¹ Paul, Pope John II, “A n Important Vehicle of Lofty Human Values,” L'Osservatore Romano, May 24, 2000.Google Scholar

² Baker, William J., Playing with God: Religion and Modern Sport (Cambridge, MA, 2007), 24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³ Smith, Robert, A Social History of the Bicycle (New York, 1972), 72.Google Scholar

⁴ Historical writing on the bicycle has paid little attention to the ties between cycling and religious institutions. Herlihy, David, Bicycle: The History (New Haven, 2004)Google Scholar, devotes one sentence to the subject. Smith, Social History of the Bicycle, gives the matter more extensive treatment, although I find it hard to defend his assumption that “effete big-city parishes” took a positive view of cycling while small-town churches opposed it. Smith focuses mostly on large urban areas, and while he does briefly discuss the bicycle's use by evangelists, he does not explore its ties to organizations such as the Salvation Army, nor does he make a connection between the bicycle and the socio-religious welfare of rural communities. Of the general histories of sport and religion in this period, Baker, Playing with God, and Putney, Clifford, Muscular Christianity: Manhood and Sports in Protestant America, 1880–1920 (Cambridge, MA, 2001)Google Scholar, have little to say about cycling, either as an organized sport or as a means of private recreation.

⁵ “Brutality and the Bicycle,” Christian Observer, Dec. 22, 1897.

⁶ “Psychology, Hygiene, and Morality of the Bicycle,” Christian Advocate, Jul. 28, 1898.

⁷ Moore, R. Laurence, Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of Culture (New York, 1994), 99.Google Scholar

⁸ “Elopement with and without Bloomers,” Milwaukee Sentinel, June 10, 1897.

⁹ “Says Bicycling Causes Immorality,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 9, 1895, p. 1. Little research exists on bicycling and prostitution. Amir Esfehani, Moghaddass, “The Appropriation of Cycling as a Foreign Cultural Technique (1860–1941),” Cycle History 13 (2003): 94–102Google Scholar, points out that Chinese prostitutes, thanks to their relatively high income and freedom from social constraints, were among the few people in China in the early twentieth century who rode bicycles. Given the high price of bicycles in the United States in the late nineteenth century, as well as their notorious “sex appeal,” the same may have held true for American prostitutes.

¹⁰ For more on the bicycle and women's sexuality, see Garvey, Ellen Gruber, “Reframing the Bicycle: Advertising Supported Magazines and Scorching Women,” American Quarterly 47 (Mar. 1995): 66–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹¹ Douglas, Ann, The Feminization of American Culture (New York, 1977)Google Scholar; Welter, Barbara, “The Feminization of American Religion, 1800–1860” in Insights and Parallels: Problems and Issues in American Social History, ed. O'Neill, William (Minneapolis, 1973), 305–31.Google Scholar

¹² “Pulpit Flanked by Bicycles,” New York Times, June 17, 1895.

¹³ “Athletics a Handmaid of Religion,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 8, 1894.

¹⁴ Shaw, John Balcom, “A Sermon to Bicyclists,” New York Evangelist, Aug. 13, 1896.Google Scholar

¹⁵ “Bicycle as His Text,” Washington Post, Aug. 3, 1896.

¹⁶ “The ‘Divine Cycle,’” Terre Haute Express, Oct. 18, 1896.

¹⁷ “He Preached to Cyclists,” Kansas City Star, June 13, 1897.

¹⁸ “The Churches To-Morrow,” Fayetteville Observer, Feb. 15, 1896.

¹⁹ “Bicycling His Text,” Morning Oregonian, July 29, 1895.

²⁰ Kelly, Alford, “Seminary vs. Spirituality,” New York Evangelist, Dec. 2, 1897.Google Scholar

²¹ “The Popular Preacher,” New York Times, Aug. 3, 1897.

²² Hansen, Maurice G., “Modernizing Christianity,” Reformed Quarterly Review 3 (July 1895): 351–64.Google Scholar

²³ “Pastor Johnson and His Wheel,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Oct. 29, 1894.

²⁴ “Goes Wheeling with the Angels,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Jan. 11, 1896; “Pastor Who Wouldn't Come Here,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Mar. 16, 1896; “The Rev. Mr. Rondthaler Accepts,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Apr. 17, 1896.

²⁵ “Dr. Abbott on Liberty,” New York Times, Jan. 10, 1898.

²⁶ “The Church and the Wheel,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Apr. 19, 1896.

²⁷ Stall, Sylvanus, “The Clerical Wheelmen's Canadian Tour,” Outing, Sept. 1886, 661–65.Google Scholar In 1892, Stall and fellow Lutheran pastor Luther Kuhlmann of Frederick, Maryland, took a similar tour through Ohio and Indiana. See “Church and Clergy,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 3, 1892.

²⁸ Plumb, J. D., “Pastor Parks' Assistant—A Cycling Story,” Outing, Dec. 1890, 205–08.Google Scholar

²⁹ “Bikes in the Church,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Apr. 16, 1896.

