1753 in London there was a proposal for Jewish emancipation. It was furiously opposed by the pamphleteers of the time, who spread the fear that Jewish emancipation meant universal circumcision. Men were urged to protect: "the best of Your property" and guard their threatened foreskins(!). It was an extraordinary outpouring of popular beliefs about sex, fears about masculinity and misconceptions about Jews, but also a striking indication of how central to their sexual identity men considered their foreskins at that time. (R.Darby) These negative attitudes remained well into the 19th century. English explorer Sir Richard Burton observed that "Christendom practically holds circumcision in horror". However, starting in the last half of the 19th century, circumcision became common among Christians in the Western World, especially in the Anglosphere countries. Today many Christian denominations are neutral about ritual male circumcision, not requiring it for religious observance, but neither forbidding it for cultural or other reasons. Today male circumcision is commonly practiced in many predominantly Christian countries and among many Christian communities. The United States and the Philippines are the largest majority Christian countries in the world to extensively practice circumcision. Christian communities in the Anglosphere countries, Oceania, South Korea, the Philippines, the Middle East and Africa have high circumcision rates, while Christian communities in Europe and South America have low circumcision rates. Revival in the English-speaking world Although negative attitudes prevailed for much of the 19th century, this began to change in the latter part of the century, especially in the English-speaking world. This shift can be seen in the account on circumcision in the Encyclopædia Britannica. The ninth edition, published in 1876, discusses the practice as a religious rite among Jews, Muslims, the ancient Egyptians and tribal peoples in various parts of the world. The author of the entry rejected sanitary explanations of the procedure in favour of a religious one: "like other body mutilations ... [it is] of the nature of a representative sacrifice". (R. Darby) However, by 1910 the entry [in the Encyclopædia Britannica] had been turned on its head: "This surgical operation, which is commonly prescribed for purely medical reasons, is also an initiation or religious ceremony among Jews and Muslims". Now it was primarily a medical procedure and only after that a religious ritual. The entry explained that "in recent years the medical profession has been responsible for its considerable extension among other than Jewish children ...