Trothen, T. (2008). Redefining Human, Redefining Sport: The Imago Dei and Genetic Modification Technologies. In The Image of God in the Human Body: Essays on Christianity and Sports, J. White, ed. Pp. 217-234. New York: Edwin Mellen Press. Trothen, T. (2003). Linking Sexuality and Gender: Naming ... (original) (raw)
Related papers
Better Than Normal? Constructing Modifi ed Athletes and a Relational Theological Ethic
2011
Bragging is generally offensive on fi eld or off, but here I am not that concerned about reaction. In the interest of manners, though, I will ask to be pardoned for that offense in order to render praise where praise is due, in this case to Theology, Ethics and Transcendence in Sports, to the editors and to the contributors. In August of 2008 I am glad to say that I served as a reader for this text and was much impressed by what I saw even it its embryonic form. Here is a bit of what I wrote at the time. This kind of book is desperately needed in the modern world. Sport is not the cause of our social and cultural problems, but I would be hard put to suggest another area of our lives that better refl ects the symptoms owing to their connection with what Thorstein Veblen in Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) calls the "occupations" of predatory cultures, government, religion, warfare and sports.. .. Here is a sincere and honest endeavor to shed light on the crucial issues of modern sport, especially from a theological and ethical perspective. Very effectively the book engages the issues of winning, prayer, the relation between science and technology, sin and evil, ethical and spiritual concerns, sectarianism and resulting antagonism, to name only a few of the themes. A familiar credo in sports and politics and even traditional religion is "winning is the only thing," but the spirit in this book echoes the admonition in Proverbs 4:7, "With all thy getting get wisdom and with wisdom get understanding." Sport is about "standing"; genuine scholarship, on the other hand, is about "understanding." "Winning is the only thing" is warped, but that may not be the most distorted axiom, which might well be the following, generally regarded in a spirit of humor which is necessary for us to retain: "Sport is not a religion-it is more important than that," attributed to Paul "Bear" Bryant and others. Not surprisingly, Theology, Ethics and Transcendence in Sports is even more impressive in fi nal form than previously. The text moves on several fronts, the physical, intellectual, spiritual and ethical but not necessarily the doctrinal although that may be part of the Foreword xi wonderful essay on Augustine's notion of evil as the absence of good, also famously the response of Emerson, himself an advocate of sport. Theology, Ethics and Transcendence in Sports raises pressing questions, old and new, as does Sport and Spirituality: An Introduction (2007), several of the same editors and scholars involved in both projects. Ideally, what is needed is a paradigm shift in the study or sport, a multidisciplinary approach on a topic regarded by some as "the little brother of war" (at least Lacrosse), more important than religion, even a key to victory in politics, and as Simon Kuper in an article on July 25, 2009, the most popular topic in the world, number one in standing: If we would know ourselves, as counsel on the ancient Temple at Delphi advises, the study of sports in all its connections to the rest of art and life would seem to be an ideal quest for understanding of self and the world.
Syllabus, 2013
Sport and Religion" is a graduate-level course offered in a kinesiology department with approximately 450 undergraduate students and 225 graduate students including approximately 20 doctoral students. The class is offered at a state land-grant institution in the United States. The course was designed in a collaborative effort between three faculty members, two of whom co-taught the course. The faculty members come specialized in three different sub-disciplines: sport management, recreation management, and sport sociology. The 24 graduate students who enrolled in the class came from similarly diverse concentrations and specialization from the department including sport management, sport psychology, sport sociology, and therapeutic recreation. The class is also open to students outside the department and there has been some enrollment from these departments. In fact, this was the first class in recent memory that drew students from the otherwise compartmentalized program areas in the department. Thus, this course seeks to address the need to overcome the varying silos in the academy (Kretchmar, 2008) and the need for more interdisciplinarity in kinesiology (Vertinsky, 2009). The class is an elective for the graduate degree programs in the department. This broad interest in the class reflects the reason the faculty have designed the course in the first place. In recent time, "Tebow-mania" and "Lin-sanity" have captured the American imagination in regards to the relationship between sport and religion (Moore, Keller, & Zemanek, 2011). This phenomenon, however, is neither a new (Hoffman, 2010), nor is it limited to Christianity (Coakley, 2009; Light & Kinnaird, 2002). With assignments designed to foster reflective practice (Boud, Keogh, & Walker, 1985), the instructors encourage students to relate their own experiences to the course content and the readings. The ultimate goal is to facilitate what Mezirow (1991) referred to as "transformative learning."
