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Numerous high-profile sporting stars talk openly about the importance of religion to their careers, including England footballers Marcus Rashford, Raheem Sterling, and Bukayo Saka. World heavyweight boxing champion Tyson Fury credits his Catholic faith with bringing him back from obesity, alcoholism, and cocaine dependency.

Sport and “gods” such as Fury attract a greater devotion from the majority of the population. Parents today are just as eager to make sure their children spend Sunday mornings at the track or on the pitch as they were once to have them attend Sunday school.

How much are our worship of sports and our pilgrimages to stadiums and pitches all over the country responsible for the emptying out of churches and other places of religious faith? Here is the story of these parallel and sometimes conflicting journeys and how they changed modern society.

This description of boxing has the power to stir the blood of an Englishman in the days to come, should the preachers who preached peace at any price, pusillanimity, and parsimoniousness, or puritanic precision, decency, and accuracy, have left any blood for our youth to stir.

Around this time, there were the first signs that religion and sport had begun to reunite. Some churchmen, influenced by both more liberal theologies as well as the nation’s failings in health and society, turned away from condemning “bad sports” and began to promote “good” sports. These included cricket and football. Muscular Christianity Movement called for the recognition of the “whole man or woman” – their body, mind, and spirit.

Wood engraving, ca. 1867. Granger Collection, CC BY

In the 1850s, sports were a major part of the curriculum at Britain’s top private schools. Many future Anglican priests attended these schools, and they would later bring their passion for sports to their parishes. More than a third (of the first team cricketers) of Oxford and Cambridge University from the years 1860-1900 were ordained as priests.

The liberal Anglicans started the Christian sports movement in the UK. Other denominations soon followed (including the YMCA and, a few years later, the YWCA). The Sunday School Chronicle wrote in an 1896 editorial about The Saving of the Body that the “attempt to separate the soul from the body has always been the source of the greatest woes of humanity.”

Jesus, unlike the medieval saints, did not seek to harm the entire man.

We can expect better results when the religions of the gym and the cricket field are recognized and taught.

Most religious clubs were created for the sole purpose of fun and relaxation, usually on a weekend afternoon. A few, however, went on to achieve greater things. Aston Villa was founded by a group of young men who were in a Methodist Bible class and played cricket with each other. They wanted to play a winter match. The Northampton Saints rugby union team was founded six years after the St James Church.

Aston Villa’s FA Cup-winning team from 1895 poses with the trophy. Henry Joseph Whitlock/Wikimedia

Christian missionaries took British sport to Africa and Asia. J.A. Mangan writes in The Games Ethic and Imperialism that “Missionaries brought cricket to the Melanesians… football to Bantu… rowing to Hindus… and athletics to Iranians”. According to David Goldblatt, in The Ball is Round, missionaries were the first footballers not only in Uganda but also in Nigeria, the French Congo, and possibly Africa’s Former Gold Coast.

James Pycroft, The Cricket Field. James Pycroft. Wikimedia

Religious denominations and their followers responded selectively at home to the late Victorian sport boom. They adopted some sports, while rejecting others. Anglicans loved cricket, for instance. One of the earliest books to celebrate it as England’s national game was The Cricket Field by Rev. James Pycroft a D, even priest who said: “The game is cricket, philosophically viewed, is a panegyric of the English character.”

Pycroft did note a darker side to the game at the time due to the high betting rates on cricket matches. He claimed that cricket was still the panacea for social ills in the country, but this claim would be repeated for other sports for the next century-and-a-half.

A national sport like cricket can both humanize our people and bring them together. It instills a love for order, discipline, and fair play to win with pure honor and glory.

Jews were the frontrunners in British boxing, in contrast with nonconformists, who opposed boxing primarily because of the violence, and horse racing was betting-based. They were fans of cycling and football, but they also approved of “healthy” sports. Many Catholics and Anglicans, on the other hand, enjoy horse racing as well as boxing.

As the 19th century came to a close, the growth of women’s sports was a hotly debated topic. In Britain, women were not as opposed to participating in sports by religious groups, unlike in other parts of Europe.

In the 1870s, upper and upper-middle-class women began playing tennis, golf, and croquet. Soon after, the sport was introduced into the curriculum of girls’ private schools. In the 1890s, the more affluent chapels and churches in the country formed tennis clubs. Those with a wider social constituency created clubs for cycling and ice hockey.