SOURCE: Beach, Charles Franklyn. “Joyful vs. Joyless Religion in W. P. Kinsella's Shoeless Joe.” Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature 16, no. 1 (fall 1998): 85-94.

On the surface, W. P. Kinsella's novel Shoeless Joe appears to be a story about baseball, about dreams that come true. However, as Kinsella states, “The best sports literature isn't really about sports” (qtd. in Horvath and Palmer 186). This holds true for Shoeless Joe, a novel that raises a question about priorities: What are the most important things in life? Kinsella uses the language and imagery of myth and religion to answer this question, in the process considering what role religious faith plays in life.

Midway through the novel, Moonlight Graham describes his views on religion in relating his encounter with a member of Billy Graham's evangelistic team:

I've always been too busy for that sort of thing, though Alicia's a good Catholic and my family wasn't very happy when I married her. … [The team member] was tall and pale and wore a black suit and tried to act solemn. Didn't look to me like he found religion very joyful—that's the one word I figure should be associated with it. …

(123-24)

Graham's statement reveals a central theme of the novel: true religion is a joyful experience that enriches the individual and, at the same time, positively influences everyone who comes in contact with him. But most religion is not joyful, at least not from the perspective of the narrator, Ray Kinsella.¹ Throughout the novel, he compares and contrasts two religions—joyless Christianity and joyful baseball (the American “myth”). By presenting individual characters who represent each of the beliefs, the narrator illustrates the advantages and disadvantages of belief, as well as the pitfalls inherent in religious experience itself. Ray eventually discovers some aspects of life that he values more than religion—the simple, ordinary blessings of family and community life.²

The participants in organized religion (Christianity) in the novel are, from Ray's viewpoint, an essentially unsympathetic lot. Some, like the member of the crusade team, are simply sour and unpleasant, lacking joy in their faith. Some are hypocrites, such as “the Christian roomer” in Violetene's house who damages his room when cut from the football team (149) and the Episcopal bishop among whose posthumous possessions were found a ton of “pornographic magazines and books” (98). Furthermore, all of the Christians lack sensitivity and understanding, like Eddie Scissons' daughters who, as Eddie says, are “Bible thumpers, and [have] been treating me like I was senile ever since they were old enough to think for themselves” (145). And not only do the Christians have negative moral characteristics and attitudes but they also share a significant character flaw: they “never let you forget they are religious” (148). Throughout the novel, it becomes clear that the version of Christianity Ray has encountered is a form of evangelical fundamentalism that stresses acceptance of the Bible in its entirety as a rigid guide for belief and practice, strict personal and social morality, and outward signs of Christian service, especially the evangelism of those who, like Ray, do not believe in Christ. In its frequently negative approach to the values of contemporary society, fundamentalist Christianity is an American religious phenomenon distinct from European evangelicalism (Marsden 3, 221-28). As such, it is an appropriate form of religious expression to contrast with the “other” uniquely American mythos, baseball.

The central representative of Christianity in the novel is Annie's mother, Violetene, a woman who, with “silver-rimmed glasses flashing glints of disapproval at everything in sight, sat ramrod straight. … When there were lulls in the conversation she read her Bible, sneering a little in her perfection” (23). Ray notes that Violetene pays special attention to “gossip of the most malicious kind, or a story of terminal illness,” and her memory is quite good at recalling any time “she was in some way slighted” (164). Violetene not only repeatedly reminds those around her of her religious inclinations but she also delights in portraying others as her inferiors. This attitude arises out of her inclination to judge the character of others on the basis of their religious beliefs. When Ray first meets her, he is inquiring about an advertised room, but she immediately asks him, “Are you a Christian?” (148). For Ray, Violetene represents all that is misguided about religion because she is externally religious: she has an annoying habit of working “the Lord into every conversation …” (148).

Annie's brother Mark, another Christian, is given a similarly unsympathetic portrayal by the narrator. Mark is a professor at the University of Iowa, as well as an investor and businessman. It is this last occupation that brings him into conflict with Ray: with his family's support, Mark attempts to buy Ray and Annie's farm and convert it, along with neighboring properties, into a computerized commercial farm. His materialistic aspirations often dominate his activities, and when he pursues a financial target, he does so with religious fervor, “his beady eyes blazing like those of a zealous evangelist” (163).

