Sport, Physical Education, and Social Justice

Religious, Sociological, Psychological, and Capability Perspectives

Nick J. Watson, Grant Jarvie, Andrew Parker, Nick J. Watson, Grant Jarvie, Andrew Parker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000175165
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Sportunterricht

This interdisciplinary collection explores the nexus of social justice and sport to consider how sport and physical education can serve as a unique point of commonality in an era of religious, political, economic, and cultural polarity.

Originally published as a special issue of Quest, Sport, Physical Education, and Social Justice offers timely theoretical perspectives from the fields of theology, philosophy, psychology, and sociology. The volume demonstrates the multiple ways in which sport can be used to overcome inequalities and marginalization relating to gender, race, disability, religion, and sexuality, and posits sports education as a powerful mechanism for addressing school-based issues including bullying, racism, and citizenship education. Truly international in scope, the text includes contributions from scholars addressing issues in both formal and informal sports education settings, communities, and locales.

Sport, Physical Education and Social Justice will be of interest to researchers, scholars, policy makers and advocates in the fields of education, psychology, sociology, and religious studies.

1
Sport, Christianity, and Social Justice? Considering a Theological Foundation

Gregg Twietmeyer, Nick J. Watson, and Andrew Parker

We need tangible experiences of justice to know the justice of God. And from Pee Wee to professional leagues, sports can provide such opportunities to prioritize safety, practice fairness, and inspire a hunger for justice.

(Hansson & Keck, 2018, p. 21)

In a review of the available literature surrounding “theological ethics in sport,” Watson and Parker (2014) raised several important themes relating to the relationship of “God,” “ethics,” and issues of “social justice” within sporting locales. The hope of the authors is that a rigorous theological approach and Christian moral vision of social justice (rooted in an understanding of theological ethics and the transformation of the human heart) will allow athletes to better navigate the ethical landscape of contemporary sport. In sum, Watson and Parker contend that Christian ethics and the biblical mandate of social justice, as understood by both Catholic and Protestant theologians (Gasaway, 2014; Novak & Adams, 2015), have important contributions to make to the understanding and practice of sport and the discipline of sport ethics. This contention is supported by a recent “position statement” (Watson, 2018) which calls for a continued focus on ethical issues/injustices within the sport–theology field, while at the same time suggesting the need to broaden the research agenda on this subject:

When Stanley Hauerwas, a theologian and sports fan, wrote the foreword to Christopher H. Evans and William R. Herzog II’s book, The Faith of 50 Million: Baseball, Religion and American Culture (2002: xiv) he noted that “… a book about the relation of baseball, Christianity, and America risks not being taken seriously. The whole project seems too whimsical to be appropriately ‘academic.’”…To-date, there has been more focus in the sport-theology literature on the many ethical and moral problems that persist in sport. While continued critical analysis of sport and its sub-cultures, by theologians and church leaders, is wholly necessary and appropriate, perhaps, moving forwards a broader vision for those operating in the sport-faith domain, should focus on the positive value and “goods” of sport, what Robert Johnston (2019) has called a hermeneutic of engagement and appreciation (versus a hermeneutic of suspicion and separation.

(pp. 243, 249–250)

In attending to this invitation, our aim within this article, is to provide a theological and conceptual foundation for studying social justice issues in sport, rather than simply examine specific social justice issues (see the Conclusion for examples). In so doing, our intentions are to: (a) provide a brief historical and conceptual backdrop outlining, in brief, how the concept of social justice has emerged within academic, social, and political discourse in the modern age; (b) examine the metaphysical anchors for sport ethics; (c) enquire how a Christian framework of metaphysics might be synthesized and understood within sport and the discipline of sport ethics, and (d) explore how key dimensions of the sporting experience, namely, play and embodiment, might impact theological understandings of ethics and social justice. We argue that a Christian metaphysical vision has much to offer in reforming sport (and advancing the discipline of sport ethics) by grounding it within a Trinitarian theology, borne out of a biblical description of a perfectly just, Creator God (Meilaender & Werpehowski, 2007).

