Lives in Cricket No 46 - George Raikes

66 glories of the world to come.” John Henry Newman was convinced that “Satan is the God of the world” (a statement worthy of an old-time dualist if ever there was one) and spoke of “an imaginative retreat from the world around him.” The enemies of the Christian Man went under a number of names: Tractarians (including the Oxford Movement), Puseyites, Evangelicals, Roman Catholics – all took issue with the viewpoint of Kingsley and Hughes. Given that the dualists were a miserable bunch it is not surprising that they failed to ‘see off’ the Christian manliness which provided the pattern for living for clergymen such as George Raikes. However muscular Christianity did lose considerable respectability when it eventually came under fire from the likes of E.M.Forster who “lampooned games-playing public-school men as victims of well-developed bodies and undeveloped heads.” Was George Raikes a Muscular Christian? (Part one) Given that Raikes was an ordained clergyman, an exceedingly talented sportsman and reached maturity in the 1890s, it would be easy to assume that he could have been defined either as a Christian Man or as a Muscular Christian – the latter probably being more appropriate to someone who spent many of his formative years in the brutal world of the penalty area. However, there is little in the way of hard evidence to back up such an assumption; frustratingly, whilst much detail of Raikes’ sporting life has survived, virtually nothing of the man himself has come down to us, possibly due to the fact that his marriage was without issue. As a result we have little or no idea of his thoughts, his plans or his motives at any stage of his life and must therefore be aware of becoming over-reliant on supposition in telling his tale. What evidence that exists on the essence of Raikes’ Christianity is, annoyingly, contradictory. That he started his career as a Christian as a protégé of Cosmo Lang might suggest he was not likely to be a Muscular Christian for Lang did not follow that movement, being no sportsman and a convinced celibate who kept a very Spartan table. However, Lang appeared to have tolerated this relatively new ‘brand’ of Christianity whilst at Magdalen College and, since he invited at least two graduates with experience of first-class cricket (Raikes and Freddy Leveson-Gower) to join him at Portsea, he clearly had no misgivings about sportsmen training as men of the cloth. Further, he inherited a parish described by his biographer, J.G.Lockhart, as having a “muscular Christianity” and, while he may have moderated its character somewhat, he did not abolish it altogether (note 10) and “the tradition of muscular Christianity was maintained by a clerical cricket Eleven”, which was known to include Raikes. Alas, Lockhart makes no mention of Raikes specifically so that the biography of Lang provides only circumstantial evidence as to Raikes’ particular world view. More solid evidence is found in Raikes’ obituary in the Church Times which refers with tantalising brevity to his “considerable gifts in initiating notable work among boys and young men”, suggesting that he was not unfamiliar with the concept of outreach and the practice of Muscular Christianity. Some evidence against this view might seem to be provided The Curate of Portsea; Was Raikes A Muscular Christian?