Liverpool and Everton and their Catholic and Protestant history | OneFootball

To many football fans, the idea of there being any sort of relationship between the club that they support and the religion that they’re a part of will seem entirely alien. After all, the world is becoming less and less religious in general, so why on earth would people think of which religion they are as being at all relevant to which club they support?

That wasn’t always the case, however, which can be seen in the history of Liverpool and Everton as clubs, bearing a much closer relationship to the sectarianism in place in Glasgow with Celtic and Rangers than many will realise.

The Religious History of Everton

If you want to get a sense of the religious nature of Everton, then you need only look at the fact that the club began life as St Domingo’s Boys Club. That was back in 1878 when the congregation at the Methodist Chapel on Breckfield Road North in Everton formed a football club in order to give the cricketers something to do in the winter months.

In fact, the first ever game that they took part in was against Everton Church Club, offering another religious connection. When people from outside of the congregation wished to play in 1879, the name was changed to Everton.

Even Everton’s departure from Anfield, the ground in which it played its games before the Reds began playing there, has ties to religion. The area where the stadium is now based was owned by John Orrell, who was a minor landowner at the time and a friend of Everton member John Houlding. Orrell charged them a small rent to play on his land, where in excess of 8,000 people turned up to watch them play.

It was bought by Houlding, who was a brewery owner. This was problematic for many involved in Everton on account of the fact that they were teetotal Methodists.

The Formation of Liverpool

By Phil Nash from Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

When Everton departed Anfield, Orrell and Houlding felt that they had no choice but to form a new team that could play its matches on the ground. The fact that Houlding was a member of the Orange Order, which was a fraternal organisation made up of Protestants, was obviously seen as problematic for the Methodist Evertonians.

In addition, he was a Freemason, founding numerous lodges in the city and eventually being appointed to the role of Senior Grand Deacon. There were many other wealthy Protestants who helped him get Liverpool Football Club off the ground too.

Of course, any suggestions that Liverpool were a Protestant football club compared to Everton as a Catholic one don’t really stand up to any sort of scrutiny when you consider that Houlding and other Protestants were a big part of the formation of both clubs.

Yes, Everton came out of the Methodist church known as St Domingo’s, but the simple fact is that religious leaders were a part of the politics of the city at the time and any strict religious doctrine was never really an important part of the foundation of either of the clubs, in spite of the religious links of those involved in their creation.

Any Previous Religious Links Have Long Since Ended

Chowells, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

There was definitely a time when religion was a really important part of Liverpool as a city. The fact that there are two large and imposing cathedrals in the city, standing at either end of Hope Street, is evidence enough of the manner in which the people of the city spent both time and money investing in religions in years gone by. Even so, any such links between the two main football clubs on Merseyside and the religions that dominate the city have long since ended. There is not the same sense of sectarianism involved in football in Liverpool as in a city such as Glasgow, for example.

Although sectarianism was rife when the two clubs were formed, that has abated across the world in the decades since. The two clubs were never religiously exclusive when it came to playing staff and there was no such religious divide in any clear way across the city based on whether you were a Red or a Blue. Evertonians will largely dislike Celtic because of the links between Liverpool and the Glasgow club, including the use of You’ll Never Walk Alone, as well as have a fondness for Rangers because of Duncan Ferguson and Walter Smith, but there are no genuine religious connections between the two clubs.