Michael W. Austin

The relationship between Christianity and sport is a long and varied one. Christian thinkers, past and present, have been highly critical of sport, for a variety of reasons. Others have been much more positive, and extol the virtues of sport. In this paper, I argue that sport is a context in which the Christian theological virtues of faith, hope, and love can be cultivated and displayed. One significant worry about this claim is that using sport to cultivate these theological virtues, it is in some sense being corrupted. If sport is autotelic, then we should not infuse it with other values or agendas that undermine its autotelicity. I respond to this objection by arguing that sport can be valued for intrinsic and instrumental reasons.

abstract In this paper, I first develop a neo-Aristotelian account of the virtue of magnanimity. I then apply this virtue to ethical issues that arise in sport, and argue that the magnanimous athlete will rightly use sport to foster her own moral development. I also address how the magnanimous athlete responds to the moral challenges present in sport by focusing on the issue of performance-enhancing drugs, and conclude that athletic excellence as it is conventionally understood, without moral excellence, has very little value.