April 11, 2025 • 19 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Faith and sports go hand in hand. Quarterbacks quote Bible verses in interviews, star players host team Bible studies, and a last-ditch attempt to win a game is called a “Hail Mary.” But it isn’t just the players who are indebted to faith—sometimes, the sports themselves are. Paul Putz, author of The Spirit of the Game: American Christianity and Big-Time Sports, shares the unusual origin story of basketball: a game initially designed to bring people to Christ that took on a life of its own.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Up next the
story from Paul Putts, who was the assistant director of
Truett Seminary's Faith and Sports Institute at Bailey University. He's
also the author of the Spirit of the Game, American Christianity,
and Big Time Sports. Here he is with the unusual
(00:30):
origin story of basketball.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
I want to take you back to that very first
game of basketball. It happened in eighteen ninety one on
a December day in Springfield, Massachusetts. At eleven thirty am
that day, eighteen grown men, most of them twenty five
years old, walked into the gym at the International Young
(00:54):
Men's Christian.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Association Training School where they were students.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
They would have noticed two peach baskets tacked to banisters
on opposite sides of the gym ten feet off the ground.
There is a soccer ball, too, and a list of
thirteen rules for a new game that their instructor, James Naismith,
explained to them. The students divided into two teams of
nine and the game commenced. There was no dribbling, no
(01:21):
jump shots, no dunking. Instead, the men passed the soccer
ball back and forth, trying to keep it away from
their opponents while angling for a chance to throw it
into the basket.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
With no template for what.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
A shot was supposed to look like, the students would
position the ball at the top of their head, prepping
themselves to toss it toward the basket, only to find
that just when they were ready to throw the ball in,
a defender would swoop in and grab it away, leaving
the player to turn around in surprise. If you've ever
tried to coach second graders like I have, it was
(01:56):
probably a scene like that, except with big players with beers.
By the time that the class in the game had ended,
just one person made a shot. The final score of
the first basketball game was one to zero. To the
students who played the game and to Naismith, however, it
(02:18):
was a success. The students loved the thrill and challenge
and creative possibilities of the game. Naismith loved those parts too,
but there was something else about it that he loved.
For him, it represented the very reason he was at
the YMCA Training School in the first place. He enrolled
in the new college out of a belief that sports
(02:39):
and physical education could be a place for spiritual formation.
On his application to the school, he was asked to
describe the role that he would be training for, and
he described it this way, to win men for the
Master through the gym. When Naismith created basketball, then the
(02:59):
game was part of this much larger vision inspired by
his Christian faith, nurtured out of Christian College, shaped by
Christian ideas, and distributed around the world through a global
Christian network. When Nasmith wrote on his application that he
wanted to win men for the Master through the gym,
he didn't have a vision of platform evangelism or using
(03:23):
celebrity athletes to promote Jesus. His idea of Christian witness
was about forming and shaping people to exhibit the character
of Christ in their everyday lives. In sports like basketball,
he thought could be a place where that could happen.
In Naismith's day, this understanding of sport was relatively new.
(03:43):
Nasmith grew up in rural Canada. His parents both died
of an illness when he was nine years old, and
so his uncle Peter, a deeply religious Presbyterian, took him in.
Peter made sure that Naismith was connected and involved with
the Presbyterian church, but when Nasmyth was fifteen opt out
of high school. He spent some time as a lumberjack,
returned to high school at age twenty, and entered into
(04:06):
college with the goal, inspired by his uncle Peter, of
becoming a Christian minister. In Nasmith's experience in the Presbyterian
Church growing up, most Christians saw sports as a diversion
or as a tool of the devil. They were people
who read First Timothy four to eight for physical training
(04:26):
is of some value, but Godliness has value in all things.
