Sports and Christianity (Historical and Contemporary Perspectives)

This is an extended review of the of the book, chapter by chapter. The following statement from the introduction gives a helpful summary of what the book is aiming to do: “In sum, Sports and Christianity aims not only to reflect on the ways in which the underpinning principles of the Christian faith might allow us to consider and challenge the values and practices of modern-day sport, but also how they might enhance the way in which we see the future of sport both in terms of its participatory and structural formation. We believe that it is by way of such reflection that our understandings of the relationship between sport and Christianity can continue to thrive and that the desire for ongoing empirical scholarship will be stimulated and encouraged. Needless to say, we trust that this book will be both a stimulus and an encouragement to our readership”.

Sport and Christianity: Mapping the field: Nick J Watson and Andrew Parker

This is very much the book’s signature chapter in which the authors conduct a systematic review of literature and contextualize what has been written in the field of Sport and Christianity. The aim is stated as to “comprehensively identify, critically appraise and synthesize scholarship, primary empirical research and initiatives on the relationship between Sport and Christianity from 1850 to the present day”.

One of their key findings is that while there is a significant amount of scholarship on sports and Christianity, there is a distinct lack of quality empirical research which looks at how professionals process sport in the light of faith.

They identify a range of examples of emerging and needed research:

Theological analysis of disability sport, including reflection on institutions,such as the Paralympics and Special Olympics.

The various uses of prayer in sport.

The theory and practice of sport chaplaincy.

Theological reflection on exercise and health, two concepts that are closely linked to sports.

Women, sport and the Christian religion.

Sport, religion and popular culture.

Beauty and aesthetics in traditional and alternative/extreme sports.

Relationships in sporting contexts.

They argue that modern-day advocates of the muscular Christian ideals “often uncritically adopt tenets of contemporary sporting culture that have little, if any, affinity with the gospel of Christ”. This is a theme which Hoffman picks up in his chapter in this book and elsewhere.

One intriguing suggestion is that an attempt be made to see how “classic devotional literature, such as the writings of Thomas à Kempis, Oswald Chambers, Francois Fenelon, Andrew Murray and C. S. Lewis” can be applied to sports ethical issues. The need for accessible literature for athletes, coaches and parents is also noted. As someone who tries to write weekly for this audience, I welcome the suggestion and will follow developments with interest.

The comprehensive way in which the authors list sources, provide a table of key players and resources, alongside a 32 page bibliography and 95 footnotes, is not only indicative of their thoroughness but also ensures that the chapter will be a seminal resource for future academics and practitioners.

Was St. Paul a Sports Enthusiast?: Victor Pfitzner

Victor Pfitzner has published a book and several papers on the Pauline athletic metaphors. This is therefore inevitably a fairly technical chapter by someone who has spent years of his life researching this area.

He is not looking to construct a Christian view of sport but rather to shed light on why and how Paul uses the sporting images. One of his conclusions is that: “athletic metaphors held such imaginative power for the apostle Paul that he could be confident that his message would be enhanced by their use”. He adds helpfully that “St. Paul writes as a bilingual, acculturated Hellenistic Jew (Saul and Paul), reflecting the language and social reality of his day”.

The chapter contains the most comprehensive list of athletic metaphors that I have ever seen, including those hidden by the English Bible translators. The exegesis in the cultural background will be of help to anyone preaching on Paul as well as the student of sport from a Biblical perspective.

Sport and Religion in England c 1790-1914: Hugh McLeod

The eminent historian gives an excellent overview of the historical context in which the Muscular Christianity movement emerged. The author suggests that in 1840 – 17 years before the publication of Tom Brown’s Schooldays – “relations between the worlds of religion and of sport had been at their nadir”. By the 1890s there were four major areas of tension between the worlds of religion and sport: “the impact of professionalism, the persistence of gambling, differing ideas on the use of time (including Sunday) and the fear that sport was becoming a new religion”.

