Jews and Unitarians Reform Faith and Architecture In

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The Pennsylvania State University

The Graduate School

School of Humanities

BUILDING LIBERAL RELIGION:

JEWS AND UNITARIANS REFORM FAITH AND ARCHITECTURE IN

NINETEENTH-CENTURY PHILADELPHIA

A Dissertation in

American Studies

Matthew F. Singer

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

August 2016

The dissertation of Matthew F. Singer was reviewed and approved* by the following:

Simon J. Bronner Distinguished Professor of American Studies and Folklore Dissertation Adviser Chair of Committee

Gregory A. Crawford Interim Director of the School of Humanities

John Haddad Professor of American Studies and Popular Culture

Anne A. Verplanck Associate Professor of American Studies and Heritage Studies

Simon J. Bronner Director, American Studies Doctoral Program

*Signatures are on file in the Graduate School

ABSTRACT

“Building Liberal Religion: Jews and Unitarians Reform Faith and Architecture in

Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia” fuses family, social, intellectual, and religious histories with material culture analysis to document, interpret, and explore the achievements of the ecumenical network that developed between Victorian Philadelphia’s community of

Americanizing and liberalizing Jews and Unitarians. The locus of this network was the relationship that developed between the Reverend William Henry Furness (1802–1896) of the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia and the progressive Rabbi Marcus Jastrow

(1829–1903) of Congregation Rodeph Shalom soon after the rabbi’s arrival in

Philadelphia in 1866. This network expanded and continued for some sixty years among the clerics’ families, congregations, colleagues, and friends. Through his singular talents, vision, and the prolificness, the Reverend’s son Frank Furness (1802–1896) translated the reformist theological, philosophical, social, and aesthetic sensibilities that shaped the ministry of his father and the rabbinate of Marcus Jastrow into ecclesiastical, cultural, educational, commercial, and domestic structures and their furnishings. In doing so, the junior Furness—with the initial support of his father and Rabbi Jastrow and continuing with the patronage of their cohort of reform-minded individuals—created a built landscape in Philadelphia that stood as evidence of strong links connecting religious and social reform with aesthetic change.

By analyzing its most significant structures, I place this “reformed” built landscape in the context of the nationally and internationally emerging ideological,

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theological, aesthetic, and social concepts and concerns that inspired its creation. Many, but alas not all, of the buildings that composed the “reformed” built landscape of late- nineteenth-century Philadelphia still stand. Numerous works of scholarship and literature produced by the Reverend Furness, Rabbi Jastrow, their accomplished children, and others in their circle may be found on library bookshelves. They are with us, but have not been considered as the cohesive expression of a collective reformist and ecumenical spirit. This dissertation seeks both to address this oversight and discuss its relevance to contemporary life in the United States.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures……………………………………………………………………………vii Preface……………………………………………………………………………………..x Purpose and Method……………………………………………………………...xi Theory……………………………………………………………………………xv Overview………………………………………………………………………xxvi Argument and Inspiration………….………………………………………....xxviii Acknowledgements……………………..………………………………...... xxxiii

Chapter 1. FAITH IN FORM: BACKGROUND AND SCHOLARSHIP FOR THE FURNESS AND JASTROW FAMILIES AND THE SHAPING OF LIBERAL FAITH IN PHILADELPHIA………………………………………..1 Sources and Scholarship…………………………………………………………16 Organization……………………………………………………………………...26

Chapter 2. THE DEVELOPMENT OF LIBERAL RELIGION AND ECUMENACULISM IN PHILADELPHIA: FINDING FERTILE GROUND IN PENN’S “GREENE COUNTRIE TOWNE”………………………………...30 Jewish Advocates of Americanization and Modernity: Rebecca Gratz and Isaac Leeser………………………………………………………………………35 Quakers Established, Unitarians and Universalists Emergent…………………...45 Abolitionism in Philadelphia: The Legacy of Quakers and Unitarians………….57

Chapter 3.THE REVEREND WILLIAM HENRY FURNESS: TRANSCENDENTALIST UNITARIAN MINISTER, ABOLITIONIST, AND ARTS ADVOCATE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY PHILADELPHIA...61 Furness, Compelled by Faith to Advocate for Abolitionism…………………….72 Seeing and Seeking the Spiritual in Art and Architecture……………………….76

Chapter 4. CHOSEN WORDS: WILLIAM HENRY FURNESS, MARCUS JASTROW, AND THE LANGUAGE OF RACE, NATION, AND RELIGION………………………………………………………………...82

Chapter 5: BECOMING FRANK FURNESS………………………………………….107 Emerson, Ruskin, and the Development of the “Furnessque”………………….120

Chapter 6. THE MOORISH-GOTHIC-TRANSCENDENTALIST SYNAGOGUE: CONGREGATION RODEPH SHALOM……………………………………...131 Furniture Designed by Frank Furness for Rodeph Shalom…………………….147 Beyond the Synagogue: “Moorish” Forms in Other Furness Commissions……157

Chapter 7. BUILDING LIBERAL RELIGION: FRANK FURNESS’ COMMISSIONS FOR UNITARIANS, JEWS, AND “THE TEMPLE OF THE FINE ARTS” ……………………………………………………………..168

An English, Gothic Parish Church in Philadelphia: The Unitarian Society of Germantown………………………………………………………………169 The “Temple of Art”: The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts…………...175 The Pre-Raphaelite Meeting House: First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia….189 A Moorish Bungalow for Eternal Rest: Mount Sinai Cemetery………………..205

Chapter 8. TO BE ETHICAL, CULTURE, CONTEMPORARY…AND GENTEEL: THE FURNESS-JASTROW CIRCLE AND THE SEARCH FOR SPIRITUAL, SOCIAL, EDUCATIONAL, AND ARTISTIC MEANING……213 Morris Jastrow, Horace Howard Furness, and the “Furness-Mitchell Coterie”……………………………………………………..216 Exemplar and Enigma: Morris Jastrow’s Evolution from Religious Leader to Scholar of Religion…………………………………………………..221 The Ethical Culture Society of Philadelphia……………………………………230 Horace Traubel and The Conservator…………………………………………..238 The Contemporary Club………………………………………………………..243

Chapter 9. CONCLUSION AND EPILOGUE…………………………………………247

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………269

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Congregation Rodeph Shalom, 1868–1871, Frank Furness (period print)...... 2 Figure 2: Frank Furness, ca. 1880 (photograph)…………………………………………..5 Figure 3: Rabbi Marcus Jastrow, ca. 1880 (photograph)………………………………...10 Figure 4: The Reverend William Henry Furness, Sr., 1861, John Sartain after William Henry Furness, Jr. (etching)……………………………………………12 Figure 5: Rebecca Gratz, 1831, Thomas Sully (painting)……………………………….37 Figure 6: Isaac Leeser as a Young Preacher, Solomon N. Carvalo, c. 1840, (painting)..38 Figure 7: First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, 1828, William Strickland (engraving)………………………………………………….41 Figure 8: Congregation Mikveh Israel, 1825, William Strickland………………………41 Figure 9: Joseph Priestley, 1801, Rembrandt Peale (painting)….………………………49 Figure 10: First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, 1813, Robert Mills…………………55 Figure 11: St. Mark’s Basilica, Venice, built 1084–1117 (photograph c. 1895)…….…128 Figure 12: Unitarian Church of All Souls, New York, 1855, Jacob Wrey Mould……..128 Figure 13: National Academy of Design, New York, 1863–1865, Peter Bonnet Wight……………………………………………………………..129 Figure 14: Temple Emanu-El, New York, 1868, Leopold Eidlitz……………………...129 Figure 15: The Church of the Holy Trinity, 1856–1859, John Notman; tower 1868, John Fraser ……………………………………………………………………..133 Figure 16: Congregation Rodeph Shalom (Rodeph Shalom), exterior (period photograph)…………………………………………………………….133 Figure 17: Rodeph Shalom, sanctuary (period photograph)……………………………139 Figure 18: Church of the Holy Trinity, seating plan……………………………………139 Figure 19: Rodeph Shalom, chancel (bimah) (period photograph)……………...... 141 Figure 20: Oranienburgerstrasse Synagogue, Berlin, 1866, Eduard Knoblauch….……145 Figure 21: Oranienburgerstrasse Synagogue, sanctuary………………………………..146 Figure 22: Congregation Rodeph Shalom, Ner Tamid (Eternal Light), 1868–1871, Frank Furness…………………………………………………………………...149 Figure 23: Rodeph Shalom, Frank Furness-designed furniture in chapel of current temple…………………………………………………………………..149 Figure 24: Rodeph Shalom, pulpit, Frank Furness, 1868–1871………………...... 150 Figure 25: Rodeph Shalom, pulpit (detail)……………………………………………..152 Figure 26: Rodeph Shalom, reader’s desk, Frank Furness, 1868–1871………………..153 Figure 27: Congregation Rodeph Shalom, chair, Frank Furness, 1868–1871……….…154 Figure 28: Anthemion, or palmette, designs (illustration from A Handbook of Ornament by Franz Meyer, 1898)……………………………………………...155 Figure 29: Chair for Horace Howard Furness library, Frank Furness, ca. 1870………..157 Figure 30: Horace Howard Furness library, Frank Furness, 1870–1871 (period photograph)…………………………………………………………….159 Figure 31: Desk for Horace Howard Furness, Frank Furness, ca. 1870–1871…………159 Figure 32: Henry Gibson house, library, c. 1880, Frank Furness (1883 photograph)….161

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Figure 33: Restaurant at the Philadelphia Zoological Gardens, 1875–1876, Frank Furness…………………………………………………………………...162 Figure 34: Brazilian Pavilion, Centennial Exhibition, Philadelphia, 1876, Frank Furness…………………………………………………………………...163 Figure 35: Desk and chair for Social Arts Club, Philadelphia, 1878, Frank Furness…………………………………………………………………...165 Figure 36: The Unitarian Society of Germantown, Philadelphia, 1866–1867, Frank Furness…………………………………………………………………...169 Figure 37: Church of Saint James the Less, Philadelphia, 1846–1850, John E. Carver after drawings by George Gordon Place……………………….171 Figure 38: Saint Timothy’s Episcopal Church, Roxborough, Philadelphia, 1862–1863, 1885–1886, Emlen T. Littell………………………………………172 Figure 39: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), 1872–1876, Frank Furness front façade……………………………………………………...176 Figure 40: PAFA, main entrance………………………………….……………………181 Figure 41: PAFA, window on front façade……………………………………………..181 Figure 42: PAFA, central stairway, view from first to second floor…………………...184 Figure 43: PAFA, light-fixture in central stairway……………………………………..185 Figure 44: PAFA, carved stonework in central stairway……………………………….185 Figure 45: PAFA, second floor, view across central stairway with domed ceiling…….186 Figure 46: PAFA, columns with exposed I-beams……………………………………..187 Figure 47: First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia (First Unitarian), 1885–1886, Frank Furness (period rendering)………………………………………………188 Figure 48: First Unitarian, sanctuary…………………………………………………...190 Figure 49: First Unitarian, chancel with Frank Furness-designed Communion table and pulpit……………………………………………………………………………192 Figure 50: First Unitarian, pulpit (period photograph)…………………………………192 Figure 51: First Unitarian, pulpit (detail)………………………………………………193 Figure 52: First Unitarian, cruciform carved-stone support hammered-beam truss……194 Figure 53: First Unitarian, ornamental leaded-glass window, 1886, Frank Furness…...195 Figure 54: First Unitarian, Charity stained-glass window, 1887, Henry Holiday for J. Powell & Sons………………………………………………………………..197 Figure 55: First Unitarian, The Good Shepherd stained-glass window, 1889–1890, Henry Holiday for J. Powell and Sons………………………………………….197 Figure 56: First Unitarian, Christ Blessing the Children stained-glass window, 1901–1902, Henry Holiday Studio……………………………………………..198 Figure 57: First Unitarian, Woman Enthroned stained-glass window, 1906, Henry Holiday Studio…………………………………………………………..199 Figure 58: First Unitarian, Woman Enthroned with Lilies stained-glass window, 1910, Henry Holiday Studio……...... 200 Figure 59: First Unitarian, Kneeling Angel and Cherubim stained-glass window, Tiffany Glass Company………………………………………………………...202

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Figure 60: First Unitarian, Isaiah, 1891, John La Farge (restoration project photos)….203 Figure 61: Mount Sinai Cemetery (Mount Sinai), chapel and mortuary, 1891–1892, Frank Furness……………………………………………………...204 Figure 62: Mount Sinai, main entrance…………………………………………………205 Figure 63: Mount Sinai Cemetery, interior (period photograph)…………….…………205 Figure 64: Mount Sinai, exterior detail…………………………………………………206 Figure 65: Home for Aged and Infirm Israelites, Jewish Hospital, 1888, Frank Furness……...... 209 Figure 66: The Anne and Jerome Fisher Fine Arts Library, University of Pennsylvania, 1888–1891, Frank Furness, exterior view of front entrance…….212 Figure 67: Fisher Fine Arts Library, interior…………………………………………...213 Figure 68: Morris Jastrow (period photograph)……………………...…………………216 Figure 69: Horace Howard Furness (period photograph)………………………….…...217

PREFACE

Spurred by a belief in progress and the perfectibility of society and individuals, an influential cohort of nineteenth-century Americans promoted ideas of “reform” in spheres ranging from religion and social-causes to architecture and design. Taking the lead in

Philadelphia were the Reverend William Henry Furness (1802–1896), a Unitarian minister; progressive Rabbi Marcus Jastrow (1829–1903); and the Reverend’s son, the architect Frank Furness (1839–1912). Reverend Furness and Rabbi Jastrow communicated their ideas to the public using all means available to nineteenth-century clergy: sermons, which were often reprinted for broad dissemination and consideration; contributions to professional and sectarian periodicals as well as the general press; pamphlets meant to edify their congregants and interested others; and books that were the product of years, even lifetimes, of intense investigation and analysis of their faiths.

Through the singular talents and vision of the junior Furness, the divines Furness and Jastrow found a way to convey their ideals in a manner other than the written and printed word. They and a network of colleagues, friends, family, and an extended cohort of the reform-minded created a built landscape in Philadelphia that stood as evidence of strong links connecting religious and social reform with aesthetic change.

Frank Furness received his first major architectural commission from Rabbi

Jastrow and his congregation, then known as the German-Hebrew Congregation Rodef

Shalom (now Congregation Rodeph Shalom), and went on to become the preferred architect for those guiding and supporting the development of the organizational and corresponding physical infrastructure of Philadelphia’s Jewish community. In addition,

Furness designed and built churches for Philadelphia Unitarians, and a broad range of clients ranging from individuals to private businesses to the University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad. The authors of his catalogue raisonné, Frank

Furness: The Complete Works (1996), attribute more than 600 projects to Furness

(Thomas 1996, 145–344).

Purpose and Method

In this dissertation, I explain the drive of the Reverend Furness, Rabbi Jastrow,

Frank Furness, and others to create a “reformed” built landscape—and the resulting products of that drive—in local and national context. I hypothesize that the five dramatis personae at the core of this dissertation—the divines William Henry Furness and Marcus

Jastrow; architect Frank Furness; Shakespearian scholar Horace Howard Furness (son of

William Henry and brother of Frank); and Semitics scholar and comparative-religion pioneer Morris Jastrow (son of Marcus Jastrow)—and those operating in sympathy with them, appealed to the spirit of liberal religion present in Philadelphia since the days of

William Penn’s “holy experiment.” This study documents and analyzes how its subjects responded to broader social movements seeking to reduce divisions on the basis of race, ethnicity, and religion in the New Republic. It posits that the image in American consciousness of Philadelphia as a “liberal” place did not stop with the end of Quaker authority initiated by Penn but, instead, took a distinct turn in the nineteenth century to work for the abolition of slavery and the racism that accompanied and enabled it, and actively denounced and fought against creedal and ethnic prejudice, anti-Semitism in particular.

More complicated, but no less central and important to this study, is the impact on and status achieved in Philadelphia’s broader society—with its established religious affiliations—made by three denominations little-known or non-existent in Philadelphia before 1800. Unitarianism, Reform Judaism, and Ethical Culture emerged or reached full bloom in the nineteenth century.

My approach to this topic may, perhaps, be considered as unorthodox as the faiths at its core. It fuses family, social, intellectual, and religious histories with material-culture analysis. This dissertation reveals, documents, and analyzes three seemingly disparate but mutually reinforcing and, in fact, thoroughly intertwined threads. The first is a century- long narrative centered on two remarkably active and accomplished families infused and guided by, and who themselves shaped, liberal religious thought and practice: the progressive Jewish Jastrows and Transcendentalist Unitarian Furnesses of Philadelphia,

Pennsylvania. These charismatic families and the networks that grew around them were once prominent and influential but are today (with the exception of the architect Frank

Furness) largely forgotten. Second are the social, intellectual, and religious histories that shaped the lives and work of the families’ members and those of their friends and colleagues, and to which they contributed. The final and third thread is the material- culture—architecture and its corresponding decorative arts, along with printed sermons, liturgy, and scholarly publications—produced or commissioned by individual members of the families. Most, but alas not all, of this material culture remains standing in

Philadelphia or can be found on library bookshelves. They are with us, waiting to be examined and appreciated—or not—on the merits that are immediately accessible to the eye and mind. However, they cannot be considered as the cohesive expression of a

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collective reformist and ecumenical spirit by all but a very few specialists, because they have not been examined, documented, and discussed as such.

With “Building Liberal Religion,” I seek to address and correct this oversight.

Unitarian Christian, reforming Jewish, secular-humanist religious texts, and period academic analyses of religion are discussed in the context of—and in conversation with—one another. Ecclesiastical architecture—whether built as actual houses of worship or metaphorical “cathedrals” of art and knowledge—are closely studied, described, and interpreted in largely symbolic terms. I emphasize symbolic reading because the structures, all of which are the work of Frank Furness, employ and experiment with well- established and much-discussed historical architectural styles—Gothic and “Moorish,” primarily—chosen by Furness for what they represented. Gothic architecture, from its

Medieval beginning, was meant to instruct (through the incorporation of narrative stained-glass windows, for example) and evoke through its awe-inspiring soaring shapes and spaces a visceral sense of the heaven-bound uplift and infinite and mysterious power of the divine. Therefore, Furness’s entire oeuvre can be seen as an evolving series of purposeful variations and transformations of well-known “texts” that could, and were intended, to be read. Furness’s buildings and furniture are known for elaborate decoration using a sui generis vocabulary of stylized, nature-based forms and shapes. These, too, were employed with the intended desire to communicate while embellishing and further beautifying.

Those central to this study—including the senior Furness and Jastrow and their children Horace Howard Furness, Annis Lee Furness Wister, and Morris Jastrow, among other members of the families—were prolific writers. It is ironic, and frustrating, that

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they either did not record their observations and interpretations of Frank Furness’s buildings or those thoughts are lost in the scrap heap of history. The contents of Frank

Furness’ offices were discarded soon after his death in 1912. His own relatively extended writing was limited to two essays—“Hints to Designers” (1878) and “A Few Personal

Reminiscences…” (1895; a memorial to Furness’s mentor/employer Richard Moris

Hunt)—that are generally informative but do not discuss in any direct way the whys and wherefores of the choices he made in designing the structures discussed in this dissertation or any other in his vast body of work.

Fortunately, extant in great abundance are thoughts about life, faith, and art by the philosopher-writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Ruskin. Emerson and Ruskin exerted profound and even transformative influences on Frank Furness, his family

(Emerson and William Henry Furness were close, lifelong friends), his patrons, colleagues, and a massive, trans-Atlantic cohort of those who were reform-minded in regard to religion, art, society, or all three and more. Therefore, their thoughts were studied rigorously while preparing this dissertation and are cited within it.

As individuals of former and/or current acclaim, Marcus Jastrow, William Henry

Furness, Frank Furness, Horace Howard Furness, Morris Jastrow, and others discussed at length in this dissertation, are the subjects of publications—monographs in some cases, essays and papers in others. They are discussed and their words and works are cited and quoted in surveys of the movements and streams of artistic and intellectual thought they represented—from Unitarianism, liberal Judaism, and Ethical Culture to the Aesthetic

Movement, Gothic Revival, Arts and Crafts Movement, and other proto-modern developments in architecture (Frank Furness), Shakespearian scholarship (Horace

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Howard Furness), and the academic study of Semitics, Biblical Criticism, and

Comparative Religion (Marcus Jastrow).

With the exception of the late historian Benny Kraut (1947–2008), no scholar has devoted extensive study to the connections among Unitarianism, reforming Judaism, and

Ethical Culture that were vibrant, close, and held a significant presence in public consciousness in nineteenth century America. Kraut, however, did not examine developments in Philadelphia. Nor did he venture into the sphere of material-culture analysis, which is so important to fully gauging the progress and impact of religious reform and evolution in Philadelphia both at the time and now in terms of the built environment created by the Furness-Jastrow network and the organizations and movements they represent. Although secondary sources addressing various aspects of this dissertation’s topic are available and their insights and documentation have been invaluable to my undertaking, the coming together of Philadelphia’s Unitarian and liberalizing, Americanizing Jewish communities and products and effects of this commixture remain undocumented, unexplored, and unknown.

Theory

This dissertation seeks to document, interpret, and contextualize an episode of marked religious, artistic, and intellectual change and advancement that was considered notable in its own time, has left a strong physical and organizational imprint on the city of Philadelphia, had an impact on broader American society, but has largely been forgotten. The core of this study begins in 1825 with the arrival in Philadelphia of the

Reverend William Henry Furness and concludes in the years leading to World War I. In

its broadest scope, however, the history told here began with William Penn’s “Charter of

Privileges” for the “Province of Pennsylvania and territories thereunto belonging,” issued in 1701, and continues to the present day (as of July 2016). Thus, the temporal nexus of this dissertation spans a century of human activity, thought, relationships, and creativity.

In its broadest conception, this study examines three centuries of multivalent developments. I emphasize the breadth and diversity of this dissertation’s foci to lay groundwork for stating that, as with the methods and approaches I employed in exploring, analyzing, and conveying my findings, the theories in which this study is rooted, engages , and builds upon are equally wide in range. They encompass everything

I have learned in the overlapping spheres of American material culture representation, intellectual history, and religious culture both formally through graduate and doctoral coursework and informally while pursuing my interests.

Having stated this caveat and context, I will narrow the theoretical wellsprings and points of reference that are most germane to “Building Liberal Religion: Jews and

Unitarians Reform Faith and Architecture in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia.” As noted previously, Benny Kraut is the only scholar to date who studied relations between

Unitarians and Jews—Reform Jews, specifically—in nineteenth-century America and the closely related emergence of the Ethical Culture movement. In various essays contributed to volumes edited by others (see Endelman 1987, 272–308, and Sarna 1998, 15–60, for example) and his study From Reform Judaism to Ethical Culture: The Religious

Evolution of Felix Adler (1979), Kraut refers to the late nineteenth-century

“rapprochement” between Reform Jews and Unitarians. In my view, and as attested to and expanded upon in this dissertation, the rapprochement identified and documented by

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Kraut operates as both a statement of historical fact and a theory. It is the latter, I believe and demonstrate here, for it is open to testing, further development, and new, unforeseen applications. I will quote Kraut in his own words to register the particulars of his theory of Reform Jewish and Unitarian rapprochement:

A variety of intellectual and socio-religious forces fostered this rapprochement between Reform Judaism and Unitarianism in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Each represented the major liberal institutional expression of its respective faith. Both were by-products of Enlightenment ideology in nineteenth-century garb, and both sought to articulate their tenets in full consonance with reason, progress, and modern scholarship in science, Bible criticism, and comparative religion. Reform rabbis and Unitarian ministers affirmed with equal vigor their commitment to religious universalism and preached with equal fervor the imminent arrival of the “Religion of Humanity,” characterized by the “Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man.” (Kraut in Endelman, 1987, 286)

In the context of this dissertation, and considering Kraut’s rapprochement as a theory to be tested, I emphasize here that Kraut places the rapprochement in the “last decades of the nineteenth century” and describes the ministers and rabbis involved in the rapprochement as preaching “the imminent arrival of the ‘Religion of Humanity.’” While owing greatly to the precedent of Kraut’s scholarship and, in general, affirming and adding to the proof for his theory, this dissertation tweaks Kraut’s thoughts by tracing the beginning of its particular story of rapprochement to a significantly earlier date in the nineteenth century (ca. 1825–1830). It, as well, finds that the clergy at the center of

Philadelphia’s liberal, ecumenical rapprochement were committed to nurturing a religiously pluralistic society rather than fostering a universal “Religion of Humanity.”

The “unforeseen application” of Kraut’s theory that I referred to above is its integration with material-culture analysis. This dissertation’s primary means of examining Philadelphia’s rapprochement is close-study and interpretation of the

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architecture produced through the coming together of Unitarians and Americanizing

Jews. This study is, above all else, an exercise in delineating the evolution and parsing the meanings of religious, social, and intellectual developments in a particular time and place by examining a particular form of material culture that it produced. Scholarship devoted to and theory developed for material-culture analysis is vast. In the context of the specific material-culture examined in “Building Liberal Religion,” and the documentary and interpretive of the dissertation, I find the perspectives shared by Jules David Prown in Art as Evidence: Writings on Art and Material Culture (2001) especially helpful, pertinent, and thought-provoking. The following statement by Prown, which presents both an hypothesis and a means for its testing, is central to my own evaluation of what this dissertation achieves through material-culture analysis:

If the thesis that a society in a particular time or place deposits a cultural stylistic fingerprint, as it were, on what it produces is correct, two conclusions follow by which the thesis can be tested. First, we would expect to find shared stylistic elements in the objects—furniture, silver, architecture—produced in the same place at the same time. Second, we would expect to find a change in style concurrent with a change in values. (Prown 2001, 56)

“Building Liberal Religion” is concerned with the “cultural stylistic fingerprint” left by a society—or a segment of society—on a particular time and place: nineteenth-century

Philadelphia. And, like Prown, it seeks to find whether and how that fingerprint in the built landscape was indisputably new, corresponded to a change in values, and was cohesive across objects.

It is noteworthy that, while Prown is firmly situated within the long-established discipline of art history, he suggests that scholars go beyond examination of particular images or artifacts as highly valuated. That is, Prown urges his fellow art historians to

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sometimes put aside the connoisseur’s orientation toward establishing a hierarchy of quality in the work of a given artist, style, etc., and join in American Studies’s non- hierarchical concern for identifying and analyzing patterns across images or artifacts.

Prown writes:

A “degree-of-sophistication” scale, ranging from rude vernacular at one end to high style at the other, comes into play. The calibrations on this scale have obvious implications of social class. High style objects, sometimes of precious materials and fabricated with technical skill that elicits admiration, tend to be preserved; ruder objects…tend to be to be discarded as junk…. Even allowing for the distortions of survival, it remains true that objects can make accessible aspects, especially nonelite aspects, of a culture that are not always present or detectable in other modes of cultural expression. (74)

Particularly helpful in analyzing the material culture at the center of this study, which was considered high style in its day and, thus, should have—but often was not— preserved, is Prown’s insight, “Objects with iconic or associational value are preserved, but when they lose their associations (religious paintings in a secular society, photographs of unknown ancestors), they become disposable” (74). Frank Furness’s work lost its “associational value” over the years as the philosophies that inspired it faded from public consciousness. Most crucially, the Emersonian and Ruskinian thought that

Furness’s work embodied was replaced by the “less is more” dictum that is central to modernism. The result: Furness’s work fell deeply out of fashion and, thus, susceptible to being destroyed, discarded, and replaced. I posit that it is not strictly coincidental that the reevaluation and renewed appreciation of Furness’s oeuvre coincided with the emergence of postmodernism and a concomitant embrace of evocative, symbolic, and even overtly meaning-laden decoration and embellishment (think of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott

Brown’s “supergraphics”).

