Sports and Religion

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

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 to connect people to their gods. This course will examine the close relationship between religion and sport, with special attention to modern North America. It 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. Special attention will be paid to local history and Notre Dame’s contributions to the history of sport. 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?