1st Edition

Theology, Ethics and Transcendence in Sports

Edited By Jim Parry, Mark Nesti, Nick J. Watson Copyright 2011
    256 Pages
    by Routledge

    256 Pages
    by Routledge

    This book provides an inter-disciplinary examination of the relationship between sport, spirituality and religion. It covers a wide-range of topics, such as prayer and sport, religious and spiritual perspectives on athletic identity and ‘flow’ in sport, theological analysis of genetic performance enhancement technologies, sectarianism in Scottish football, a spiritual understanding of sport psychology consultancy in English premiership soccer and how Zen may be useful in sports performance and participation. As modern sport is often intertwined with commercial and political agendas, this book also provides an important corrective to the “win at all costs” culture of modern sport, which cannot always be fully understood through secular ethical inquiry. This is a unique and important addition to the current literature for a wide-range of fields including theology and religious studies, psychology, health studies, ethics and sports studies.

    Foreword  Professor Robert J. Higgs.  Introduction  Nick Watson  Section 1: Theological Ethics in Sport  Section 1 Introduction  Jim Parry  1. An Augustinian Critique of Our Relationship to Sport  Mark Hamilton  2. Prayers Out of Bounds  Shirl Hoffmann  3. Better Than Normal? Constructing Modified Athletes and a Relational Theological Ethic  Tracy J. Trothen  4. Living in a Sectarian Maelstrom: A Christian Professional Football Player’s Perspective  Ian Lawrence.  Section 2: Psychological and Spiritual Dimensions of Sport  Section 2 Introduction  Mark Nesti  5. Identity in Sport: A Psychological and Theological Analysis  Nick Watson  6. Sport Psychology and Spirit in Professional Football  Mark Nesti  7. Flow, Sport and the Spiritual Life  Patrick Kelly, S.J.  Section 3: Transcendence in Movement, Play and Sport  Section 3 Introduction  Jim Parry  8. Why Dichotomies Make it Difficult to See Play and Games as Gifts of God  Scott Kretchmar  9. The Energy of Play  Susan Saint Sing  10. Zen, Movement and Sports: Focussing on the Quality of Experiencing  Irena Martínková and Jim Parry  11. Pilgrimage as a Form of Physical and Movement Spirituality  Ivo Jirásek

    Biography

    Nick Watson is senior lecturer in Sport Psychology and Sociology; Founding Director of the Centre for the Study of Sport and Spirituality, York St John University; and co-author of the book Sport and Spirituality: An Introduction (2007, Routledge).

    Jim Parry is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at Leeds University. He is the co-author of The Olympic Games Explained and co-editor of Ethics and Sport (both published by Routledge).  

    Mark Stephen Nesti, Reader in Sport Psychology, York St John University, England, is an applied sports psychologist currently working at Premiership football club, Newcastle United, and the author of the pioneering text, Existential Psychology in Sport: Theory and Applications (2004).

    "The cumulative effect of these pages suggests, for theologians and scholars of religion, the promise of what might be called a “sport hermeneutic” with which to reengage various scriptural and theological traditions, and contributes, for those working in the field of sport, to the emergence of a post-positivist paradigm that seeks to transcend materialistic and naturalistic presuppositions in the analysis of sport." - Religious Studies Review