The chapter is full of examples, which exemplify the ambivalent context of sport and church, for example at a conference: “One speaker warned that many men had left the Church because the clergy had not recognized their need for recreation, and a Nottinghamshire curate attributed the high level of morality in that county to the large number of cricket clubs”.

On the subject of Muscular Christianity, MacLeod suggests that Thomas Hughes’ rhetoric was directed at “religious people who thought sport was not Christian, at sportsmen who thought religion was not manly and also at those who saw their sport simply as a source of personal pleasure and who lacked a social conscience”.

The chapter documents a Liverpool Catholic Schools’ Football League, formed around 1900 with the aim, according to a Catholic paper, of keeping “football enthusiasts in a Catholic atmosphere.”

I felt the judgement on some modern day Christian sportspeople was harsh in his statement that “the role of religion in elite sport continues to the present day in the ‘Chariots of Fire’ phenomenon, whereby some top athletes perceive their sporting talents as gifts from God, and their religious faith provides the driving force behind their will to win and their disciplined training”.

The chapter is helpful and thought-provoking helping Christians in engaged in sport to see some of the jigsaw pieces which have helped shape the development of the modern sports ministry movement.

Harvesting Souls in the Stadium: Shirl James Hoffman

Anything by Shirl Hoffman is worth reading. While one may not agree with all his conclusions, the questions he asks are always worth considering. The weakness of this chapter is that one may be familiar with much of the material from, for example, Good Game.

He argues in this chapter that Christianity’s engagement with sport in the 19th century was because “sport, especially in the images of famous Christian athletes and coaches, promised fundamentalism what it could find in few other avenues of society: social respectability”.

However as the 20th century developed, Christians more and more came to see sport’s value in its potential for evangelising the masses, by making the gospel more attractive to them. More and more, evangelical Christians became intentional about their sports evangelism rather than leaving it to what Hoffman calls the “hit-or-miss post game stammering of individual athletes”.

The greatest indictment of the Christian community has been the lack of engagement with sport. Hoffman argues that the Christian community has never attempted to “influence the form and function of popular sport” and equally little attention has been paid to the meaning of sport in the Christian life or to how Christian virtues might be applied to sport. The entire emphasis has been on hoe sport and the Christian athlete can be used in evangelism.

One implication of that is that “Christian athletes may be expected to lead Christ-inspired lives when off the field, but during competition, another ethic was held to be supreme”. Hoffman includes some material that I have not come across before on how Alonso Stagg – often seen as a great pioneering Christian role model – engaged in “on-the-field trickery and deception that barely skirted the line of cheating”.

Writing about Eric Liddell, Hoffman states incorrectly that a “last-minute arrangement permitted Liddell to run in the 400 meters” when he discovered that the 100 metres heats were on a Sunday. In reality Liddell knew months in advance and adjusted his training accordingly to concentrate on the 200 and 400. Moreover when Hoffman states that “Liddell talked of correlations between faith and running - he described winning as a God-honoring feat and running as a spiritual obligation”, I believe he is quoting Colin Welland’s Chariots of Fire script rather than the historical Eric Liddell.

Hoffman’s point that Eric Liddell was the first elite Christian athlete to “allow his religious conscience to override the demands of the sporting culture” is an interesting one.

Stereotypes and Archetypes in Religion and American Sport: Robert J Higgs

I have never found Higgs easy to read and did not find much of interest here. The purpose of the chapter is to: “explore one aspect common to both stereotypes and archetypes. How they intersect and react to make our games and religions what they are and what they are not”.

Special Olympians as a ‘Prophetic Sign’ to the Modern Sporting Babel: Nick J, Watson

I found it exciting that the book included a chapter on disability sport. Personally I am still processing the experience of working at the Paralympics and wondering why disability sport has been largely neglected by the sports ministry community.

From a comprehensive review of the literature in the disciplines of theology of disability and disability sport’ Nick Watson concludes that here is virtually no empirical research or scholarship on disability sport from a Christian perspective.

The most challenging idea in the chapter – one which is explicit in the title - is whether disabled athletes have a prophetic message for sport in an “era that exalts self, celebrity, wealth, outward beauty the intellect, success and the need to be perfect in all that we do”. The New Testament reminds us that God delights in using the poor, weak and humble rather than the rich and famous.

