Religion And Sport

This text presents the best of the literature available on the relationship between sport and religion. The collection includes ground-breaking studies as well as recent articles from popular and scholarly publications. Sport and Religion is organized into four parts that - consider the case for and against sport as religion, - examine the potential of the sport experience as a path to religious insight, - analyze the significance of the pervasiveness of religious gestures in sport, and - explore the impact of religious views on perceptions and behaviors in sport.

Prebish offers a thoughtful look at sport as a religious experience and argues that sport has become an American religion. The first section of the work contains three chapters that provide a definitional, theoretical, and methodological frame for examining sport as religion. The five chapters that follow, each written by an authority in the field, treat different aspects of the religious dimension of sport. These chapters represent the most important writings on sport as a religious experience, and each author offers a full and thoughtful discussion rather than a cursory overview. A final chapter by Prebish closes the work. The first chapter of the book challenges traditional assumptions about religion and encourages the reader to reconsider what religion is. The second chapter examines the difficulty of defining sport, and the third probes the close relationship between sport and religion. The anthology that follows contains chapters that examine religion and sport from sociological, historical, theological, philosophical, and psychological perspectives. A concluding bibliography lists material for further reading.

This book provides a systematic and interdisciplinary analysis of the published literature and practical initiatives on the sports-Christianity interface from both Protestant and Catholic perspectives. Within the context of this relatively new and rapidly expanding area of inquiry, this text offers an original contribution to the current literature for both undergraduate and postgraduate students and serves as a point of reference for academics from a wide range of related fields including theology and religious studies, psychology, history, sociology, philosophy, psychology, health-religion studies, and sports studies. The book will also be of interest to sports chaplains, those involved in sports ministry organizations, physical educators and sports coaches who wish to adopt a more critical and ‘holistic’ approach to their work. As modern-day sports are often entwined with commercial and political agendas, the book also provides an important response to the ‘win-at-all-costs’ and business orientated philosophy, which characterises much of contemporary sport practice, yet which cannot always be fully understood through secular inquiry.

Readers are introduced to a range of theoretical and methodological approaches used to understand religion – including sociology, philosophy, psychology, and anthropology – and how they can be used to understand sport as a religious phenomenon. Topics include the formation of powerful communities among fans and the religious experience of the fan, myth, symbols and rituals and the sacrality of sport, and sport and secularization. Case studies are taken from around the world and include the Olympics (ancient and modern), football in the UK, the All Blacks and New Zealand national identity, college football in the American South, and gymnastics. Ideal for classroom use, Understanding Sport as a Religious Phenomenon illuminates the nature of religion through sports phenomena and is a much-needed contribution to the field of religion and popular culture.

Religion and Sports in American Culture explores the relationship between religion and modern sports in America. Whether found in the religious purpose of ancient Olympic Games, in curses believed to plague the Chicago Cubs, or in the figure of Tim Tebow, religion and sports have been and are still tightly intertwined. While there is widespread suspicion that sports are slowly encroaching on the territory historically occupied by religion, Scholes and Sassower assert that sports are not replacing religion and that neither is sports a religion. Instead, the authors look at the relationship between sports and religion in America from a post-secular perspective that looks at both discourses as a part of the same cultural web. In this way each institution is able to maintain its own integrity, legitimacy, and unique expression of cultural values as they relate to each other. Utilizing important themes that intersect both religion and sports, Scholes and Sassower illuminate the complex and often publicly contentious relationship between the two. Appropriate for both classroom use and for the interested non-specialist, Religion and Sports in American Culture brings pilgrimage, sacrifice, relics, and redemption together in an unexpected cultural continuity.

'Sport' and 'religion' are cultural institutions with a global reach. Each is characterised by ritualised performance and by the ecstatic devotion of its followers, whether in the sports arena or the cathedral of worship. This fascinating collection is the first to examine, in detail, the relationship between these two cultural institutions from an international, religiously pluralistic perspective. It illuminates the role of sport and religion in the social formation of collective groups, and explores how sport might operate in the service of a religious community. The book offers a series of cutting-edge contemporary historical case-studies, wide-ranging in their social and religious contexts. It presents important new work on the following fascinating topics: * sport and Catholicism in Northern Ireland * Shinto and sumo in Japan * women, sport and the American Jewish identity * religion, race and rugby in South Africa * sport and Islam in France and North Africa * sport and Christian fundamentalism in the US * Muhammad Ali and the Nation of Islam. With God on their Side is vital reading for all students of the history, sociology and culture of sport. It also presents important new research material that will be of interest to religious studies students, historians and anthropologists.

While the relationship between sport and religion is deeply rooted in history, it continues to play a profound role in shaping modern-day societies. This edited collection provides an inter-disciplinary exploration of this relationship from a global perspective, making a major contribution to the religious, social scientific and theological study of sport. It discusses the dialectical interplay between sport and Christianity across diverse cultures, extending beyond a Western perspective to include studies from Africa, South America and Asia, as well as Europe, the UK and the US. Containing contributions from leading experts within the field, it reflects on key topics including race, gender, spirituality, morality, interfaith sport clubs, and the significance of sport in public rituals of celebration and mourning. Its chapters also examine violent sports such as boxing and mixed martial arts, as well as reflecting on the cult of sporting celebrity and the theology of disability sport. Truly international in scope, Global Perspectives on Sports and Christianity is fascinating reading for all those interested in the study of sport, sociology and religion.

Sport and Christianity examines sport and Christianity from a variety of historical perspectives, with the main focus on the period from the nineteenth to the early twenty-first centuries. The book is not limited to a narrow definition of Christianity, but rather encompasses a wide range of denominations, related philosophies and viewpoints. The contributors are international, and the geographical range of their chapters is equally wide, extending, for example, from China to Argentina, and from Australia to Poland. Some chapters focus on a single sport such as gymnastics, soccer or Australian Rules football, while others look at modern sports more generally. Different methodological and theoretical approaches have been adopted, as contributors enter the debates on, for example, cultural imperialism, gender, changing Christian attitudes to leisure, or the intersection between religion, politics and sport. Demonstrating the many-sided significance of the relationship between Christianity and Sport, this book is ideal for scholars of Sport History and Christianity. This book was originally published as a special issue of The International Journal of the History of Sport.