And they saw in that passage mutually exclusive domains, one
physical and one spiritual. The truly committed Christians in their
minds would focus on spiritual tasks and vocations. After Nasmith
started playing football while he was a seminary student, a
(04:48):
group of his Christian friends began meeting together to pray
for his soul. But Naismith was also coming of age
during a time when a new movement was taking shape
in England and North America, a movement scholars have labeled
muscular Christianity. There's a lot that can be said about
this complex movement. The main point I want to make
today is that muscular Christians pushed back against a dualistic
(05:12):
understanding of the world, one that pitted sacred against secular
that elevated the unseen spiritual world over the physical and
the material. Muscular Christians suggested that we should see the
sacred value of our physical bodies, that we should see
human beings in a holistic way, mind, body, and soul intertwined.
(05:32):
Muscular Christians could look at a verse like First Timothy
four to eight, and instead of seeing mutually exclusive activities
physical training or spiritual training, they saw the potential that
all things, including physical training, could provide an opportunity for
training in godliness.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
It was not either or.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
This came home for Naismith in a story he pointed
to as his epiphany. It happened while he was a
seminary student playing football, perhaps as at the very moment
that his friends were praying for his soul. During one game,
in the middle of an intense moment of action, the
guard to Nasmiths left, lost his temper and let out
a stream of curse words. At a break in action,
(06:14):
the guard sheepishly turned to Naismith.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
I beg your pardon. I forgot you were there, he said.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Naismith was surprised at first, he had never spoken out
against profanity. He never mentioned it. He had been a lumberjack.
He was used to course language. It took him some
time to reflect, and then a light bulb went off.
His teammate felt compelled to apologize because he respected the
fact that, in Nasmith's words, I played the game with
(06:44):
all my might and yet held myself under control. The
teammate was responding, in other words, to the type of
person Nasmith was in ordinary everyday life, to the consistency
and integrity of Nasmith's character displayed on and off the field.
(07:04):
Soon after that encounter, Naismith heard about the YMCA Training
School in Springfield, a new college that would train leaders
who could connect sports in physical activity with Christian formation.
He submitted his application, and away he went to the
United States, where he created basketball, a game that Naismith
hoped would provide opportunities for players to grow and develop
(07:25):
as whole people. The aim of basketball, Naismith said, is
to develop the man. Naismith believed strongly an individual expression,
the freedom to try new things. He wanted basketball players
to have the space to create, to be able to
take the initiative. He gloried in the inventive new moves,
(07:48):
the improvisations that players developed, like the dribble and the
hook shot. He often expressed awe and wonder as he
witnessed the ever advancing skill of basketball players. Over the
course of his life, Naismith's appreciation for players led him
to take a more skeptical view of coaches. He understood
the value of the coach, but he worried that they
(08:11):
tended to overcoach, that they pursued victory at the expense
of developing people. A coach could drill his players or
her players to follow orders and win plenty of games,
but this created dependence rather than independence. It turned players,
Naismith warned, into cogs in a machine rather than broad
(08:31):
and independent young men and women. As Naismith wrote in
his autobiography, why should the play of a group of
young men be entirely spoiled to further the ambitions of
some coach?
Speaker 1 (08:44):
And you've been listening to Paul Putts tell the story
of basketball and its roots, and that first basketball game
that Putts described just a lot of passing, a lot
of well, a lot of movement and running and for
oneas and only to try and put the ball in
the hoop, and how many times did it happen? Just once?
(09:05):
The score of the first basketball game a mere one
to nothing. Why did he do this? What was his reasoning?
Masmith said, to win men for the Master through the gym.
He loved being at the YMCA and training young people
and their bodies in a holistic way, part of what
(09:27):
Putts described as the muscular Christianity movement. And my goodness,
that example of him on the court, who he is,
who he was, and how he carried himself compelled a
fellow player to apologize for cursing on the court, and that,
of course was the point, had a best model behavior
that represented Christ. When we come back more of this
(09:51):
remarkable story, the story of basketball and its origins here
on our American Stories, and we continue with our American
stories and the origin story of basketball, which of course
(10:15):
includes Naysmith. But my goodness, we're learning about the motivations
behind nay Smith's invention, and we're listening to Paul Puttz
tell the story. Let's pick up where he last left off.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Naismith didn't want to simply roll out the ball and
set up a free for all. His favorite role in
the game of basketball was not the player, certainly not
the coach.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
It was the referee.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
To Naismith, the referee was the central figure creating the
conditions in which moral development could occur.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Games, he wrote.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Have been called the laboratory for the development of moral attributes.