³⁰ “An Invitation to Cycle Riders,” New York Times, June 14, 1896; “Checked Nine Bicycles,” New York Times, June 22, 1896.

³¹ See “Social and Economic Influence of the Bicycle,” Forum, Aug. 1896, 680–90; “Trade and the Bicycle,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Aug. 12, 1896.

³² “Fifield on the ‘Bicycle,’” Chicago Daily Tribune, Sept. 27, 1897.

³³ “Bicycles and the Liquor Trade,” Milwaukee Sentinel, Aug. 8, 1897. The report originated with the Philadelphia Times and may have been, as the Milwaukee editors pointed out, an attempt to flatter the League of American Wheelmen, which held its annual convention in Philadelphia that year.

³⁴ Willard, Frances, A Wheel Within a Wheel: How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle, with Some Reflections by the Way (Chicago, 1895).Google Scholar

³⁵ “Miss Willard Hopeful,” New York Times, Apr. 19, 1896.

³⁶ Collins, E. R., “A Sunday Ride to Coney Island” in Wobble's Tour Around the World on a Bicycle and Other Sketches (New York, 1890).Google Scholar

³⁷ Hall, George F., A Study in Bloomers, or The New Model Woman (Chicago, 1895), 140, 187Google Scholar, 190, 234.

³⁸ Baker, , Playing with God, 76–81.Google Scholar

³⁹ “Christian Endeavor Notes,” New York Evangelist, Sept. 30, 1897.

⁴⁰ “The June Runs of the Young Men's Christian Association Bicycle Club,” Bangor Daily Whig & Courier, June 12, 1893.

⁴¹ “Among the Wheelmen,” Milwaukee Journal, July 1, 1898.

⁴² “In Their Elegant New Home,” Galveston Daily News, June 12, 1897; “Y.M.C.A.'s New Gymnasium,” Galveston Daily News, June 27, 1897.

⁴³ “Will Oppose the L.A.W.,” Rocky Mountain News (Denver), Nov. 29, 1895.

⁴⁴ Putney, , Muscular Christianity, 72.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ “The Cycle Organizations,” New York Times, May 8, 1898.

⁴⁶ “Bicycles in Salvation Army,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 18, 1899.

⁴⁷ “Salvation Army Band,” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 1, 1899.

⁴⁸ “Mounted Salvationists,” New York Times, June 5, 1884.

⁴⁹ Putney, , Muscular Christianity, 91.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ “Mounted Salvationists.”

⁵¹ “Salvation Army on Wheels,” War Cry (American ed.), Sept. 19, 1896.

⁵² War Cry (American ed.), Aug. 1, 1896; Sept. 19, 1896.

⁵³ War Cry (American ed.), Sept. 12, 1896. The men's model was advertised at $49, the ladies' model at $52—fair prices at a time when new bikes typically sold for $75–$100.

⁵⁴ “Commissioner Eva Booth's Khaki Contingent,” Field officer, Aug. 1900.

⁵⁵ War Cry (Canadian ed.), July 3, 1897.

⁵⁶ “Lutherans Honor Rev. Paul M. Young,” New York Times, May 20, 1925.

⁵⁷ “A Bicycle Missionary,” Knoxville Daily Journal, Aug. 2, 1895.

⁵⁸ “A Twin-Captained Ship,” Washington Post, Sept. 1, 1901.

⁵⁹ “South Dakota” and “Home Missions,” The Church at Home and Abroad 14 (1893): 116, 395.

⁶⁰ Forbes, Bruce David, “John Jasper Methvin: Methodist ‘Missionary to the Western Tribes’ (Oklahoma)” in Churchmen and the Western Indians, 1820–1920, ed. Milner, Clyde A. II and O'Neil, Floyd A. (Norman, OK, 1985), 41–73.Google Scholar

⁶¹ “A Bicycle Missionary,” Morning Olympian, Oct. 22, 1891.

⁶² Norcliffe, Glen, The Ride to Modernity: The Bicycle in Canada, 1869–1900 (Toronto, 2001), 220.Google Scholar

⁶³ “For Good Citizenship,” New York Times, Dec. 13, 1897.

⁶⁴ Grahame, Wilder, “The Country Road,” Good Roads, Oct. 1892, 199.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ “Good Roads and Good Morals,” Chautauquan 24 (Dec. 1896): 345–46.

⁶⁶ Ibid.

⁶⁷ Thompson, Maurice, “An Instance of Good Roads,” Independent, Feb. 6, 1896.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Jenks, Jeremiah W., “Road Legislation for the American State,” Publications of the American Economic Association 4 (May 1889): 9–20.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Whittlesey, M. K., “What's the Use?” Good Roads, Dec. 1892, 317–24.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ “Editorial Notes,” Catholic World, Dec. 1892, 442–43.

⁷¹ “Highways and Byeways,” The Presbyterian, July 29, 1896.