This dedication to his investments supersedes Mark's spiritual convictions. Unlike his mother, Mark is willing to make business deals with non-Christians in order to make money—one can probably assume that his partner Bluestein is not a fundamentalist Christian since Ray never mentions that fact. Mark also does not seem as interested in the character of the college students who live in his apartment buildings: he seems primarily interested in charging them “exorbitant rates” in order to make a profit (62). And Mark appears to have no scruples or limits to his scheming and manipulating. For instance, when Ray refuses to sell the farm, Mark blackmails Eddie Scissons into signing over the mortgage by threatening to tell the true story about Eddie's days as a ballplayer. But when this effort to foreclose on the farm fails, Mark shows his lack of consideration for his promises to Eddie and for the feelings of others by telling the secret anyway (182).

Throughout the novel, Mark fails to understand the dedication Ray and Annie have to their dreams: he cannot comprehend Ray's fascination with baseball and Annie's love for her husband. And he cannot comprehend Ray's attachment to the farmland itself. Mark sees the ideal farmer as operating a huge computerized mechanical apparatus, pushing buttons to program the actions of the equipment—a process Ray calls “all neat and clean and sterile and heartless” (163). Ray has already described his epiphanic experience with the “soft black soil” (13-14), an experience Mark does not share because he has not been “touched by the land.” When Ray tries to explain that farmland is “not just a product,” his brother-in-law just “stared … uncomprehending, seeing only the money breeding incestuously, diversifying, multiplying …” (163-64).

The problem with Mark, as far as Ray is concerned, is that he fails to see beyond himself and his goals. Richard Alan Schwartz sees Mark as an “unbeliever” (145), but for Ray, Mark is a believer who believes in the wrong things—the world of stocks and bonds and investments and life insurance, the world Ray left to become a corn farmer. Mark's materialism and evangelicalism represent the two forces most opposed to Ray's idyllic life as a farmer and baseball fan. And from Ray's perspective, Mark's narrow-mindedness involves a lack of mental and spiritual perception: Mark and his family had “not an imagination among them except to forecast the wrath of God that will fall on the heads of pagans such as I” (5).

Thus, Christians appear in Shoeless Joe as joyless people who allow their religious zeal to interfere with their obligations to family and society. They may uphold a highly negative, legalistic sense of morality, as does Violetene, or they may blend their faith with an aggressive materialism, as does Mark. Whatever the case, the Christians in the novel end up taking “themselves too seriously,” a condition Kinsella believes makes them, and by implication their faith, “absurd” (Thrill of the Grass ix-x). The repeated efforts of the Christians to separate Ray from the farm—which throughout the novel represents his sense of Paradise—show they lack the imagination necessary to share Ray's dreams and ideals. Indeed, Kinsella suggests that baseball “fans are intellectuals if not philosophers” because a spectator needs more “imagination” to follow the action in baseball than he does for any other sport (qtd. in Chism 1C-2C). Because they lack the necessary imagination, Ray's in-laws are unable to see the action on the baseball diamond in Ray's cornfield and thus believe that he and the other spectators are crazy.

Clearly, the external religion of Annie's relatives contrasts with the internal nature of Ray's experiences. But what is the nature of those experiences? And is “baseball” actually a religion? Most readers might find the narrative's credibility tested by the second question. However, in the world according to Ray Kinsella, baseball is both a game and, at the same time, something more. Early in the novel, he tells the reader about “the loves in my life: Annie, Karin, Iowa, Baseball. The great god Baseball” (6). For him, baseball is the great American myth, and he describes “a ballpark at night” as being “more like a church than a church” (135). As early as 1919, Morris R. Cohen described baseball as a truly American religion:

The essence of religious experience … is the redemption from the limitations of our petty individual lives and the mystic unity with a larger life of which we are a part. And is not this precisely what the baseball devotee or fanatic, if you please, experiences when he watches the team representing his city battling with another? Is there any other experience in modern life in which multitudes of men so completely and intensely lose their individual selves in the larger life which they call their city? … In baseball the identification has even more of the religious quality, since we are absorbed not only in the action of the visible actors but more deeply in the fate of the mystic unities which we call contending cities.

