In the following years, there was considerable growth in the academic literature focusing on the subject of sport and religion. Despite the long-existing general neglect of sport as a topic of scholarly inquiry by those in traditional disciplines (Hoffman, 1992, vii), the field of study known as religion and sports has only been around since the 1970s (Mazurkiewicz, 2018a, 109). ![]() Religion constitutes a part of the world of sport and vice versa.Īlthough the intricate interplay of religion with all kinds of social, political, or economic forces has been a frequently explored research field among historians, sociologists, and religion scholars, it should be noted that the relationship between religion and sport (until the last few decades of the twentieth century) has not received the scholarly attention it deserves. (Meyer et al., 2017, 632) note, “sport and religion share a long history of social significance, transcending culture and geographic location.” Although over the centuries, secularization permeated sport, different kinds of connections between these two important spheres of life remain (Mazurkiewicz, 2018a, b). The phenomenon seems to have no borders, which makes it something ubiquitous. These include primitive times when ritual-cultic ball games were played to appease the gods (for fertility) the athletic spectacles of ancient Greece and the Olympic games that were held in honor of mythological deities the gladiatorial contests of Rome the festivals and folk-games of the Middle Ages the general Puritan suspicion and prohibitions against sports and, lastly, Victorian muscular Christianity (1850–1910), a socio-theological movement, and some would argue ideology, that significantly shaped the character of modern sports. Historians and anthropologists have mapped a relationship between religion and sport that spans approximately three thousand years … Links between the sacred and sport have been identified in a number of historical epochs. The observations of Parker and Watson ( 2013, 9–10) show how that interaction took shape in particular periods of time: In other words, these connections constitute not only an important segment of the history of sport but continue to function currently in different modified forms. … As religion and sport have interacted vigorously throughout history, the terms of their relationship have changed over time, but never has the one been far removed from the other” (Baker, 2012, 216). ![]() Baker puts it, “from the earliest glimmer of civilization to the most recent World Cup, religion and sport have been intimately connected. In fact, the relationship between the two is a multifaceted phenomenon existing since the advent of sporting rivalry. Sports and religion do, indeed, have a long history of mutual interplay (Alpert, 2015, 24). Yet below the surface reveals an interesting and important overlap. Sport and religion are separate spheres, seemingly having little in common, arguably as separate as church and state.
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