The Holy Trinity of American Sports explores how football, baseball, and basketball interact to illustrate civil religion in the United States. These three sports mark movement through one year in the country, providing extended seasons to supplement holidays like Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. Year after year, they generate ritual actions of daily, weekly, yearly, and once-in-a-lifetime significance. Football, baseball, and basketball portray three core stories of national worldview. Football depicts stories about the realities of life within history, while baseball expresses mythic aspiration for an ideal future. Basketball presents narrative of irreversible progress, story of fast-paced movement to highly productive conditions. Through stories of life, the three games convey doctrines about the source of truth, where to find knowledge of truths, and how to solve problems. Beyond doctrinal convictions, they disclose ethical beliefs of the nation for the worst, best, and most common situations. Functioning as a unit, the sports trinity communicates commitments to certain social arrangements, offering directives for interaction with people outside and inside the country. Football, baseball, and basketball possess great importance in the United States because they provide comprehensive and detailed illustration of American beliefs.

Like religion, playing and watching sports is a deeply meaningful, celebratory ritual enjoyed by millions across the world. The first scholarly work designed for use in both religion and sports courses, this collection develops and then applies a theoretically grounded approach to studying sports engagement globally and its relationship to modern-day issues of violence, difference, social protest, and belonging. Case studies explore the place of sports in mainstream faiths, such as Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Christianity, and lesser-known religious groups, particularly in Africa. It covers football, baseball, and basketball but also archery, soccer, bullfighting, judo, and track. Essays reflect all skill levels, from amateur to professional, and find surprising affinities among practices and cultures in locations as disparate as Germany and Japan, Spain and Saudi Arabia. Thoroughly examining a range of phenomena, this collection fully captures the unique overlap of two universal institutions and their interplay with human society, politics, and culture.

In The Games People Play, Robert Ellis constructs a theology around the global cultural phenomenon of modern sport, paying particular attention to its British and American manifestations. Using historical narrative and social analysis to enter the debate on sport as religion, Ellis shows that modern sport may be said to have taken on some of the functions previously vested in organized religion. Through biblical and theological reflection, he presents a practical theology of sport's appeal and value, with special attention to the theological concept of transcendence. Throughout, he draws on original empirical work with sports participants and spectators. The Games People Play addresses issues often considered problematic in theological discussions of sport such as gender, race, consumerism, and the role of the modern media, as well as problems associated with excessive competition and performance-enhancing substances. As Ellis explains, "Sporting journalists often use religious language in covering sports events. Salvation features in many a headline, and talk of moments of redemption is not uncommon. Perhaps, somewhere beyond the cliched hyperbole, there is some theological truth in all this after all."

This book provides a rigorously researched introduction to the relationship between Christianity, race, and sport in the United States. Christianity, Race, and Sport examines how Protestant Christianity and race have interacted, often to the detriment of Black bodies, throughout the sporting world over the last century. Important sporting figures and case studies discussed include: the sanctification of baseball player Jackie Robinson; the domestication of Muhammad Ali and George Foreman; religious expressions of athletes in the NFL; treatment of African American tennis player Serena Williams; Colin Kaepernick and his prophetic voice. This accessible and conversational book is essential reading for undergraduate students approaching religion and race or religion and sport for the first time, as well as those working within the sociology of sport, sport studies, history of sport, or philosophy of sport.

This book provides a systematic and interdisciplinary analysis of the published literature and practical initiatives on the sports-Christianity interface from both Protestant and Catholic perspectives. Within the context of this relatively new and rapidly expanding area of inquiry, this text offers an original contribution to the current literature for both undergraduate and postgraduate students and serves as a point of reference for academics from a wide range of related fields including theology and religious studies, psychology, history, sociology, philosophy, psychology, health-religion studies, and sports studies. The book will also be of interest to sports chaplains, those involved in sports ministry organizations, physical educators and sports coaches who wish to adopt a more critical and ‘holistic’ approach to their work. As modern-day sports are often entwined with commercial and political agendas, the book also provides an important response to the ‘win-at-all-costs’ and business orientated philosophy, which characterises much of contemporary sport practice, yet which cannot always be fully understood through secular inquiry.

Introduction to Recreation and Leisure, Fourth Edition, presents a comprehensive view of the multifaceted field of recreation and leisure. It delves into foundational concepts, delivery systems, and programming services. Over 40 leading experts from around the globe offer their diverse perspectives

This book examines the relationship between sport and religion with regard to twenty-first century topics such as race, fandom, education, and culture. The contributors provide new insights into the people, movements, and events that define the complex relationship between sport and religion around the world. A wonderful addition to any academic course on religion, sports, ethics, or culture as a whole.