“It is the innocence which constitutes the crime,” wrote James Baldwin in a letter to his nephew in 1962. White people were unable to see their complicity in creating a world that devalued African Americans because, Baldwin said, they were “in effect still trapped in a history which they do not understand and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it.”Footnote ³

This innocence can too easily be buoyed by simple narratives of sports’ power to break down racial bias and inequality through the perseverance of the individual. Many people see sports as a key venue that has broken down racial barriers; meritocracy on the field breaks down the visible and invisible walls that segregate people. It may start with a pioneer, what scholar Arthur Remillard calls “an athletic standard-bearer of a marginalized group,” who integrates a sport and then perseveres to transcend “the moral limits of an era and [suffer] for the sake of a more inclusive future.”Footnote ⁴ Or it may start with a forced change, like in the 2000 film Remember the Titans, in which players and coaches on a newly integrated high school team in the 1970s learn to love one another and overcome bigotry, all the while winning on the gridiron.Footnote ⁵

This is the narrative many of my students bring to my class on the history of sports in the United States, and which many of them who have played on multiracial teams have experienced. It is also one we interrogate throughout the course, and which Paul Putz’s Spirit of the Game helps complicate by demonstrating how colorblindness and individual change came to dominate Christian approaches to racial equality in big-time sports in the context of what he calls the Christian athlete movement.

Seeing sports as a way to advance racial equality has a long history. Black muscular Christians who, like their white counterparts, began to champion sports in the late nineteenth century, carried an added burden: seeking racial equality.Footnote ⁶ They saw winning at sports as a way to prove they were as good as any white man. In the 1920s, as sports’ popularity increased, many Black churches became sporting congregations, valuing sports for the supposed character traits that they helped develop. In California, Pastor Karl Downs used sports to draw people to his Methodist church, including a young Jackie Robinson, who would go on to integrate Major League Baseball.Footnote ⁷

When Robinson and fellow Methodist, Brooklyn Dodgers general manager, Branch Rickey (re) integrated Major League Baseball, they were operating in a nation grappling with how best to achieve the so-called American way. Putz outlines the tension: on the one hand, men like Rickey believed that pluralism could exist in the free market, projecting, Putz says, “an image of a pluralistic and inclusive American way that contrasted with Nazi Germany’s doctrine of racial purity.”Footnote ⁸ On the other hand, some Americans wanted to redistribute power, uniting as a pluralistic society around more substantial economic, social, and political reforms. The former was more individualistic; the latter addressed systems and institutions.

In big-time sports, the former won out: while Rickey might disrupt the status quo, few white power brokers were like him. From the 1940s–1960s, to the chagrin of Black sportswriters and fans, most white-led teams with Black players benched them when playing against segregated teams. It was, white coaches said, an example of “Christian hospitality to the segregationist traditions of the South.”Footnote ⁹ It was clear; few white Christians in big-time sports were willing to force racial change.

Northern white Christians were not like their southern segregationist counterparts who were convinced that God almighty had segregated the races.Footnote ¹⁰ Though they may agree in theory with the “brotherhood of man under the fatherhood of God,” a common phrase at the time, they prioritized free choice and individual autonomy. These priorities manifested in debates over housing, which was the lynchpin of race in the North. During the early 1960s, Black activists and a minority of white mainline Protestant and Catholic partners worked for open housing, arguing that their position matched Judeo-Christian values.Footnote ¹¹ In Illinois, white evangelical ministers, collaborating with the Illinois Association of Real Estate Boards, called the proposed legislation “forced housing.” They argued, “we don’t doubt the words of Him who said, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,’ but we do doubt … that He meant to disturb our American heritage and freedoms by picking these neighbors for us.”Footnote ¹²

While this commitment to individual autonomy limited the possibilities of change, Putz’s narrative prevents readers from assuming clear binaries. To give just one example, the FCA refused to run segregated camps in the South, even as it was gaining popularity in that region, which was radical in the South.Footnote ¹³ The FCA did place some limits on individual choice. Nonetheless, as Putz notes, “the FCA’s support for racial inclusion came on white terms and placed white concerns at the forefront,” so much so that white coaches who segregated their programs “were put forward as model Christian coaches with no expectation that they speak out or challenge segregation.”Footnote ¹⁴

