If I had to choose between my wife and my putter... well, I’d miss her.
Spirit of the Game
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Paul Putz, New York, Oxford University Press, 2024
This book details how a group of Protestant men (and women after 1970) built a lasting evangelical sports subculture, a movement which the author calls the “Christian athlete movement”. Their achievement has been so successful that, the author argues, “a strong case can be made that there is no public workplace or industry in American culture today with a greater concentration of organised and committed Christians than big time sports”. The book comes out of Paul Putz’s PhD research “American protestants and the creation of Sportianity 1920-1980” but the book continues the story to the present day.
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In 1999 Tony Ladd and James Mathisen had written Muscular Christianity Muscular Christianity Ladd and Mathisen an account of the relationship between evangelical protestants and the development of American sport 1850s to 1990s, using a structure of engagement, disengagement, re-engagement which is probably rather overstated. Nonetheless we should be grateful to Ladd and Mathisen for starting the process. In 2001 Clifford Putney wrote Muscular Christianity (Manhood and sports in protestant America, 1880-1920) Muscular Christianity Putney
Other books like The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Sport , How Calvinism and Capitalism Shaped America’s Games, Steven J. Overman, Protestant Ethic
help the non-American reader (and maybe the American too) to understand how Christianity has influenced the development of sport in USA.
There are many things that make Putz’s book outstanding. It is painstakingly researched. The account of the development of Christian ministry in and around the big American sports is unique and helps us understand how we got to where we are now. Issues are identified as part of the story - race, sexuality, theological differences etc. The origins of ministry to and in sport are documented as never before.
A very helpful contribution to our understanding of sport and Christianity.