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“Building Liberal Religion” uses the approach proposed by Prown. It identifies patterns, visual and cultural, in furnishing, architecture, and decoration and correlates these patterns with theology and philosophy espoused by makers and followers. In doing so, it maps a societal environment with distinctive values and outlook.

The new style examined here—the architecture and decorative arts of Frank

Furness—emerged at the same time as changes in religious culture, in particular the ascendancy of “liberal religion” and conscious efforts among the liberally religious of at least two faiths to interact. Given this dissertation’s emphasis on liberal religion, it seems essential to provide a working definition for the term. The following reflects statements of the key characteristics of liberal religion provided by Gary Dorrien in his three-volume

The Making of Liberal Religion (Dorrien 2001, xix–xx). Liberal religion is:

1. Non-fundamentalist, meaning that it regards scripture as the work of humans

grappling with the ineffable Divine, meant to be understood as metaphor

rather than Holy Writ to be interpreted literally

2. Concerned with individual and communal life in this world rather than the

promise of an afterlife

3. Open to diverse interpretations of God—ranging from a personal God who

intercedes in human affairs to an inchoate life-force that permeates the

universe—and even questioning or rejecting the existence of God or

withholding opinion on the topic due to lack of empirical evidence

4. Lacking in ritual or views it as metaphor

5. Marked by an ecumenical spirit arguing that all of America’s major religions

are, ultimately, devoted to promoting personal ethics and global peace

6. Concerned with social justice

Dorrien’s concerns are those of a theologian, and the above list of the characteristics of liberal religion reflects that. In Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality

(2012), Leigh Eric Schmidt provides a definition for liberal religion that focuses on how it manifests itself in the individual and society in nineteenth-century America. He states that the “rudiments for spiritually inclined progressives” included:

 Individual aspiration after mystical experience or religious feeling;  The valuing of silence, solitude, and serene meditation;  The immanence of the transcendent—in each person and in nature;  The cosmopolitan appreciation of religious variety as well as unity in diversity;  Ethical earnestness in pursuit of justice-producing reforms or “social salvation”;  An emphasis on creative self-expression and adventuresome seeking. (Schmidt 2012, 12) The theological aspects of liberal religion that I drew from Dorrien’s study were and are shared by Unitarianism, Reform Judaism, and Ethical Culture, albeit with differences in degree and the particulars of expression and changes over time. They are the theological underpinnings of the religious developments discussed in this dissertation. Given that this is primarily a study of religious culture rather than theology per se, Schmidt’s definition provides the theoretical framework for viewing and understanding the events and objects I discuss.

Another important contribution made by Schmidt is an inclusiveness in approach and perspective that extends beyond ecumenicalism. His understanding of the “excitedly

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eclectic, mystically yearning, perennially cosmopolitan” cohort of the nineteenth- century America’s liberally religious extends to:

Transcendentalists, romantic Unitarians, Reform Jews, progressive Quakers, devout disciples of Emerson and Whitman, Spiritualists, questing psychologists, New Thought optimists, Vedantists, and Theosophists, among sundry other wayfarers. (6–7)

Unitarians and Reforms Jews are central to this dissertation, as are Transcendentalism,

Emerson, Whitman, and even “questing psychologists” (with Rabbi Jastrow’s son

Joseph representing the last category). It is important to note that, with statements such as this, Schmidt departs from other histories of liberal religion, which have focused on single religions (Protestantism, Judaism, etc.) or denominations within these larger religious groups (Unitarians, Reform Jews, etc.).

Schmidt speaks of the Society of Friends—those by and for whom the “Holy

Experiment” of Pennsylvania was launched—as “a mystical leaven rather than a tiny denominational organization” (245). Most crucially to the full historical and theoretical arc of this dissertation, Schmidt is emphatic in making the connection between the

Quaker and Transcendentalist past and today’s increasingly prevalent self-identification among millennials: “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR). He describes the SBNR label and those it represents as “the latest condensation of a post-Protestant sensibility that had initially taken shape among a particular set of nineteenth-century religious dissidents—

Transcendentalists, radical Unitarians, Whitmanites, progressive-minded Quakers, and their sundry allies” (xv).

Schmidt continues by stating,

The spiritual-but-not-religious pilgrims of today, just as much as Whitman’s nineteenth-century samplers, warrant fair-minded and focused engagement. No less than their foils on the religious right, they merit

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ethnographic familiarity and historical cognizance—as well as the the kind of critical understanding that comes from careful and sustained study. (xvii)

Indeed. Schmidt issues a rallying cry, one to which “Building Liberal Religion” is something of a response—albeit in reverse, looking at the status of contemporary religiosity in its epilogue while placing the bulk of its focus on a previously unexplored but revelatory extended moment and expansive milieu shared by nineteenth-century

“Whitman samplers.” Why this reversal? Since Restless Souls was first published in

2005, the emergence of the SBNRs has been much studied in terms of the quantifiable data collected, analyzed, and issued by the Pew Research Center for Religion and

Society. It has, as well, been much discussed by alarmists on the right who see in it further evidence of the decline of American morality and approvingly on the left by those who welcome a more secular American society or who believe that the rise of the SBNRs represents a more autonomous and authentic manifestation of religious feeling.

Schmidt is correct in noting that the Transcendentalists, Whitman, and other exemplars of and catalysts for nineteenth-century liberalism have been studied extensively. However, with the exception of Joseph Siry’s Unity Temple: Frank Lloyd

Wright and Architecture for Liberal Religion (1996), the rise of emergence and prominence of liberal religion in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century America has not been analyzed through its material culture. Moreover, despite its centrality—through the Quaker “Holy Experiment”—to religious tolerance and freedom of religious expression, Pennsylvania has not been the focus of studies of the development of

American religious liberalism; Massachusetts has. Similarly, while Philadelphia has been a leading center of Jewish American religious, educational, organizational, and cultural

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life since the Colonial era—and contributed greatly to the liberal streams of American

Judaism—New York and Cincinnati have, overwhelmingly, been the central subjects in the study of liberal Judaism in America (with the latter being home to the first campus established by Hebrew Union College—America’s Reform Jewish seminary—and other organizational components of the Reform movement).

Correspondingly—and remembering Prown’s thesis that cohesive changes in style correspond to cohesive changes in values—thee has been underestimation and lack of recognition of Philadelphia’s contribution to, and Frank Furness’s leading role in, the development of what has variously been called Modern Gothic, Reform, Aesthetic,

Eastlake, and Arts and Crafts architecture and decorative arts. This style—now often lumped together and dismissed as “Victorian Eclecticism”—spread across the country, but much of its foundational American roots are in Philadelphia, where it dominated the city’s streetscape during the late-nineteenth century and resulted in the enormous number of commissions (more than 600) received by Furness. As this dissertation will document, the ascendancy and popularity of this style was an organic development in Philadelphia spawned, spurred, nurtured, and maintained by an extended network of cultivated, culturally aware, academically inclined, and progressive yet genteel (that is, not radical) reformers. So, too, was the case with the development of liberal religion in Philadelphia, which was given shape and shelter by the architecture discussed in this dissertation. This encourages further concentration on Philadelphia by scholars across disciplines ranging from American Studies, art and architectural history, to religious, cultural, and intellectual history and beyond.

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The process by which a style (which I will, for the sake of simplicity, refer to as

Modern Gothic going forward) which, while emerging first in New York, was very soon adopted—and, arguably, reached its zenith—in Philadelphia and then spread nationwide, affirms Lewis Mumford's critique of Frederick Jackson Turner’s enormously influential

“frontier thesis.” As first explicated by Turner in 1893, the frontier thesis posited that ceaseless expansion westward over the course of four centuries forged all that was distinctive about American character and culture. Disagreeing at least in part, Mumford argued that American cultural development should be related to the new rising forms coming out of the cities, especially those in the Northeast. Mumford writes, “[T]he growth of eclecticism…had by the middle of the nineteenth century given the American city the aspect of a museum and the American countryside a touch of the picture-book”

(Mumford 1924, 90). His reference to the “city as museum” is an engaging one when considering Furness’s design for the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Mumford goes on to note that “Poe described the mansion of a not altogether imaginary Arnheim as semi-Gothic, semi-Saracenic” (ibid) conjures Furness’s design for Rodeph Shalom and other buildings in the 1870s (and the chapel of Mount Sinai Cemetery in the 1890s) and underscores that the merging of these styles was normative. So, too, does Mumford’s hypothetical question “Who can doubt that the design for a Byzantine cottage, shown in

The American Cottage Builder (1854), was somewhere carried out?” (ibid). Beyond stylistic concerns, what is key in Mumford’s exegesis is that, in the years of the Industrial

Revolution’s growth in the United States, the “Romantic” yet “Scientific” and Europe- evoking Modern Gothic style took hold first in the America’s large Northeastern cities and then spread to the South and West. Speaking to the frontier thesis, Mumford states

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authoritatively, “Nettled by the criticism that America was not Europe, the pioneer determined to bring Europe to his doors” (ibid).

Building Liberal Religion reveals the “cultural stylistic fingerprint” that faithfully reform-minded Philadelphians left on their city. This fingerprint is composed in part of buildings that remain standing and in use, but their conceptual and philosophical origins are largely unknown and those who built them mostly forgotten. The fingerprint of liberal religion in Philadelphia has been hiding in plain sight. With theory and example provided by Jules Prown, Leigh Eric Schmidt, Joseph M. Siry, and canonical Americanists such as

T. J. Jackson Lears (The Machine in the Garden, 1983) among others, this work is written with hope that Philadelphia’s landscape of reform will be seen clearly, for all that it is, was, and will be.

Overview

The founding of the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia in 1796 brought to the city a liberal, “scientific,” and universalist form of Christianity with deep European roots that developed its American form in Boston and environs. In the 1830s, Philadelphia’s

Jews began concerted efforts to “Americanize” their prayer-services and related activities, including the introduction of sermons; referring to a congregation’s spiritual leader as “minister” and having him function in the synagogue and the community beyond as a Protestant clergyman did in his church and town; and establishing Sunday schools for the religious education of children. By the 1850s, large segments of the

Jewish community—then expanding rapidly with the arrival of Central European Jews fleeing the reactionary aftermath and deprivations of the failed democratic revolutions of

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1848—were advocating for the more dramatic changes in ritual and observance associated with “Reform Judaism” as it was developing in Germany. These innovations included streamlined services delivered primarily in “the vernacular” (first German, later English); instrumental music, particularly the deep, hymn-guiding tones of the organ; professional choirs; mixed-gender seating; abandonment of ritual in Jewish practice at home and in the synagogue; and the embrace of reason, intellectualism, and orientation toward active engagement in societal uplift that mirrored key characteristics of contemporary Unitarianism.

The Society for Ethical Culture was founded in 1877 in New York as a non- creedal, non-theistic religion (that is, whether one believed in God was immaterial to participation in Ethical Culture) that drew its leadership and membership from the most radically progressive-minded cohorts of the Unitarian and Reform Jewish communities and sought to synthesize and distill Judaism and Christianity as most liberally interpreted into one rational, socially conscious, universally applicable and compelling essence. The

Philadelphia Society for Ethical Culture was established in 1885, the third fellowship formed by the movement, preceded only by associations in New York and Chicago.

Viewed in the context of their times and places, Unitarianism, Reform Judaism, and Ethical Culture may be seen, with all accuracy, as natural evolutions in post-

Enlightenment religion. Their statuses as breakaway denominations in long established faiths, or a newly established creed in the case of Ethical Culture, are unremarkable in the

United States, with its absence of a designated “state” religion accompanied by orientations toward individualism, pluralism, emphasis on public expression of religious devotion, and varying but ultimately relatively tolerant attitudes toward the organization

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and propagation of new faiths. Taking a longer and broader view, the efforts of

Unitarians, Americanizing and reform-minded Jews, and Ethical Culturalists created schisms within Christianity and Judaism (Ethical Culture was, itself, one such schism) while establishing precedents for what would become normative, “mainstream”

Judeo-Christian organized religion in the twentieth century. In addition, they laid the groundwork for the non-religious secularism and humanism—of both the avowed and casual varieties—and “spiritual but not religious” attitude ascendant and oft-discussed in those coming of age in the twenty-first century.

The final third of the nineteenth century and early decades of the twentieth—the tumultuous, searching decades following the Civil War—were coined “The Age of

Reform” by Richard Hofstadter in his book of the same name (1960). As Mark Twain, perhaps the epoch’s greatest master of the powerful and pithy aphorism, wrote in his notebook in 1904, “Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).” Less well-known, but identified and studied by the aforementioned scholar Benny Kraut, is the rapprochement between Reform Jews and

Unitarians that Kraut placed in the final third of the nineteenth century.

Argument and Inspiration

The title of this dissertation is “Building Liberal Religion: Jews and Unitarians

Reform Faith and Architecture in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia.” It is so titled because I found that, rather than being followers of ideologically driven national trends,

Philadelphia’s reformers created, almost by happenstance, a movement distinct to the city. It began felicitously in an informal context of friendship, collegiality, and the

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goodwill of what we now call multiculturalism fostered by the Reverend Furness immediately upon his arrival in the city in 1825. Furness’ beneficent presence began to shape the city’s sensibilities and brought together its Jews and Unitarians decades prior to the era of reform and liberal ecumenical rapprochement associated with the final third of the nineteenth century. It persisted into the early-twentieth century in ongoing, close, and productive relationships between the Jastrow and Furness families, their respective congregations and the individuals that composed them, and what evolved into a broad, diverse, and multi-faceted liberal community that transformed the city’s social, religious, artistic, and political spheres.

Through the milieu created by his parents, Frank Furness emerged into young adulthood as an individual deeply immersed in and informed by the era’s most forward- looking thought in religion, philosophy, and aesthetics. He became an architect of protean creativity, productivity, and highly distinctive and richly symbolic design sense. Thanks to him, religious reform in Philadelphia was made material in robust, attention-grabbing structures laden with meaning and meant to stand the test of time. The contributions and achievements of the Furness and Jastrow families and the community of nineteenth- century Philadelphia reformers that coalesced around them echo to this day, and many of the architectural manifestations of their efforts remain in clear view (although many— including Furness’s design for Rodeph Shalom—are now gone, reflecting an extended period of being viewed as anachronistic and unfashionable and therefore susceptible to demolition by intent or neglect). Despite the presence in today’s Philadelphia of both

Furness’s emphatically powerful architectural work and the long-lived organizations that commissioned Furness to create their expressive homes, few in Philadelphia and fewer

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still outside the region know when, where, and why the bells first tolled and cornerstones were laid.

I wrote this dissertation because I heard the echoes of the tolling bells and saw what stands upon those cornerstones. Being history-minded, I searched and researched to find their origins. This process began as a personal rather than academic endeavor. I was born and raised in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania—a two-hour drive from Philadelphia— where I was brought up as a fourth-generation member of a progressive-leaning

Conservative Jewish temple. As an adult living and proceeding through “a career in the arts” in Philadelphia, I joined Congregation Rodeph Shalom after much investigation driven by the question of whether to affiliate with an organized religious body and, if so, which one and of what kind.

Rodeph Shalom is my spiritual home, but through my explorations I developed and maintain an intellectual respect for and curiosity about Unitarianism and Ethical

Culture. On Sundays I sometimes attend services at the Unitarian Church or platforms at the Ethical Society. Five sentences in one book pulled together the diversity of my religious as well as artistic explorations and interests. The following passage is found on page 81 of Michael J. Lewis’s Frank Furness: Architecture and the Violent Mind (2001):

The synagogue [Furness’s Rodeph Shalom] was consecrated to great public excitement on September 7, 1870. With it a cordial friendship was cemented between [Rabbi Marcus] Jastrow and the Furness family, especially Horace [Howard Furness]. Moreover, Reverend Furness proposed that a joint Thanksgiving service be offered by the two spiritual communities as an annual event. Thus was an axis drawn between the liberal Judaism of Jastrow’s Berlin and the abolitionist and Unitarian sentiment of Furness’s native Boston. Upon this unlikely axis [Frank] Furness began to build his career. (Lewis 2001, 81)

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On the same axis I built this dissertation. But its import to me is not limited to something of a unifying resolution for my seemingly disparate interests in Reform

Judaism, Unitarianism, Ethical Culture, and the Arts and Crafts Movement and its precedents—including the oeuvre of Frank Furness. All of the aforementioned represent and were products of liberalism. Such liberalism was normative in mainstream

Protestantism and Judaism in nineteenth- and early- to mid-twentieth-century America.

However, the emergence and activities of the vociferous Moral Majority in the

1980s presented—and effectively established in the public mind— “religion” as inherently illiberal and fundamentalist. I am distinctly aware that, in the relatively well- educated and cosmopolitan milieu in which I live and work, and others like it, religion is regarded as a dangerously anti-intellectual, intolerant, and retrograde anachronism.

I know through personal experience and investigation, however, that there are many people involved with a broad range of faith traditions for whom religion fosters a sense of community and presents the imperative to simply “do the right thing” as defined by the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” I admit to feeling frustrated when I see discussion of religion in the mass-media and other public venues limited to the pronouncements of dogmatic fundamentalists and equally doctrinaire atheists. It seems that religious liberals are neither given a voice nor are they—we—making an effort to speak. As a participant in social media, it is my observation that religion is either missing from the mass exchange or reduced to the fundamentalist versus atheist dichotomy described above.

I know that “liberal religion” was not always an oxymoron, that it has an identified and substantive history that is at least two-centuries old. Through my research,

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I know that liberal religion was a growing concern in the nineteenth century, one of great public interest, and one embraced by many of the era’s leaders. Finally, through observation, lived experience, and data accumulated, studied, and disseminated primarily by the Pew Research Center on religion and public life, I know that many millions of people subscribe to it, albeit mostly in a way so mild, moderate, and little-considered that its presence is negligible in the public consciousness.

Therefore, it is my hope that this dissertation not only brings to light a forgotten chapter in American religious and cultural history, but serves as a reminder that, not long ago, religion served as a prod for intellectual investigation, artistic creativity, personal growth, respect for diversity, societal improvement, and the breaking of boundaries based on race, ethnicity, class, and creed. What I just listed are prime attributes of a healthy democratic society. These attributes are as valid and desirable today as they ever were, and remain far from fully realized. If you care to read about a model for nurturing a healthy society through liberal religion, one developed, long active, and highly visible in nineteenth-century Philadelphia, read on.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

“How good it is, and how pleasant, when we dwell together in unity.” Psalm 135

The subject of this dissertation is two very different groups of people who came together in the City of Brotherly Love and resolved to live together in harmony and help others do the same. What follows is the result of my own dwelling in wildly varying groups over the course of my life and what I have learned from those experiences and from the people who formed those groups. Writing a dissertation is a challenge, one greater than I could have imagined. But the people with whom I worked turned the challenge into something good and pleasant. I thank them. I thank you.

Psalm 135 is sung in Hebrew at the beginning of services at Congregation Rodeph

Shalom in Philadelphia—my temple. So I begin these grateful words by thanking the three congregations who together form the unified heart of this dissertation. At Rodeph

Shalom, I extend my thanks to Rabbi William Kuhn, Rabbi Eli Freedman, Rabbi Jill

Maderer, Cantor Erin Frankel, Roy Feinberg, and Carol Perloff. At the First Unitarian

Church of Philadelphia, my heartfelt gratitude goes to Reverend Nathan Walker,

Reverend Susan V. Rak, and Julia Wierski. Hugh Taft-Morales, Leader of the Ethical

Society of Philadelphia, has been a source of much help and inspiration.

I worked at the Philadelphia Museum of Art for some 23 years, an illuminating tenure that came to a close this past November, 2015. My thoughts have been enriched and my work made better through my engagement with hundreds of colleagues over the years. Here, I express special thanks to the staff of the Museum’s library and archives, with particular acknowledgement to Rick Seiber and Evan Towle, whose help over the course of nearly seven years of doctoral study extended far beyond what could possibly

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be expected of even the most benevolent colleagues and friends. Also to be acknowledged at the Museum are curators Kathy Foster and David Barquist; former conservator David DeMuzio; and publishing director Sherry Babbitt and editors Kathleen

Krattenmaker and David Updike.

Hundreds of books were gathered and thousands of pieces of paper and digital files collected or reviewed during this undertaking. My thanks go to the librarians at Penn

State-Harrisburg and the staffs of the American Jewish Archives, the American

Philosophical Society, the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, Harvard University Libraries, the

Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic

Studies at University of Pennsylvania, the Library of Congress, the Pennsylvania

Academy of the Fine Arts, the Philadelphia Jewish Archives at Temple University, the

Rosenbach Museum and Library, and the University of Pennsylvania Archives. I am especially grateful to Josef Gulka of the University of Pennsylvania’s Katz Center for his tireless and thorough assistance, astute guidance, and boundless goodwill and good- humor.

In conceiving, researching, and writing this dissertation, I had the enormous good fortune of engaging with prominent scholars who not only responded to my inquiries but even, unprompted, shared with me primary-source material and other information they thought would be helpful. Unfailingly, it was. Michael J. Lewis of Williams College has been part of this project from the first moment the topic glimmered in my mind—sparked by the aforementioned reference in Lewis’s Frank Furness: Architecture and the Violent

Mind to the joint Thanksgiving services held by Rodeph Shalom and First Unitarian

(Lewis 2001, 81). Joining Lewis among the specialists who so generously shared their

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thoughts with me are Samuel Gruber, Syracuse University; Arthur Kiron, University of

Pennsylvania; Jonathan Sarna, Brandeis University; George Thomas, Harvard University; and Gary Zola, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (Cincinnati).

I cannot imagine a more nurturing context for learning than the American Studies program and the School of Humanities at the Pennsylvania State University at

Harrisburg. Every instructor with whom I studied is represented in this work. My gratitude and warmest regards go to Dr. Michael Barton, Dr. Erin Battat, Dr. John

Haddad, Dr. Charles Kupfer, Dr. Irwin Richman, and Dr. Anne Verplanck. Doctors

Verplanck and Haddad—joined by Dr. Gregory Crawford, the Interim Director of the

School of Humanities—served on my dissertation committee; each strengthened this work through the knowledge they so generously shared and the invaluable insights, feedback, and guidance they provided.

No words in my grasp are sufficient to express the gratitude I hold for Dr. Simon

Bronner, the chair of my dissertation committee, the head of the American Studies program, and my advisor and primary instructor over the course of my graduate and doctoral studies—a period spanning twenty-six years. Dr. Bronner introduced me to the discipline of American Studies and taught me new ways to look, think, and communicate.

He has greatly exceeded the most positive associations one may connect with the roles of teacher, advisor, mentor, and—if I may say—friend.

I save my final thanks for those who are closest to my heart. My parents—David

Singer, of blessed memory, and Renee Singer—encouraged and supported me in all things in every possible way. They taught me, by word and example, what it is to be a kind, ethical, caring, tolerant, and loving human being. I am fortunate to have a bonus

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parent, Neil Bernstein, who shares the same inspiring traits of character and has extended them to me with a kind and generous spirit. To my partner in life, Mark, I am forever grateful for his faith in me, his encouragement, and his love. How good it is.

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My House Shall Be Called a House of Prayer for All Peoples Isaiah 56:7

Every spirit builds itself a house; and beyond its house, a world; and beyond its world a heaven. Know then, that the world exists for you: build, therefore, your own world. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, 1836

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Chapter 1. FAITH IN FORM: BACKGROUND AND SCHOLARSHIP FOR THE FURNESS AND JASTROW FAMILIES AND THE SHAPING OF LIBERAL FAITH IN PHILADELPHIA

Philadelphia never saw anything quite like it. The strange edifice materialized amid the city’s Victorian streetscape between 1869 and 1871. Atop an octagonal, off- center turret that flared slightly as it soared upward sat a boldly striped, bulbous “onion” dome, common in both Islamic and Byzantine architecture (figure 1). Horseshoe arches—again, “Moorish” or Byzantine in their derivation—crowned the gabled main entrance, as well as the smaller entryways that flanked the primary entry portico.

Composed of alternating blocks of yellow and red sandstone, these arches appeared to radiate from disks densely carved with abstract floral patterns. A biblical passage, presented in Hebrew above the flanking entryway to the left and English on the right, declared a universalizing message, “My House Shall Be Called a House of Prayer for All

People” (Isaiah 56:7). This was the new home, and the first purpose-built synagogue, of the city’s venerable German-Hebrew Congregation Rodef Shalom (“Pursue Peace”).1 It was designed by the young architect Frank Furness (figure 2) and its specifications and construction overseen by Furness and his partners, John Fraser and George Hewitt

(Fraser, John, et al, 1869).

1 Dating to 1795 as a minyan (prayer quorum) and having purchased a burial plot in 1801, the German- Hebrew Congregation Rodef Shalom was officially incorporated in 1802 as the first Ashkenazi synagogue in the Western Hemisphere. Its establishment gave Philadelphia the distinction of being the first American city with two Jewish congregations. Regarding the synagogue’s identification in figure 1 as “Rodef Sholam”—the spelling of the congregation’s name, and that of other congregations the names of which included the word “shalom,” was inconsistent from the time of its founding trough the late nineteenth century; this is true of many Jewish synagogues established before the twentieth century. “Rodef Sholom” and “Rodef Shalom” were frequent alternates to “Rodeph Shalom.” The use of “Sholam” in figure 1 is most likely a simple typographical or editorial error made by someone unfamiliar with the sound of the Hebrew world that is most frequently, today, transliterated as “shalom.” 1

This determinedly exotic, eclectic, and more than vaguely alien structure staked its place on Philadelphia’s Broad Street, the city’s primary north-south thoroughfare. A rising upper-middle-class population, including a growing community of Jews of German origin and descent, lived in the vicinity of this particular stretch of North Broad Street.

What a figure this building must have cut in staid, Quaker-founded and -inflected

Philadelphia. In a city characterized by block upon block of red-brick row-houses,

Rodeph Shalom’s temple mixed Islamic, Byzantine, and Gothic elements.

Figure 1: Congregation Rodeph Shalom, 1868–1871, designed by Frank Furness, (Courtesy Historical Society of Pennsylvania) 2

A notice in an 1869 issue of The Jewish Messenger reported:

The synagogue edifice, when finished, will be unique, the style of architecture chosen being that of the Saracenic or Moorish. It will, therefore, be one of the richest specimens of church architecture, and will rank in size and splendor with any place of worship in the country. The architects, Messrs. Fraser, Furness, and Hewitt, have given their imagination full play, and the mind wanders with pleasure over the beautiful ornamentation, the perforated stone-work, and the rich tracery both within and without, from the floor to the dome above the tower, painted with broad alternate lines of blue and gold, with a feeling akin to that with which one gazes on the drawings of the Alhambra.

