Writing

Books 

In progress: Bodies in Motion: A Religious History of Sports in America

Gods, Games, and Globalization: New Perspectives in Religion and Sports (Mercer University Press, 2019) co-edited with Rebecca Alpert

Southern Civil Religions: Imagining the Good Society in the Post-Reconstruction Era, The New Southern Studies Series (University of Georgia Press, 2011)
  • Winner of the 2012 Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore Award from the Florida Historical Society
  • Reviewed in: Choice; American Historical Review; Southern Jewish History; Journal of Interdisciplinary History; Journal of Southern Religion; Journal of American History; Journal of Southern History; Register of the Kentucky Historical Society; Southern Historian; Journal of African American History
Popular and Online Publications

Research Articles

  •  “Civil Religions in America,” Beyond Bellah: New Directions in Civil Religion, eds. Raymond Haberski and Philip Goff (forthcoming 2021)
  • “‘The Pure of Body are Pure of Soul’: Religion and the Emerging Sports Culture of the New South” Southern Religions, Southern Cultures: Essays Honoring Charles Reagan Wilson (University Press of Mississippi, 2018)
  • From Prizefights to Praying Colonels: Civil Religion, Sports, and a New(ish) Direction for the Lost Cause,” Journal of Southern Religion 17 (2015)
  • “Playing on Sacred Ground: Uncovering the Religious Dimensions of Athletic Venues around the World,” The Changing World Religion Map, ed. Stanley D. Brunn (Springer, 2014), 2881-2892
  • “Movement, Maps, and Wonder: Civil Religious Competition at the Source of the Mississippi River, 1805-1832,” Gods of the Mississippi, ed. Michael Pasquier (Indiana University Press, 2013), 56-73
  • “Between Faith and Fistic Battles: Moralists, Enthusiasts, and the Idea of Jack Johnson in the New South,” Perspectives on Religious Studies 39, no. 3 (2012): 219-33
  • “From Muscular Christianity to Divine Madness: Sports and/as Religion in America,” Faith in America: Changes, Challenges, and a New Spirituality, ed. Charles H. Lippy (Praeger, 2006), 215-34
  • “Holy War on the Football Field: Religion and the Florida State University Mascot Controversy,” Horsehide, Pigskin, Oval Tracks, and Apple Pie: Essays on Sports and American Culture, ed. James Vlasich (McFarland, 2005), 104-18
    • Reprinted in, Taking Sides: Clashing Views in Race and Ethnicity, eds., Raymond D’Angelo and Herbert Douglas (McGraw-Hill, 2012 [8th edition])
Encyclopedia Entries
  • Religion and Sports in America,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia, ed. John Corrigan (March 2016)
  • “Civil Religion: Christian Contact, Theological Exchanges, and Current Issues” and “Civil Religion: History, Beliefs, and Practices,” Handbook of Religion, ed. Terry C. Muck (Baker Academic, 2014), 643-47, 648-52
  • “Bob Hayes” and “Michael Johnson,” American Sports: A History of Icons, Idols and Ideas, ed. Murry Nelson (ABC-CLIO, 2013), 540-41, 633-35  
  • “Sports,” The Encyclopedia of Religion in America, eds. Charles H. Lippy and Peter W. Williams (C.Q. Press, 2010), 2153-60
  • “Father Divine” and “Mother Ann Lee,” American Countercultures: An Encyclopedia of Nonconformists, Alternative Lifestyles, and Radical Ideas in U.S. History, ed. Gina Misiroglu (M.E. Sharpe, 2008)
  • “The Moonies,” Postwar America: An Encyclopedia of Social, Political, Cultural, and Economic History, ed. James Ciment (M.E. Sharpe, 2006)
  • “Jeremy Bentham” and “William Ellery Channing,” The Encyclopedia of Protestantism, ed. Hans J. Hillerbrand (Routledge, 2004), 215, 373
  • “Spanish Colonization in North America” and “The Spanish Empire,” The Encyclopedia of Religious Freedom, ed. Catharine Cookson (Routledge, 2003), 461-65, 465-70

