Muscular Christianity: Faith, Fitness, and Masculinity

Can faith and fitness converge to create stronger Christians? Join our esteemed guests Drs. Christy Snyder, Michael Bailey, and Jon Parker as we explore the fascinating concept of "Muscular Christianity" and its impact on church and society.

We'll dive into the historical context of Muscular Christianity's emergence in mid-19th century England and its eventual spread to the United States. Learn about the fears of middle-class men becoming too effeminate during the Industrial Revolution, the feminization of the church, and the implications of muscular Christianity on gender roles.

Don't miss this engaging discussion as we examine the tensions within muscular Christianity in contemporary society and the dangers of muscular, masculine Christianity when taken to its extremes.

The views expressed on Church Potluck are solely those of the participants and do not represent any organization.

Transcript

Speaker 1: Why does Springfield make fun of Arkansas? This is not a joke. I'm asking you. That sounds like a joke.

Speaker 2: I think all states have a state that they pick on Georgia, we pick on Alabama and Alabama picks on.

Speaker 1: So for Southern Missouri it'd be Arkansas. Yeah, just because of what? the illiteracy and poverty and the crime.

Speaker 3: Remember we are recording to a white audience here at the Bailey. I love Arkansas. Of course it will be.

Speaker 1: Me too. I'm a huge fan. I really just was there and I want to move there.

Speaker 2: In fact, I don't know if you guys remember Louis LeBlanc, who used to teach at. Barry. He used to joke that Georgia would be Arkansas if it wasn't for Atlanta Right. So yeah, I like Arkansas.

Speaker 3: Instead of the right reverend, louis LeBlanc called me the middle reverend For my very middle of the road positions at Barry. Welcome everyone to Church Potluck, where we are serving up a smorgasbord of snark today And also a smorgasbord of Christian curiosity. I'm your host, dale McConkie, sociology professor and United Methodist pastor, and you know we say it every week. There are two keys to a good church potluck lots of variety and engaging conversation. And that's what we are trying to do right here, sitting down with friends and sharing our ideas on a variety of topics from a variety of academic disciplines and a variety of Christian traditions. So let us set the table for today.

Speaker 3: Music Hand motions are at the ready, that's right, everyone throw the hand, motions, Oh, it's going to be a little bit YMCA. The song has come to be known as a bit of an anthem for the gay community, But YMCA, the organization was created to link Christian values and Christian virtues with bodily strength to integrate mind, body and spirit. The YMCA is just one of the prime examples of something called muscular Christianity, Something that we are going to be talking about today. So let's find a table of guests. Dr Bailey, tell us what you know about muscular Christianity.

Speaker 1: Well, this, i think, is a good time to say I'm a big fan of Arkansas. I was there a few weeks ago, went to Crystal Gardens Museum and. North Crown Chapel, Hot Springs is a fabulous place, and so that's reason I was sort of trying to defend Arkansas from Christie's attacks. I'm fine, how are you Dale?

Speaker 3: I am doing well as well, and as again, we get the summer giddiness going on here, dr Bailey is dressed up in his Route 66 shirt.

Speaker 1: Just about the moment we turn off the recording, you're ahead now, I did not get the memo about the all-nude podcast Dale, but I applaud you for your courage coming here. Well, we are talking about muscular Christianity.

Speaker 3: So there you go. There it is All right. Well, we have. We've got one person who knows quite a bit about muscular Christianity, and the rest of us are going to join in and mansplain to her what it really means. So let's introduce our guests here First. We have Dr Christy Snyder. Hello, a returning guest, dr Christy Snyder?

Speaker 2: Yes, So I am a professor in the history department here at Berry College. I teach US history, women's history. In fact it's teaching women's history where I first kind of ran across the concept of muscular Christianity.

Speaker 3: Great, and you are not only a recurring guest, but you are an avid listener of Church Potluck And, as someone who I consider to be, like the, an aficionado, who knows you are quite the podcast listener the fact that you would put us in your rotating slate. I appreciate that very much. So what is it about the podcast that you like so much? Is it the host wit or the host insights?

Speaker 2: Yes, yes, both of those are really compelling. Bring me back week after week.

Speaker 3: Thank you, all right. Well, thank you very much, dr Snyder. And next, as I said, he's heading out the door, but he cared enough to come and be on the podcast with us today. We have Dr Michael Bailey Greetings, hello, enough said. And we have someone who's also very busy and took time out of his very busy schedule, working on a deadline, to come and be with us. We have Dr John Parker Hello, hello, all right, you've been on planning, but go ahead and introduce yourself again as well.

Speaker 4: Yep, john Parker, i work in the Lich Department And I guess for this talk I mean only tangentially related. I teach a course on women and Scripture And a lot of times how the church has received images of masculinity, femininity. What that has to do with our faith often is sort of the first thing we discuss as we're getting back into the Bible and what it has to say.

Speaker 3: So well, great. Yes, we will certainly be focused on muscular Christianity, but I'm sure that will form into many different directions. Yeah, I don't think we're going to turn around, but let's go ahead and get us started. Dr Snyder, you are our point person today. Tell us. For folks who have not heard the phrase muscular Christianity, it does mean something fairly specific, so go ahead and tell us a little bit about that.