Sport Spirituality Published Article 2006.pdf
"Sports and Spirituality: The New Symbiosis", Hagigei Hagiva, Givat Washington, 2006, pp. 209-231. This article surveys a growing trend to integrate sports with spirituality. First, I describe the historical influence of religion on sports, tracing the intertwining of the two from the Olympics in Ancient Greece and "Muscular Christianity" in the mid 19th century to the flourishing of sports in modern culture. A section is devoted to the Jewish response including Nordau's "Muscular Judaism", Hirschian synthesis of Torah with Sports and Rav Kuk's symbiotic integration. The first section concludes with a description of how sports are sometimes viewed as the "newest universal religion" with myriads of devotees discovering emotional satisfaction, self-fulfillment and personal well-being. Indeed, for some vocal fans or "true" believers, sports have assumed religious trappings with superstar athletes as idols, sportscasters as scribes, and houses of worship in expansive stadiums. In the second section, I examine research in philosophy and psychology of sports which has focused on spiritual experiences in sports. What is the meaning of the subjective experiences of awe, wonder and well-being in sports? What are the "exceptional experiences" which athletes describe as "highs" of optimal performance? I survey the studies where sport experiences are described using language such as joy and bliss, peace and wholeness, intuition and self transcendence. These "altered states of consciousness" have been defined as "peak experiences" (Maslow) and "flow" (Csikszentmihalyi), and have even been said to contain a numinous dimension (Ravizza, Murphy and White). "Flow theory" defines "playing in the zone" as an effortless merging of action and awareness accompanied by unique sensations such as a loss of self-consciousness and autotelic (self-rewarding) experience. "Flow" can include moments of illumination and ecstasy, altered perceptions of time and space, and exceptional feats of strength and endurance. The article concludes with practical directions for enhancing a more beneficiary symbiotic relationship between these two potentially congenial bedfellows, sports and spirituality.
Review of Growing in the Image of God by Carol Rausch Albright
Implicit Religion, 2007
In the first part secularization is conceived as multi-dimensional. In the second part three levels are distinguished: the individual, organizational and societal level. This, indeed, is an improvement. The second part is not, unfortunately, as elaborate as the first. It gives a personal selection of relevant literature rather than a comprehensive overview of the whole field. Dobbelaere sees an ongoing process of secularization in the sense that religion ceases to be significant to the working of the social system. He concludes that, 'instead of measuring only religious pluralism, researchers should measure the impact of competing meaning systems-religious, a-religious and anti-religious-on the behaviour, the opinions and attitudes of the individuals'. I could not agree more. However, one wonders how developments culminating in the destruction of 'the twin towers' can be fitted into the secularization thesis. Dobbelaere must have completed his book before this tragic date, otherwise he would certainly have taken the opportunity to confront this new intellectual challenge.
Sport, Theology, and the Special Olympics: A Christian Theological Reflection
Journal of Disability & Religion, 2017
This article explores the potential of the Special Olympic movement to act as a counter-narrative and prophetic message to the big-business world of professional sports. Drawing on the work of pioneers in the field of theology of disability, such as, Jean Vanier, John Swinton, Brian Brock, Amos Yong and Stanley Hauerwas, we provide a brief overview of the key themes within the theology of disability which are then deployed analyse the Special Olympics. This section is prefaced with a succinct account of the modern sporting institution and its key characteristics from a theological standpoint. We conclude that "those that are excluded … those at the edge of the system" (Rohr, 1995, p. 28)-Special Olympians-have an important and timely message for those within the system of big-business professional sport.