Book Reviews 
  • Roman Catholicism in America (2nd Ed)by Chester Gillis. In Choice Reviews (forthcoming 2020)
  • The Gods of Indian Country: Religion and the Struggle for the American West, by Jennifer Graber. In Ethnohistory (forthcoming 2020)
  • Strangers and Friends at the Welcome Table; Contemporary Christianties in the American South, by James Hudnut-Beumler. In Tennessee Historical Quarterly (forthcoming 2020)
  • Cowboy Christians, by Marie W. Dallam. In Western Historical Quarterly (2018)
  • American Covenant: A History of Civil Religion from the Puritans to the Present, by Philip Gorski. In Choice Reviews (October 2017)
  • No Depression in Heaven: The Great Depression, the New Deal, and the Transformation of Religion in the Delta, by Alison Collis Greene. In Agricultural History (October 2017)
  • Frank Merriwell and the Fiction of All-American Boyhood: The Progressive Era Creation of the Schoolboy Sports Story, by Ryan K. Anderson. In the Journal of American History (March 2017)
  • The Abbey: A Story of Discovery, by James Martin.  For BookMark, WPSU (January 2016) 
  • Catholicism Today: An Introduction to the Contemporary Catholic Church, by Evyatar Marienberg. In Choice Reviews (March 2015)
  • The Secular Spectacle: Performing Religion in a Southern Town, by Chad E. Seales. In Choice Reviews (July 2014)
  • The Last Segregated Hour: The Memphis Kneel-Ins and the Campaign for Southern Church Desegregation, by Stephen R. Haynes. In Church History (May 2014)
  • Sister Thorn and Catholic Mysticism in Modern America, by Paula M. Kane. In Choice Reviews (April 2014)
  • A Cry for Justice: Daniel Rudd and His Life in Black Catholicism, Journalism, and Activism, 1854-1933, by Gary B. Agee. In Church History (September 2013)
  • God and War: American Civil Religion since 1945, by Raymond J. Haberski. For the Society for U.S. Intellectual History blog (October 2012)
  • Diverging Loyalties: Baptists in Middle Georgia During the Civil War, by Bruce T. Gourley.  In Civil War Book Review (Summer 2012)
  • A History of the Catholic Church in the American South, 1513-1900, by James M. Woods.  In The American Historical Review (December 2012)
  • Out of Left Field: Jews and Black Baseball, by Rebecca T. Alpert.  In Religious Studies Review (June 2012)
  • Game Day and God: Football, Faith, and Politics in the American South, by Eric Bain-Selbo.  In Religious Studies Review (December 2011)
  • Tennis and Philosophy: What the Racket is All About, edited by David Baggett.  In The Journal of Sports History (Summer 2011)
  • Kentucky’s Most Hated Man: Charles Chilton Moore and the Blue Grass Blade, by John Sparks.  In The Journal of Southern History (May 2011)
  • The Great Match Race: When North Met South in America's First Sports Spectacle, by John Eisenberg.  For BookMark, WPSU (June 2010) 
  • Rounding the Bases: Baseball and Religion in America, by Joseph L. Price.  In H-American Studies (October 2008)
  • Liquor in the Land of the Lost Cause: Southern White Evangelicals and the Prohibition Movement, by Joe L. Coker.  In Church History (December 2008)
  • Religion on Our Campuses: A Professor’s Guide to Communities, Conflicts, and Promising Conversations, by Mark U. Edwards, Jr.  In Religious Studies Reviews (June 2008)
  • We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition, by John Courtney Murray.  In Religious Studies Reviews (June 2008)
  • The South’s Tolerable Alien: Roman Catholics in Alabama and Georgia, 1945-1970, by Andrew S. Moore. In H-Catholic (January 2008)
  • Feast of Souls: Indians and Spaniards in the Seventeenth-Century Missions of Florida and New Mexico, by Robert C. Galgano.  In Religious Studies Reviews (October 2007)
  • Authentic Fakes: Religion and American Popular Culture, by David Chidester.  In The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture (Spring 2007)
  • The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Volume I: Religion, edited by Samuel S. Hill.  In H-American Studies (December 2006)
  • Creating an Old South: Middle Florida’s Plantation Frontier before the Civil War, by Edward E. Baptist.  In H-USA (March 2004)
  • The Martyrs of Columbine: Faith and the Politics of Tragedy, by Justin Watson.  In H-USA (December 2003)
  • From Season to Season: Sport as America Religion, edited by Joseph L. Price.  In The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture (Fall 2002)  

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