By: Rev. John W. Gehring IIFWP Director of Youth and Sports
In villages and major cities in every nation, sports are one of the most popular activities among young people. Soccer, basketball, track and field are played in every continent and they have a unique ability to draw communities together across ethnic, social and religious divides. The potential of sports to be a catalyst for social change and peace building is enormous.
Two years ago, Rev. Sun Myung Moon announced the creation of the Interreligious Peace Sports Festival (IPSF) as a new approach to peace building, utilizing the powerful medium of sports. Further clarifying the nature of the event, Rev. Kwak shared with the IIFWP staff that it is True Father’s desire to create a religious Olympics as a visible demonstration of the beauty and power of religious cooperation. For this reason, the IIFWP was asked to recruit athletes from all religions and create a program that could fulfill this purpose.
Since the announcement of the event in 2002, the IPSF has grown from concept to substance and become a dynamic event that in its first two years had over 2,100 participants from 57 nations. The path to the recent successful IPSF in Korea on July 20-27th was not always clear but its growth and development show that this event clearly has the Blessing of God.
Part of the reason for sharing this short report on the Interreligious Peace Sports Festival is to give the readers an insight on how our small international IPSF team of three worked to respond to True Father’s direction and support Reverend Kwak’s effort to fulfill True Parent’s hopes and expectation. In addition, we want to convey to you, the power, joy and creativity that is springing out of this festival as a result of responding to Father’s request.
Receiving the Direction:
In September, 2002 when Rev. Kwak announced that the staff of Religious Youth Service would take responsibility for recruiting athletes for the IPSF and this came as a huge surprise to its staff. The RYS staff team of Carol Pobanz, Daniel Bessell and John Gehring had no experience organizing sporting events and some of us had no serious interest in sports. Before the creation of the sports festival, RYS simply focused on creating and expanding its international outreach by offering its interreligious service projects worldwide. In 2004, the Religious Youth Service (RYS) and the IPSF became part of newly formed, Department of Youth and Sport. This structural change was initiated in an effort to connect the efforts of the department to True Father’s larger vision for world peace.
Despite what our staff saw as its disadvantages, Rev. Kwak realized that the RYS staff had a unique foundation in the Unification Movement as a result of its two decades of work in which it completed 132 interfaith service projects in 47 nations. This work has resulted in the development of a substantial interreligious network of colleagues committed to the practice of world peace through interreligious action.
The RYS network of graduates would prove the wisdom of Rev. Kwak’s trust. They would step up and recruit the majority of athletes for the festival and additional take on major roles in running the education, culture and service components of the festival.
In the early stages, each member of our staff naturally wondered what kind of event were we bringing the athletes to. What was this real meaning behind Reverend Moon’s direction to set up a religious Olympics? True Father must desire something unique and of providential importance but what would that include? We had to think beyond the framework of a simple sporting event. What was the role of international culture, would service projects be an option for athletes, what kind of educational opportunities would we offer, what experiences would be given to worship and learn about other religions? How were we going to get the quality athletes needed for this event? How could we present this to the world when it was hard even to explain it to our own membership? We had to ask both God and Rev. Kwak many questions during this time period.
Over a period of time, clarifications gradually came. A few changes of the name of the event occurred in part as a result of legal consultation. Finally our religious Olympics was given its official name, the Interreligious Peace Sports Festival or IPSF. Early in our preparations, Reverend Kwak clarified that each athlete and team coming to the IPSF was primarily selected to represent their religion and only secondarily their nation. We were promoting competition between Christian and Muslim teams, between Hindu and Sikh teams and teams representing each of ten major religions.
In one sense, we were asking these teams to compete wholeheartedly on the field but then turn around and share in friendship and service during the rest of the program. This requires a sensitivity and insight into the hearts and minds of those representatives from each religion, for this reason the graduates of the Religious Youth Service (RYS) projects were chosen to play a major role in staffing the IPSF. The staff would work hard to promote the spirit of understanding and the free exchange of ideas through the cultural, religious, education and service programs of IPSF.
The Korean based IPSF staff from Sun Moon University served as hosts of the IPSF and prepared all the sporting events and provided for the food, housing and transportation needs of the athletes and staff. The hosting staff also worked on local promotion of the event and helped organize a variety of tours and experiences that the participants could enjoy.