The revolt of the Black athlete laid bare the systemic racism that continued to characterize big-time sports in the late 1960s. This Black Power-inflected movement “criticized the sports establishment, [was] skeptical of prioritizing integration at the expense of Black institutions, and either rejected Christianity as a “white” religion … or de-emphasized Christianity as a core aspect of their identity.”Footnote ¹⁵ Some Black participants in the Christian athlete movement supported the protests while others continued to look for shared common ground with white teammates and coaches. However, while white FCA leaders sought out the perspectives of their Black counterparts, “theirs was ultimately a vision with clear limits,” Putz writes. They “could not adopt race-conscious remedies that deviated from an individualistic, colorblind ideology.”Footnote ¹⁶

Care for a colorblind ideology characterized much of the Christian athlete movement for the rest of the century, though Putz paints the dynamics as complicated. Given the precariousness of evangelical Christianity’s position within big-time sports, white leaders wanted to bring Black and white athletes together around a “shared vision of Christian manhood” and to portray “sports as a site for interracial cooperation.”Footnote ¹⁷ While white Christian athlete leaders made room for people who did not follow the conservative line on race like Tom Skinner, most African Americans involved had to take care not to offend white people.Footnote ¹⁸ The Christian athlete movement more often than not marginalized the civil rights activism that had come to characterize a significant portion of the Black church tradition.

Thus, the interracial relationships that developed in the Christian athlete movement were limited in their capacity to effect racial change. And so, with our students. The Spirit of the Game can help us take them beyond Remember the Titans.

The first time I heard Paul Putz describe The Spirit of the Game: American Christianity and Big-Time Sports, I was transported back in time to September of 1992, when I heard Buck Williams, power forward for the Portland Trail Blazers, talk about his faith in Jesus. Williams spoke before an overflowing crowd at Civic Stadium alongside country music legends Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash, but the true star of the evening was the Reverend Billy Graham. That night, Graham treated over 50,000 Portlanders to a classic Crusade, complete with music, testimony, preaching, and of course an overflowing altar call. As a kid, I was a huge Blazer fan (Rip City!), and I only had eyes for Williams, but I listened as Williams said that Billy Graham coming to the Rose City was “the greatest thing that has ever happened to Portland, by far.”

Many historians have documented how Billy Graham and his colleagues – conservative white Protestant denominational leaders, political activists, parachurch organizers, and businessmen who gathered under the umbrella term of “evangelical” in the mid-twentieth century – shaped American public life throughout the twentieth century. Far fewer have explored how the cadre of public figures that Graham invited to share his stage influenced the trajectory of religion and public life in the USA.

And yet, my childhood memory is just one among millions of stories of people drawn into an experience with evangelical Protestantism by the potent blend of sport and celebrity and Christian piety. In The Spirit of the Game, Putz asks readers to consider: what can one learn about the development of American Christianity in the twentieth century if one uses the Christian athlete movement as a prism through which to refract Protestantism? My research has explored the role that evangelical pop music known as Contemporary Christian Music played in creating and shaping evangelicalism in the United States and beyond, and so I suspected that one could learn a great deal in the hands of a skilled historian and thoughtful student of sport.

The Spirit of the Game shows that Putz is just the right scholar to ask that question. In this monograph, Putz uses the Christian athlete movement as a lens through which to examine how sports have shaped American Christian communities, and how conversations about athletics serve as proxy conversations about Christians and race, ethnicity, class, politics, and more. Putz asks bigger questions about the intersection of athletes, athletics, and American Protestantism, but conservative (mostly white) evangelicals constitute a majority of the commercial partnerships, ministry networks, and political activism associated with the Christian athlete movement. Because of this, and the fact that my own work on evangelical entertainment intersects with this exploration of sports and evangelicals, my comments are focused primarily on the insights that an exploration of American evangelicalism through sports yields.