One imagines whether passers-by gazing upon Rodeph Shalom for the first time might have thought their wandering minds conjured an apparition from a distant time and place.

In fact, Furness’s Rodeph Shalom was quite the opposite: it represented the vanguard in its own time and place. The artfully arranged stone, mortar, and glass of this enigmatic “house of prayer for all people” was a dramatic, trailblazing manifestation of the era’s most advanced ideas regarding architecture and design. While incorporating prominent “Moorish” and Byzantine elements, Furness’s design for Rodeph Shalom’s temple was, on the whole, in keeping with the “Modern Gothic” style of architecture first developed in England with inspiration and sense of imperative drawn from the writings of the enormously influential art-critic John Ruskin (Ruskin and the Modern Gothic are discussed at greater length in chapter 5; see pages 116–125).

A product of England that spread throughout the English-speaking world, Modern

Gothic was considered a vanguard, reformist trend in architecture. Indeed, furniture designed in the Modern Gothic style, as Furness had done extensively for Rodeph

Shalom, was often described as “Reform” furniture. Modern Gothic work was considered

forward-looking because it did not seek to merely “revive” an ancient or exotic style based on fashion or whim, but to adapt one specific style—the Gothic—that was considered the benchmark for “honest” construction. Gothic architecture was honest in that the vertical and horizontal supports that upheld a given structure were clearly visible.

Its honesty was expressed further in what materials were used, and how. For example, plaster was never used to imitate and replace wood or stone. In addition to honesty in construction and materials, which was considered morally instructive, Gothic architecture was typically asymmetrical.

Buildings derived from Greek and Roman classical precedents were designed as perfect expressions of balance and proportion that would never need (or allow for) further enhancement. In contrast, the Gothic allowed buildings to evolve and grow, with wings, towers, and the like added over time. This flexibility was viewed as practical to the contemporary experience in the nineteenth century, which was a time of burgeoning growth and recognition of evolution in all things. Frank Furness brought to England’s

Modern Gothic the American Transcendentalists’ focus on nature as the essence and exemplar of all things, even the human-made, and emphasis on personal experience and expression. Distinguishing Furness’s work from other examples of Modern Gothic architecture are its profusion of floriated decoration and a highly individualistic approach to composition.

A manifestation of deeply held philosophical approaches to architecture,

Furness’s design for Rodeph Shalom made material both the progressive edge of theology and, despite the temple’s unusual and even “foreign” appearance, the

Americanization of Philadelphia’s Jews. While there is a lack of documentary materials

explaining why, the city’s Jewish community embraced and presented as a collective public-face what was then a decidedly modern product of Anglo-American culture.

Rodeph Shalom’s new synagogue was a precocious yet fully realized expression of broad religious, philosophical, and social trends.

Figure 2: Frank Furness, ca. 1880 (Image: Theodore Green)

American organized religion—mainstream Protestantism, in particular, which still very much hegemonic—faced unprecedented intellectual, theological, and social challenges in the late-nineteenth century. Clergy in the Episcopal, Presbyterian,

Methodist, Congregationalist (now the United Church of Christ), Lutheran, and (to varying degrees) Baptist churches were university educated. Much of the laity— particularly the segment of laypeople who were leaders in congregational and

denominational polity, philosophical engagement, and financial support—were either university educated or continued rigorous self-education following secondary school.

Quakerism, which in its egalitarianism dispensed with professional clergy, placed a high value on education.

This educated, cultured, and typically financially comfortable Protestant cohort was exposed to Darwinism and the widespread acceptance of its ideas, which forcefully and unequivocally shunted aside any literal interpretation of the biblical narrative of the world and humankind’s creation and history. They experienced the American adoption, propagation, and resulting scholarship derived from the “Higher Criticism,” an academic approach first developed in German universities in the early nineteenth century, in which

Judeo-Christian scripture was examined and analyzed as the product of an extended, evolving process of human literary work rather than Divine Writ. More recently emergent was the academic discipline of comparative-religion, which placed study of

Judeo-Christan religion on the same plane as that of any of the world’s religions present and past, thereby demonstrating that Christianity—the religion long unquestioned as being essential to the development and continued vitality of post-Hellenic Western civilization—was neither a sui generis development nor the only faith possessing and promoting a “civilizing” moral system.

The second-half of the nineteenth century witnessed, as well, the rapid advance of the Industrial Revolution and mass immigration to the U.S. of newcomers who were deemed less desirable than their Protestant English, Scottish, French, German, and

Northern European predecessors. The earliest-arriving of these immense new waves of immigrants were Irish Catholics, followed by German Catholics and Southern and

Eastern Europeans, who were overwhelmingly non-Protestant—if not Catholic, they were

Eastern Orthodox or Jewish. The Eastern European Jews who began arriving en masse in the 1880s from the Russian Pale of Settlement, Poland, and Austro-Hungarian region known as Galicia were typically more traditional in their religious beliefs and practices and less Westernized than the country’s already established Sephardic and German-

Jewish communities.

Great numbers of characteristically unskilled and under-educated immigrants settled in the major East Coast port cities—with relatively few diffusing inland— and formed an exploited and, thus, volatile working-class of industrial workers and laborers.

This transformed urban life, creating what were—or were perceived as—alien ethnic enclaves at best, and squalid, seemingly lawless slums at worst. The strong presence of unmistakable newcomers added questions about, and tensions surrounding, ethnicity and religion among European-stock (and, thus, “white”) Americans to the white-black racial duality that reached an apogee of divisiveness and destruction during the Civil War and produced new forms state-sanctioned discrimination and expressions of prejudice afterward.

The nation’s most liberal religious groups, Reform Jews and Unitarians, were at the forefront of responding to the dramatic advances in sciences and seismic shifts in religious thought and study. Indeed, Reform Judaism and its non-theistic offshoot, Ethical

Cultural—in which Unitarians were central to its early history and development—can be seen as direct outcomes of modernity as represented by pursuit of formal and advanced education; freedom of intellectual and scientific inquiry; urbanity; upward-mobility achieved through education and entrepreneurial participation in industrial consumer-

society and other capitalist professional activity; and overarching desires to assimilate into middle- and upper-class Western European and American society. It is worth noting that Unitarians, Reform Jews, and Ethical Culturalists represented relatively elite portions of the American population. Some members of these religious groups were “old-stock”

Americans of the nation’s founding and still-hegemonic Anglo-Saxon Protestant background and others were from Central European Jewish families who arrived in the

U.S. in the nineteenth century. But all were socioeconomically well-established and were of the class that established the network charities and benevolent organizations such as settlement houses that were intended to ease the plight of poor immigrants while

Americanizing them.

In Philadelphia, Americanizing and reforming Jews, Unitarians, and Ethical

Culturalists formed an ecumenical web of personal and professional associations in the final third of the nineteenth century. This development was not unusual in post-Civil War

America. The Unitarian minister William James Potter wrote of the founding in 1867 of the Free Religious Association, a coalition of liberal Unitarians, Quakers, and Jews that was the first American Jewish-Christian interfaith organization. He enthused:

Our Association was one of the legitimate issues of that wonderful period of gestation of ideas which came in this country in the last half of the Great War…With these came President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and the beginning of all the vast consequences to human liberty and the country of that military yet moral act…The pulpit, the press, the political meeting, voiced a higher law than that of material prosperity or political expediency. “The New Civilization” was a phrase frequently on the tongue to express the expectations of the country’s better day. (Potter 1892, 8)

Reform Jews and Unitarians joined forces in forging this “New Civilization.” In cities across the country, Reform Jewish rabbis and Unitarian ministers exchanged pulpits and fought side-by-side for a politically secular America. Publishers of the denominations’ newspapers shared mailing lists and printed essays by one another’s clergy. Widespread public perception viewed the two faiths as indistinguishable. In the ultimate expression of mutual respect and identification, individual Unitarians and

Reform Jews called for their religions’ merger (Kraut 1986, 89-91). In a lecture titled

“Reformed Judaism” delivered in 1885 and published that same year in the New York- based periodical American Hebrew, Felix Adler (1851–1933), an ordained rabbi who left

Reform Judaism to establish the Society for Ethical Culture, underscored the fact that

Unitarians and Reform Jews both avowed the unity of God as their only creed. Given this shared and focused theological base, Adler posed this question: “Why then do not the

Reformers labor to bring about a fusion between themselves and Unitarians? What possible reason is there why this step should not be taken—why this logical outcome of the principles of Reformed Judaism should not be clearly stated?” (Adler 1885; Adler and

Ethical Culture will be discussed at length later in this dissertation).

As noted in the preface, the late Benny Kraut is, to date, the only scholar to study in depth what he termed the “rapprochement” between Reform Jews and Unitarians and the related emergence of the Society for Ethical Culture. Considered in the context of

Kraut’s findings, which placed the rapprochement between Unitarians and Reform Jews in the final third of the nineteenth century, Philadelphia’s story is unique. In Philadelphia, the history of substantive engagement, collaboration, and sharing of mutual goodwill between Unitarians and Jews began in the late 1820s. Further distinguishing the

intertwined narrative shared by nineteenth-century Philadelphia Unitarianism, Reform

Judaism, and Ethical Culture is that it can be told wholly through the personal and professional actions and interactions of two generations of two progressive-minded but far-from-radical Philadelphia families, the Furnesses and the Jastrows.

The temple Frank Furness designed for Rodeph Shalom was the first decidedly physical and durable evidence of the union of two accomplished, scholarly, and bravely principled clergymen: the progressive Rabbi Marcus Jastrow and the Transcendentalist

Unitarian minister William Henry Furness. The rabbi and minister were joined in this union by their families, colleagues, friends, and congregations. Rodeph Shalom’s temple was but one edifice built by Furness for Philadelphia’s Jewish community. It was joined by commissions awarded to Furness for Unitarian and other churches, in addition to hundreds of residential, mercantile, cultural, educational, medical, and other building projects from the architect’s hand and mind. So abundant and prominent was Frank

Furness’s work in Philadelphia and its close surrounding environs that the region could reasonably be described as containing a landscape of reform.

Figure 3: Rabbi Marcus Jastrow (Image: American Jewish Archives)

Marcus Jastrow (figure 3), born in Prussian Posen, studied at the University of

Berlin, received his rabbinic ordination in 1853, and earned his doctorate from the

University of Halle in 1855. In 1858, Jastrow assumed the pulpit of a progressive Jewish congregation in Warsaw, the membership of which was predominantly German-Jewish.

There, he protested Russian oppression of Poland and its people (Warsaw came under

Russian rule during the final Annexation of Poland in 1795). Jailed for three months in

1862, Jastrow was then deported to Germany. Thus, Jastrow became a public figure known throughout the Jewish communities of Europe and the United States. He was, in addition, a prolific author whose essays were reprinted in the American Jewish press.

Philadelphia’s rapidly growing and prospering Congregation Rodeph Shalom persuaded the young, prominent, and accomplished—yet beleaguered—Jastrow to leave his native

Germany. He arrived in Philadelphia in 1866, just four years prior to the consecration of the congregation’s new temple. In this brief period, he was befriended by the Reverend

William Henry Furness (figure 4), pastor of the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia.

The Reverend Furness preached a staunchly Christ-centered Unitarianism at his church. To the degree that the Reverend Furness is known and discussed today, it as the father of Frank Furness and a leading abolitionist. These are notable and noble distinctions. However, they disregard Furness’s accomplishments as an enormously popular and active pastor and his much-published scholarship, which brought a

Transcendentalist Unitarian perspective to the study of the life and teachings of Jesus, and Furness’s advocacy on behalf of Catholic and Jewish Americans.

Figure 4: The Reverend William Henry Furness, 1861, John Sartain after William Henry Furness, Jr. (Image: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts)

Most germane to this study, Furness delivered the sermon “An Apology for the

Jew” to his congregants and visitors (including many Jews) at the First Unitarian Church in 1830. “An Apology for the Jews” was reprinted that same year in the Boston-based journal The Liberal Preacher, a periodical the title of which makes clear that “Liberal

Christianity” was an identified movement with self-identifying “liberal” proponents and adherents as of 1830. Despite possible ambiguities surrounding the term “apology,” the purpose of Furness’s discourse was explicit. He stated within the first paragraph of his

“Apology” that—while not an absolution of the Jews as “Christ-killers”—the sermon was a condemnation of Christian prejudice against Jews. In this way, among others, Furness’s

“Apology”—while all but unknown today (it has not been reprinted since its appearance in The Liberal Preacher)—is a singular and historic discourse. Written some three to four decades prior to the period of rapprochement identified by Kraut, Furness’s “Apology” stands as not only the first spoken and printed sermon in which a Unitarian minister

extended his hand in friendship to the Jews, but the first by a Christian minister in the

United States to decry anti-Semitism.

So close were the personal bonds, theological and ideological sympathies, and sense of social consciousness shared between Jastrow and Furness that the clergymen led their congregations in joint services, particularly celebrations of Thanksgiving, which

President Lincoln and Congress established as a national, nonsectarian holiday in 1863.

Fitting it is, then, that among the earliest addresses by Rabbi Jastrow to be published in the United States was the Sermon Delivered in the Synagogue Rodef Shalom on

Thanksgiving Day (1868). This sermon was a response to Pennsylvania Governor John

W. Geary’s 1868 proclamation that Thanksgiving should be celebrated as a Christian holiday.

Reform Judaism and Unitarianism occupied, albeit to greater and lesser degrees, respectively, ambiguous positions within the unambiguously Christian mainstream of

American society of the time—Unitarians for their disavowal of the concept of the

Trinity and emphasis on Jesus’ essential humanity, and Jews for simply not being

Christians. Unitarian Christian ministers and Reform Jewish rabbis, as well as lay members coming primarily from the ranks of the faiths’ most highly educated and engaged elites, recognized in one another’s platforms like-minded commitments to bettering humankind and improving the human condition by establishing rational, and universal religions devoted to social and intellectual progress. Both Unitarianism and

Reform Judaism developed styles of worship that were largely free of ritual, which was considered a collection of inherited practices that were meaningless in the contemporary context. Both groups, while maintaining belief in the existence of a single deity, rejected

other expressions of supernaturalism, such as biblical tales of miracles. Instead, they sought—or held open the possibility for—“scientific” explanations for anomalous biblical events. This perspective was favored by the Reverend Furness. The most inclined to empiricism understood them as metaphorical tales that conveyed compelling moral and spiritual truths but not historical fact.

Founded in 1876, Ethical Culture directly drew from but leapt past the liberalizing trajectories of Unitarianism and Reform Judaism by establishing itself as a non-theistic, non-creedal religion that held the perfectibility of human behavior as its highest ideal. In doing so, Ethical Culture drew its adherents and admirers primarily from the most radical representatives of Reform Judaism and Unitarianism (to the particular consternation of the former, at least in most cases).

The Jastrow and Furness families, and their expanding circle of reform-minded friends and associates, are the subjects of this dissertation. They present a historical narrative unique to particular individuals in a specific place and time, but with broad resonance. In doing so, they bring vivid human countenance and depth to the otherwise all-but-buried history of the birth, boom, and decline of a nationwide tendency in

American progressive religious culture. Their stories pulse with the nineteenth century’s unfailing belief in progress. At the same time, they resonate with fiery debates over the role of religion in American public life, disagreements that are as inflammatory today as they were in the nineteenth century. Rich, substantive, and instructive, the two families’ histories as forces for meaningful and authentic ecumenical interaction were largely lost to history, as was the era of consciously liberal interfaith outreach represented by the families, their friends, and colleagues.

As one of America’s largest, most diverse, and long-established metropolitan areas, and as a city that has experienced substantial revitalization and growth over the past two decades, Philadelphia is a fitting locus for this study. It is, in many ways, the birthplace of America, the city where the Founding Fathers—many-to-most of whom subscribed to a liberal approach to Christianity, in particular, and even religion, in general

(Waldman 2008, 193)—established the guidelines for American polity and the outlines of

American values and ideals in the Declaration of Independence, the United States

Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

By documenting, analyzing, and interpreting the activities of this network of individuals living and working in nineteenth-century Philadelphia, this dissertation will illustrate how religious, social, and aesthetic reforms intersected and reinforced one another. So that it may provide historic context and contemporary relevance, the scope of this examination—though focused primarily on developments in the nineteenth century— extends backward in time to the founding of Pennsylvania as a haven for Quakers, other

Protestant dissidents, and people of all faiths, and to Philadelphia’s central role in the

Revolutionary and Federal periods. The topic of “liberal religion” in contemporary

America is examined in the conclusion by presenting and analyzing national perspectives and trends as documented in data gathered and reported by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, and a report on the contemporary status of the three congregations central to this study: Rodeph Shalom, the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, and the

Ethical Culture Society of Philadelphia (now called the Ethical Humanist Society of

Philadelphia, and long popularly referred to as simply “the Ethical Society”).

This dissertation discerns and delineates how an extended group of friends, families, and colleagues in nineteenth-century Philadelphia crossed the lines between faiths, created new senses of aesthetics and invested them with new meanings, and explored and pursued methods of societal amelioration and equality. It can and will be argued that the ecumenical and artistic initiatives of a relatively small but decidedly devoted and energetic circle of Victorian Philadelphians holds unique relevance to— indeed, did much to shape—life in the United States today.

Sources and Scholarship

Marcus Jastrow, William Henry Furness, and Frank Furness were individuals of local and national prominence. Rabbi Jastrow and the Reverend Furness authored books and numerous small publications and contributions to periodicals. The rabbi and minister are the subjects of numerous biographical essays and, in Jastrow’s case, a recently published, comprehensive biography (Galas, 2013). Frank Furness is the subject of several monographs and a catalogue raisonné. Congregation Rodeph Shalom and the First

Unitarian Church of Philadelphia are august institutions, established in 1795 and 1796 respectively. Rodeph Shalom is the subject of congregational histories published in 1926

(Davis) and 1995 (Hochman), while First Unitarian—during the ministry of Reverend

Furness, in particular—stands at the center of Elizabeth Geffen’s Philadelphia

Unitarianism (1961). Despite the breadth of these printed materials, they say little about the personal, familial, congregational, and denominational interrelationships of the

Furness and Jastrow families or the development of an interfaith liberal religious community in nineteenth-century Philadelphia.

Rodeph Shalom and First Unitarian maintain archives (much of Rodeph Shalom’s historical records have been lost; what remains is housed in the Philadelphia Jewish

Archives). Published collections of sermons delivered by the Reverend Furness and

Rabbi Jastrow—in addition to individual sermons found in archives and through online sources—provide insight into both the theological and social ideals that united the congregations as well as topics elided to ensure the comfort of all in attendance. The

Ethical Society of Philadelphia maintains excellent archives, including lists of members, the discourses of the Society’s clergy, and copies of the many annual-reports and ephemera published over the past 130 years. The Free Library of Philadelphia’s collections include the full run of poet, journalist, and Walt Whitman-acolyte and biographer Horace Traubel’s Philadelphia-based periodical The Conservator. It served as an unofficial house organ for Ethical Culture and reported extensively on, and promoted, the activities of Unitarian and liberal Jewish congregations.

Other key archival sources with holdings that relate to the Furness and Jastrow families and their milieu include the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia), the American Philosophical Society (Philadelphia), the University of Pennsylvania

Archives, the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies (Philadelphia), the

Athenaeum of Philadelphia, the Maryland State Archives (Annapolis; this source is key due to the Jastrow family’s exceedingly close ties with the family of Rabbi Benjamin

Szold, whose children included Henrietta Szold), the Andover-Harvard Theological

Library (Cambridge, Massachusetts), the American Jewish Archives (Cincinnati, Ohio), the Leo Baeck Institute (New York City), and the Wisconsin Historical Society (Marcus

Jastrow’s son, Joseph, was a psychologist who taught at the University of Wisconsin).

Countless books and journals are devoted to the history and development of

American Judaism and Jewry. Preeminent among them is the series The Jewish People in

America, a multi-author, multivolume work published in 1992 by the American Jewish

Historical Society and The Johns Hopkins University Press. The Jewish People in

America, like other fine publications such as American Judaism by Jonathan D. Sarna

(2005) and Max I. Dimont’s The Jews in America: The Roots, History and Destiny of

American Jews (1978), presents Jewish-American history as a sequence of four eras. The first era, covering the period from 1654 to 1820, is that of the Sephardim, when Jewish-

American life was dominated by a few thousand Jews whose heritage extended to the

Iberian peninsula and whose ancestors suffered forced conversion or expulsion during the

Inquisition. The second era, from 1820 to 1880, is dominated by a much larger Jewish immigration, totaling some 200,000 to 300,000 souls (estimates vary widely), of German- speaking Jews from central Europe. The German Jews (called Ashkenazim, a term that also includes the Jews of Eastern Europe) established nationwide networks of synagogues and sectarian and philanthropic organizations. The third era of Jewish-American history belongs to the 2,000,000 to 3,000,000 million Jews (again, estimates vary) who fled the deprivations and oppression of the Russian-ruled Pale of Settlement between 1880 and

1920. Largely impoverished, Yiddish-speaking (a tongue considered a degraded and degrading version of German), and relatively un-Westernized, these Eastern European immigrants are the ancestors of the overwhelming majority of contemporary Jewish

Americans.

Every wave of immigration was followed by a period of intense and enthusiastic assimilation into mainstream American life, which brings us to the fourth era in Jewish-

American history. The Eastern European Jews assimilated, established themselves, and quickly came to dominate Jewish-American life. They and their descendants experienced—from a distance geographically, but more intimately and viscerally in the heart and mind—the horrors of the Holocaust and the stunning establishment of the state of Israel.

This dissertation, “Building Liberal Religion: Jews and Unitarians Reform Faith and Architecture in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia,” reconstructs and analyzes an extended historical moment that began during the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century

Sephardic era in Jewish-American history and concludes amidst the great immigration of

Eastern European Jews in the late nineteenth and early-twentieth century. It takes place in

Philadelphia, one of just five American cities and towns—the others being New York

City; Newport, Rhode Island; Charleston, South Carolina; and Savannah, Georgia—that had significant, formalized Jewish communities at the time of the American Revolution.

Philadelphia was the first American city to have two synagogues, the Sephardic Mikveh

Israel (founded in 1740) and the Ashkenazic Rodeph Shalom (established in 1795).

Philadelphia birthed (as noted earlier) the Hebrew Sunday School movement (1818); the

Jewish Publication Society (1845); the first (albeit short-lived) American rabbinical seminary, Maimonides College (1867–1873); and dozens of other major organizations and institutions central to Jewish-American life. The city’s Jews were the first to create a united federation of Jewish charities (1869), which established a model later instituted in communities across the country. Philadelphia’s Jewish firsts are the subjects of Edwin

Wolf and Maxwell Whiteman’s History of the Jews of Philadelphia: From Colonial

Times to the Age of Jackson (1956) and Jewish Life in Philadelphia, 1830–1940 (1983), edited by Murray Friedman.

Today, architect Frank Furness is the best known of the three men referenced in the title of this dissertation. He is the subject of the monographs The Architecture of

Frank Furness by James F. O’Gorman (1973) and the catalogue raisonné Frank Furness:

The Complete Works, by Jeffrey A. Cohen, Michael J. Lewis, and George E. Thomas

(1996). Michael Lewis’s Frank Furness: Architecture and the Violent Mind (2001) is the only biography of Furness. This dissertation is profoundly informed by Lewis’s work, for

Architecture and the Violent Mind discusses the impact on the young Furness of the social, political, and theological liberalism of his father, the Reverend William Henry

Furness, and the intellectual, independent, and reform-minded milieu of the Furness household.

While Frank Furness has been the most studied figure in this dissertation, a single, but exceptional, volume serves to save the life and work of Marcus Jastrow from under- documented obscurity. An English edition of Michal Galas’s Rabbi Marcus Jastrow and

His Vision for the Reform of Judaism: A Study in the History of Judaism in the Nineteenth

Century, published in Poland in 2007, was issued in 2013. Drawing on extensive archival research in Europe, Israel, and the United States, Galas’s study is comprehensive. In addition to presenting the biographical details of Jastrow’s life, Galas discusses Jastrow’s views on the reform of Judaism in the context of the dramatically shifting ground that was Judaism in nineteenth-century Germany, Poland, and America.

The context for this dissertation, the place where its subjects lived and acted, is the city of Philadelphia. As a major metropolitan center of great historical and cultural

importance, Philadelphia has and continues to be the focus of far too many studies to mention here. Philadelphia: A 300-Year History (1982), edited by Russell F. Weigley, includes contributions by more than twenty scholars and provides an astoundingly comprehensive overview of the city’s political, social, cultural, and physical developments. The chapters “Industrial Development and Social Crisis, 1841–1854” by

Elizabeth M. Geffen, “The Border City in Civil War, 1854–1865” by Dr. Weigley, “The

Centennial City, 1865–1876” by Dorothy Gondos Beers, “The Iron Age, 1876–1905” by

Nathaniel Burt and Wallace E. Davies, and “Progressivism, 1905–1919” are particularly rich in discussion of the contributions of the Furness family and the network of reform- minded civic and cultural leaders who formed their milieu, and devote much attention to the growth and activities of Philadelphia’s Jewish community and the roles its members played in the city’s evolution.

That art, politics, and social issues are conjoined rather than separate spheres is made clear in Philadelphia’s Cultural Landscape: The Sartain Family Legacy (2000), edited by Katharine Martinez and Page Talbott. John Sartain (1808–1897), the family patriarch, was a mezzotint engraver who arrived in Philadelphia in 1830 and involved himself immediately in a broad range of forward-looking artistic, cultural, civic, and religious activity in the city. He was a long-time member of William Henry Furness’s

First Unitarian Church and joined the Ethical Culture Society of Philadelphia late in his life. His sons Samuel and Henry were celebrated engravers, printmakers, and photographers. His daughter, Emily, was an accomplished painter who became principal of the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, now known as Moore College of Art and Design. Philadelphia’s Cultural Landscape makes clear that John Sartain and the

Reverend Furness were as much cultural collaborators as they were congregant and minister, and documents fascinating connections between them and well-known, ambitious, and adventurous Philadelphia artists such as Mary Cassatt and Thomas

Eakins.

Thomas F. Rzeznik’s Church and Estate: Religion and Wealth in Industrial-Era

Philadelphia (2013) looks at the confluence of class identity and religious affiliation among the city’s industrial elite in the second-half of the nineteenth century, and how values, beliefs, and concerns of that elite were manifested in church architecture.

Rzeznik’s primary focus is the ascendance of both Episcopalianism and the Gothic

Revival in Philadelphia, and his examination of that nexus is thorough. He makes only passing reference to Frank Furness (Rzeznik, 80) and does not mention Unitarianism or its church architecture. In regard to the city’s emerging Jewish elite, he bypasses Rodeph

Shalom for its more radically Reform—and later established—counterpart, Keneseth

Israel (Rzeznik, 187–190).

Putting aside matters of individual biography and activities in the city of

Philadelphia, this dissertation is also a more general study of the interactions between

American liberal religious groups—Reform Jews, Unitarians, and Ethical Culturalists.

