In recent years the United States has seen an influx of Christian athletes and coaches into big-time sports, as well as a heightened importance placed on sports in church programs and enormous platforms for intercollegiate sports at Christian schools and colleges. However, as Shirl Hoffman critiques, a Christian vision of sport remains merely superficialreplete with prayers before free throws and praises after touchdowns but offering little if any alternative vision from the secular sports culture. Far from being the kind of life-affirming, faith-affirming events that they could be, games played in Christian college gymnasiums, for example, too often end up as mockeries of the faith statements given prominence in their mission statements. Here, in this thoughtful, narrative-driven exploration, Hoffman retells numerous fascinating stories from the world of ancient and contemporary sports and draws on the history of the Christian tradition as he seeks to answer the question What would it mean to think Christianly about sport?
Shirl J. Hoffman, Ed.D. is Professor Emeritus of Kinesiology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He has served at all levels of education, beginning his career as a physical education teacher in White Plains, New York before moving on to positions as head basketball coach at Westchester Community College (NY). After completing his graduate work at Teachers College, Columbia University, he served successively as professor at The King's College (NY,the University of Nebraska at Omaha and the University of Pittsburgh for 13 years before moving to University of North Carolina at Greensboro as department head in 1985. He has an extraordinarily broad background in the field spanning motor learning and performance, sociology of sports, and sport philosophy. His work has appeared in Journal of Motor Behavior, Perceptual and Motor Skills, Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sports, Journal of Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, Quest, The Journal of Sport Philosophy, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Chronicle of Kinesiology and Physical Education in Higher Education and Journal of Sport Behavior. He has spoken to such wide-ranging groups as The Canadian Psychomotor and Sport Psychology Symposium, the Research Consortium of AAHPERD, The North American Society for Sport Psychology and Physical Activity, the International Congress on Physical Education, the Sport Sociology Academy, The American Academy of Kinesiology and Physical Education, The Second National Symposium on Teaching Kinesiology and Biomechanics in Sport, British Sport Psychology Conference and the Fourth European Congress on Sport Psychology.
Hoffman has been a frequent contributor to the national dialogue on issues in kinesiology and higher education. He is a former editor of Quest and former associate editor of the Chronicle for Physical Education in Higher Education. He was named Distinguished Scholar by National Association for Kinesiology and Physical Education in Higher Education (NAKPEHE). He is a member of the International Society of Sport Philosophy and a fellow emeritus of the American Academy for Kinesiology and Physical Education. Currently he is Executive Director of the American Kinesiology Association, an association of over 100 college and university departments of kinesiology across the U.S. and Canada.
His interest in reconciling the ethical parameters of popular sport and the Christian faith spans several decades. He has spoken and written widely on the subject. He has been the featured speaker at a number of Christian colleges and has lectured on the topic at the National Conference on New Religions and Revitalization Movements, the Joint Conference for the North American Society for Sport Sociology and the International Association for the Philosophy of Sport, The Popular Culture Association, Joint meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and American Academy of Religion, and the Second International Conference on Sport and Religion at St. Olaf College. He recently delivered a keynote address at the Inaugural International Conference on Sport and Spirituality at York St. John University in England. His work on sport and religion has appeared in Christianity Today, The Nebraska Humanist, The Journal of Philosophy of Sport, Quest, The American Baptist, The Banner, and The Word and World, Christianity and Leisure: Issues in a Pluralistic World, and he has spoken on the topic to numerous community interest groups.
He is editor of the first book on the subject (Sport and Religion, Human Kinetics, 1992) and has been featured in a number of nationally aired televised documentaries on sport and religion on CBS, ("Sport and Ethics") ESPN ("Time to Pray, Time to Play"), Channel 4 in Britain ("Praying to Win") and on nationally aired broadcasts on NPR ("A Whole New Ballgame") BBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Company ("Inside Track") and various local and regional talk shows.
Hoffman and his wife, Claude Mourot, reside in Greensboro, North Carolina where he enjoys golf, traveling, and hiking in the near-by mountains.
