wars that were currently taking place (which was frequently) in order to hold the sporting event. Alas, they enjoyed fighting just a bit too much for that to be true. What is true is that competitors and spectators who were on their way to the Games were allowed safe passage through war zones because they were believed to be under the protection of Zeus. Speaking of, the Games were held in the Panhellenic Sanctuary in the town of Olympia as a way to honor Zeus.

Rome conquered Greece in the middle of the second century B.C.E. and stole a bunch of their culture, including the Games, but its heyday had passed. Nevertheless, the Olympic Games continued in the Roman Empire for several more centuries.

Why did they stop hosting them? Because of Christian fanaticism, that’s why.

The roots began with Roman Emperor Constantine the Great in the early fourth century, who made the empire de facto Christian. What would become the world’s largest religion had some ups and downs what with Emperor Julian unsuccessfully trying to stamp out Christianity in the empire a couple of decades later, but Jesus worship had taken hold and people were more keen on the one god (or three, whatever) thing instead of the old motley collection of pagan gods.

Then in the late fourth century Emperor Theodosius got sick, and that really shook shit up. See, like most emperors, he was an absolute murderous bastard. He was also a Christian, and he wanted to go to heaven. And like Constantine had done, he delayed his baptism. He was all like hey I don’t have to be a good person if I can get my sins washed away last minute. It worked for Constantine; it can work for me.

So, yeah, he got sick. And back then, getting sick often meant certain death. Theo was convinced the dirt nap was imminent, so please come baptize me quick so I don’t have to spend eternity getting violated like I’m a sexy sectional alone in a room with JD Vance.

He got baptized, and then he got better.

Then he was like well fuck now I gotta be a good Christian. Part of that, to his mind, involved religious intolerance. Ergo, stamping out the last vestiges of pagan worship. That meant the Olympic Games that had been honoring those multiplex of gods for the last millennium had to go.

And that’s what happened. The last of the Ancient Olympic Games were held in 393. The modern ones were revived in 1896 in Athens, in the Panathenaic Stadium, which was the site of an ancient religious festival to honor the goddess Athena.

So if you’re one of those Christofascists who wants to ram the Ten Commandments down everyone’s throats and suppress any gods but your own, you cannot in good conscience watch, attend, celebrate, or compete in the Olympic Games because its totes pagan.

Who am I kidding. None of those fuckers have what one could call a “good conscience.”

Get my sweary history bookON THIS DAY IN HISTORY SH!T WENT DOWN.