Clarifying the IPSF Program
Through a combined effort from the RYS alumni and various Unification representatives and the IIFWP Ambassadors for Peace, we could attract nearly 900 athletes from ten religions to the 1st IPSF. Once we had secured the applications from these athletes, we had to seriously ask ourselves the following questions, `Who was going to take care of all the international athletes from so many religions and what kind of programs would we create for them?
We began to add elements to the IPSF program as we came closer to the July, 2003 event. Realizing the importance of providing elements of education that would empower the athletes when they returned home we created a variety of education programs that would focus on three major themes:
1. Character Education as Training for Life
2. Peace and Development: Taking steps in developing the foundation for peace
3. The World is Our Home: Building religious and cross-cultural understanding.
Once the education themes were set our IIFWP office was able to draw a wide variety of speakers to make presentations, they included, Hollywood actors, professors, motivational speakers and religious leaders. In addition, we wanted to offer experiential models of education in the form of service projects, cultural and religious programs. As part of the learning opportunities offered at the festival our athletes worked with Service for Peace on a project with disabled Korean children.
Our cultural programs became a nightly highlight of the IPSF as a wide variety of nations offered traditional and contemporary music, dance and performance. At times, the whole auditorium would join in and celebrate with the performers.
Our internal purpose for the IPSF was also become clearer as we moved towards the opening ceremony. We are working to see that sports be properly offered to God, that the desire for physical perfection be put in an objective position to the desire for spiritual perfection. Thus, the spiritual elements of the festival became integral to the event fulfilling its Providential Purpose. Each morning a variety of morning devotions were offered so that people could attend a session with those from their own religion or they could visit the morning devotional of another tradition. This was one way we could promote understanding and spirituality at the IPSF.
Newspapers are filled with unfortunate stories reporting the excesses and corruption within the world of sport. In part, this corruption is a result of sports deviating from their original purpose of bringing joy to God and to humanity. IPSF is our movement’s Providential attempt to link the natural love for excellence in sports to the more internal quest to give joy to God. IPSF draws religious athletes together and provides a model for how sports can fulfill that original purpose. Athletes and teams compete as representative of their religion and strive to model the values integral to that religion. In this way, they help religion in the quest to fulfill humanities age-long desire for world peace.
The 2nd IPSF July 20-27 A Time for Expansion and Focus
After completing the 1st IPSF, the International staff evaluated ways to expand and improve the 2nd IPSF that was scheduled for July 20-27, 2004 at Sun Moon University. Since our staff now had a much clearer understanding of what the Interreligious Peace Sports Festival was, we could envision many ways in which we could raise our standards. At Sun Moon University we would have the advantage of working and living at a modern facility with the ability to create an environment of a “Sports Village”.
Our staff had internal and external goals. Recruiting efforts focused on bringing 1,200 athletes in 2004 and we were determined to include more athletes from Israel and the Arab world to support the Mid East Peace Initiatives of the IIFWP. The most important of our internal goals was to have the festival come much closer to fulfilling the hopes and expectations of the Founders.
The Providence is now in an age when the religions of the world will cooperate in order to advance the cause of goodness. On certain occasions religious leaders have come together and offer up prayers based on a common theme and this is a good and valuable step towards coming closer to the spirit of the time. The IPSF staff took the Providence a major step forward with a 60 day long, Unified Prayer Condition. In our case, the international staff representing each of the world’s religions, offered prayers on 5 key points considered central to the success of the sports festival. This effort required a deep heart to heart connection as a unified family for we were all concerning for the proper growth and success of the IPSF. The ability of the staff to offer their sincere hearts in prayer, planning and action was a qualitative leap in our relationship. We were moving closer to the spirit of the new age.
One of the central goals of the World Culture and Sports Festival is to usher in a new culture of heart. The WCSF at this point in time are held annually in Korea but they will some day spread to each region and eventually be held in every nation. The seeds of the new culture need to be bought out to the world and visibly demonstrated so that the new culture can take root in all areas of the world. Various organizations inspired by True Parent’s are working with the WCSF to help to establish that quality of heart as the norm in our relationships. The IPSF is striving in its unique way to make this vision into a reality.
The content of our prayers included the following five points:
Another landmark accomplishment occurred with the team of Religious Advisors that was formed and helped organize each morning’s devotional services. Daily the team meet at 6:00 AM to pray, discuss and plan out how to create the best spiritual environment for the festival. Based on these discussions, which were often intense, they would come up with common ground in which to guide the devotional programs.
