Christianity Today’s cover story for February is a lengthy piece adapted from Shirl James Hoffman’s book Good Game: Christianity and the Culture of Sports. Its a heady article from what sounds like a scholarly read on the intersection of faith and sports so frequently discussed here.

What struck me was Hoffman’s use of the term Sportianity (coined 30 years ago by SI’s Frank Deford) and how he defines it:

“In other words, Sportianity is Christian theology vetted and co-opted by the dictates of the sports industry. Not surprisingly, it cannot speak truth to power. Its doctrines are promulgated far beyond the locker rooms of the NFL, the NBA, or Major League Baseball. Rationalized and systematized, it is vigorously taught to college, high school, and even younger athletes. Its themes crop up in sermons preached from evangelical pulpits and in articles from the religious press. There are, in fact, few alternative ways of thinking about sports and faith in the evangelical community.

In spite of its theological conservatism, Sportianity advocates a quite worldly view of sports. The concrete trumps the symbolic; doing, achieving, and struggling are favored over mystery, joy, feeling, transport, and spiritual insight. When effort, sacrifice, and competitive success become the preferred ways to glorify God, joyous play—which might be what theologian Robert K. Johnston has called “a prolegomenon [preface] to further encounters with God”—can seem an unworthy offering. In the dialectical, serious-but-not-serious world of play, Sportians tip the scales decidedly toward the serious, made weightier by the evangelistic mission they are anxious to load onto sports.”

Any thoughts?