Good Game: Christianity and the Culture of Sports »

Shirl James Hoffman is Professor Emeritus of Exercise and Sport Science at University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The Executive Director of the American Kinesiology Association, he is the author of Sport and Religion and the editor of Introduction to Kinesiology: Studying Physical Activity, now in its third edition.

In recent years the United States has seen an influx of Christian athletes and coaches into big-time sports, as well as a heightened importance placed on sports in church programs and enormous platforms for intercollegiate sports at Christian schools and colleges. However, as Shirl Hoffman critiques, a Christian vision of sport remains merely superficial—replete with prayers before free throws and praises after touchdowns but offering little if any alternative vision from the secular sports culture. Far from being the kind of life-affirming, faith-affirming events that they could be, games played in Christian college gymnasiums, for example, too often end up as mockeries of the faith statements given prominence in their mission statements.

Here, in this thoughtful, narrative-driven exploration, Hoffman retells numerous fascinating stories from the world of ancient and contemporary sports and draws on the history of the Christian tradition as he seeks to answer the question "What would it mean to think Christianly about sport?"

Acknowledgments ix

Preface xi

Introduction 1

1 Sports and the Early Church 23

2 Proscribing, Controlling, and Justifying Sport 47

3 Bowling, Bicycles, and Other Snares of the Devil 73

4 The Church Heads for the Playground 99

5 The Rise of Sport Evangelism 127

6 Christians and the Killer Instinct 145

7 Building and Sacking the Temple 167

8 Sport and the Sub-Christian Values 193

9 Touchdowns and Slam Dunks for Jesus 219

10 Prayers Out of Bounds 239

11 Note Toward a Well-Played Game 263

Notes 293

Index 329