Speaker 2: Well, i'm going to give you a definition that Clifford Putney puts in his history book, citation Yeah, it's muscular Christianity. So you know, and it's a really basic definition. It just says a Christian commitment to health and manliness, and he points to a couple of biblical passages that he says you can pull this from. One is Mark, where I guess it talks about a sanction for manly exertion, and one is first Corinthians where it talks about physical health. And so you know, he starts with this very kind of basic definition. So I don't know if anybody has, you know, thoughts about that being too basic. It doesn't seem like it's a bad kind of idea, but it's just kind of, maybe, how it plays out throughout America and in England that maybe some of the more problematic aspects arise.

Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll go ahead and follow up and just say with the first Corinthians passage that he listed there. Probably the passage he's talking about is first Corinthians, 6th night, that says Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own, you were bought with a price. Therefore, honor God with your bodies. Yeah, the only thing about that is the This major emphasis above that is sexual morality more than physical fitness, that there are other references, and 1 Corinthians Paul also talks about running the race, and so there are these linkages. I would say that they're relatively tangential, but they are there. This is probably getting way too far ahead, but this idea of physicality and manliness would have made sense when this arose in the 19th centuries, because physicality for women and physical fitness was probably not nearly as stressed as much. So I'm curious down the road for us to have a conversation does manliness, is that a necessary ingredient of muscular Christianity?

Speaker 2: But the same, yeah, still, you mean.

Speaker 3: Yeah, with women being much more into physical fitness now, but anyway, that's a, like I said, getting ahead of ourselves. Tell us a little bit about the history and how this developed, and what does it have to do with the YMCA eventually.

Speaker 2: Yeah, so it kind of emerges. First in England around the 1850s. They have a couple of people there who are actually Christian socialists and they're worried about industrialization and what that's doing to society, what's as far as like workers being abused, middle-class men being kind of not outside and active any longer. And they began writing these I guess you'd call it venture stories where they have their heroes as these Christian, very kind of righteous people who are also very healthy and active and involved in sports. And the idea is that these and the reviews of the books begin to call these people muscular Christians. And the idea is that having a healthy body is a way to help combat some of the ills being brought about by the industrial revolution, and not only having and sport is going to help you have that healthy body And then sport also becomes enthused with. Well, if you're playing sports correctly, you have all these values of like good sportsmanship and playing by the rule and things like that.

Speaker 3: So do you think the emphasis was on the physicality of sports or on the moral lessons being learned from the sports, or is it just both of those were good benefits?

Speaker 2: I think they're both really essential right, so that you need to be healthy, to play sports and sports gives you, i guess, these values And you need to be healthy if you're going to carry out kind of this Christian socialist activity in the world. The two men who I'm talking about one of them was Charles Kingsley who was an Anglican minister, the other one was Thomas Hughes who was a lawyer, and they both criticized kind of the Anglican church at the time, both on the left and the right, of being too outside of the world, too involved in just kind of thinking or reading about God and scripture rather than engaged in doing God's work.

Speaker 4: So more too spiritually minded to be of any earthly good? Yes, i think that, and there was a lot of controversies going on in the mid-19th century in the Church of England about how the performance of the church was going to be done, so I can imagine how that's detracting. Do you think it's a part of? has that meant to undermine industrialization as a whole? Are they trying to say, hey, our guys can't run around and play football very well, we might need to work on our decreasing our pollution. Or is it more of a cooperative sense like, oh, you need to do sport on the weekend so that you can be good in the factories on the weekday? Do you see what I mean?

Speaker 2: Yeah, So I think there is kind of a recognition that the actual workers in factories might be strong but they're not getting kind of the other things they need out of life.

Speaker 4: Recreation.

Speaker 2: Yeah, they're really worried about the bodies of middle-class men And, in fact, ministers. they're really worried about ministers' bodies being weekly and sick and that the really energetic men are being drawn into big business and away from the church. And so maybe if you make Christianity more compelling, that energetic manly men will get more involved and become I don't know.

Speaker 4: So it's anti-injustrial, but not necessarily at a mass level. Where we're going to, we should shut down the factories and go back to being negrarian.

Speaker 2: Oh no, definitely not, and in fact I would say they actually see muscular Christianity as helping promote British imperialism. Right, oh, interesting That healthy weekend yeah.

Speaker 1: I know nothing about muscular Christianity or really anything about muscularity in general, but I mean, what this really strikes me just again, having never heard it before is it seems to me it's trying to apply not necessarily Christian values explicitly, but really just the gentleman values of the aristocracy. It's interesting that he's a socialist because I know at Oxford and Cambridge and all those boarding schools there was an emphasis that the gentleman is trained in sports for the reasons that you talked about. It's good for their body, it's sort of a. It preserves excellence with integrity and integration of mind and body. But you learn those rules. You learn how to win well, you learn how to lose well. Because I guess I'm surprised that is taken up by socialists who I would think would be opposed to some degree to this aristocratic yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah, i think what they would argue is that a focus on athleticism in sports actually helps undermine the class system, because what you're valued for is your prowess on the field and not that you were born into nobility. Yeah, cool.

Speaker 3: And if we were looking for kind of an archetypal example of muscular Christianity, maybe a Teddy Roosevelt?

Speaker 2: Oh yeah, definitely It would be a good example. It would be a good example later though.

