If I had to choose between my wife and my putter... well, I’d miss her.
Primitive Methodist confrontation with popular sports
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Sport, Money, Morality and the Media
Sport, Money, Morality and the Media, Edited Richard Cashman and Michael McKernan, NSW University Press, 1979
One chapter in the book is of particular interest: Primitive Methodist confrontation with popular sports, Scott Kershaw Phillips Pp289- 303
The article opens with a reference to the Maudlin Sunday football match between two East Riding villages and the primitive Methodist objections to it. “Such confrontations with popular sport were commonplace wherever the Primitive Methodists set about making their new life.” Sport and other such activities were condemned as vanities. Primitive Methodists believed sports and sporting venues to be permeated by the maleficent presence of either Satan or evil spirits.
The author suggests that Primitive Methodists were not principally attacking popular sports per se but rather “the infernal spirits which were believed moralistic and evangelical Christian groups such as sixteenth and seventeenth century Puritans, eighteenth century Methodists and nineteenth Century Evangelicals joining the condemnation.
Those who frequented horse-racing, assemblies, and cock-fighting wee assured that none of these would exist in heaven! In fact “sports were sinful entertainments which had no place in heaven”.
One example of how Primitive Methodists sought to counter sporting events was a cricket tournament in 1818 when the Primitive Methodists held a camp meeting nearby. While one crowd enjoyed a game of cricket, “the camp meeting praised God and implored sinners to seek salvation”. The article refers to similar Methodist meetings deliberately arranged to clash with horse-racing.
Conversion to Christ, under the Primitive Methodists, involved turning away from “the God-forsaken old life symbolized by the cock-fighting, the bull-baiting, the boxing match, the wake and the ale-house”.