“Perhaps then, relationships with persons with disabilities in sport (ID and PD) can prophetically speak to others and allow them to see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn’ and enter into a relationship with God the Father (Matt. 13:15). As Moltmann (1998: 121) intimates, ‘a person with disabilities gives others the precious insight into the woundedness and weakness of human life,’ and I would add, the heart of Jesus for the world of sport”.

An important and thought-provoking chapter.

The Technoscience Enhancement Debate in Sports: Tracy J Trothen

The chapter looks at the impact of new and visible technoscience enhancements. The writer’s purpose is to “argue that when the issue is reframed as a theological one, centered on a postmodern feminist understanding of transcendence, ethical interrogation surfaces additional issues concerning values, difference, visibility, relationship, hope and the sacred” and to “demonstrate that normative embodiment discourse and related assumptive values are operative even if not always visible in sport enhancement issues”.

The Quest for Perfection in the Sport of Baseball: Jacob L. Goodson

The chapter examines the use of steroids within Major league Baseball in the U.S. With no reference to Scripture and just fleeting references to Augustine and Aquinas, the chapter fits more into the ethics or philosophy of sport than does it help ourt understanding of Sport and Christianity.

The Vatican’s Game Plan for Maximizing Sport’s Educational Potential: Kevin Lixey

Kevin Lixey begins by noting the irony that the Catholic Church which in the past was often accused of being anti sport is now advocating putting play back into sport. Arguing that “sport entered onto the church’ s concern through the doorway of education”, he sees sport as playing a key role in educating young people. As someone who spent a number of years championing sport in the Vatican, Kevin Lixey deserves a lot of the credit for the current catholic openness to thinking about sport.

I warmed to his suggestion that sports coaching should be recognized as a legitimate branch of youth ministry with the coaches given the necessary “spiritual” training alongside the practical. Moreover the important role of the coaches should be honoured. In an era where attendance at traditional church attendance and catechism class are dwindling, the believing sports coach has a unique opportunity to make “the friendly face of the Church and love of Christ concrete for the young person”.

I also warmed to the suggestion that just as the Church had sought to develop a “spirituality of work”, it should seek to apply this thinking to sport or even better develop a spirituality or theology of sport.

My one reservation about Kevin Lixey’s writing, which makes it a little inaccessible to the non-catholic is that it could be said to have a sub-title of “What the popes have said about…”. The present chapter includes two quotations from Scripture and 36 quotations from five different popes.

Hard-Won Sporting Achievements and Spiritual Humility Are They Compatible?: Scott Kretchmar

Scott Kretchmar begins with the provocative comment that if you are wanting to write about spiritual humility, sport may seem a strange place to start, noting the contrast between the ego-driven performance-based world of sport and Jesus who described himself as “meek and lowly.”

He goes on to elaborate the issue: “If devout individuals wanted to cultivate their spiritual humility, would sport be a good place to do so? Conversely, if serious athletes wanted to become better competitors, would spiritual humility fortify and enhance that project or have precisely the opposite effect?” Two great questions!

I cannot do justice to his argument in a short review but can share this, enigmatic, conclusion: “We can conclude that sporting and spiritual progress is dependent on humility, but in a messy, complicated kind of way, one that does not exclude elements of pride”.

He goes further, hinting at an integrated whole-life approach, seeing Sport and Christianity as one rather than two dualistically separated entities. This is a proposition, which Lowrie McCown and others have pushed athletes, coaches, sports chaplains etc to espouse. Kretchmar puts it as follows: “If the sacred and secular are not separate worlds, if sport and spirituality overlap one another in complicated, messy ways, then it would be misleading to speak simply about the transferability of lessons from one domain to the other. It would be more accurate to claim that the confident humility one feels in different places and on different projects may be sacred-secular”.

My only caveat about a thought-provoking chapter is the inclusion of material on humility from Islam and Zen, which I found both confusing and unnecessary given the title of the book