The Liturgy of Sports: Or How to Celebrate Contingency without Believing That God Loves Tom Brady More Than Everyone Else.

Harvey elucidates a theology of sport as the "liturgical celebration of our contingency."[7] Harvey bases this account of sport as liturgy within a rigorous theological anthropology. Keywords: Sport; contingency; Lincoln Harvey; Jonathan Z. Smith; ritualization; sacramentality EN Sport contingency Lincoln Harvey Jonathan Z. Smith ritualization sacramentality 14 21 8 01/07/22 20211001 NES 211001 In what follows, I want to treat two thinkers who will help us think through two distinct ways in which sport - either participating in sport as a player or following sport as a fan - might be construed as "liturgy." In sport, "God instead steps back, evacuating the space created by the liturgical action, enabling the creature to be somehow at a distance in its own integrity."[12] For sport to be a liturgical celebration of our contingency the outcomes must be I genuinely contingent i since "sport is the miraculous liturgy of momentary distance in which [God] steps back, uninvolved, refusing to influence the outcome of a game in any way whatsoever." Sport as Liturgy: A Brief Amendation Yet, can it be that sport and I only i sport is the sole venue worthy of God's stepping-back and allowing full contingency within the whole of the human milieu?. [Extracted from the article]