Abstract
There are two kinds of civil religion for which sports serve as a denomination. The priestly kind features testimonies of faith by athletes and celebrates devotion to sports as religious behavior. In the prophetic kind athletes challenge the status quo by using the public platform of sports to decry the roots of injustice. This chapter, a response to the previous chapters, commends the analyses of prophetic dimensions of sports that are introduced by the contributors to this book.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
See Higgs, Robert J. and Michael C. Braswell. 2004. An unholy alliance: The sacred and modern sports. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, and Chandler, Joan M. 1992. “Sport is not a religion,” in Sport and Religion. Ed. Shirl J. Hoffman. Champaign: University of Illinois Press.
- 2.
As an example of the prosperity gospel, see Joel Osteen, Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential (Nashville: FaithWords Press, 2004).
- 3.
See also Steven J. Overman, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Sport: How Calvinism and Capitalism Shaped America’s Games (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2011), especially chapter three, “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirt of American Capitalism.”.
- 4.
See Debra A. Shattuck, Bloomer Girls: Women Baseball Pioneers (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017).
References
Bain-Selbo, E., & Gregory Sapp, D. (2016). Understanding sport as a religious phenomenon: An introduction. London: Bloomsbury.
Baker, W. J. (2007). Playing with God: Religions and modern sport. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Borders, I., & Ardell, J. H. (2017). Making my pitch: A woman’s Baseball Odyssey. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Duckett, A. (1972). I never had it made. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
Eliade, M. (1959). The sacred and the profane: The nature of religion (Willard R. Trask, Trans.). New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Florio, J., & Shapiro, Ouisie. (2017). One nation under baseball: How the 1960s collided with the national pastime. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Jackson, S. A., & Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. (1999). Flow in sports: The keys to optimal experiences and performances. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
Marty, M. E. (1974). Two kinds of civil religion. In R. E. Richey & D. G. Jones (Eds.), American civil religion. New York: Harper and Row.
Price, J. L. (Ed.). (2001). From season to season: Sports as American religion. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press.
Smart, N. (2000). Worldviews: Crosscultural explorations of human beliefs (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Span, E. (2014, June 6). Is softball sexist. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/07/opinion/is-softball-sexist.html. Accessed May 3, 2018.
Tillich, P. (1957). Dynamics of faith. New York: Harper and Brothers.
Trothen, T. J. (2015). Winning the race? Religion, hope, and reshaping the sport enhancement debate. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Price, J.L. (2019). Postures of Prophetic Action in American Sports. In: Shoemaker, T. (eds) The Prophetic Dimension of Sport. SpringerBriefs in Religious Studies(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02293-8_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02293-8_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-02292-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-02293-8
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)