Macho Christianity, As Pointless Now As It Was Then

The more things change, the more they stay, lamentably, the same:

"That characteristic of the school which has been . . . termed "Muscular Christianity," appears liable at every turn to degenerate into most obnoxious qualities -- bluster and dogmatism, and a perpetual talk about manliness, which is as much the reverse of real manliness, as the talk about purity... is the reverse of real purity." Frances Power Cobbe, 1864

Broken Lights: An Inquiry into the Present Condition and Future Prospects of Religious Faith (1864), Quoted in: Larson, Janet L., "Skeptical Women V. Honest Men v. Good Old Boys: Gender Conflict in the High Victorian Religious Wars," in Victorian Religious Discourse, edited by Jude V. Nixon.