The SkyePod - Paul Putz

Summary

The SkyePod - Paul Putz (June 20, 2025)

Host: Skye Jethani
Guest: Paul Emery Putz, Director of the Faith and Sports Institute at Baylor University's George W. Truitt Theological Seminary
Book Discussed: The Spirit of the American Christianity and Big Time Sports

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1. Introduction

In this episode of The SkyePod, host Skye Jethani engages in a comprehensive discussion with Paul Emery Putz, a distinguished scholar from Baylor University. Putz explores the intricate relationship between American Christianity and big-time sports, a subject that challenges the common perception of their seamless coexistence. Their conversation delves into the historical evolution of this relationship, emphasizing pivotal eras and influential movements that have shaped the current landscape.

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2. Paul Putz’s Background and Motivation for Writing the Book (00:00 - 02:14)

Paul Putz begins by sharing his personal journey, rooted in a conservative Christian upbringing in Nebraska. As a pastor's child, he recounts the restrictive environment his family maintained, such as not celebrating Christmas due to its pagan origins ([02:14]). Despite these constraints, sports emerged as a sanctuary where his Christian identity could flourish. Through basketball, he found community and mentorship, particularly within the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which affirmed his dual identity as an athlete and a Christian ([02:20]).

Quote:
"Sports was the one area within this sort of guarded Christian home that I could engage in the world with." ([02:07] Paul Putz)

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3. The 1920s: A Pivotal Decade for Sports and American Christianity (04:59 - 08:17)

Putz identifies the 1920s as a transformative period when sports surged to national prominence, becoming a cultural obsession akin to religion. This era, often dubbed the "golden age of sports," saw figures like Babe Ruth and the rise of mass media platforms such as radio and newspapers solidify sports' place in American life ([06:35]). Concurrently, Protestantism faced a cultural crisis, grappling with modernist fundamentalism, youth culture revolutions, and societal shifts like prohibition ([07:20]). Putz emphasizes that while broader American culture was moving away from overt Christian influence, sports became a beacon for Christians to maintain their cultural and moral presence ([08:17]).

Quote:
"Sports take off as a national obsession to the point that people call it a religion." ([07:05] Paul Putz)

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4. Muscular Christianity and the Integration of Sports (05:00 - 07:17)

The conversation transitions to the concept of Muscular Christianity—a movement from the late 19th and early 20th centuries that advocated for the integration of physical vigor with spiritual well-being ([05:04] Caitlin Schess). This ideology promoted a holistic view of humanity, intertwining mind, body, and soul, and positioned physical activity as a means to advance Christian virtues. The YMCA exemplifies Muscular Christianity, with figures like James Naismith, the inventor of basketball, embodying this synthesis.

Quote:
"Muscular Christianity emphasizes the importance of physical activity in sports." ([05:04] Putz)

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5. Masculinity, Protestantism, and Sports Culture (10:05 - 13:45)

Putz and Jethani delve into the nexus of masculinity, Protestantism, and sports, highlighting how sports became a vessel for expressing a rugged, virtuous masculinity. Figures like Amos Alonzo Stagg exemplify this ideal—a blend of athletic prowess and moral integrity ([11:27] Caitlin Schess). This form of masculinity drew parallels with iconic American figures like Teddy Roosevelt, advocating strength coupled with ethical behavior. The movement addressed the perceived loss of Protestant influence by offering men a heroic and disciplined outlet through sports ([12:03] Paul Putz).

Quote:
"For muscular Christians, there's a sense that the Protestant church is losing its grip on the nation, and sports offer a platform to engage young men with heroic and disciplined values." ([12:15] Caitlin Schess)

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6. The Rise of Football in the American South and Cultural Identity (14:29 - 25:39)

A significant portion of the discussion focuses on the Southern United States and the embedding of football into its cultural identity. Putz explains how post-Civil War sentiments, amplified by media portrayals like the 1915 film Birth of a Nation, fueled a desire among white Southern Protestants to reclaim honor and regional pride through football ([21:31] Caitlin Schess). Football became a symbolic arena where the South could assert its identity, mirroring historical conflicts and reinforcing narratives tied to the Lost Cause. The sport's commercialization and association with national institutions further solidified its role as a cultural staple in the South ([25:39] Paul Putz).

