Religion of Sports: Navigating the Trials of Life Through the Games We Love by Deepak Chopra and Joe Leavin (review)

Reviewed by: Religion of Sports: Navigating the Trials of Life Through the Games We Loveby Deepak Chopra and Joe Leavin Zachary T. Smith, Ph.D. Chopra, Deepak and Joe Leavin. Religion of Sports: Navigating the Trials of Life Through the Games We Love. Atria Books, 2023. 256Pages. ISBN13: 9781501198090 Author note: This review is based on a pre-publication "galley copy" of the book. Referenced page numbers may differ slightly from the final printed version, though the content is unlikely to be substantively different. Gotham Chopra is an accomplished storyteller whose previous work includes the Why Sports Matterpodcast, the film Kobe Bryant's Muse,and the Religion of Sportsdocuseries in partnership with former NFL players Tom Brady and Michael Strahan. The unifying theme in much of Chopra's work, sometimes explicitly stated and sometimes artfully depicted, is that "sports isreligion." Chopra's forthcoming book Religion of Sports: Navigating the Trials of Life Through the Games We Loveis his attempt at codifying End Page 57this thesis, bringing together the many strands that appear in the different stories Chopra has told throughout his career. As a narrative, Chopra's book draws heavily on his own experiences in sports. He recounts how, as the son of Indian immigrants, he fell in love with Boston sports even though it bewildered his parents. He also retells conversations and interactions with some of the biggest sport stars like Tom Brady, Kobe Bryant, and Simone Biles. And these aren't just casual conversations. Chopra offers a window into some of the biggest moments of these athletes' careers: Biles' 2020 Olympics, Kobe's 2013 ruptured achilles, and Brady's Super Bowl LI comeback against the Atlanta Falcons. At its best, Chopra's book engages the form of sports narrative to draw the reader into his larger ideas about sport as a fundamental element of what it means to be human. Sports fans the world over will find much to identify with in Religion of Sports, whether they ultimately buy Chopra's comparison or not. Despite the engaging storytelling, and Chopra's positioning of his thesis as a novel interpretation, scholars of sports and religions will recognize the well-worn arguments casting sport as religion. The chapter titles reflect an approach that resembles Ninian Smart's "seven dimensions," featuring topics such as "Baptism," "Myths," "Transcendence," and "Moral Codes" that he contends collectively "prove that sports are religion" (Chopra 10). Elsewhere, Chopra proffers the secularization thesis, citing Gallup polling on the decline of religion "in the classical sense" (8) and suggesting that sports now fill the vacuum left by religion. Joseph Campbell's "hero's journey" also appears, another popular explanansthat nonetheless is often used as a target for critique in contemporary religious studies theories and methods courses (e.g., Hughes). While deep meta-theoretical engagement about the categories of sports and religion are perhaps unfair to expect from a mass-market paperback put out by one of the "Big Five" publishers, Chopra's recapitulated common-sense arguments are not able to stand up to critical scrutiny and crumble under the host of counterexamples not considered in the book. What is more, Chopra frequently makes statements which run contrary to the conclusions of sports studies scholars. For example, chapter five "Moral Codes" unequivocally positions sports as a moral teacher. But social scientific literature on sport shows that this is one of sports greatest unsubstantiated myths (Coakley, "Positive Youth Development Through Sport"; End Page 58Erdozain; Rees et al.). In fact, sport is just as likely, if not more so, to contribute to what might be considered character deformation (Beller Doty; Krause & Priest). Elsewhere, chapter eight (problematically positioned using the uncritical label of "tribalism") contends that "there's no stronger force than sport in the entire world. There's so much good channeled together that for a moment, it seems as if anything is possible"—ignoring hundreds if not thousands of documented examples of violent sports fandom (Chopra 180). If "sports are human" as Chopra contends, then they reflect not only the best of what it can mean to be human, but also the worst. It would be unfair to say that...