released 8/9/2024

In light of this summer’s Olympic Games, we present two sports-related interviews from Volume 57 of the Journal. First, historian Clifford Putney discusses the increased emphasis on physical fitness amongst Protestants at the turn of the nineteenth century. Putney is author of Muscular Christianity: Manhood and Sports in Protestant America, 1880-1920 (published in 2001). He explains that the development of YMCAs in America contributed to the Protestant concern for strong, fit bodies; immigration patterns also contributed to the concern. Before the era of non-Protestant, non-European immigration and before the YMCAs added gymnasiums to their reading rooms, Protestants had antipathy towards “artificial exercise” and professional sports. Putney describes how this antipathy gave way to “muscular Christianity.”

Professor Andrei S. Markovits discusses why soccer is not as popular in America as it is in the rest of the world. Markovits is author of Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism (2001). He compares learning about a sport to learning a language; if people are exposed to either early in life, it will be easier for them to learn it than if they are exposed later in life. Soccer is having a difficult time establishing itself in America because the nation has been exposed to it relatively late in life and its “sport space” is full of other sports. Markovits describes the term “sport space” and also attends to the characteristics of the sports that developed in the late 1800s.

23 minutes

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