Although bearing the expansive title The Making of American Liberal Theology:

Imagining Progressive Religion, 1805–1900 (2001; one of a trilogy of works that detail developments in American liberal theology from 1805 to 2005), author Gary Dorrien focuses his study on Protestant Christianity, with a particular emphasis on Unitarianism.

Dorrien’s book devotes a subchapter to Catholicism, makes only cursory reference to

Judaism, and offers no mention of Ethical Culture. Nonetheless, Dorrien presents a

definition of “liberal religion” that, if one omits the word “Christian” and makes a few minor editorial adjustments, is germane to the three religious movements discussed in this dissertation. Dorrien writes:

In essence, [liberal theology] is the idea that Christian theology can be genuinely Christian without being based on external authority. Since the eighteenth century, liberal Christian thinkers have argued that religion should be modern and progressive and that the meaning of Christianity should be interpreted from the standpoint of modern knowledge and experience (xiii).

Overviews of the histories and ideologies of Unitarian, Reform Judaism, and

Ethical Culture are presented in David E. Bumbaugh’s Unitarian Universalism: A

Narrative History (2000), Michael A. Meyer’s Response to Modernity: A History of the

Reform Movement in Judaism (1988), and Howard B. Radest’s Toward Common

Ground: The Story of the Ethical Societies in the United States (1969) among other publications.

As noted, the late Benny Kraut is the only scholar to examine vigorously varied aspects of the relations among Reform Judaism, Unitarianism, and Ethical Culture. His

From Reform Judaism to Ethical Culture: The Religious Evolution of Felix Adler (1979) is the sole book to examine Ethical Culture founder Felix Adler’s (1851–1933) life as a

Jew and the son of a rabbi, his studies for the rabbinate, and the impact of Adler’s rejection of Judaism and founding of Ethical Culture on Jewish-American religious and communal life. In the article “Judaism Triumphant: Isaac Mayer Wise on Unitarianism and Liberal Christianity” (1982), Kraut discusses the rapprochement that took place between Reform Jewish and Unitarian clergy and their congregations in the final third of the nineteenth century. Their sincere and enthusiastic desire for interaction and

cooperation had its limits, however. Through analysis of Rabbi Wise’s writings and those of his Unitarian contemporaries, Kraut observes that Reform Judaism and Unitarianism each regarded itself, independently, as the ultimate universalizing religion, and that the adherents of both religions were strictly loyal to their historic faith identities. Kraut concludes that “it was mutually exclusive forms of religious triumphalism which separated religious liberals such as Wise and other Jewish Reformers from their Unitarian counterparts, just as contrary religious triumphalist claims separated all religious liberals from the more conservative denominations within their respective religions” (230).

Kraut’s scholarship summarizes the arc of Reform Jewish and Unitarian rapprochement and the ascendance of Ethical Culture. It does not, however, touch upon how these developments were lived, experienced, and shaped in Philadelphia, with the exception of a passing reference to the friendship between Rebecca Gratz and William

Henry Furness (Kraut in Endelman, 1987, 287). Interestingly, Gratz and Furness are mentioned by Kraut in a tally of (male) Unitarian and Jewish clergy (which Gratz, per

Jewish strictures of the day, could not be because of her gender) who formed close, collegial friendships based on “[c]ommon ground for intellectual, religious, and cultural discourse” in Boston, Cincinnati, New York, Rochester, and Saint Louis (ibid).

As noted previously, Unity Temple: Frank Lloyd Wright and Architecture for

Liberal Religion (1994) by Joseph M. Siry is the closest antecedent in regard to material- culture study of connections between reforms—and, in the case of the Unitarian Frank

Lloyd Wright’s 1909 Unity Temple (a Unitarian and Universalist congregation) in Oak

Park, Illinois—radical innovations in architecture and design spurred by liberalizing philosophies, approaches to, and expressions of religion. Siry presents Unity Temple as a

case-study of exemplary architecture and places it within its religious, social, and historical context.

In 2012, Siry published Beth Sholom Synagogue: Frank Lloyd Wright and

Modern Religious Architecture. Beth Sholom is a Conservative Jewish congregation located in the Philadelphia suburb of Elkins Park, which was a prime destination for the prospering German-Jews of North Broad Street to relocate and eventually became known as Philadelphia’s “most Jewish” suburb. Beth Sholom is the only synagogue designed by

Wright, and is considered one of his greatest masterpieces. Siry examines Wright’s conception and development of Beth Sholom’s design in relationship to the architect’s other religious architecture. Siry documents Wright’s relationship with his lead client at

Beth Sholom, Rabbi Mortimer Cohen, and analyzes how Cohen’s overarching concerns—that the synagogue be a material expression of traditional Jewish values and contemporary life in post-World War II America.

Much of Siry’s scholarship is pertinent to this dissertation. In addition to presenting exemplary models for the study of religious architecture in a socio-cultural context, Siry’s subject—Wright—was the product of a line of committed Unitarians.

Moreover, Wright first emerged as a prominent architect in the context of the Arts and

Crafts Movement, which can be seen as the culmination of the nineteenth century’s reformist tendencies. Finally, Wright, as a student of Louis Sullivan, is in Frank

Furness’s “architectural lineage,” as Sullivan apprenticed with Furness—admiring the man and his work. Siry discusses Furness’s design for Rodeph Shalom in the context of

Sullivan’s work for Jewish congregations in Chicago (Siry 2012, 33–35). Wright

described Furness’s design for the University of Pennsylvania’s library as “the work of an artist.” 2

Organization

This dissertation is composed of eleven parts. Following the preface and introduction, the second chapter discusses Quaker-founded Philadelphia’s uniquely hospitable climate for religious diversity and ecumenical exchange and the relationship between the Reverend Furness and the Jewish community—with particular emphasis on

Rebecca Gratz—that led to Furness’ “Apology.” It investigates, as well, the ways in which Mikveh Israel and Rodeph Shalom—both ostensibly orthodox in the early- nineteenth century (Mikveh Israel remains so)—adapted and adopted elements of both institutional organizational and styles, if not the theological content, of worship from

Protestantism.

The third chapter examines the life and work of the Reverend Furness. In doing so, it discusses and analyzes the rapid advances of, and roiling divisions within,

Unitarianism—in Philadelphia and nationwide—from the mid-1860s to the end of the nineteenth century. Chapter four analyzes sermons and essays by Furness and Jastrow that address the situation of the Jew in a Christian society. Their discourses reveal both commonality and great disparity—in matters biblical, social, and “racial”—in the perspectives and concerns of the two friends and colleagues as well as the religions, ethnicities, and nationalities they represented.

Frank Furness is paramount to the history chronicled in this dissertation, for he, quite literally, gave it shape. As noted earlier, Furness designed and built not only

2 George E. Thomas on frankfurness.org; cited on July 13, 2014. 26

Congregation Rodeph Shalom but also the third home of the First Unitarian Church of

Philadelphia (a commission awarded after his father’s ministry), the church of the

Unitarian Society of Germantown, and the chapel at Mount Sinai Cemetery. Chapter five will study and analyze the development of Frank Furness as an individual and architect.

Chapter six presents a close examination of the exterior and interior architecture of the temple designed by Furness for Rodeph Shalom (the congregation commissioned him to design every component and element of the structure, whether inside or out, structural or decorative, fixed or mobile). Chapter seven presents and analyzes the architecture and fittings of additional structures designed by Furness for the Unitarian and

Jewish communities—in addition to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, which the Reverend Furness described as “the temple of the fine arts” and was an early, and overt, example of conceiving museums as secular churches. These examinations demonstrate how religious reform was rendered as architecture—and why and how

“religious” architecture was employed for secular purposes— in Philadelphia and elsewhere in the late-nineteenth-century America.

Chapter eight shifts focus to the Ethical Culture Society of Philadelphia, its offshoot the Contemporary Club, the children of the Reverend Furness and Rabbi

Jastrow, and their circle, network, or “coterie” of like-minded friends and colleagues.

Morris Jastrow (1861–1921), the rabbi’s eldest son, was the heir apparent for his father’s pulpit and, like his father, pursued his higher secular and rabbinic education, and received ordination, in Germany. He resigned from the rabbinate after one year’s service at

Rodeph Shalom. He went on to be a frequent lecturer at the Ethical Society, a member and president of the Contemporary Club, and became the first Jewish faculty member at

the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a professor of Semitics and Rabbinic

Literature. In addition, the younger Jastrow was named a librarian at Penn in 1888. In that same year, Frank Furness was commissioned to build a monumental, state-of-the-art library for the university; he received this commission while his brother, Horace Howard, was chairman of Penn’s Library Committee, and his brother-in-law and fellow Unitarian,

Fairman Rogers, chaired the university’s Building Committee. The library Furness created for Penn was his last major secular building designed with a decidedly ecclesiastical, Gothic appearance—it was a cathedral of knowledge. The library held the collection of antiquities that would become the University of Pennsylvania Museum of

Archaeology and Anthropology. Morris Jastrow served as curator of its Middle Eastern holdings, and Rabbi Jastrow spoke at the opening if its installation of religious ceremonial objects. Given its architecture, holdings, and the congruence of Furnesses and

Jastrows and closely related others involved in its development and ongoing activities,

Furness’ Library of the University of Pennsylvania serves as a fitting culmination for this dissertation. Although the story continued into the twentieth century, the library stands atop the arc of the Jastrow and Furness families’ intertwined and similar evolutions: from the fathers’ scholarly, rational approaches to faith to the children’s faith in scholarship and, in the case of Frank Furness, to the expression of the era’s forward-looking and intertwined social, spiritual, and aesthetic ideals through architecture.

The conclusion is bittersweet. It is, in part, a postmortem for Rabbi Jastrow, the

Reverend Furness, and their extended, ecumenical coterie of culturally, artistically, academically, and socially engaged religious liberals (it must be noted that religious liberalism thrived, and even advanced, in subsequent generations). It recounts the many

achievements of this group, and ponders why they are so little remembered. It explores the decline of the vigorous, somewhat utopian interfaith explorations and experiments unique to the Victorian era—and the rise of political Progressivism and new, less theologically radical but more socially pragmatic Social Gospel movement and concomitant ecumenical efforts. The progressive, liberal politics and religious activities that coalesced in the early-twentieth century contributed, decades later, to the successes of the more-or-less concurrent Civil Rights and Women’s Liberation movements. These, in turn, established templates and precedent for those fighting for civil-rights—the LGBT community prominent among them—and transformed America into a more pluralistic, diverse, and multicultural society.

The conclusion will, as well report on the present status of Congregation Rodeph

Shalom, the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, the Ethical Humanist Society of

Philadelphia, and the denominations they represent. It will consider and analyze the current state and future challenges and opportunities of liberal religion in the United

States through developments underway and planned in Philadelphia.

Chapter 2. THE DEVELOPMENT OF LIBERAL RELIGION AND

ECUMENICALISM IN PHILADELPHIA: FINDING FERTILE GROUND IN

PENN’S “GREENE COUNTRY TOWN,” 1681–1838

William Penn’s “Holy Experiment”—the establishment, promotion, nurture, and enlightened governance of the colony of Pennsylvania—was an act of faith. Its hypothesis and procedures were inspired by the religious and humanitarian concerns of his Quaker beliefs and the persecution that Penn (1644–1718) and other Quakers suffered as resolute dissenters from the Church of England. In 1681, in payment for a debt owed to Penn’s father by King Charles II, Penn received 40,000 acres of land in the middle of the Atlantic coast along which England established its North American colonies. The charter for Pennsylvania that Penn drafted in 1682 stated his hopes for a political, material, and spiritual utopia.

Along with democratic practices such as elections and trial by jury, Penn’s charter conveyed the Quaker (and democratic) principles of freedom of conscience, religious tolerance, and equality among all peoples. Penn respected the rights of the Native

Americans indigenous to Pennsylvania (although relations between Pennsylvania’s native peoples and its European settlers did not remain unproblematic). Uncharacteristically for the era, Penn encouraged immigration from non-Anglo-Saxon countries. He distributed a prospectus throughout Europe that emphasized both the political and religious freedom of

Pennsylvania as well as the colony’s bounty of natural resources—its vast expanse of farmable land not least among them—and the promise those resources held for the economic advancement of its current citizens and future settlers. Penn’s prospectus was

successful. Persecuted groups—Amish, Mennonite, Huguenot, Catholic, Jewish, and others, representing points of origin across Europe and already established but less tolerant English Protestant colonies—found sanctuary in Philadelphia and other parts of

Pennsylvania. It seems Penn held Jews in special regard. The Select Works of William

Penn (1782), documents his belief that Jews “…had a measure of light, some divine seed sown in their heart, some talents given….” (175). 3

By the late-eighteenth century, Philadelphia was the fourth-largest English- speaking city in the world (after London, Edinburgh, and Dublin; Weigley 1982, 79), the birthplace of American independence, and the new nation’s capital. Philadelphia was the country’s center for government, commerce, manufacturing and nascent industrialization, and the arts. It competed with Boston for leadership in education and intellectual and scientific pursuits. Prominent in the elements that defined colonial and federal

Philadelphia and Pennsylvania were characteristics and events that spoke to the city’s and state’s inherent and intended, Quaker-informed history of diversity, freedom of conscience, civic consensus, and support for enslaved and free African Americans.

By the time of the nation’s first census in 1790, Pennsylvania was the most heterogeneous of the thirteen founding states, with a population that was equal parts

English, German, and Scots-Irish in origin (Baltzell 1996, xii). Given its variegated populace, no single denomination could dominate Pennsylvania’s religious life. With that said, all but a tiny percentage of Pennsylvanians were Protestant.

Of the Protestant denominations, it is the Society of Friends—commonly known as Quakers—who dominated Philadelphia’s early history and remains closely associated

3 In regard to matters of spelling, grammar, punctuation, syntax, etc., all quotations from primary sources are presented in this paper as they were originally written. 31

with the city in the popular mind. The Quakers originated as dissenters from the Church of England and, in the words of Sidney Ahlstrom in A Religious History of the American

People (2004), arose “out of left-wing Puritanism” (Ahlstrom 2004, 176). Quakers, like

Puritans, dissented from the Catholic-modeled sacraments, ritual objects and images, and hierarchy of the Anglican church, but were less dogmatic and more inclusive and encouraging of individual expression than were the Puritans (Baltzell, 176). In 1648, the shoemaker George Fox (1624–91) of Leicestershire, England, began to preach in public—including churches, albeit after the parish minister concluded the official service—proclaiming the spiritual power and imperative need for an inner-directed faith.

In response to his spiritual testimony and witness, Fox was ridiculed, physically attacked, and imprisoned (Ahlstrom 2004, 177). In 1652, Fox and a “convinced” group of seekers established the Society of Friends (177).

In their dismissal of hierarchy and sacraments (and the rituals that accompany them), the power they vested in individuals to determine their relationship with the

Divine, and by denying the concept that scripture was the sole and static medium for revelation (and the related, implicit understanding that scripture could be reinterpreted and, indeed, challenged), Quakers established the basic characteristics of “liberal religion” as it became a self-identifying movement in the nineteenth century. Anti- ritualism, autonomy of thought and conscience, and the reevaluation of scripture—and questioning and even rejection of scripture as Divine Writ—were central to the gathering tendencies toward religious liberalism that emerged in certain circles, typically composed of relatively elite and educated individuals, in the 1800s. This trend toward religious liberalism among cohorts of relatively privileged individuals was evident in England,

Germany among both Christians and Jews. This is not to say that many or most eighteenth-century Quakers were indistinguishable from nineteenth-century Unitarians,

Reform Jews, and Ethical Culturalists. Quakers lived according to norms regarding behavior and self-presentation that a committed, self-identifying nineteenth-century proponent of liberal religion would likely have deemed anachronistic and needlessly constraining. However, the demands and standards according to which Quakers lived were arrived at by their community through broad consensus. They did not live and worship according to the rulings of an ecclesiastical elite, and that set a decidedly liberal and democratic precedent.

Liberal Christianity in America is most often associated with developments in

New England among the descendants of the Puritans. Boston was the center of this turn away from orthodox Congregationalism, and Cambridge—Harvard and its Divinity

School, specifically—its epicenter. The liberalizing Congregationalists were given an appellation that was initially considered a pejorative: they were called “Unitarians” because they rejected the idea of the Trinity. They soon claimed the name Unitarian for themselves, and established congregations led by ministers trained at Harvard Divinity

School. As delineated by Ahlstrom in An American Reformation: A Documentary History of Unitarian Christianity (1998), Unitarianism departed from mainstream Protestantism in three essential ways. First is the belief that man is, by nature, good rather than “fallen.”

Second is an understanding of God as a source of love, an understanding that could not coincide with doctrines such as predestination and eternal damnation. The third is the rejection of Trinity, which Unitarians viewed as polytheistic and untrue to the natures and missions of God and Jesus (Ahlstrom 1998, 5–6).

By 1803, only one of Boston’s nine Congregationalist churches was headed by a conservative minister. That same year, the liberal Henry Ware was appointed Harvard’s

Hollis Professor of Divinity, the longest established and most prestigious professorship in the nation. With Ware’s appointment, Harvard declared itself an unequivocally Unitarian institution (Dorrien 2001, 4).

Gary Dorrien’s The Making of American Liberal Theology: Imagining

Progressive Religion, 1805–1900 (2001) is the first volume of his monumental, three-part study intended to provide a comprehensive record and analysis of liberal Christianity in

America from its earliest days to the present. Noteworthy it is, then, that Quakers— whose beliefs were established in the mid-seventeenth century and transported to

America well before the close of that century—are mentioned just a few times in the volume, and are only obliquely linked to the liberal tradition. In truth, one could argue— as Dorrien does by omission and E. Digby Baltzell does explicitly in Puritan Boston and

Quaker Philadelphia (1979/2007)—that the Quaker rejection of hierarchy (and, thus, a driving and driven organizational structure), combined with a deliberate absence of an educated and ordained clergy who could serve as the public face and voice of the faith, limited the possibility for a coherent dissemination of the Quaker doctrine. In contrast,

Unitarians—with the powerful educational, institutional, and personal resources of

Harvard and the ministers it trained—were in a much better position to spread their liberal faith.

In The Philadelphia Quakers in the Industrial Age, 1865–1920 (1976), Philip S.

Benjamin discusses a series of setbacks experienced by the Friends in the nineteenth century that undermined their ability to serve as a compelling presence in American life.

In 1827, the Quakers suffered a massive and contentious schism between “Hicksite” and

“Orthodox” followers. Elias Hicks (1748–1830) was a Quaker mystic who lived on Long

Island; he emphasized “the inward light” and believed that salvation could be attained without scripture (Benjamin 1976, 10), thus establishing an even more liberal approach to, and understanding of, Christianity.

In the final third of the nineteenth-century, Quakers “were governed by a

Quietism which accentuated their aloofness from the rest of American society”

(Benjamin, ix). In America’s rapidly changing society, the appearance of some

Quakers—plain coats without lapels, a palette limited to gray, and broad-brimmed hat for men and bonnets for women—grew increasingly anachronistic and provincial (Benjamin,

3). With this said, it was the Quakers who established Philadelphia, and their influence on its culture remained dominant—through disproportionate representation on the boards of the city’s financial institutions, large commercial enterprises, and social-welfare organizations (Benjamin, viii)—long after they lost numerical sway in the city’s population and power among its elite.

Jewish Advocates of Americanization and Modernity: Rebecca Gratz and Isaac Leeser

Often described as the “foremost” or “most famous Jewess of the nineteenth century,” Rebecca Gratz (figure 5) was devoted to her faith, considered herself to be traditionally observant, and was remarkably active in her synagogue, Congregation

Mikveh Israel, and numerous Jewish and secular organizations and causes. She was, as well, a close friend and ardent admirer of the Reverend William Henry Furness.

From the late eighteenth through the nineteenth century, members of the Gratz family were stalwart—indeed, for several decades, the sustaining—members of

Congregation Mikveh Israel, Philadelphia’s first (and still extant) synagogue, which has been active since the 1740s. The family founded, helped to establish, and contributed to cultural and educational institutions such as the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, several libraries, and a school for the “deaf and dumb.“ Gratz biographer Dianne Ashton explains, “Raised in a decidedly exuberant family known for its patriotism, civic activism, and artistic taste, Rebecca Gratz refused to accept the unflattering and marginalizing depictions of Jews…in the early nineteenth century” (Ashton 1997, 17).

Rebecca Gratz’s exceedingly accomplished adulthood was filled with good works. As noted in the introduction, she established and was otherwise active in supporting and working with both Jewish and non-sectarian “benevolent” organizations serving the poor, particularly women and children. Unlike the overwhelming majority of women of her time, Gratz never married and did not have children of her own. It is important to note, however, that Gratz raised the six children of her sister Rachel, who died in 1823.

Figure 5: Rebecca Gratz, 1831, Thomas Sully (Image: Rosenbach Museum & Library, Philadelphia)

Rebecca Gratz was not a leader of worship, a role that was unthinkable for women in traditional Judaism. However, her talent for organizational, educational, and spiritual leadership was expressed in her establishment in 1838 and her ongoing role as teacher at the coeducational Hebrew Sunday School Society, which was the first of its kind in America. Gratz drafted prayers for the children to recite (these prayers were written in English as Gratz, like most Jewish women and many Jewish-American men, did not know Hebrew). She is believed to have written and published a kind of catechism—an innovation in Jewish education borrowed from Protestant Sunday- schools—for use by the school’s teachers that instructed them in how to help the children arrive at a concept of God.

Gratz worked closely with the German-born Isaac Leeser (1806–1868; figure 6).

Orphaned at the age of fourteen, Leeser nonetheless received thorough Jewish and 37

general educations before immigrating in 1824. He settled in Richmond, Virginia, where a maternal uncle awaited him. Leeser was soon fluent in English and became known for his scholarship in matters Jewish, his outspoken defense of Jews and Judaism in the face of those who defamed them, and his abilities as a synagogue officiant. Although

Ashkenazic, he was hired in 1829 by Philadelphia’s Sephardic Congregation Mikveh

Israel to serve as its hazan (cantor and prayer-leader). At Mikveh Israel, he led services according to the Sephardic rite, led funerals and subsequent mourning services, and— with permission from the congregations all powerful board of officers (adjunta)— performed other life-cycle events (Sarna 2005, 76).

Figure 6: Isaac Leeser as a Young Preacher, Solomon N. Carvalo, c. 1840 (Image: National Museum of American Jewish History, Philadelphia)

It is important to stress that Leeser was not a rabbi. The first individual who could make a reasonable claim to that title was Abraham Rice, who emigrated from Bavaria to

Baltimore in 1840 (Sarna 2004, 91). While Rice received smicha—traditional rabbinic ordination—it was not accompanied by secular university education, which became a requirement for rabbis serving in Western Europe and England during the nineteenth century.

Like Gratz, Leeser was innovative and open-minded in regard to accommodating

Judaism and Jews to life in the United States. The traditionalist Leeser was also the primary advocate of Jewish-American “regeneration”—a term borrowed from contemporary Protestants—in the first half of the nineteenth century (Sarna 2005, 76). In its explicit platform, Jewish-American regeneration meant turning away from sin and toward observance of Judaism’s elaborate and finely honed system of mitzvot (moral and ritual deeds performed as religious duties), cultivating refinement in behavior and values, and enhancing Jewish education. In practical application, “regeneration” was a route to modernization and Americanization (Sarna, 76). In this spirit, Leeser delivered his sermons and wrote his publications in English. Tellingly, he refused to excommunicate even obstreperous or lax congregants, for he deemed such an action as “contrary to

American values” (Sarna, 78).

Of particular concern for Leeser was, in the absence of a proper rabbinate, establishing the role of a Jewish minister. Leeser envisioned the Jewish American minister’s purvey extending beyond that of prayer-leader (hazan) to preacher, educator, pastor, and—most essentially—acknowledged spiritual leader of the congregation and its representative to the broader community. Leeser found the template for his calling in the professional responsibilities and public personae of respected Protestant ministers.

Whether speaking to Jews or Christians, he described himself as a minister (Sarna, 78–

79).

Given Leeser’s desire to pursue his vocation in a manner akin to that of Christian ministers—and his congregation’s growing prosperity and acceptance into the highest ranks of Philadelphia society—it is worth noting that Mikveh Israel’s second home, like

First Unitarian’s second church building, was designed by William Strickland (1788–

1854), Philadelphia’s leading architect of the era and champion of the Greek Revival. It is in the Greek Revival style (Doric, specifically) in which the second First Unitarian was built in 1828 (figure 7). Greek Revival differed from the general neoclassicism of the late-colonial, early national, and Federal periods in its more strict adherence to, and replication of, Greek forms. The Greek Revival was the first in the series of revivals that marked the nineteenth century. Tellingly, the synagogue designed by Strickland for

Mikveh Israel, which was completed in 1825, was Egyptian in style—the first example of

Egyptian Revival architecture in the United States (figure 8).

Strickland’s departure from the Greek Revival when designing Mikveh Israel speaks to a lasting trend among growing Jewish congregations in the nineteenth century.

Thriving Jewish congregations awarded prominent architects with commissions to design and build edifices that were as notable and imposing as leading churches nut distinguishable from them. This distinction—as was seen in a later rundbogenstil synagogue built by Mikveh Israel in 1860 and Frank Furness’s tour de force in an elaborated, individualistic version of the same style for Rodeph Shalom in 1869–1871— was made by drawing inspiration from “the East,” reflecting the perceived “Oriental”

origins of Judaism and Jews (a perception that overlooked Christianity’s Middle Eastern beginnings).

Figure 7: The second home of what is now called the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia. Designed by William Strickland, 1828. Engraving by Cephas G. Childs after the drawing by H. Reinagle (Courtesy Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia)

Figure 8: First purpose-built synagogue of Congregation Mikveh Israel, 1825, William Strickland (Courtesy American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati)

The discrepancy between Leeser’s concept of a Jewish-American ministry and what Mikveh Israel’s adjunta (lay leadership, or trustees) expected of a hazan led to a

tumultuous relationship with his congregation during his twenty-one-year tenure. Mikveh

Israel’s adjunta, more often than not, impeded Leeser as he sought to realize, and embody, his vision of a Jewish-American minister. For example, it was not until 1843 that the adjunta passed a resolution granting Leeser the formal right to deliver “a moral or religious lecture in the English language every Sabbath morning” (Sussman 1995, 136).

Although beleaguered by his own congregation—and dismissed from it 1851—

Leeser was, at least in retrospect, a figure of great importance in the development of

American Judaism. In addition to his work as a minister, he launched the monthly Jewish journal The Occident and American Jewish Advocate in 1843 (its only precedent in

America was a periodical titled The Jew, the purpose of which was to counter the efforts of Christian missionaries, and which was published for a mere two years, from 1823 to

1825; Sussman, 136–137). Leeser was one of the two original vice presidents of the

Board of Delegates of American Israelites, founded in 1859, and on which he served for the rest of his life. He was a primary force in founding Maimonides College in

Philadelphia, the first Jewish-American seminary, in 1867. Leeser was provost of the college and president of its faculty. Alas, Leeser held these positions for but a brief period—he died in 1868—and Maimonides College closed in 1873, having produced only three graduates (Diane A. King in Friedman 1983, 244).