(qtd. in Joffe 153)

Schwartz calls this myth a “secular faith” that “requires a leap of faith” on the characters' and on the reader's part (145). And novelist Kinsella states that “on the true baseball field the foul lines diverge forever, the field eventually encompassing a goodly portion of the world. …” Since there is also “no time limit” to the game, Kinsella believes that “this openness makes … for mythology” (qtd. in Horvath and Palmer 188). As part of its mythos, baseball includes history, nostalgia, and the heroic, legendary exploits (Thurn x). But while “the timelessness of baseball … makes it more conductive to magical happenings than any other sport,” it does not make its participants superhuman or divine: in his writings, Kinsella suggests that “baseball players are very ordinary mortals with the same financial, and domestic problems as Joe Citizen” (Thrill of the Grass xii). This is also certainly true of nonplayers associated with baseball, such as Ray Kinsella, whose financial struggles underlie much of the novel.

In the novel, baseball has all of the positive, life-enhancing qualities a religion ought to have. Through its power, J. D. Salinger leaves his reclusive lifestyle and is “raptured”; Ray's brother Richard is reconciled to their father; Moonlight Graham sees his lifetime dream fulfilled; and the farm's mortgage is paid off. Lest the reader miss the significance of these miraculous happenings, the idea is reinforced late in the book, when Richard asks of the daily gathering in the left field bleachers, “Is this some kind of religion?” and Ray answers, “It may be” (168). As Kinsella elsewhere suggests, “Baseball … is ‘an art and a religion’ …” (qtd. in Chism 1C).

Timothy C. Lord asserts that in Shoeless Joe “baseball becomes both a metaphor and a replacement for religion and the religious life,” an example of what has become a primary alternative devotion in the late twentieth century: sports (43). Lord sees the analogy between traditional religion and the baseball mythos particularly appropriate, as several characters are resurrected and many of the others “receive salvation in one form or another” (47). In serving this function, baseball ironically fulfills Marx's vision of religion as “the opium of the people” because it simply imposes a new religious belief system on the ruins of the old (Lord 48).

Ray Kinsella serves as a prophet figure for this “religion” of baseball. Linda S. Joffe compares Ray's role for baseball to that of Jesus in the New Testament (156-57), but that analogy can be only partial, as Ray never makes the ultimate sacrifice for his beliefs. Instead, he merely suffers verbal persecution and a brief financial hardship. Yet he does play an important role in leading and organizing devotion to baseball. He hears an invisible voice speaking to him and obeys its instructions to build a ballpark, to take J. D. Salinger to a ball game, and to visit Moonlight Graham in Chisholm, Minnesota. Knowing that obedience to the voice may cost him the farm, Ray obeys anyway, willing to risk everything, willing to act so that Shoeless Joe and the other 1919 White Sox players may have another chance to play and so that Salinger may have his mysterious pain “eased.” This obedience Salinger calls Ray's “passion for baseball” (83). Ray himself describes his experience as a feeling similar to “just falling in love—you want the sensations to last forever” (91). As part of his prophetic role, Ray seeks to communicate his vision to others. As an active proselytizer, he gains new converts in Salinger, Gypsy, Eddie, and, by the end of the book, even the skeptical Richard.

Additionally, Ray acts as priest of the religion. He leads others in the daily ritual of watching games from the left field bleachers. He presides over the burial of Eddie Scissons and provides a more sympathetic (though brief) ceremony than the “minister” who earlier “ranted and chanted and raged over his coffin” (199). He teaches his daughter Karin the essentials of the game, raising her to enjoy baseball as much as he does (26). And when publicly confronted with Eddie's false past, he forgives the would-be Cub because he understands that Eddie's dream to play major league ball had been “rewarded with … frustration and disillusionment” (184). But Ray is not a priest in the Christian sense, as becomes apparent through allusion to Ray's “pagan” condition (5) and through description of his appearance, which in the moonlight is that of “an Aztec priest” (137). Such a priest would be more concerned with the rituals and rhythms of daily existence and less with the eternal elements of religion, including salvation and the afterlife. Certainly, in Shoeless Joe Ray himself, while curious about what lies beyond the cornfield, has no knowledge of what force or entity “controls the strings” on the whole magical experience (214).

