Baseball as a Civil Religion

The important distinction is that baseball is a civil religion and not a "religion". Thus it is not an ecumenical religion like Christianity, Judaism, Islam or Buddhism. In “Civil Religion in America,” Robert Bellah posits the idea that “most Americans share common religious characteristics expressed through civil religious beliefs, symbols, and rituals that provide a religious dimension to the entirety of American life.”[i] Civil religions have neither gods nor sacred texts but they do have institutions which aid and abet their effects. They possess religious overtones as they live deep in peoples’ souls and elicit a visceral emotional connection.

They present qualities that its follower’s value and create a spirited community.
In the same way that religions have institutions, so too does baseball. If institutionalized religion has cathedrals and synagogues, then baseball has stadiums. Walking through the tunnels of a stadium is like walking through the crypt of a church. Stepping out of a tunnel and facing the open field is then analogous to entering the sanctuary. Even baseball jargon is religious in tone and form. In the stands you here cries of “you gotta believe!” and strategies that require “sacrifice.” When the game is close fans are encouraged to have “faith” in such “life and death” scenarios. Larry Merchant, a sports analyst for HBO, once said that the World Series was treated by fans “as though it were a solemn high mass.”[ii]

The emotions felt by athletes and fans work to inspire religious feelings as well. When Robert Novak goes to watch his beloved Dodgers he notices several ways in which baseball creates and inspires a civil religion:

By the asceticism and dedication of preparation; by a sense of respect for the
mysteries of one’s own body and soul, and for powers not in one’s own
control; by a sense of awe for the place and time of competition; by a sense
of fate; by a felt sense of comradeship and destiny; by a sense of
participation in the rhythms and tide of nature itself.[iii]

All of these emotions and effects are present in baseball but could easily be found in religion. The companionship of crowds yields congregational sentiments. The sense of fate breeds respect for what will come and helps us cope with events when things go sour. The rituals of baseball—do not step on the foul line, take exactly two practice swings, lick your fingers before every pitch—are not unlike the rituals found in religion.

A famous sports saying goes “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” What follows from this is that in losing there is a sense or element of death. To lose is to die. But this is symbolic just as baptism and communion in church are symbolic. In each ritual the participant dies, symbolically, and then is reborn, symbolically. The same is true in baseball. A player loses a game or strikes out three time and dies, symbolically. But the next day he is born again with a chance at redemption. As long as the churchgoer or player cedes himself to the symbolism and does not just walk through the motions, the effects of the rituals can be impacting.

Some are cynical and find it aggrandizing to elevate sports to a semi-religious status. They are more humanistic and fail to see—or refuse to see—how a stadium could bear resemblance to a church. But then again, what religion does not have its skeptics, its nonbelievers? “Any religion worthy of the name thrives on irreverence, skepticism and anticlericalism. A religion without skeptics is like a bosom never noticed.”[iv] Indeed, Novak welcomes their challenges as their dispositions validate baseball’s religious nature.

Baseball is also religious in that its followers share common histories and pass shared experiences and memories down through generations. Robert Elias’ A Fit for a Fractured Society, quotes Stephen Riess who said “the national pastime…supplied some of the symbols, myths and legends society needed to bind its members together.”[v] Shared beliefs create communal bonds and also inspire reverence for the subject. A young child listening to his father’s experience seeing Jackie Robinson play or Barry Bonds slug home runs can have a very impressionable effect. That these memories can be passed down through generations shows the sport’s transcendentally religious nature. Sharing memories and stories ensures that the civil religion persists and stays vibrant.

Unlike much of the world, we lack the thousands of years of evolving society that has placed art, and music and opera at the summit of societal importance. We have musical talents but nothing on the order of Beethoven or Mozart. America has some great literature but most rankings put Shakespeare, Milton and others at the top. The reason is that Europe has had thousands of years of societal struggle—we have had just over 250. Alas, sports are our civilizing agents.[vi] They better us by bringing us together and they inform our hearts and souls through the values that they teach. Baseball is America’s universal art form and our civil religion.

It is very easy to gloss over sports. So ubiquitous in our society, they often fade into the background as scores scroll across the bottom of television screens. We are inundated with sports to the point that they may even seem to have a dulling effect. But to rest there would be a serious injustice. As the French author Jacques Barzun once wrote, “Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball.”[vii] What began as a simple game played on the Elysian Fields in New Jersey has blossomed into so much more.

[i] Robert Bellah, “Civil Religion in America,” Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Winter 1967, Vol. 96, No. 1, 5.
[ii] Larry Merchant, quoted in Will, 24.
[iii] Novak, 18.
[iv] Novak, 23.
[v] Stephen Reis, quoted in Robert Elias, A Fit for a Fractured Society: Baseball and the American Dream,(Armonk, New York: Sharpe, M.e., Inc., 2001), 10.
[vi] Novak, 27.
[vii] Jacques Barzun, God's Country and Mine: A Declaration of Love Spiced with a Few Harsh Words, (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1954) 159.