Giving religion a sporting chance in today’s world

Be that as it may, millennia of faith has already been observed so it seems likely we will continue to see a blurring of the lines between religion and sport.

Dips in the Forty Foot and Banna Strand. Surfers in Sligo. All those thousands who took part in the GOAL Mile Challenges dotted around the country. Christmas Day clearly isn’t what it used to be. In a society increasingly swaddled by secularisation, our observance of religious festivals has undergone a sea change.

For more and more of us, old traditions that leaned on prayer and pulpits have been supplemented, or even replaced, by visits to the beach, hikes in parks or up mountains or maybe just walks or jogs around our localities — much of it with twin benefit for our own physical health and charity towards our fellow man.