Speaker 3: Yeah it was much later, but here's a quote. I brought him up just because of one of the quotes he said. That fits, i think, very well with this. There is only a very circumscribed sphere of usefulness for the timid good man. So you're talking about the pastors? I don't know. I have no idea what you're talking about in terms of pastors being kind of flabby and out of shape. But No, i mean, i never say that. I don't quite picture what you're saying there.

Speaker 3: But this is what Roosevelt was saying that even if you're a good man, if you're a timid good man, if you're not muscular, if you're not manly, then you are very little use in most spheres of life.

Speaker 4: It's interesting that you said it was happening at the stories of heroes, Christian mid-19th century. All that reminds me of who became known as Chinese Gordon or a Gordon of Khartoum, because he came to fame around 1850.

Speaker 2: Oh, very good.

Speaker 4: He was very celebrated as an imperial Christian wise leader that was able to bring a robust Christianity to parts of the world that needed And he was widely celebrated and later began a school for boys in the south of England that kind of continued this idea of passing on masculinity and muscularness to the individual. So I think of him at that time period as being probably one of those heroes.

Speaker 2: One of these people who Yeah.

Speaker 4: I don't know. I don't know if he has direct connection, i'd have to study up a little bit.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not sure.

Speaker 4: Yeah, but same time.

Speaker 2: Yeah, and I guess what I'd say is part of the reason why you have some people who begin to write about this in America in the 1850s, but it doesn't catch on really until the 1870s, 1880s, and there's several reasons for that. One is that we have the Civil War to keep our men masculine. We don't need sports as a way to compensate. Our Industrial Revolution happens a little bit later, so that explains it, and then we just have a really strong strain of Calvinism, which saw kind of sport and play as wasteful and therefore sinful, and so I think that is a lot of the reason why you have. It doesn't connect quite as fast in America If you're having a good time down here.

Speaker 3: You're not focused up there enough.

Speaker 2: Exactly Right, exactly That all changes 1870s, 1880s, and it changes for numerous reasons that we can talk about as we go through.

Speaker 2: So one of them is the Industrial Revolution in the United States and this fear that middle-class men are doing office jobs, they are being bankers and lawyers.

Speaker 2: They're not tilling the soil any longer, they're becoming weak, they're becoming actually over-civilized, right, kind of too polite and worried about kind of social, i don't know fitting it into society. They're too effeminate and that you need something to fix, not only their bodies but their, the way they behave. So Christian masculinity is one of these ways that, yeah, they get involved in sports, not only will their bodies become healthier but they'll become braver and courageous and have more these masculine values. So I think Industrial Revolution is one of the big ones. Another big one is the feminization of the church during this period, so that you know you had seen a decline in male membership of the church. In the early part of the 1800s women had become at least, by some accounts, three-fourths of the membership of many churches. There were arguments that the actual doctrine that ministers were preaching was changing to more appeal to women. So things like infant damnation wasn't being spoken of in the way, it's a very masculine value.

Speaker 2: I don't know, it's just like that. The way it gets written about is that, yeah, women really want to make sure their babies are not going to hell, right?

Speaker 3: All right, a modern day application of that pets going to heaven. I've had some theological conversations with certain members and it may or may not be a coincidence that they have been women in general in terms of whether their pet is going to be with them in heaven, so kind of the same thing.

Speaker 2: This might be a different podcast, but two pets have souls. I've never thought they did.

Speaker 3: Here's the pastoral answer that I heard someone say many years ago said if it's going to take Fluffy and Heffin to make you happy, then Fluffy's going to be in heaven. That's the non-answer answer.

Speaker 2: Let's see. Oh, another. I think another reason why it catches on is increased immigration in the United States during this period, and immigration not from Britain or Germany or France, these western European countries, but southern and eastern European countries where people a little bit darker skinned and they are not Protestant, right, they're Catholic, they're Jewish, and there's a fear that if Protestant Christians don't approve their health and become more upstanding in society, that these other people are going to kind of take over. You see this. oh, there's also concern about the modern woman. The modern woman would be that kind of 1890s, 1900s Gibson girl woman who's a little more athletic, she's maybe gone to a woman's college, she perhaps has a job, either paid or unpaid, at the public sphere, is she wearing slacks yet?

Speaker 2: Not really. All right, all right.

Speaker 3: But not showing any ankle.

Speaker 2: I'm very no, not yet All right And so but still a lot more engaged in kind of public life than her mother or grandmother had been. And so are men going to be just kind of sussumed by these women. And then Teddy Roosevelt, right, teddy Roosevelt, the strenuous life that all rises up at this same time. So I think the combination of all these things makes this idea of focusing on health, focusing on masculinity in the church, seem much more necessary than before.

Speaker 4: Now, when you talk about muscular Christianity, actually the first thing I think of is the temperance movement and a sense of being healthy, as opposed to being addicted to drink, and also having men be protective rather than abusive of women. Am I right in connecting those, or is that outside the bounds of what?

Speaker 2: No, i would say that probably becomes part of the muscular Christianity movement, this idea that yeah, if you're going to be a good athlete and good in sports, you need to abstain from drinking. I mean, a lot of temperance was. I mean there were men's temperance societies but women were also very engaged in temperance work. But yeah, it was very much kind of to stop men from abusing kind of their families or wasting their rent money on alcohol and things like that. I think.

