Christian Instrumentality of Sport as a Possible Source of Goodness for Atheists

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to differentiate between religion and spirituality more strictly, or, specifically, between the religious and spiritual aspects of sport. The text is written in an autoethnographic genre from an ‘outsider’ position, by an author who is not Christian. Religion, including Christianity, represents a connectedness between the natural world (the profane) and an ontologically different reality (the sacrum) and its transcendence towards the sacrum. But spirituality is the centre of the human way of being and a manifestation of personality. So spirituality and spiritual values can and should be an integral part of human movement, including sport, while any religion is not an inherent quality of sport but an external factor that is only accidentally (not substantially) associated with the area of human physical activity. Despite this fact, the argumentation leads toward a conclusion that sport can serve as a tool and means for the realization of Christian values. If the instrumentality of sport means the realization of love as a basic Christian attitude to all people, then this should be a positive outcome not only for religious people, but also for agnostics and even atheists.

Keywords:

• Christianity
• spirituality
• sport
• values
• love