But they will not in and of themselves accomplish this purpose.
They must be properly conducted by competent individuals. Few things
are worse in a basketball game than a referee who
makes the game about themselves. If you start paying attention
to a referee, chances are something has gone wrong. The
(11:12):
best referees are those who operate in a quiet way,
whose presence is barely felt, whose service gives them no
special privileges except the knowledge that they helped to create
an environment in which players could experience the joy of
the game and develop the potential more fully. This was
especially important because Naismith designed basketball to provide intense competition
(11:35):
without brute force. Basketball, Nasmuth said, is personal combat without
personal contact. This requires a high degree of discipline. Players
on both teams can move anywhere on the floor at
any time.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
They can literally get nose to nose with.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Their opponent, but they cannot overpower them with physical contact.
The only way to enforce this is through consistent application
of the rules. A well regulated game sets the players
up for both the joy of playing and the possibility
of moral development. To give another example of the nineteen thirties,
(12:14):
while Naismith was a professor at the University of Kansas,
a student named John McLendon enrolled at the school. McLendon
was an African American. He wanted to join the basketball team.
He could not because at the time Kansas did not
allow black players to participate in sports. Naismith was not
the basketball coach, but he was a physical education professor,
(12:34):
and so he took McClendon under his wing.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
He mentored the young coaching prodigy.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
John McLendon would go on to become one of the
most accomplished and important basketball coaches of the twentieth century,
thanks in part to Naismith's mentorship. But Naismith is not
the hero of this particular aspect of basketball's story. The
important thing to know is that it was never just
us a Christian game developed by Naismith. It was always
(13:04):
also from the beginning, a game influenced and shaped by
a variety of people from different backgrounds in different identities,
it crossed gendered lines. In eighteen ninety two, a woman
named Senda Berenson, serving as an instructor at a women's
college in Massachusetts, heard about this new game.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
She went to check it out.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
At the time, there was essentially no team's sport deemed
acceptable for women. Their opportunities to compete and play in
any sport were severely limited, but Berenson saw in basketball
a chance to change that. She brought the game back
to her college. She developed new rules, and thanks to
(13:45):
her efforts in many other women, it quickly became the
most popular and important women's team sport in the twentieth century.
As a woman, Senda Bearnson was already moving the game
beyond its muscular Christian origins, but she was also Jewish,
and basketball quickly became a favorite sport for the Jewish community,
(14:05):
providing the game with many of us early stars and innovators.
Other faith traditions embraced basketball as well, Catholics and latter
day Saints. Basketball crossed racial and ethnic lines too. At
the time that Nasmith created basketball, the YMCA was racially segregated.
There were some black ymcach chapters but they often lacked
(14:27):
the resources to build gym spaces where basketball could be played.
With little help from the white Christians who developed basketball,
African Americans had to create their own spaces to play,
and they did. In New York City, black churches played
a central role in this development. They provided the gym
space and sponsored some of the earliest teams, helping to
(14:50):
build a thriving culture of black basketball that shaped New
York City and beyond. In Washington, d C. Another hub
of black basketball, Edwin E. B. Henderson, who was the
key figure later nicknamed the Grandfather of black basketball. Henderson
decided to create a black basketball league after he was
kicked out of a whites only YMCJM. Naismith supported and
(15:15):
cheered on the efforts of Baronson, Henderson and others.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
But he was not actively involved.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Naismith remained a Presbyterian throughout his life, committed to the
Christian faith. Basketball would not be the game we know
and love today if it had not been embraced by
a multitude of people across a variety of faith traditions.
It is a gift released into the world for all
to enjoy.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Later in his.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Life, when he was asked to discuss basketball's origins, Naismith
reflected to his mission in life, and here's what he
said about his life's submission. Way back in my college days,
I was lying on bed one Sunday in thought, what
is this all about? What is life about? What are
(16:02):
you going to do? What are you going to be?
