"Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing."
Sports Chaplaincy, Theology and Social Theory
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Disrupting Performance-Based Identity in Elite Sporting Contexts, Luke Jones, Andrew Parker, and Graham Daniels, Religions, December 2020
The authors state: “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”.
In the abstract of the paper we read: “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”.
It is the author’s contention that understanding sociological concepts and ideas will assist chaplains in their work with elite athletes. The authors propose the chaplains take more account of “the social composition of sporting contexts” and take an altogether “more person-centred and non-judgmental approach” - if this implies that chaplains are not person-centred and judgemental, one could ask where the evidence is for that.
Acknowledging the sports chaplain is a pastor (Shepherding) role, walking alongside athletes through their sporting trials and successes, the authors argue for a theological approach which will help Christian athletes “in negotiating and recalibrating the relationship between their faith and their athletic identity”. The paper also directs chaplains towards sociological frameworks in order to understand more fully modern ways of thinking about sport and its underlying dynamics.
Whether it is realistic to expect chaplains to draw on interpretive, critical humanist and poststructuralist research, is a big question