Quote:
"Football becomes a way for Southern schools to assert an identity and claim a place in modern America while maintaining a sense of regional pride connected to historical narratives." ([23:19] Putz)

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7. The Cold War Era and the Evolution of Christian Sports Engagement (25:39 - 29:02)

Transitioning to the mid-20th century, Putz discusses the impact of the Cold War on the intersection of Christianity and sports. The emergence of organizations like the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) in the 1950s is highlighted as a response to the ideological battle against communism. Sports became a platform to promote American values and counteract the perceived threat of communist influence on youth and culture ([26:33] Paul Putz). This period marked a shift from the mainline Protestant elite's involvement in sports to a more evangelical and fundamentalist engagement, aligning sports with nationalistic and anti-communist sentiments ([29:02] Caitlin Schess).

Quote:
"The Cold War brought these pieces together because we have to fight back against communism, and one way to do that is by capitalizing on sports as a platform for promoting American values." ([28:54] Paul Putz)

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8. Conclusion

Paul Putz's exploration reveals the deep-seated connections between American Christianity and big-time sports, tracing their symbiotic relationship through pivotal historical moments. From the foundational Muscular Christianity to the cultural assertions of the Southern football tradition and the Cold War's ideological battles, sports have served as a powerful medium for expressing and reinforcing Christian values and American identity.

Notable Quotes:

• "Sports was the one area within this sort of guarded Christian home that I could engage in the world with." — Paul Putz ([02:07])
• "Sports take off as a national obsession to the point that people call it a religion." — Paul Putz ([07:05])
• "Football becomes a way for Southern schools to assert an identity and claim a place in modern America while maintaining a sense of regional pride connected to historical narratives." — Paul Putz ([23:19])
• "The Cold War brought these pieces together because we have to fight back against communism, and one way to do that is by capitalizing on sports as a platform for promoting American values." — Paul Putz ([28:54])

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This episode offers a thorough examination of how sports and Christianity have interwoven to shape American cultural and moral landscapes. For those intrigued by the historical dynamics between faith and athletics, Paul Putz's insights provide a nuanced understanding of this enduring relationship.

Transcript

[Paul Emery Putz]

But it's through consuming certain products that.

[Caitlin Schess]

Your spirituality is defined.

[Skyler Smith]

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Skypod brought to you by Holy Post Media. I am joined today by Paul Emery Putz. He is at Baylor University. You are the director of the Faith and Sports Institute at Baylor University's George W. Truitt Theological Seminary. That's a long title, but for our purposes today, you are the author of the Spirit of the American Christianity and Big Time Sports. What a great area to study. I think so many of us just assume that, of course, Christianity goes with sports, but you've written a whole book about how that wasn't always the case. So today we're going to look at that and get into the book and talk about. First of all, Paul, thanks for being here first. My first question is why did you write this book? What about your background and interest led you to, I don't know how many years you spent studying the history of sports and Christianity, but what about your background led you to this topic?

[Paul Emery Putz]

Well, thanks for having me on.

[Caitlin Schess]

And I think it's autobiographical, like so many books are. I grew up in Nebraska, in the Bible Belt. I was a pastor's kid and in.

[Paul Emery Putz]

A very conservative home.

[Caitlin Schess]

We adapted over time, but early on we were so conservative that we didn't.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Celebrate Christmas because Christmas was a pagan holiday.

[Caitlin Schess]

So it was the kind of that.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Level, didn't have a TV for a while. But the one area within this sort.

[Caitlin Schess]

Of guarded Christian home that I could engage in the world with was sports.

[Paul Emery Putz]

And so I think early on I.

[Caitlin Schess]

Had that sense of connection with other people through sports. So I'm playing all the sports that I can. Basketball ends up being one I'm decent at.

[Paul Emery Putz]

And so I played that throughout high.

[Caitlin Schess]

School and for a small college. And then also through basketball, I got connected to a mentor, my high school.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Basketball coach, who was part of the.

[Caitlin Schess]

Fellowship of Christian athletes. And I started to see my identity.

[Paul Emery Putz]

As a Christian, which is really important.

