The Death of Christian Britain

— The Death of Christian Britain —
for boys and young men to restrain their physical energies on Sunday, but
such restraint is highly beneficial for them morally, we believe also physically.’
56 And even when sport was utilised by evangelicals, as in the Boys’
Brigade, there was no complete ditching of the attempt to androgynise
Christian manhood. In the ‘BBs’, the curriculum may be regarded as perceptibly
gendered, with compulsory attendance at the weekday prayer meeting
qualifying the boys to participate in the Saturday football and drilling activities.
57 An act of (feminine) piety was required before admission to the
(masculine) sport.
Much discussion took place in the 1880s and 1890s on how to
Christianise men. Some churchmen felt that men had a specific problem
about believing in miracles, but their approach of allowing Christ to be
viewed as merely ‘a historical figure of the past whose lessons are fitted
for our moral guidance’ was much criticised by others. 58 The essence of
the discourse on male religiosity was to problematise masculinity, and to
divert men away from their ‘natural’ state. Encouraging militaristic and
sporting activities was not a caving-in to this, but was an attempt to contain,
capture, restrain and discipline masculinity. Muscular Christianity was
never unreservedly accepted in evangelical discourse on male piety because
it was too closely associated with the sins of gambling, drinking and rough
culture. Organisers of sport, especially commercial sport, became tarnished
with the same brush as bookmakers and brewers. 59 From the evangelical
standpoint, muscular Christianity was no more than an experiment and not
a fundamental change to a dominant negative discourse on male religiosity.
THE PROBLEMATIC PIETY OF EVEN
HOLY MEN
This negative discourse was so powerful that it was the main theme in
biographies of pious men. Exemplars of holy women abounded in religious
literature between 1800 and 1950. Every woman, from humble cottage or
workhouse to suburban mansion or aristocratic country house, was capable
of being used to represent piety. Holy men, on the other hand, were in
rather short supply. It was the clergyman, especially of the dissenting
denominations, who came to dominate representations of the holy man,
and his piety was represented as a constant problem.
Clergy were prominent, popular and in some cases mobbed by admiring
crowds. Some received huge amounts of mail from admirers. When R.W.
Dale, the Congregationalist minister from Birmingham, left for a six-month
trip overseas in 1887, he notified the public that letters would not be
answered, and his return was the subject of great coverage in the religious
press. 60 Thomas Chalmers recalled to a House of Commons select committee
the popularity he had in his first urban charge in Glasgow in the
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