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Author: Robert J. Higgs
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813185041
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 498
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Book Description
From the worship of Michael Jordan to the downfall of O.J. Simpson, it has become clear that sports and sports heroes have assumed a role in American society far out of proportion to their traditional value. In this powerful critique of present-day American popular culture, Robert J. Higgs examines the complex and increasingly pervasive control that sports wield in shaping the national self-image. He provides a thoughtful history and analysis of how sports and religion have become intertwined and offers a stinging indictment of the sports-religion-media-education complex. Beginning with the place of sports in Puritan life, Higgs traces the contributions of various individuals and institutions to the present circumstances in which sports and religion are joined. He discusses the transfer of the Puritan ideal to the New World and then moves to the revolutionary period of the national hero and manifest destiny, through the classic period of education for a sound mind in a sound body, to the imperial phase of American supremacy. In the process of tracing this history Higgs makes clear the growing influence of "muscular" Christianity, from circuit-riding evangelists to pulpit-pounding televangelists, from Billy Sunday to Billy Graham, from the YMCA to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Finally he arrives at our present Low Roman or "bread and circuses" period in which sports simultaneously serve the purposes of entertainment, religious proselytism, distraction of the masses, and political propaganda, all under the colorful banner of Christian knighthood as seen in the stadium revivals of Billy Graham and the sporting enthusiasm of Jerry Falwell. In brief, sports and Christianity have followed similar paths. In the beginning they were nationalized, then Hellenized, then Romanized, and, in our own time, televised. The result is that spectator sports have become the reigning American religion, one sharply at odds with a traditional shepherd ethos. This well-written and innovative book makes clear the dangerous power wielded by the sports-religion-media-education complex over the minds and energies of the American people. It is a call for recognition and reevaluation of our present situation that will concern anyone interested in the future of American culture.
Author: Robert J. Higgs
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 9780813127866
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 404
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Book Description
Linda Sue Preston was born on a feather bed in the upper room of her Grandma Emmy's log house in the hills of eastern Kentucky. More than fifty years later, Linda Scott DeRosier has come to believe that you can take a woman out of Appalachia but you can't take Appalachia out of the woman. DeRosier's humorous and poignant memoir is the story of an educated and cultured woman who came of age in Appalachia. She remains unabashedly honest about and proud of her mountain heritage. Now a college professor, decades and notions removed from the creeks and hollows, DeRosier knows that her roots run deep in her memory and language and in her approach to the world. DeRosier describes an Appalachia of complexity and beauty rarely seen by outsiders. Hers was a close-knit world; she says she was probably eleven or twelve years old before she ever spoke to a stranger. She lovingly remembers the unscheduled, day-long visits to friends and family, when visitors cheerfully joined in the day's chores of stringing beans or bedding out sweet potatoes. No advance planning was needed for such trips. Residents of Two-Mile Creek were like family, and everyone was ""delighted to see each other wherever, whenever, and for however long."" Creeker is a story of relationships, the challenges and consequences of choice, and the impact of the past on the present. It also recalls one woman's struggle to make and keep a sense of self while remaining loyal to the people and traditions that sustained her along life's way. Told with wit, candor, and zest, this is Linda Scott DeRosier's answer to the question familiar in Appalachia--""Who are your people?""
Author: Robert J. Higgs
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813185041
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 498
Get Book Here
Book Description
From the worship of Michael Jordan to the downfall of O.J. Simpson, it has become clear that sports and sports heroes have assumed a role in American society far out of proportion to their traditional value. In this powerful critique of present-day American popular culture, Robert J. Higgs examines the complex and increasingly pervasive control that sports wield in shaping the national self-image. He provides a thoughtful history and analysis of how sports and religion have become intertwined and offers a stinging indictment of the sports-religion-media-education complex. Beginning with the place of sports in Puritan life, Higgs traces the contributions of various individuals and institutions to the present circumstances in which sports and religion are joined. He discusses the transfer of the Puritan ideal to the New World and then moves to the revolutionary period of the national hero and manifest destiny, through the classic period of education for a sound mind in a sound body, to the imperial phase of American supremacy. In the process of tracing this history Higgs makes clear the growing influence of "muscular" Christianity, from circuit-riding evangelists to pulpit-pounding televangelists, from Billy Sunday to Billy Graham, from the YMCA to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Finally he arrives at our present Low Roman or "bread and circuses" period in which sports simultaneously serve the purposes of entertainment, religious proselytism, distraction of the masses, and political propaganda, all under the colorful banner of Christian knighthood as seen in the stadium revivals of Billy Graham and the sporting enthusiasm of Jerry Falwell. In brief, sports and Christianity have followed similar paths. In the beginning they were nationalized, then Hellenized, then Romanized, and, in our own time, televised. The result is that spectator sports have become the reigning American religion, one sharply at odds with a traditional shepherd ethos. This well-written and innovative book makes clear the dangerous power wielded by the sports-religion-media-education complex over the minds and energies of the American people. It is a call for recognition and reevaluation of our present situation that will concern anyone interested in the future of American culture.
Author: Chad Gibbs
Publisher: Zondervan
ISBN: 0310589878
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 242
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Book Description
At the age of 8, Chad Gibbs attended his first Southeastern Conference football game. Since then he has been in a constant battle to not let his love of all things pigskin consume him. As a Christian, Gibbs knows he cannot serve two masters, but at times his faith is overwhelmed by his fanaticism. He is not alone.In 2008 over six million people attended an SEC football game. They spend thousands on season tickets, donate millions to athletic departments, and for three months a year order their entire lives around the schedule of their favorite team. Gibbs and his six million friends do not live in a spiritually void land where such borderline idol worship would normally be accepted. They live in the American South, where according to the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey, 84 percent identify themselves as Christians. This apparent contradiction that Gibbs sees in his own life, and in millions of others, has led him to journey to each of the twelve schools to spend time with rabid, Christian fans of various ages and denominations. Through his journey he hopes to learn how others are able to balance their passion for their team with their devotion to God. And if Gibbs learns others are just as messed up as he is, at least he will know he is not alone.