[Caitlin Schess]

To me, being a pastor's kid, my identity as an athlete, which I felt.

[Paul Emery Putz]

A sense of affirmation for who I.

[Caitlin Schess]

Was when I'm on the basketball court. Those things were connected in some really.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Important ways as I'm developing.

[Caitlin Schess]

So that's part of my story. Growing up, I move into secondary education after my college time. I'm going to be a high school.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Teacher, I thought, to be a coach.

[Caitlin Schess]

And in my mind, what do coaches teach?

[Paul Emery Putz]

They teach social studies so they can.

[Caitlin Schess]

Play videos and then they can game plan while they pass out worksheets. That's a Stereotype that then he teaches listening. I know that. But that was kind of the image I had. And so I get in the classroom.

[Paul Emery Putz]

And as I'm teaching social studies, I'm also.

[Caitlin Schess]

I always liked history, but I got really drawn even more into history and wanting to ask these questions like, where.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Did a group like the FCA come from? It shaped my own life. It shaped how I thought about what.

[Caitlin Schess]

It means to be a Christian athlete.

[Paul Emery Putz]

But I didn't have a sense of its history. Like, surely there were some people who came up with these ideas and developed it over time. So really, my own curiosity about the.

[Caitlin Schess]

Origins of organizations led me to look.

[Paul Emery Putz]

For books that had been written about it. I didn't find much.

[Caitlin Schess]

I had questions that I wanted to.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Ask that I didn't find answers for.

[Caitlin Schess]

And ended up coming to Baylor to.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Do a PhD in history, where I got to explore those connections between sports.

[Caitlin Schess]

And Christianity and eventually write a book about it.

[Skyler Smith]

I'm glad you did. So where my interest comes in this, I'm not an athlete. I didn't really grow up as an athlete. My dad's an immigrant. And for a lot of immigrants, sports is purely recreational. It's not a huge focus of their identity. So I didn't grow up in that environment like you did, but I studied history as an undergrad. I love history. I've had numerous guests on who've written history books. So the history of this is really interesting to me. And early in the book, you make an observation that is so obvious but hadn't occurred to me, and I'm sure it's going to resonate with a lot of our listeners here. You make the observation that over the last century, so many parts of American culture have lost its Christian influence, or Christianity has less of a presence in so much of American culture. But in the last century, that's been the opposite with sports. The Christian presence has only grown in sports, which makes it an outlier. And the obvious question is why? But I want to go back and start kind of where you do in the book with the 1920s. Talk about why that was such a pivotal decade for this relationship between not just sports and American culture, but sports, Christianity and American culture. Why the 1920s? What happened that was so important?

[Paul Emery Putz]

Yeah.

[Caitlin Schess]

So I'll start by going back just.

[Paul Emery Putz]

A little bit further.

[Caitlin Schess]

And right before the 1920s, there's this.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Movement scholars write about called muscular Christianity. And if you do study sports and.

[Caitlin Schess]

Christianity, that's kind of the area where scholars have helped us understand what was going on.

[Paul Emery Putz]

So this is in the 19th century, the early 20th century, it's after the.

[Caitlin Schess]

Civil War, the Industrial Revolution, and starting.

[Paul Emery Putz]

In the United Kingdom and also in.

[Caitlin Schess]

The United States, you started to see.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Christians embrace sports in a way that they hadn't before. So before muscular Christianity, there was a little bit of a dualism within Christianity.

[Caitlin Schess]

Where, you know, sports were seen as a diversion from what really mattered. It could lead to sin, it could lead to breaking the Sabbath. So it was sort of maybe a.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Necessary evil, certainly wasn't a priority to do these bodily physical activities. But during the era of muscular Christianity.

[Caitlin Schess]

There'S a movement that really tries to emphasize this holistic view of the human being, mind, body, soul, intertwined, and it.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Emphasizes the importance of physical activity in sports.

[Caitlin Schess]

The YMCA is the classic example of.

[Paul Emery Putz]

What emerges out of muscular Christianity.

[Caitlin Schess]

And the YMCA has people like James Naismith, who actually creates basketball out of.