Some who witness his activities, like Mark, call Ray “crazy” for his faith, and Salinger suggests that he “could be accused of being possessed …” (137). Indeed, throughout the novel, Ray's actions border on the irrational; his cross-country trips and his construction of the ballpark lead his in-laws and his neighbors to question his sanity. But Ray is not crazy, as he demonstrates through the course of the novel. By the end, what matters to Ray is not some ritual or abstract truth, but “love, and family, and life, and beauty, and friendship, and sharing …” (215). Ray understands that these are the things in life that are truly important; this understanding motivates him to obey the voice when it urges him to act so others will be healed. This understanding also enables him to accept Eddie in spite of the old man's untruths (183).

This understanding, however, is only part of Ray's perspective. He has a quality that the Christians lack and that he, Salinger, and Moonlight Graham share—“imagination” (75). All three characters have the ability to communicate their vision of life—Ray through his ballpark and through his story-telling, Salinger through his writing, and Graham through his life of service as a doctor. In each case the vision is communicated in a manner that is not confrontational or judgmental: the message is placed within a medium intended to promote healing or transformation of life.

Throughout the novel, Ray struggles to keep a balanced perspective on his passion for the game. When Salinger asks, “Is there a baseball devil?” Ray answers, “Anything taken too seriously becomes a devil” (137). Even baseball, if it becomes an all-consuming obsession, can become a “devil,” and in Eddie Scissons' case it does. Eddie, who describes himself as “a very religious man” (106), has not shared the experience of playing major league baseball, so he weaves for himself a whole past history with the Chicago Cubs. Consequently, he has lost the ability to distinguish between his stories and actually experienced events. Even after his younger self has been humiliated in the magical ballpark and Mark has publicly revealed the truth, Eddie still believes: “It takes more than an infinite ERA to shake my faith …” (194). Eddie has failed to find happiness in the game itself, but he finds some peace at last in his acceptance by Ray and the other “believers”—in spite of his failure as a ballplayer and as a mythmaker.

But Eddie carries his devotion to baseball too far. His emotional, enthusiastic sermon contains the same “evangelical fervor” that alienates Ray from his Christian in-laws. He is described as becoming “a fundamentalist” who preaches the “word of baseball” in loose paraphrases of biblical passages. When he enthusiastically claims that “the word of salvation is baseball,” Eddie has clearly stepped beyond rationality, and the only thing that keeps his audience's attention is the sheer force of his voice (192-93). Ray recognizes Eddie's sermon has made the baseball myth into a didactic religion, and this makes the old man, despite his sympathetic qualities, a spokesman for evil. This idea is reinforced by reference to “the serpent head” of the “cane” Eddie leans on. And the sequence of events ironically supports Mark's viewpoint: “He [Mark] points at Eddie Scissons like a tent-meeting evangelist pointing at the devil” (182).

The character who keeps baseball in its proper place in life is Dr. Graham, the larger-than-life humanitarian who had a powerful impact on the residents of Chisholm. For example, Graham is not inflexible in his loyalty to the sport, as he tells Ray: “Any game becomes important when you know and love the players” (117). He is a content man who has “always done the things [he] enjoyed most—doctoring and playing baseball” (122). And his priorities always remain in that order; when Ray's daughter Karin falls from the bleachers, Graham sacrifices his dream of playing in the major leagues to revive her (208-09). He tells Ray that he never regrets giving up baseball, but “if I'd only got to be a doctor for five minutes, now that would have been a tragedy. You have to keep things in perspective. I mean, I love the game, but it's only that, a game” (127).

