Can sport be regarded as ‘cultural liturgy’? Recognizing the significance of the liturgical frame for the social scientific study of sport

Abstract

Several Christian thinkers have employed liturgical language in their attempts to theorize sport, and academic comparisons between sport and religious pageantry are common. While the natures of these proposals are varied, they all rely on the explicitly religious language of liturgy to communicate something significant about sport and its ethos. In this paper, current work on sport as liturgy is critically reviewed in order to tease out the significance of such liturgical language and its appropriateness for the study of sport. The concept of cultural liturgy is proposed as a way of recognizing the significance of the liturgical frame for studying sport while also serving as a useful construct for the social scientific study of sport.

Notes

1. See Vincent Lloyd (2011) for further explanation of liturgy in the ‘broad’ sense.

2. It should be noted that some, like Birrell (1981) and Sansone (1988), accentuate the historical continuity of the ritual nature of sport, rather than discontinuity like Guttmann. Sansone, like Birrell, sees modern sport as being turned towards a different purpose, a shift that he posits happens on the communicative level.

3. For example, see Adamson (2015). Work in play studies shows that the notion of ludicity, or ‘play’ is not bound to activities perceived as playful. Thus, even activities undertaken as ‘work’ can be done so as play. Similar points can be made about transcendent experiences and competition. These features are far from unique to the realm of sport. See Smith (2016) for an extended treatment of each of these features, and their role in the construction of a sporting ethos.

4. Though there is not space to cover it, Smith bases part of his thesis on Heidegger’s notion of ‘attunement’/‘construal’ which ‘is a precognitive mode of intentionality that discloses the world precisely because it construes the world’ (2012, 170).

5. This is precisely why brands attach their names to sports teams. They capitalize on the logic of fandom and the capital of a given club, team, or individual to inculcate brand loyalties.

6. The precise ways that sports operate as cultural pedagogies deserves more attention. Unfortunately the best I can do here is to provide brief suggestive examples in the hope that future work will develop this further.