[Paul Emery Putz]

This muscular Christian ideology. So before the 1920s, you had Christians who were making connections to sports, who were using sports to advance Christian ideas.

[Caitlin Schess]

Scholars have written about that. There's some good books about that.

[Paul Emery Putz]

What I found when I was studying this was the 1920s are the era in American history where sports become a national obsession.

[Caitlin Schess]

Like this is the era where, I.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Mean, it's called the golden age of sports for a reason.

[Caitlin Schess]

You have million dollar boxing bouts, you have baseball fans are crowding the stadiums.

[Paul Emery Putz]

You have Babe Ruth and the Yankees touring the country, and fans are, you.

[Caitlin Schess]

Know, flocking to see these famous athletes.

[Paul Emery Putz]

You have a national media ecosystem through the radio and through newspapers where you can actually have a national celebrity based sports culture.

[Caitlin Schess]

And so in the 1920s, that's really.

[Paul Emery Putz]

When sports takes off as a national obsession to the point that people call it a religion. At the same time, in the 1920s, you have this crisis for Protestants.

[Caitlin Schess]

So this other part of American culture in history that has defined itself as.

[Paul Emery Putz]

The established religion, or not not fully established, but kind of informal established religion, is Protestantism. And they're figuring out like, what do we do with ourselves?

[Caitlin Schess]

We have the modernist fundamentalists battling it out. We have this problem of youth culture.

[Paul Emery Putz]

And there's jazz music and there's flappers and there's prohibition and people breaking prohibition. And so there's a feel for Protestants that they're losing their grip on the nation. Meanwhile, sports is ascending in influence.

[Caitlin Schess]

And yet scholars kind of skip over.

[Paul Emery Putz]

The 1920s as if Christians stopped caring.

[Caitlin Schess]

About sports in that era. And that just wasn't a satisfying answer for me.

[Paul Emery Putz]

I knew Christians had to have been involved with what was going on because.

[Caitlin Schess]

Everyone in America was, was doing stuff with sports.

[Paul Emery Putz]

So I start there in the 1920s because I wanted to understand in this changing modern consumer culture, how are Christians continuing to engage in sports culture and what meaning are they making from it?

[Skyler Smith]

So it's interesting that there's a long history in America between the role of the church and the spread of Christianity and media going all the way back to the colonial days and George Whitefield and his open air revivals. But this is an era where you have mass media for the first time, you have radio. Newspapers are being able to transmit and communicate much more effectively because of the telegraph and things in the late 19th century, which allows sports to become more than a recreation, it becomes an industry. And right on the heels of that, you find the church jumping on because of the things you just identified. The sense that the world is changing really quickly and we need something to help boost our perceptions. Explain the role of the ymca. And I was especially intrigued by Amos Stagg. What a great name. First of all, and the link between the church embracing, or at least Protestantism embracing athletics and sports, combined with this concern for masculinity. There's all kinds of echoes here of what I remember reading in Jesus and John Wayne from Kristen Kobes Dumas. What is that link between the rise of sports culture in Christianity and the fear of losing masculinity in Christianity?

[Paul Emery Putz]

Yeah, well, it's interesting.

[Caitlin Schess]

The one of the surprising things that.

[Paul Emery Putz]

I found that I didn't expect when I started this research.

[Caitlin Schess]

I started from the foundation of some of these sports.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Ministries that are now fully evangelical.

[Caitlin Schess]

We're talking about a group like the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

[Paul Emery Putz]

I mentioned them earlier.

[Caitlin Schess]

I'm sure we'll talk more about them.

[Paul Emery Putz]

And they're not created until the 1950s. But when I looked at who the Fellowship of Christian athletes were influenced by, like who were the Christian coaches and.

[Caitlin Schess]

Athletes who came before fca?

[Paul Emery Putz]

They were people like Amos Alonzo Stagg. And when I started to look at.

[Caitlin Schess]

His story, I realized this guy is not an evangelical.

[Paul Emery Putz]

This guy is not a fundamentalist. In fact, he intentionally chooses churches that are not fundamentalist. He goes to a church that's pastored.

[Caitlin Schess]

By a close friend of Harry Emerson.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Fosdick who's like the classic liberal Protestant preacher of the 1920s.

