I ran across this in my reading. Does it ring a bell with what any of you have experienced?
The term “muscular Christianity” appears to have first made its appearance in England during the late 1850s to describe the values embodied in two Victorian novels: Charles Kingsley’s Two Years Ago and Thomas Hughes’ Tom Brown’s School Days. The British popular press picked up the phrase, using it to refer to adventure novels that advocated and exemplified high moral principles and manly Christian heroes. A new paradigm of Christian existence was emerging as Protestants broke free of the somewhat sentimental attitudes toward religion that had settled in within much of Victorian church life.
In part, this development reflected a growing concern that Christianity was becoming feminized. Church congregations seemed increasingly to be made up of women — an observation that led many men to wonder what role masculine values might play in the ministry and mission of the church. Alarmed by statistics in the early 1890s suggesting that the membership of Protestant denominations was becoming increasingly female, many pastors wondered how the church could be reconnected with masculine values. For some critics, including powerful lay figures such as Theodore Roosevelt and John D. Rockefeller, the problem lay with the pastors themselves, who were seen by some as little more than “thin, vapid, affected, driveling little doodles” who found it easier to take tea with women than to encounter men on their own territory. What congregations needed, they said, were more “men whose blood coursed strong and hot through their veins, fine specimens of muscular, soldierly Christianity.” Protestant clergy and lay leaders of the “muscular Christianity” movement abandoned the sentimentality and “feminine” forms of religion that had gained the upper hand in the Victorian era, opting for a new model that stressed action rather than reflection and “masculinity” rather than gentility. An active Christian presence in sport seemed to be the answer to this problem.
The term “muscular Christianity” appears to have first made its appearance in England during the late 1850s to describe the values embodied in two Victorian novels: Charles Kingsley’s Two Years Ago and Thomas Hughes’ Tom Brown’s School Days. The British popular press picked up the phrase, using it to refer to adventure novels that advocated and exemplified high moral principles and manly Christian heroes. A new paradigm of Christian existence was emerging as Protestants broke free of the somewhat sentimental attitudes toward religion that had settled in within much of Victorian church life.
In part, this development reflected a growing concern that Christianity was becoming feminized. Church congregations seemed increasingly to be made up of women — an observation that led many men to wonder what role masculine values might play in the ministry and mission of the church. Alarmed by statistics in the early 1890s suggesting that the membership of Protestant denominations was becoming increasingly female, many pastors wondered how the church could be reconnected with masculine values. For some critics, including powerful lay figures such as Theodore Roosevelt and John D. Rockefeller, the problem lay with the pastors themselves, who were seen by some as little more than “thin, vapid, affected, driveling little doodles” who found it easier to take tea with women than to encounter men on their own territory. What congregations needed, they said, were more “men whose blood coursed strong and hot through their veins, fine specimens of muscular, soldierly Christianity.” Protestant clergy and lay leaders of the “muscular Christianity” movement abandoned the sentimentality and “feminine” forms of religion that had gained the upper hand in the Victorian era, opting for a new model that stressed action rather than reflection and “masculinity” rather than gentility. An active Christian presence in sport seemed to be the answer to this problem.
