In Passion Plays: How Religion Shaped Sports in North America, Randall Balmer argues that “especially among the demographic of white males, the devotion to sports has eclipsed allegiance to traditional expressions of religion” (2). These men, Balmer writes, “find in sports an alternative, orderly universe very much in contrast to their perceptions of an unfair, chaotic world all around them,” a universe that they see as untouched by politics (11). There are many ways that the intersection of religion and sports has been approached by scholars; Balmer is interested in how sports and sports fandom might fulfill the same social and psychological functions that religion does for some people. Balmer argues that, for the men he writes about, “sports provides something very close to fixed moral standards,” pointing to examples like baseball fans’ furor over the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scandal (131).

The book's chapters largely focus on the histories of four sports in the United States and Canada with some attention to religious elements therein. Balmer pairs each sport with a broader cultural force that shaped it: “baseball and the Industrial Revolution, football and the Civil War, hockey and the formation of the Canadian Confederation, basketball and urbanization” (11). Despite the book's subtitle's suggestion that it will address “How Religion Shaped Sports in North America,” religion appears within these chapters somewhat intermittently, sometimes as a shaping force, but also to construct parallels between religion and sports or discuss noteworthy religious figures who played, coached, or otherwise influenced the sport in question. For the purposes of Passion Plays, North America is solely comprised of the United States and Canada, with discussion of Canada largely restricted to the chapter “Soul of a Nation: the Canadian Confederation and the Origins of Hockey.” “Religion” is almost entirely Christianity; Jewish baseball players and sportswriters make brief appearances in the chapter on baseball, and Muslim athletes are mentioned only once, in the chapter “A Labyrinth of Wanderings: Urbanization and the Origins of Basketball” (27–28, 30, 120).

In a few instances, Passion Plays contains puzzling errors. For example, Balmer writes that the Young Men's Hebrew Association expanded as “Reconstructionist Judaism sought to mimic institutional churches” (4). Based on the cited articles (which do not mention Reconstructionist Judaism at all) and the broader history of the Young Men's Hebrew Association, it seems likely that Balmer intended to refer to Reform Judaism. In another instance, Balmer claims that the House of David's baseball program “fielded a team of cultural outcasts, Jewish and otherwise” (27). The House of David, a religious movement that considers itself to be grounded in Christianity, at no time made any particular effort to hire Jewish baseball players. While these errors may seem small, they are glaring enough that their presence is surprising.

In his conclusion, Balmer delves into what he identifies as an escapist quality in this shift from finding meaning and community in religion to finding meaning and community in sports. Balmer argues that this is a key component of white fans’ backlash toward black athletes who are seen as transgressing “an idealized separation between sports and politics” (128). Although Balmer briefly mentions Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf while discussing athletes’ protests during the national anthem, a further exploration of the lives of some of the Muslim athletes Balmer mentions in his chapter on basketball, like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, along with other Muslim athletes like Muhammad Ali, could have been useful in articulating his arguments about the dynamics between white fans and black athletes. Additionally, Balmer's assertion that fantasy sports might replicate a system that views athletes as “a form of chattel expected to perform, not opine” is somewhat undermined by his admission that he “can't claim any experience or much knowledge” of fantasy sports (130). It would have been interesting to see Balmer further explore this argument about fantasy sports, as it could be a compelling extension of his arguments earlier in the chapter.

Passion Plays is not a declension narrative. Balmer does not bemoan the migration from religion to sports for meaning making among some white men; rather, he asks what this migration can tell us about the history and future of sports in the United States and Canada, and what its racial and gender dimensions might be. Passion Plays would serve as a useful introductory text for undergraduate students or non-academic readers interested in the intersections of religion and sports.