"I love the sense of satisfaction that I get when I’ve done a swimming workout or race, and know that I gave my whole being and heart to God in every moment of the swim. It’s the best worship I can offer him."
Both Praying and Playing
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Neal Garnham
Both Praying and Playing: 'Muscular Christianity' and the YMCA in North-east, in County Durham, Neal Garnham, Journal of Social History, Vol 35, 2001, Pp 397-407
William Baker had published a paper entitles “To pray or to play”, Garnham argues for both noting that in some places the YMC was taken to stand for “Young Muscular Christians”. Garnham rightly points out that the founders of the YMCA were not really associated with the Muscular Christian movement or Arnold, Hughes, Kingsley etc as the founders of Y had no background in public school Muscular Christianity but were rather were narrowly evangelical and had mainly spiritual aims.
By 1890 the author notes, South Shields Y had a flourishing cycling club, had won a rugby cup and was forming a cricket club and Sunderland Y offered young men “the privileges of every form of athletic exercises in a congenial society”.
The article notes the opposition to Christian involvement in sport at the time and the arguments made:
Sport led to the sin of vanity
Sport was for self-gratification
Sunderland Y Boat club known as “Floating fornication club”
Sport led to aloss of moral tone
It encouraged gambling
Billiards was associated with the evil of smoking
Billiard halls were “strongholds of Satan [Lux June 1893]
Football was addictive and overindulgence could stunt a man’s intelligence
The danger of becoming a person with fine muscles and little brain
There was a self-righteous quote that “Men who were willing to buy bicycles and pay for entry to football matches…would be better off subscribing their money ‘for charitable and religious purposes’”.
A more serious argument was that “Sport in the YMCA was seen as an unnecessary distraction from the true purpose of the organization: the propagation of the Christian message. While by all means men might take physical exercise they should not do so ‘at the expense of absenting themselves from the temple’ and if sport were to be taken to excess it “could inhibit both the evangelical mission of the Association and the personal salvation of its members”.
On the other hand, sporting activities had other practical advantages too and were clearly seen as aids to evangelism in some cases attracted men to the movement who would not attend purely religious gatherings. Sports evangelism, it is now called! The argument was also made that if the Y wanted to reach out to a particular type of young men “a really good gym ..a billiard and smoking room” would help.
In South Shields members found a way of enacting the title of this article literally by forming a cycle mission band to visit local villages to promote the gospel. It gave them ‘an opportunity of doing grand service for our Lord while enjoying some healthy recreation’.
Biblical authority was also cited that physical exercise was ‘profitable’. A balance was achieved as in 1898 it was noted that attendance at Bible Studies far outnumbered involvement in sports activities.