Speaker 4: Yeah, I kind of think of it as complementary almost. I mean, I don't know as much about Billy Sunday, but I remember, Yeah, I was going to talk about it. Okay, well, I don't want to repeat that a little bit.

Speaker 4: Well, i just think, yeah, there's a sense of where the masculine version of muscular Christianity is an attempt to kind of channel masculine energies in a way that it's helpful, and it is a kind of strangely Calvinist in the sense that it's trying to push it towards things that are productive rather than wasteful or even luxurious. So I'm reminded of I mean, even Barry got established during this time period. One of the reasons that we're dry is because money spent on alcohol is not money spent on the poor, for example, and so we're going to all get on the spandwagon of health. And I also think of the. The origins of the graham cracker always comes to mind that the graham cracker was essentially this sort of limbless bread, this piece of nutritious goodness that you could eat that would help you be healthy and strong, and it didn't have any sugar in it, so it was really nasty, and so later they added a little bit of sugar to it and honey to it, and now we have the cinnamon. Now.

Speaker 1: Cinnamon And the precursor of the trisket perhaps? Yeah, It was supposed to be like the modern manna back then.

Speaker 4: Like it was like, but it was. So I think of those features as being, as being kind of interconnected in terms of health and wholeness and productive in society. Crispy, do you think?

Speaker 1: can I ask a question, no, related to this? I'm wondering whether one of the causes that may have contributed this may have been effectively the end of the frontier You said you know earlier that we didn't really in the United States need to sort of dwell on masculinity or muscularity because of the war, and one way it's finally channeled is through sports, which made me think that either masculinity or muscularity is best expressed in opposition And having an opponent. And now, with industrial revolution, we need more cooperation, people inside. So could be the end of the frontier without needing to, you know, just sort of push back and fight. Could that be a contributing cause? this, you think, as well?

Speaker 2: Oh yeah, i think that's probably definitely something that is occurring And I forget this makes me a really bad historian, but I can't remember whether it's like 1890 or 1900. But at one of these censuses they determined that the frontier was no longer there, was no longer like a line in America beyond which there were fewer than two people per mile.

Speaker 1: I always think of that around 1890. Yeah.

Speaker 2: And so, yeah, definitely, i think there's this, this kind of that. Yeah, that's one of the things that kept Americans active and engaged in masculine.

Speaker 1: Is there a sense in this that opposition is central to or necessary for the expression of, you know, manliness or muscularity?

Speaker 2: That's a good question. I'm not sure I mean. do sports require opposition?

Speaker 1: Well, is for the really muscular Well yeah, but yeah, maybe.

Speaker 2: But so bodybuilding becomes really popular right during this period And that doesn't require opposition, it's just about making your body healthy. But I would say that in gymnastics becomes very, and again, that's not necessarily about competition And in fact a lot of muscular Christians would argue that professional sports are not as good as amateur sports for maintaining Christianity.

Speaker 3: Very interesting. Was there any kind of formal opposition to muscular Christianity in the sense that, well, no, these kind of more feminine, effeminate values are actually good And they really are what Jesus preached, where they're pushed back to this emphasis? I'm just thinking about the movements that are alive today And we'll talk about those later that are alive and well today that kind of promote a version of muscular Christianity. Certainly there is a lot of pushback today just of making such clear gender roles for men and women in the church and beyond.

Speaker 2: Well, i think yeah, there was. I mean, the one I think about most, or that at least I've read about most, happened back in England where I think it was Cardinal Newman who was very much kind of promoted like church is really about these feminine values, sensitivity and nurturing and caring, and him and I think Kingsley had a big debate and Kingsley was just like crushed by Newman And so there was some pushback and there were also, i mean, some women, especially as these muscular Christian values, kind of infiltrated Protestant dominations, leave the church and they head towards like Christian science which was emerging at the time. And so, yeah, there was some pushback, or at least I don't want to be a part of this, or I don't feel as much of a part of this.

Speaker 3: And John, you're a Bible guy so you can maybe weigh in on this. But I'm thinking that you know, when you look at a lot of the things that Jesus said and did, you have things like the last Shelby first, and you have things like I'm going to wash your feet. And our motto here at Berry College is, in Jesus words, right Not to be ministered unto but to minister. Jesus said that's what the reason that he came. So you see a lot of these themes of submission and lowliness and not. Christ is victor, coming to save and conquer over sin and over death, and so you have both images. But I think in a lot of the images you see a more feminine or more docile Jesus. Would you agree?

Speaker 3: with that or would you not agree with that?

Speaker 4: No, i don't think I would. I don't think that servanthood is essentially feminine, that's, you know, lots of servants were males. I think there is a pushback against a Roman conception of masculinity, where I mean Augustus Caesar famously, as a political ploy, says that every man in his household is now head of his household, and that's for the purposes of managing them better, i think, and also for creating the more productivity. But prior to that you had economies and political organizations and Mike can maybe help me correct me on this but as I understand it, that are village based and agrarian, and so those I think Jesus often uses terms that are that were male figures are good managers, they're good farmers, they're good growers. That's all very masculine imagery. There's nothing essentially feminine about that, but it is anti-conquest, it's anti-imperial to use those terms, but I don't think it's anti-masculine in that sense.