The biggest big-time sports are professional, but examining twentieth-century evangelicalism through the Christian athlete movement invites readers to consider how Christian sports in the amateur space aligned with, and bolstered, conservative evangelical parenting culture. Evangelical activist and media magnate Dr. James Dobson and his organization Focus on the Family appear mostly in the background of this book, in instances when Focus on the Family enlisted Christian athletes alongside Contemporary Christian Music artists and other evangelical celebrities as models of ideal Christian living. Dobson’s understanding of parenting, however, positioned mothers and fathers as agents of catechesis, responsible for shaping not only their children’s religious beliefs but also their character, habits, political and social identities during the crucial years of adolescence. Sports seemed like the ideal way to form young Christians.

Youth sports became an effective arena for this broader evangelical project of spiritual formation and political activism. Within Christian athletic culture, competition, discipline, teamwork, and physical excellence were imbued with spiritual significance, while athletic participation, particularly among boys, reinforced conservative evangelical ideals of gender, authority, and family. Boys “preparing for adolescence,” and young men were celebrated for embodying a modern form of muscular Christianity in which strength, leadership, competitiveness, and self-control were understood as marks of both athletic success and godly manhood.

The Christian athlete movement reveals how evangelical influence extended beyond the home and church into institutions outside the purview of church governance. Sports became a powerful site for transmitting theological commitments and conservative social values to the next generation, and the Christian athlete movement did not need traditional church structures to survive and thrive. The fact that the Christian athlete movement flourishes outside traditional church institutions is especially relevant in the twenty-first century, as forms of conservative white Protestantism that once depended on strong, stable institutions – the “Billy Graham era” of twentieth-century evangelicalism – have entered a period of sustained decline in the twenty-first century. Denominational membership has fallen, church attendance has decreased, and many long-standing evangelical publishing houses, colleges, and parachurch organizations face mounting financial and demographic pressures. These institutional challenges reflect broader shifts in American religious life, including declining trust in established authorities, generational disaffiliation, and changing patterns of media consumption and political engagement.

It would be tempting to conclude, based on observing institutional measures, that “white evangelicalism” has lost power in American public life. Yet in The Spirit of the Game, Putz shows how in big-time sports, evangelical public action and activism continue in powerful ways on prominent platforms. In this way, The Spirit of the Game shows the value of analyzing American Christianity beyond institutional measures. The influence of conservative white Protestantism is alive and well in decentralized networks, charismatic personalities, digital platforms, and activist organizations rather than through the robust denominational and institutional infrastructures that shaped much of the twentieth century.

In The Spirit of the Game, Putz also provides researchers with a valuable model for examining evangelicalism as a commercial religion through the business of sports. Putz demonstrates how sports became a marketplace in which evangelical organizations, ministries, publishers, coaches, athletes, and entrepreneurs created institutions, brands, and networks that shaped American religious life. His work highlights how evangelical communities gather and form in the expanding sports industry. In doing so, Putz invites scholars to analyze sports not simply as a cultural backdrop to evangelicalism, but as one of the key economic and institutional arenas through which evangelical identities, values, and authority have been produced, marketed, and sustained.

Putz’s treatment of the Christian athlete movement also reveals how evangelical ideals can be efficiently organized around language of achievement, competition, and victory. By presenting athletic success as evidence of discipline, virtue, and divine favor, these ministries often frame the Christian life as one of “winning.” The wins are ultimately spiritual, to be sure, but also this-worldly, observable through accomplishments, influence, and excellence. In this way, the movement reflects a broader prosperity-oriented logic, even when it does not explicitly preach a prosperity gospel. Success on the field becomes a sign of faithful living, while the disciplined body serves as both testimony and witness. At the same time, the movement elevates a particular vision of the ideal Christian body: youthful, healthy, strong, and able. Such representations reinforce able-bodiedness as a spiritual norm, leaving little space for disability, chronic illness, aging, or bodily vulnerability as a healthy embodiment of Christian faithfulness. The result is an evangelical imagination in which physical excellence and competitive success become intertwined with holiness, obscuring theological traditions that locate God’s presence not in triumph, but in weakness, dependence, and suffering.

A strong scholarly work opens new avenues of inquiry, and The Spirit of the Game does exactly that. Putz’s account invites historians to examine forms of Christian athleticism beyond elite sports and their influence on evangelical communities. Organizations such as The Power Team, whose feats of strength drew millions to churches, schools, and revival meetings, shaped evangelical ideas about masculinity, discipleship, and spiritual authority in under-interrogated ways. The book also prompts questions about those on the margins of this story. Because the Christian athlete movement has been organized largely around straight, male ideals, future research might explore more deeply how it shaped the experiences of women and LGBTQ+ people through exclusion, accommodation, or resistance. In addition, as evangelical sports ministries expand through digital media, global celebrity athletes, and transnational networks, Putz’s work provides a strong foundation for understanding how these movements continue to evolve.