Setting the Scene: Sport, Social Justice and Christianity

There is widespread acknowledgment of the importance of religion and spirituality in sports across the academic disciplines and within government-funded sports organizations. Indeed, over the last decade, there has been an exponential increase in publications on this topic and the organization of related global/international scholarly gatherings. The office of the “Pontifical Council for Culture” within the Vatican recently hosted an international conference entitled Sport at the Service of Humanity (2016) which, according to the official report of the conference, had a central focus on social justice research and praxis and inter-faith dialogue (Ellis, 2017). The commissioning of this event at the seat of the Catholic Church is embedded in the Pontificate of the late Pope John Paul II. The profile of the opening speakers at the conference (which included Pope Francis; the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby; the President of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach; the CEO of Special Olympics, Timothy Shriver; and the General Secretary of the UN, Ban Ki-moon) further reflects the growth of academic and public discourse surrounding the social justice and sport–religion interface. Such growth was similarly reflected in the Inaugural Global Congress on Sports and Christianity (IGCSC) which took place at York St. John University, UK, in August 2016. This conference generated nine journal special editions¹ and a number of books (e.g., Adogame, Watson, & Parker, 2018; Parker, Watson, & White, 2016; Watson, Hargaden, & Brock, 2018). Yet, despite this growth, to-date, no sport–religion publication projects (across the monotheistic traditions) have specifically addressed social justice within the sporting arena.

The term “social justice” was absent from popular and academic discourse in the West until the 1840s when it was adopted by a Jesuit priest named Luigi Taparelli (Regaldo, 2009). The conceptual roots of the term were however embedded in the thought of two theological heavy weights, Augustine of Hippo (354–430 AD) and Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274 AD), long before its widespread use by modern ethicists, legal scholars, social theorists, and human rights activists (Burgess, 2015). Reflecting the upsurge in academic interest in social justice within the social sciences, the sub-disciplines of “public theology,” “liberation theology,” and “practical theology”² have emerged within the broader discipline of theology. Social justice has been a focal point of scholarly reflection and praxis within these sub-disciplines (see Palmer & Burgess, 2012; Rowland, 2007; Sagovsky, 2017). Within both the social sciences and theology, various models of social justice—distributive, procedural, retributive, and restorative—have been adopted (Sabbagh & Schmitt, 2016). For example, within the context of sport, Hansson and Keck (2018) noted that:

Athletes organized for justice—through teams or player’s unions—have power. Since baseball’s 1968 collective bargaining agreement, professional sports unions have been instrumental in securing distributive justice in the form of salaries, arbitration procedures, non-discrimination policies, safety protocols, and others worker’s rights for players who earn millions of dollars for teams.

(p. 21)

The need for theological ethicists to engage with such examples of distributive justice (and other forms of social justice) in sport is clear. Prior to our analysis of several key thematic issues, brief descriptions of a number of central terms are necessary: theological ethics (sometimes called moral theology or Christian ethics) is a branch of Christian theology that defines virtuous behavior and wrong behavior from a Christian perspective (Meilaender & Werpehowski, 2007); metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things (often religious things), especially abstract concepts such as being, knowing, identity, time, space, and the existence of God (Loux & Zimmerman, 2005); social justice, it is widely accepted among scholars and policy-makers alike that there is no universal, or all-encompassing, definition of social justice. In addition, binary models of social justice (e.g., secular–religious; progressive–conservative; global–local, etc.) are fast becoming outdated due to their many theoretical and praxis-based limitations and the inherent complexity of geo-political justice issues. In turn, scholars are beginning to “transcend these boundaries…as…religion is deeply intertwined in political struggles for justice across the world and at all levels” (Baumgart-Oshse, Glabb, Smith, & Smythe, 2017, p. 1070).

Nevertheless, “social justice” is not without controversy. Many persuasive critiques have been offered of the term. Perhaps the most trenchant secular criticisms are those of the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek (1967), who argued that the adjective “social” which precedes “justice” was a redundancy “incredibly empty of meaning” (p. 238). Hayek (1976) worried that “social justice” had been politicized to the point that it was often a “Trojan horse through which totalitarianism has entered” (p. 130) society. In essence, the point Hayek was making was that the classic definition of justice, as the virtue “which accords to each and every man his due” (Augustine, 1958, p. 469) should suffice. For Hayek, to insist on more, betrayed a duplicitous motive.

