The World Series of religion and baseball

Intellectuals who paid attention when Molly Worthen became a Christian—see Olasky Books for August—should note as well the publication this month of Charles Murray’s Taking Religion Seriously (Encounter). In it the formerly agnostic scholar gives reasons, including “the brute facts of the big bang,” for his new belief in God.

Much of the book details Murray’s exploration of Christian claims. When I interviewed him in front of Patrick Henry College students in 2012, Murray said: “I’m a wannabe Christian.” What did he need to go beyond wanna? “I’m not yet applying myself…. It requires a lot of study.” Murray added, “At the age of 69 maybe I better get with the program sooner rather than later.” 

God has been merciful in giving Murray time: “I now accept that Jesus of Nazareth represented himself as having a unique relationship with God—and suspect that he had such a relationship.” Now past 80, Murray adds, “I have yet to experience the joys of faith…. I sometimes feel like a little boy whose nose is pressed against the window…. I’m not done trying to join the party.”

Maybe we’ll see a happy ending like that of the great romantic comedy You’ve Got Mail, where Kathleen (Meg Ryan) realizes that the man with whom she has emailed is Joe (Tom Hanks)_: “I wanted it to be you. I wanted it to be you so badly.”

For Christians who pray that others will join the party, Mark Farnham’s Every Believer Confident: Apologetics for the Ordinary Christian (P&R, 2025) can help: “The key to engaging nonbelievers in a nonthreatening way is to ask them questions… that get to the heart of their worldview and belief systems.” Questions can be as generic as “what do you think about what’s going on in the world and what would make it better?”

Farnham alludes to the expression about “carrying the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other.” When people try to make sense of the world, showing how the Bible does can help. Sometimes conversion is a “slow train coming,” as Bob Dylan put it, and sometimes it’s a speeding locomotive, as Iain Duguid in Turning the World Upside Down (Crossway, 2025) describes the progress of the early church in the early chapters of the book of Acts.

Some wonder what will happen if today’s young read less: D. Brent Sandy’s Hear Ye the Word of the Lord (IVP, 2024) fluently shows that Christianity made progress in oral cultures, and can again do so. Along those lines, I highly recommend a daily Bible podcast, “The M’Cheyne ESV Bible Plan with Conrad Mbewe,” a great African speaker. Graphic novels (extended comic books) are also surging: Welcome to “the adventures of Theo and Geneva” in John Calvin’s Illustrated Institutes (P&R, 2025).

I’d err if I did not mention this month the upcoming World Series, the crown of Major League Baseball. Will Bardenwerper’s Homestand: Small Town Baseball and the Fight for the Soul of America (Doubleday, 2025) describes what happened when MLB, with cupidity and stupidity, ignored the viewing stand on which the crown sits.

MLB eliminated 42 minor league teams in 2020 and left many towns bereft. Batavia in upstate New York, though, revived its beloved Muckdogs as a summer league team of college players that took on rivals including the Kannapolis Cannon Ballers and the Jamestown Tarp Skunks. Minor league ballparks are still places where community grows and ticket prices do not exclude average families from baseball bonding.

Homestand’s closing clause epitomizes the book: “evening shadows advancing toward the infield as that familiar feeling of serenity slowly swept over us.” Serenity, like paradise, can be lost when accountants obey orders to see “team” as synonymous with money rather than love.

Briefly noted

Richard Kahlenberg’s Class Matters lucidly portrays what the subtitle says: The Fight to Get Beyond Race Preferences, Reduce Inequality, and Build Real Diversity at America’s Colleges (PublicAffairs, 2025). Kahlenberg rightly shows how we can have diversity while reducing discrimination and recrimination: Look for students who with brains and grit have overcome disadvantages. 

Bryan Burrough’s The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild (Penguin, 2025) tells good stories about the bad old days. Carl Benedikt Frey in How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations (Princeton, 2025) wonders if good new days are coming. The best bet is to remember the “decentralized organizational structure” of Silicon Valley’s early days, when corporate leaders “made a point of striking up informal lunch and hallway conversations with employees at all levels…. Good ideas could come from anywhere.”