Ultimately, The Spirit of the Game demonstrates that the history of American Christianity cannot be fully understood without taking sports seriously. Putz shows that athletics have been more than a backdrop for evangelical witness; they have been a central arena in which evangelical identities have been performed, commercialized, and reproduced. His book reminds historians that religious influence resides not only in churches and denominations, but also in stadiums, youth leagues, media networks, and the consumer marketplaces that connect them. By placing the Christian athlete movement at the center of the story, Putz offers both a compelling account of twentieth-century evangelicalism and a methodological invitation to scholars of religion: to follow the institutions, markets, bodies, and spectacles through which religious power circulates.

At the end of a preseason practice in August 2012, Clemson University head football coach Dabo Swinney gathered his team for a special announcement. “Someone is about to turn their life over to Christ,” Swinney exclaimed. He invited the entire team to stay in order to witness star wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins be baptized by the pastor of Swinney’s Southern Baptist church in a large Rubbermaid ice tub. Swinney did not regularly superintend his players’ conversions nor conclude practices with religious rituals, but he had happily granted Hopkins’s request to be baptized in front of his coaches and teammates. Indeed, this event epitomized how Swinney was building upon the efforts of his predecessor, Tommy Bowden, and establishing a thoroughly Christianized culture within Clemson University’s football program. After becoming head coach in 2008, Swinney hired assistant coaches and staff who shared his evangelical faith and enthusiasm; installed a team chaplain and director of player relations who each offered players Christian resources and spiritual direction; coordinated annual bus trips for the team to attend church together; held chapel services prior to games that almost all players attended; spoke openly about his own faith in individual and team meetings; and made religion a prominent part of Clemson’s recruiting process. “I’m a Christian,” Swinney reportedly told potential players. “If you have a problem with that, you don’t have to be here.”Footnote ¹⁹

By almost any measure, Clemson’s football program under Swinney’s leadership became one of the most successful contemporary representatives of the Christian athlete movement that Paul Emory Putz insightfully analyzes in The Spirit of the Game: American Christianity and Big-Time Sports. The most prominent sports ministry organization in Putz’s historical account, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA), significantly shaped the ways in which, according to a Sports Illustrated article, Swinney “made Christianity the foundation of his program, using faith to bring together players and coaches.” Swinney’s own conversion experience at age 16 occurred at an FCA meeting. As Clemson’s head coach, he served as both a spokesperson and exemplar for the organization, featuring prominently in FCA’s promotional materials and receiving its Coach of the Year award in 2014. The team’s chaplain was sponsored in part by FCA, which provided the Bibles that he offered to players. A full-time FCA staff member also simultaneously served as a “life coach” for the program’s off-field leadership and life skills program. Numerous players participated in FCA activities and advertising. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the broader FCA student group at Clemson University grew to become the nation’s largest chapter. While football fans cheered Swinney’s and the team’s resounding on-field success – between 2011 and 2021, Clemson won two National Championships, played in the title game four times, and won seven ACC Championships – participants in the Christian athlete movement celebrated their intensive integration of Christianity and sports. And yet, as described below, a number of critics did not share this enthusiasm. Instead, they protested that Swinney and Clemson University were violating the legal requirements and ethical expectations of religious pluralism.Footnote ²⁰

The tension between the problems of diversity and the promise of pluralism represents a central theme in American religious history. Religious diversity has been a social reality since the colonial era that has often created challenges and conflicts. Pluralism, a positive response to diversity, has been a largely unrealized goal that entails widespread respect for and even engagement with people of diverse beliefs and behaviors. Historian William R. Hutchison has characterized pluralism as “a founding ideal” of the United States: most Americans in the early republic proudly regarded their culture as significantly more tolerant than European nations, and the First Amendment prohibited the federal government from both “establishing” an official religion and prohibiting citizens’ “free exercise” of religion. Yet pluralism developed slowly and unevenly. In response to growing religious diversity, the majority of white Protestant Christians sought to preserve their power and privileges. Religious minorities only gradually gained legal toleration, cultural inclusion, and more equitable participation in all spheres of American life by the end of the twentieth century. As a range of contemporary scholars have suggested, the expansion of religious pluralism has produced both battles and benefits throughout American history.Footnote ²¹

