Gods and games;: Toward a theology of play

Striking exactly the right note between seriousness and playfulness, David Miller talks about the concept of "play" and its importance in religious thought today. What is play? What are the origins of our contemporary fascination with ideas about games and their rules as applied to life? What is the significance of game-theory in such areas as art and recreation, drama, and group interaction, liturgy and leisure? "Play," says Miller, "is our mythos. Play is a metaphor of contemporary consciousness." In a book that is unfailingly stimulating and entertaining, Mr. Miller leads us toward a theology of play. To do so he takes us through man's history to fine the origin of the spirit of play in man and to show how all areas of life=including traditional religions=have been related to play. Anthropologists and ethnologists such as Joseph Campbell and Adolph Jensen have seen man at play in primitive societies. In literature and art criticism, man's playful nature has been depicted by such writers as Thomas Mann, Edward Albee, and Samuel Beckett. What, then, would be some of the rules of the Religious Game? A theology of play would, for instance, think of resting on the First Day rather than on the Seventh because recreation, contemplation, and play do not come at the end of work; they are the bases of all life.