Try free for 30 days
-
Passion Plays
- How Religion Shaped Sports in North America (A Ferris and Ferris Book)
- Narrated by: Randall Balmer
- Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from Wish List failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy Now for $14.99
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also picked
-
The Great Dechurching
- Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back?
- By: Jim Davis, Michael Graham, Ryan P. Burge - contributor, and others
- Narrated by: Jim Davis, Michael Graham, Ryan Burge
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Great Dechurching, Jim Davis and Michael Graham along with renowned sociologist Dr. Ryan Burge examine the largest and most comprehensive study of dechurching—the largest and fastest religious shift in US history—to drill down to exactly why people are dechurching with respect to beliefs, behavior, and belonging.
-
America's Book
- The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization, 1794-1911
- By: Mark A. Noll
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 37 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
America's Book shows how the Bible decisively shaped American national history even as that history influenced the use of Scripture. It explores the rise of a strongly Protestant Bible civilization in the early United States that was then fractured by debates over slavery, contested by growing numbers of non-Protestant Americans, and torn apart by the Civil War.
-
Gratitude
- Why Giving Thanks Is the Key to Our Well-Being
- By: Cornelius Plantinga
- Narrated by: Christopher Grove
- Length: 4 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What is gratitude? Where does it come from? Why do we need it? How does it change us? In Gratitude, award-winning author Cornelius Plantinga explores these questions and more. Celebrating the role of gratitude in our lives, Plantinga makes the case that it is the very key to understanding our relationships with one another, the world around us, and God. Going deeper than mindfulness and positive psychology, Plantinga explores gratitude in a theologically informed and pastorally sensitive way.
-
An Infinite Fountain of Light
- Jonathan Edwards for the Twenty-First Century
- By: George M. Marsden
- Narrated by: Tim Danko
- Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For perspective on our own times and how we got here, it helps to listen to wise guides from other eras. In An Infinite Fountain of Light, the renowned American historian George Marsden illuminates the landscape with wisdom from one such mentor: Jonathan Edwards. Drawing on his deep expertise on Edwards and American culture, Marsden explains where Edwards stood within his historical context and sets forth key points of his complex thought.
-
24/7 Politics
- Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News
- By: Kathryn Cramer Brownell
- Narrated by: Patricia Shade
- Length: 12 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As television began to overtake the political landscape in the 1960s, network broadcast companies, bolstered by powerful lobbying interests, dominated screens across the nation. Yet over the next three decades, the expansion of a different technology, cable, changed all of this. 24/7 Politics tells the story of how the cable industry worked with political leaders to create an entirely new approach to television, one that tethered politics to profits.
-
Heathen
- Religion and Race in American History
- By: Kathryn Gin Lum
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lam
- Length: 16 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Americans long viewed the world as a realm of suffering heathens whose lands and lives needed their intervention to flourish. The term "heathen" fell out of common use by the early 1900s, leading some to imagine that racial categories had replaced religious differences. But the ideas underlying the figure of the heathen did not disappear. Heathen reveals a key source of American exceptionalism and a prism through which Americans have defined themselves as a progressive and humanitarian nation even as supposed heathens have drawn on the same to counter this national myth.
-
The Great Dechurching
- Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back?
- By: Jim Davis, Michael Graham, Ryan P. Burge - contributor, and others
- Narrated by: Jim Davis, Michael Graham, Ryan Burge
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Great Dechurching, Jim Davis and Michael Graham along with renowned sociologist Dr. Ryan Burge examine the largest and most comprehensive study of dechurching—the largest and fastest religious shift in US history—to drill down to exactly why people are dechurching with respect to beliefs, behavior, and belonging.
-
America's Book
- The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization, 1794-1911
- By: Mark A. Noll
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 37 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
America's Book shows how the Bible decisively shaped American national history even as that history influenced the use of Scripture. It explores the rise of a strongly Protestant Bible civilization in the early United States that was then fractured by debates over slavery, contested by growing numbers of non-Protestant Americans, and torn apart by the Civil War.
-
Gratitude
- Why Giving Thanks Is the Key to Our Well-Being
- By: Cornelius Plantinga
- Narrated by: Christopher Grove
- Length: 4 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What is gratitude? Where does it come from? Why do we need it? How does it change us? In Gratitude, award-winning author Cornelius Plantinga explores these questions and more. Celebrating the role of gratitude in our lives, Plantinga makes the case that it is the very key to understanding our relationships with one another, the world around us, and God. Going deeper than mindfulness and positive psychology, Plantinga explores gratitude in a theologically informed and pastorally sensitive way.
-
An Infinite Fountain of Light
- Jonathan Edwards for the Twenty-First Century
- By: George M. Marsden
- Narrated by: Tim Danko
- Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For perspective on our own times and how we got here, it helps to listen to wise guides from other eras. In An Infinite Fountain of Light, the renowned American historian George Marsden illuminates the landscape with wisdom from one such mentor: Jonathan Edwards. Drawing on his deep expertise on Edwards and American culture, Marsden explains where Edwards stood within his historical context and sets forth key points of his complex thought.
-
24/7 Politics
- Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News
- By: Kathryn Cramer Brownell
- Narrated by: Patricia Shade
- Length: 12 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As television began to overtake the political landscape in the 1960s, network broadcast companies, bolstered by powerful lobbying interests, dominated screens across the nation. Yet over the next three decades, the expansion of a different technology, cable, changed all of this. 24/7 Politics tells the story of how the cable industry worked with political leaders to create an entirely new approach to television, one that tethered politics to profits.