It is notable that those who were most dedicated to preserving Leeser’s place in

Jewish-American history were the members of the so-called “Philadelphia Group”—

Mayer Sulzberger, Solomon Solis-Cohen, Cyrus Adler, and Sabato Morais (Sulzberger,

Solis-Cohen, and Adler were students who grew into acolytes of Leeser; Morais was

Leeser’s successor in Mikveh Israel’s pulpit). Their concern was developing a moderate,

modern, and assimilationist approach to maintaining the tenets and practices of traditional

Judaism—a goal and outlook that became raison d’etre of Conservative Judaism. Like

Reform Judaism, Conservative Judaism was a product of the university-centered

German-Jewish Enlightenment. Initially referred to as the “Positive-Historical School,”

Conservative Judaism sought to “conserve” long-established Jewish practice and liturgy while adapting to the needs and sensibilities of contemporary society. It, therefore, occupied a middle-ground between the perceived rigidity of Orthodoxy and experimentation of Reform, and became the ideological home for those who were previously considered “moderate Reformers”—including Morris Jastrow.

The “Philadelphia Group” represented the elite of Conservative Judaism in

Philadelphia and across the country. They were philanthropic, communal, and intellectual leaders who had a vast and lasting impact in developing a Jewish organizational and institutional infrastructure on both local and national levels (Sussman 1995, 246). Among their accomplishments was the founding of the Jewish Theological Seminary—the training ground for Conservative rabbis and educators—in New York in 1886.

In The Jews in America: The Roots, History and Destiny of American Jews

(1978/2001), Max I. Dimont writes of Isaac Leeser and Rebecca Gratz in the context of secularization and Reform. Contrasting them with the self-proclaimed reformers Isaac

Harby and Gustav Poznanski of Charleston (the city where, in 1825, America’s first

Reform congregation was established [Meyer 1988, 229]), Dimont notes that while

Harby and Poznanski focused on the religious aspects of Judaism, Leeser and Gratz addressed its secular needs. Specifically, Gratz and Leeser devoted their energies to developing an organizational infrastructure—including schools and benevolent societies

for orphans and widows—that met the needs and helped to sustain the Jewish community. Dimont notes, “Ironically, these two ostensibly Orthodox Jews did more to secularize Judaism than did the reform leaders of the times” (Dimont 2001, 69). Dimont goes on to argue that “this quintet of early reformers—[Gershom Mendes] Seixas, Harby,

Poznanski, Leeser, and Gratz—rather than the German Reform rabbis who arrived with the next generation of immigrants, set the foundations for American Reform Judaism”

(71).

In Isaac Leeser and the Making of American Judaism (1995), Lance J. Sussman compares Leeser’s experience with that of Furness, another outsider who came to

Philadelphia on the call of a congregation that was marginal—and often misunderstood and even viewed as suspect—to mainstream Philadelphia. Sussman contrasts the challenges faced by Lesser within his congregation with the great congregational and community-wide success of Leeser’s fellow religious outlier and Philadelphia outsider, the Reverend William Henry Furness, who quickly earned a reputation as an accomplished scholar, translator, orator, and spiritual leader (Sussman 1995, 59). Leeser has been described as an unattractive man who was depressive and difficult and had an unpleasant voice (Philipson 1929, 108; Sussman 1995, 253). Of Leeser, Sussman says in summary, “He basically lived a hard, lonely life” (253).

The Reverend Furness was described by Ralph Waldo Emerson as having “a face like a benediction” (Furness, Horace Howard 1910, 132). As seen in Rebecca Gratz’s admiration of and friendship with the Reverend Furness, and references to Gratz and other members of Philadelphia’s Jewish community attending Furness’s Wednesday and

Sunday services at First Unitarian, even those who were sympathetic and supportive of

Leeser and his goals preferred the company of Furness (Philipson 1929, 132, 133, 192,

240). While both were men of substantial and worthy content and accomplishment,

Leeser was at a disadvantage in matters of style. Moreover, Furness was a Harvard- educated ordained divine while Leeser was an autodidact who lacked ordination. Nor can we overlook the fact that Leeser represented a tiny community of Jews while Furness, although an advocate of a “dissenting” and rather marginal form of Christianity, was very much a member of America’s elite hegemony.

History has perhaps overcorrected the disparity in popularity experienced by the two men during their lifetimes. The scholarship of Jonathan Sarna, Lance Sussman, and numerous others places Leeser front and center in the development of American Judaism.

Today, the Reverend Furness is perhaps best known and most-often referred to as the father of Frank Furness. His contributions to Transcendentalist Unitarianism and abolitionism are not forgotten or disregarded, but they are little studied. Nonetheless, in their own day, Furness and Leeser received markedly different levels of welcome, comfort, and appreciation in their respective and shared milieux within Philadelphia’s evolving religious and cultural landscape.

Quakers Established, Universalists and Unitarians Emergent

Jews were a minuscule minority in Philadelphia—in 1830, their community consisted of but some 500-1,000 souls in a city of 80,000.4 Quakers, although long since

4 United States Census Bureau, “Population of the 100 Largest Cities and Other Urban Places in the United States, 1790 to 1990 (www.census.gov/population); cited December 11, 2011

overwhelmed in numerical terms by other groups, retained their honored and prestigious distinction as Philadelphia and Pennsylvania’s founders, and their culture continued to inform and shape civic and personal ways of life in the city and commonwealth. The

Transcendentalism of Furness and Emerson was “anticipated by the Quaker doctrine of the inward light and the Puritan doctrine of salvation as wrought by the solitary soul transfused by the Holy Spirit” (Buell 2006, xxiv). In his 1842 Essay on

Transcendentalism, Charles Mayo Ellis provides a definition of the movement that emphasizes the importance of the “inward light,” a concept shared by Unitarians and

Quakers (or, likely, borrowed by Unitarians from Quakers):

This, then, is the doctrine of Transcendentalism, the substantive, independent existence of the soul of man, the reality of conscience, the religious sense, the inner light, of man’s religious affections, his knowledge of right and truth, his sense of duty…his love for beauty and holiness, his religious aspirations—with this it starts as something not dependent on education, custom, command, or anything beyond man himself (Gura 2007, 11).

In a letter to Emerson dated April 27, 1840, Furness wrote, “Yr [sic] refusal to administer the Lord’s Supper [Communion] years ago, & your late omission of public prayers are both spoken of with an irrecognition of the existence of Quakers which is too ridiculous” (Furness 1910, 13). Metaphorically, Furness may have regarded

Philadelphia’s Quakers as spiritual siblings, but at least one Quaker fell firmly within the realm of family. Dr. Caspar Wister—a member of a prosperous German Quaker family that arrived in Pennsylvania in 1717—married Furness’s daughter, the acclaimed translator Annis Lee (1830–1908).

While the majority of Philadelphia’s Quakers of the period professed to be orthodox in their beliefs and practices, most—in actuality—followed the more liberal

views espoused by Elias Hicks. “Hicksite” Quakers held that the concept of the Inward

Light was the most essential element of the Quaker religion, more central to the faith than the Bible itself. Indeed, Hicks was described as Unitarian by Hicksite Quakers such as

Lucretia Mott (Geffen 1961, 163).

In 1825, the young William Henry Furness (1802–1886) arrived in the Quaker

City to serve as minister of the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia (“First Unitarian” hereafter). Furness was born in Boston to a family of old New England stock. He graduated from Harvard College in 1820 and from its Divinity School in 1823. He remained the minister of First Unitarian until 1875 and continued to serve in an emeritus status for the rest of his life.

Furness was the first full-time, properly educated and ordained minister of

Philadelphia’s Unitarian society, which was founded in 1796 by just twenty-one men, nearly all of whom were English-born merchants who came to the United States to escape the persecution inflicted upon them for their dissenting beliefs. First Unitarian was unique in that its congregants were English immigrants rather than New Englanders whose faith had evolved from Congregationalism. It is further distinguished as the first church in the United States to name itself Unitarian, “a name which was then under great odium, even among the liberal Congregationlists of New England, being equated in the public mind with ‘Deist’ or ‘Atheist’” (Geffen 1958, 260).

As noted in the introduction, Furness has not been the subject of a comprehensive biography nor is there a published history of First Unitarian. However, Elizabeth M.

Geffen’s Philadelphia Unitarianism, 1796–1861 (1961) provides a thorough study of the church—and Furness, the primary occupant of its pulpit for fifty years—within a broader

purview of the entirety of Unitarian Philadelphia (in truth, this broad purview is rather narrow, for there have never been more than a handful of Unitarian congregations in the

Quaker City. To my knowledge, there have been but four, of which First Unitarian, the

Unitarian Society of Germantown, and the Church of the Restoration—a Universalist congregation until 1961—remain (the fourth was in Philadelphia’s Spring Garden neighborhood). With the exception of the Church of the Restoration, the city’s Unitarian churches were founded by members of First Unitarian and remained closely connected to their “Mother Church” and its minister, the Reverend Furness. At the time of First

Unitarian’s founding in 1796, Philadelphia was home to some 70,000 individuals—a very large population—and its social and cultural lives were, perhaps, the most highly developed in the United States (Geffen 1961, 35).

The “intricate maze of cliques and sets” for which Philadelphia was known (35) was overwhelmingly Protestant but decidedly not Unitarian, at least at the time of the establishment of First Unitarian. For those with whom Furness studied at Harvard, “The call to Philadelphia was actually a call from the wilderness…” (Geffen 1958, 261).

Furness wrote in 1873 of his fellow New Englanders’ view of the Philadelphia society and its English congregants, who were considered radically liberal, “This church in

Philadelphia, composed almost exclusively of persons from the Old Country,…was looked upon pretty much as a settlement of Mahometans, an exotic, having no root in the soil. Even the liberally disposed in New England were shy of it, as going altogether too far” (261).

Geffen notes the delay in Furness’s settlement in a church—he was without one for more than a year after graduating from Harvard Divinity—and that, when a call did

arrive for this minister of unimpeachable background and education, it was from a small and obscure group of English Unitarians displaced to Philadelphia. She suggests that these inauspicious circumstances were due to Furness being “a convinced humanitarian, believing Jesus to have been entirely human, the son of God just as all men are sons of

God. This position was a good deal nearer to [Joseph] Priestley’s Unitarianism than it was to Boston’s, and was actually a whole generation in advance of New England

Unitarian orthodoxy” (262). Priestley (1733–1804; figure 9)—widely credited as the discoverer of oxygen—was an English scientist, educator, philosopher, political theorist, and radical theologian and cleric. Geffen’s reference to Priestley in the context of First

Unitarian is wholly pertinent. Priestley and his wife arrived in New York City in 1794 with the ultimate purpose of establishing a new home in the countryside of

Northumberland, Pennsylvania, a destination at a dramatic geographic and cultural remove from the discord Priestley faced in London.

Figure 9: Joseph Priestley, 1801, Rembrandt Peale (Image: American Philosophical Society)

The Priestleys stopped in Philadelphia on their way to Northumberland, where

Joseph Priestley was pressed by his fellow dissenting English expatriates to deliver a series of sermons. His discourses led to the formal establishment of Unitarianism in

Philadelphia.

Although Philadelphia lacked a formal Unitarian congregation at the time of

Priestley’s first visit, liberal Protestantism outside of the thoughts and practice of free- thinking and progressive individuals and groups in the Quaker community—indeed, strongly “dissenting” religious views—were not unknown in late-eighteenth-century

Philadelphia. Philadelphia was the political center of the emerging United States for most of the final quarter of the eighteenth century—it was the meeting place of the Continental

Congress and the new nation’s official capital from 1790 to 1800. There is great, ongoing debate regarding the specific religious views of those who gathered in Philadelphia to draft and issue the bedrock texts of the United States—the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the Articles of Confederation in 1777, the Constitution in 1787, and the Bill of

Rights, which was formally ratified in 1791.

However, it is safe to say that the writings and documented statements of

Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Cornelius Harnett, Thomas Jefferson, James

Madison, Gouverneur Morris, and Hugh Williamson reflect the “Deist” philosophy promulgated in America by Thomas Paine and Elihu Palmer. Reflecting the

Enlightenment emphasis on reason and scientific study and understanding of nature,

Deism affirms the existence of God but dismisses the possibility of divine intervention in natural events—thus calling into question the divine origin of scripture, the possibility of miracles, and the concept of the Trinity. The Deist perspective aligned with that of

nineteenth-century Unitarians, particularly Transcendentalists like William Henry

Furness.

While Deist—and, slightly later, Unitarian—thought was associated with educated and prosperous individuals of Anglo-American Protestant background,

Universalism represented a more populist variant on liberalized Protestant faith. In contrast to the Calvinist views of the Puritans and later Congregationalist “orthodoxy”— which holds that eternal salvation is the destiny of only a pre-determined “elect” and, thus, cannot be earned by an individual through earthly actions and beliefs—or even more liberal interpretations professing that Christian faith and good-works are the key to salvation, Universalism proffered the appealing assurance that every soul would eventually make peace with God and be saved. Most Unitarians shared this perspective.

As Ernest Cassara notes in Universalism in America: A Documentary History of a

Liberal Faith (1997), “Growing faith in man’s ability was to be the distinguishing feature of Unitarianism—despite the fact that the movement was to be tagged with a name stressing its rejection of the trinity and affirmation of the unity of the godhead” (4).

Philadelphia’s First Independent Church of Christ Commonly Called Universalist was organized in 1793 with forty-nine subscribers, including Dr. Benjamin Rush (1745–

1813), physician, Founding Father (he signed the Declaration of Independence), and reformer. While both Unitarianism and Universalism are associated with New England, generally, and Boston and its environs, in particular, Philadelphia was central in the development of Universalism in the United States. Indeed, Clinton Lee Scott declares in

The Universalist Church of America: A Short History (1957) that “The Pennsylvania province, with its practice of toleration, its protection from persecution, and its religious

heterogeneity, was the seed bed of American Universalism” (5). Conventions of

Universalist congregations were held in Philadelphia in 1790 and 1792 (Cassara 1997,

28).

Joseph Priestley was barred from speaking at any Philadelphia church with the exception of the Universalist meeting house on Lombard Street (the building, still extant, is now the home of the Jewish traditionalist Congregation Kesher Israel). Beginning on

February 14, 1796, at the invitation of the Universalist’s minister Elhanan Winchester,

Joseph Priestley delivered a series of sermons that were, as he expressed in gratitude, “an opportunity which the liberality of this congregation has now given me” (Priestley 1796,

16). These sermons were published in London that same year with the title Unitarianism

Explained and Defended, in a Discourse, Delivered in Philadelphia, 1796. And it was this series of discourses by Priestley that resulted in the founding of the First Unitarian

Church of Philadelphia with twenty-one subscribers.

Little separated Unitarians and Universalists in theology and philosophy. Cassara explains “both Unitarianism and Universalism are compromises between Christianity

(especially in its Calvinistic form) and Deism. The two liberal movements were heavily influenced by the worldview of the Deists, and both accepted the importance of reason in religion” (Cassara 1997, 6). Where they diverged from Deism was their engagement with scripture, albeit an engagement that included critical analysis. Unitarians and

Universalists both emphasized the unity of God (as opposed to Trinitarianism) and rejected the Christian concept of atonement: that the crucifixion of Jesus was a divinely ordained reparation—a revenge exacted by God—for human sin (Cassara, 6). Priestley

addressed, and rejected, this concept of atonement by citing William Penn’s arguments regarding the subject:

[A]s the famous Mr. Penn, the founder of this colony, in his excellent treatise The Sandy Foundation Shaken, observed, if the justice of God the Father required satisfaction, did not that of God the Son require an equal one, and what satisfaction was made to him? And it is absurd to suppose that he made it to himself; for then God the Father might have done the same” (Priestley 1796, 32; the italicization in this quote and those following reflect the original document).

Thus, Priestley established—while ostensibly “explaining and defending” to

Philadelphians the supposedly alien and heretical precepts of Unitarianism—that he was, in actuality, merely reaffirming the disseminated beliefs of William Penn, who established Philadelphia and Pennsylvania with the intent of providing refuge for religious dissenters.

Other writings by Penn further underscore the Unitarian nature of his Quaker beliefs. In The Sandy Foundation Shaken (1668)—a tract for which he spent time imprisoned in the Tower of London—Penn declares (as would a Unitarian), “If God, as the scriptures testify, hath never been declared or believed, but as the Holy One; then will it follow, that God is not an Holy Three, nor doth subsist in Three distinct and separate

Holy Ones.” Penn’s rejection of Trinitarianism was unequivocal.

In Unitarianism Explained and Defended, Priestley provides fascinating foreshadowing of two aspects of religious liberalism as it developed in Philadelphia in the nineteenth century: the importance of ecclesiastical architecture and a linking of

Jewish and Unitarian belief—and, with the latter, an apparent philo-Semitism. While encouraging those who attended his lectures to form small, informal societies immediately so they could begin meeting for worship, he emphasized the ultimate goal of

building a church, at least in part for its symbolic value—“[B]ut a church, and a place of public worship, known to all, and open to all who choose to attend it, is like a city that is set on a hill, that cannot be hid” (Priestley 1796, 12). Indeed, the architecture of the first church built by “The First Society of Unitarian Christians in the City of Philadelphia”— dedicated in 1813, designed by Robert Mills, and occupying the northeast corner of Tenth and Locust streets—differed radically from other churches in Philadelphia. Mills and his clients eschewed the prevailing cruciform plan and erected an octagonal building, thereby rejecting the Christian cross as a symbol appropriate for Unitarians (figure 10). The near- circular shape and modest height of the building suggest that the philosophy represented by the church and the activities that took place within it were inclusive and egalitarian.

As discussed earlier, the society’s second home—also at Tenth and Locust, replacing the octagonal church—was designed by William Strickland in the style of a Greek temple, evoking the rationality and intellectual and scientific curiosity associated with the classical world.

Priestley credited Jews and Judaism for introducing monotheism:

The worship of one God, and that one God the maker of all things, styled in the New Testament and by our Saviour himself his God and father, John xx. 17, was the one great object of the whole Jewish dispensation. The Hebrew nation was chosen, and set apart from the rest of the world, on purpose to be the repository of this great truth, while all other nations were sunk into idolatry, and the corrupt practices universally connected with it. The doctrine of the strict unity of God was considered the most fundamental of all religion by the whole body of the Jews in our Saviour’s time. They were then entirely free from idolatry, and dreaded the worship of any other Being than one; and by means of prophets of the Jewish nation, will the worship of the one true God be restored over the whole world (Priestley 1796, 25).

In contrast to prevailing Christian thought of the period and later, which held that

Judaism lost its mission with the arrival—and Jewish rejection of—Jesus, Priestley used the future tense when declaring “and by means of prophets of the Jewish nation, will the worship of the one true God be restored over the whole world.” Based on this passage, one could deduce that Priestley believed that Jews maintained to his day and beyond the mission of spreading the message of monotheism.

Despite considerable overlap in perspectives and the tightly intertwined histories of Unitarianism and Universalism in Philadelphia and elsewhere (the Unitarian and

Universalist denominations merged in 1961—following a century of considering the possibility), the activities of the city’s Universalist churches are not discussed in Horace

Traubel’s The Conservator, the periodical of note for liberal religious developments in

Philadelphia in the late nineteenth century. This omission may have been socioeconomic.

Despite his socialism, the movements Traubel championed—Unitarianism, Reform

Judaism, and Ethical Culture—were largely the domain of the wealthy, well-educated, or otherwise elite. Universalism attracted “the lower classes” (Cassara 1997, fn 87).

Figure 10: The first home of what is now called the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia. Designed by Robert Mills, 1813 (Image: First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia)

First Unitarian’s tiny but devoted band of congregants worked hard to establish themselves both economically and socially while exercising their freedom of religious conscience by maintaining their church and participating in its services. Unfortunately,

Priestley, whose acclaim and notoriety as an outspoken political and theological liberal made him a target and source of divisiveness and controversy, and Unitarianism were thoroughly intertwined in the minds of Philadelphians (Geffen 1961, 47). This remained so long after Priestley departed from Philadelphia, and even after he departed this mortal coil. Geffen notes that, “Although Philadelphia was a center of Protestantism, that did not extend to Unitarianism. Its services and meetings were not listed in the city’s newspapers” (Geffen 1958, 261). In a letter dated September 20, 1825—almost immediately following his arrival in Philadelphia—Furness wrote that the city’s

Unitarians were “about as obscure and despised as any company of Methodists or such like are in Boston” (Geffen 1958, 261–262).

The theological and philosophical overlap between Quakers and Unitarians manifested itself in a way that testifies to Furness’s skills as a preacher and the growing popularity and acceptance of First Unitarian. Philadelphia was the epicenter of Quaker life in the U.S. and the city was rich with Quaker meetings. However, an observation written by Furness on December 27, 1830—just five years after Furness’s arrival in the city and at First Unitarian— indicates that among those who attended his services were a noteworthy number of Quakers. He wrote in a letter that he evening service included “an anthem finely sung. But there are too many Quakers in our society to like such a display.”

(Geffen 1961, 163). Worth noting is the Great Separation between Hicksite and Orthodox

Quakers in 1827, in which the Orthodox retained all but one of the city’s Quaker

meetinghouses (Geffen 1976, 11). The Quakers attending First Unitarian may have been displaced Hicksites.

Abolitionism in Philadelphia: The Legacy of Quakers and Unitarians

Due in large part to the belief and efforts of Philadelphia’s Quakers, abolitionism had a long and active history in Pennsylvania. Organized abolitionist activities in the

Delaware Valley date to 1639. The first formal abolitionist statement written and made public in England’s American colonies was the work of a group of Germantown Quakers in 1688. Founded in 1775, “The Pennsylvania Society for promoting the Abolition of

Slavery, for the relief of free Negroes, and for improving the Condition of the African

Race” (the Pennsylvania Abolition Society) was the first abolitionist association established in the United States. In 1780 a law was passed for the gradual abolition of slavery in Philadelphia: no child could thereafter be born into slavery, and all those who were currently enslaved would be freed when they turned twenty-eight. It was the first such law in the United States.

William Penn’s “Holy Experiment” seemed to yield largely positive results.

However, Philadelphia experienced a series of increasingly virulent mob riots in the

1820s and 1830s. The early riots—triggered by a nativism reflecting the social and economic fears and insecurities of rapidly growing and industrializing city attracting

“newcomers,” both while and black—had a wide array of targets, but African Americans became a particular object of the madness in the 1820s and the 1830s. Philadelphia experienced a rash of violent, racist riots during these decades. Generalized racism and xenophobia among the rioting mobs came to focus on abolitionism. The violence reached its apex with the torching and destruction of Pennsylvania Hall, which was built by and

intended as a central meeting-place for various abolitionist groups, in May 1838, just days after its completion. Appalled, the Reverend William Henry Furness—by then in the thirteenth year of his ministry at what came to be called the “First Unitarian Christian

Church of Philadelphia”—committed himself to ardent, persistent, and high-profile opposition to slavery, a call of conscience that brought the reforming nature of

Philadelphia Unitarianism beyond the church walls and into the public square.

Quakers were prominent among those who started and sustained the anti-slavery movement. Jews were relatively mute on the issue of abolition. This may be because of the ambiguity of their own racial status—they were often referred to, and even referred to themselves, as a “race.” At differing points in time and place across American history,

Jews were regarded as something other than “white.” The insecurity of their positions in previous lands, where they typically tolerated aliens rather than citizens, may have created an aversion to rocking the boat in America. Another rationalization for Jewish silence on the issue of abolition was the importance of international trade was central to

Jewish economic wellbeing and, relatedly, to their individual and communal survival.

The slave-trade was an enormous component of international commerce in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and it benefited both the northern and southern United States.

Unitarian liberalism would suggest an inclination to abolitionism, but their predominantly elite status and full engagement with and integration into the broad society—and, one can suggest, the absence of the imperative idealism strengthened by relative insularity that distinguished the Quakers—left Unitarian congregations divided on the issue. Such was the case at the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia. But with the

Reverend William Henry Furness’s conversion to the abolitionist cause in 1838, and his

emergence as the city’s most vocal abolitionist, made abolitionism central to the experience of First Unitarian’s members over the coming, tumultuous decades.

Commitment to slavery by some and the commitment to its abolition by others set the stage, most essentially, for the Civil War. It also developed the context, connections, and methods of advocacy and protest for those who opposed slavery. This cohort saw

American institutions other than slavery that were in need of reform. From their ranks came demands for women’s rights, accessible public schooling, the elimination of child labor and the broader strengthening of the status of factory workers as the Industrial

Revolution expanded, and so many other pressing societal needs. The specific cause of abolitionism gave rise to the culture of reform. As the southernmost port-city in the

North, Philadelphia had many citizens who were quite literally invested in slavery. But it was also among the first American cities to have a substantial population of free blacks, a significant proportion of whom reached the economic status of the middle-class and developed the communal infrastructure that marked middle-class life among whites. In

1688, Quakers in the Germantown (later incorporated into Philadelphia) were the first

Americans to denounce slavery; Quakers remained stolid opponents to the institution. In

1775, the first abolitionist society in America—“The Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, and for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, and for Improving the Condition of the African Race”—was launched in Philadelphia.

Although it took thirteen years after his arrival in Philadelphia for William Henry

Furness to take up the Abolitionist cause, when he did so it was with a vengeance and he advocated relentlessly and fearlessly. The liberalism, diversity, and tolerance of

Philadelphia provided Furness the New Englander with a context. But his well-honed,

highly informed, and deeply held Boston Unitarian values propelled him forward. His

Unitarian pulpit, which he came to hold with great popularity and prominence in

Philadelphia, provided his platform.

Chapter 3. THE REVEREND WILLIAM HENRY FURNESS:

TRANSCENDENTALIST UNITARIAN MINISTER, ABOLITIONIST, AND

ARTS-ADVOCATE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY PHILADELPHIA

William Henry Furness arrived in Philadelphia in 1825 as something of an alien.

He was a Massachusetts native of Puritan stock in a historically Quaker city with a well- established social hierarchy. He was a Harvard-educated minister who preached

Unitarianism, a denomination little known outside of New England with a theology that broke radically with the rest of Christianity by denying the Trinity and the divinity of

Jesus. His prospects for surviving in Philadelphia were slight. But with his wife, the former Annis Pulling Jenks, he transformed the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia and its congregants from an obscure and questionable society of recently displaced

Englishmen to a venerable institution composed of honorable Americans. An amiable and open-minded individual, he possessed oratorical and intellectual skills that soon made him a significant public figure in Philadelphia and ensured his leadership among progressive Philadelphians. He stands at the center of the network of individuals and the architectural landscape that are the paired focus of this study.

First Unitarian grew, with an influx of New Englanders outnumbering the English immigrants and those native (or local) to Philadelphia. In 1828, the church built a new, neoclassical structure on its original site, which was twice the size of the previous building (Geffen 1961, 137). In time, the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia grew so prominent and popular, and Furness’s reputation so widely celebrated and unassailable,

that many New England-based Unitarian ministers shed their misgivings about

Philadelphia and traveled to the city to preach at Furness’s church.

