Playing for God Evangelical Women and the Unintended Consequences of Sports Ministry / Annie Blazer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Blazer, Annie, Author.

Series:

North American religions.

North American religions

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Christian athletes--Religious life.

Christian athletes.

Church work with teenagers--Catholic Church.

Church work with teenagers.

Femininity--Religious aspects--Christianity.

Femininity.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (414 p.)

Manufacture:

Baltimore, Md. : Project MUSE, 2021

Place of Publication:

New York ; London New York University Press [2015]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

When sports ministry first emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, its founders imagined male celebrity athletes as powerful salespeople who could deliver a message of Christian strength: “If athletes can endorse shaving cream, razor blades, and cigarettes, surely they can endorse the Lord, too,” reasoned Fellowship of Christian Athletes founder Don McClanen. But combining evangelicalism and sport did much more than serve as an advertisement for religion: it gave athletes the opportunity to think about the embodied experiences of sport as a way to experience intimate connection with the divine. As sports ministry developed, it focused on individual religious experiences and downplayed celebrity sales power, opening the door for female Christian athletes to join and eventually dominate sports ministry. Today, women are the majority of participants in sports ministry in the United States. In Playing for God, Annie Blazer offers an exploration of the history and religious lives of Christian athletes, showing that evangelical engagement with popular culture can carry unintended consequences. When sport became an avenue for embodied worship, it forced a reckoning with evangelical teachings about the body. Female Christian athletes increasingly turned to their own bodies to understand their religious identity, and in so doing, came to question evangelical mainstays on gender and sexuality. What was once a male-dominated masculinist project of sports engagement became a female-dominated movement that challenged evangelical ideas on femininity, marriage hierarchy, and the sinfulness of homosexuality. Though evangelicalism has not changed sporting culture, for those involved in sports ministry, sport has changed evangelicalism.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction. Practicing Faith: Sports Ministry and Evangelicalism in America

1. Making the Save

2. Transcendent Intimacy

3. Spiritual Warfare and Christlikeness

4. Wearing Our Shorts a Little Longer

5. Challenging the Call

6. Faith Off the Field

Conclusion: A Tale of Unintended Consequences

Notes

Index

About the Author

Notes:

Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-4798-3882-9

OCLC:

951103556