Speaker 1: Dale, can I ask you maybe clarify your question? Are you asking whether traditionally conceived masculine virtues or descriptions are inconsistent with Christianity? or are you suggesting that Christianity is inherently biased towards more again sort of classic we can see feminine? Or are you I mean, what is it you're asking?

Speaker 3: I do think that there's probably a reason why more women are worshiping in the church today than men that the message of grace and well, just even the fruits of the spirit right, the fruits of the spirit love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, that put together there, it does have a feminine feel to it, rather than going out and conquering right, going out. And I want to be real clear I don't believe in dividing these values up into masculine and feminine. I think that a healthy person has both this kind of strength and this kind of submission and weakness and strength. But historically I think that the values of the church I would agree with Carl Neumann have a feminine feel to them. I think, personally, that's a great topic for a future podcast. I think It is.

Speaker 2: Thank you, And I would say, at least during this period 1870s, 1880s there was a feeling, i think, that those values of love and compassion were overly feminine and that they had. If they weren't driving men away, they at least weren't attracting men to the church. And that's why we need to talk about Jesus as being brave and courageous and an activist in society. That's why even the art around Jesus changes during this period. Yeah, so there was. I just looked up. There was an article published I forget the journal in the 1900s, late 1800s, where it was like new images of Jesus, where Jesus is not emaciated and he's not sorrowful or looking pitiful, but he's standing up on a mountain.

Speaker 3: And he's turning the tables over in the temple right.

Speaker 2: Exactly. So I think this is part of and you can talk about. Well, is this part of, yeah, keeping men in the church or attracting men to church, or is it that, yeah, these are actually really things that, given the age we are in, that Christians need to be doing right, riding against the sin in the world.

Speaker 3: A little side note that's more appropriate for the future podcast that you're talking about, Dr Bailey, is that I've always found it an irony that women are far more likely to be involved in the church and yet men are supposed to be in control of the church. In many denominations our two largest denominations You don't agree on much with Catholicism and Southern Baptist, Two largest women still aren't allowed to have the top leadership positions in the congregation. So I find that an interesting interplay as well.

Speaker 2: I thought, found it really interesting that apparently Catholicism was not as attracted to muscular Christianity, in part because, yeah, men, i mean you know ministers were still for the most part men, but you know they are you have less of a concern about kind of the feminization of the church. I think, maybe because of the ritual and a lot of their adherents, a lot of the parishioners are still muscular because they're working in the factories and they're working in the shipyards.

Speaker 1: It also could be. Again, this is pure speculation. It would seem that if, when you have systems or societies where patriarchy is wholly established, really without any sort of question, in some sense you don't need bell hooks. More of a contemporary thinker talks about how, today, men are constantly guilty of what she describes as these sort of exaggerated displays of chauvinism and misogyny, in part because they don't know what it is to be a man. They don't. They're supposed to have power. They don't have power.

Speaker 1: So they, you know, wear chains, indicate on their neck to indicate again their wealth and their ability to play, and they, you know, show off again these sort of superficial types of displays of masculinity, in part because of their powerlessness. And in comparison, you know, to something like a Jane Austen novel which is sort of the end of aristocracy, where patriarchy is completely established, those dudes are kind of wimpy in there in some sense, because you don't need to be constantly asserting the power and superiority and I'm wondering of maleness. Is this sort of baked into this? I'm wondering whether it's Catholicism, whether something similar. Is this a non-issue and so you don't need to really be defensive about it? Is that-?

Speaker 2: I suspect that's correct. Yeah, cool.

Speaker 3: Is there any connection here? we started off, or I started off with the YMCA. Yeah, yeah, i'm using that. The YMCA I've always envisioned as it kind of meant to be a haven for industrialization, that these farm kids coming into the brutal city and this was a safe place for them to nurture their Christian values, to have their bodily training and to just have a safe place in the world. Is that a pretty good characterization of the YMCA in the United States?

Speaker 2: Yeah, i think that's correct. What I found surprising and I didn't know this until I was actually prepping for this podcast is that the Y existed before muscular Christianity without the gymnasiums. Right, as, just like this evangelical, we're going to Christianize urban people and then muscular Christianity starts and they're like oh man, let's build some gymnasiums, both to attract people in here and to turn them into these type of brave, courageous Christians that we would like to see. Yeah, so I think you don't get the YMCA of what we think of today without muscular Christianity.

Speaker 4: I think that's right. But I also think in the 19th century and I can't speak to, the one of the things I'm sort of sorting through is the popularity of these things. So you have the sort of lay people, lay men, what kind of sport are they doing? what's happening with them in the streets, you know, and with them the upheaval of their own vocational life is a huge thing about the how they understand their masculine is connected to their, like their father's job, and now they can't go into their father's job, and so there's a sense of vocation, of masculine. I think is important. That's being shifted in fundamental ways.