The Water Stories: A. S. Byatt’s Wonder Tales of Female (Em)Power(ment)
46th NeMLA Convention, roundtable Wonder Tales in A. S. Byatt's Fiction (convened and chaired by ACheira),Toronto, Canada, April 30- May 3, 2015
Welcome to Toronto and NeMLA's much awaited return to Canada! This multicultural and multilingual city is the perfect gathering place to offer our convention attendees a vast and diversified selection of cultural attractions. While in Toronto, enjoy a performance of W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage at the Soul Pepper Theatre, with tickets discounted thanks to the negotiations of NeMLA and our host, Ryerson University. Also while in Toronto, stroll around Chinatown, then take a tour of the Rare Books and Special Collections at the University of Toronto, the largest repository of publicly accessible rare books and manuscripts, and admire the architecture of the library thought to be the model for the secret library in Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. Visit, at a discounted NeMLA price, the Art Gallery of Ontario, one of the largest galleries in North America, which includes more than 80,000 works spanning the first century to the present, as well as the largest collection of Canadian art. During our convention, this gallery will feature a special exhibition and first-ever thematic examination of Jean-Michel Basquiat's work. For music lovers, the Canadian Opera Company will offer a Saturday performance of Barber of Seville.
Sport in Society
The vast majority of social scientific studies of sport have been secular in nature and/or have tended to ignore the importance of studying the religious aspects of sport. In light of this, Shilling and Mellor (2014) have sought to encourage sociologists of sport not to divorce the 'religious' and the 'sacred' from their studies. In response to this call, the goal of the current essay is to explore how the conception of Christianity as 'public religion' can be utilised to help justify the use of a Christian sociological approach for studying the social scientific aspects of sport. After making a case for Christianity as public religion, we conclude that many of the sociological issues inherent in modern sport are an indirect result of its increasing secularisation and argue that this justifies the need for a Christian sociological approach. We encourage researchers to use the Bible, the tools of Christian theology and sociological concepts together, so to inform analyses of modern sport from a Christian perspective.
“Decadent Bodies and the Materiality of Digital Humanities.”
For the panel, “Visualizing Communities through the Digital Humanities —Textual and Historical” organized by Dr. Dennis Denisoff. Annual Conference of the Northeast Modern Languages Association (NeMLA). Ryerson University, Toronto ON, April 30 – May 5, 2015.
The Eiffel Tower as Poetical Chronotope of the Historical Avant-garde
NeMLA Annual Meeting. Toronto, Ontario, May 1, 2015
These events and receptions are available to conference registrants for free. In addition, members can enroll, for a small fee, in a number of exciting and interactive small-group workshops related to teaching in the humanities, pedagogy and professionalization, and creative writing. We will conclude the convention with our usual membership brunch and the call for proposals for NeMLA 2016.
What if St. Paul were to address the commissioners of the Olympics, Paralympics, and Special Olympics, simultaneously? Drawing in particular from the specific reference to athletic ideals and imagery in 1 Corinthians 9, I suggest that as (arguably) the first theologian of disability, he would urge them indeed to revise what it means to train for, compete in, and pursue goals that are imperishable rather than perishable. This approach means, then, that the model for sport, even for disability spirit, becomes something like the Special Olympics, particularly inasmuch as its "wisdom" belies the conventional wisdom of the sporting world in its emphases on ability, competition, self-achievement, and self-exaltation. This essay suggests that rereading 1 Corinthians 9 from the perspective of disability in general and intellectual disability in particular highlights aspects of Paul's argument that counters any uncritical appropriation of his ideas in support of the contemporary Christian embrace of sport. Its goal is to apply a disability hermeneutic to the Pauline materials even while extracting from the latter disability perspectives for a contemporary theology of sport.