{"id":10787,"date":"2023-07-31T23:19:56","date_gmt":"2023-08-01T03:19:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/?p=10787"},"modified":"2023-08-01T13:21:05","modified_gmt":"2023-08-01T17:21:05","slug":"how-sport-became-the-new-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/2023\/07\/how-sport-became-the-new-religion\/","title":{"rendered":"“How sport became the new religion”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“The Conversation” website has an excellent piece titled “How Sport Became the New Religion,” by Hugh McLeod, professor emeritus at the Univ. of Birmingham (U.K.)<\/a>. McLeod traces the history of the rise of sport, and the concurrent decline of religion, over the past two centuries. From his perspective as a U.K. historian, he identifies several key moments:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1850s:<\/strong> sport was of central importance in the U.K.’s elite private high schools; these elite high schools were training grounds for Anglican clergy, and one third of the top cricketers and footballers from Oxford and Cambridge Universities went on to become clergy<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1880s:<\/strong> “Muscular Christianity” movement begins to develop, with clergy advocates emphasizing spirt, mind, and body<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1920s and 30s:<\/strong> a large percentage of club teams in hockey and rounders (women), and cricket and football (men) were church-based clubs<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1960:<\/strong> the Football Association (soccer to us Yanks) lifted its ban on Sunday games<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1960s:<\/strong> emergence of a trend of scattering a deceased person’s ashes on the field of their favorite sports team<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1990s:<\/strong> “sports chaplaincy” movement becomes a standard position in many U.K. sports teams, esp. football (soccer) and rugby<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2000s:<\/strong> “Game Plan,” a U.K. government initiative to “reduce crime and enhance social inclusion,” claims that participation in sports can reduce social ills \u2014 i.e., society is now looking to sport rather than to organized religion to reduce social ills<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2017:<\/strong> in spite of sports scandals, 71% of Britons believe “sport is a force for the good”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today:<\/strong> McLeod writes that “religion has been crowded out by sport in general society, it remains a conspicuous part of elite sport \u2013 with a number of studies around the world finding that athletes tend to be more religious than non-athletes.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Obviously, the U.S. would have a somewhat different timeline. But the end result is much the same: participation in organized religion continues to decline, while participation in sports \u2014 both as a player and\/or a fan \u2014 remains robust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So don’t believe people who claim that religion is dying out in the U.S. Maybe Christianity<\/em> is in decline, and probably other organized religions as well. But participation in sports is not in decline, and in fact it has taken over the role that religion used to play in the U.S.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The Conversation” website has an excellent piece titled “How Sport Became the New Religion,” by Hugh McLeod, professor emeritus at the Univ. of Birmingham (U.K.). McLeod traces the history of the rise of sport, and the concurrent decline of religion, over the past two centuries. From his perspective as a U.K. historian, he identifies several … Continue reading ““How sport became the new religion””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[132,14],"tags":[1044,961],"class_list":["post-10787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-practical-religion","category-religious-institutions","tag-hugh-mcleod","tag-sport-as-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10787"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10788,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10787\/revisions\/10788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}