[Caitlin Schess]

And that just, I was, I thought.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Okay, what's happening here? These are mainline Protestants in the 1920s who are primarily identifying with sports in terms of big time sports culture. And they're doing something there that doesn't.

[Caitlin Schess]

Fit what I was expecting, which is evangelicals using it as a platform.

[Skyler Smith]

Yeah. And Stagg, as you reported, he was an athlete at Yale and then became a football coach at the University of Chicago. Not exactly evangelical schools.

[Caitlin Schess]

Not at all. This is like you are an insider, the elite. You are kind of the guardian of American leadership. And so it's that Protestant establishment, a.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Masculinity associated with that.

[Caitlin Schess]

It's a masculinity centered on sort of a sense of respectability, a sense of authority, like you are already in a.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Position of privilege and your job is.

[Caitlin Schess]

To steward that and to maintain it.

[Paul Emery Putz]

I mean, the classic figure of this.

[Caitlin Schess]

Type of masculinity is someone like Teddy Roosevelt. Right. U.S. president, and he preaches this message.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Of strength, but also you need some moral virtue along the way.

[Caitlin Schess]

You know, so it's these dueling emphases.

[Paul Emery Putz]

For muscular Christians where they're feeling a.

[Caitlin Schess]

Sense that the Protestant church, especially the establishment, mainline church, is losing its hold on young men. And to reach young men, you need to offer them something that is, quote.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Unquote, heroic, that is adventurous, where they're exerting themselves some a more aggressive Christianity. And so that's very much a part.

[Caitlin Schess]

Of where football comes into play, where someone like Amos Alonzo Stagg fits.

[Paul Emery Putz]

But at the same time, and this.

[Caitlin Schess]

Sometimes gets lost, I think, in the versions of militant masculinity that Kristin Dumay writes about, and her book is excellent.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Some of those versions, they sort of drop off. The other part, which is emphasized by these earlier muscular Christians, which is moral restraint, which is sacrifice for the good of others, which is a sense of service to society. And that's very much what Teddy Roosevelt.

[Caitlin Schess]

And Amos Alonzo Stagg emphasized too, that it's, yes, you're drawn into this courageous cause, but it's supposed to be something.

[Paul Emery Putz]

That engenders loyalty, sacrifice, discipline.

[Caitlin Schess]

And even a softening in a certain sense of the harsh, super masculine traits. So that's what Amos Alonzo Stagg is trying to do. A gentleman, a respectable man who can.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Go on the football field and.

[Caitlin Schess]

Tackle hard, but also does it fairly, plays by the rules and develops those traits.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Of moral virtue along the way.

[Skyler Smith]

So when I think of Teddy Roosevelt, for example, and his form of masculinity, he was celebrated because he was an adventurer. He went out west and kind of did the cowboy thing. He was a soldier. So a lot of times in American popular culture, we use imagery of the rugged individualists in the Western frontier or the soldier as models of masculinity. Why did football or sports in general come into the picture? Was it because there weren't as many opportunities for soldiering and cowboying out there and we needed something that young men could actually do and sports filled that need? Is that why that arose at that moment?

[Paul Emery Putz]

I do think there's something to that. And other scholars have made this point.

[Caitlin Schess]

Like it's in the 1890s where there's this famous essay about the closing of.

[Paul Emery Putz]

The frontier by Frederick Jackson Turner, a historian. That's the decade when football really becomes a prominent part of college life.

[Caitlin Schess]

And football you mentioned, Stag is a Yale graduate.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Football is connected to the Ivy leagues.

[Caitlin Schess]

That's where it gets its start. It's these privileged institutions where you have young men who are from well to do families and yeah, maybe they don't.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Have an opportunity, they don't have a war to fight.

[Caitlin Schess]

They aren't going out and conquering, really taking over Native American territory. And, and so the question is, how.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Can you develop in those young men.

[Caitlin Schess]

This, this sense of courage and adventure?

[Paul Emery Putz]

And football absolutely is connected to that.

[Caitlin Schess]

It's something that, that they write about. Someone like Stag writes about how football can, can, can prepare men for the battle of life. And it's, it is geared towards elite men. At first, the idea is that we.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Need the well to do middle and upper class white men to play football.

