Religion and Sports in American Culture

Religion and Sports in American Culture PDF Author: Jeffrey Scholes
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135121354
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
Religion and Sports in American Culture explores the relationship between religion and modern sports in America. Whether found in the religious purpose of ancient Olympic Games, in curses believed to plague the Chicago Cubs, or in the figure of Tim Tebow, religion and sports have been and are still tightly intertwined. While there is widespread suspicion that sports are slowly encroaching on the territory historically occupied by religion, Scholes and Sassower assert that sports are not replacing religion and that neither is sports a religion. Instead, the authors look at the relationship between sports and religion in America from a post-secular perspective that looks at both discourses as a part of the same cultural web. In this way each institution is able to maintain its own integrity, legitimacy, and unique expression of cultural values as they relate to each other. Utilizing important themes that intersect both religion and sports, Scholes and Sassower illuminate the complex and often publicly contentious relationship between the two. Appropriate for both classroom use and for the interested non-specialist, Religion and Sports in American Culture brings pilgrimage, sacrifice, relics, and redemption together in an unexpected cultural continuity.

Religion and Sports in American Culture

Religion and Sports in American Culture PDF Author: Jeffrey Scholes
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135121354
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 168

Get Book

Book Description
Religion and Sports in American Culture explores the relationship between religion and modern sports in America. Whether found in the religious purpose of ancient Olympic Games, in curses believed to plague the Chicago Cubs, or in the figure of Tim Tebow, religion and sports have been and are still tightly intertwined. While there is widespread suspicion that sports are slowly encroaching on the territory historically occupied by religion, Scholes and Sassower assert that sports are not replacing religion and that neither is sports a religion. Instead, the authors look at the relationship between sports and religion in America from a post-secular perspective that looks at both discourses as a part of the same cultural web. In this way each institution is able to maintain its own integrity, legitimacy, and unique expression of cultural values as they relate to each other. Utilizing important themes that intersect both religion and sports, Scholes and Sassower illuminate the complex and often publicly contentious relationship between the two. Appropriate for both classroom use and for the interested non-specialist, Religion and Sports in American Culture brings pilgrimage, sacrifice, relics, and redemption together in an unexpected cultural continuity.

Religion and Popular Culture in America, Third Edition

Religion and Popular Culture in America, Third Edition PDF Author: Bruce David Forbes
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520965221
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
The connection between popular culture and religion is an enduring part of American life. With seventy-five percent new content, the third edition of this multifaceted and popular collection has been revised and updated throughout to provide greater religious diversity in its topics and address critical developments in the study of religion and popular culture. Ideal for classroom use, this expanded volume gives increased attention to the implications of digital culture and the increasingly interactive quality of popular culture provides a framework to help students understand and appreciate the work in diverse fields, methods, and perspectives contains an updated introduction, discussion questions, and other instructional tools

From Season to Season

From Season to Season PDF Author: Joseph L. Price
Publisher: Mercer University Press
ISBN: 9780865546943
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
In From Season to Season: Sports as American Religion, nine scholars of religion and theology explore the relationship between religion and sports in American popular culture and the role of sports as religion.

Sport and Religion

Sport and Religion PDF Author: Shirl J. Hoffman
Publisher: Human Kinetics Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Sports
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
This text presents the best of the literature available on the relationship between sport and religion. The collection includes ground-breaking studies as well as recent articles from popular and scholarly publications. Sport and Religion is organized into four parts that - consider the case for and against sport as religion, - examine the potential of the sport experience as a path to religious insight, - analyze the significance of the pervasiveness of religious gestures in sport, and - explore the impact of religious views on perceptions and behaviors in sport.

The Faith of Fifty Million

The Faith of Fifty Million PDF Author: Christopher Hodge Evans
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
ISBN: 9780664223052
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
This volume features essays by religion scholars who analyze the relation of baseball and theology in American culture. Topics include issues of national identity, baseball and civil religion, baseball as a metaphor and more.

Game Day and God

Game Day and God PDF 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.

Religion and Sports

Religion and Sports PDF Author: Rebecca Trachtenberg Alpert
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780231165709
Category : Sports
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
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.

God In The Stadium

God In The Stadium PDF 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.

Religion and Sport

Religion and Sport PDF Author: Charles S. Prebish
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Prebish offers a thoughtful look at sport as a religious experience and argues that sport has become an American religion. The first section of the work contains three chapters that provide a definitional, theoretical, and methodological frame for examining sport as religion. The five chapters that follow, each written by an authority in the field, treat different aspects of the religious dimension of sport. These chapters represent the most important writings on sport as a religious experience, and each author offers a full and thoughtful discussion rather than a cursory overview. A final chapter by Prebish closes the work. The first chapter of the book challenges traditional assumptions about religion and encourages the reader to reconsider what religion is. The second chapter examines the difficulty of defining sport, and the third probes the close relationship between sport and religion. The anthology that follows contains chapters that examine religion and sport from sociological, historical, theological, philosophical, and psychological perspectives. A concluding bibliography lists material for further reading.

The Holy Trinity of American Sports

The Holy Trinity of American Sports PDF Author: Craig A. Forney
Publisher: Mercer University Press
ISBN: 0881461733
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
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.