What model will you hold up before you? I put
on my wall, not in writing, but in my mind
this thought, I want to leave the world a little
better than I found it. That is the motto I
had then, and it is the motto I have today.
That has been a mighty fine.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Thing for me.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Like to close with one more story about Nasmyth, and
this is one of my favorites.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
It happened in the nineteen twenties, more than.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Three decades after basketball's creation, when Nasmith stopped by a
small college in Iowa. He dropped into a gym anonymously
and quietly to pass the time. Two teams were set
to play a pickup game, and they decided a referee
was needed. One player ran over to Nasmith, sitting in
(16:56):
the bleachers, and asks if he would officiate, but be
forour Naismith could reply. A second player interrupted that old man.
He doesn't know anything about basketball. Let's get someone else.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Off.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
The players went to find a different referee. Well, Nasmus
smiled with a twinkle in his eye. He didn't need
people to recognize him.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
He just loved that the game was being played and enjoyed.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
And a terrific job by the production and editing by
our own Greg Hengler, and his special thanks to Paul Puttz,
who is the assistant director of Truet Seminaries, Faith and
Sports Institute at Baylor University. He's also the author of
the Spirit of the Game, American Christianity, and Big Time Sports.
And I'm a big time hoops fan. Loved the sport.
(17:47):
Dad coached the sport. My brother and I both were
captains of our high school basketball teams. And this is
so true about the nature of the sport and Nasmith's
nature himself that he gave this gift to the world.
It's game and allowed it to be developed by many collaborators,
all these ethnic groups, all the different racial composition, giving
(18:11):
the game its own life, its own styles. Very popular
with the Jews, the Mormons, Blacks, whites, women and men.
It brought people together and this was the essential Presbyterian
nature of the man, the essential Christian nature of the man,
and the pluralism of the sport itself. Its development hinged
(18:33):
on that, and in the end hinged on that idea
of America itself. Eplur of masunum from the many won.
And I love that closing line about his mission. I
want to leave the world a little better than I
found it, And indeed he did. The story of basketball
it's Christian roots here on our American Stories
Speaker 2 (19:21):
At
And we continue with our American stories. Up next the
story from Paul Putts, who was the assistant director of
Truett Seminary's Faith and Sports Institute at Bailey University. He's
also the author of the Spirit of the Game, American Christianity,
and Big Time Sports. Here he is with the unusual
(00:30):
origin story of basketball.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
I want to take you back to that very first
game of basketball. It happened in eighteen ninety one on
a December day in Springfield, Massachusetts. At eleven thirty am
that day, eighteen grown men, most of them twenty five
years old, walked into the gym at the International Young
(00:54):
Men's Christian.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Association Training School where they were students.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
They would have noticed two peach baskets tacked to banisters
on opposite sides of the gym ten feet off the ground.
There is a soccer ball, too, and a list of
thirteen rules for a new game that their instructor, James Naismith,
explained to them. The students divided into two teams of
nine and the game commenced. There was no dribbling, no
(01:21):
jump shots, no dunking. Instead, the men passed the soccer
ball back and forth, trying to keep it away from
their opponents while angling for a chance to throw it
into the basket.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
With no template for what.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
A shot was supposed to look like, the students would
position the ball at the top of their head, prepping
themselves to toss it toward the basket, only to find
that just when they were ready to throw the ball in,
a defender would swoop in and grab it away, leaving
the player to turn around in surprise. If you've ever
tried to coach second graders like I have, it was
(01:56):
probably a scene like that, except with big players with beers.
By the time that the class in the game had ended,
just one person made a shot. The final score of
the first basketball game was one to zero. To the
students who played the game and to Naismith, however, it
(02:18):
was a success. The students loved the thrill and challenge
and creative possibilities of the game. Naismith loved those parts too,
but there was something else about it that he loved.
For him, it represented the very reason he was at
the YMCA Training School in the first place. He enrolled
in the new college out of a belief that sports
(02:39):
and physical education could be a place for spiritual formation.
