"Football is not a matter of life and death, it is more important than that."
From season to season
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Sports as American Religion,Edited by Joseph L. Price, Mercer University Press, 2001 ISBN 0-86554-694-0
The book consists of 15 chapters by 9 authors. It is arranged in 5 sections: Sport and Religion on America, baseball, football, basketball, hockey and wresting.
The introduction “Fervent Faith” sets the scene arguing the importance of sport in America and its religious connotations and parallels. The chapter provides a useful review of the relevant literature.
There is a nice quotation from Bishop William T Manning that I had not come across before: "Clean, wholesome, well-regulated sport is a most powerful agency for true and utmost living…. True sport and true religion should be in the closest touch and sympathy. Few things have done more harm than the idea that religion frowns upon sport or is out of sympathy with it. The notion gives men the wrong idea of religion and it puts religion out of touch with the life of the people. A well played game of polo or of touch football is in its own place and in its own way as pleasing to God as a beautiful service of worship in the Cathedral".
From Sabbath Proscriptions to Sunday Celebrations gives an interesting account of how America got from one extreme to position to the other. The chapter’s sub-headings are Sports Conflicting with Religion, Sports Commingling with Religion, Religion Conscripting Sports, Sports Co-opting Religion, Sports Supplanting Religion.
In God and Games in Modern Culture,Lonnie D. Kliever argues that Christian cultures have typically valued work above play, sometimes to the point of regarding play as “the work of the devil… Such Christian denigration and modern approval of play reinforce each other in separating religion and play in our time”. Kliever continues: “For all of our frantic devotion to sports and games, to entertainment and diversions, we need to rediscover the fun and grace of children at play. Perhaps this was what Jesus meant when he said: Except you become as a little child, you will not see the Kingdom of God.”
Much of the subsequent content seeks parallels between sport and religion as part of an argument that sport is a religion. For example, in Basketball’s Abbot, Lois Daly makes a comparison between the role of an abbot and the approach of Coach Knight and the tendency to describe basketball’s final four in religious/apocalyptic language.
In A puckish reflection on religion in Canada, Tom Faulkner starts with the premise that being a fan or player of hockey is a way of being religious. He uses Thomas Luckman’s The invisible religion to support his thesis. Surprisingly the writer sees Hockey as violent and sexist but does not comment negatively on that!
Jim Mathisen writes on American sport as folk religion interpreting the 1980s NFL strike in terms of football as folk religion.
There is a great quote from Lou Holtz on Notre Dame’s victories. “I know that you are going to say God doesn’t care who wins. And I say that’s true, but I believe his mother does.”
In the final chapter Price concludes that despite “protests against classifying sports as a religion, it seems reasonable to do so”.