If I had to choose between my wife and my putter... well, I’d miss her.
The International Journal of Religion and Sport
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Volume 1, 2009 Mercer University
The volume contains essays and two reviews. The essays are:
The Sporting Spirit? Gene Doping, Bioethics, and Religion - Tracey Trothen
Eastern Influences on Western Sport: Appropriating Buddhism in the G/Name of Golf - Jane M. StangI
The Holy Trinity of Sacred Stories in the United States: Football, Baseball, and Basketball - Craig Forney
Playing and Praying, Sport and Spirit: The Forms and Functions of Prayer in Sports - Joseph L. Price
Throttle Up a Whirlwind: Space, Time, and the Sacred Elixir of Speed among Recreational Motorcyclists - Richard Hutch
Living in a Sectarian Maelstrom: A Christian Professional Football Player’s Perspective – Ian Lawrence
In Appropriating Buddhism in the G/Name of Golf, Jane M. Stangl gives a good summary of papers with content on spiritual applications to golf. However, she is either unaware of has chosen to exclude Christian reflections on golf such as:
Christian Golf Psychology, Tim Underwood, Cross Training Publishing 1998
A round with God (Parables from the golf course), Matt Parsons, Lifeline Ministry Cornwall, 2009
Focus, the name of the game – a golf devotional. Scott Simpson, Larry Mize and Loren Roberts with Sigmund Brouwer, J Countryman 1999.
Finishing the course (Strategies for the back nine of your life), Jim Sheard and Wally Amistrong, J Countryman 2000
The Heart of a Golfer: Timeless Lessons and Truths About Faith, Life, and Golf, Wally Armstrong and Frank Martin, Zondervan Publishing House 2002
Tiger himself was quoted in a 1996 Sports Illustrated piece as saying that he “liked Buddhism because it’s a whole way of being and living. It’s based on discipline and respect and personal responsibility.” Oops!
In The Holy Trinity of Sacred Stories in the United States: Football, Baseball, and Basketball, Craig Forney sees sport as an analogy for life. “Three sports mark the passage through one year in the United States, illustrating three myths foundational for the worldview of the nation. Football depicts a story about the realities of life inside history… Baseball portrays American mythology regarding the end of time… basketball expresses a story of irreversible progress from historical adversities to a much better future”.
In Playing and Praying, Sport and Spirit: The Forms and Functions of Prayer in Sports, Joseph L Price looks at the forms and functions of prayer and examines “the confluence of praying and sports in the United States, providing examples of various occasions and purposes of prayers for athletes and their contests. Finally, drawing on the structural analysis of play and theological reflections on prayer, I will propose that the act of praying can be understood as an act of playing, and that acts of playing can be construed as acts of prayer”.
There is a good analysis of praying after scoring and the official ruling that prayer was a permissible act of celebration. The article provides as good a summary of issues relating to the legality and litigation re prayer in sport in USA as I have seen.
On the purpose of prayer, he presents evidence that teams find prayer creates “a great spiritual bond” and a source of strength for the team.
I found the following a helpful summary of the status quo: “In a variety of ways, sports and prayer intersect in American culture: in petitions by players and teams at sites of competition, in expressions of thanksgiving by athletes, in invocations by priests and fans for contests and games, and in prayers of intercession by fans for athletes. The tendency to connect athletic success and divine favor suggests that the convergence of sports and religion involves a kind of denigration of one or both—the profanation of the sacred or the diminution of sporting competition”.
There is surprisingly no reference to the writings of Czech.
Living in a Sectarian Maelstrom: A Christian Professional Football Player’s Perspective – Ian Lawrence is interesting but I have reviewed it elsewhere
Annie Blakeney-Glazer, in her review of William J. Baker’s Playing with God: Religion and Modern Sport, is more positive about the book than I am in my own review of it. See my review