First Unitarian’s first purpose-built home, the distinctive octagonal structure designed by Robert Mills and dedicated in 1810, sat 300. The Doric temple conceived by

William Strickland for First Unitarian, dedicated just three years after Furness’s 1825 arrival in Philadelphia, accommodated some 600. Later in his pastorate, Furness became an exceedingly active and engaged advocate for the arts and a much-called-upon speaker on their behalf. However, at the dedication of First Unitarian’s second purpose-built home on November 5, 1828, Furness made only passing reference to the physical aspects of the church. This exceedingly brief description, although telling of the restrained and utilitarian Unitarian sensibility (one shared by Philadelphia’s Quakers, one could argue), was greatly overshadowed by Furness’s focus on the spiritual purpose of the church.

Addressing the members of First Unitarian, he said:

You have erected this chaste and commodious structure not merely for your own comfort, but for the sake of a high and holy cause, for which you believe to be the glorious gospel of the blessed God. (Furness 1828, 33)

Notably, the focus of the dedication sermon was Unitarianism itself. This was a logical approach, given that such a momentous occasion was likely to attract not only confirmed members of the congregation but also those Philadelphians eager to see the interior of a prominent new structure in their city. Fitting it is, then, that Furness seized the opportunity presented by the dedication to explain the little understood precepts of

Unitarianism, a faith that many regarded as suspect and even heretical. He proclaimed that the new church was dedicated to…

…the one God as strictly one person, of supreme, unrequited and unrivalled divinity, and infinitely exalted above all other things, the almighty creator and everlasting possessor of all things. (Furness 1828, 7– 8)

He related the Unitarian understanding of Jesus:

We dedicate this house to the solemn purposes of religion, believing Jesus Christ to be not the supreme God, but the great teacher whom the Father sanctified and sent. (Furness 1828, 8)

Extending his use of language familiar to trinitarian Christians (such as “the Father”) to convey Unitarian concepts, Furness continued:

We consecrate this spot to the Holy Spirit. And we understand by the holy spirit not a distinct person, but the power of the Father, particularly as it is exercised in the spiritual world. (Furness 1828, 8)

Finally, in his dedication sermon, after deftly emphasizing unequivocal monotheism,

Furness introduced the humanistic emphasis on ethical behavior that is the other half of the core idea of liberal religion in the Judeo-Christian tradition—that is, ethical- monotheism—by declaring:

We set apart this place to the inculcation of those views of human duty which imply the moral ability of man without any metaphysical reservations. (Furness 1828, 10)

Furness’s first and overarching imperative desire was to achieve and share a profound understanding of the life and teachings of an unequivocally human Jesus. To achieve this, Furness devoted decades of study and exegesis to the synoptic Gospels— those of Matthew, Mark, and Luke—which are relatively consistent in their narratives and were, and continue to be, considered primary sources for historical information about the life of Jesus. Like the Transcendentalists with whom he was associated, Furness was

deeply influenced by and had accepted the precepts of biblical literary and historical analysis known as the Higher Criticism (the analysis of scripture as historic and literary documents), which first developed in early-nineteenth-century German universities.

Furness was exposed o the Higher Criticism while a student at Harvard ’s Divinity

School.

In a letter to his lifelong friend Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) dated January

15, 1849, Furness wrote “My chief hobby for years past, you know, has been in the life of

Christ, in a literary point of view perhaps rather than religious” (Furness 1910, 70; emphasis added). Nevertheless, Furness regarded the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and

Luke as historically accurate. He referred to their authors as “Jesus’ biographers” rather than evangelists (Hoffman 1983, 246). As R. Joseph Hoffman noted in his 1983 article

“William Henry Furness: The Transcendentalist Defense of the Gospels,” “the theological faculty in Heidelberg…showed that the New Testament text had undergone a complicated series of redactions to bring the biography and teaching of Jesus into line with the developing theology of the second-century church” (258). Furness knew that

Christian scripture, doctrine, and rituals were the products of more than a millennium of interpretation, reinterpretation, and what many scholars and ministers would declare misinterpretation. At a time when mainstream American Unitarians considered Scripture to be divine and eternal law, Furness maintained profound respect and even reverence for the Bible while seeing it as did German proponents of the Higher Criticism: as the work of humans influenced by informed by particular historical and other mortal circumstances

(254).

Above all else, the influence of Transcendentalism on Furness is seen in his naturalist approach to interpreting scripture. Furness was a naturalist, although in a more gentle manner than that of the literary school and philosophy that bear that name. He wrote that in directing “attention to the study of the works and ways of nature, as the great means of obtaining knowledge of the perfection which is our aim, I do not for a moment exclude Christianity as a means to the same end. For, from the true point of view, Christianity is comprehended in nature” (Furness 1855, 143; emphasis added).

Both Emerson and Furness believed that there was a connection between the spiritual and moral spheres, and that the world was the product of a single “Oversoul”—a single mind and soul made manifest in nature (Hoffman 1983, 246–247). In contrast to Emerson,

Furness proclaimed that nature and Christian belief were wholly compatible and, therefore, that the core concepts of Christianity were a unique revelation of the universal mind. Per Furness’s decidedly Christian engagement with transcendentalism, Jesus was the “New Teacher” that Emerson predicted—and argued for, although not in a specifically Christian context—in his address to the Divinity School (Ziff 1982, 127).

In a letter to Emerson dated April 27, 1840, Furness describes his investigation of the life of Jesus in naturalistic and transcendentalist terms:

Why should not the works of Jesus be introduced within the circles of natural facts, instead of being excluded as anomalies. Do they not help us as no other facts do to enlarge our view of Nature? Do they not bear witness to spiritual forces? (Furness 1910, 16)

He extends and introduces a note of Christianized pragmatism when he states in his

Discourses:

How then are we to oppose the wrong? I say, in one word, with the Truth. And by Truth, I do not mean any set of theological doctrines…but Truth,

in relation to the right and wrong of our social institutions, and the laws, practices, opinions of the living world, in which we daily live and move and have our being. (Furness 1855, 265)

Furness considered the Gospels as written by men, but in “innocence,” i.e., without agenda. He upheld the synoptic Gospels as “truth,” for they convinced him of Jesus’s life as an exemplary man among men (Gura 2007, 100).

Where Furness departed from mainstream Unitarianism was in his understanding of the miracles performed by Jesus. The miracles described in the New Testament were a source of enormous and divisive conflict among Unitarians in the 1820s and 1830s.

Mainstream Unitarians held that Christ’s deeds “marked divine intervention in the physical world” and validated “the truth of [Jesus’] message” (100). Furness, in an implicit affirmation of scientific research and discovery, argued that “given man’s limited and still expanding knowledge of the physical world, he should not presume to know whether such things were beyond the realm of sensory experience” and that “Mankind believed in his [Jesus’] teachings primarily because of their congruence with man’s own internal, spiritual sense” (100).

Furness’s motivation to determine and disseminate the factual truths of Jesus’s existence is revealed in a letter to Emerson dated September 1869. He wrote, “I am as much interested as ever in…the historical facts of the Life of Jesus. Since the world has been disputing about him for so many centuries, I can’t think it’s the waste of a life to give it to the attempt to establish the truth about him” (Furness 1910, 145). Furness did not seek to diminish Jesus by emphasizing his humanity. As he was unwaveringly resolute in his belief that Jesus was mortal rather than divine, he was equally convinced that the example set by Jesus grew only stronger when he was viewed as a man of

exceptional wisdom and goodness rather than a deity or part of a larger Godhead. In his

Discourses of 1855, one of twenty-two books published by Furness in his lifetime,

Furness proclaimed that Jesus’ power is derived through “his pure humanity, his being so thoroughly human, identifying him forever with the sorrows and the struggles, with the aspirations and the triumphs of the whole race of man,—it is his greatness, but his greatness always as a man, that renders him under God our nearest relative and friend”

(Furness 1855, 111–112).

Emerson’s love for Furness was deep and never wavered. In a letter dated October

15, 1845, he wrote to his friend of childhood, college, and adulthood, “[A]s far back as I can remember in life you ever stand in the shape of a benefactor to me. I shall write a hymn to you one day” (Furness 1910, 45). To another correspondent, he wrote that

William Henry Furness “has a face like a benediction, and a speech like a benefaction…”

(Furness 1922, 1:xvii).

Emerson’s goodwill and positive regard for his lifelong friend were reciprocated by Furness. On September 19, 1847, Furness wrote to Emerson, “I think of you in your high office as prophet & priest.” In March 1888 he explained to an unknown recipient,

“My own obligations to my life-long friend are beyond telling. You know how deeply and how long I have been trying to ascertain the simple historical truth concerning Him, whom I have learned to consider the greatest by far of all our teachers. Emerson has said things here and there that have flashed as from Heaven upon the pages of the New

Testament as I have read them” (Furness 1910, xvii). This statement testifies to the importance and influence of Emerson’s thought on Furness’s scholarly research, theological perspectives and, thus, the worldview that shaped and was espoused in his

congregational ministry. Emersonian Transcendentalist philosophy and worldview was and is associated with rejection of creed, dogma, canon, and a hierarchical, institutional, centralized church (that is, what was later described as “organized religion”) and emphatic emphasis on the individual’s unstructured, intuitive, and direct mystical communion and experience rather than formalized communal worship (Schmidt 2012,

33). Furness’s testimony to the impact and centrality of Emerson’s insights on his own demonstrates and explains how Furness—who was committed to scripture, Unitarian

Christianity as theology and a religious body, and to public gathering for prayer, uplift, and edification—could function inside, identify with, and be considered a founding and continuing member of the Transcendentalist cohort (Buell 2006, 31).

Emerson delivered his iconoclastic “Address to the Harvard Divinity School” in

1838, two years after Furness published his convention-defying Remarks on the Four

Gospels. In his enormously controversial address, Emerson dismissed two foundational theological tenets of early-nineteenth-century American Unitarianism—that the Gospel narratives of the miracles performed by Jesus were factual, proving the unique power and singular legitimacy of Christianity, and that Jesus was God’s preeminent and, ultimately, definitive messenger to humankind. Emerson followed this with a stinging critique of contemporary preaching, which Emerson encouraged each graduate of the divinity school to correct by preaching prophetically as if he were a “a newborn bard of the Holy Ghost”

(Buell 2006, 129). The address caused a long-lasting rift between the Unitarian establishment and the denomination’s more radical wing. Ultimately, the perspectives proffered by the radicals became normative Unitarian belief.

Emerson declared in the address that “Miracles, prophecy, poetry, the ideal life, the holy life, exist as ancient history merely; they are not in the belief, nor in the appreciation of society; but, when suggested, seem ridiculous” (134) and relates that

“From the views I have already expressed, you will infer the sad conviction, which I share, I believe, with numbers, of the universal decay and now almost death of faith in society. The soul is not preached. The Church seems to totter to its fall, almost all life extinct” (137).

Sydney Ahlstrom presents the consensus view of the importance Emerson’s

Divinity School Address, saying “Historians would call this address a milestone in the development of the Liberal Faith; indeed, cautious Unitarians feared that they heard in these calmly spoken words the fulfillment of the prophecy…that Unitarianism was the halfway house to infidelity” (Ahlstrom 1998, 3). Ahlstrom adds that Emerson’s address, and Transcendentalism in general, mark “a turning point in the process by which

Unitarianism was changed from a Christian denomination into a diversified and completely nonconfessional ethical and religious movement” (30). Indeed, this is an accurate description of today’s Unitarianism.

Furness supported his friend in a telling manner, one that was essentially conservative: “It was wise advice which you gave the Divinity School, not to overthrow but revivify existing institutions” (Furness 1910, 15). With that said, it is clear that

Furness shared at least some of Emerson’s frustrations. He wrote (albeit of Christianity, in general, rather than Unitarianism specifically) “And now the history of the Church from the earliest days to the present—what is it but the history of bigotry, hypocrisy, and persecution, the warring of sects, the splitting of mankind into angry parties, loading one

another with all sorts of abuse. And all this evil has been produced by opinions concerning Religion, which Christ never uttered” (Furness 1855, 188–189).

Furness the reformer—a believer that reformed theology will bring about social change—is distinctly evident in the following statement: “Again and again is it urged:

Preach pure and uncorrupt Christianity, extend Unitarianism, and all iniquity, personal and public, will disappear, all inhuman institutions, Slavery and War, will be abolished: a pure faith will produce a pure practice” (Furness 1855, 84). As scholars like Geffen have noted, it was an age of reform, an era in which many committed themselves to improving the human condition in a sometimes bewildering range of manners. Among the most prominent, widespread, and sustained concerns among nineteenth-century reformers were women’s rights, temperance, care for those ill in body and mind, sanctuary and support for orphans and destitute women, and the abolition of slavery (with the latter being perhaps the preeminent cause of the day). The Reverend Furness was energetic in his engagement with an imposing range of reform initiatives, but it was abolition that claimed his passion (Geffen 1958, 255).

Furness had a seemingly boundless belief in, and a sincere sense of optimism about, the betterment of humankind. But this enthusiasm was not that of the purely rational intellectual, the scientist, or the prevailing Victorian faith in “Progress.” Furness argued that an unfettered understanding of the Gospels was the key to enriching human existence. He embraced Darwinism because it was supported by the facts of nature, and natural fact could not be contrary—in Furness’s perspective—to the facts of Christianity, which he considered the “religion of nature” (Hoffman 1983, 252). For Furness,

“evolution” was the route moral and spiritual elevation. To wit, quoting from “Natural

Religion: Nature and Christianity Identified,” a lecture Furness delivered at Harvard on

May 12, 1847—“The highest, the elect, are the ones whom nature selects; the fittest to live are those who are ready to die for others, sacrificing their mortal existence if need be to lift up the weakest of their fellowship” (252).

Furness’s tolerance, intellectual curiosity and activity, and the sense of welcome he exuded touched those who fell not only outside his particular understanding of

Unitarianism but outside of Christianity itself. A Unitarian minister of moderate stripe,

Furness, placed the human Jesus—a Jesus who fit within the Jewish tradition of prophetic and sage mortals, but definitively superseded all who had come before him—at the center of his theology. He respected Jews as the people of the scriptures, the people of whom

Jesus was born, and as contemporary individuals he knew and with whom he socialized and shared intellectual and civic pursuits in Philadelphia. His 1830 “Apology for the

Jews,” while not dismissing the canard of Christ-killing, emphasized Christianity’s

Jewish roots and lauded the Jewish people for maintaining their faith in the face of unrelenting and often violent persecution. Ultimately, Furness’s “An Apology for the

Jews” was an argument against, and a condemnation of, Christian prejudice against Jews.

While Christian ministers of the American colonial and federal eras discussed Jews in biblical terms, and sometimes ventured as far afield as to address topics such as the continued existence of Jews and their persisting unwillingness to accept Jesus as humanity’s Savior (Jacobson 1998, 171–172, 177), they did not in any way advocate on behalf of Christian “acceptance”—and even celebration, as encouraged by Furness—of

Jews, much less indicate that Christians had subjected Jews to unwarranted persecution.

In contrast, Furness urged his listeners and readers to “cherish toward the Jews” (Furness

1830, 2).

Furness inspired and encouraged ecumenicalism. He was not a proselytizer and he strongly discouraged it in others stating, in a spirit of pluralism that seems especially remarkable for its time, that he regarded religious diversity “not only as natural and inevitable, but as inevitable and useful’” (quoted in Geffen 1961, 176). Furness was proud and spoke often of the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia’s role, from its beginning, as a point of gathering for those of widely differing religious convictions

(Hoffman 1983, 251).

His pronouncements, addresses, and actions indicate that Furness either actively promoted or was deeply engaged with and informed by forward-looking approaches, philosophies, and theories such as Higher Criticism, transcendentalism, pragmatism, naturalism, and even Darwinism. First and foremost, however, Furness was a committed

Unitarian minister of progressive inclination. He believed that “what the religion of Jesus itself was at the first—a spirit of love and power and of a sound mind’” (quoted in

Hoffman 1953, 242). What he said, wrote, and did were done to promote the faith he professed and to pursue the mission—the abolition of slavery—which he believed his faith demanded of him.

Furness, Compelled by Faith to Advocate for Abolition

If Furness’s first concern was with the Man of Nazareth, his second—yet similarly all-consuming—preoccupation was with the predicament of the Man of Africa in the United States (Geffen 1958, 263). Time and time again, Furness gave witness to

and condemned the treatment of African Americans at the hands and through the laws of

European Americans. This condemnation along with outrage and a sense of immediate is seen in the following statement and countless more made over the decades: “What at this very hour is this Christian people doing, buying and selling human flesh, hunting the fugitives, and so treading down into the dust the verbal laws of him whom every Sunday, and in all their churches they solemnly profess to honor, making the corner-stone of their civil Union the crushed souls of those over whom the precepts of Christ in vain throw their protection” (Furness 1855, 76).

He characterized slavery and oppression as the greatest possible affronts against

Christianity, to which the overwhelming majority of Americans swore allegiance just as they did, with galling irony when viewed through eyes of slavery’s opponents, to their country as a bastion of freedom and liberty. Oft-forgotten is the fact that slavery remained legal, albeit it in a determinedly diminishing degree, in Pennsylvania into the nineteenth century. Pennsylvania’s Abolition Act of 1780 initiated only a gradual approach to the elimination of slavery: those already enslaved when the act was passed remained slaves; their children were considered indentured servants until the age of 28.

Furness came somewhat late to public denouncement of slavery, perhaps out of concern for the well-being of what had long been a marginal institution and its congregants who, by making the conscious choice to join First Unitarian, took upon themselves “…the burden of disfavor” (Geffen 1958, 262). Furness’s commitment to

Abolitionism emerged, seemingly fully formed, in 1839, fourteen years after his arrival in

Philadelphia. Events in his adopted hometown cried for intelligent and resilient response.

Within a year of the May 1838 destruction of Pennsylvania Hall by an anti- slavery mob, Furness became and forever remained an indefatigable advocate of abolition. It was said that he preached against slavery every Sunday for twenty-five years

(Geffen 1958, 270). On a less anecdotal note, William Still, who served as corresponding secretary of the Vigilance Committee of the Underground Railroad, wrote a history of that organization in his 1872 account of that organization published by the Pennsylvania

Anti-Slavery Society in 1872. He declared:

Among the Abolitionists of Pennsylvania no man stands higher than Dr. Furness; and no anti-slavery minister enjoys more universal respect. For more than thirty years he bore faithful witness for the black man; in season and out of season contending for his rights. When others deserted the cause he stood firm; when associates in the ministry were silent he spoke out. (Geffen 1958, 259)

Not surprisingly, Furness brought a distinctly biblical perspective to his fight for the freedom of the enslaved Man of Africa. For Furness, slavery was contrary to divine law because the Bible stated that all men are created equal, in God’s image. Therefore, the continued subjugation of one group of humans by another was a sin (279).

Moreover, Furness viewed slavery as a moral failing that left no segment of the

American population untouched. He argued that slavery degraded both the slave and the enslaver. In his sermons and lectures Furness fervently and relentlessly denounced slavery, saying that it weakened the nation’s mental and moral strength, discredited the integrity of United States and its self-proclaimed raison d’être as the land of the free, and made the nation vulnerable to charges of extreme hypocrisy in the international community.

In his Discourses of 1855, Furness wrote that instead of telling once more the

story of the Good Samaritan, “[L]et him tell the people of this land a Parable of the Good

African, proving to us that the African is our neighbor…and there are thousands who

would cry out against him as a dangerous fanatic and a blasphemer, not fit to live”

(Furness 1855, 82). In impassioned correspondence to Emerson, Furness wrote of the

fight against slavery as epic and international, barely stopping short of casting it as a

metaphysical battle between good and evil.

The struggle is tremendous. It is the world’s battle. The regeneration of Europe is to be decided here. How grand it is to see the cause of God & man making its way against the passions, the interests, the will of man! How sublimely the banner streams out against the wind! Nearly all the Republican speakers begin with vigorously disclaiming Abolitionism. Don’t you want to make an Anti Slavery Speech which shall be ‘the terror of the earth’? I do. (Furness 1910, 112)

Curiously, there is no mention in publications from the period—including the many printed editions of individual and collected sermons and discourses by Furness—or in histories such as Elizabeth Geffen’s Philadelphia Unitarianism, 1796–1861 of racial integration among the membership or others who attended services at First Unitarian. One notable, and perhaps telling, exception to this gap in the historical record is Frances Ellen Watkins

Harper, the first woman of African descent to have her poetry and fiction published in the

United States (among her printed works are Forest Leaves (1845); Poems on

Miscellaneous Subjects (1854); the short-story “The Two Offers,” published in Anglo-

African Magazine (1859); and Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted (1892). Harper was a member of First Unitarian from 1870 until her death in 1911. In addition to writing, was a political and social activist who regularly lectured on abolition before and during the Civil

War, the Reconstruction and African American civil rights after the war, temperance, and

women's rights, including the right to educational opportunities equal to those available to men. Like the Reverend Furness, Harper was a reformer.

Seeing and Seeking the Spiritual in Art and Architecture

William Henry Furness denied any talent in, or proclivity toward the arts:

I am an adept neither in the science nor the philosophy of Art. Nor have I enjoyed any but the most common opportunities for the cultivation of correct taste. I do not say these things, which are simply matters of fact, merely for the sake of modesty. (Furness 1848, 1)

Despite these remonstrations to the contrary, Furness demonstrated ability and interest in

the visual arts and creative expression throughout his life. He was a skilled and

enthusiastic draftsman, and architectural aficionado (he collected architectural sketches

while at Harvard) and patron, a literary critic, a translator of German verse, and a hymnist

(Lewis 2001, 9–10, 15).

His children did not enter their father’s profession, the ministry, but all chose

artistic vocations. William Henry Furness, Jr., (1827–1867) was a painter, primarily of

portraits. Annis Lee Furness Wister (1830–1908) translated German literature into

English; a set of thirty volumes of her work was published in 1888. Horace Howard

Furness (1833–1912) became the leading Shakespearian scholar of the nineteenth

century, the editor of the comprehensive Valorium of the great playwright’s work. Frank

Furness (1839–1912) pursued architecture, and was notably prolific and influential in the

field.

The home in which the Reverend Furness and his wife, Annis Pulling Jenks

Furness, established their markedly accomplished family was a lively gathering place for

Philadelphia’s cultural and intellectual leaders, particularly those of an “advanced”

orientation. Among his congregants and friends were the painters Rembrandt Peale

(1778–1860), Thomas Sully (1783–1872), Hugh Bridport, (1794–c. 1868), and John

Sartain (1808–1897), a pioneer in the revival of the mezzotint. Indeed, First Unitarian appears to be the spiritual home of choice for Philadelphia’s engravers for, in addition to

Sartain, its members included Samuel Carpenter, Cephas Childs, Gideon Fairman, Robert

Lovett, Joseph Ives Pease, Henry Saulnier, Asa Spencer, Charles Toppan, and William

Tucker (Geffen 1961, 256–293).

Furness’ first major discourse on the topic of art—or, at least, the oldest extant in print—was an address to the Art-Union of Philadelphia on October 12, 1848. The Art-

Union was a subscription organization. In return for their annual dues, members received an engraving. Funds raised were used to purchase additional “pictures,” which subscribers had the opportunity to win through a lottery. Displaying his Germanophilia,

Furness said in regard to the establishment of art-unions:

[They took] their rise in Germany—the land, to which we are indebted for so much, for the Printing Press, Gunpowder, and the Protestant Reformation: the three great elements, as they have been termed, of modern civilization. (Furness 1848, 4)

Thus, Furness wasted no time in linking art and religion, Protestantism in particular. He emphasizes and expands upon this point by explaining:

But the simple truth is, that the Fine Arts—Poetry, Music, Painting, and Sculpture—were all natural, and the highest works of Art in either of these departments, those works which are inspired and fashioned by the finest genius, are the highest works of Nature. That principle of the human soul, of which the Fine Arts are at once the offspring and the witnesses, is the love of the beautiful; in its first stage the love of visible beauty, but in its essence and aspiration the love of spiritual beauty, of the Eternal Harmony, of the infinite grace and beauty of God. (Furness 13)

He continues, “In connection with religion [the “Fine Arts”] have done more for the elevation of mankind than is acknowledged, or can well be estimated” (Furness, 24).

Particularly germane to this study, Furness argues for a link between the reform and improvement of the domestic setting—and the uplift of those who dwell within— through appreciation, and good influence, of art. He notes, “For if our parlors are ever to be well furnished, if the fine union of beauty and comfort is ever to be attained, I believe it will come from a taste cultivated for and by the Arts of Painting and Sculpture”

(Furness, 21).

Foreshadowing the work of his son Frank, and his design of First Unitarian’s third home, dedicated in 1886, which departed from the overt austerity and rationality of the congregation’s earlier churches by being designed in a relatively ornate Modern Gothic style, Furness defends the appropriateness of representational art in Christian contexts:

The influence of Christianity, and of the Arts inspired by Christianity, is visible, not in the idolatry, but in the fact that the symbol was what it was, so touching and so true to nature, the holiness of womanhood, the innocence of infancy, and the tenderness of maternal love. I confess, I cannot see any absolute necessity for confounding the sign with the invisible fact for which it stands….” (Furness, 26)

Furness delivered the closing address at the fourth annual convention of the

American Institute of Architects (AIA) in 1870 (the year Rodeph Shalom was consecrated; it was completed the following year). His talk begins on a somewhat surprising note for remarks delivered by a “man of God”—he celebrates America’s growing wealth and the corresponding increase in the ambitious and expensive architectural projects:

There is hardly anything more wonderful in these days and in this country than the rapidity with which wealth is created. The means of erecting the

costliest structures, public and private, are amassed in ever increasing abundance. And only the love of art, animating the public generally, is wanting to give artists of every description as much as they can do, were there ten times the number. (Gifford 1966, 393)

In his address to the AIA, Furness elaborates dramatically on his earlier discussion of the spiritual aspects of art and focuses this line of though by directing it at architects and architecture:

[Y]our true architect is, in the highest sense of the word, an artist, having always an infinitely dearer purpose than moneymaking. He has priceless visions of truth and grace, which he is living and dying to express in wood and iron and stone, and he would soon as think of falsifying a revelation from Heaven as of sacrificing them for the sake of money. (398)

He encourages architects to view their work as public pronouncements of moral principle and endeavor:

[I]n the loud language of brick and stone, utter your high aspirations—say your prayers like the Pharisees of old, though not in their spirit, at the corners of the streets and in the marketplace, with all the world looking on at every stone that is laid…So you see what a very discipline of personal religion the publicity of your art is; putting you under the blessed necessity and practicing a large and unfailing charity for your ignorant fellow creatures, tending to make pattern Christians of you. (399)

Finally, he declares the vocation of architecture as something akin to his own calling, “You are, by the ordination of Heaven, street preachers, and whether you hold forth sound doctrine or false, we must listen to you” (399). Perhaps thinking of his son’s ornate Rodeph Shalom and casting an intriguing look ahead not only to the Modern

Gothic third (and current home) of First Unitarian but the elaborate Pennsylvania

Academy of the Fine Arts designed by Frank Furness and opened in conjunction with the

Centennial Exhibition held in Philadelphia in 1876, the Reverend Furness changed tack.

He establishes a context for the appropriateness of embellishment, saying, “I find for myself a cheering effect in all architectural ornamentation, whether it be good or bad. Be it ever so bad, it hints of plenty. It is an assurance that people have more than they absolutely need” (400).