[Caitlin Schess]

Because these racialized notions of the, you know, the so called uncivilized races, they're more physical, they're more, you know, they exercise more, their bodies are in better shape. We need to make sure that the upper and middle class white men are.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Also developing their bodies.

[Caitlin Schess]

So along with those ideas of the well to do respectable manhood we've been talking about, there's racist notions of who.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Is the right type of man to.

[Caitlin Schess]

Lead that play into football's popularity spreading.

[Paul Emery Putz]

At these lead institutions.

[Skyler Smith]

Yeah, and this is the same era as eugenics where there's so much focus on racial differences and perfecting a race or humanity through sterilization and breeding, all that sort of stuff. And it's interesting. Football, at least in my view, is the most militant of popular sports. I mean, it has the most military like tactics where you have two lines facing off each other. Just like old school warfare. You're trying to take territory from the other side. So it is interesting that it fills this proxy role of war that a lot of elite men at Ivy League schools weren't participating in. But this gave them a way of participating in it and gaining what they see as the virtues from it. Okay. Before we leave the 1920s, have you made any connections between 100 years ago and what you're seeing today? Because there's a lot in the news right now about young men returning to Christianity. The need for this more masculine, tougher, more militant form of faith that some Christian nationalism is very appealing. You have voices out there like Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan and others who are flirting with all kinds of Christianity. There's reports that young men are being drawn towards Calvinism and Eastern Orthodoxy and these other forms of faith that seem more rigid or definitive. Are we in yet another cycle of people fearing Christianity has become too feminized and men are too weak and we need to kind of have this muscular, masculine Christianity again? Is it a repeat of 100 years ago or is this something different we're seeing today?

[Caitlin Schess]

I think there's resonances.

[Paul Emery Putz]

There's definitely resonances, but there's also some key differences.

[Caitlin Schess]

You know, I mentioned before, who is.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Driving this muscular Christian movement? It's liberal Protestants. It's mainline Protestants.

[Caitlin Schess]

Right?

[Skyler Smith]

That's not true.

[Caitlin Schess]

I mean, the, the classic, one of the classic examples of like the height.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Of muscular Christianity in its Progressive era form is this.

[Caitlin Schess]

It's called the Men in Religion Forward movement. And in 1911 and 1912, like the.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Whole point of this movement is to go out and make your cities better.

[Caitlin Schess]

So it's a government reform, social services, social gospel. Social gospel is very tied into muscular Christianity. So yes, there's, I think people today sometimes have a hard time like it's. People expect like the bundles to all be like, if there's a liberal bundle.

[Paul Emery Putz]

And you are a liberal, then everything.

[Caitlin Schess]

Must be good if you're conservative. Right. You have a hard time kind of separating out, like, hey, there's these people.

[Paul Emery Putz]

In the Progressive era who were social gospel, progressive Christians and also racist with.

[Caitlin Schess]

These ideas of white Anglo Saxon superiority and at the same time going out and caring for poor people and saying, we need a Christianity that is going to reach the downtrodden.

[Paul Emery Putz]

And that's very much what's happening with a lot of these muscular Christian ideas.

[Caitlin Schess]

They're using racialized notions of the quote, unquote, white man's burden to then encourage the quote unquote best of society to go out and help out those who might need help. So that service oriented perspective, the connection to liberal Protestantism makes it different. There's also elements by the 1920s, what happens with muscular Christianity is it shifts a bit from this idea of social reform and it really gets connected more to the business world, I think.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Of the classic example is Bruce Barton.

[Caitlin Schess]

Who is this ad executive at a.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Time when marketing and advertising really first becomes an industry in America.

[Caitlin Schess]

Bruce Spartan is the preacher's son and.

[Paul Emery Putz]

He'S a leader in this field. But he writes a best selling biography.

[Caitlin Schess]

Of Jesus called the Man Nobody Knows.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Publishes it in 1925. And it really presents Jesus in liberal Protestant ways, but in very human ways.

[Caitlin Schess]

As this boisterous businessman figure who can slap you on the back and he can go out and he could cheer.

[Paul Emery Putz]

For the football team.

[Caitlin Schess]

And at the same time he's like a business executive who takes 12 disciples.

