One Month After The Book Drop
Catching up on the reaction and response to THE SPIRIT OF THE GAME
As I type this, I’m sitting in a living room in McCook, Nebraska.
Outside the air is crisp and cold, perfect for a November night in the Midwest. Inside, the scent of molasses and ginger from holiday cookies lingers. It’s warm, comfortable, welcoming. It feels like home.
My last post was about this town and the way it shaped me as a person and a writer. I wrote it just two days before my book was officially released to the world.
I planned to write a follow-up post about my journey as a young scholar, reflecting on the historians and academics who invested in me as I pursued a career in higher education. Then work responsibilities piled up and life got busy. I wasn’t able to carve out the time to put my thoughts together.
I’m still going to write that post. But right now, as I hang out in my hometown during Thanksgiving week, it’s the perfect time to pause and reflect back on the past month and the response I’ve received since my book dropped.
From beginning to end, it’s an exercise in gratitude.
Let’s recap a few highlights:
Kelsey Dallas of the Deseret News is one of the best journalists out there covering the intersection of sports and religion. On the release day of the book, she published an interview with me about the way athletes talk about faith.
In the Boston Globe, Craig Fehrman wrote an essay centered on my book: “When sports got religion: A new book examines how Christianity became woven into the fabric of American athletics”
Matt Brown, founder of the Extra Points newsletter, is one of my favorite sportswriters. His newsletter is a go-to source for anyone interested in the landscape of college sports. He gave The Spirit of the Game a great shoutout in one of his recent mailbag posts.
My favorite Christian publication, Christianity Today, published an excerpt from the book and featured it in its weekly books newsletter: “After Making Baseball History, Branch Rickey Faced a Spiritual Crisis”
Roger Lipe has been serving in the sports chaplaincy community for decades. He started his career with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and now serves as Character Coach Director of Nations of Coaches. Roger shared a few thoughts after reading the book: “I just finished reading this outstanding book. Though I grew up in, volunteered in, and have been employed for 30 years by ministries of the Christian athlete movement, I had no idea of some of the nuance and cultural shifts within it.”
RaShan Frost played football at Auburn and then served as a college coach and a team chaplain. He’s now a pastor and a professor. And he wrote a great review of The Spirit of the Game for The Gospel Coalition. Here’s Frost’s main takeaway: “[Putz’s] groundbreaking survey shows how sports, religion, and politics converge to influence American life and culture...From my perspective, Putz tells this important story well. Coaches, athletes, and pastors who hope to understand the relationship between Protestant Christianity and sports in the United States will find this an important book for years to come.”
Sean Strehlow, professor of sport management at Messiah University, shared a few thoughts about the book on Threads. “If you have an overlapping interest in sport and American religious history,” he wrote, “this book is a must-read.” Check out his whole thread if you want to know what I was trying to do with the book. I think Sean really captures the nuanced, balanced, complex story I was trying to tell.
Brian Smith, a sports ministry leader and author of The Christian Athlete, wrote these kind words in an Amazon review: “Whether you’re a sports enthusiast, a history buff, or a student of American religion, Dr. Putz’s work offers rich insights into how faith has shaped the world of American athletics. It's a beautiful blend of being well researched but also extremely accessible. In other words, you don't need a PhD to wrap your head around the role that faith has played in shaping the culture of sports in the US.”
Along with the public feedback I’ve received, I’ve also had the opportunity to do a couple invited talks about the book, including one with the athletic department at George Fox University. (Side note: Oregon is absolutely beautiful). And I’ve loved seeing so many people sharing photos of The Spirit of the Game on social media or messaging me individually to let me know they’ve read it.
That part has been especially encouraging: hearing from readers what they liked, what they didn’t, and what stood out.
I had coffee a few weeks ago with someone who has spent 40+ years in sports ministry at the elite sports level. He’s lived through and experienced many of the events, people, and developments I write about in the last three chapters of the book. And while he definitely had some pushback—some sections of the book had more of a critical edge than he would like—he also genuinely enjoyed it. He felt it put together in a new way some of the big-picture pieces of the Christian sports world that he has inhabited for most of his life.
As an author, I couldn’t ask for more.
The same goes for the overall response I’ve received since October. If you’ve read or spread the word about The Spirit of the Game, thank you for making this first book release so special. On Thursday, when I list the things I’m thankful for, your support will be near the top of the list.
Along with book release activities, I’ve shared my thoughts on sports and Christianity in a few other places recently.
For Common Good Magazine, I contributed to a panel discussion titled “What Happens When Sports and Church Conflict?”
At Sports Spectrum, I wrote about the work we’re doing at the Faith & Sports Institute.
Happy Thanksgiving y’all!