In the 1970s, historians such as Brian Harrison, Peter Bailey, John Walvin, and Hugh Cunningham studied the history of leisure in nineteenth-century Britain through inquiries into the development of self-improvement institutions, physical recreations, and popular amusements. Much of their work focused on the contest that emerged at midcentury between recreation and Evangelical religion. It was argued that Evangelicalism’s hostility to leisure was gradually worn down through the creation of “respectable” and sober “rational recreational” venues, such as Mechanics Institutes, parks, libraries, art galleries, and museums. Since this time, historians of leisure have not paid much attention to the role of religion, except in its cursory background influences. No scholar has satisfactorily explained the practical or theological ways in which Evangelical churches or associations became more inclusive and accepting of leisure in the nineteenth century. Dominic Erdozain’s book importantly helps to answer this question through his examination of changes produced within the YMCA and the churches and chapels of this period.

Erdozain does not set out to engage directly with historians of leisure or sport or to break new social, cultural, or gendered historiographical ground. His agenda concerns the history of religion, specifically to account for the processes through which secularization occurred within Britain. Taking great issue with Callum Brown’s contention that the secularization of Britain began in the 1960s, Erdozain sees its origins in the mid-1800s when the contestations within Evangelicalism concerning recreations and leisure began to slowly dissipate. The book reads as a cautionary tale, reminding us that “experiential ‘conversionism’” was not only the path to salvation but the “essence of the movement” and responsible for the growth and vibrancy of Evangelicalism in the early nineteenth century (43). Soteriology is at the center of Erdozain’s argument: “the doctrine of salvation that propelled evangelical Christianity into the British consciousness, and its gradual dismantling and dissipation at the hands of its own guardians in the churches and Christian agencies of late-Victorian Britain” (38). Secularization occurred because Evangelicals eventually began to accept that recreations, specifically physical exercise, could provide a connection to the divine: “The thesis is that a practical, this-worldy theology of salvation-by-recreation quietly occluded the classical and explicit soteriology of the ‘parent’ institutions” (38).

Erdozain lays out a compelling and well-structured argument as he charts the trajectory of Evangelicalism’s relationship with pleasure from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. Although his first two chapters rely heavily on secondary material, he effectively outlines the early “evangelical genius” that made Christianity its own recreation. Pleasure was to be found in spiritual communions with the divine through scripture and the conversion experience. This ultimately led many Evangelicals to declare war on all earthly, and thus potentially sinful, pleasure-inducing activities. This extremism induced others, particularly broad church Christian socialists, to push back and call for a more active Christianity. It was out of the Christian socialism of F. D. Maurice, Thomas Hughes, and Charles Kingsley, as Norman Vance has highlighted, that “muscular Christianity” emerged.

The strength of Erdozain’s book is in its latter half, when he delves into his own primary source research highlighting the contestations within Evangelicalism as it began to tackle the “problem of pleasure” at midcentury. Chapter 3 examines the creation of Evangelical associations such as the YMCA and the influences of leading Evangelicals, such as Thomas Binney, R. W. Dale, and Charles Spurgeon, who called for a renegotiation with the world. From this call emerged the idea that physical recreation could perhaps serve spiritual purposes while also serving as a useful tool in turning men away from sinful temptations. Erdozain correctly demonstrates that most Evangelicals did not quickly succumb to the ideals of muscular Christianity. However, he also effectively shows, within such agencies as the YMCA and through the sermons and pamphlets of leading Evangelicals such as Binney, that there was a growing contention that it was perhaps possible to make the best of both worlds.

Chapter 4 examines how this new idea of recreation was applied as the YMCA and other Evangelical associations adopted physical recreational facilities such as gymnasiums during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Sin became increasingly indistinguishable from the specific urban vices of intemperance, gambling, and impurity, and so “salvation was increasingly reduced to methods of avoiding them” (39). Physical recreations that assisted in the avoidance of these vices became the path to salvation and, thus, secularization. Erdozain’s final two chapters document how youth ministries succumbed to this “philosophy of redemption-by-recreation” (39) and the resistance that surfaced against this ecclesiological shift of salvation through supernaturally oriented forms to ethically and culturally defined ones. Erdozain sees it as unfortunate that the voices of dissent, such as that of the Baptist minister Archibald Brown, were not powerful enough to stop the advance of the recreationalists, asserting that “religion is in dangerous territory when its professed ideals can be achieved without recourse to the supernatural” (272).

Erdozain has provided an important contribution to our understanding of the Evangelical adoption of nonreligious agencies and their central place within the secularization process. However, he likely overemphasizes the role played by physical recreations and sports, particularly when the issue of class is considered. Great attention is paid to the debates concerning the introduction of gymnasiums and athletics within British YMCAs, but only passing mention is paid to the introduction or attractiveness of other self-improving agencies, such as libraries, reading rooms, emigration and employment bureaus, and, especially, education classes. These agencies were designed to cater to the specific masculine needs of the young lower-middle-class men who comprised the vast majority of YMCA members and subscribers from its founding in 1844 until the early twentieth century. Debates raged within British YMCAs over the introduction of education classes catering to the development of white-collar skills a couple of decades before gymnasiums were established. They were just as fierce, if not more so, than the debates Erdozain examines concerning the introduction of physical recreations. Without the consideration of the class base of the YMCA or, for that matter, Evangelicalism as a whole, the reader is left with an uncertainty about the breadth and degree of variation of the secularization process. Meanwhile, there is only minor engagement with the work of historians of sports and athletics. The adoption, practice, and culture of athletics and sports varied considerably across the British class spectrum, but this is not accounted for in Erdozain’s narrative. Perhaps more curious, however, is the complete absence of women in this story. For example, the YMCA is examined in great detail, but no mention is made of the YWCA. Erdozain treats the problem of leisure as an entirely male one. One is ultimately left wondering whether the path to salvation was altered in the same manner for Evangelical women as it was for men. These assessments do not, however, invalidate Erdozain’s persuasive secularization-by-occlusion thesis. What they suggest is that the means being adopted for the avoidance of vice also undoubtedly took nonphysical recreational forms and probably differed significantly, depending on an individual or group’s class, gender, and age.