Furness then turns to the building of churches. This was not incongruous, for houses of worship supplied a steady supply of large-scale commissions for architects such as those assembled for his speech.

Our multitudinous places of worship, covered though they may be with the commonest of church decorations, pinnacles, and mortgages, make it interesting to go through the streets, or rather round the streetcorners, where, for the most part, they are, very properly to be seen of men. (400)

He emphasizes the spiritual potential of architecture, and of ecclesiastical architecture, in particular: “Does [architecture] not in all times and countries repay in kind the debt of inspiration which it owes to the religious sentiment? Does it not awaken emotions nonetheless deep because they are indefinable?” (401). Ultimately, Furness urges reform in architecture, a reform spurred and nurtured by the freedom and expansive possibilities of life in the United States: “[W]ho can doubt...that in this country, so richly blest of heaven, with these gloriously free institutions, offering opportunity, invitation, incitement to every human faculty to spring forth and help to enrich human life, the weary age of imitation will come to an end, and that a brilliant age of creation will succeed for your noble art?” (403).

Furness delivered to the American Institute of Architects as much a sermon as a professional address, one imbued with ideas of the spirit, liberalism, and reform. He delivered this sermon in 1870, just four years after meeting and befriending Rabbi

Marcus Jastrow, a recent immigrant who, with his congregation, presented the

Reverend’s architect son with his first major commission of what would come to be hundreds. The emergence of a built landscape imbued with the ideas and inspirations of liberal religion and reform-minded thought was still to come. The Reverend Furness spoke as a prophet.

Chapter 4. CHOSEN WORDS: WILLIAM HENRY FURNESS, RABBI MARCUS

JASTROW, AND THE LANGUAGE OF RACE, NATION, AND RELIGION

The Reverend Furness and Rabbi Jastrow shared views regarding religion, the study of Judeo-Christian scripture, and the promotion of religious tolerance. Both recognized, even celebrated, what is now called “cultural pluralism.” In 1830, Furness delivered the provocative sermon “An Apology for the Jews” at the First Unitarian

Church of Philadelphia. It was published that same year in Boston-based periodical The

Liberal Preacher. Furness’ “An Apology for the Jews” is central to this narrative and—to my knowledge—is the first sermon delivered in America by a Christian clergyman decrying Christian anti-Semitism. The “Apology” has neither been reprinted since 1830 nor discussed. Analyzing it and later sermons and essays presented by Furness and

Marcus Jastrow reveals both overlap and divergence between a Christian minister and

Jewish rabbi, both of whom were moderately progressive in regard to their faiths.

Particularly telling—and, likely, of historical importance in the developmental arc of the

Reform Jewish and Unitarian rapprochement in Philadelphia and elsewhere—are differences in how the two clerics characterize Jews, describe them in the collective, and assess their place in American society. These disagreements between two men who were otherwise in sympathy with one another foreshadow the ultimate fate of the Unitarian and progressive-Jewish rapprochement in Philadelphia and across the nation.

Also evident in the words of Furness and Jastrow is the ongoing role played by scriptural narratives and theological interpretations in the varying and evolving, but never resolved, understanding of the nature of the Jewish collective, and how this affected

Jewish-Americans as individuals and as a group. As will be made evident in this analysis, issues of “race” and “deicide” remained central to the evolving relationship between Jews and America’s broader, overwhelmingly Christian society in the nineteenth-century. The following discussion demonstrates that tensions and disparities between Christian and

Jewish perspectives on Jews and Judaism existed even among mutually sympathetic, religiously and socially progressive representatives of the two faiths such as Marcus

Jastrow and William Henry Furness.

Often overlooked in twentieth and twenty first century scholarship and popular perception, Furness, nonetheless, made profound contributions to goodwill and ongoing and active fellowship between Christians (or, at least, Unitarians) and Jews. However, his

“Apology” is not unproblematic when considered in terms of later understandings of how to regard and discuss Jews as a group. Furness wrote:

But the deadly hate, the unwearied and ingenious persecutions, of which that remarkable nation, by whose hand our great deliverer perished, have been the object…prove how little we have been touched by this instance of forgiveness [that is, the entreaty to “forgive them, for they know not what they do”] which we applaud. (Furness 1830, 1)

Although specific terms such as “nation,” and the ideologies they expressed and societal conditions they reflected, waxed and waned in their usage over the course of the nineteenth century, by the mid twentieth century, “race” and “nation” were deemphasized and replaced by ideas of (white) ethnicity, peoplehood, and of the Jews as members of one faith among many in America’s increasingly pluralistic society (Goldstein 2006,

137).

Furness wrote of the Jews as a nation—a large body of people who, in typical use of the term, occupy a particular territory and share a governing structure. Of course, if the

Jews of 1830 were, indeed, a nation, they were a nation that had been in diaspora— without a territory of their own and governed by others—for 1,760 years, since the destruction of the second Temple in Jerusalem and the dispersal of the Israelite nation in

70 C.E. Indeed, it is common to date the Jewish diaspora to circa 586 B.C.E., when the

Babylonians destroyed the first Temple and expelled the Israelites from what had been their sovereign kingdom.

Most notably, Furness refers to Jews as those “by whose hand our great deliverer

[Jesus] perished.” The repetition and prevalence of the charge that some or all Jews were

(or are) responsible for killing Jesus—deicide in the context of traditional Christian belief—is the ur-narrative that forms the basis for centuries of Christian hatred toward, and persecution of, Jews. Yet, otherwise comprehensive examinations of the role played by race and other semantic, categorical, and conceptual perspectives through which to view the assimilation of Jews into American society—such as Eric L. Goldstein’s The

Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity (2006), which is fully devoted to the topic, and Matthew Frye Jacobson’s Whiteness of a Different Color: European

Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (1998)—do not explore this aspect of anti-

Semitism.

Furness was not a bigot. By the standards of his time, he was the opposite.

Although associated with the Transcendentalists, Furness was a Unitarian minister of moderate stripe. As discussed in chapter two, he placed the human Jesus—a Jesus who fit

within the Jewish tradition of prophetic and sage mortals, but definitively superseded all who had come before him—at the center of his theology.5

“An Apology for the Jews” can be read in the context of Furness’ concern with race. While he most often refers to Jews as a nation, he also applies the word “race” to

Jewish group identity. “We do not connect with the present race the memory of their pious ancestors,” he wrote in the “Apology.” “We appear rather to associate all Jews with that particular generation which consented to the death of Jesus…” (Furness 1830,

14). A struggle against the dehumanization , illogic, and injustice of regarding a person not as an individual but as a representative of a group—particularly one that has been subject to persecution and oppression—is evident in Furness’s statements and actions on behalf of both Jews and African Americans.

Authors and scholars such as Jacobson and Goldstein remind us of the mutability of the concept of “race” over the course of American (and Western) history, and of the oft-forgotten fact that many Europeans of non-Anglo stock were once considered something other than white and were understood as distinct races (races inferior, inevitably, to that of the Anglo hegemony). Jacobson argues that these groups, later termed “white ethnics,” “became white” because they were not members of America’s preeminent racial “other,” those of African descent (Jacobson 1998, 75-76). Nevertheless,

Jacobson states emphatically that “…race is absolutely central to the history of European immigration…” well into the twentieth century (8). Goldstein notes that Jews faced a

“wrenching dilemma” in their own racial self-definition. Having been subject to persecution, confinement, and pogroms in Europe, Jews came “…to see apartness as one

5 See William Henry Furness’s Discourses, first published in 1855 and reprinted by BiblioLife in 2009. 85

of the most salient aspects of Jewish identity. As a result, in the American context they often defined themselves as a distinct ‘race,’ a description that captured their strong emotional connection to Jewish peoplehood” (Goldstein 2006, 3). Nevertheless, maintaining a sense of “race” and “peoplehood” placed Jewish Americans in an ambiguous, uncomfortable position. The nineteenth century saw the rise of a romantic nationalism that argued that a given nation be composed of a common “racial” stock. If

Jews were a “race” and a “people” unto themselves, they could not be considered true members of the various nations in which they lived. Indeed, the only way that Jews could fit into the romantic-nationalist paradigm would be to leave their “host” countries and establish a state of their own.6

The history of Jewish immigration to the United States, and the British colonies from which the nation grew, differs from that of other “white ethnics.” It occurred in three relatively distinct waves, and those waves were composed of Jews from differing parts of Europe who came to the American colonies and later United States with varying levels of familiarity with, and assimilation into, Western culture. Estimates vary, but it is widely held that fewer than 2,000 Sephardic Jews, descendants of those who fled or were expelled from Spain and Portugal during the Inquisition, arrived in America during the

Colonial era beginning in 16547, making them white ethnics of “old stock.” In addition to their early American roots, many of the Sephardim previously took refuge in liberal and

6 Of course, this perspective can be seen in the establishment and rise of Zionism and, ultimately, in the founding of Israel in 1948. These developments are largely outside of the scope of this dissertation. However, it must be noted that deeming the desire for a Jewish state as evidence of “romantic nationalism” seems sanguine. Continuous pogroms in Russian-ruled lands, the anti-Semitism that came to the surface of “polite” society during the Dreyfus Affair and, ultimately, the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis all argue that calling for and developing a Jewish state was a practicality—Jews needed an autonomous safe-haven—rather than a romantic ideal. 7 Twenty-three Sephardic Jewish men, women, and children—refugees from Recife, Brazil, which had been in Dutch hands but was overtaken by the Portuguese—arrived in New Amsterdam in 1654. 86

advanced Holland and had integrated into tolerant Dutch society and were influenced by that society’s embrace of Enlightenment values, making Dutch-Sephardic Jews highly fit for life in the United States and, in general, desirable. Approximately 250,000 German and other Central-European Jews came to the United States primarily in the mid- nineteenth century (Dimont 2001, 107). Although, typically, partial-to-full citizens of

Germany or the Germanic countries of Mitteleuropa, they continued to face strong anti-

Semitism, a broad roster of legally sanctioned restrictions, social ostracism, and were barred from most professions. Nonetheless, these “German” Jews were, on the whole, avid participants in, and proponents of, advanced German culture; thus, they too were well-prepared for American life and, correspondingly and on the whole, well-received.

An estimated three million Eastern European and Russian Jews emigrated to this country between 1880 and 1924 (122). Largely destitute, Orthodox, and culturally isolated, the

Jews of this “Great Migration” were perceived as backward. Both Jacobson and

Goldstein explore how Jews, particularly given their arrival in the United States in three distinct waves of immigration of exponentially increasing size, were racialized, deracialized, and re-racialized at various times and places in the course of Jewish history and experience in the United States (Goldstein 2006, 1).8

Furness was, with some qualifications and aberrations, fervent in championing

Jews and encouraging Christians to admire Jews for their fidelity to their faith. As is evident in his “Apology for the Jews,” he accepted the “blood” connection—that is, the bond and lineage of extended family, of kin, ethnicity and, ultimately, of “race” as it was understood in his day—between the Jews of the Bible and those living in nineteenth-

8 As with the previous footnote, a single reference is cited here, but Goldstein’s The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity is a comprehensive examination of this subject. 87

century Philadelphia. But his discourse implored its (primarily Christian) audience to continue to conceive of Jews not only as protagonists in the Christ’s Passion, but as the

People of the Book, the people to whom monotheism was revealed and who disseminated that revelation. Furness saw “the Jews”—two short words that encompass individuals of a wide breadth of appearance, custom, and culture, dispersed across the earth—as the originators and inheritors of a noble legacy, one that has been both a blessing and a curse for those who possess it.

Furness balanced Christian criticism of Jews for rejecting Jesus as the Messiah by noting that Jesus and his earliest followers were Jews, and thus practitioners of Judaism and informed and influenced by the beliefs Jews held:

There was nothing in the nature of a descendant of Abraham that indisposed him to God and to truth…We forget that our blessed Saviour was himself a member of this most despised and persecuted nation. His immediate friends, the amiable John—the honest and affectionate Peter— they were all Jews. And so were nearly all the first Christians. (Furness 1830, 9–10)

In the specifics stated amidst the ardor of his arguments, Furness reveals a way of perceiving and understanding Jews that distinguishes the Jewish experience of assimilation and acceptance into American society from that of other non-Anglo

Europeans. This distinction goes beyond the differences between Protestants, Catholics, and the adherents of various forms of Eastern Orthodoxy—groups that, despite large discrepancies in creed and rite, were irrefutably Christian. For well over a millennium,

Jews filled for Christians not only the role of “other” but were, as Furness stated in the quote above, the “most despised and persecuted nation.”

Furness also wrote of a “consecrated nation,” the “descendant of Abraham,” and the people whose members included Jesus and his apostles. In doing so, he underscored

how the process of Jewish assimilation into American society was profoundly entwined with religion, in general, and scriptural language and theological rhetoric, specifically.

That is, even philo-Semites such as Furness viewed Jews through inextricably overlapping, even melded—and overwhelmingly problematic—prisms of race, religion, nation, and “blood” relation to the people of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.

Furness refers to “offensive attempts to proselyte” the Jews (2–3). However, while stating his disdain for the means, Furness made clear his desire for the same end:

But if the Jew submits himself heartily and faithfully to his own religion, if he studies the law of Moses and sways his life by its grand principles, he is brought very near, in spirit, to the since Christian, and made meet for Christian influences, and prepared to see the beauty and worth of pure and uncorrupt Christianity. (10-11)

Thus, for Furness, the Jew who is most fully imbued in his own faith is the one best prepared to accept another: Christianity. In this regard, Furness shared, at a basic level, the desire of the ubiquitous missionaries intent on converting Jews to Christianity

(Finkelstein 2007, 58). If their efforts, and Furness’ more gently conceived and stated perspective, had been realized, the varied categorizations of Jews—either as race, nation, people, or religious group—would be moot, for the Jews would be lost to history.

Although Philadelphia had one the largest, long-established, and institutionally organized Jewish communities in the United States in 1830, that community consisted of but some 500-1,000 souls in a city of 80,0009 people (Friedman 1983, 2). Jews were not only fully integrated into Philadelphia’s broader society, but were accepted as member of

9 United States Census Bureau, “Population of the 100 Largest Cities and Other Urban Places in the United States, 1790 to 1990 (www.census.gov/population); cited December 11, 2011

that society’s elite beginning in the colonial era (5), and married Christian members of that elite. Etting and Hays are “old” Philadelphia families with Jewish roots. Israel

Israel—a prominent Philadelphian known first for his patriotism during the

Revolutionary War and later for his Jeffersonianism—was the son of Jewish Michael

Israel and Mary Paxton, an Episcopalian; he was baptized in 1746 by the Reverend Henry

Muhlenberg (Wolf and Whitman 1956, 31). In 1742, Phila Franks married the socially prominent Oliver Delancey of New York. In 1743, Phila’s brother David Franks married

Margaret Evans, an Episcopalian who was the daughter Peter Evans, Philadelphia’s

Registrar of Wills (33). It is worth noting that the children of these marriages were not raised as Jews; David Franks’ children were baptized at Philadelphia’s historic

Episcopalian Christ Church. Sampson Levy, Sr., converted to Christianity and became a member of St. Peter’s Church; his sons, Sampson Jr. and Moses—despite their names— were prominent lawyers who did not consider themselves Jewish. These few examples demonstrate how the elite of Philadelphia, and those of other cities and towns in colonial and federal America, gained Jewish genes but remained overwhelmingly Protestant.

“An Apology for the Jews” makes clear that, even in Philadelphia—a city with a long-established and relatively substantial Jewish community—Jews were a decidedly modest, even rare, portion of the broader population. Furness noted that “…our obligations are not relaxed, because there may happen to be few or none of that proscribed nation…in our immediate circle, to need our kindness and respect” (Furness

1830, 16). Furness, however, knew Jewish Philadelphians and was well-regarded by members of that community, as discussed in the introduction to this dissertation.

With that said, the one extant publication by Furness issued between “An Apology for the

Jews” until after the arrival of Rabbi Marcus Jastrow at Rodeph Shalom in 1866

(discussed from page 94 onward) that relates directly—albeit ambiguously—to Judaism or Jews is a reprint of a eulogy of sorts delivered in 1839 and titled “Our Benevolent

Institutions: A Discourse Occasioned by the Death of Julius R. Friedlander, Principal of the Pennsylvania Institution for the Blind.” Friedlander’s institution—which, it seems particularly important to note in this context, was funded by prominent First Unitarian congregants John Vaughan and W. Y. Birch—is now the Overbrook School for the Blind.

Per his name, Friedlander was very likely of Jewish origin, although it appears that he did not state (publicly, at least) his ethno-religious background. Furness comments on this uncertainty:

He came hither little more than six years ago, a stranger, bringing high testimonials to his worth from the bosom of a distant community. Whether he had been nurtured as a Jew or a Christian, a Catholic or Protestant, Trinitarian or Unitarian, we knew not. After the acquaintance I had the pleasure of enjoying with him I cannot now say, for I do not know, what were his peculiar religious opinions. (Furness 1839, 18).

What is notable about Furness’ tribute to Friedlander is that it does not mention

Friedlander by name anywhere in its twenty-four printed pages. The seventeen pages that precede the above statement emphasize repeatedly the Christian nature of humanitarian, philanthropic endeavors. Commending Philadelphia and Philadelphians for the city’s many “Benevolent Institutions,” Furness states:

It furnishes impressive evidence of the benign influence of our common faith, of the prevalence of the spirit of Christianity, which is the simple spirit of humanity enlightened, enlarged, and sanctified. It tell us that Jesus Christ did not teach and suffer—that his blood was not shed, in vain. (3–4)

Furness’ remarks continue in this vein for 15 pages before positing that good works, in and by being expressions of Christian ideals, reduce sectarianism and prejudice:

And thus, too, our Benevolent Institutions, as the children and the servants of Christianity, have done and will do much to break down the partition-walls of sects. It is true, and it cannot be disguised, bigotry has not yet become a mere tradition. It still exists, although shorn of much of its strength…all this is owing, in a great and good measure, to that indirect influence of our benevolent Institutions to which I have referred. To so many labours of love and moral reform have we been called, that we have lost and are losing all inclination to aggravate our differences. And besides, men of opposite persuasions, of different religious associations have been brought together. (16–17)

Furness continues by emphasizing what he frames as the Christian yet non-sectarian nature of the Institution for the Blind, saying of Vaughan and Birch:

They have never once thought to obtain ant conditions for their distinctive opinions, but have united with their brethren of other denominations with one heart and mind to build up this noble Institution. It is based upon the broad principle of Christian Liberty. And as thus far all sectarian peculiarities have been unknown in the administration of its concerns, we devoutly trust that it will continue to be the praise and glory of the School for the Blind, that it recognizes no doctrines save those in which in which all the friends of Benevolence, of every religious name, agree. (22)

The epigraph for “Our Benevolent Institutions”— “I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame. I was a father to the poor”—is from Job, an “Old Testament,”

Jewish scriptural source. Furness concludes his discourse with a God-praising, human- exhorting benediction that does not invoke Jesus. The following sentences are the last of this expansive consecration:

The Lord God omnipotent, all-righteous reigneth. Serve him instantly day and night. Be ye steadfast and immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour cannot be in vain. (24)

In Philadelphia Unitarianism, Elizabeth Geffen identifies Friedlander as a

“Silesian Jew” (Geffen 1961, 171). Furness did not make clear Friedlander’s religious heritage. He, instead, indicates that Friedlander was not a religious man, and introduces the possibility that his background was Jewish (“Whether he had been nurtured as a Jew or a Christian… we knew not”). Furness’ prolonged balancing of Christian and nonsectarian themes in “Our Benevolent Institutions” evokes a sense of “protesting too much,” of justifying for his audience—and perhaps himself—why he, a Christian minister, is delivering a religious eulogy for a non-Christian individual.

Through his connection to Rebecca Gratz, as discussed earlier, Furness was well aware of organized charitable activity—“Benevolent Institutions” both Jewish and nonsectarian—successfully established, sustained, and grown by Philadelphia’s Jewish community as of 1839 (the year of Friedlander’s death). In 1801, eight Jewish women— including Rebecca Gratz—joined their Christian counterparts in founding the nonsectarian Female Association for the Relief of Women and Children in Reduced

Circumstances (Whiteman and Wolf 1957, 272). Gratz was a founding board member of the non-sectarian Orphan Asylum. Jewish organizations included the Society for the

Visitation of the Sick and for Mutual Assistance (1813), Female Hebrew Benevolent

Society (1819), United Hebrew Benevolent Society (1822), Hebrew Sunday-School

Society (1838), and the Ladies' Hebrew Sewing Society (1838). In light of this well- established and still burgeoning history of Jewish participation in sectarian and nonsectarian philanthropy, and knowing that Furness would be well acquainted with it, the emphasis on the Christian nature of benevolent organizations in his eulogy for Julius

Friedlander seems incongruous. But it is in keeping with the ambiguity of Furness’

“Apology for the Jews” of nine years earlier. Arguably, these conflicting sentiments from a committed and active multiculturalist (nearly two centuries before the concept of

“cultural pluralism” was an identifiable concept with some societal traction) reflect matters ranging from the scarcity of Jews in Philadelphia to their continued status as the

“other” based on negative associations with Christianity’s origin narrative—that is, the life and death of Jesus as recounted in Christian Scriptures

Of the above-mentioned challenges to recognition and acceptance for

Philadelphia’s Jewish community, the issue of scarcity changed dramatically between

1839 and 1866 (the year of Marcus Jastrow’s arrival). The 500–1,000 Jews in a city of

80,000 as of 1830 grew to 8,000 Jews (Friedman 1983, 2) in a city of 565,529 in 1860.

This growth reflected a wave of German Jewish immigration that followed the failed democratic revolutions of 1848. With the German Jews came Reform Jews, which developed as a systematic, theologically and academically coherent and cohesive approach to Judaism beginning in Germany at the turn of the nineteenth century.

Congregation Keneseth Israel, founded in 1847, became the city’s first Reform congregation in 1855. Keneseth Israel became Philadelphia’s center for “Radical

Reform” with the arrival of Bavarian-born Rabbi David Einhorn (1809–1879) in 1861.

Marcus Jastrow brought modern, German university-developed Reform to Rodeph

Shalom, although his stance was moderate relative to that of Einhorn and other

“radicals.”

Reform Judaism holds that Judaism should remain in a state of constant evolution so that it is always compatible with contemporary society and scientific and intellectual advances. For example, Darwin’s theory of evolution loomed large in the minds of

nineteenth-century Jewish reformers, just as it did in the developing worldviews and theologies of liberal Christians, in general, and Unitarians, in particular. Reform Judaism also proffered that Jewish law offers guidelines, rather than binding dictates, for Jewish life within and without the synagogue, so that, again, Jewish practice may reflect the spirit and sensibilities of whatever culture and time Jews, in their Diaspora, find themselves living. Most importantly, Reform Judaism disavowed the idea of a Jewish

“nation” or “race,” and spoke of Judaism strictly in terms of religion, one whose mission was “to be a light unto the nations” by promoting the universal centrality of ethical monotheism as the basis for peaceful, advancing civilization. With that said

Jewish-American Reform rabbis may have expressed their desire for a universalistic society, but, in the words of Goldstein, “…in moments of frustration or doubt, revert[ed] to a racial understanding of the Jews” (Goldstein 2006, 29).

Reform rabbis of a more radical orientation than Marcus Jastrow—such as Joseph

Krauskopf, who was elected to the pulpit at Keneseth Israel in 1887—held hope that

Judaism and Christianity would ultimately merge into a universal faith (Blood 1973, 150;

Krauskopf 1891, 1–9). Krauskopf argued that Christians must disentangle “the man from the god” (Blood 1973, 150). This was the conception of Jesus represented by Unitarians.

Christians already accepted the “Old Testament” (roughly equivalent—but not identical—to the Hebrew scriptures) as part of the Bible. However, Jews and mainstream

Christians interpreted it differently, for the latter saw in it prophecies of the coming of

Jesus. Krauskopf held that it was equally essential for Christians to abandon this perspective of the “Old Testament” and for Jews to “acknowledge the moral and ethical truths of the New Testament” (150).

As a proponent of moderate religious reform, Marcus Jastrow is often discussed and regarded as a progenitor of what came to be called Conservative Judaism (Sarna

2004, 184; Meyer 1988, 251, 263). But, like those who were unequivocally committed to

Reform, he argued that Jews were citizens of the countries in which they lived rather than a nation unto themselves.

Fittingly, among the earliest addresses by Rabbi Jastrow to be published in the

United States was the Sermon Delivered in the Synagogue Rodef Shalom on Thanksgiving

Day delivered in 1868—the year Frank Furness began work on the design for Rodeph

Shalom’s first purpose-built temple (the plans developed by Fraser, Furness, and Hewitt were formally accepted by Rodeph Shalom’s trustees on February 16, 1869 [Lewis 2001,

77]). This sermon was a response to Pennsylvania Governor John W. Geary’s proclamation that Thanksgiving should be celebrated as a Christian holiday, specifically.

Just two years in the United States, Rabbi Jastrow argued:

[T]he Governor of this state has ignored the character of the Constitution of the United States, by making his own particular belief the basis of a proclamation to the commonwealth, thus intimating that he wishes only such to unite with him in thanksgiving for the country’s happiness and greatness, who may profess certain dogmas similar to his own, and that he considers all other inhabitants under his jurisdiction unworthy to shout before their God…when the country celebrates a day of national importance. (Jastrow 1868, 5)

Jastrow implored the “American people” to remember that “…it was the banner of freedom and equality to all under which God gave thee victory and success! Be cautious and never change this universal banner into an exclusive one!” (Jastrow 1868,

6). He continued by entreating “[Y]e, sons of Israel, who suffered and struggled for centuries for that great idea of universal equality” to “raise your loudest voice, whenever the slightest attack is attempted on your freedom and equal rights” (Jastrow 1868, 7).

Like Furness in his “Apology for the Jews,” Jastrow invoked the Bible and lineage. He spoke of, and to, the “sons of Israel,” and he conjured the history of Jewish suffering.

Unlike Furness, for Jastrow the persecution suffered by the Jews had nothing to do with

Jesus. Instead, Jastrow connected Jewish suffering with the struggle for “that great idea of universal equality” that he saw espoused in the Torah and Talmud (Jastrow is recognized as one of the greatest Talmudic scholars in Jewish history), the ethical- monotheism for which the Jews in their diaspora served as “a light unto the nations.”

Jastrow’s call for equality and invocations of freedom were highly resonant in the

American context. In his Thanksgiving sermon, he made a quintessentially American argument for equal rights. In that, it corresponds—albeit in a situation not nearly so severe—with Furness’ Our American Institutions: A Thanksgiving Discourse of 1863, which decried slavery and bolstered the Union cause in the midst of the Civil War.

Jastrow’s demand for equal rights was based on the separation of church and state as made law by the First Amendment. Unitarians held a similar stake in upholding separation of church and state. Their rejection of the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus rendered them heretics in the eyes of other Christians—indeed, as not Christian at all.

In his Thanksgiving sermon of 1868, Jastrow was not concerned, at least not in this instance, with biblical narratives nor the Jews’ place in them, regardless of whether the scripture in question placed Jews in a positive or negative light. He was, instead, focused on how Jews fit within American polity and society, and ensuring that fit was fair and inclusive. He was not speaking of Jews as either a race or nation. His argument addresses the American nation and its treatment of those American citizens who adhere to the religion of Judaism.