[Paul Emery Putz]

And turns it into the best Christianity, the best organization the world has ever known. So there's, there's a shift from the.

[Caitlin Schess]

Prototype muscular Christian to almost, yeah, this, this business friendly world in the 1920s. That, that I think is really important to understanding what happens even in sports because as sports becomes commercialized, as sports becomes focused again on big business in the 1920s, the man that is trying.

[Paul Emery Putz]

To produce is a man fit for business leadership instead of that earlier version like a Teddy Roosevelt, which is a.

[Caitlin Schess]

Man fit for political leadership or service or the military and that sort of thing.

[Skyler Smith]

Let's talk about. You mentioned how football really took off in the Ivy League circles and Stagg was a Yale guy and all that, but it was also the 1920s that football starts to take root in the south. And ask anybody today, nobody associates football with the Ivy League, but football is like a religion in the American South. Explain why football found such receptivity in the south at this time and how it linked to the Lost cause. This is roughly a generation after the Civil War. What about the south was ripe to receive football and sports and integrate it into their culture?

[Caitlin Schess]

Yeah, it's one of the things I.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Tried to do with this book.

[Caitlin Schess]

I wanted to recognize the complexity of different Protestant cultures and trying to draw on these threads because sometimes we lump them all together. And so I write about mainline Protestants, sort of the establishment, who are mostly.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Northern and Midwestern based.

[Caitlin Schess]

I write about black Protestants in the black church. I'm writing about the fundamentals who become neo evangelicals. But then also it was clear to.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Me that there's something different about Southern Protestants, white Southern Protestants, and we need.

[Caitlin Schess]

To, we need to recognize that difference.

[Paul Emery Putz]

And so sports is a good way.

[Caitlin Schess]

To get at that because in the 1920s, the. For many white Southern Protestants, there's a.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Desire to become more part of the.

[Caitlin Schess]

National mainstream, but they're not yet. And football becomes this way to assert an identity, to claim a place in a modern America, but still have a sense of regional identity that gets linked to this story they're telling themselves about the past. So with the Lost Cause, you think about this is around the time when this movie called Birth of a Nation comes out in 1915, which really popularizes at a national level the idea that the white south were victims of what.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Happened after the Civil War, that their quote, unquote way of life is destroyed.

[Caitlin Schess]

And for a brief time, they were.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Taken over by African Americans who are now voting.

[Caitlin Schess]

And. And, you know, so they're. They're presented as the victims, the oppressed people. And Birth of a Nation gives momentum to that idea. And so football becomes a way for these Southern schools to have this.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Their young men go out on the.

[Caitlin Schess]

Field and play out, kind of recreate, you know, the old Civil War ideas, these battles of guarding your home and.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Protecting your home and asserting a way of life that's tied to segregation.

[Caitlin Schess]

And it's also in the 1920s where you start to see intersectional games that.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Are played by college football teams across the country.

[Caitlin Schess]

So you'll have Southern teams might play.

[Paul Emery Putz]

A northern team, or they might go.

[Caitlin Schess]

And play a team on the west coast. And so when Alabama goes and they play Stanford or they play California, it becomes like a metaphor for the south versus the North. You talk about the game college in Yale or Harvard. Right.

[Skyler Smith]

You talk about the center of college rivalry with Harvard. And it is like a proxy, again, a military analogy for the Confederacy versus the Union. It's the south versus the north. And we're not fighting with guns anymore on a battlefield. We're going to fight with footballs on the field. But there's such a shame honor culture in the south, and that gets linked here with our ability to defeat our enemies on the football field is the way we regain our honor that was stolen from us in the Civil War. The loss of.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Or even to lose valiantly. Right. I mean, center college does lose their first game to Harvard, but they lose in a close match.

[Caitlin Schess]

It's like six zero. And it's would have been a huge upset.

[Paul Emery Putz]

And so that is even framed as.

[Caitlin Schess]

Recreating the Civil War where the south lost.

[Paul Emery Putz]

The quote, unquote, good guys lost if.

[Caitlin Schess]

You'Re the white south, but at least you held your honor while you do it. Yeah.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Once they start winning games, that shifts.