-
Heathen
- Religion and Race in American History
- By: Kathryn Gin Lum
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lam
- Length: 16 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Americans long viewed the world as a realm of suffering heathens whose lands and lives needed their intervention to flourish. The term "heathen" fell out of common use by the early 1900s, leading some to imagine that racial categories had replaced religious differences. But the ideas underlying the figure of the heathen did not disappear. Heathen reveals a key source of American exceptionalism and a prism through which Americans have defined themselves as a progressive and humanitarian nation even as supposed heathens have drawn on the same to counter this national myth.
-
The Point of No Return
- American Democracy at the Crossroads
- By: Thomas Byrne Edsall
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After Donald Trump's rise to power, after the 2020 presidential election, after January 6, is American politics past the point of no return? New York Times columnist Thomas Byrne Edsall fears that the country may be headed over a cliff. In this compelling and illuminating book, Edsall documents how the Trump years ravaged the nation's politics, culture, and social order.
-
Stealing My Religion
- Not Just Any Cultural Appropriation
- By: Liz Bucar
- Narrated by: Esther White
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We think we know cultural appropriation when we see it. Blackface or Native American headdresses as Halloween costumes—these clearly give offense. But what about Cardi B posing as the Hindu goddess Durga in a Reebok ad, AA's twelve-step invocation of God, or the earnest namaste you utter at the end of yoga class? Liz Bucar unpacks the ethical dilemmas of a messy form of cultural appropriation: the borrowing of religious doctrines, rituals, and dress for political, economic, and therapeutic reasons.
-
Following Jesus in a Warming World
- A Christian Call to Climate Action
- By: Kyle Meyaard-Schaap
- Narrated by: Mike Lenz
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Have you ever looked at the effects of climate change and the apathy of so many around you and wondered, "What are we missing here?" Climate activist Kyle Meyaard-Schaap understands this feeling from personal experience. But in his years of speaking to and equipping Christians to work for climate action, he's seen the trend begin to shift. More and more young Christians are waking up to the realities of climate change. They want to help, but they're not sure how.
-
Faith Formation in a Secular Age
- Responding to the Church’s Obsession with Youthfulness (Ministry in a Secular Age Series, Book 1)
- By: Andrew Root
- Narrated by: Mike Lenz
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The loss or disaffiliation of young adults is a much-discussed topic in churches today. Many faith-formation programs focus on keeping the young, believing the youthful spirit will save the church. But do these programs have more to do with an obsession with youthfulness than with helping young people encounter the living God?
-
Why We Hate
- Understanding the Roots of Human Conflict
- By: Michael Ruse
- Narrated by: Mike Cooper
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why We Hate tackles a pressing issue of both longstanding interest and fresh relevance: why a social species like Homo sapiens should nevertheless be so hateful to itself. We go to war and are prejudiced against our fellow human beings. We discriminate on the basis of nationality, class, race, sexual orientation, religion, and gender. Why are humans at once so social and so hateful to each other? In this book, Michael Ruse looks at scientific understandings of human hatred, particularly Darwinian evolutionary theory.
-
Next Sunday
- An Honest Dialogue About the Future of the Church
- By: Nancy Beach, Samantha Beach Kiley
- Narrated by: Nancy Beach, Samantha Beach Kiley
- Length: 5 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A great reckoning is underway in the church today: a naming and exposing of the exclusivity, abuse, racism, patriarchy, and unchecked power that have marked evangelical Christianity for far too long. What kind of church will emerge on the other side?
Publisher's Summary
Randall Balmer was a late convert to sports talk radio, but he quickly became addicted, just like millions of other devoted American sports fans. As a historian of religion, the more he listened, Balmer couldn't help but wonder how the fervor he heard related to religious practice. Houses of worship once railed against Sabbath-busting sports events, but today most willingly accommodate Super Bowl Sunday. On the other hand, basketball's inventor, James Naismith, was an ardent follower of Muscular Christianity and believed the game would help develop religious character. But today those religious roots are largely forgotten.
Here one of our most insightful writers on American religion trains his focus on that other great passion—team sports—to reveal their surprising connections. From baseball to basketball and football to ice hockey, Balmer explores the origins and histories of big-time sports from the late nineteenth century to the present, with entertaining anecdotes and fresh insights into their ties to religious life. Referring to Notre Dame football, the Catholic Sun called its fandom "a kind of sacramental." Legions of sports fans listening to Passion Plays will recognize exactly what that means.
Critic Reviews
“This entertaining history examines the religious and cultural roots of baseball, basketball, football, and hockey...The illuminating insights into how sports reflect the historical periods and communities in which they developed will change how fans see the games. This one is a winner.”—Publishers Weekly
"An engaging look at the historical conditions surrounding America's secular, on-field religions."—Kirkus Reviews
"Compelling and absorbing...a lively introduction to the historical origins of the sports that we watch and play, while also inviting deeper reflection into the relationship between our religious practices, our sporting devotions, and the social worlds that we share with others...Balmer's posture is one of wonder and curiosity as he revels in the potential implications of his findings. It's that journeying spirit and the strength of Balmer's clear and accessible writing that make this book shine."—Christianity Today