Muscular Christianity is a philosophical movement that originated in England in the mid-19th century, characterized by a belief in patriotic duty, discipline, self-sacrifice, manliness, and the moral and physical beauty of athleticism. You only have to take a seek-peak out your window to see we need a whole lot more Muscular Christianity.
Patriotic duty- is not how the likes of Leo McKinstry would like to claim, that it is our patriotic duty to “ spend, spend, spend”. That is the consumerism of which eradicates all meaning for materialistic possessions. Having the latest Playstation or iPhone doesn't make you patriotic.
Patriotic duty is doing anything and everything you can to uphold the laws and integrity of your nation and its reputation without breaking those laws or damaging said reputation in the process.
If you pay your bills, obey the law, and have your own hobbies and interests that you peruse and you do all of that without disrupting your community (unnecessarily) that's patriotism. A removal of patriotism is an attempt to underpin the nation-state, patriotism is a necessity of any functioning country, it can install meaning where resentment lay, the country is a unifying institution that needs to be upheld.
Discipline- or our lack of it. Our lack of Discipline shows in the number of abortions, failed relationships, breakdown in marriage, school drop-outs, the underpinning of the family unit, house-held debt, the amount of murder and substance abuse, the call for a forever lowering of the age of consent, sexual and domestic abuse. By any and every measure, our rejection of God leads to a lack of discipline, which is the cause of our own destruction. The goal of all parental disciplic is to give kids the ability to self-discipline- in other words, to control their own behavior, thoughts, and emotions for the betterment of themselves and others. This is the effect God has in a believer's life, this is the effect a believer spreads throughout the community and further society. One of discipline and order. From Abraham to Moses up-to Jesus, discipline, self-control, awareness of one's thoughts is central to its teaching. Atheism leads to narcissism in pursuit of whatever makes them happy, void of a transcendent being, void of consequence or repercussions.
Self-sacrifice- found its apex in the story of the life of Jesus Christ. Jesus said “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” & “Love your neighbors as you love yourself”. These are the ideals that gave birth to the mindset of chivalry and people's conviction to lay their life down for what they believed in. To wilfully Marta yourself, to leave the world better than you found it.
Wouldn't you consider carrying a child as more important than a neighbor? Yet our society revivals in the murder of innocence yet to be born, the modern woman wears it with pride, each time she kills a little part of herself as a rejection of God. Its a rejection of responsibility, discipline, and self-sacrifice, all in pursuit of sexual desire and gratification. This is a lack of morality, this is selfishness of the worst kind.
The concepts of Christian Manliness. Was a protestant movement introduced by Charles KINGSLEY in Victorian England. Specifically rooted in Protestantism and characterized by the importance of the male body and physical health, notions of morality, romantic love, theology, and patriotism with Jesus Christ as a leader. What separates Christian manliness and Muscular Christianity is the latter's focus on physical and athletic aspects of masculinity while Christian manliness encompasses moral manliness as well as physical manliness, which leads to the moral and physical beauty of athleticism.
Obesity can be battled with Christian ideals such as philosophies like Muscular Christianity help to guard against, promoting a healthy, fit lifestyle. Even American President Theodore Roosevelt was raised in a household that practiced Muscular Christianity and was a prominent adherent to the movement. Roosevelt, Kingsley, and Hughes promoted physical strength and health as well as an active pursuit of Christian ideals in personal life and politics.
Let us be honest!
Society is in decay- A return to the ideals that built the West is all that can save it from continued decline & fall into decadence. We already tried to have a Christian society without God in the seventeen and eighteen hundreds where they wanted to keep the morals without the belief's, and it evolved into the mess we have today- the removal of absolute truth for the cult of relativism. When absolute truth is abandoned for relativism, society explodes into a fractured mess of conflicting ideologies. Without a common moral structure, there is no bond or trust among people.
If you say there is no God, then you're saying there is no absolute reality, there is no truth, outside of our perception, and if a society believes that, it feels empowered to change society however it chooses. However, if you believe in God as the basis of your society then your society will reflect the values of the God you believe it. In this atheistic society, money & consumerism are Gods.
In which we exchange purpose & meaning for existence as a series of temple experiences.
If you take away the belief of a supernatural transcendent God, then you have no moral authority to underpin the moral system superscribed in the book. And then, it simply becomes a competition of who has the biggest guns and most influence.
Unless you're basing your value system on something transcendent, on someone not temporal, on something above that of human intellect, reason, and desire, then you have no basis to claim the family is the primary unit of society and explains the fall in birthrates in the West, and the breakdown in marriage. This current society has lost sense of itself, of reality, a society without a value for the family doesn't have much of a future. The family is the primary building structure of our society. Liberal narratives are undermining it by – Redefining it- not supporting it in their tax policies- liberalizing divorce instead of strengthening the family unit and more. The reason why the family is important is that the family is the first line of defense for your mental health, wealth-fair support, its the first line of protection of all kinds, it is your first teachers and carers. You do have to wonder what kind of society loses value in their continued survival? Have we become that selfish chasing our wants and desires? Are we that busy consuming?
Without a true understanding of love- family, community, and society fall apart. Scientific development in the enlightenment has its antecedence in Christendom. Christianity has never been anti-science, it has always been pro-science, look to Francis Bacon for example. The problem with the enlightenment is that it separates us from that which gave our society gravitas and became intoxicated in the seventeen hundreds with scientific and technical development for its own sake, and when we went into that exchange we lost the ability to navigate the moral questions that breed a healthy society, or which allow us to breed at all.
It is not a coincidence that those societies that are most advanced in technology; Germany, Uk, Japan, the US, The Westen World are dying, they're dying because of falling birthrates, which is intrinsically linked to the loss of Christian ideals. This post-modern Western world have given up on the family and become intoxicated with a modern genocide we call 'abortion'. We are morally bankrupt. People march for falshoods in the West while Christians and Muslims are being put in concentration camps and their women are being forcibly raped to ethnically cleanse them out of existence. Again, The West is morally bankrupt.
A return to Christian ideals of Love, selflessness, Patriotic duty, discipline, self-sacrifice, manliness can restore some order among the chaos. Bring light into the darkness.
It is a challenge because as Christians we are badly lead, by priests & bishops, we have fallen into a narrative that says that Christianity and politics do not mix, and when we do mix our religion and our politics we tend to borrow from the politic narratives of others. At the moment we have an incoherent political narrative because we are not basing it squarely upon our Christian identity.
The church is silent in times of moral crisis, core beliefs, and tents that have built up our societies and brought harmony are being removed without thought or consequence. This return of Christianity will have to be muscular in nature because we have lost so much ground, feminist and secular groups have been weaponized, Islamists are allowed to run rampant, almost at will it seems and welcomed in with open arms. The lay of the land has changed but Jesus Christ is still the answer and muscular Christianity is a philosophy that can attend to many of society's problems.
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