From the worship of Michael Jordan to the downfall of O.J. Simpson, it has become clear that sports and sports heroes have assumed a role in American society far out of proportion to their traditional value. In this powerful critique of present-day American popular culture, Robert J. Higgs examines the complex and increasingly pervasive control that sports wield in shaping the national self-image. He provides a thoughtful history and analysis of how sports and religion have become intertwined and offers a stinging indictment of the sports-religion-media-education complex. Beginning with the place of sports in Puritan life, Higgs traces the contributions of various individuals and institutions to the present circumstances in which sports and religion are joined. He discusses the transfer of the Puritan ideal to the New World and then moves to the revolutionary period of the national hero and manifest destiny, through the classic period of education for a sound mind in a sound body, to the imperial phase of American supremacy. In the process of tracing this history Higgs makes clear the growing influence of "muscular" Christianity, from circuit-riding evangelists to pulpit-pounding televangelists, from Billy Sunday to Billy Graham, from the YMCA to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Finally he arrives at our present Low Roman or "bread and circuses" period in which sports simultaneously serve the purposes of entertainment, religious proselytism, distraction of the masses, and political propaganda, all under the colorful banner of Christian knighthood as seen in the stadium revivals of Billy Graham and the sporting enthusiasm of Jerry Falwell. In brief, sports and Christianity have followed similar paths. In the beginning they were nationalized, then Hellenized, then Romanized, and, in our own time, televised. The result is that spectator sports have become the reigning American religion, one sharply at odds with a traditional shepherd ethos. This well-written and innovative book makes clear the dangerous power wielded by the sports-religion-media-education complex over the minds and energies of the American people. It is a call for recognition and reevaluation of our present situation that will concern anyone interested in the future of American culture.

Renowned humorist and die-hard football fan Chad Gibbs knows he cannot serve two masters, but at times his faith is overwhelmed by his fanaticism. He is not alone.

To examine the social and cultural significance of the athlete hero in American literature, Robert J. Higgs turns to the works of Ring Lardner, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, William Faulkner, Robert Penn Warren, Arthur Miller, and Tennessee Williams. Higgs views the athlete in literature not as an artistic creation but as one who reflects the tastes, attainments, beliefs, and ideals of his society. The athletes he describes as Apollonian are the know-it-alls, of whom Lardner's Busher Keefe is an example; the Dyonisian, as exemplified by Irwin Shaw's Christian Darling, worships his body as an end in itself. The Adonic seeks knowledge for the sake of self-realization and lives in a world of tension, pain, struggle, and hope. Such a figure is Wolfe's Nebraska Crane. Higgs finds in contemporary American literature a clear rejection of the Apollonian and Dyonisian models and an acceptance of the Adonic.

The president of New York University offers a love letter to America’s most beloved sport and a tribute to its underlying spirituality. For more than a decade, John Sexton has taught a wildly popular New York University course about two seemingly very different things: religion and baseball. Yet Sexton argues that one is actually a pathway to the other. Baseball as a Road to God is about touching that something that lies beyond logical understanding. Sexton illuminates the surprisingly large number of mutual concepts shared between baseball and religion: faith, doubt, conversion, miracles, and even sacredness among many others. Structured like a game and filled with riveting accounts of baseball’s most historic moments, Baseball as Road to God will enthrall baseball fans whatever their religious beliefs may be. In thought-provoking, beautifully rendered prose, Sexton elegantly demonstrates that baseball is more than a game, or even a national pastime: It can be a road to enlightenment.

Like no other nation on earth, Americans eagerly blend their religion and sports. This book traces this dynamic relationship from the Puritan condemnation of games as sinful in the seventeenth century to the near deification of athletic contests in our own day.

The Christian Athlete is a gospel-centered guide that assists athletes who identify as Christians and are seeking to understand how to practically apply their faith to their sport. Athletes desire—and deserve—a more substantive expression of the Christian faith in the context of sport, but they don’t know what it looks like or where to turn to learn more. Author Brian Smith shares his story as an athlete and coach, and his experience working with high-level athletes in the last decade to help readers better understand how to integrate faith and sport by: Assisting those who want a wide-angled understanding of how to live the Christian faith in the context of sports Walking through the many questions Christian athletes ask about winning, losing, injuries, practice, and everything in between Moving Christian athletes from simply having clichéd spiritual sayings decorating their bodies or t-shirts to actually living out their faith through all the opportunities their sport offers them The Christian Athlete will show readers how to live out a biblical perspective on athletics and urge them to engage in the gifts they are given to glorify God whether they are the team MVP or riding the bench.

That Americans take to sports with a spiritual fervor is no secret. Athletics has even been called a civil religion for how it permeates our daily lives as we chase our own dreams of glory or watch others compete. Few would deny our national devotion to sports; however, many would gloss over it as all of a piece. To do that, as William J. Baker shows us, is to miss the fascinating variety of experiences at the intersection of sports and religion—and the ramifications of such on a national citizenry defined, as Baker writes, “by the team they cheer on Saturday and the church they attend on Sunday.” With nods to modern and ancient history, Baker looks at the ever-changing relationship between faith and sports through vignettes about devout athletes, coaches, and journalists. Of Gods and Games offers an accessible entrée into some of the larger issues embedded in American culture’s sports–religion connection. Baker first considers two Christian athletes who have engaged sports and religion on fundamentally different terms: Shelly Pennefather, one of the dominant women’s basketball players of the late 1980s, who left the sport for life as a cloistered nun; and Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow, who has used his college and pro football careers as a platform for evangelizing. In discussing basketball coach Dean Smith (University of North Carolina) and football coaches Steve Spurrier (University of South Carolina) and Bill McCartney (University of Colorado) Baker looks at how each strove to honor faith amid sometimes complicated personal lives and ever-crushing professional demands. Finally, Baker looks at how faith inspired such sportswriters as Grantland Rice, who sprinkled his stories with religious allusions, and Watson Spoelstra, who struck a deal with God at his daughter’s deathbed (she recovered) and subsequently devoted his off-hours and retirement years to charity work.