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Muscular Christianity is the view of the Victorian-era English writers Charles Kingsley and Thomas Hughes (though the name was bestowed by others). Kingsley and Hughes promoted physical strength and health (at least for men) as well as a vigorous pursuit of Christian ideals in personal life and politics. The term is also applied to later movements that combine physical and Christian spiritual development.

Though muscular Christianity is most closely associated with Kingsley and Hughes, aspects of it appeared in literature as early as 1762, when Rousseau's Emile described physical education as important for the formation of moral character.^[1] The term itself probably first appeared in a review of Kingsley's novel Two Years Ago in the February 21, 1857 issue of the Saturday Review.^[2] Kingsley wrote a reply to this review in which he called the term "painful, if not offensive",^[3] but he later used it favourably on occasion.^[4] Hughes used it in Tom Brown at Oxford; saying that it was "a good thing to have strong and well-exercised bodies," he specified, "The least of the muscular Christians has hold of the old chivalrous and Christian belief, that a man's body is given him to be trained and brought into subjection, and then used for the protection of the weak, the advancement of all righteous causes, and the subduing of the earth which God has given to the children of men."^[5]

In addition to the beliefs stated above, muscular Christianity preached the spiritual value of sports, especially team sports. As Kingsley said, "games conduce not merely to physical but to moral health" (Education and Health, quoted by Ladd and Mathisen).

Muscular Christianity spread to other countries in the 19th century. In the United States it appeared first in private schools and then in the YMCA and in the preaching of evangelists such as Dwight L. Moody.^[6] (The addition of athletics to the YMCA led to, among other things, the invention of basketball and volleyball.) Parodied by Sinclair Lewis in Elmer Gantry (though he had praised the Oberlin College YMCA for its "positive earnest muscular Christianity") and out of step with theologians such as Reinhold Niebuhr, its influence declined in American mainline Protestantism. Nonetheless it was felt in such evangelical organizations as the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Athletes in Action, and the Promise Keepers.^[7]

1. ^ Watson, Nick J.; Stuart Weir and Stephen Friend (2005). "The Development of Muscular Christianity in Victorian Britain and Beyond". Journal of Religion & Society 7: paragraph 7. 
2. ^ Ladd, Tony (1999). Muscular Christianity: Evangelical Protestants and the Development of American Sport. Grand Rapids, Mich.: BridgePoint Books, pp. 13–14. ISBN 0-8010-5847-3. 
3. ^ Watson, Weir, and Friend, paragraph 6.
4. ^ Kingsley, Charles (1889). Letters and Memoirs of His Life, vol. II. Scribner's.  Quoted by Rosen, David. "The volcano and the cathedral: muscular Christianity and the origins of primal manliness", in in Donald E. Hall (ed.): Muscular Christianity: Embodying the Victorian Age. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-45318-6. 
5. ^ Chapter 11, quoted by Ladd and Mathisen
6. ^ Heather, Hendershot (2004). Shaking the World for Jesus: Media and Conservative Evangelical Culture. University of Chicago Press, p. 226. ISBN 0-226-32679-9. 
7. ^ Putney, Clifford (2001). Muscular Christianity: Manhood and Sports in Protestant America, 1880–1920. Harvard University Press, pp. 205–206. ISBN 0674011252. 

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