The Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City. Who would have believed this would be possible as a few emaciated characters, fleeing as reviled sectarians, decided at the edge of the Great Salt Lake: "This is the right place." These people had come from Ohio into Illinois; they called themselves Mormons, after their founder Joseph Smith - who was not without his own faults - was locked up and murdered by a rabid crowd. Now they were seeking their earthly home, in order to practice their religion there undisturbed, a belief that is based partly on the Bible and partly on the revelations of their founder. Fundamental for their view of themselves is the Book of Mormon, which is said to have been given to Joseph Smith by an angel. Certain ideas of an end-time and a return of Jesus Christ are a part of the belief of the community with the name "Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints."

Here we are not talking about religious content and judging it, but about a social phenomenon: How would it be if this community were to first emerge today, and with united forces pound a city out of the ground and compete to host an international event? Probably church warnings about a dangerous sect would show their effects immediately and the honorable men on the Olympic Committee would throw up their hands. A city shaped by new religious belief, in a state whose citizens believe in the events of the end-time - that seems like an impossible place to carry out the World Olympic Games. But a community persecuted in pogroms has meanwhile become a religion with 10 million members. People have gotten used to their belief and treat them with tolerance. The church veto against religious competition has lost power in the state of Utah. These Olympic Games could be an example of this.

In another area, however, they have a somewhat repulsive effect. The entire air space over the Olympic stadium has to be closed off. Salt Lake City will become a fortress, guarded by tens of thousands of soldiers, policemen, national guardsmen and FBI and CIA agents. 225 million dollars are to be spent transforming the Olympic City into a high-security site. 

In ancient Greece, military action came to a stop during the Olympic Games. In our time, too, the youth of the world, as it was always so nicely called, gathered for peaceful competition. But we are living, as the American president proclaims again and again, in an era of war that is supposed to continue. Would it not be more honest to do without the Olympic Games as long as they have to take place in an army camp? There is too much of a gap between the illusion of peaceful competition and the reality of our world. Maybe we should make the money planned for the martial guarding of this sporting event available to the starving children in underdeveloped countries, of whom 40,000 die every day. Peace cannot be made through external means, but solely through the inner transformation of the inhabitants of this peaceless globe. Perhaps we should for some time replace the Olympic call of "faster, higher, stronger" with another comparative form: "more selfless."   

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