Synopses & Reviews
Prebish offers a thoughtful look at sport as a religious experience and argues that sport has become an American religion. The first section of the work contains three chapters that provide a definitional, theoretical, and methodological frame for examining sport as religion. The five chapters that follow, each written by an authority in the field, treat different aspects of the religious dimension of sport. These chapters represent the most important writings on sport as a religious experience, and each author offers a full and thoughtful discussion rather than a cursory overview. A final chapter by Prebish closes the work.
The first chapter of the book challenges traditional assumptions about religion and encourages the reader to reconsider what religion is. The second chapter examines the difficulty of defining sport, and the third probes the close relationship between sport and religion. The anthology that follows contains chapters that examine religion and sport from sociological, historical, theological, philosophical, and psychological perspectives. A concluding bibliography lists material for further reading.
Review
Recommended for purchase by academic and large public libraries as one of the few monographs dealing specifically with this topic.Popular Culture in Libraries
Synopsis
Prebish offers a thoughtful look at sport as a religious experience and argues that sport has become an American religion. The first part of the book contains three essays that consider the meaning of sport and religion and the relationship between the two. An anthology of five chapters follows. These chapters, written by leading authorities in the field, represent a significant work on the religious dimension of sport. The chapters fully analyze the interplay of sport and religion from sociological, historical, theological, philosophical, and psychological perspectives. A final chapter by Prebish offers some closing thoughts, and a bibliography lists works for further reading.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [228]-233) and index.
About the Author
CHARLES S. PREBISH is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at The Pennsylvania State University.