The Origins of Modern Sport Pt. 1

The following will be the first in a series of posts (approximately 4) outlining and examining the origins of modern sport in the United States. The series is taken from a longer article that I wrote, which is why it has been broken up into parts.

In 1842, Christopher Lilly and Thomas McCoy punched, pummeled and pulverized one another for over 150 minutes before the bell rang. Had McCoy not fallen over dead, drowning in his own blood, the bell would not have rung and the two most certainly would have continued fighting. The prevailing Victorian mindset that held the nation would have been horrified at such an event. Championing values of self-restraint and pious hard work, Victorian ideology was particularly antithetical to sports. Though Victorian folk aspired to have these values take root in America, other forces countered them.

As the country stood poised to enter a new millennia and profit from the new wealth created by the Industrial Revolution, many Americans saw their fellow man as ill-equipped for the years to come. Many felt that Americans, particularly men, had become sissified and had lost their “manliness.” An especially strong outcry came from various denominations of the American Protestant Church who began preaching a strain of religiosity called “muscular Christianity” around the late 1800’s. The movement was due to a reaction against the churches in the antebellum and Victorian periods that fostered poor health as they viewed exercise as an immoral waste of time. Muscular Christians felt that their church was becoming overly tolerant of effeminacy and physical weakness, especially in light of a growing disproportion of female to male members[1]. Alleged one “muscular Christian,” even the church clergy looked sickly to the point of ineffectiveness:

He [the pastor] is in this condition through neglect of exercise, improper
eating, etc. The saints must have stronger and more enduring bodies than they
have to bear the burdens and heat of the day that soul-winning and earning their
daily bread and butter cast upon their shoulders.[2]

The reaction to the apparent demise of manliness in the church sparked a movement that began to acknowledge and even encourage physical activity as a means to character-building and re-invigorating the church.

Many leaders in American society around the turn of the century adopted the “muscular” ecumenicalism as a means to thwart the enfeebling effects of urban and post-industrial life. Among such converts were the likes of Josiah Strong, G. Stanley Hall and even President Teddy Roosevelt. Each believed that a strenuous religion would prepare men to succeed in the “strenuous life” that was the early 20th century.[3] To be sure, of all the organizations looking to bridge religion with physical activity and ensure preparation for the “strenuous life,” the YMCA had the greatest influence.

The first YMCA to spring up in America was in Boston in 1851. Soon after, other cities followed suit, and by 1860 there were more than 250 YMCAs.[4] Consistent with the ideals of the “strenuous life,” the YMCA espoused and looked to instill values of vigorous action, physical hardness and the rejection of many genteel controls. These values stood diametrically opposed to those of the Victorian age. Central to the YMCAs goals was physical exercise. The idea behind this goal was that strengthening the body physically would enhance its capacity for spiritual and moral good. As the YMCA made gains in popularity, it expanded its services from improvised affairs to organized gyms with exercise machines and other sports equipment.[5]

The YMCA even invented two sports: volleyball and basketball. Basketball, developed in 1891 by the Reverend James Naismith, was an indoor substitute for football. Volleyball, in turn, was a substitute for basketball, which was more physical and harder to play than volleyball.[6] The sports stressed teamwork, hard physical exertion, determination, sacrifice, and sociability; all things associated with “muscular Christianity” and not Victorian America.

As Clifford Putney astutely stresses; “Freeing the body from the prejudices of the past was a significant accomplishment for the YMCA, which had worked since the late 1860s to break down the barrier between religion and sport.”[7] Indeed, the reform movement in American Protestant churches succeeded in making religion compatible with sport, as well as the larger accomplishment of revitalizing many Americans to engage the “strenuous life” that would have engulfed them had the prevailing Victorian ideals persisted.

[1] Donald Mrozek, Sport and American Mentality, 1880-1910, (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1983), 39.
[2] Clifford Putney, Muscular Christianity: Manhood and Sports in Protestant America, 1880-1920, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 54.
[3] Ibid, 57.
[4] Ibid, 65.
[5] Ibid, 67.
[6] Chris Armstrong, “College Sports: Prodigal Son of Muscular Christianity,” Christian History and Biography, http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/newsletter/2003/aug15/html, posted August 15 2003, (Accessed February 22 2008).
[7] Putney, 72.