Putz recognizes that his work illustrates debates concerning this theme. In the introduction to The Spirit of the Game, he writes, “Precisely because my book is about sports and religion, it is also about American pluralism and the public spaces we share together.” Throughout his narrative, Putz highlights how prominent figures within the Christian athlete movement attempted to “keep the United States aligned with their vision for society,” even as these coaches and players at times disagreed in their interpretations of American identity, belonging, and desired cultural values. Ultimately, he writes in the epilogue, “The Christian athlete movement was [among other things] a cultural and political project that privileged and promoted certain ideas about America and Christianity over others”–namely, particular ideas predominantly held by the conservative white Protestants over the past half century.Footnote ²²

Despite its increasing visibility and impact, the Christian athlete movement represented a subculture. The wide world of sports was, well, much wider than the circles of middlebrow Protestants and evangelicals. Big-time sports in America developed as a pluralistic context in which participating Christian coaches and players had to operate but that they could not control. Thus, Putz argues, “this need to fit within a pluralistic space means that the Christian athlete movement” faced a perpetual “paradox.” The movement gained significant power: not only “the ability to define…what it means to be a Christian in sports,” but also (I would add) the financial resources, perceived credibility, and other privileges that come with being part of the majoritarian religious tradition in America. At the same time, Putz concludes, the movement seemed precarious: it did not have ensured access, much less autonomy, within the pluralistic context of the sports industry, which itself sits within the larger pluralistic culture of the United States. As a result, leaders and participants chose or were forced to make accommodations and to adjust their practices.Footnote ²³ By analyzing the Christian athlete movement in relation to pluralism, therefore, The Spirit of the Game enriches our broader understanding of potential challenges and conflicts that arise when religious groups – especially those part of the Christian majority – attempt to promote their agendas in non-private and religiously diverse spaces. Putz’s work reveals how and why sports in America often become religiously-infused rather than religiously neutral spaces, settings not only for personal religious expressions but also for controversial exertions of religious power.

Building upon Putz’s framework, I want to briefly highlight the power and precarity of the modern Christian athlete movement with respect to the legal requirements for religious pluralism as mandated by the Constitution. The First Amendment “establishment” and “free exercise” clauses leave citizens free to believe whatever they find compelling and to choose whether or not to engage in religious practices. The government, its officials, and its employees should not endorse any particular religion and should not act in religiously coercive manners. Putz addresses this theme briefly as he mentions resistance within the Christian athlete movement in the 1980s and 1990s to prohibitions against prayers in public schools and limitations on “the religious activities of coaches and sports ministry groups on public school campuses.”Footnote ²⁴ Yet ignorance of or aversion to constitutional principles of religious pluralism persisted within the Christian athlete movement and, one could argue, even intensified in recent years as part of polarizing debates concerning religious liberty and expressions in public spaces. The example of Dabo Swinney and the pervasively Christian culture of the football program at Clemson–a public university–offers a vivid case study that garnered widespread national attention.

After receiving several complaints from people associated with Clemson, the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) – a prominent watchdog organization dedicated to the separation of church and state – sent a letter to the university in April 2014. The group charged Clemson with violating the Constitution in numerous ways, naming many of the practices previously described. In effect, FFRF argued, the university and its employees failed to remain religiously neutral when members of the football staff – particularly Swinney as head coach–endorsed Christianity, sponsored religious practices, used public funds and resources for religious purposes, and created “a culture of religious coercion” for student-athletes over whom they exercised power and authority.Footnote ²⁵

A range of media outlets carried stories about this criticism of Swinney and Clemson’s football program, demonstrating the cultural significance of this controversy that involved sports, religion, and politics. Articles appeared both in mainstream outlets such as USA Today, the New York Times, and the Associated Press as well as on sports media sites such as ESPN.com, Bleacher Report, and SB Nation. Constitutional lawyers and scholars were often interviewed for these stories, and one eventually published a sustained analysis in the Virginia Law Review. “Although Clemson’s success on the football field continues,” one concluded, “several of its program’s documented religious practices should fail an Establishment Clause challenge” because of their coercive nature and lack of neutrality.Footnote ²⁶

