ABSTRACT
Christianity has been an enduring feature of films featuring sports or sporting figures since the early twentieth century, such that religious icons, references and rituals have now become naturalised as familiar and recurring presences in the cinema. Recent Christian drama films such as the American football-themed Facing the Giants (2006) and the surfing biopic Soul Surfer (2011), have employed the emotive and seductive qualities of the mainstream sports film to affirm Christian themes. They each remind us that sport is a powerful vehicle for the promotion of faith-based narratives; while offering the considerable challenges of sporting competition, the drive to success and its realisation by characters who foreground their Christian belief, may appear to provide convincing evidence to some of the importance of Christian faith.