On his application to the school, he was asked to
describe the role that he would be training for, and
he described it this way, to win men for the
Master through the gym. When Naismith created basketball, then the
(02:59):
game was part of this much larger vision inspired by
his Christian faith, nurtured out of Christian College, shaped by
Christian ideas, and distributed around the world through a global
Christian network. When Nasmith wrote on his application that he
wanted to win men for the Master through the gym,
he didn't have a vision of platform evangelism or using
(03:23):
celebrity athletes to promote Jesus. His idea of Christian witness
was about forming and shaping people to exhibit the character
of Christ in their everyday lives. In sports like basketball,
he thought could be a place where that could happen.
In Naismith's day, this understanding of sport was relatively new.
(03:43):
Nasmith grew up in rural Canada. His parents both died
of an illness when he was nine years old, and
so his uncle Peter, a deeply religious Presbyterian, took him in.
Peter made sure that Naismith was connected and involved with
the Presbyterian church, but when Nasmyth was fifteen opt out
of high school. He spent some time as a lumberjack,
returned to high school at age twenty, and entered into
(04:06):
college with the goal, inspired by his uncle Peter, of
becoming a Christian minister. In Nasmith's experience in the Presbyterian
Church growing up, most Christians saw sports as a diversion
or as a tool of the devil. They were people
who read First Timothy four to eight for physical training
(04:26):
is of some value, but Godliness has value in all things.
And they saw in that passage mutually exclusive domains, one
physical and one spiritual. The truly committed Christians in their
minds would focus on spiritual tasks and vocations. After Nasmith
started playing football while he was a seminary student, a
(04:48):
group of his Christian friends began meeting together to pray
for his soul. But Naismith was also coming of age
during a time when a new movement was taking shape
in England and North America, a movement scholars have labeled
muscular Christianity. There's a lot that can be said about
this complex movement. The main point I want to make
today is that muscular Christians pushed back against a dualistic
(05:12):
understanding of the world, one that pitted sacred against secular
that elevated the unseen spiritual world over the physical and
the material. Muscular Christians suggested that we should see the
sacred value of our physical bodies, that we should see
human beings in a holistic way, mind, body, and soul intertwined.
(05:32):
Muscular Christians could look at a verse like First Timothy
four to eight, and instead of seeing mutually exclusive activities
physical training or spiritual training, they saw the potential that
all things, including physical training, could provide an opportunity for
training in godliness.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
It was not either or.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
This came home for Naismith in a story he pointed
to as his epiphany. It happened while he was a
seminary student playing football, perhaps as at the very moment
that his friends were praying for his soul. During one game,
in the middle of an intense moment of action, the
guard to Nasmiths left, lost his temper and let out
a stream of curse words. At a break in action,
(06:14):
the guard sheepishly turned to Naismith.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
I beg your pardon. I forgot you were there, he said.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Naismith was surprised at first, he had never spoken out
against profanity. He never mentioned it. He had been a lumberjack.
He was used to course language. It took him some
time to reflect, and then a light bulb went off.
His teammate felt compelled to apologize because he respected the
fact that, in Nasmith's words, I played the game with
(06:44):
all my might and yet held myself under control. The
teammate was responding, in other words, to the type of
person Nasmith was in ordinary everyday life, to the consistency
and integrity of Nasmith's character displayed on and off the field.
(07:04):
Soon after that encounter, Naismith heard about the YMCA Training
School in Springfield, a new college that would train leaders
who could connect sports in physical activity with Christian formation.