For their part, a university spokesperson and Swinney responded to the Freedom From Religion Foundation by maintaining that players participated in religious activities only on a voluntary basis and by insisting that they respected religious pluralism. “Players of any faith or no faith at all are welcome in our program,” Swinney declared. Nevertheless, his defiance was evident. “We do things the right way and always have,” Swinney stated. “We’ll continue to run the program the way we always have…I have coached and recruited just about every faith and religion that’s out there, or non-religion, and have never had a problem with any of it before.” Despite legal expectations for accommodating religious diversity and differences, Swinney sought to protect his power and privilege to lead the program according to his sectarian Christian convictions.Footnote ²⁷

The pervasive nature of religion in America and the realities of religious diversity have often combined to create religious conflicts in shared cultural spaces. Because sports have become one of our most important and powerful cultural institutions, Paul Putz’s The Spirit of the Game shows scholars the importance of incorporating analyses of athletics in their studies of religious pluralism in the United States.

In the introduction to The Spirit of the Game, I wrote about my experience growing up as a basketball-playing pastor’s kid in Nebraska. I struggled to reconcile two identities: the Christian and the athlete. Then, in high school, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) came into my life, and I began to link those identities together. I began to see myself as part of a Christian athlete community. Although I did not realize it at the time, that experience set me on the path to becoming a historian. It gave me a set of questions to explore, a desire to know more about the unique Christian sports subculture that had shaped my life.

In my PhD program, as I worked to make sense of the way that sports fit into the landscape of American religious history – how they provide a lens through which to see the negotiations and transformations of American Protestantism – I found support from a community of scholars who became conversation partners along the way. Many were affiliated with the American Society of Church History (ASCH), offering crucial insights that helped me refine my project and develop as a historian. To have this book featured at an ASCH conference and in this Church History roundtable is truly an honor. I am grateful to Hunter Hampton, a fellow scholar of religion and sports, for organizing the panel, and to each of the respondents, whose work I have read and learned from over the years. In the spirit of continuing the conversation, I would like to offer a few reflections in response to the thoughtful questions and ideas they have raised.

I will start with Karen Johnson, whose remarks are shaped by her expertise as a scholar of race and religion. She beautifully articulated the “partially fulfilled promise of sports,” the reality that emerges when we dig underneath the mythology of racial progress and see the ongoing complexities and nuances at the intersections of sports, race, and Christianity.

At the same time, Karen focuses special attention on our task as teachers, on how the scholarship that we produce comes across when we present it to students in the classroom. She highlights one of the benefits of teaching sports history courses: They provide a starting point through which students can explore challenging questions related to race and ethnicity, belonging and inclusion, systems and structures. The familiarity of sports and of a particular story that Americans tell about sports – the story about progress and meritocracy and inclusion that is present in films like Remember the Titans – offer students a foundation from which they can engage and explore questions they have not considered before. I tried to write The Spirit of the Game with students like that in mind, and I hope that people who use it in the classroom can find it helpful for those purposes.

Something else was significant about Karen’s comments: Her attention to place. This is no surprise given the exemplary way she emphasizes that theme in One in Christ: Chicago Catholics and the Quest for Interracial Justice. Footnote ²⁸ Similarly, in her comments she highlights how the logics displayed and articulated in the sports world – the “colorblind” and meritocratic world of free choice and individual autonomy – were deployed outside sports, in places like Chicago, Illinois, and its open housing debates in the 1960s.

Sports hold their power in large part because they provide communal rituals and activities through which people enact and form a shared sense of identity around a particular place. To encourage students to reflect on the role that sports plays in their own communities, to ask them to research the histories of their local contexts with an eye for the intersections of religion and race, is a generative way to encourage historical inquiry and curiosity.

