Religion 331 - Sports and Religion

Play is an essential component of human life. Yet, while the word play evokes leisure and frivolity, it can be serious work. Cultural values, spiritual truths, and social politics arise from play, particularly when they are codified in sports. From raucous games of lacrosse in pre-Columbian North America to Tim Tebow’s gameday prayers, sports have long been used as instruments of social cohesion and as a way to connect a people to their gods. This course will examine the close relationship between religion and sport in modern American history and will push students beyond the sports-as-religion paradigm to consider sport as a medium of exchange between the overlapping influences of celebrity, national politics, religion, and the economy. We will cover how sports and religion intersect with topics like nationalism, gender, race, sexuality, identity formation, commercialism, mass-media, recreation, and labor. Concepts like ritual, collective effervescence, and sacred space will be used to analyze key historical movements and organizations, such as muscular Christianity, the YMCA, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, the Olympics, amateurism and the NCAA, and Black Lives Matter. Key figures for examining sport as a site of piety and protest include Muhammad Ali, Serena Williams, Tim Tebow, Jackie Robinson, Colin Kaepernick, and Abe Saperstein. Throughout the course we will ask: How, where, and when do sports act religiously? What do sports and religion accomplish together that they cannot accomplish alone?

Spring semester. Visiting Lecturer Musselman.

How to handle overenrollment: Priority will be given to Religion majors if the class is overenrolled.

Students who enroll in this course will likely encounter and be expected to engage in the following intellectual skills, modes of learning, and assessment: Emphasis on written work, development of research skills, final research paper, short essays, oral presentations, emphasis on reading and group discussion, group work and peer-review, in-class visitors and possible off-campus site visits