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 19^th 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 19^th 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 19^th 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 19^th 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-controlHowever, 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 malesòat 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 Christiansòas 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"òas 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