[Caitlin Schess]

Right. And it becomes a way to. To. To reclaim that identity. I mean, this.

[Paul Emery Putz]

You think about Confederate flags eventually being.

[Caitlin Schess]

Being flown at Southern during Southern football games and.

[Paul Emery Putz]

And the songs that are played and There very much is a culture of.

[Caitlin Schess]

Recreating a story that white Southerners tell themselves through college football. That really gets going in the 1920s. And before then, as you mentioned, college.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Football was seen as a Yankee game.

[Caitlin Schess]

It was seen as something from those, the Northerners. So we have to resist it. By the 1920s, they kind of claim it and over time begin to shape.

[Paul Emery Putz]

The national culture of football along the way.

[Skyler Smith]

Okay, let's jump ahead to after World War II in the cold War era. We've talked a lot over the years on this show and other holy post media shows about the impact that the Cold War has had on American evangelicalism. But your book focuses on the way the Cold War impacted the Christian fascination with sports. And this is also the era where FCA is created, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Talk a little bit about how communism or the fear of communism in the Cold War impacted Christianity in sports and how you see this shift from the mainline Protestant sort of elite roots of this relationship between sports and Christianity and how it morphs over to what we think of today as primarily an evangelical or fundamentalist fascination with sports.

[Caitlin Schess]

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, if we think about.

[Paul Emery Putz]

What do we mean when we think of mainline Protestants? The image tends to be the intellectual.

[Caitlin Schess]

It tends to be the bureaucrat, tends to be the professor and the liberal. And those might be the most prominent representatives.

[Paul Emery Putz]

But the fact is, if you look at people in the pews even today.

[Caitlin Schess]

Like, the numbers and the data show.

[Paul Emery Putz]

That white mainline Protestants are far more.

[Caitlin Schess]

Conservative on social issues than the stereotype might be. And so when I was, when I was looking into this, when we look.

[Paul Emery Putz]

At sports, who are the mainline Protestants drawn to sports? A lot of times, their main line, they're not necessarily like, theology isn't the main thing that defines them.

[Caitlin Schess]

They're sort of liberal, but also not.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Like going all the way there. And they're really.

[Caitlin Schess]

What they're really concerned about is just everyday life.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Like, how does religion affect their everyday life? And I wanted to have a category, a kind of a way of differentiating, like, what type of mainline Protestant are we talking about?

[Caitlin Schess]

There's a couple scholars, especially Matt Headstrom, who's written extensively on liberal Protestants, and he has written about what he calls.

[Paul Emery Putz]

The middle brow religion.

[Caitlin Schess]

And so I took his concept to.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Describe this group of mainline Protestants. I called them middlebrow Protestants. Who, yes, they're part of the mainline. They're not fundamentalists. They're not like focusing on winning people to Christmas, but they're focusing on building Christian character. They're focusing on love of God, love of country. They see themselves as generally tolerant, so they're sort of open minded and optimistic, but then also rooted in some like.

[Caitlin Schess]

Default assumptions of white normativity that are.

[Paul Emery Putz]

They'Re shaping their view of the world. Those middle brow mainliners are the ones who really engage in sports in the.

[Caitlin Schess]

20S and 30s and 40s, and it's out of those roots that the fellowship.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Of Christian athletes comes along.

[Caitlin Schess]

The Cold War is the thing that.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Kind of brings these pieces together because with the Cold War, we have this.

[Caitlin Schess]

National threat, we have this fear of the Soviet Union who is trying to.

[Paul Emery Putz]

Win not only the rest of the world, but they're trying to win American children and young people supposedly to this.

[Caitlin Schess]

This, this communist way of life. And so there's, there's a movement within the United States to resist that.

[Paul Emery Putz]

We have to fight back against communism.

[Caitlin Schess]

And one way to do that is by capitalizing on don't worry, this is.

[D]

Not the end of the episode. There's actually plenty more. But to listen to the rest, you need to be a Holy Post plus subscriber. So head over to HolyPost.com SkyPod and sign up. For just $5 a month, not only will you get uninterrupted episodes of the Skypod, which means you'll never have to.

[Skyler Smith]

Hear this dumb announcement again, but you'll.

[D]

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