In his carefully researched, beautifully written Playing with God, Bill Baker demonstrates that athletes and ministers have long worked together, and that the idea of sport as a civic religion is far from being an accident or a turn of phrase.
Benjamin G. Rader
Playing with God is sprightly, humorous, fast-paced, and judicious. No other book on modern religion and sport is as expansive, well-researched, or satisfying. Yet another touchdown by a former college quarterback!
— Benjamin G. Rader, author of American Sports: From the Age of Folk Games to the Age of Televised Sports
Randall Balmer
Playing with God surveys the complex and dynamic relationship between sport and religion throughout American history, with a keen eye for the shifting dynamics between these two staples of American life. This is a superb book that invites us to consider even more carefully the relationship between play and piety.
— Randall Balmer, Barnard College, Columbia University
Randy Roberts
In his carefully researched, beautifully written Playing with God, Bill Baker demonstrates that athletes and ministers have long worked together, and that the idea of sport as a civic religion is far from being an accident or a turn of phrase.
— Randy Roberts, author of The Rock, the Curse, and the Hub: A Random History of Boston Sports
Elliott Gorn
William Baker's Playing with God is a natural. Baker reveals the countless ways that religious ideas infuse sports, and the complex ways that sports resemble religion. Along the way he tells great stories, and unearths a range of beliefs and practices across time and faiths. This is a fascinating history.
— Elliott Gorn, author of A Brief History of American Sports
