Geneive Claude left a comment asking about Ellen White’s view on sports.

In his book Ellen White’s World, George Knight has a passage about sports in Ellen White’s day.

Starting on page 130, he writes that around the late 1800’s leisure became more of a reality for the common folk. Before that time, most people spent much of their time working. They did not have time for leisure activities.

However, with the inventions of time-saving machines, the common people had less working hours and more time for leisure activities. Two of these leisure activities were watching and participating in sports.

Baseball was the first to become popular. Football became popular as a collegiate sport. It started of as a very brutal sport. In 1905 eighteen Americans died playing college football. President Roosevelt met with college coaches to reduce the brutality.

Individual sports like golf, tennis, archery, croquet, and bicycling became popular too. Gymnasiums were built on campuses and cities as the physical fitness movement began to take root.

However, one of the individual sports, boxing, had a dangerous beginning like football. Boxing matches were fought bare-knuckle and could take up to 75 rounds! A match would not end until a boxer was knocked out unconscious.

So what did Ellen White think about sports in her world?

George Knight writes in pages 135 and 136:

Ellen White had mixed feelings regarding the new recreational environments. She was most against football and boxing, which “have become schools of brutality,” and she discouraged such activities in Adventist schools (Ed 210). Also she opposed emphasizing competition, and thought that Christians in their various activities should focus on cooperation. In addition, she enthusiastically advocated that individuals get daily physical exercise, but cautioned against excesses in gymnastic exercises and investing too much of one’s enthusiasm in team sports (Ed 210). Her highest recommendation for beneficial exercise was “useful employment” in the “open air” (Ed 215, 219), though she did not condemn the “simple exercise of playing ball.” However, she cautioned against overdoing the latter because Christians should have other priorities for their time and money (AH 499).