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UK Registered Charity 1117093
Company Number 5947088

"I jump into a sand pit for a living"

Jonathan Edwards, World record triple-jumper

The gift of Sport

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Stuart Burgess and Tabitha Carron, Day one Publications, 2023. ISBN 978-1-84625-761-2.

A strange book which has chapters on individual sports including a description, history and science of the sport, sometimes rules and usually 10 fun facts. The subtitle is how sport reveals the wonder of the human body.

There is nothing which could be described as theology of sport in the book. There's no reference to any of the published material on theology of sport but with random Bible verses from Genesis, Ecclesiastes, Job, Psalms etc. The religious content is largely simplistic statements like “sport provides a good incentive to regularly get out into God's creation…Sports Illustrates how humans are fearfully and wonderfully made, sports can help train people for work sports help maintain health and fitness”.

There are also sport specific comments like: “God has given humans the unique potential to be good at both long distance swimming and long distance running...golf is suitable for all ages and gives a good reason to get outdoors and appreciate God's creation. Golf demonstrates the amazing hand eye coordination that God has designed into the human body”.

The book adds nothing to our understanding of sport from a Christian perspective.



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