Faith, sport and the spiritual roots of Hogwarts

The story of the greatest social reformer you've probably never heard of

It’s the early 1800s, there is no state education and English boarding schools are feral.

Quality teaching is sparse, headteachers are corrupt, discipline is cruel, violence is widespread and students are, not infrequently, rioting on campus. And whilst the stories are rather amusing, I do not mean they are pranksters: it is actual rioting. The violent, revolutionary type of rioting that ends up with mass destruction of property, explosive misuse of gunpowder, setting fire to papers, attacking staff and facing down armed, local militia. English boarding schools were a mess, to say the least.

And whilst many of these schools had their historical origins in the church or monastic traditions, the suggestion that someone might come along and use these institutions as a vehicle for social transformation, particularly with a Christian ethic, would have sounded utterly preposterous.

But that is exactly what happens next.

Into this calamitous state of affairs steps Dr Thomas Arnold: a young, plucky upstart freshly appointed as the new Headmaster of Rugby School in 1828. What follows is one of the great cultural transformations of British history as Dr Arnold, aflame with his sense of Christian duty, reimagines Rugby School’s purpose as a place that will churn out young men of virtue; of healthy mind, body and soul alongside their educational excellence.

Arnold’s chivalric vision not only captures the imagination of Victorian England but will revolutionise schooling the world over.

We all know Thomas Arnold by his fingerprints, whether we went to boarding school or not. You need only reach for the nearest bookshelf to find the boarding school stereotypes immortalised in stories like Harry Potter, Mallory Towers, St Clare’s etc: embedded house systems, school prefects, access to the Headmaster, the pursuit of belonging, lots of physical education, quirky sports galore, regular chapels or assembly, the culture of team spirit and a sense of adventure. These all find their birth or evolution in Thomas Arnold and his vision for Rugby School to sculpt moral and educational fibre in his students rooted in his Christian faith. For Thomas Arnold, school was not merely about filling youngsters with knowledge, it was about the formation of moral character. His primary tactic amongst all of the above perhaps being to convert a cadre of boy revolutionaries with a taste for social anarchy into an order of prefects with a zeal for leading their peers towards a higher purpose.

The impact Thomas Arnold has had on the nation and beyond is, perhaps, hard to overstate. Partly due to the proliferation of storytelling that emerged amongst a series of authors who idolised his methods and became de facto disciples. Chief amongst these teenage school dramas was Tom Brown’s School Days, one of the best selling books of the 19th Century. The author was Thomas Hughes, who had been a pupil at Rugby School and became an advocate for Thomas Arnold’s vision for the moral development of young men: storytelling was his vehicle to preach to a generation. His lead character, Tom Brown, even has a committed nightly prayer routine. But Tom Brown’s School Days, inspired by the Headship of Thomas Arnold, was not weaving in a feeble Christianity. The deliberate marrying of faith, physical activity and athleticism ignited a social movement across the UK that wedded sport to a morally robust life. Hughes did not just use his books to promote his ideas, travelling the UK to preach the gospel and sport, with a particular fondness for visiting Northern towns.

This chivalric vision of an athletic Christianity mesmerised Victorian England. And not just amongst the upper classes; most of the dering do schoolboy adventure material being consumed by young boys who would never go anywhere near a boarding school, let alone attend one; just as today with Harry Potter readers.

A passion for the marriage of sport and faith spread well beyond education, with local churches across the country soon opening up football clubs to do the same. Everton, Aston Villa, Manchester City and Southampton - to name just a few - are just a few of the now thriving football clubs that started off as local church initiatives. England quickly became a nation of playing fields. The hundreds of thousands of community sports clubs that fill up every weekend all across the country today are a direct legacy of Thomas Arnold and his disciples.

Aston Villa sits for a team photo in the grounds of their church

It wasn’t just people in the UK that were captivated by Arnold’s vision; his ideas being transported right across the British Empire. The transcendent, apolitical ‘spirit of sport’ that countries across the world are expected to tap into when they put on their jersey is rooted in Arnold’s sense of the transcendent. Indeed, so enamoured was the founder of the modern Olympics - Baron Pierre de Coubertin - with Thomas Arnold’s moral vision (having been an avid reader of Tom Brown’s School Days) that when he visited Rugby School in the 1880s he held an all night vigil over Thomas Arnold’s grave; Britain’s own Olympic Torch returning to Rugby School in 2012 to pay homage.

So long is Arnold’s shadow that almost every school now has a house system, plays sport with the hope it develops a spirit of collegiate endeavour and chooses a cadre of prefects each year. Indeed, when state schools were set up, the British Board of Education mandated that every British school must have a copy of Tom Brown’s School Days to show an example for the students.

So, next time you see a playing field, hear someone make mention of the spirit of sport or root for your child’s house at school, know you are living under the transformational vision of one of the most influential men of the past two hundred years, a man that most have never heard of.

"As much as any who could be named, Arnold helped to form the standard of manly worth by which Englishmen judge and submit to be judged."

Sir Joshua Fitch (1897), Thomas and Matthew Arnold and their influence on English education