Tyler Deck Shipley Dr. Ben Lewin Senior Thesis Annotated Bibliography Research Question: A wide noticed phenomena in the realm of athletics is that athletes inject a belief in God in their performance and sports related lives. My question is then, how do athletes understand these manifestations and what are athletes motivations in applying to go their athletic lives. Key Words: Athletes, Religion, Sport, Christianity, Spirituality, Emotionality, Work DeBerg, A. Betty. 2002. “Athletes and Religion on Campus.” Peer Review 4(4):10-14 I located this article in EBSCO’s Academic Search Premier. Deberg’s research on athletics and religion largely focuses on the motivations of the University to put in spiritual activities for their athletes. While …show more content…
The same benefits that she identifies in colleges could be visible in my respondents as well. Her framework allows me to look at how a protestant religious life may encourage athletes to live in a manner that is conducive to success in athletic activities. Her argument provides a functionalist scope to the way religion and athletic life styles intersect, which can be applied nicely to understanding motivations of athletes and if these personal motivations are influenced from outside institutions such as Colleges. This as well exemplifies one contemporary and sensationalized sphere where athletics and religion are advertised as adhering to a religious life style becomes beneficial to the institution. Again, this provides is another example of how religion and athletics begin to intersect and materialize in athlete’s …show more content…
For example, Hoffman argues that sport, especially football, may represent the worship of society and because of this mimics Durkheim’s social function of religion. This establishes that religion is a product of society and because of this, practices of sport directly influence religious ideals and how religion operates. Simply that the relationship between sport and religion is dialectical in nature. This work relates well to my project, as it helps me explore not only the reasons for applying god to athletics but conversely, why athletes apply sports to the realm of