![]() ![]() “The race,” one man lamented, “was dying dying of its own stupidity dying from in-doorness.” 4 The new professional and managerial revolution fluffed the spirit of masculinity in particular and atrophied its body. But now hardly forty percent are farmers, and nearly all the rest are at callings - mercantile, mechanical, or professional - which do almost nothing to make one sturdy and enduring. Over eighty percent of all our men then were farming, hunting, or fishing, rising early, out all day in the pure, bracing air, giving many muscles very active work, eating wholesome food, retiring early, and so laying in a good stock of vitality and health. ![]() There was more done to make our men and women hale and vigorous than there is today. Yet this move also “sapped white-collar virility.” One writer illustrates the shift, contrasting his day in 1889 to just one hundred years prior: This fractured the home base, introducing the splintered modern household we know as the norm today. Men left their homesteads and the untilled fields of an agrarian society for the hustle and bustle of the city. Several significant shifts occurred as the West mechanized. The fertilizer? The Industrial Revolution.” 2 “If the seeds of Christianity’s feminization were planted in the Middle Ages,” posit Brett and Kate McKay, “those seeds came to full fruition in the 19th century. 1 Yet something significant hastened Western Christianity’s man-problem in the 1800s. His detractors cited one major accelerant to his downfall.Īccelerant, because the crisis of masculinity in the Western church, both in its disproportion of women to men and in the quality of men it produced, predates the nineteenth century. Feminizing Fertilizerīefore we look at the perceived deficiencies in the Victorian man, consider him first in his context. Then we can explore the movement’s response, analyze its legacy and downfall, and finally glean a few lessons for manhood within the church today. To understand the XY-mindset of Muscular Christianity, we must first view the state of manhood as they saw it. Proponents attempted to treat with one cure both men’s glaring absence from the church and the thin virility of the few lads who remained. ![]() ![]() The movement, originating in England, originally among liberal Protestants, gained momentum in America and sought to pump more testosterone into Western Christendom. As proponents saw it, “masculinity” (a term they coined to describe the rugged side of maleness) roamed the church as an increasingly endangered species. One prescription in the nineteenth century read, “More discipline, more mission, more muscle.” The Muscular Christianity movement, finding its peak physique in America from 1880 to 1920, concerned masculinity. The ancient and true religion had, in the eyes of more than a few, grown flabby and soft. This is the story of a time when Christianity wanted more muscle and more men. The movement dwindled in the years after World War I, but its secularized legacy remains today, and the questions it asked still look for answers from churches facing many of the same problems.įor our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors, leaders, and teachers, Greg Morse draws lessons from the history of the Muscular Christianity movement. Muscular Christians sought to reach and reclaim men with a focus on practical religion and physical strength. In response, some Protestant leaders began a movement that would come to be called Muscular Christianity. Women outnumbered the men in seemingly all quarters, and many of the men who remained seemed feminine, emasculated by an industrialized society and a church that catered to the female sex. ABSTRACT: In the mid-nineteenth century, a growing number of Christians looked at the church and noticed a distinct lack of both men and masculinity. ![]()
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