As the coun­try com­mem­o­rates a week­end of re­li­gious hol­i­days - Good Fri­day, Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist/Shouter Lib­er­a­tion Day, and East­er Mon­day with Eid ul Fitr on April 10, it is in­ter­est­ing to as­cer­tain the re­la­tion­ship be­tween sport and re­li­gion.

Re­li­gion and sports have pro­mot­ed a pos­i­tive com­mit­ment to hard work, per­son­al sac­ri­fice, fair­ness, and achieve­ment. They use rit­u­als and cus­toms and ap­peal to God in train­ing, team meet­ings, cel­e­brat­ing suc­cess, and mourn­ing fail­ure. Yet still, some com­men­ta­tors ques­tioned whether the com­pet­i­tive spir­it of sport is weak­en­ing the spir­i­tu­al bond of peo­ple as ac­tive and pas­sive sports par­tic­i­pants.

Gon­za­lez's [2020] study, "Par­tic­i­pat­ing in sports and prac­tic­ing a re­li­gion are re­lat­ed to lev­els of hap­pi­ness," con­clud­ed that "peo­ple's hap­pi­ness in­creas­es with sports par­tic­i­pa­tion and re­li­gious prac­tice."

How­ev­er, they not­ed that "peo­ple who par­tic­i­pate in sports and prac­tice a re­li­gion de­clared the high­est hap­pi­ness lev­els, though there is no sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence be­tween this group and the group that par­tic­i­pates in sports but does not prac­tice a re­li­gion, which shows that the re­la­tion­ship be­tween hap­pi­ness and sports par­tic­i­pa­tion is stronger than the re­la­tion­ship be­tween hap­pi­ness and re­li­gious prac­tice."

Park­er, White, and Mey­er [2023], a qual­i­ta­tive study of 15 Chris­t­ian youth in the USA, claim that per­sons in­volved in sports and re­li­gion can play a crit­i­cal role in help­ing youth nav­i­gate the 'ten­sions and dilem­mas' of tran­si­tion­ing from youth to adult­hood in West­ern in­dus­tri­al so­ci­eties. This study adds to the ex­tant lit­er­a­ture on the role of sport, re­li­gion, and oth­er so­cial in­sti­tu­tions, such as the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, in shap­ing young peo­ple's iden­ti­ty.

Woods [2007] ar­gues that sport ap­peals to God and re­in­forces re­li­gious mem­ber­ship. The Young Men's Chris­t­ian As­so­ci­a­tion (YM­CA), sec­ondary schools such as Christ the King, and uni­ver­si­ties such as Oral Roberts Uni­ver­si­ty pro­vide sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties and ex­cel­lent sport­ing pro­grams to at­tract new mem­bers, stu­dents, and donors [Woods 2007].

Ama­ra [2008] notes that sports have been able to mo­bi­lize na­tion­al­ist sup­port through­out the Mus­lim world, cut­ting across class, gen­der, and sec­tar­i­an dif­fer­ences. He ar­gues that mod­ern sport and Is­lam can co­ex­ist in the same world once sport is a site for ne­go­ti­at­ing dif­fer­ences, which can en­hance cross-cul­tur­al ex­pe­ri­ences. This ap­proach has the po­ten­tial to min­i­mize the clash of

West­ern and tra­di­tion­al val­ue sys­tems, have been a source of con­tro­ver­sies in sports as it re­lates to Mus­lim ath­letes' par­tic­i­pa­tion in sports.

In an in-depth study of eight schools in West Mid­lands, Eng­land, to gain an un­der­stand­ing as to why Mus­lim girls were with­draw­ing from phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion, Dagkasa et al. [2011] con­clud­ed that re­li­gious con­cerns of the girls need to be part of schools' poli­cies as well as in its phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion pro­grams. Some of the spe­cif­ic prob­lems that the stu­dents and their par­ents iden­ti­fied were the lack of flex­i­ble dress codes, es­pe­cial­ly as it re­lat­ed to the wear­ing of the hi­jab and the use of pub­lic swim­ming pools. The re­searchers stat­ed that a more em­brac­ing sport pol­i­cy would al­low for the in­clu­sion of Mus­lim girls.

Stud­ies in Trinidad and To­ba­go can pro­vide an un­der­stand­ing of the link be­tween sports and re­li­gion, which can have mul­ti­ple and ever­last­ing ben­e­fits, es­pe­cial­ly in a high­ly dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed so­ci­ety along re­li­gious lines. As such, in for­mal set­tings such as schools, once a prop­er un­der­stand­ing of how re­li­gious be­liefs and prac­tices im­pact stu­dents' views and en­gage­ment in sports is gained, ap­pro­pri­ate in­ter­ven­tion strate­gies can be un­der­tak­en. These strate­gies can be help­ful to phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion teach­ers, par­ents, and, most im­por­tant­ly, the stu­dents.

Lo­cal re­li­gious or­ga­ni­za­tions must al­so make more ef­fort to en­cour­age young and old fol­low­ers to par­tic­i­pate in sports and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties. Not on­ly would such ac­tiv­i­ties ben­e­fit the in­di­vid­u­als per­son­al­ly, but col­lec­tive­ly, they can be a means through which re­li­gious groups can fur­ther con­nect with their mem­bers. As much as com­pe­ti­tion and win­ning are im­por­tant, sports can al­so be a good means through which re­li­gious bod­ies can teach im­por­tant life lessons to their mem­bers.

When com­bined with oth­er vari­ables such as so­cial class, fam­i­ly, school, and com­mu­ni­ty, re­li­gion im­pacts the lev­el and ex­tent of par­tic­i­pa­tion in sports and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties. As such, the Min­istry of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Na­tion­al Gov­ern­ing Bod­ies [NG­Bs] and re­search in­sti­tu­tions such as The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies [UWI] and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go [UTT] should em­bark up­on projects aimed at gain­ing a deep­er un­der­stand­ing of the con­nec­tion be­tween re­li­gion and sport.