Author: William Joseph Baker
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820349852
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 94
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Book Description
The fascinating variety of experiences at the intersection of sports and religion--and the ramifications of such on a national citizenry defined, as Baker writes, "by the team they cheer on Saturday and the church they attend on Sunday."
Author: William J Baker
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674020448
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
Like no other nation on earth, Americans eagerly blend their religion and sports. This book traces this dynamic relationship from the Puritan condemnation of games as sinful in the seventeenth century to the near deification of athletic contests in our own day.
Author: John Sexton
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101609737
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 267
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Book Description
The president of New York University offers a love letter to America’s most beloved sport and a tribute to its underlying spirituality. For more than a decade, John Sexton has taught a wildly popular New York University course about two seemingly very different things: religion and baseball. Yet Sexton argues that one is actually a pathway to the other. Baseball as a Road to God is about touching that something that lies beyond logical understanding. Sexton illuminates the surprisingly large number of mutual concepts shared between baseball and religion: faith, doubt, conversion, miracles, and even sacredness among many others. Structured like a game and filled with riveting accounts of baseball’s most historic moments, Baseball as Road to God will enthrall baseball fans whatever their religious beliefs may be. In thought-provoking, beautifully rendered prose, Sexton elegantly demonstrates that baseball is more than a game, or even a national pastime: It can be a road to enlightenment.
Author: William J. Baker
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674261879
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 335
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Book Description
The spectacle of modern sport displays all the latest commercial and technological innovations, yet age-old religious concerns still thrive at the stadium. Coaches lead pre-game and post-game prayers, athletes give God the credit for home runs and touchdowns, and fans wave signs with biblical quotations and allusions. Like no other nation on earth, Americans eagerly blend their religion and sports. Playing with God traces this dynamic relationship from the Puritan condemnation of games as sinful in the seventeenth century to the near deification of athletic contests in our own day. Early religious opposition to competitive sport focused on the immoderate enthusiasm of players and spectators, the betting on scores, and the preference for playing field over church on Sunday. Disapproval gradually gave way to acceptance when "wholesome recreation" for young men in crowded cities and soldiers in faraway fields became a national priority. Protestants led in the readjustment of attitudes toward sport; Catholics, Jews, Mormons, and Muslims followed. The Irish at Notre Dame, outstanding Jews in baseball, Black Muslims in the boxing ring, and born-again athletes at Liberty University represent the numerous negotiations and compromises producing the unique American mixture of religion and sport.
Author: Robert J. Higgs
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813162998
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 208
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Book Description
To examine the social and cultural significance of the athlete hero in American literature, Robert J. Higgs turns to the works of Ring Lardner, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, William Faulkner, Robert Penn Warren, Arthur Miller, and Tennessee Williams. Higgs views the athlete in literature not as an artistic creation but as one who reflects the tastes, attainments, beliefs, and ideals of his society. The athletes he describes as Apollonian are the know-it-alls, of whom Lardner's Busher Keefe is an example; the Dyonisian, as exemplified by Irwin Shaw's Christian Darling, worships his body as an end in itself. The Adonic seeks knowledge for the sake of self-realization and lives in a world of tension, pain, struggle, and hope. Such a figure is Wolfe's Nebraska Crane. Higgs finds in contemporary American literature a clear rejection of the Apollonian and Dyonisian models and an acceptance of the Adonic.
Author: Eric Bain-Selbo
Publisher: Mercer University Press
ISBN: 9780881461558
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280
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Book Description
Game Day and God: Football, Faith, and Politics in the American South takes seriously the often-stated assertion that college football in the South is a religion. To this end, Eric Bain-Selbo draws upon a wide range of theoretical approaches in religious studies and cultural criticism. He also relies upon field research on several campuses in the Southeastern Conference where he interviewed fans and experienced "game day." Consequently, the author is able to make the case that college football does function religiously for many people in the South. In addition, the author introduces key concepts and theories of religion and culture to a general audience Game Day and God also recounts the role that college football has played in Southern history and culture. Going back as far as the Civil War, the work explains the cultural meaning of college football in the South, delivering a much-needed critical perspective to the subject Scholars of religion will find the work a compelling extension of key concepts and theories to an otherwise "secular" activity. Scholars of American culture and sports will find the work to be an interesting case study, one that-unlike much work in the area-focuses our attention on the religious dimension of the phenomenon of sport in American culture. And general readers will find that college football or any sport can be much more than they imagined as well as discover important theories with which to make sense of the complexity of our daily lives Book jacket.
Author: C. J. Mahaney
Publisher: Crossway
ISBN: 1433522500
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 66
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Book Description
“Why is it that sports seem to bring out the best and the worst in us?” asks author C. J. Mahaney. “Sports are a gift from God. But as soon as you introduce the human heart, things get complicated.” For the Christian athlete, sports are one of the key battlegrounds in which pride and self-glory are regular temptations. If sports are indeed a gift from God, why are playing fields and courts so often arenas for our egos? How are we to enjoy sports in a godly way? Self-described “pastor athlete” C. J. Mahaney looks to Scripture for principles that speak to the role of sports in our lives. This booklet outlines how Christian athletes are to play for the glory of God and model gratitude, humility, and service. With candor and humor, Mahaney recounts his own story with sports and through illustrations and practical applications exhorts athletes not to waste their sports. The booklet concludes with application questions and an addendum to parents. A great gift for Christian athletes, these booklets are also sold in packs of twelve.
