“Knowing Christ is the best thing that has ever happened to me, although winning the US Open was a pretty good second.”
The Meanings of Sport
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An Empirical Study into the Significance Attached to Sporting Participation and Spectating in the UK and US, Robert Ellis, Practical Theology, Vol. 5.2 August 2012, 169-188
This article is an empirical study of the attitudes of spectators and players of sports in the UK and USA. Through qualitative research the significance of sport in people’s lives is explored. The author is exploring the hypothesis that sport might be taking over some of the functions of religion in people’s lives. Several broad areas are considered: (1) answers about the significance of sport in people’s lives and how it effects scheduling of other commitments; (2) answers concerning motivation in playing or watching, and also the importance of team or club; (3) answers about the watching, and also the importance of team or club; (3) answers about the relationship of playing or watching sport to one’s character; (4) answers about winning and losing and their impact.
This article also tries to set out a very preliminary discussion of what night be called a “theology of sport” including testing some significant theological ideas—notably that it is e concept of transcendence.
The author raises the “coincidence of two sets of statistics, travelling (as it were) in opposite directions, [Less attend church; more watch sport] raises an intriguing question: could it be that modern sports have taken over some of the functions of religion for people in western culture in the late nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries?”
The author suggests: “The responses to this survey give some grounds for believing that sport is performing a quasi-religious function in the lives of many of our contemporaries. It appears to give coherence to the lives of individuals and to be a significant, even meaning-making part of their lives. There is evidence that it plays an important part in helping individuals construct their sense of identity and is a means by which they connect with others and their environments. Sport may reveal or affect character, and it appears also to offer a release from social constraints experienced in other spheres-sometimes in a cathartic way. It offers an opportunity for aesthetic stimulation and appreciation, and aspects of sport might even bring us close to the phenomenon of worship. There is evidence that it may, given the central place of the contest in sport, offer its participants and spectators the opportunity for moments of self-transcendence, for a reaching after the Other. It may also even involve a subtle negotiation with matters of life and death”.