European Studies in Sports History, vol. 18
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Présentation
The eighteenth issue of European Studies in Sport History joins a long-standing and dynamic academic conversation on the intersection of sport and religion, offering a historical perspective that spans from the nineteenth century to the present day. Across this period, profound shifts in cultural and social practices have redefined how societies experience ritual, faith, and the body. Sport has become one of the key spaces in which these transformations are expressed, contested, and sometimes ritualized in new ways. The famous story of Eric Liddell in Chariots of Fire, who refused to run on a Sunday because of his religious convictions, evokes a time when sacred obligations could outweigh Olympic ambition. Today, however, churches often stand empty while stadiums overflow. Collective identity and belonging, once nurtured through religious communities, are increasingly found in sport — through shared chants, symbols, and emotional rituals. The sacred has not disappeared but has migrated, changed form, or found new expressions. The contributions assembled in this volume examine the complex and evolving relationships between religion and sport: from competition to leisure, from amateur practice to professional performance, from sacred rituals to modern spectacles. Authors explore how both spheres have historically shared — and sometimes struggled over — values, spaces, gestures, and communities. The volume also reveals the persistence of religious expressions in contemporary sport, amplified by media and global audiences. Bringing together historians, sociologists, scholars of religion, anthropologists, and philosophers, this special issue offers a multifaceted portrait of how sport has mirrored, replaced, or intertwined with spiritual experience in modern and contemporary societies. It invites readers to reflect on the ways belief, identity, and the body continue to be negotiated on playing fields as much as in places of worship.
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