Of course, sports are not the only popular cultural activity that can help us make sense of our contexts and communities. As I was writing The Spirit of the Game, Leah Payne was working on her brilliant book about contemporary Christian music, God Gave Rock and Roll to You. Footnote ²⁹ While we were both in the writing stage, we set up a Zoom call to swap notes and talk through how we were exploring our topics. That conversation with Leah helped me clarify one of the themes I emphasize in my book: Evangelical Christians have had to approach their sports subculture in a different way than their music subculture. They cannot withdraw and create their own “family-friendly,” Christian-only leagues. Their public witness relies on reaching as many people as possible, and that requires them to be involved in the pluralistic spaces of big-time sports, spaces whose boundaries and priorities they do not dictate or control.

Brantley Gasaway, whose Progressive Evangelicals and the Pursuit of Social Justice is essential for understanding the post-1970s evangelical landscape, picked up on the challenge of pluralism in his comments.Footnote ³⁰ The case study he discusses –the fusion of evangelical Christianity and college football fostered by Dabo Swinney at Clemson University – is especially helpful because Swinney exemplifies the way the Christian athlete movement’s influence extends across generations. Swinney is at once a product of the movement (he said his life was changed after attending an FCA event in the 1980s) and a key leader for a new generation. As young athletes and coaches experience organizations like the FCA and become part of the movement, many go on to long careers where they replicate and reproduce the ideas and practices they have been taught. It is that behind-the-scenes, institutional infrastructure of the Christian athlete movement that gives it its staying power.

Interestingly, in 2019 I was interviewed by Sports Illustrated for one of the articles Brantley referenced. The author of the article wanted me to be the token academic, offering some critical words about how Dabo Swinney’s culture of Christianity was potentially coercive. I played my part. Although I also defended Swinney’s right to express his faith and pray in public, I pointed out the unique position of power occupied by a coach and suggested that caution was needed.

After the article was published, I received an angry phone call from an older Southern Baptist. He saw that I was employed at a seminary, and he wondered how a self-professed Christian could say anything other than “amen” to a story of a coach sharing their faith.

We had a fruitful conversation. I explained my work as a historian and my perspective as an academic. I talked about the balance between publicly expressing your faith (the “free exercise” part of the First Amendment) and also respecting the rights of others not to be coerced by government entities when it comes to religion (the “establishment” part). I gestured to the idea that Brantley expressed, that in some ways college and high school sports have become “settings not only for individual religious expressions but also for controversial exertions of religious power.” I suggested that Christian coaches could witness for Christ in their vocations while also respecting the rights of their players to compete in an environment free from religious coercion.

I still stand by what I said to that caller. But I also think there is something else to be said, particularly to those on the other side, those who are troubled by Swinney’s fusion of evangelical Christianity with college football. Put simply, focusing only on criticism and court cases is a losing strategy. At some point, if you want to create a more pluralistic space in sports, you need to offer something constructive.

In The Spirit of the Game, I trace how ecumenical and mainline Protestants launched and then gradually lost influence over the Christian athlete movement. While there are multiple reasons for their decline, one reason was self-inflicted: Not wanting to coerce anyone, they opted out of providing a Christian presence entirely. They took themselves and their tradition away as an option for Christian athletes and coaches seeking to connect their lived experience with their faith. They ceded the space to evangelicals. By the 1980s, liberal Protestants rarely, if ever, offered a constructive vision for sports engagement. But they did provide plenty of think pieces and editorials criticizing the presence of Christianity in sports and urging courts to step in to prevent high school and college coaches from praying with their teams.

Given the current disposition of the Supreme Court, the chances of turning to the courts to constrain what Christian coaches can say and do seem more unlikely than ever. For those who believe there is a need for greater religious pluralism in sports, it might be time to learn from evangelicals and get in the game. Provide a ministry of presence and a vision of faith that is connected to the realities of coaching and competing. Instead of focusing only on fighting against public expressions of religion in sports, invest in and provide alternative expressions of religion for athletes and coaches. If my book showed anything, I hope it showed that sports are an important and powerful source of identity formation in today’s world. Religious groups that hope to shape society and reach future generations ignore it at their own peril.

That suggestion takes us into the realm of the future, however, which is certainly not my expertise. In the meantime, while the future continues to work itself out, I am grateful to have such sharp and thoughtful conversation partners with whom I can continue to explore the fascinating and formative intersections between sports and Christianity.