Abstract
Existing literature on the work of sports chaplains has focused primarily on practitioner accounts of chaplaincy with elite athletes. While these narratives provide useful descriptions of personal experience and practical application, they are largely devoid of theoretical grounding. This paper seeks to address this imbalance by proposing the need for sports chaplains to have a more critical understanding of sport and its relational dynamics. We begin by problematizing some of the historical assumptions underpinning elite sport, especially in relation to identity formation. We then explore some of the moral dilemmas which may be experienced by Christian athletes who inhabit contemporary sporting contexts. In line with the work of established sociological scholars, we then move to a critical analysis of performance-based identity and how an understanding of sociological concepts and ideas might assist chaplains in their work with elite athletes. The paper concludes by identifying sports chaplains as key figures in the disruption of performance-based identity.
Highlights
Connections between the sacred and sport have long since been acknowledged and recent years have witnessed an increasing amount of discussion and debate around the sport–religion interface.In turn, a significant body of related scholarly work has emerged mapping these connections across a range of geographical and religious landscapes.1 These accounts provide useful insight into the different ways in which sport has been appropriated by specific belief systems and the challenges and responses that such practices have encountered both in sporting and religious locales
Our aim within this paper has been to enhance the theoretical and conceptual profile of sports chaplaincy by arguing that, in addition to pastoral and spiritual care, sports chaplains might seek to develop a broader theological and theoretical outlook on sporting practices and behaviours in the hope of better serving the wellbeing needs of their athletes. Such arguments expand the academic literature on sports chaplaincy and provide an additional set of lenses through which sports chaplains might construct more sophisticated interpretations and analyses of elite sport
To do this we have built upon previous academic work to call for the critical interrogation and disruption of long-standing attitudes, assumptions and behaviours in sport around performance-based identity and the negative impact that this might have on Christian athletes
Summary
Connections between the sacred and sport have long since been acknowledged and recent years have witnessed an increasing amount of discussion and debate around the sport–religion interface. We believe that exposure to these concepts and ideas (which feature large in broader socio-cultural analyses of sport), may allow sports chaplains to more fully appreciate the complexities of how athletes often construct and sustain their identities in line with the historical assumptions that continue to shape elite sport. Such exposure has the potential to enhance sports chaplains’. The paper concludes by identifying sports chaplains as key agentic figures in the disruption of performance-based identity
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