Sports: a modern arena for the sacred?

Studies in Christian Ethics, 2012

ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to suggest that sport can be understood as a form of engagement with the fundamental contingency and vulnerability of the human condition, and as such that it expresses a yearning for meaning in a modern society that offers only the illusion of meaning. Sport, at its most profound, is argued to be a negative liturgy, in the sense that it highlights an absence of meaning, rather than offering a positive alternative. The paper draws on an analysis of contemporary society, and resultant defence of the potential role that liturgy might play in restoring meaning and a sense of transcendence to society, that is offered by the Radical Orthodoxy theologian Catherine Pickstock.

in Richard D. Hecht Vincent Biondo III (eds), Religion & Everyday Life and Culture, Praeger, 2010, Vol. 3, pp. 915-943. Reprinted in in Richard D. Hecht and Vincent F. Biondo III (eds), Religion and Culture: Contemporary Practices and Perspectives, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 2012, pp. 307-326.

At first glance sport and religion appear to have little in common, apart from being perennial human activities. Yet there are at least five ways in which sport and religion are deeply interrelated: first, it can be demonstrated that in pre-modern societies ritualized sport was very often part of worship of the gods; second, altered states of consciousness attained during sport have frequently been compared to religious or mystical experiences (for example, where a sense of oneness with the universe is felt, or a loss of ego-consciousness); third, some modern sporting champions have professed religious faith and attributed their success to divine power; fourth, the devotion of fans to sporting teams and individual “stars” resembles religious fervour; fifth and final, in the modern West sport has become a functional equivalent of religion (or an actual religion) for some people. The academic study of sport and religion has focused on the centrality of ritual in both phenomena for multiple reasons. Sociologist Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) argued that religion was, at a fundamental level, concerned with the classification of the world into two categories, the sacred and the profane. Rituals enacted these categories and revealed the deepest concerns of the community. Further, ritual (both traditional and modern) may involve apparently profane activities from everyday life, such as tea-drinking and cleaning. It is clear that Durkheim’s interpretation of religion, and the categories of sacred and profane, can be applied to phenomena other than religion. Before considering the relationship between sport and religion in two case studies, the ancient Olympic Games and Japanese sumo wrestling, it is necessary to observe that the modern West acknowledges a diversity of “ultimate concerns” among its citizens. In a variegated culture without a unifying religious, civil, or cultural metanarrative, individuals are free to attribute absolute significance to a range of activities, including sport, rock music, film and television, art, family, and politics. Sport is religion for some, but not for others.

Physical education and sport through the centuries, 2018

The scientific contribution of this paper consists of an innovative approach to the issues of Orthodox faith and sport, which opens up a new creative area for theology itself, where sport also gets new opportunities. Given the known "affair" in almost all sports branches, which illustrate the state of "alarming helplessness", the contribution of faith in solving it is indisputable, especially in the way advocated in this research work. The primary goal is to extract from the plethora of theological literature those contents that can encourage the creative responsibility of all positive factors of sports events, from the athletes themselves, through their managers and club officials to the fans. Recognizing these problems and referring to theological sources as "clear content", without the bias of the members, with critical awareness, qualifies work to search and find adequate answers to the asked questions. The mere fact that a new research field has been opened, without the intention to make the last word on this, points to the scientific contribution of this paper.

International scientific conference, 2019

The modern era can be called «the age of sports», because the latter has taken a prominent place in society. It is no accident that it is a phenomenon of civilized life, one of the important elements of the system of values of modern culture, and in some cases even a mirror of social life. Sports and physical culture are important elements of modern society, which have enormous potential for a positive impact not only on health, physical perfection, but also on the spiritual world, on human culture, on its outlook, emotions, moral principles, aesthetic preferences. as well as relationships between people, because sport is a cultural practice. According to Fed' V.A.,-«cultural practices express worldview traditions in such modes of being as space, time, movement, becoming, and verify cultural creativity in materialization, material subjectivity, artifacts as the object and spiritual» body «of culture» [3, pp. 10-16]. After the last elections to the Ukrainian Parliament, Volodymyr Borodyanskyi, Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports of Ukraine, said: «We are accustomed to regard sport as a sport, but it is part of the culture, a model of behavior and an element of inclusion in society» [1]. This thesis clearly emphasizes the above. In the study of sports, the analytical focus is on symbols. Both athletes and spectators express some symbolism, hold beliefs, and practice sports-related rituals [4]. In the XX century. There was considerable support for the claim that the sport was at least quasi-religious. It is often associated with certain rites or rituals. There are even theories that propose ritual as the basis of the origin of physical culture and sport-in particular, Reynack's theory or A. Gutt-Man's concept is outlined in his book, «From Ritual to Record.» We will not go into the archives of historical details, but let us recall that the Olympic competitions (games) of Ancient Greece were also part of religious activities. But in the subject of this report, we would like to focus on one of the most popular sports-soccer (soccer). Football is the second most popular sport in the world after athletics (Association for the promotion of the international movement «Sport for All»). With more than three billion followers in the world, it has more followers than Christianity-the largest religion in the world with 2.2 billion followers (according to recent data, there are now 2.1 billion Christians in the world (World Popula tion Clock)). This stunning statistic justifies the assumption that football has a huge impact on people's social life. If one researched thoroughly, or at least closely followed, football, he would have to draw an analogy with religion or ask the question: «is football at least a quasi