Following the religious advisors meeting at 6:30 AM, athletes and staff would gather outside and take part in the morning devotion of their choice. During this devotional time, most of the IPSF participants attended services from their religion, or visited another religions service or joined at special interreligious activities. The morning would often offer a choice spiritual options including, meditation, prayer, prayer walks and reflective time. This helped set up a strong foundation for the rest of the day.
Culture is such an important element for peace that the Russian author Nicolei Dostoyovsky claimed, “ Beauty will save the world”. Our cultural programs were a vital element in demonstrating the power of beauty and the creative energy that is necessary foundation for both art and life.
The festival cultural programs were offered every evening at the University or publicly on Global Family Day. In the Spring, the national IPSF representative’s began working with coaches and athletes to prepare traditional and contemporary performances for the festival. These performances continually turn out to be very popular and often generate energetic responses from the audiences. National delegations presented songs, dance and skits and often they encouraged eager to learn athletes onto the stage to teach them their dance moves. Many of the dances and songs served to pull everyone together in voice and in dace. Yet, their were cultural performances so different from the cultural experience of others that they held the audience in quiet, appreciative, amazement.
Imagine the reaction of viewing so many nations cultures when you had been so long isolated in regions of the world that had been isolated by war or poverty. One participant from Washington DC shared; I have never been outside of his neighborhood before and now I have had a chance to experience the whole world as a result of this festival.
Some Notes of Interest:
Among the teams that were selected to participate were the National Championship soccer team (19 years and under) of Sri Lanka who represented Christianity.
This team of Tamil youth came from an area in Sri Lanka that had been isolated from the rest of the country for over a decade. They raised over $ 8,000 from their poor village community including a $ 1,000 donation from the local Bishop to support their airfare. A press crew from Sri Lanka press came to Korea to cover the event and they sent daily progress reports to radio stations and local newspapers back home. Even though the team from Sri Lanka did not medal in the competition, they were able to reconnect their community to the larger world through their wonderful experience in Korea.
A Buddhist soccer team from the poverty ridden mountain region of Sikhim in North East India came to the IPSF. Walking around our “Sports Village” neatly dressed in their uniforms they joined in joined as often as possible the wide variety of programs the festival offered and presenting a very unique and exciting cultural performance. The team came with the blessings and full financial support of the provinces government.
Over one hundred athletes came from each of these nations, USA, Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand and Malaysia and between fifty and one hundred athletes came from Russia, India, the Philippines and Japan. Athletes from a total of 52 nations participated and they represented 11 religions.
It should be noted that the IIFWP provided scholarships associated with hosting the event while the weight of raising funds for international travel was on the participants. This year athletes received partial sponsorship and vital support from many organizations including: Taiwan and Thailand National Sports Authority, the Olympic Sports Association in South India, Afro-American Center, Colorado, the Police Athletic League, New Jersey, the North East Regional Government of India, Sikh and Hindu Organizations in Malaysia and various civic organizations and businesses. The Family Federation of the USA also provided a grant for some of the US athletes
Education Programs
The IPSF is concerned about providing its athletes with insights into how to improve their leadership abilities and gain a foundation to become a Young Ambassador for Peace in the field of Sports. Our education programs focused on three central themes:
These programs were provided to give athletes active options to participate in during the day or when they finished practice or completed their competition. The content of the programs was aimed at a range of issues such as AIDS prevention, examining he role of religion in promoting peace, sports and its role in building character, and the role of service in promoting peace and cooperation.
Lectures, performances, a religious exhibition and displays were all designed as a part of the approach to support the educational thrust of the IPSF. A handbook on the educational presentations was printed in Korea and given to all participants.
Orientation Programs:
This year the International Staff organized a participant orientation as a way to help newly arrived athletes and coaches adjust to the new surrounding and prepare them for the week ahead. This orientation program was offered 8 separate times over a two-day period and served to explain in an interactive way the goals, norms and practical setting of the IPSF. Orientation included the WAIT Team, a 2nd Generation performing arts team from the USA which is being directed by Mrs. Kate Tsubata. These young performers added energy and a dynamism to a serious orientation in an effort to visibly demonstrate a number of the central orientation themes.
Additional Program Efforts:
The IPSF staff worked with Mister and Miss University Leadership to coordinate a presentation of MMU to the IPSF during one of our cultural evenings. We also worked to have a delegation of our athletes and coaches come to the finals of the Mister and Ms. University, which were held in Seoul. This partnership was very good for both organizations and is important in creating a more unified approach to the World Culture and Sports Festival.
