Religion And Sport Research Paper

Religion and Sport Final Essay:

Introduction

There are certain phenomena common throughout many different social, political and religious denominations – sport is one such phenomenon. By examining the dynamic, and often complex relationship between sport and religion as a whole, one can gain a deeper understanding of various religious values, and use sport as an overarching medium under which the comparison of different religions throughout history becomes possible. Religious studies are generally extremely complex, religions are not easily definably and the same religion may manifest in a number of different ways, depending on historical, geographical, and social context. The study of a single religion in itself is complex, but to simultaneously

The movement was comprised of mostly conservative Christians who believed that through helping others discover Jesus, they would be fulfilling their duty of the Great Commission: to go into the world and teach the Gospel (Matthew 28:18-20). The evangelicals initially did not see the value of combining sport with religion. They believed that activities such as gambling often associated with sport, made sport an activity that clashed with their religious values (Ingle, and Sutera 2013, p.33). Early evangelists saw sport as an activity that detracts from religious and spiritual pursuits. However, evangelists in the Unites States began to see the value in using sport as a vessel to communicate their gospel to the masses. Sport became increasingly popular and the well-known athlete, Billy Sunday, an outfielder in the Nation League of baseball during the late 19th century, was a prevalent evangelist. Combining the values and popularity of sport with a religious message had been established with the advent of ‘muscular Christianity’ earlier in the 19th century, but, for the first time, sports were being used not only to foster desirable masculine characteristics in the Christian youth, but by evangelical Christians to as a medium through which they could spread their gospel. Billy Sunday combines the attractive elements associate

Hughes is very careful to explain common problems and misconceptions prevalent in the study of world religions, with a special focus on Islam, in the introduction of his book, Muslim Identities: An Introduction to Islam. This is important as it prepares the reader mentally to consider Islam from a number of different perspectives, as the complex multifaceted religion it is. Hughes begins by pointing out the dichotomy between understanding Islam in a robust manner, and the normative approach, in which many scholars attempt to package all of Islam into one narrow characterization. Hughes writes that, “The goal of this book is not to choose one [definition of Islam] and hold it up as normative…” (Hughes 2013, p.3). He explains that the attempt to define a one true Islam is an erroneous modern phenomenon that wrongfully leads to oversimplification and generalization. Hughes believes that no one real static definition of Islam exists, rather Islam is and has been constantly shaped throughout space and history. The dynamic Islam that Hughes attempts to study shaped through inheritance and creation (Hughes 2013, p.3). The inheritance represents the passing down of Islamic teaching and culture from one generation to the next, and the creation involves the new generation reimagining and adapting those Islamic teachings to fit their current social and cultural constructs. In this way, Islam cannot fall into one certain normative, overarching definition; rather it must be