The Bible in Transmission (Spring 2012) on Sporting Life

The latest issue of the excellent publication, The Bible in Transmission, from Bible Society, is now available (pdf here), offering a collection of articles on ‘Sporting Life: Reflections on Sport, Culture and the Church’.

Matthew van Duyvenbode

Editorial

Dominic Erdozain

‘I will not cease from mental fight’?: Sport and the Protestant Work Ethic

Sport is a serious business and is strongly influenced by secularised versions of the Protestant work ethic. To a large extent sport has lost its sense of enjoyment, its playfulness. A Christian approach to sport should relativise its importance, without trivalising it: the game is just a game.

David Oakley

Common Ground?: Sport and the Church

David Oakley highlights the central place of sport in the world. He presents sociological arguments as to why Christians should critically embrace the appeal of sport and argues that churches have real possibilities through sport to rediscover their role within the community.

Synthia Sydnor

Sport, Women and the Mystical Body of Christ

An overview of conventional critiques surrounding ‘women and sport’ shows that most call for cultural changes to achieve gender equity. A Christian vision of sport begins with the premise that man and woman have unique masculine or feminine characters, endowed by God.

Nick Watson

Sport, Disability and the Olympics

An exploration of the status and prophetic role of the Special Olympic Movement in light of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Andrew Parker and J. Stuart Weir

Sport, Spirituality and Religion: Muscular Christianity in the Modern Age

An overview of the key features of the ways in which the relationship between sport and religion has developed during and since the nineteenth century. In Victorian Britain, long-standing religious values began to permeate and underpin sporting endeavour but these have subsequently been modified in various ways.

Chris Rose

The Street Child World Cup: From Durban to Rio

The story of the inaugral Street Child World Cup in Durban South Africa, a tournament that proved to be a great success and helped changed perceptions and practices in several countries. Planning is well under way for the next tournament, which will be hosted by Brazil in 2014.

James Catford

News from Bible Society

Paul Bickley and Sam Tomlin on Reclaiming Sport for the Common Good

Paul Bickley and Sam Tomlin, Give us our Ball Back: Reclaiming Sport for the Common Good (London: Theos, 2012).

Theos have produced another helpful-looking booklet, this one written by Paul Bickley and Sam Tomlin, on sport.

There is more detail here, it’s available for download here, and here’s the back cover blurb:

‘Sport is everywhere. Yet in spite of its prominence, its position in society is relatively under-analysed.

‘As sport becomes more central, we realise that we don’t just want it for its own sake, but because of what it can do for us. We believe it has the power to make us good, peaceful, prosperous and healthy. Today, there is no such thing as ‘just a game’ – sport is treated as an arena for moral development, a way to resolved deep sectarian and international conflicts, a key plank in government strategies to make us healthier, and it is ‘big business’.

‘This report assesses how the claims stack up, and argues that the more governments, inter-governmental organisations, and NGOs pump sport for its social, political and economic benefits, the less it will be able to offer for the common good. Inflated rhetorical claims have distorted our understanding, expectations, and often our political decisions.

‘Sport is just as capable of making us bad as it is of making us good. It is just as likely to promote and excuse conflict as it is to reconcile. Although the sporting economy is growing, the claim that mega-events like the Olympics will contribute substantially to the economy must be carefully scrutinised. Finally, the participation agenda has faltered, raising questions about methodology and strategy for getting people healthy. Again and again, sport has been set up to over-promise and under deliver.

‘The report concludes with a theological appraisal of sport as an unnecessary and playful, yet serious, activity that does not require utilitarian justification. It makes several proposals with a view to sport taking a different but still essential place in society – reclaimed from the social, political and economic agendas of the age for the common good.’

Anvil 28, 1 (2012) on Christianity and Sport

The latest issue of Anvil is now available online, with essays on Christianity and Sport.

Robert Ellis

‘Faster, Higher, Stronger’: Sport and the Point of It All

This article traces the rise of ‘modern sport’ since the middle of the nineteenth century and notes both a corresponding decline in church attendance over the same period and the use of sport in the service of religious (missionary) ends. The author asks whether sport itself may be said to have any religious dimensions. Having answered in the positive, a theology of sport is sketched with the notion of self-transcendence taken as the key idea around which such a theology might cohere. Finally, some cautionary theological observations are made regarding sport – relating to such matters as the distorting effects of competition. Sport mirrors, and perhaps sustains, some problematic notions of class, ethnicity, and gender, and its commercialisation also raises questions of which the theologian should be aware.

Dominic Erdozain

In Praise of Folly: Sport as Play

This paper considers the relationship between Christianity and sport under three headings, each broadly representing a different era in the relationship between religion and leisure: ‘puritanism’, ‘muscular Christianity’ and ‘sports evangelism’. It argues that each has led to impoverished experiences and understandings of sport. The first tended to condemn sport, along with other leisure activities; the second, exemplified by ‘Muscular Christianity’, tended to instrumentalise sport for moral gains, with mixed results; and the third, labelled ‘Sportianity’ by some commentators, has attempted to combine evangelism and the values of modern sport in ways that have arguably compromised both. The paper argues that a missing ingredient in each case is ‘play’ – a constituent element of any definition of sport which has so often been lost. It concludes with some practical and theological reflections on putting play back into sport.

Lincoln Harvey

Towards a Theology of Sport: A Proposal

This article seeks to understand sport in light of the Christian doctrine of creation. It does so by highlighting first a systematic connection between the ontology of the creature and the reality of play. Within this framework, sport is then argued to be the ritual celebration of contingency, a ritualised way in which we chime with the non-serious nature of our being. As a result, I propose that sport – though distinct from the Christian act of worship – needs to be accorded a rightful place within the life of the Sabbath-shaped creature.

Andrew Moore

‘Nearer My God to Thee?’: Theological Reflections on Mountaineering

Is mountaineering a sport, a game, or a lifestyle, and what might it have to tell us about the nature and meaning of sport? These are the questions discussed in the first part of these personal theological reflections. Central to the attraction of climbing is risk but that, the article argues, is only a simulacrum – albeit an instructive one – of the risks involved in Christian discipleship. The final section of the article argues that spiritual reflections on outdoor activities, including climbing, can be theologically and spiritually misleading both as to the nature of ‘nature’ and as to how the God who addresses us in Jesus Christ is known.