The most trenchant theological critique of “social justice” questions what the appropriate locus of attention should be in promoting justice. Should reformers work on “reshaping themselves” or upon “reshaping society”? Those who doubt the veracity of “social justice,” as it is commonly understood, argue the former. They insist that: “We are not led to undo the work of creation or to rectify the Fall. The duty of the Christian is not to leave the world a better place. His duty is to leave this world a better man” (Gilbey as citied in Akers, 2017, para. 8).

This is the case for at least two reasons. First, any corporate action which ignores the virtues or vices of individuals will be ineffective. As Christ so wisely opines regarding our judgment of others and the world, “first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:5, NIV). You cannot reshape society, when your own soul is disheveled. Second, Christian scripture and tradition insist that one’s social obligation to “Love your neighbor as yourself” rests on a prior obligation to love God “with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37, 39, NIV).³ Justice demands the measure of truth which only God (rather than mere social reorganization) can provide. “For no matter where one places one’s worldly hopes; in the ‘classless society,’ or in ‘education,’ or ‘the advent of social justice,’ or ‘healthy choices’ death still reigns” (Twietmeyer, 2018, p. 12). A death from which only God’s grace, mercy, and forgiveness can save us.

In this sense, the theological critique could be said to be promoting the “transcendence of social justice” by lifting one’s focus to a broader horizon, from the merely temporal to the eternal. It is no doubt true that man needs “his daily bread” and that meeting such needs (in terms of access, distribution, etc.) is a matter of justice. However, man does “not live, on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4, NIV).

Such debates over the value and meaning of social justice will not be definitively settled here.⁴ And so, while great ambiguity exists surrounding how to define, or describe social justice, we offer a provocative statement from the fourth-century Christian apologist, Lactantius (who became the religious and political advisor to the first Christian emperor, Constantine I), as a working definition for our analysis: “the whole point of justice consists in our providing for others through humanity what we provide for our own families through affection” (as cited in Jones, J., Bishop, 2016, p. 10). To show how Christian theology might help spur the development of the kind of universal love of God and neighbor that such familial affection generates, our initial task must be an examination of the relationship between theology, metaphysics, and ethics, within the context of the modern-day sporting world.

Of Metaphysics and Theological Ethics

A seminal statement on the connection between metaphysics and ethics (and therefore, notions of justice) comes from the ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle (2002) argued that to identify the good of any particular thing requires that we know its nature or end. For instance, we know that a good knife is sharp because we are rightly convinced that knives are meant for cutting. Similarly, we know that a good basketball needs to bounce because basketballs are for dribbling, that a good eye sees, and so forth. Aristotle’s point is that any evaluation of goodness (even in the realm of human actions) depends upon a prior metaphysical commitment (even if unacknowledged) regarding the nature of the thing in question. Justice requires metaphysics.

For Aristotle, the bottom line was ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Editorial: Religious, Sociological, and Capability Perspectives
• 1 Sport, Christianity, and Social Justice? Considering a Theological Foundation
• 2 Social Justice, Sport, and Judaism: A Position Statement
• 3 Sport for Social Justice, Capability, and the Common Good: A Position Statement in Honor of Tessa Jowell
• 4 Social Justice in Sport and Exercise Psychology: A Position Statement
• 5 Social Justice, Sport, and Sociology: A Position Statement
• 6 Physical Education, Citizenship, and Social Justice: A Position Statement
• 7 Social Justice, Character Education, and Sport: A Position Statement
• 8 A Position Statement on Social Justice, Physical Education, and Bullying: A Figurational Sociological Perspective
• 9 Social Justice, Sport, and Racism: A Position Statement
• 10 Sport, Homelessness, and Capability: Voices From the Street
• 11 Taking a Knee, Making a Stand: Social Justice, Trump America, and the Politics of Sport
• Index