Muscular Christianity and value-centred sport: The Legacy of Tom Brown in Canadaстатья из журнала
Аннотация: Abstract Tom Brown's Schooldays was always well known in Canada, almost from the first edition. The ideas about sport as education for citizenship and social responsibility it dramatized, often referred to as ‘muscular Christianity’, were widely diffused within Canadian society. This paper argues that muscular Christian values influenced a broad spectrum of Canadian movements for progressive social change, and contributed to the development of many important institutions of youth recreation and socialization, including amateur sport. Whereas muscular Christianity is often associated with right-wing political ideas and fundamentalist Christian churches today, in Canada it was linked through the social gospel to the left. The influence of muscular Christianity is still exerted in Canadian amateur sport, particularly through the turn to ‘values-centred sport’ that followed Ben Johnson's disqualification for steroids from the Seoul Olympics. Notes [1] Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, ‘Tommy Douglas’, available online at http://archives.cbc.ca/IDD-1-73-851/politics_economy/tommy_douglas/, accessed 2006. For a fascinating comparative study of contemporary Canadian public opinion, see Adams, Fire and Ice. [2] Douglas, The Making of a Socialist; Shackleton, Tommy Douglas; Stewart, The Life and Times of Tommy Douglas. [3] My reading of Hughes's social and political ideas is based upon Mack and Armytage, Thomas Hughes; Worth, Thomas Hughes; and Haley, The Healthy Body. [4] Lexington ‘The jock-in-chief’,The Economist, 13 Aug. 2005, 30. [5] E.g. Children's Books Recommended for Public Libraries; Books for Boys and Girls; Smith, Books for Boys and Girls. The inscriptions are taken from the Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books, Toronto Public Library. I am particularly grateful to Leslie McGrath, Head of the Collection, for this information. [6] ‘The Education of the Playground’, 139–41. [7] Prentice, The School Promoters. [8] Roberts, ‘The Influence of the British Upper Class’. [9] Brown, ‘Prevailing Attitudes’. [10] The Globe (Toronto), 9 Aug. 1870. [11] Kidd, ‘H.J.P.W. Good’. [12] McKenzie, ‘Rugby Football in Canada’. [13] Cited by Brown, ‘Prevailing Attitudes’, 62–3. [14] Metcalfe, Canada Learns to Play; Kidd, The Struggle for Canadian Sport; Bouchier, For the Love of the Game. [15] Harney, ‘Homo Ludens and Ethnicity’. [16] Gruneau and Whitson, Hockey Night in Canada, 46. [17] Allen, The Social Passion; Cook, The Regenerators; Valverde, The Age of Light, Soap and Water. [18] Of course, I'm biased. I write as someone who is deeply immersed in this tradition. My parents met a national youth conference, my father a ‘boy's work secretary’ from the Montreal YMCA, my mother a representative of the Student Christian Movement, one of the institutional arms of social gospel. I've spent a lifetime in amateur sport, the last decade in charge of co-curricular sport at Canada's largest university, while deeply involved in the debates about policy and practice. [19] Kidd, The Struggle for Canadian Sport. [20] In fact, during the heyday of Canadian amateur sport during the 1920s, most of the athletic and organizational strength came from these institutions. [21] Kidd, ‘Make the Pros Pay’. [22] Canada, Commission of Inquiry in the Use of Drugs, 317 and 320; MacAloon, ‘Steroids and the State’; Kidd et al., ‘Comparative Analysis of Doping Scandals’. [23] See Blackhurst et al., Values and Ethics in Amateur Sport. Commissioned by Sport Canada in response to the Dubin recommendations, it begins: ‘Canadian sport leaders must assume a collaborative and guiding role in first determining, then promoting, Canadian sport values and moral codes. We are at a turning point. This is a teachable moment’ (viii). [24] Available online at http://www.cces.ca, accessed 2006. [25] Available online at http://www.adrsportred.ca, accessed 2006. [26] ‘Terms of reference of the Mayor's Panel on Community Safety’ in Kidd and Phillips, From Enforcement and Prevention to Civic Engagement. See also Donnelly, ‘Recreation and Youth Development’, Pitter, ‘Midnight Basketball’; and Vanessa Lu, ‘Judge Issues Call to Action’, Toronto Star, 8 Sept. 2005.
Год издания: 2006
Авторы: Bruce Kidd
Издательство: Routledge
Источник: The International Journal of the History of Sport
Ключевые слова: American Constitutional Law and Politics, Doping in Sports
Открытый доступ: closed
Том: 23
Выпуск: 5
Страницы: 701–713