What is "muscular christianity"

Muscular \Mus"cu*lar\, a. [Cf. F. musculaire. See Muscle.]

1. Of or pertaining to a muscle, or to a system of muscles; consisting of, or constituting, a muscle or muscles; as, muscular fiber.

   Great muscular strength, accompanied by much awkwardness.
   --Macaulay.

2. Performed by, or dependent on, a muscle or the muscles. ``The muscular motion.''
   --Arbuthnot.

3. Well furnished with muscles; having well-developed muscles; brawny; hence, strong; powerful; vigorous; as, a muscular body or arm. Muscular Christian, one who believes in a part of religious duty to maintain a healthful and vigorous physical state. --T. Hughes. Muscular Christianity.

   1. The practice and opinion of those Christians who believe that it is a part of religious duty to maintain a vigorous condition of the body, and who therefore approve of athletic sports and exercises as conductive to good health, good morals, and right feelings in religious matters.
      --T. Hughes.

   2. An active, robust, and cheerful Christian life, as opposed to a meditative and gloomy one.
      --C. Kingsley.

      Muscular excitability (Physiol.), that property in virtue of which a muscle shortens, when it is stimulated; irritability; contractility.

      Muscular sense (Physiol.), muscular sensibility; the sense by which we obtain knowledge of the condition of our muscles and to what extent they are contracted, also of the position of the various parts of our bodies and the resistance offering by external objects.

n. A movement of Victorian origin stressing the need for energetic Christian activism in combination with an ideal of vigorous masculinity.

Muscular Christianity is a Christian commitment to piety and physical health, basing itself on the New Testament, which sanctions the concepts of character and well-being .

The movement came into vogue during the Victorian era and stressed the need for energetic Christian evangelism in combination with an ideal of vigorous masculinity. Historically, it is most associated with the English writers Charles Kingsley and Thomas Hughes, and in Canada with Ralph Connor, though the name was bestowed by others. American President Theodore Roosevelt was raised in a household that practiced Muscular Christianity. Roosevelt, Kingsley, and Hughes promoted physical strength and health as well as an active pursuit of Christian ideals in personal life and politics. Muscular Christianity has continued itself through organizations that combine physical and Christian spiritual development. It is influential within both Catholicism and Protestantism.