Bringing together leading scholars in the fields of Religion and Sport, this book examines the prophetic dimension of sport, to arrive at a better understanding of the nature of sports in the United States. By detailing and analyzing particular sports, a portrait of sport as an important space for social and political critique emerges. Sport is indisputably an important cultural phenomenon in the United States. Each year millions attend sporting events, track the statistics and lives of sports stars, collect memorabilia, engage in fantasy sports, and play various sporting games. But increasingly, sport is also a space for public articulations regarding social and political issues within the United States. What are we to make of these particular articulations? What do they tell us about the nature of sport in the United States? How are these social and political critiques formed? Why do sporting voices seem to carry more weight at this moment in history? Ideally suited for use in undergraduate and graduate courses, this book offers a new way of thinking about the connection between sport and religion in a secularizing society. By analyzing various sports and particular historical moments, the chapters supply a unique example of the relevance of sport as it pertains to social and political critique.

Unsportsmanlike behavior by student athletes or parents at youth sporting events happens with regularity these days. Much recent research reveals that young people are dropping out of sport at alarming rates due to the often toxic elements in the culture of youth sports. The timely, innovative essays in Youth Sport and Spirituality present a wide-ranging overview that draws on resources from Catholic spiritual and theological traditions to address problems such as these, as well as opportunities in youth sport in the United States. The book consists of two sections. In the first, prominent scholars in philosophy, psychology, theology, and spirituality reflect on how youth sport contributes to the integral development of the person and his or her grasp of spiritual values. The second half of the book consists of chapters written by coaches, athletic directors, and specialists working with youth coaches. These practitioners share how their approaches to working with youth in sport contribute to the integral development of their players and their openness to transcendent values. The essays examine coaching as ministry, youth sport and moral development, and how parents can act as partners in youth sports, among other topics. The book will interest coaches, athletic directors, and youth ministers in Catholic elementary and high schools in parish settings, as well as undergraduate and graduate students in education who are preparing to teach in Catholic schools. Contributors: Patrick Kelly, SJ, Daniel A. Dombrowski, Nicole M. LaVoi, Mike McNamee, Clark Power, David Light Shields, Brenda Light Bredemeier, Richard R. Gaillardetz, Kristin Komyatte Sheehan, Dobie Moser, Jim Yerkovich, Sherri Retif, James Charles Naggi, and Edward Hastings.

This interdisciplinary text examines the sports-Christianity interface from Protestant and Catholic perspectives. In addition to a "systematic review of literature," field-pioneering contributors such as Michael Novak, Shirl Hoffman, Joseph Price and Robert Higgs address a wide range of topics from the sporting world, including biblical athletic metaphors, disability, evangelism, professionalism and celebrity, humility and pride, genetic enhancement technologies, stereotypes, sport as art and British and American historical analyses of sport and Christianity. Insightful chapters from Scott Kretchmar, one of the world’s leading philosophers of sport, and Father Kevin Lixey, the head of the Vatican’s ‘Church and Sport’ office (2004-), add further depth and breadth to this book, making it accessible and interesting to academic and practitioner audiences alike. Within the context of this relatively new and rapidly expanding area of inquiry, this collection provides a unique and important addition to the current literature for both undergraduate and postgraduate students, and serves as a point of reference for scholars of theology and religious studies, psychology, health studies, ethics and sports studies. The book may also be of interest to physical educators and sports coaches who wish to adopt a more "holistic" and ethical approach to their work. As modern sport is often intertwined with commercial and political agendas, this book offers an important corrective to the "win-at-all-costs" culture of modern sport, which cannot be fully understood through secular ethical inquiry.

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 interdisciplinary text examines the sports-Christianity interface from Protestant and Catholic perspectives. In addition to a "systematic review of literature," the contributors, who include many of the pioneers in the field, address a wide range of topics. These include biblical athletic metaphors, disability, evangelism, professionalism and celebrity, humility, the Vatican's perspective on sport and genetic enhancement technologies.

Eric Bain-Selbo argues that the study of religion-from philosophers to psychologists, and historians of religion to sociologists-has separated out the “ends” or goals of religion and thus created the conditions by which institutional religion is increasingly irrelevant in contemporary Western culture. There is ample evidence that institutional religion is in trouble, and little evidence that it will strengthen in the future, giving some reason to believe that we are in the process of seeing the end of religion. At the same time, various cultural practices have met in the past and continue to meet today certain fundamental human needs-needs that we might identify as religious that now are being fulfilled through what Bain-Selbo calls the “religion of culture.” The End(s) of Religion traces the way that the very study of religion has led to institutional religion being viewed as just one human institution that can address our particular “religious” needs rather than the sole institution to do so. In turn, ultimately we can begin to see how other institutions or forms of culture can function to serve these same needs or “ends.”

This ground-breaking book provides a fascinating insight into the relationship between sports (and leisure), religion and disability. In the shadow of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, at which athletes that were both able-bodied and disabled, provided an extravaganza of sporting excellence and drama, this text is a timely and important synthesis of ideas that have emerged in two previously distinct areas of research: (i) ‘disability sport’ and (ii) the ‘theology of disability’. Many of the elite athletes at this global sporting mega-event often explicitly displayed their religious beliefs, and in turn their importance in the context of sport, by observing different religious rituals, and or, utilising the multi-faith sports chaplaincy service. This raises a whole range of unanswered questions with regard to the intersections between sports, religion and disability, which to-date has been under- researched. Examples of subjects addressed in this text include: elite physical disability sport--Paralympics; intellectual disability sport--Special Olympics; reflections on the illness narrative of the cyclist Lance Armstrong through the lens of the theology of ‘radical orthodoxy’; the application of biblical athletic metaphors in understanding modern conceptions of disability sport; the role of sport and spirituality in the rehabilitation of injured British Military personnel, and; the importance of sports and leisure in L’Arche communities. This book begins a critical conversation on these topics, and many others, for both researchers and practitioners. This book was based on two special issues of the Journal of Religion, Disability and Health.