Annie Blazer, “Playing for God: Evangelical Women and the Unintended Consequences of Sports Ministry” (NYU Press, 2015)

New Books in Sociology · Oct 8, 2015 · 1h 12m

In her new book, Playing for God: Evangelical Women and the Unintended Consequences of Sports Ministry (NYU Press, 2015), Annie Blazer shows through archival research and participant-observation how the paradigm of sports ministry transformed from one centered on celebrity male athletes using their fame to explicitly call audiences to conversion to Christ, to one in which female athletes predominate and implicitly seek to convert their sports fans through moral, Christian behavior while seeing themselves as engaged in spiritual warfare and enjoying the joy of athletic pleasure as God’s…