Ladd, Tony and James A. Mathisen. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.
2002. 288 pp. ISBN: 0801058473. $20.99 USD (PB).
[1] In their book Muscular Christianity: Evangelical Protestants
and the Development of American Sports, James A. Mathisen and Tony
Ladd present an historical and sociological portrait of "Muscular
Christianity" rich in anecdotes about both legendary figures and
myriad evangelical organizations.
[2] Mathisen and Ladd, both professors at the evangelically-identified
institution of higher education, Wheaton College (in the sociology and
kinesiology departments, respectively), regale their readers with fascinating
stories about the origins of the confluence of sport and evangelicalism
in the 19th century. They identify as their starting point
the evangelical Studd brothers in England, the preeminent cricket stars
of that era, and the arrival of Muscular Christianity in America via
the popularity of the Thomas Hughes novel Tom Brown at Oxford
and the 1885 tour of American colleges by J.E.K. Studd. The evangelical
context of the creation of basketball in 1891 by James Naismith, an
"American Tom Brown" at the YMCA's Springfield, Massachusetts,
summer institute, and modern coaching, attributed to Amos Alonzo Stagg,
the legendary turn-of-the-century University of Chicago athletic director,
reveals an aspect of American cultural history that is rarely discussed.
Mathisen and Ladd's narrative recounts the tradition of evangelical
testimonials by sports figures through the twentieth century, most notably
telling the tales of Gil Dodds, the "new Tom Brown" and preeminent
American miler of the 1940s (associated with Billy Graham), and Bill
Glass, the former Detroit Lion and Cleveland Brown, who evangelized
his fellow athletes and used football as a means to reach American youngsters.
[3] More problematic are the boundaries of Muscular Christianity.
Ladd and Mathisen acknowledge that there is no univocal description
of the phenomenon, although they identify its 19th century
incarnation with "manliness," moral righteousness, and "man's
dominion over the earth." These principles of Muscular Christianity
were promoted largely by certain seminal figures including Dwight L.
Moody, the Chicago evangelist, associated with the Midwestern YMCA,
who saw in the movement a vehicle to advance his brand of premillennialist
evangelism, and Robert McBurney, who emphasized physical well-being
itself as a blessing and led the national YMCA to a more accommodationist
approach to the broader culture.
[4] Mathisen and Ladd hang these anecdotes on a sociological framework
which postulates that the relationship of evangelicalism to sports has
been one of engagement (during the late 19th century), disengagement
(through the 1930s), and reengagement (since World War II). They attribute
the disengagement in part to the rhetorical stance of Billy Sunday,
an ex-baseball star, who argued that baseball was not a model for the
evangelical Christian life, and in part to the rise of fundamentalist
separationism. Although they note the Lynds’ study of Middletown in
the 1920s which revealed a pervasive and growing secularization of American
life beneath a veneer of religious identification, they do not present
any convincing explanation for this disengagement. Religion, they conclude,
"simply lost its ties to culture." Likewise they offer little
in the way of explanation of why reengagement occurred in the post-war
era, except by noting the rise of evangelical entrepreneurs who spawned
sport-identified mission organizations (like Sports Ambassadors, the
Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Campus Crusade for Christ, and Athletes
in Action), sports chaplaincies (like Baseball Chapel and Pro Athletes
Outreach), and sports programs at evangelical megachurches.
[5] What they do observe, however, is a radical shift from 19th
century Muscular Christian beliefs in sport itself as a progenitor of
values (e.g., manliness and moral righteousness) to the use of sports
largely as a vehicle to attract the attention of non-evangelicals and
to legitimize evangelical and fundamentalist colleges and universities
(e.g., Oral Roberts University and Jerry Falwell's Liberty University)
in the eyes of mainstream culture. But, as their anecdote concerning
Bill McCartney (the evangelical University of Colorado football coach
and founder of the "Promisekeepers" movement) and Colorado's
scandalous national football championship (secured on a "fifth"
down) shows, evangelicalism increasingly serves the ideology of "winning."
[6] To be sure the last chapter of the book sketches out other elements
of Muscular Christianity's modern incarnation: meritocratic democracy,
competitive virtue, heroic models, and therapeutic self-control. However,
what is notably absent from the book, aside from a few passing allusions,
is any sustained analysis of the relationship of Muscular Christianity
to the ideologies of male domination and white supremacy. The relationship
of Muscular Christianity to misogyny and racism is given short shrift
as if this phenomenon avoided the ills which plagued the rest of American
society since its very beginnings. This lapse is especially glaring
in light of the historical domination of Muscular Christianity by white,
conservative males—at least until the more recent incorporation of black
male athletes within its ranks. It is as if evangelical Christianity's
theology of Christological "sinlessness" has undergone a metamorphosis
into an historical, corporate social reality. But this weakness to
the text may be attributed to the authors' confessional orientation
that bleeds through the academic palimpsest of the book. Non-evangelical
readers will note that evangelicals are consistently referred to as
Christians—as if other members of mainstream Protestant denominations
and Catholics are not. And the authors’ lament that one evangelical
sports magazine "missed opportunities to offer more realistically
and biblically based understandings of modern sport"—as if "biblically
based understandings" represented a form of "right thinking."
Muscular Christianity therefore is depicted as largely benign with little,
if any, negative impact on American culture as a whole. Those looking
for academic muck-raking on the Muscular Christian movement will find
nothing here. Nonetheless, with these caveats in mind, this book fills
a gap in the literature on the movement and the reader may well profit
from the countless stories of evangelical Christians interwoven with
an aspect of American society which has become our very own post-modern
religion.
James McBride, Ph.D., J.D., Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP, New York,
NY
