Rumi Forum Podcast

On November 14th, Rumi Forum held a book event at our offices for God and the Goalposts: A brief History of Religion, Sports, Politics, War, and Art. The interpenetration of sports and religion is as old as history and as wide as geography. The angles of interpenetration have been diverse—from the Bible to the Iliad and the Aeneid, from gladiatorial contests to the Crusades to chess, from the Mayan game of pok-a-pok to Lacrosse to contemporary NBA championship games. Moreover, the sports/religion matrix has always been interwoven with politics (from which religion has rarely strayed) and war (for which sports has always offered a surrogate)—and art (which captures so much of this in words and images—from Greek vase paintings to contemporary films. Give this subject an hour and you will never watch a game the same way again. Speaker/Author: Ori Z. Soltes teaches art history, theology, philosophy and political history at Georgetown University. He is the author of over 280 books, articles, exhibition catalogs,