"Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play…it is war minus the shooting."
Muscular Christianity
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Robert J Higgs
Muscular Christianity, Holy Play, and Spiritual Exercises: Confusion about Christ, Robert J Higgs, in Sports and Religion. Arete 1(1), (Fall 1983): 59-85
The author quotes Don McLaren founder of FCA that the new ministry would see sports as an ally of Christ instead of a foe.
While sport is sometimes said to develop character while others suggest that it only reveals it, Higgs tends towards the latter view, quoting Newsweek 1971:“All the evidence indicates that US sports do not develop Christian morals…in fact they tend to undermine them. Take brotherly love. There is a solid history of racism, discrimination and the development of dual systems in organized American athletics”.
There is a discussion of the link between Muscular Christianity and the military with suggestions that the concept can be traced back to Christian knights of middle ages if not right back to the Emperor Constantine in Roman times. The article also includes a discussion of where play fits in.
One of the article’s conclusions is that “in its passion for visibility and for influence in high places, muscular Christianity in America has lost knowledge of the invisible, that is, the holy. The old idea of quietude has yielded to emotion and incessant yelping about God. The believers in holy play, on the other hand, have also cheapened the idea of the holy by associating it with the cosmic dance without seeking a vision of the one who, like fire, is still and in motion at once. Both have misinterpreted the role of the body in Christianity, the one by witnessing through muscle, the other by implying that play or experience is a route to the holy”.