Baker, William J. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. ix + 322 pp., $29.95 (USD). ISBN: 0-674-02421-4.

[1] Much of the scholarship at the intersection of religion and sports has been written from one of two perspectives.  The first perspective finds parallels between sport (often defined loosely, but generally understood as team-based athletic competitions) and the various categories of the academic study of religion: myth, ritual, sacred time and space, and the like.  The works common to this “history of religions” perspective often seek answers to such questions as: How does the timelessness of a baseball game recreate sacred time?  How does the football gridiron symbolize sacred space?  How do sports heroes resemble mythic gods or saints?  These works have their use, though they often illuminate the limitations of such comparisons as much as their strengths. Works taking the second perspective focus on a “religious” team—a team more easily and recognizably affiliated with an religious community, such as the “Fighting Irish” of Notre Dame, or the “Mighty Macs” of Immaculata—and examine either the role religion played in the life of the team (or its sponsoring institution) or the role teams with such affiliations have played in larger cultural dynamics.

[2] Because it favours neither of these perspectives, Baker’s Playing With God is refreshing to read. Taking a traditional historian’s approach, Baker (a retired historian) explores the interrelationship between religion and sports in American culture generally, from the rise of “muscular Christianity” in the second half of the nineteenth century to the rise of religious self-consciousness (involving Muslim and Evangelical athletes and coaches) in contemporary sports.  There is at the outset a brief examination of what might best be labeled “religious sports”—sporting events that are directly related to the expression of traditional religious institutions—but for the most part this work is set in twentieth century America, against the backdrop of nineteenth century Protestant cultural dominance.  With great ease and some grace, Baker describes the initial tensions between public athletic competitions (which were considered coarse and crude) and the Protestant establishment that was still mired in Victorian social patterns, and the eventual recognition—due to the “femininization” of American religion? Or competition with African American males? Baker does not say—that sport as much as work could reflect God’s glory.  Debates over when and what to play were tinged not only by religious considerations, but class concerns as well; some games were more “civilized” than others, and since the working class enjoyed a six day work week, Sunday became the day for competitions.  But by the 1930s, it would be clear that as social institutions go, sports and religion were, for the most part, on a level playing field.

[3] Often regrettably downplayed is Baker’s assertion that the acceptance of sport in general American culture was facilitated by “muscular Christianity,” one form of compromise by which Protestantism acculturated into the larger American society.  Unstated by Baker, but supported throughout the work, is the implication that this moderate Protestant compromise—which took place at roughly the same time as other compromises producing the twentieth century version of what might be more broadly labeled “Americanization”—framed the culture into which Roman Catholics, Jews, and eventually Mormons, Muslims, and Evangelicals would compete for a place of acceptance.  It would be through sport and athletic competition—as one but certainly not the only way—that these groups would create their niche, be it the football teams of Notre Dame or Brigham Young University, or the individual but no less effective presence of Jews—and later Muslims—on college and professional basketball and baseball teams.  The real proof would come with the resurgence of Evangelicals who, after a century of increased marginalization from mainstream American culture, would eventually work their way back into the mainstream in part through the institutions of college and professional sport.

[4] Many will be relieved to see that Baker’s work is written in the style of a retired historian more motivated to tell a good story than the need to justify a methodological approach or theoretical perspective.  It reads well, is interesting, and is informative without being smothered by jargon, making it well suited for undergraduate classes in religion and sports, or religion in American culture generally.  For those for whom an absence of heavy theory is a liability rather than an asset, this work can easily be supplemented by any worthwhile history of American religion.

Eric Michael Mazur
Virginia Wesleyan College
emazur@vwc.edu