Muscular Christianity

“Muscular Christianity” is a philosophy that blends Christian values with men's physical embodiment of masculinity. In the United States, its impact has been especially significant in fusing gender and power relations in two major social institutions: religion and sport.

Muscular Christianity originated in England during the early nineteenth century, and by 1850 it had become a dominant philosophy among Christian reform leaders. It was introduced in the United States during the late nineteenth century in Thomas Hughes' Tom Brown's Schooldays (1890), a novel that linked Christian ideology with rugged masculinity through the story of a boy transformed into a man by playing rugby.

Protestant clergy developed muscular Christianity in reaction to several late-nineteenth-century developments in American life: the perceived feminine nature of Victorian religion; the dominance of women parishioners in Protestant churches; a growing feminist movement in the United States; a cultural fear that white, middle-class men were becoming feminized by overcivilization; and a concern that Anglo-Saxon Protestant men were less physically fit than the growing numbers of Catholic immigrants, many of whom worked as manual laborers. Protestant clergy believed that increasing men's church attendance required a masculine religiosity with which men could identify. Proponents of muscular Christianity rejected the feminine Victorian portrait of Jesus as a slight man with a sad face, frail body, and oversized robes in favor of a muscular carpenter with black hair and a stoic heavenward gaze. This image, combining Christian commitment with a brawny physique, represented a new ideal representation of white, middle-class, male spirituality.

This new model of middle-class manhood was spread through several institutions, primarily the Boy Scouts, established in 1910, and the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), an English organization first established in the United States in 1851. Both of these organizations encouraged sport in their efforts to promote a model of manliness based on physical fitness and Christian morality. Muscular Christianity was also promoted by such prominent spokesmen as the Congregationalist ministers Josiah Strong and Lyman Abbott, the Unitarian minister Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the YMCA leader Luther Gulick, the psychologist Granville Stanley Hall, and Theodore Roosevelt.

Billy Sunday, a former professional baseball player turned evangelist, became its most famous American advocate. Having grown from a small and sickly child (like Roosevelt) into a strong, successful athlete, Sunday argued that a dedicated Christian man did not have to be feminine, but could, in fact, display great physical strength and toughness. His departure from professional baseball, he said, was not a retreat from manliness but the manly achievement of spiritual fulfillment and a higher moral calling. Sunday preached in an atmosphere that resembled a sporting event, eliciting crowd cheers and responses resembling those at baseball games.

Sunday's successful promotion of muscular Christianity inspired the Men and Religion Forward Movement (1911–12), which was cofounded by Fred Smith and Henry Rood to increase church membership among American men. Emphasizing vigor and steadfast dedication as essential to true Christianity, and urging male leadership both in the home and in church life, it increased men's church attendance in some communities. This movement added a strong element of social concern to its definition of Christian manliness, encouraging participants to oppose local brothels, which the Men and Religion Forward Movement considered potentially detrimental to a muscular Christian style of manliness.

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