"Football is not a matter of life and death, it is more important than that."
The Problem of Pleasure
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The Problem of Pleasure: Sport, Recreation and the Crisis of Victorian Religion, Dominic Erdozain, Boydell Press, 2010.
Dominic Erdozinain’s book made my brain hurt! It provides an excellent summary of issues relating to how Victorian Christianity approached the issue of pleasure and recreation. The amount of source material referred too makes the book of great value to the reader.
The knots that evangelicals tied themselves in are well documented. They would be hilarious if it were not so serious. Fishing was OK; shooting was not. Chess was OK but not card games. You could read Walter Scott’s poems but no novels! The heart of the issue was an “assumption that secular pleasure was the enemy of vital religion” resulting in “a permanent battle with the traditional customs and pastimes of the British people”.
The book gives examples of the context in which the debate was being carried on: Wilberforce was concerned that he spent too long eating meals; others stopping drinking tea and coffee to save time. Then they was the suggestion of hanging a clock on tree so that you did not spend too much time gardening!
An 1873 missionary magazine stated that: “Few social questions have proved so difficult of solution as the amusements it may be permitted to Christian converts to enjoy”.
Five approaches to the issue of pleasure are identified:
• Separation and denunciation.
• Sense of rightful opportunity.
• Highly pragmatic and purely instrumental use of sport for the conversion and retention of young Christians.
• Sport as possessing moral and spiritual properties.
• Fused moral and spiritual health to the point that they were scarcely distinguishable.
For many the solution to the problem was simple: the faithful did not need entertainment. Evenings of hymn singing could replace secular entertainments. Thus in the ideal scenario religion was recreation: “The High Churchman has little enjoyment beyond a choral service or a grand function”, and those “who claim the tide of Evangelical find their relaxations in teas or bees, in Missionary or Dorcas meetings”.
The concern was well expressed by WM Oatts: “Some of our best young men are being lost to spiritual work through their connection with promiscuous cricket and football clubs”. The book documents YMCAs where the evangelistic emphasis was seemingly crowded out by a range of sporting and recreational activities. It was felt that “a clergyman’s time and energy could be better employed in purely spiritual work than in maintaining men’s or youth clubs”.
Archibald Brown expressed opposition to any Christian run recreation even more strongly in a pamphlet, The Devil’s Mission of Amusement, saying that the “evil” was now “in the professed camp of the Lord”. He continued “’If it is Christian work, why did not Christ at least hint it?’, he challenged. The command, ‘Go ye into the world, and preach the gospel to every creature’, was clear enough without the modem addendum to ‘provide amusement for those who do not relish the Gospel’”.
An alternative strategy involved fighting the devil on his own ground or as the Methodist Times put it – decades ahead of Larry Norman – “There is no reason why the devil should have all the good games”.
For some sport was what might crudely be called the hook or rather the bait to attract people into an environment where they could be evangelised. Rev Joseph Halsey suggested: “religion, pure and simple, cannot be swallowed without a considerable admixture of more palatable ingredients”. It was also referred to as “recreational inducements to make religion attractive by adjuncts and auxiliaries”. Belfast YMCA found that “athletics properly conducted under the auspices of the YMCA might reach a young man in a way nothing else could”.
The approach was successful as Bolton YMCA could report in 1888 a Bible Study of 50 people of whom 17 were footballers. Thain Davidson noted in 1886 that “some of the first athletes of Oxford and Cambridge have, at the same time, been most successful students and devoted Christians”. Lord Kinnaird, was equally positive offering the example of a professional rower who was converted after joining a YMCA athletic club.
E.J. Kennedy, director of the Exeter Hall Gymnasium, felt that “the gymnasium and the athletic clubs were the best places wherein to win the men they wanted, for young men in the country towns would go to the gymnasium when they would not go to the Gospel meetings”.
Others were more incarnational in their approach. A YMCA pamphlet saw sport as a way of “furthering of Christ’s kingdom on earth… [believing] that one way to help young men is not to preach to them, but to mix and play with them in everyday life – not one day a week, but seven. The Cambridge YMCA seeks, through brotherliness and service, the establishment of the Kingdom of God, and tries to help fellows to play, not only football and cricket, but the greater game – the game of life. Canon Lyttelton agreed arguing that it was “most desirable that the clergy should not stand altogether aloof from the sports and pastimes of the people”.
Grandley went further, almost seeing sport as part of creation, “Our churches are recognising that in the past we have taken up a false position on the amusement question, and that we are now going to identify religion with everything that makes life in this world joyous and beautiful”.
Samuel Earnshaw reached the same conclusion for pragmatic reasons: “It was a lamentable situation when the great bulk of ‘religious people’ would not, ‘on any account, be seen to be present at, or to take any part in a public exhibition of athletic sports’. This caused ‘multitudes’ to assume that they could not become Christians without succumbing to the same cult of renunciation”.
A variant on this was to “Crowd out the devil. Take up anything that interests you,.. Only passion can cast out passion… take plenty of exercise; go in strongly for cricket, boating, athletics of all kinds. Get upon your bicycle, or your tricycle.”
The book is useful in documenting in great detail the challenges of developing a Christian approach to sport and recreation. It helps to see where we have come from.