A Global Family Day was designed and created through the efforts of a wide coalition of organizations including Service for Peace. This event was partially sponsored by the IPSF and it included the active participation and attendance of most of the IPSF delegates. The Global Family Day was a special opportunity for our participants to mix with the people of Korea and share a good time together. We were able to prepare a number of cultural performances for the residents and the audience greatly appreciated it.
Participating in the Global Family Day was a real plus for both the organizing coalition and the IPSF participants. This event was enriched by the full cooperation of the hosting staff of Sun Moon University and the support of the IPSF International staff and the good result is an indication of the level of cooperation that occurred.
On our International Offices request, the Korea chapter of Service for Peace worked to organize a visit and service project in the DMZ. Mr. Khorrem Omar of India served as the IPSF Service Director and he coordinated with Service for Peace to bring 60 IPSF participants who were then joined by 60 Korean participants. The athletes traveled to the DMZ and labored in fields picking certain plants that were spreading pollen. The work helped lessen the release of pollen into the air; this is helpful for children and the elderly who suffer from respiratory illnesses. The testimonies of those athletes that participated in the event expressed that seeing the reality of the DMZ was really a painful memory of the reality of two Koreas. Many enjoyed being able to do aservice and only regretted they could not stay longer.
The International Office helped invite journalists from Jordan, Sri Lanka, USA, Bulgaria, Mongolia and Australia. A TV crew from Bulgaria and Mongolia were present making an IPSF documentary. Mr. Simon Kinney, (a TV Producer) and Peter Lewis helped film and interview athletes, coaches and advisors for a soon to be released promotional tape. (Please contact the IPSF office for a copy).
The Korean based IPSF staff worked on outreach to Korea media outlets and prepared a media room with computers and internet links for the press. We had a good press conference at the Office of the Mayor of Cheonan’s as a result of good relationships that were built by the various departments of the WCSF. To date, radio material was broadcast for Sri Lanka, a program for Miami TV was prepared and a 30 minute TV program was shown for national TV in Mongolia. These steps mark a beginning of a more serious media approach aimed at reaching the broader public with the vision of the IPSF and the larger World Culture and Sports Festival.
This year we re-thought the issue of announcing the total point scores of each religion at the closing of IPSF. The fact that Christianity scored the best results in both years may be a comfort to those Christians involved but it could be easily misinterpreted as; “The Christians defeated the Muslims.” To adhere more closely the spirit that the Founders envisioned for IPSF, we decided to present awards to each religion for the individual that best demonstrated, “The Spirit of Sportsmanship.” The religious advisors selected the top athlete of each religion that best demonstrated on and off the field the true spirit of the IPSF.
The Spirit of Participation Award was an additional award set up to encourage teams to go beyond their sporting preparations and fully invested in the festival. This years winner was the Christian soccer team from Sri Lanka. The Buddhist soccer team from Sikkim in North East India received the honorable mention.
A few words on the Meaning of the IPSF
The Interreligious Peace Sports Festival is a Providential Development that is integrated into the World Culture and Sports Festival (WCSF). The IPSF is a one tool that God has to help promote and establish a new culture of heart. In a sense, the IPSF is a microcosm of the World Culture and Sports Festival for it has within its program all the elements of the WCSF. Those that participant are from all areas of the world and represent each religion, we are a diverse sporting event, we are a unique cultural event, we have an academic and service component, some athletes take part in the World Peace Blessing, we strive to embody the spirit of a new culture.
The IPSF is working to create seeds of a new approach to sports and to life. It is vitally linked to the longing of both God and humanity. This vision is being offered in large part to young men and women with guidance from advisors, thus the IPSF strives to pass to the upcoming generation the wisdom of there tradition in hopes that the younger generation will be able to harmonize the best aspects of these teachings and move them forward to provide a basis for a world of peace.
The IPSF philosophy blends the rich spiritual tradition of a love for God with currents of humanism that hold the human form in high esteem. Both approaches to life offer something precious to humanity but clearly the spiritual quest is in the subject position in that it is the most fundamental. For this reason we ask each athlete to offer up their love of sports to the Source of Life and then demonstrate and compete with a desire to draw the best out of themselves and others. This deep respect for the spiritual and appreciation of the physical is the basis for harmony within the individual, family, nation and world.
In the upcoming festivals a greater emphasis will be placed on the centrality of marriage as the building block for world peace and more of the athletes will be encouraged to take an active role in the World Peace Blessing that the central highlight of the WCSF.
Interreligious Peace Sports Festival
is a project of Universal Peace Federation
© 2008