Tom Brown's Schooldays and the Development of “Muscular Christianity”

Abstract

The Broad Church movement, of which “muscular Christianity” was one of the most influential expressions, represented a type of liberalism within the Church of England. Benjamin Jowett claimed that the name “Broad Church” was first proposed in his hearing by Arthur Hugh Clough and that it had become a familiar term in circles at Oxford a few years before 1850. In July 1850, A. P. Stanley, writing on the Gorham controversy in the Edinburgh Review, said that the Church of England was “by the very conditions of its being, not High or Low, but Broad.” The term “Broad Church”, however only began to be used generally from October 1853, when an unsigned article by W. J. Conybeare, entitled “Church Parties,” appeared, also in the Edinburgh Review. F. D. Maurice believed that Conybeare invented the name.