Religion and Sport Under Duress Panel: Sport and exercise provide many individuals and communities across the globe with rhythms to mark time and myriad ways to engage the body--physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. From three distinct perspectives, this session examines these dimensions in terms of transcendent and ethical values; the promotion of the integrity of health by attending to limitations; and an exploration of the benefits and risks associated with conceptualizing sport and/or exercise as alternative cures or comfort in addressing mental, emotional and spiritual challenges

Francis Klose, Rosemont College

Lent Disrupted: COVID-19 and the 2020 Major League Baseball Season

Cody Musselman, Washington University in St. Louis

The “Sport of Fitness” becomes the Sport of Health: CrossFit Health in the COVID Era

This paper traces the rise of CrossFit Health and its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. While recent scholarship on religion and sports attempts to move the subfield away from debates around whether or not sport is a religion, assertions likening sport to religion still animate the field. This paper joins recent scholarship in pivoting the conversation away from asking whether or not sport is a religion and instead looks at how certain actors within sport are doing religion. Through the example of CrossFit Health, a healthcare initiative of “the sport of fitness,” this paper examines how Glassman positioned himself as a health crusader with a global mission to save the world through diet, exercise, and the communal joys and accountability of sport. When gyms first closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, CrossFitters collectively vowed that CrossFit would survive the pandemic because CrossFit was more than a sport: it was healthcare.

Nicholas Fieseler, University of Calgary

Wrestling with Religion: A Theodramatic Exploration of Religion in Popular Culture