Moonlight Graham's life of service as a doctor, attested to by many of the residents of Chisholm, serves as an example of a truly religious life, as Ray would define it: “It seems to me that a truly religious person would let his life be example enough, would not let his religion interfere with being a human being, and would not be so insecure as to have to fawn publicly before his gods” (148). Graham does not remain in his baseball past, nor does he display mementos and honors in his office. As he tells Ray, “I never talk about my past unless I'm asked, and then the less the better” (124-25). The doctor's restrained behavior contrasts with Eddie's lifetime of stories and Ray's endless retelling of his experiences. Of all the central characters, only Graham successfully balances his devotion to the game with his real-life responsibilities. Like Shoeless Joe and the other White Sox players, Moonlight Graham only participates in the magical game in Ray's ballpark after his life is complete.

According to Graham's example, religion should be a celebration of life carried out in each person's daily activities. One's faith must be kept in perspective with one's duties and family obligations: an ideal or a belief that interferes with life itself is a “devil” that threatens the rationality of that life. Because baseball is “only a game” and does not pretend to have far-reaching implications for the hereafter, it can be a joyful enhancement to the daily routine, as the game is for those who sit each day in the left-field bleachers at Ray Kinsella's ballpark.

However, some readers might object to the apparently unbalanced presentation of religion in Shoeless Joe. On the one hand, the supporters of baseball range in attitude from the rational perspective of Dr. Graham to the unrestrained fanaticism of Eddie Scissons, while on the other, all of the representatives of Christianity in the novel are manipulative and fanatical or participate in some sort of moral hypocrisy. It is particularly ironic that the characters in the novel who claim to be followers of Christ consistently fail to follow their Lord in humility and moral purity—two of the chief characteristics of Christ Himself. The Christians in the novel also lack the spirit of Joy which some Christians, such as C. S. Lewis, discover is at the center of a living faith (219-22). However, when one reads Shoeless Joe, one must remember the perspective from which the novel is narrated—the voice of Ray Kinsella. Ray's reliability as a narrator is hardly in question, for his presentation of the fantastic elements of the story is consistently grounded in solid physical details and regularly questioned from a skeptical viewpoint. The resulting narrative is probably as realistic in tone as any fantasy or religious tale could be. But at the same time, Ray allows his own religious presuppositions and his attitudes toward his in-laws to color his treatment of the two faiths.

As a result, Ray himself ironically undercuts the novel's emphasis on maintaining balance, leaving the reader questioning Ray's motivation: Is his primary goal to support and encourage the mythic qualities of baseball? Or is his primary goal to oppose anyone or anything that will not (or cannot) support his devotion to the game? Perhaps the answer lies in Ray's treatment of Eddie and Annie's family. Although Ray knows from the beginning that Eddie's stories are not true, he withholds that knowledge from the reader until Mark blurts out the truth late in the narrative. Meanwhile, Ray repeatedly reminds the reader of the weaknesses and failings of his in-laws. Both Eddie and Violetene have wronged Ray, but he only chooses to forgive Eddie because the would-be Cub shares his beliefs. Thus, Ray's inability to transcend his personal feelings reveals potential limitations in his belief system similar to those he identifies in traditional religion. But it is unclear whether the limitations originate in Ray's myth or in his own character, since he never applies the same scrupulous analysis to his own behavior and motivations that he applies to the other characters. In any case, Ray's relationship with his wife's family is a matter that remains unresolved at the end of the novel.

Furthermore, he is reminded of his own tendency toward self-centeredness by Salinger, after Ray protests the novelist's opportunity to visit the mysterious spiritual world beyond the left-field fence. Neil Randall comments that, although Ray has participated in the creation and presentation of the fantastic ballpark, he is denied access to the full extent of the mystery: Ray “alone is unable to discover precisely what his magic does” (179). Since Ray is unable to share in Salinger's rapture, he makes obtaining the experience his ultimate personal goal:

My hope is that if I serve them [the White Sox] well, I may someday be told their secrets, may even be invited to walk through that door with them after a game.

