“Satan Scourges Us with It: A Brief History of Carpeted Mormon Basketball”

Last updated on: March 19, 2017 at 1:10 pm by Dan Peterson

“Satan Scourges Us with It: A Brief History of Carpeted Mormon Basketball” 2017-03-19T13:10:00-06:00 Dan Peterson

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We attended church today in the large chapel that stands adjacent to the Newport Beach California Temple, which is shown above. The church has a very nice basketball court. (LDS.org)

This article is actually somewhat more broadly significant, and more interesting, than its title might suggest:

http://deadspin.com/satan-scourges-us-with-it-a-brief-history-of-carpeted-1793111588

I’ll append to it a little story that I may have told here before, though I don’t believe so:

Long ago, my department held its fall party (just prior to the beginning of the new academic year) at my department chairman’s home. A native of Osaka, Japan, he was a counselor in his Orem, Utah, stake presidency, and he lived across the street from his stake center.

Accordingly, we had borrowed tables and chairs from the stake center for use in his backyard.

When the party was over, we all pitched in to carry those tables and chairs back across the street to the church.

As it happened, I fell into working with a senior Japanese scholar, a non-Mormon, who would be serving as a visiting faculty member during the fall term. Together, we took several tables over to the stake center and stowed them away underneath the stage in the “cultural hall.” During our repeated visits to that section of the building, he plainly noticed the hardwood floor, the painted stripes, and the basketball hoops.

“May I ask you a question about your theology?” he finally asked, during our last visit.

I was pleased. A missionary moment!

“Certainly!” I replied.

“Does basketball play an important role in your faith?” he asked.

I wish that I had been quick-witted enough, and irresponsible enough, to explain to this distinguished man whom I scarcely knew that a boy’s first basketball score was an important rite of passage in our religion, or something of that sort. But I didn’t. I told him that basketball was utterly insignificant in our doctrine, and merely something that we favored so as to provide exercise and wholesome activity for our young people. Boring.

Posted from Newport Beach, California

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