He submitted his application, and away he went to the
United States, where he created basketball, a game that Naismith
hoped would provide opportunities for players to grow and develop
(07:25):
as whole people. The aim of basketball, Naismith said, is
to develop the man. Naismith believed strongly an individual expression,
the freedom to try new things. He wanted basketball players
to have the space to create, to be able to
take the initiative. He gloried in the inventive new moves,
(07:48):
the improvisations that players developed, like the dribble and the
hook shot. He often expressed awe and wonder as he
witnessed the ever advancing skill of basketball players. Over the
course of his life, Naismith's appreciation for players led him
to take a more skeptical view of coaches. He understood
the value of the coach, but he worried that they
(08:11):
tended to overcoach, that they pursued victory at the expense
of developing people. A coach could drill his players or
her players to follow orders and win plenty of games,
but this created dependence rather than independence. It turned players,
Naismith warned, into cogs in a machine rather than broad
(08:31):
and independent young men and women. As Naismith wrote in
his autobiography, why should the play of a group of
young men be entirely spoiled to further the ambitions of
some coach?
Speaker 1 (08:44):
And you've been listening to Paul Putts tell the story
of basketball and its roots, and that first basketball game
that Putts described just a lot of passing, a lot
of well, a lot of movement and running and for
oneas and only to try and put the ball in
the hoop, and how many times did it happen? Just once?
(09:05):
The score of the first basketball game a mere one
to nothing. Why did he do this? What was his reasoning?
Masmith said, to win men for the Master through the gym.
He loved being at the YMCA and training young people
and their bodies in a holistic way, part of what
(09:27):
Putts described as the muscular Christianity movement. And my goodness,
that example of him on the court, who he is,
who he was, and how he carried himself compelled a
fellow player to apologize for cursing on the court, and that,
of course was the point, had a best model behavior
that represented Christ. When we come back more of this
(09:51):
remarkable story, the story of basketball and its origins here
on our American Stories, and we continue with our American
stories and the origin story of basketball, which of course
(10:15):
includes Naysmith. But my goodness, we're learning about the motivations
behind nay Smith's invention, and we're listening to Paul Puttz
tell the story. Let's pick up where he last left off.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Naismith didn't want to simply roll out the ball and
set up a free for all. His favorite role in
the game of basketball was not the player, certainly not
the coach.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
It was the referee.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
To Naismith, the referee was the central figure creating the
conditions in which moral development could occur.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Games, he wrote.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Have been called the laboratory for the development of moral attributes.
But they will not in and of themselves accomplish this purpose.
They must be properly conducted by competent individuals. Few things
are worse in a basketball game than a referee who
makes the game about themselves. If you start paying attention
to a referee, chances are something has gone wrong. The
(11:12):
best referees are those who operate in a quiet way,
whose presence is barely felt, whose service gives them no
special privileges except the knowledge that they helped to create
an environment in which players could experience the joy of
the game and develop the potential more fully. This was
especially important because Naismith designed basketball to provide intense competition
(11:35):
without brute force. Basketball, Nasmuth said, is personal combat without
personal contact. This requires a high degree of discipline. Players
on both teams can move anywhere on the floor at
any time.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
They can literally get nose to nose with.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Their opponent, but they cannot overpower them with physical contact.
The only way to enforce this is through consistent application
of the rules. A well regulated game sets the players
up for both the joy of playing and the possibility
of moral development. To give another example of the nineteen thirties,
(12:14):
while Naismith was a professor at the University of Kansas,
a student named John McLendon enrolled at the school. McLendon
was an African American. He wanted to join the basketball team.
He could not because at the time Kansas did not
allow black players to participate in sports. Naismith was not
the basketball coach, but he was a physical education professor,
(12:34):
and so he took McClendon under his wing.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
He mentored the young coaching prodigy.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
John McLendon would go on to become one of the
most accomplished and important basketball coaches of the twentieth century,
thanks in part to Naismith's mentorship. But Naismith is not
the hero of this particular aspect of basketball's story. The
important thing to know is that it was never just
us a Christian game developed by Naismith. It was always
(13:04):
also from the beginning, a game influenced and shaped by
a variety of people from different backgrounds in different identities,
it crossed gendered lines. In eighteen ninety two, a woman
named Senda Berenson, serving as an instructor at a women's
college in Massachusetts, heard about this new game.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
She went to check it out.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
At the time, there was essentially no team's sport deemed
acceptable for women. Their opportunities to compete and play in
any sport were severely limited, but Berenson saw in basketball
a chance to change that. She brought the game back
to her college. She developed new rules, and thanks to
(13:45):
her efforts in many other women, it quickly became the
most popular and important women's team sport in the twentieth century.