Speaker 4: But also during the 19th century you have this promotion of particularly I'm thinking of the SCM, of the YMCA. You have these mission agencies that are sending young men across the world to go on these adventures for God And it is, you know, somebody connected to imperialism or greatly connected to imperialism. We can go back and forth on the history of imperialism and missions, but there's a real masculine view of that. Sometimes you have women who are missionaries, but it's much more rare There is. You want to give your life for God and this adventure and courage. Go learn these languages and go across the world. Charles Simeon was a real early 19th century promoter of this and some of the stories that come back about what they were able to do and how they gave lives. They're honored in that way. So I think that probably does then bridge into some of this concern about their body and their healthiness and relations between with drink and that kind of thing.

Speaker 1: Real, practical question When did the YMCA sort of get going here? Or you have a sense of when the gymnasium's red? are we talking about early 20th century, late 19th century? Does that seem roughly?

Speaker 2: Yeah, it is like I mean.

Speaker 1: I know you're not a historian of YMCA.

Speaker 2: No, yeah, so I think it is actually during the 1860s, so there was a Y in England And I can't remember whether they added the first gymnasium and then the Y in America followed them, but it's happening around that time. Yeah, so this is also the time where you start seeing churches set up summer camps, right, so that we're going to send our kids out to be active in countryside and also get a good dose of Christianity while they're there.

Speaker 3: Was this generally a concern apart from Christianity as well? Just people were saying aware of the ills And so this was a social concern apart from Christianity. But Christianity kind of latches on to this concern and integrates it.

Speaker 2: Yeah, i think so. Yeah, So this is part of my I'm not sure about like, is it a chicken and the egg which comes first, or, but definitely it is a broad social concern And I think Christians it's not just a concern about people being not healthy, but to be not healthy, you're also not being spiritually connected, because you start to see people talking about, right, our bodies are temples to God And if you're really worshiping God, then you are going to have a healthy body as well.

Speaker 3: I just want to provide God with a really big temple.

Speaker 1: In terms of just being a broader, broader, broader movement. I mentioned earlier just sort of ingest being in Arkansas.

Speaker 1: You know, I was at Hot Springs a week or two ago And that sort of fits into what you're talking about, because it's really. You have all these spas, bathhouses that are built at the early part of the 20th century And you have also at that time a lot of hiking trails in the hills and you have baseball teams that go and do their sort of spring training there, but then it gets promoted as a way for people to restore their whole body and their mind And, you know, sort of gives them peace, together with an occasion to exercise their body so they can go back and be more productive and be a better citizen, and all of that And it's interesting that takes place right at the early part of the 20th century. Like you said, it's just a big theme.

Speaker 2: Oh yeah. Well, you know, 1920 is the first census where more Americans live in urban areas than in rural areas, and so it is not surprising, right, that all of this stuff is coming together when it is.

Speaker 3: I'm thinking of all the Hindus out there listening and practicing yoga, thinking, oh, it's nice to view Christians to figure this out 2000 years after So do you want?

Speaker 2: I mean, i don't know where you want to go from here, but I could go back to Billy Sunday. I don't know if you, if you guys, know who Billy Sunday was or not, or.

Speaker 3: Yeah, tell us a little bit more about Billy Sunday or just other major voices of this time that we may or may not be familiar with.

Speaker 2: Well, billy Sunday was a. I mean, he really had a pretty difficult upbringing He had been. his father died, i think, in the Civil War. His mother had to give him and his brother up because she couldn't afford to care for them. He is a great athlete, though, and he becomes a member of the Chicago White Stockings While playing baseball. he converts to Christianity. When his baseball career ends in the 1880s, he works for the Chicago Y for a while, and then he becomes this revivalist minister traveling around the United States in the in the first two decades of the 20th century.

Speaker 1: Yeah, He's a Chicago guy originally.

Speaker 2: Is that right? Well, he might have been born in Iowa but he, yeah, but he played for Chicago, yeah, but even in his preaching he is very energetic, breaking chairs and taking his coat off to preach, and so, yeah, you very much kind of see this in him. So you know, you have all of these, i think, consequences of the movement from the establishments of things like gyms and camps and Billy Sunday drawing in, you know, trying to draw in more manly men into the church. But there are some negative consequences, i think that come along with muscular Christianity as well.

Speaker 1: I want to ask our resident Marxist Dale whether I mean, you see, i'm really kind of astonished about how much you see here sort of a template of ideas and practices and ideology following changes in the mode of production, right, or at least you have these material changes happening in people's lives and then people responding to it, rather than the other way around, as you have a new idea that implements Is from a sociology standpoint, would this be surprising or is this predictable?

Speaker 3: This is the 100% heart of the underlying theme of my intro to sociology class is that the means of production shift our values. It's not that it's never the other way around It can be the other way around But so often the way we produce things organizes our lives in profound ways, and so this makes perfect sense to me that our understanding of God, our understanding of what it means to be a proper Christian, would significantly shift, and our lives shift from agrarian to industrial, for sure.

Speaker 1: So, christy, as we shifted to a more industrial society, what are some of just the really broad changes that you've already mentioned, that we became more urban? What are some other changes that occurred over, you know, from 1860 to 1920, in terms of just how we lived life? Is that too broad a question? Yeah, okay, well, i mean, i was thinking urbanization is an example of that.

Speaker 3: It's not too broad for me because that's all I teach is broad. I'm not a historian, right? So much more urban Christi already mentioned that. Much more pluralistic Christi's already touched upon that and so you are running up against people with different ideas. When you're small, rural community, everyone basically thinks like you.

