PAUL EMORY PUTZ
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I specialize in the history of sports and Christianity in the modern United States, and I have also researched and written on subjects related to race, religion, and the Midwest in American history. Along with my academic publications, my writing has appeared at Christianity Today, Religion & Politics, Slate, Religion News Service, and more. I have been interviewed or quoted by publications including The Atlantic, Sports Illustrated, New York Times, The Ringer, Associated Press, NPR's "Only A Game" radio program, and more (see my home page for additional links).
My CV

Books and Book Chapters

My revised dissertation, titled The Spirit of the Game: Christian Athletes, Big-Time Sports, and Transformation of American Protestantism, ​is under contract with Oxford University Press. I also have chapters in two edited collections that are under contract with Oxford University Press: "Touchdown Jesus: The Midwest and the Integration of Religion and Sport," (in Oxford History of the Midwest) and "Fundamentalism and Sport" (in The Oxford Handbook of Christian Fundamentalism).

In 2022, I published an essay titled “‘There is Talk of Black Power’: Christian Athletes and the Revolt of the Black Athlete,” in Religion and Sport in North America: Critical Essays for the Twenty-First Century, edited by Jeffrey Scholes and Randall Balmer (New York: Routledge, 2022), 13-34.


Peer-Reviewed Publications

  • “Tracing the Historical Contours of Black Muscular Christianity and American Sport,” The International Journal of the History of Sport, 39.4 (2022): 404-424. [PDF available upon request]
  • “Commercializing the Sacred Office: Sexual Revolution and the Scandal of the Modern Marrying Parson, 1895-1930,” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 17.1 (January 2018): 56-76. [PDF available upon request]
  • “For Race and Region: A Brief History of the Western Negro Press Association, 1896-1920,” Great Plains Quarterly 38.2 (Spring 2018): 175-198. [PDF available upon request]
  • ​“Building a City on a Hill: Mobilizing Evangelical Protestant Men for Moral Reform under the Des Moines Plan, 1907-1916.” The Annals of Iowa  77.1 (Winter 2018): 1-40. [this article can be accessed online]
  • “Big-League Basketball Comes to Omaha: A History of the Omahawks.” Nebraska History 97.4 (Winter 2016): 185-198. [PDF available upon request]
  • "From the Pulpit to the Press: Frank Crane's Omaha, 1892-1896." Nebraska History 96.3 (Fall 2015): 136-153. [this article can be accessed online]
  • Co-author with Jordan R. Bass and Mark Vermillion, “‘Going Viral’: The Impact of Forced Crowdsourcing on Coaching Evaluation Procedures.” International Sport Coaching Journal  1.2 (2014): 103-108.
  • “A Church for the People and a Priest for the Common Man: Charles W. Savidge, Omaha’s Eccentric Reformer.” Nebraska History 94.2 (Summer 2013): 54-73. [this article can be accessed online]
  • “Jesse ‘Cab’ Renick: In Search of an Indian Identity.” Chronicles of Oklahoma 89.1 (Spring 2011): 72-97.

BLOGGING


​In my current role with Truett Seminary's Faith & Sports Institute, I serve as editor and contributor to the Faith & Sports Blog. 

During my graduate school days I sporadically kept up Sportianity, a blog exploring the historical and contemporary connections between sports and Christianity in the United States. Among the most popular blog posts at the site:
​
  • Football, Prayer, and the South: The "Praying Colonels" of Centre College 
  • The Women Who Were Christian Athletes Before Title IX​
  • ​Felipe Alou and Latino Christian Athletes
  • How Billy Graham Made Peace With Sunday Sports
  • The Fundamentalist Frank Merriwell

I used to have a personal blog at peputz.blogspot.com, where I wrote about basketball, music, history, culture, and whatever else caught my fancy. Below is a sampling of my most popular blog posts, arranged by category.

Basketball:
  • The NBA Comes to Omaha
  • The Fifteen Best NBA Teams Of All Time...If Those Teams Were Organized By Players' College Degrees
  • The Most Interesting College Degrees in the NBA
  • Indian Identity and Jesse "Cab" Renick, Captain of the 1948 U.S. Olympic Basketball Team in London
  • Looking Backward: Reliving the 1990 NBA Draft

Books:
  • The Rise of the National Basketball Association 
  • Henry George and the Crisis of Inequality: Progress and Poverty in the Gilded Age
  • The National Basketball League: A History, 1935-1949 ​

​Personal Reflections:​​
  • Farewell Chipper: Baseball and Memories

I have also written at a couple of academic group blogs, including Sport in American History (you can find my posts by clicking here) and ​Religion in American History (You can find my posts by clicking here). Below is a sampling of some of my RiAH ​posts.
Book Preview Lists:
  • 2017 American Religious History Year in Preview (May-August)
  • 2017 American Religious History Year in Preview (January-April)
  • 2016 American Religious History Year in Preview (September-December)
  • 2016 American Religious History Year in Preview (May-August)
  • 2016 American Religious History Year in Preview (January-April)
  • 2015 American Religious History Year in Preview (September-December)
  • 2015 American Religious History Year in Preview (May-August)
  • 2015 American Religious History Year in Preview (January-April)
  • 2014 American Religious History Year in Preview (July-December)
  • 2014 American Religious History Year in Preview (January-June)

Book Reviews:
  • Of Gods and Games: Religious Faith and Modern Sports
  • Saving Faith: Making Religious Pluralism an American Value at the Dawn of the Secular Age
  • Outsiders in a Promised Land: Religious Activists in Pacific Northwest History
  • Boys among Men: How the Prep-to-Pro Generation Redefined the NBA and Sparked a Basketball Revolution
  • Playing for God: Evangelical Women and the Unintended Consequences of Sports Ministry 
  • Under the Big Top: Big Tent Revivalism and American Culture, 1885-1925
  • The Cross of War: Christian Nationalism and U.S. Expansion in the Spanish-American War
  • Transcendental Meditation in the Midwest
  • The Urban Pulpit: New York City and the Fate of Liberal Evangelicalism
  • Building the Old Time Religion: Women Evangelists in the Progressive Era
  • The Radical Middle Path: Jesus According to Ingersoll, Herron, and Debs

American West/Midwest
  • Toward a Bibliography of Religion in the Midwest
  • Take a Stand for Peanuts: Thinking Out Loud About The Irreverent George Norris
  • Social Gospel(s) in the American West? Five Possible Themes
  • A Time for Burning: (ir)Religion, Race, and Civil Rights in Omaha
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