Studies in Physical Culture and Tourism, 2011

The article presents an analysis of ritual-a phenomenon in human life known since the dawn of mankind. A predilection for rituals is one of the main features of human beings. Each community has developed certain rituals because they determine the attitude of a given group towards the world. Rituals exist in various spheres of life. Contemporary sport is a peculiar and spontaneous "para-religion" with associated rituals. In his analysis of ritual in sport, the author concentrates on two sport disciplines: baseball and soccer.

Broadcasted sport is one of the elements of the mediated culture which mobilizes extremely passionate masses. Thus, it can be considered as a mythical expression within current society, since contemporary era is witness to the revival of the sacred which manifests through rituals, myths and the divinization of certain products and celebrities. This article analyzes how media depictions exalt players as objects of worship and devotion. It will specifically focus on the most successful Spanish sportsmen such as the tennis player Rafael Nadal and the players of the national soccer team and how they are promoted as national heroes in advertising.

Quest, 67(3), 290-299

We are living in a time of increasing interest in the religious and spiritual aspects of sport and human movement activities. A strict distinction between religion and spirituality is, however, still missing in much of the literature. After delimiting religious and spiritual modes of experience, this article addresses Coubertin’s religio athletae and demonstrates that this notion should have spiritual, not religious, content. Religious values are external to achievements in sports, while spirituality should be an inner aspect of human movement activities. To gain a deeper understanding of the religious and spiritual aspects of physical activities, this article focuses on spiritual health as one of the main goals of the activities of teachers and coaches.

This paper focuses on the development of pastoral work in the field of sports over the past ten years of the Department for the Pastoral Care of Athletes of the Zagreb Archdiocese, founded in 2009. The pastoral care for sports is, first of all, understood as a practical church activity which consists of activities around the full presence through support, counselling and spiritual care for athletes as well as appropriate liturgical celebrations. The paper provides an analysis of the existing contemporary environment where the main protagonist of the pastoral activity is, and that would be the man and the sports as an anthropological reality. Since it is impossible to cover the complexity of sport itself, this paper has been limited to sport as a socio-cultural phenomenon and the documents of church teaching that bring forward specific guidelines regarding pastoral care in sport. The educational, pastoral and cultural nature of sport can be recognized in the context of the Christian values and thus become a developmental path of young people. The church itself is interested in sports because it is an interested ofhuman beings as well as inany area of their life and work. Sports events are an opportunity for an educational but also a moral and ethical growth where the participants meet, exchange experiences, communicate and discover values connected not only to sports and competition but also ethical and Christian values. The analysis of the current practice in this paper presents the projects realized over the ten-year period. The first part of the pastoral work refers to the (supra)diocesan level and parish sports competitions, whereas in the second part special attention has been paid to the activities in the pastoral work focused on professional athletes.

2009

The intersection between sport and spirituality has attracted unprecedented academic interest in the first decade of the twenty-first century, as a general survey of the field in this volume by Rob Hess shows. One sign of a quickening of interest in the area has been the emergence of academic conferences devoted to the theme, with one (held in the United States in 2004) generating considerable interest among the sport history community, and another (held in Great Britain in 2007) providing the impetus for the establishment of the International Journal of Religion and Sport. Other beacons have been tertiary courses devoted to the field, notably a new unit ‘Sport and Spirituality’ taught by former Olympian Richard Pengelly at the University of Western Australia, and the newly established Centre for the Study of Sport and Spirituality at York St John University in England.1

2019

Catholic reflections on sport in India need to proceed in a comparatively interreligious way with Hinduism, which is the major and most diffused religion in India. In this dialogical approach, which is very much in keeping with the missionary method of Pope Francis, various themes that are relevant to Hinduism and to the Indian milieu in general are treated within specific paradigms, namely the mythical, theological, spiritual, anthropo-sociocultural, and the commercial paradigm. The advantage of this kind of an approach employed for our reflections is that it is able to offer a wide range of insights that otherwise would have remained hidden and unknown to global Catholic and interreligious research in sport.