Speaker 1: You have a very much Homogenization of thought and with the railroads you're gonna have shifts of people and population from east to west and more you know. Nothing like the internet, but still you are running into different ideas far more regularly than you ever did before and normal ways of normal, typical ways of living are completely up overturned at this time and more disconnected from the land, i would suppose, and regular cycles of growing and absolutely, and greater privatization slash Individualism and in your thinking you think more in terms of yourself than the group.

Speaker 3: Your institutions become a little bit more separated. There's not as much overlap between your. The various Education becomes very distinct from religion, comes very distinct from the family in ways that are not as much in a great society. The other one that that I find kind of fascinating is you stop looking toward tradition, you're, and you start looking more for progress and science, to technology to provide answers and Christi also mentioned, there's a little bit of a shift towards meritocracy.

Speaker 1: If you break away, as Jonathan said, you know that you just have the vocation of your father. You have to go out and earn your own thing. Then there might be more of an emphasis on Meritocracy and showing, proving you know your own worth at that time.

Speaker 3: So I should say that those four categories that I just gave came from Peter burger citation. There you go.

Speaker 4: Oh, I guess I'm thinking about Doris Kerns Goodwin's biography of Taft and TR.

Speaker 4: Citation one of the things that I just sticks in my head from that was when Teddy Roosevelt This is a really prior to his going out and wrestling with bears or whatever he did his vigorous walks, but that he was in New York City and finding himself as a laissez-faire economic sky from Harvard, face-to-face with the squalor of tobacco rollers working seven days a week, 14, 18 hours a day, something like that. Right that there was no. So we had this Industrialization. We also don't have labor laws. We'd have no that after you move from agrarianism and Seasonality you move to this production, that of which there is no end, and people who are in a state of real need and it really makes Them what much more compassionate kind of guy, because he sees this and says and also wants them to get them away.

Speaker 4: Then the poison of their, of their industry, that they're being affected by Whatever mass production, that they are having to be involved and you see this in England with the miners as well and trying to get Them out of the darkness of the mines, and what can we do to help them. So I, that mine thing doesn't actually go in the muscular direction, i actually start making an art school, but I think some of the drive for muscular Christianity and the move to camps, especially the birth of camps. It's just for health, it's just to help and it's to help people. I want to say that I've got of compassion, but it is from all these, it seems to Be from a lot of these changes in production in ways that we can't really even conceive of, because we benefit from labor laws and So, along with the squalor, isn't this the time also Sort of the industrial magnets, who?

Speaker 1: I mean 1870? so some of those folks are displaying Credible, you know amount of wealth, and so you have this huge inequality. Does that, you think, fit into this narrative somehow? No, i mean force it.

Speaker 2: Make it fit, christie, yeah well, i mean, i do think so a Rockefeller right as somebody who He was, you know, extremely wealthy, huge magnet, but also very dedicated Christian and what used his wealth in a lot of ways to try, and I think, Trying to mill it. Mill your rate, some of these issues. So, yeah, i think there is connections, connections there. I was gonna go off of John John's comment, though, that Muscular Christianity very much supports the social gospel movement, that is, i think, at the same time Is that.

Speaker 3: I found that fascinating because I did not see that connection before. Yeah, which is interesting because I would think fast-forwarding now That there are still vestiges of muscular Christianity out there. Yes, when I was growing up as a young adult, promise keepers was at its height and promise keepers were basically a sense of men You have duties, you have responsibilities, be good to your families. That protectiveness that you were talking about earlier, john, you know, protect your families, be faithful for men, to take your role as men. But I don't remember much emphasis on social gospel connected there and I think about it was a big movement and one at one connection.

Speaker 4: Well, i mean, we should probably, you know, talk about what social gospel is, maybe, but it's a Characterized by Rauschenbüsch. But it's a movement that says the kingdom of God has lived out in our social dynamics today And that that act. There is a tension between what's gonna happen, between, say, evangelicalism, which is nascent at this time, and social gospel, and whether it's sort of kingdom or cross that we're preaching, and there become some points of real, of Some divergence shortly after that early period.

Speaker 3: But very quickly explain that what you mean kingdom versus cross. Yeah, yeah, sorry distinction there.

Speaker 4: Well, just sort of that, that Jesus comes and says you know, here's the kingdom of God, and characterized, they say, the sermon on the mount, like here's how you relate to one of their giving, receiving of relationships and economies that are Beneficial to one another, whereas cross might be seen as a symbol of eternal salvation, how I'm going to live for eternity. And yeah, i don't. I wouldn't necessarily want that, to pick between those two, but there is. There was a significant moment, i think it's with the YMCA, where they said you know, we wouldn't put the cross as central I can't remember if it's YMCA or SCM, but we wouldn't put the cross as central in what we do. We would put social recovery and movement and redemption as what we are all about.

