Robert Ellis is principal of Regent’s Park College, Oxford, and a member of the faculty of theology and religion at the University of Oxford. He is the author of The Games People Play: Theology, Religion and Sport.

The Rev. Lincoln Harvey is a lecturer in systematic theology at St. Mellitus College in London and the author of A Brief Theology of Sport, which posits that “sport has everything to do with our deepest identity.”  

Olivier Bauer is an associate professor of theology and religious studies at the Universite de Montreal and the author of Hockey as Religion: The Montreal Canadiens.

Rick McDaniel is a Christian speaker, author and leader of Richmond Community Church in Richmond, Va. In September 2013, he wrote a column for Fox News challenging the idea that one cannot be a good Christian and still love football.

Harold Wells is a football coach at J.O. Johnson High School in Decatur, Ala., where he is also the pastor at Newcomb Street Church of Christ.

Atletas de Cristo, or Athletes for Christ, is a Brazil-based international organization of Christian — usually Pentecostal and evangelical — athletes. Its purpose is to “bring the Gospel to the world through the athlete.” Brazilian soccer players have been known to flout FIFA’s rules against proselytizing via clothing at games.

Sohaib N. Sultan is Muslim life coordinator and chaplain at Princeton University. In July 2014, as part of a series of Ramadan reflections for Time, he wrote about why Muslims should avoid food waste.

Phillip Larsen is a Christian and a writer based in Yukon, Okla. In October 2013, he wrote an essay for Ethics Daily that questioned holding up as heroes football players who misbehave off the field.

Rachel Allison is an assistant profession in the department of sociology at Mississippi State University. She is the coordinator of a session called  “Soccer and the Politics of Inequality,” which will look at the social and racial issues raised by professional soccer and the FIFA World Cup, at the 2014 conference of the North American […]