Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality

If fictional sports coach Ted Lasso needed a priest, he would find the right one in American Jesuit Patrick Kelly. Kelly has been writing at the intersection of sport and spirituality for nearly two decades. In his most recent book Play, Sport, and Spirit, he examines the very heart of the relationship between sport and spirituality in his fullest description of the element of play. Kelly is an associate professor at the University of Detroit Mercy and completed his doctoral dissertation under flow theory originator Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. This latest book is Kelly's deep dive into a multidisciplinary understanding of play, revealing a powerful energy within the spiritual life and the sporting world.

The book's six chapters are split into two equal parts. Chapter 1 carefully dissects sports, naming its potential risks (quoting Orwell's perspective that sports are "war minus the shooting") and specifying its dangers (e.g., professionalization of youth sport). Against this background, Kelly then unpacks the dynamism of play. He begins with the work of Johan Huizinga, which articulates an all-encompassing reach of play that dwarfs simplistic or monochromatic descriptions. The next two chapters consider the historical and theological background of play and sports. Chapter 2 reviews sporting insights from Thomas Aquinas, early humanist schools, and Jesuit French missionaries in North America to show a religious impulse open to premodern sports. Positive assessments of play by nineteenth-century American Protestants Horace Bushnell and W. E .B. Du Bois counter the rejection of sporting play by Puritan leaders. Chapter 3 gathers positive excerpts about play by Harvey Cox, Jurgen Moltmann, and John Henry Newman—however, with the last, Kelly makes no mention of Newman's public spat against sports enthusiast Charles Kingsley. Part One's substantial historical review both praises play and argues that there is comparatively little sustained reflection on sports.

Kelly's work wants neither to underline the "muscular" part of the muscular Christian movement nor to examine sport as a civil or folk religion. Instead, he offers a reflection on play to create a spiritual understanding of sports. The final three chapters present this multifaceted theological reflection on play in sports. Chapter 3 examines play from an evolutionary context; chapter 4 from a phenomenological [End Page 177] perspective; and chapter 5 from positive psychology and flow theory. Despite how sports can emphasize external motivations for playing (e.g., wealth) or push aside social issues (e.g., race and gender), Kelly sees sports as social practices that bear inherent goods worthy of examination.

The final two chapters are particularly important. Chapter 5 uncovers experiences of play as freedom, where ontological meaningfulness in sports is possible through its spirit of play. That is, when the player plays with all of herself and identifies with this action, she experiences freedom. Matching herself with what she is doing, the true self can be found in sports. This movement makes possible "interior freedom" (87) that can also be found in the spiritual life, in particular in moments of spiritual consolation (and desolation) according to Ignatius' spiritual exercises. Experiencing freedom through play and finding the true self can enable identification with the God who lovingly plays creation into existence. Kelly completes a similarly thorough examination of the joy felt in playing sports—as explained through flow theory—and the spiritual life's qualities of joy, effortlessness, and egolessness. (He has written on related interfaith connections elsewhere.)

For readers of this journal, Kelly's multidisciplinary perspective on play and its relationship to sports provides fertile ground for further thinking. Why have spiritual writers shied away from the topic of sports? It is likely the result of modern sports' ambiguous meanings. Despite moral shortcomings in its current formations (e.g., hyper-masculinities) sports have at their heart the spirit of play, which calls for further theological reflection. Sports maintain an incredible draw and power in society because of their fun, communal, and fresh appeal for overworked, technologically driven societies. Sports point to a deeper spirit within human experience, something...