Speaker 4: And there are some evangelicals And Billy Sunday back on that would be when push back on that and say, well, so we can't get to good in society if we don't have right relationships with God, and so that sort of constitutes some of the changes I was just gonna say about the promise keepers, which we've probably skipped a couple steps, one of them being connection But make muskow Christianity to patriotism and to militantism. I don't know that that's not a necessary Juncture to move from muskow Christianity to militantism and patriotism, but it does happen, especially during World War two, roosevelt before too as well. Yeah, i wonder about that if we can definitely becomes clear later anyway, wouldn't necessarily it's absent earlier. Kristen Dumay covers this in her book Jesus and John Wayne, which is an excellent book on the subject. But then, you know, promise Keepers comes much later. But one of the places where they do a kind of social movement is it was a really strong push for racial reconciliation. So there was a remarkable sort of emphasis on bridging racial gaps.

Speaker 3: Now that has since, you know, petered out, but that was one emphasis I'm very glad you brought that up because yes, that was a big push among the Promise Keepers.

Speaker 4: Because it had to do with football. I mean honestly, and there's a there's yeah, we could still talk about like football teams as places where men from different backgrounds come together in ways that are unique in our society.

Speaker 3: And I did not give enough context to the Promise Keepers and some of you might have more details than I have. But it was a movement that arose up in the 1990s, headed by Colorado's or at least as a figurehead, colorado's football coach, and would attract stadiums full. Tens of thousands of men would come praise, hear messages, lectures, sermons and just being called to live out their manhood as Christian men and live it with integrity. And for many this was a wonderful movement to really revive men in the church and to bring men to repentance and to faithfulness. And others were concerned that it was kind of a call to male headship and dominance and taking authority in the family in ways that seemed to go against egalitarian values at least. Yeah, i think that's right.

Speaker 2: I do think I mean muscular Christianity, i think you know it does promote, i think, some really good things. But there are tensions that kind of brings up right.

Speaker 3: Absolutely.

Speaker 2: Same as, like, if you focus on a healthy body, then do you become anti-intellectual, right? It doesn't have to be a tension, but I think oftentimes it does become one. Or if you promote these male values, does that mean you are distrustful, then, of women in leadership, or women's influence, especially over boys? And so yeah, i think you know muscular Christianity has, you know, all these kind of good consequences, but it also raises these dynamics that can be have negatives.

Speaker 3: And, of course, like anything taken to its extreme, it can be very damaging And, christy, you and I are big fans of a podcast called The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill.

Speaker 3: Citation And if you have not listened to that podcast, i really want to encourage you. I think it is, i think, one of the best done podcasts, especially Religion and Culture and especially as a sociologist chat. the second episode, just as a fabulous sociological analysis of everything that was going on at Mars Hill, but it is a story of a church and a pastor specifically named Mark Driscoll, who was very intentionally masculine in everything that the church did as a way of getting men to be involved, and it really was taken to an extreme where some I think, very damaging messages and some hyper masculine, hyper masculine is a very good term for it, But anyway, it's a very good podcast And I encourage you to see that And you enjoyed it as well.

Speaker 2: Yeah, i love it, yeah, So yeah, because they just did such a great job, i thought, playing out the, you know why people were so motivated initially to get involved in this church And it was compelling, right, they're playing this. You know alternative music and you know doing all these things And even it sounded like a pastor.

Speaker 3: He sounded like you know, he was just a great, great guy.

Speaker 2: And then what kind of brings about the downfall?

Speaker 4: And so yeah, I couldn't finish it. Oh, is that right? Because I was in ministry at the time And I kept on having all these people come up to me. I'm the oldest guy, mark Driscoll, and he seems he's awesome dude. He's really awesome, especially young men.

Speaker 3: Really.

Speaker 4: They were drawn to this And that's it's a really interesting case about. You know again what masculine Linda is. But they would come down and I would, you know, try and find out what this Mark Driscoll guy was saying and wanted to, you know, vomit personally and just couldn't stand it. I thought it was completely anti-Christian And so I'd say you got, you know, you need to put your critical hat on with this guy. And I just kept my trying to discourage people from going in that direction And they, i saw a kind of desire for power. Really is what I saw. It was a kind of hunger for power which is just, you know, sinful. So I was saying, you know, you're just more hungry for power rather than actually serving. So yeah, it was, when I listened to it at first, like oh, i can't, it just gets, it, takes me back, a traumatic effect.

Speaker 3: And that discernment between strength and power, you know it can be very, can be very nuanced, sometimes, not in the case of Mark Driscoll, but in other cases it can. Well, this is.

Speaker 4: I mean, this is a central part of Christianity, right? What do you do with your strength? Do you put it towards service or do you put it towards power? I just think that's a critical question. And what is the answer? No, i'm kidding, that's pretty clear.

Speaker 3: So, Christy, is there anything that we haven't covered yet that we need to cover?

Speaker 2: No, i think we did a really good job talking about the origins and the consequences And yeah, well, good Well, good Well.

Speaker 3: I think you did a very good job And thank you so much for being our point person today, so we had a good time. Dr Bailey, you are just heading out this exact moment, are you not?

Speaker 1: going to a cabin in the woods, my wife and my in-laws in Tennessee and going to a state park. It really should be lovely Pondtune boat tomorrow.

Speaker 3: Oh, very fun, Very fun. Dr Parker, how much do you have left before your deadline tomorrow? Quite a bit. We are very grateful that you took the effort to come in up here and talk with us. I want to thank all of you out there in Listenerland for listening to Church Potluck. I hope you have had some food for thought. I hope we've given you something to chew on And if you give it a thought, please rate and review us. And until next time, god's blessings.