Well, I’ll admit that I succumbed to the allure of using a catchy title as clickbait. With football season in full swing, the logical conclusion is that this article will extol the virtues of teamwork and unity found in the National Football League. However, I am talking about the other NFL, founded three years after the football one: the National Forensics League.
Rev. Dr. Sarah Blackwell
While I know this NFL no longer exists after a name change in 2014 to the National Speech and Debate Association (denying a new generation of brainiac debaters the pleasure of telling people they were in the NFL and watching eyebrows raise in disbelief), I think its merits warrant some consideration. I, myself, counted the NFL as one of my favorite high school memories — especially my trophy in Original Oratory from the Licking Tournament (named after the host city of Licking, Missouri, and not something you do with your tongue).
So, why (besides my nostalgic memories) do Christians need this NFL? Well, first a little etymology lesson. While we think of “forensics” most often today as what quirky characters on evening network dramas do to investigate crimes, the root of the word goes all the way back to the Roman Forum where people would come to speak publicly, raise legal concerns, debate issues, or listen to the arguments of others. The root word came from forensis, meaning “of or before the forum.” If there was one thing that those Romans knew how to do, it was talk, and they had learned from their Greek predecessors how to craft sound rhetorical arguments based on logic combined with persuasive emotional appeals.
I miss the term National Forensics League because it better reflects how we speak and talk in society, rather than formal speech and debate competitions with artificial rules reserved for overachieving high schoolers. As a society, we have lost the art of rhetoric, and all one must do is turn on the news or open a social media site to see the dangers and ramifications. Politicians default to name-calling and off-topic comments rather than putting forth coherent arguments for a platform they support. “Debates” deteriorate into personal attacks and strings of falsehoods to rile up the voting base rather than any constructive discussion about how anyone might address and resolve the issues facing our country.
As a member of the NFL, I had to learn how to create logical arguments without running into the dreaded fallacies of ad populum (good because everyone says it is), red herrings (introducing random side issues), post hoc (saying the timing of something is equivalent to causation), and, of course, the dreaded ad hominem (personal attack) that would be sure to sink your debate instantly. Sometimes when politicians, business leaders, or even pastors have a viral moment for something juicy enough to catch the attention of the 24-hour news cycle, all I can think of is some debate judge sitting there with a ballot putting a big ol’ zero on it.
After researching the debate topic (which was much more of a chore before Google and the internet) and preparing our initial arguments, we would walk into the room and randomly be assigned which side we were supporting. Topics in the Lincoln/Douglas values debate would be topics like — Resolved: terminally ill patients have the right to die when and how they choose or Resolved: when in conflict, community standards are of greater value than individual liberty. In policy debate, we would spend the entire school year covering topics such as — Resolved: That the federal government should guarantee comprehensive national health insurance to all United States citizens.
Let me just tell you, in the early 1990s, there were a bunch of debate kids who could tell you everything about the health systems of Canada and the European Union. Personal opinions were put to the side as we pulled together the most convincing case possible for our given position. What resulted was a firm understanding of how people arrived at different conclusions on the same topic and a true comprehension that people do not believe what they believe for no reason. Arguing was not something to be dreaded or feared but the spirit of the activity itself.
We would often debate the same teams more than once and came to appreciate the skill of our competitors. It is much like how you hear stories of how Republicans and Democrats used to debate all day on the floor of Congress and join each other for dinner afterward. There is more charity when the topic remains the focus rather than when things get personal, as we see today. It also allows for meaningful compromise and solutions that marry ideas from both sides, rather than one side having a perceived monopoly on all the good ideas.
Photo by Clint Patterson on Unsplash
In the 1920s, American schools began to move away from offering courses in rhetoric, choosing instead to break it into different disciplines such as public speaking and language arts. In doing so, they lost some of the magic of debate. The quick thinking on one’s feet and the understanding of both sides of an issue were harder to come by. Recent estimates put the number of high schools without a speech debate team at around 80%. This is an unfortunate statistic — especially when we see that in a recent study, participation in these programs led to an 87% increase in analytical skills and a 36% increase in reading test scores. In an age of AI, being able to recognize and articulate good arguments will be of utmost importance.
So why do Christians need the NFL? I am not necessarily thinking about apologetics or being out there arguing for the faith. Rather, I am drawn to this idea as a method of discernment. How can we be as “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16) without doing our homework? As a country, we have gotten lazy in the art of research and rhetoric, and it shows. Rhetoric is slow. It develops. It includes in-depth proofs and thorough investigation — none of which fit conveniently into our attention economy. This is one way that Christians can be distinctive and set apart from the world, using our brains to do comprehensive research and deep thinking.
To me, it is the opportunity to love the Lord with all our MIND as Deuteronomy 6:5 commands. For example, what have we been told the “Bible clearly says” that further investigation provides some kind of counterpoint within the text? How do we reconcile which view should take precedence? The book of the Bible it came from? Who said or wrote it? Whether it is the dominant voice of the entire text or a more fringe one? Does it align with the two things Jesus told us were most important: love God and neighbor? One of the assignments that I do with my students is to have them take a current societal issue that people apply biblical reasoning to and then show how both sides have been argued using words found in the Bible. They have yet to find a current event or policy topic that they could not find support for within the text (of course some arguments are much more convincing, and others clearly take words out of context).
As Christians, we can also call out the low-hanging fruit of logical fallacies — especially the ever-present ad hominem or personal attack. As Christians, we need to take discussions about religion and faith seriously. We should know the arguments on both sides of issues to become more empathetic listeners. We should avoid the trite sayings we have heard repeated tons of times that are sometimes not even Christ-like. We should practice in our churches this kind of discussion done in love as preparation for the wider world. We should teach our children and youth about rhetoric and debate and not be afraid to show places where people in the Bible disagreed with each other, like Peter and Paul in Galatians 2:11-14, where they debate whether Gentiles must become Jews first to follow Christ. Back then, this was as hot-button an issue as any in our world today.
So, we can take some important lessons with us from the old NFL. By leaning in and encouraging research and rhetoric in our local churches, schools, and universities, we can help restore the “civil” to the idea of “civil discourse.”As Christians, we must demand better because the Latin root word of “civil” is “civis” or citizen. And we are called to be citizens of heaven (currently residing on earth), so we should learn to talk like it.
Rev. Dr. Sarah Blackwell is a contributing writer at Word&Way and a graduate of the Gardner-Webb School of Divinity and the McAfee School of Theology. She teaches in the Religion and Philosophy Department at Wingate University. She knows Brian Kaylor will appreciate this article because he used to be her little brother’s high school debate partner. Follow her writings at www.proximitytolove.org.