(220)

The danger here is subtle: if Ray's motivation for service becomes some future reward, he sows the seed for future corruption of his faith, the same kind of corruption he has identified in organized religion.

Beyond Ray's own limitations as a story-teller and religious leader, his religion of baseball ultimately has limited altruistic qualities—limited primarily to communal participation in the game as spectators and to obeying a supernatural voice that gives instructions. For Ray, baseball does nothing more, nor should it. But baseball can be a joyful experience, even if one is only a spectator. And the excitement of the game is something he perceives as absent from traditional religion. This limited application of the “myth” shows up in Ray's situation at the end of the novel: despite his travels, his conversations with Salinger and Graham, and his reunion with his father and brother, Ray does not seem to have reached any life-changing conclusions from his experiences. He seems content to continue dwelling in the “isolation” of Annie's love (184). Nor does the baseball mythos itself provide the metaphysical framework necessary for such life changes. A potential future problem does arise, however, when Ray makes a religion out of baseball, especially if Salinger's vision comes true and the ballpark becomes a shrine to which hundreds and thousands of visitors come and pay the twenty-dollar admission fee (211-13).³ Much like the fundamentalists he despises, Ray runs the risk of institutionalizing an individual, internal mythic experience that has few corrective guidelines or principles to keep it focused on the things that matter: love, family, life, beauty, friendship, and sharing.

Notes

1. Since the narrator of Shoeless Joe shares the same last name as the author, there exists the temptation to read the novel as (quasi-)autobiography. But the author rejects a direct identification of himself with the narrator. Certainly, there exist fundamental differences between the two, including a difference in beliefs: while Ray Kinsella is a follower of the “great god Baseball,” W. P. Kinsella states, “I am a realist. There are no gods. There is no magic” (Thrill of the Grass xi). In any case, an autobiographical reading of Shoeless Joe would not significantly alter the nature of the religious conflict within the narrative; the question of the relationship between author and narrator would be a separate study.

2. It is important to note that, while this is also the conclusion reached by the screenplay of the movie adaptation, Field of Dreams, the film does not address religion to any significant degree, and it deletes several characters who contribute to the religious discussion, including Eddie Scissons, Gypsy, and Ray's twin brother Richard. Additionally, the significant negative influence Violetene exerts on Ray in the novel is greatly diminished in the movie.

3. It is perhaps ironic that the baseball field constructed in Dyersville, Iowa, as part of the set for the film Field of Dreams had become (by 1993) a shrine attracting 65,000 pilgrims a year (Fong 29).

Works Cited

Chism, Olin. “A Field Where a Novelist's Dreams Can Play.” Dallas Morning News 1 May 1992: 1C-2C.

Fong, Bobby. “The Magic Cocktail: The Enduring Appeal of the ‘Field of Dreams.’” Aethlon 11.1 (1993): 29-36.

Horvath, Brooke K., and William J. Palmer. “Three On: An Interview with David Carkeet, Mark Harris, and W. P. Kinsella.” Modern Fiction Studies 33 (1987): 183-94.

Joffe, Linda S. “Praise Baseball, Amen: Religious Metaphors in Shoeless Joe and Field of Dreams.” Aethlon 9.2 (1992): 153-63.

Kinsella, W. P. Shoeless Joe. New York: Ballantine Books, 1982.

———. The Thrill of the Grass. New York: Penguin, 1984.

Lewis, C. S. Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life. New York: Harcourt, 1955.

Lord, Timothy C. “Hegel, Marx, and Shoeless Joe: Religious Ideology in Kinsella's Baseball Fantasy.” Aethlon 10.1 (1992): 43-51.

Marsden, George M. Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism 1870-1925. New York: Oxford UP, 1980.

Randall, Neil. “Shoeless Joe: Fantasy and the Humor of Fellow-Feeling.” Modern Fiction Studies 33 (1987): 173-82.

Schwartz, Richard Alan. “Postmodernist Baseball.” Modern Fiction Studies 33 (1987): 135-50.

Thorn, John, ed. Introduction. The National Pastime. New York: Warner, 1987. ix-xi.