As a woman, Senda Bearnson was already moving the game
beyond its muscular Christian origins, but she was also Jewish,
and basketball quickly became a favorite sport for the Jewish community,
(14:05):
providing the game with many of us early stars and innovators.
Other faith traditions embraced basketball as well, Catholics and latter
day Saints. Basketball crossed racial and ethnic lines too. At
the time that Nasmith created basketball, the YMCA was racially segregated.
There were some black ymcach chapters but they often lacked
(14:27):
the resources to build gym spaces where basketball could be played.
With little help from the white Christians who developed basketball,
African Americans had to create their own spaces to play,
and they did. In New York City, black churches played
a central role in this development. They provided the gym
space and sponsored some of the earliest teams, helping to
(14:50):
build a thriving culture of black basketball that shaped New
York City and beyond. In Washington, d C. Another hub
of black basketball, Edwin E. B. Henderson, who was the
key figure later nicknamed the Grandfather of black basketball. Henderson
decided to create a black basketball league after he was
kicked out of a whites only YMCJM. Naismith supported and
(15:15):
cheered on the efforts of Baronson, Henderson and others.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
But he was not actively involved.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Naismith remained a Presbyterian throughout his life, committed to the
Christian faith. Basketball would not be the game we know
and love today if it had not been embraced by
a multitude of people across a variety of faith traditions.
It is a gift released into the world for all
to enjoy.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Later in his.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Life, when he was asked to discuss basketball's origins, Naismith
reflected to his mission in life, and here's what he
said about his life's submission. Way back in my college days,
I was lying on bed one Sunday in thought, what
is this all about? What is life about? What are
(16:02):
you going to do? What are you going to be?
What model will you hold up before you? I put
on my wall, not in writing, but in my mind
this thought, I want to leave the world a little
better than I found it. That is the motto I
had then, and it is the motto I have today.
That has been a mighty fine.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Thing for me.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Like to close with one more story about Nasmyth, and
this is one of my favorites.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
It happened in the nineteen twenties, more than.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Three decades after basketball's creation, when Nasmith stopped by a
small college in Iowa. He dropped into a gym anonymously
and quietly to pass the time. Two teams were set
to play a pickup game, and they decided a referee
was needed. One player ran over to Nasmith, sitting in
(16:56):
the bleachers, and asks if he would officiate, but be
forour Naismith could reply. A second player interrupted that old man.
He doesn't know anything about basketball. Let's get someone else.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Off.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
The players went to find a different referee. Well, Nasmus
smiled with a twinkle in his eye. He didn't need
people to recognize him.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
He just loved that the game was being played and enjoyed.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
And a terrific job by the production and editing by
our own Greg Hengler, and his special thanks to Paul Puttz,
who is the assistant director of Truet Seminaries, Faith and
Sports Institute at Baylor University. He's also the author of
the Spirit of the Game, American Christianity, and Big Time Sports.
And I'm a big time hoops fan. Loved the sport.
(17:47):
Dad coached the sport. My brother and I both were
captains of our high school basketball teams. And this is
so true about the nature of the sport and Nasmith's
nature himself that he gave this gift to the world.
It's game and allowed it to be developed by many collaborators,
all these ethnic groups, all the different racial composition, giving
(18:11):
the game its own life, its own styles. Very popular
with the Jews, the Mormons, Blacks, whites, women and men.
It brought people together and this was the essential Presbyterian
nature of the man, the essential Christian nature of the man,
and the pluralism of the sport itself. Its development hinged
(18:33):
on that, and in the end hinged on that idea
of America itself. Eplur of masunum from the many won.
And I love that closing line about his mission. I
want to leave the world a little better than I
found it, And indeed he did. The story of basketball
it's Christian roots here on our American Stories
Speaker 2 (19:21):
At
Host
Lee Habeeb
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