In Frank Furness: Architecture and the Violent Mind (2001), Furness scholar

Michael J. Lewis suggests that the Reverend Furness made the initial proposal for an annual service in which First Unitarian and Rodeph Shalom could join together (Lewis

2001, 81). Thanksgiving is associated in the popular mind with the celebration of thanksgiving organized and attended by neighboring Pilgrims and Native Americans following the Pilgrims’ first harvest in Plymouth Colony in 1621. In later years, many days of thanksgiving to God were called for at different times throughout the year by various governing and communal entities to mark successful harvests, military victories, the ends of drought, and other happy occurrences seen as evidence of benevolent divine intervention or, simply, worthy of praise to God. However, Thanksgiving did not become a set national holiday, observed on the fourth Thursday of November, until 1863, in the midst of the Civil War. President Lincoln proclaimed in his Proclamation of

Thanksgiving, delivered on October 3, 1863:

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.

Lincoln’s Thanksgiving proclamation makes clear that what became the preeminent national, secular holiday of the United States had decidedly religious roots.

Therefore, it was natural that part of the Thanksgiving observance should take place in a house of worship. It is difficult to determine the precise year in which the clergy and members of First Unitarian and Rodeph Shalom first came together to give thanks. Nor can one be certain—in their earlier years, at least—whether these services were truly

“joint” or, instead, occasions when the spiritual leader of one congregation addressed that

of the other. This ambiguity is evident in a note sent on Sunday, November 23, 1873,

Rabbi Jastrow sent the following note to the Reverend Furness:

Reverend Sir! The undersigned as well as his Congregation would be highly honored if you would consent to lecture at Broad Street Synagogue this Thursday on Thanksgiving Day at 11:00 o’clock A.M. I should have called upon you personally to make the above request but many years’ sickness prevents one from giving me that pleasure. I shall be happy to learn that you accept this invitation tendered to you by Yours Most Respectfully M. Jastrow Rabbi, Cong. Rod. Shalom. Bearer, my son, will be pleased to receive your answer. (Annenberg Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; Horace Howard and William Henry Furness Papers)

The collections of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, contain a run of the Congregation Rodeph Shalom Annual dating from 1898 to 1912, coinciding with the rabbinate of Dr. Henry Berkowitz (1857–1924), who led Rodeph Shalom from 1892 to the time of his death. The seventh edition of the Annual (corresponding to the Jewish year

5660 and the secular years 1898–1899) notes that on:

November 24th 1898—We united with the Unitarian Congregations of Philadelphia at the Spring Garden Unitarian Church [a satellite of First Unitarian] in the observance of the National Thanksgiving Day. (10)

The eighth edition of the Annual (5661/1899–1900) reports that First Unitarian hosted the

Thanksgiving service and that the minister of the Unitarian Society of Germantown (a neighborhood in northwest Philadelphia) delivered the sermon. It adds, “The sentiment of fraternity and good-will thus cultivated should certainly win our members to a larger participation” (14). The ninth Annual records that:

Union Thanksgiving Services were held at our Synagogue in conjunction with the members of the various Unitarian Churches of the city…the

services were conducted by your ministers and the sermon delivered by Dr. J. H. Ecob of the First Unitarian Church. The attendance was the largest of any union service in which we have participated. The spirit of fellowship thus cultivated is productive of a more genuine religious sentiment and fraternity among all. (14)

The last mention of a Union Thanksgiving Services continued in the Rodeph Shalom

Annual through its eighteenth edition (5671/1910-11). Thus, if the idea of Philadelphia’s

Unitarians joining the congregants of Rodeph Shalom in a service appropriate to the national holiday of Thanksgiving began in the early 1870s—as Michael Lewis’s reference suggests and Rabbi Jastrow’s 1873 note appears to confirm—it was a practice that continued for some forty years or more.

Under the heading “A Unitarian Christian in the Synagogue,” the anonymous author of an article in the journal A Christian Life reported the Reverend Furness’ thoughts regarding preaching in a Jewish house of worship on Thanksgiving:

Am I false to my Christian profession? Do I turn away from Him by whose name I am called? Oh, no! I am nearer to him, rather. For here I am among His kindred in the flesh, among the people to which He belonged, the people of His blood, of His race [emphasis added], the people the pure spirit of whose ancient and most venerable faith lived and breathed in Him, whose religion in its present form He exemplified. Where but in the bosom of the Hebrew nation could such a character have appeared? (“A Unitarian Christian in the Synagogue,” Christian Life, 1879, 624)

In this discourse delivered on Thanksgiving Day, 1879—nearly forty years after his

“Apology for the Jews”—Furness again expressed his goodwill toward Jews in terms of their centrality to the message of the Bible and, most essentially, their relationship to

Jesus—as his kin, his nation, his race.

In a (lower-case) universalist—even post-racial—spirit, Furness went on to remark:

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Men are being brought face to face, and are finding out that, notwithstanding all differences of language, of complexion, of customs, and of religion, we are, after all, more alike than different; that our different religious faiths are only so many imperfect attempts to say the same thing…[T]hey catch glimpses of the grand fact, the unity of the human race….(ibid).

He concluded his remarks, however, by returning to the theme of the Jewish race, blood, lineage—and Jesus: “The head of Christendom was of Hebrew extraction, born on

Hebrew ground, nursed by a Hebrew mother, and it is your sacred books that for centuries have furnished Christians with the loftiest language of devotion” (3). Furness seems unable, at least in the context of public addresses, to conceive of Jews outside of their scriptural and racial ties to Jesus.

In 1880, within a year of the Thanksgiving sermon by Furness quoted above, the great wave of Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe began. The Eastern European immigration resulted in a ten-fold increase in America’s Jewish population immigration, from approximately 250,000 in 1880 to some 2.5 to three million as of 1924, when highly restrictive immigration laws were passed. With the arrival of this mass of largely impoverished, traditionally pious, and culturally “backward” Jews there arose an equally imposing swell of American anti-Semitism. All Jews were re-racialized. As Jacobson notes, “Racial depictions of Jews would become most urgent…as immigration figures climbed in the decades following Russia’s May Laws [which placed exceedingly harsh restrictions on Jews] of 1881” (Jacobson 1998, 183). This development, understandably, caused enormous distress among established Jewish-Americans, such as those at Rodeph

Shalom to whom the Reverend Furness so recently preached on, and of, Thanksgiving.

In 1890, ten years into the great Jewish immigration—a time of nativist promotion of immigration restriction and the beginning of the particular strain of thought

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that came to be called “eugenics” in the early-twentieth century (Jacobson 1998, 183)—

Rabbi Marcus Jastrow wrote The Causes of the Revived Disaffection against the Jews. He began the discourse by noting that “There was a time, not very far distant, when it was thought that, at least in the civilized parts of the world, the Jew-hunting and Jew-hatred, persecutions political or social for our religion or our race’s sake were forever gone”

(Jastrow 1890, 3). He continues by asking, and answering, the rhetorical question, “What, now, are the most discernible causes of the disturbances in the world’s social atmosphere that have produced that epidemical distemper to which we give the name of Disaffection against the Jews? Religious hatred you will say” (Jastrow 1890, 5). Jastrow continued baldly in words weary, dismissive, and defiant:

[I]t is a perfectly idle question whether or not the Jews of Palestine had a share in the execution of Jesus. It may be a very interesting problem for historical and legal research just to determine how much of the responsibility for this act rested upon the Jewish authorities or people, and how much upon the Roman government and its organs, what were the legal aspects of the case, and what part political passions took in it. But whatever the result, it cannot influence the present political or social movements for good or bad. (Jastrow 1890, 5–6; emphasis added)

Instead of religious hatred, Jastrow concluded that it was science that had

“…unwittingly given an impetus to this recall from the grave and the regalvanization of racial hatred” (8). He cited the arguments engendered by racialist science—“’We are

Aryans, and the Jew is the Semite. The Jew is a foreign substance in the Teutonic body and in the bodies of all European nations, the Jew is a festering splinter’” (9). He continued, “[T]he contagion has reached our beloved country…destroying the social peace which heretofore has been its just pride” (9).

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Despite this, Jastrow concluded The Causes of the Revived Disaffection against the Jews with a declaration of faith in the United States and its citizens, “No cry of

Semite, no cry of Christ-killer, and no disguise, however modern-shaped, of those weapons will do us any permanent harm in this country” (13). He did not once cite the influx of Eastern Jews as a cause for the “disaffection.” Instead, Jastrow spoke of the perennial—if evolving—specter of “racial hatred” toward Jews.

From 1830 to 1879, Furness spoke of admiration for Jews and against Christian persecution. His arguments were rooted in theology, focusing on Jewish centrality to the biblical narrative and “kin” and/or “race” relationship to Jesus, while raising and dismissing the issue of deicide. Jastrow, in contrast, took a pragmatic approach spurred by the vulnerabilities felt, and threats experienced by, Jewish-Americans in the “here and now” of the final third of the nineteenth century. For Jastrow, the imperative was defense of Jewish equal rights in the American polity and, later, against the rise of anti-Semitism.

Jastrow was far from timid in defense of a cause, as demonstrated—during his tenure as rabbi of Warsaw’s progressive synagogue from 1858 to 1861—in his advocacy for Polish nationalism and against the onerous excesses of Russian rule, which led to his imprisonment and, ultimately, expulsion from Russian-Poland. Furness—at great threat to his security and that of his congregation—spoke against the enslavement of African

Americans fervently and relentlessly in the decades leading to the Civil War.

By 1879, slavery was abolished (although, with the institution of Jim Crow laws beginning in 1876, African Americans suffered great and increasing discrimination).

Furness and his Unitarian congregants were firmly and safely ensconced in Philadelphia society, often in its upper echelon. In comparison, while Jastrow’s German-Jewish

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congregants were, on the whole, prospering—as had the Sephardic Jews who preceded them—their place in American society grew increasingly insecure as the nineteenth century progressed. Whether of Sephardic, Central European, or Eastern European origin; immigrant or native-born; identified with the Reform, Conservative, or Orthodox streams in Jewish-American religious practice and belief—and even if non-practicing and without formal association in the Jewish community—a Jew was simply a Jew, the “other” in the eyes of the Christian hegemony in the United States. While Unitarians stretched the theological boundaries of Christianity to its limits—and beyond, as in the case of members of the Unitarian clergy who came to eschew any Christian particularism and espoused, instead, “Free Religion” (as will be discussed in chapter eight)—they remained culturally Christian and, thus, “us” in the reckoning of America’s Christian majority.

While a central tenet of Reform Judaism was that Judaism was simply one faith among others to which a given member of a society might adhere, Jastrow’s arguments as presented in his Thanksgiving sermon of 1868 or The Causes of the Revived Disaffection against the Jews make clear that Jews viewed themselves—and were viewed by others— collectively, as a “people” rather than mere practitioners of a religion. In his well- intended remarks, which were remarkably inclusive for their time and place, Furness never quite transcended an understanding of contemporary Jews as the descendants of those in scripture, and therefore the people central to the narrative of Jesus. Despite their friendship, intellectual and philosophical sympathies, and mutual professional respect, there was a divide at the core of the clergymen’s identities that could not be bridged. In their sermons, other orations, and essays, Jastrow and Furness provide some explanation

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for the eventual demise of a vigorous and sustained rapprochement between Reform Jews and Unitarians in the United States.

The Reverend Furness and Rabbi Jastrow were successful in establishing a bond between their congregations that, through their connection to the “Mother Church,” expanded to include other Unitarian congregations10 in Philadelphia. It lasted into the second decade of the twentieth century under the stewardship of their successors in the pulpit. It is understandable that a specific event, such as the annual joint Thanksgiving service—an initiative fostered by Furness and Jastrow and maintained by their successors for some four decades— is unlikely to last forever. However, it is puzzling that neither the joint services nor any broader connection between the two congregations is documented in histories written about Judaism and Unitarianism in Philadelphia, even those that focus on Rodeph Shalom or First Unitarian. Prior to inquiries I made as I pursued my research of this topic, neither the clergy nor laity of First Unitarian nor

Rodeph Shalom were aware of the history they shared.

This lost memory may be attributed to a variety of causes and effects. One—as demonstrated in the sermons, addresses, and other communications examined here—is that Jewish-Americans’ conceptions of themselves in aggregate evolved over time, as it did in broader American society, with “race,” “nation,” “people,” and “religious group” ascending and descending in usage. The clerics at the core of this dissertation, the

Unitarian Furness and the Jewish moderate-reformer Jastrow, were friends and colleagues who built an alliance that extended into the next generation, but their

10 The other Unitarian congregations within the city of Philadelphia, the Spring Garden Unitarian Church and the Unitarian Society of Germantown, were established by members of the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia who—reflecting the city’s growth and the beginnings of suburbanization—relocated outside of Center City Philadelphia and desired a local house of worship. The relationships between First Unitarian and the Spring Garden and Germantown societies were strong (Geffen, 1961, 220, 224). 105

discourses reveal markedly different perspectives on Jews and Judaism. Despite the clerics disparate foci when considering the past and then-present circumstances of the

Jewish people and their religion, and the communal loss of memory of the connection between Furness and Jastrow, an outcome of their collegial respect and friendship remains evident in Philadelphia to this day. It is testified to in buildings designed and constructed by the minister’s youngest son, the architect Frank Furness.

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Chapter 5. BECOMING FRANK FURNESS

Frank Furness was the master-architect who created the “reformed” built environment that emerged in late-Victorian Philadelphia. He was just thirty when he received the commission to design the first purpose-built temple for Philadelphia’s burgeoning German-Jewish Congregation Rodeph Shalom. Rodeph Shalom represented a first for Furness, as well—it was the initial major commission in a remarkably prolific career; Furness designed and oversaw the construction of some 600 buildings. His previous work included a far more modest church for the Unitarian Society of

Germantown and collaborations with his partners, John Fraser and George Hewitt, on a handful of residential projects. The Rodeph Shalom commission presented an opportunity valued by architects at any stage in their careers, let alone one as young as Furness. He was invited to design the entirety of the synagogue: its overall structure, exterior articulation, interior spaces, and all furniture, furnishings, and fittings (as discussed further in chapter six). In his memoir The Autobiography of an Idea (1924), Louis

Sullivan, who apprenticed with Fraser, Furness and Hewitt, declared that Furness “made buildings out of his head” (Sullivan 1956 [reprint of 1924 original], 193). Rodeph Shalom proved to be the first full expression of Furness’s vision. This vision was shaped as much by immersion in the American Transcendentalism of Emerson as the English neo-

Gothicism of John Ruskin—that is, by what he learned in the home and church of his minister father and in the architectural studio as an apprentice.

Rodeph Shalom presented Furness with a tabula rasa upon which he could create an all-encompassing and cohesive environment that embodied fully the architect’s rapidly

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maturing aesthetic. That Frank Furness received this somewhat unusual but highly desirable commission, and that a work from the earliest years of the architect’s oeuvre so fully expressed his aesthetic, speaks to the singularity and strength of his innate sensibilities and his singular upbringing. He was the son of the Reverend William Henry

Furness, a highly educated and well-cultivated man who was deeply engaged with and active in the most advanced societal, intellectual, religious, and artistic currents of his day. As paterfamilias, the Reverend Furness joined his wife, the former Annis Pulling

Jenks (1822–1885) of Salem, Massachusetts, in fostering a household in which their children were, as a matter of course, exposed to an extraordinary roster of some of the greatest minds of their day.

As noted earlier, the Furnesses had no connection with Philadelphia prior to their arrival in 1825. Their promulgation of a dissenting, even radical, interpretation of

Christanity and the Reverend Furness’s relentless advocacy of the divisive and volatile cause of abolitionism did not make for promising social prospects. However, by dint of intelligence, charisma, personal charm, moral constancy, civic involvement, and intellectual attainments—and despite a lack of wealth—the Furnesses became the “first family” of the cultured and literate in a city of sufficient age and substance to have an elite that valued refinements of character, intellect, and aesthetic sensitivity over fortune.

Of course, Philadelphia was not a meritocracy built purely on cultural and academic achievement. It would be disingenuous to say that money was immaterial in this milieu, a truth borne out by the marriage patterns of the Furness children (as will be discussed). Moreover, status in Philadelphia was commonly predicated upon lineage.

Here too, the Furnesses fared well in their adopted city’s social sensibilities. Although

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not scions of an “old” family Philadelphia, the Reverend and Mrs. Furness were of New

England Puritan stock—a pedigree that was, de facto, highly desirable and respected.

By example and encouragement, the senior Furnesses led their children into lives of the open and inquisitive mind, discerning eye, talented hand, and empathic heart. Each

Furness child extended the family’s proud legacy. Thus, by nature and nurture, Frank

Furness was destined—as much as any individual can be—to an existence distinguished by accomplishment, exposure to and embrace of forward-looking thought and practice, and self-possessed individualism.

While his parents were transplants to the city, Frank Furness was a native

Philadelphian. His deep connection to, and immersion in, the personality of the city and its leading families and figures shaped his career and, ultimately, his legacy.

The youngest of the Furness children, Frank was born on November 12, 1839, in a vigorous city of 200,000 inhabitants. From the late-Colonial through Jacksonian eras,

Philadelphia was the largest and—with some contesting voices from Boston—leading city in the United States. By the time of the future architect’s birth, Philadelphia was overtaken by New York in terms of population and was competing with its neighbor to the north for economic and cultural primacy. The nation’s political capital from 1790 to

1800, Philadelphia remained the nation’s banking and financial capital and a hub for cultural, educational, and scientific activity as the middle of the nineteenth century approached. It was a major industrial and commercial center, boasting large and technologically advanced textile mills, foundries, chemical manufactories, and shipbuilding facilities.

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Furness’s Philadelphia was a distinctive mix of cosmopolitan and ambitious characteristics—the epitome of a rapidly growing and evolving Industrial Revolution metropolis—and historical and provincial sensibilities that spoke of a city proud of its venerable heritage. Modern, urban, and increasingly industrial, it nonetheless held dear and promulgated its Colonial identity.

In the spirit of the Enlightenment and its emphasis on reason, and with the exceedingly rare opportunity to plan a city from scratch, William Penn designed

Philadelphia as a city in which streets formed a clear grid along north-south and east-west axes. The grid featured open, green squares for public use at the city’s center in its north, south, east, and west quadrants. Penn envisioned freestanding houses as the primary habitations of his “greene countrie towne.” While Penn’s vision of gridded streets and public squares was fully realized, the characteristic Philadelphia domestic structure came to be the two- and three-floor row-house. The typical Philadelphia row-home was fifteen or sixteen feet wide. Wealthier residents dwelled in row-homes as well, but ones that were thirty feet, or more, wide—that is, twice the width of their more modest neighbors.

Although not precisely what Penn envisioned, eighteenth- and early-to-mid nineteenth- century Philadelphia was what would now be termed a “livable” city.

Furness scholar Mark Orlowski credits Philadelphia’s stability and continuity—its

“enduring tradition”—to “a durable social order. The city’s social and economic structure was based on a large, prosperous middle class of skilled craftsmen, mechanics, and tradesmen” (Orlowski 1986, 2).11 It was such a cohort of people who would build, inhabit, and maintain expansive and harmonious neighborhoods of externally

11 In his unpublished doctoral dissertation, Frank Furness: Architecture and the Heroic Ideal (1986, University of Michigan]), Mark Orlowski presents a comprehensive and evocative discussion of Philadelphia at the time of Frank Furness’s youth; see pages 1–7. 110

unprepossessing but sufficiently spacious and well-equipped row-houses. Though not the son of a craftsman, mechanic, or tradesman, Frank Furness was raised in just such a home at 1426 Pine Street.

Today, the only thing that distinguishes the childhood home of Frank Furness—an architect known for his bold, some would say grotesque, deployments of irregular and assertive forms, materials, and color—from its equally plain, red-brick neighbors is a blue Pennsylvania state historical marker that stands on the sidewalk in front. The marker was dedicated on September 14, 2012, in conjunction with the centenary of Frank

Furness’s death.

While occupied by the Revered Furness and his family, this nondescript dwelling was a place of extraordinary activity. The Furness home was a meeting-place for the

Philadelphia’s cultural elite and a destination—and even temporary residence—for visitors from out-of-state and abroad. Ralph Waldo Emerson, lifelong friend of the

Reverend Furness, visited the Furness home—and preached at First Unitarian—while in

Philadelphia for stops in his lecture tours. The Reverend Furness’s foremost mentor,

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842)—the leading voice in liberal Unitarianism in the nineteenth century—stayed with the Furnesses for extended periods each year. Other luminaries of the Unitarian ministry, among them Theodore Parker (1810–1860), stopped at the Furness home and delivered sermons at First Unitarian. Charles Sumner (1811–

1874), a senator from Massachusetts and abolitionist leader, was hosted by the Furness family, as was William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879), and Harriet Martineau, a celebrated

English Unitarian and abolitionist, who stayed with the Furnesses for six weeks while touring the United States in 1834.

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Among the Furness family’s locally based visitors were Lucretia Mott (1793–

1880), a Quaker preacher, abolitionist, and advocate for women’s rights and other societal reforms; the Reverend William White (1748–1836), the long-serving Presiding

Bishop of the American Episcopal Church and the second United States Senate Chaplain;

Rebecca Gratz, the Jewish communal and philanthropic leader discussed in the first chapter of this dissertation; and the physician, writer, and cultural advocate S. Weir

Mitchell (1829-1914). Also welcomed to the Furness home was the educator, writer,

Transcendentalist philosopher, and reformer Amos Bronson Alcott (1799–1888) who, though most associated with New England (and as the father of Louisa May Alcott), led schools in Philadelphia and neighboring Germantown from 1830 to 1834. Walt Whitman

(1819–1892) lived in Camden, New Jersey, across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, from 1873 through the end of his life. The Furness family was personally acquainted with this seminal figure in American letters and thought (Lewis 2001, 142–143).

In addition to welcoming illustrious visitors, the Furness household was the breeding ground for strikingly accomplished children. Expanding upon his father’s abilities as a draftsman and interest in art, the eldest son—William Henry, Jr., (1827–

1867)—developed into an accomplished painter. The Reverend Furness was actively involved in Philadelphia’s art world. Through his father, the young William was—as, one can safely conjecture, were his siblings—introduced to the best collections in the city and made privy to substantive discussion about art. Recognizing his son’s talent, the

Reverend Furness sought for him the best art-education that Philadelphia and, later,

Boston could provide.

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Through his father, William Henry, Jr., met and studied with the German-born,

Philadelphia-based painter Emmanuel Leutze (1816–1868). Leutze lived and taught in

Düsseldorf, Germany, from 1845 to 1859. In 1852, William Henry, Jr., departed for several years of travel and study in Europe. He enrolled at the Dusseldorf Academy with

Emanuel Leutze. By 1864, he had set up a studio in the Studio Building, Boston, and there became a good friend of Elihu Vedder (1836–1923), a painter greatly influenced by the British Pre-Raphaelites. Although he lived in Boston, William Henry, Jr., spent much time in Philadelphia and exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

(PAFA). Fittingly, PAFA’s permanent collection includes Furness’s oil portrait of Ralph

Waldo Emerson, which is dated to ca. 1867, just one year prior to the premature death of

William Henry Furness, Jr.

In a letter to Emerson dated August 16, 1847, the Reverend Furness wrote of his daughter, Annis Lee: “I am foolish about this daughter of mine—She is not yet 17 & is a full grown woman & an excellent German so far as the language is concerned & reads it like a native & we have lots of pleasure together” (H. H. Furness 1910, 64). Here, too, the influence of the father—specifically, the Reverend Furness’s pronounced

Germanophilia—was fully manifested in the child. Annis Lee (1830–1908) went on to become an accomplished and active translator. Her work in translation from German to

English was compiled and issued in an edition of thirty volumes in 1888. Annis Lee married the anatomist and physician Dr. Caspar Wister in 1854 and thus, into an old and prominent Philadelphia family. Her husband was a descendant of the German Quaker immigrant Caspar Wister, a glassmaker who arrived in America in 1717 and prospered in

Philadelphia. Anis Lee Furness’s literary activities extended beyond translation. She

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worked closely with her friend, the previously mentioned S. Weir Mitchell, reviewing his manuscripts and providing criticism and advice.

Horace Howard Furness (1833–1912), the third-child in the gifted and dynamic

Furness household, studied at Harvard like his father. Like his brother William Henry, Jr., he garnered additional education and life experience during time spent in Europe. Upon returning to Philadelphia, he studied law and was admitted to the Philadelphia bar in

1859. Hearing loss made it impossible for Horace Howard to continue his legal practice.

This setback held a silver lining, for it allowed him to pursue his true passion: literature, in general, and Shakespeare, specifically. He devoted forty years to editing the "New

Valorium” editions of Shakespeare, ultimately collecting in a single resource the annotations, references, analyses, interpretations, and commentaries on Shakespeare’s work proffered by the leading Shakespearian scholars of the preceding three centuries as well as his own insights. Fifteen plays are examined in Horace Howard’s initial

“Valorium” (they were issued between 1871 and 1913) and five more were completed by his son, Horace Howard, Jr., after his father’s death. The “Valorium” was and remains regarded as a great achievement in American literature and established Horace Howard as the preeminent American Shakespearian scholar of the nineteenth century.

Testimony to the esteem in which Horace Howard was held was his election to the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He received honorary doctorates from Harvard, the University of Halle, the University of

Pennsylvania, Columbia University, and the University of Cambridge.

Horace Howard married Helen Kate Rogers (1837–1883), whose family had amassed a prodigious fortune in iron-making. The Rogers family were members of the

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First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia and Helen’s brother, Fairman Rogers (1833–

1900)—a civil engineer, educator, and philanthropist—was the Reverend Furness’s greatest champion and the foremost benefactor of First Unitarian. Helen joined her husband in scholarly response to Shakespeare—she authored A Concordance to

Shakespeare's Poems (1874). Annis Lee Wister Furness and Horace Howard Furness were active and prominent in the literary coterie surrounding S. Weir Mitchell.

Horace Howard lectured at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a longtime (1880–1904) member of its board of trustees, as was his brother-in-law Fairman

Rogers. Their presence on Penn’s board likely helped Frank Furness become the university’s de facto official architect. Rogers, in addition, chaired the building committee for the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, which—along with the design of Penn’s library—is considered Frank Furness’s greatest masterwork.

Both William Henry Furness, Jr., and Horace Howard established the course for their brother Frank’s architectural studies. In “A Few Personal Reminiscences of His Old

Teacher by One of His Old Pupils,” a memorial tribute to the acclaimed, Beaux-Arts trained architect Richard Morris Hunt (1827–1895) written by Frank Furness in 1895

(reprinted in Thomas 1996, 351–356), Furness recalled a visit by Hunt to the Furness household circa 1855. Hunt met William Henry, Jr., in Paris during the course of their studies. Frank Furness wrote of this visit and the “enthusiastic alacrity” with which Hunt spoke of architecture (Thomas, 351). Furness wrote that Hunt’s description of his expression inspired in him “…a fascinated admiration, which is destined to end only with my life” (351).

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By this time, the youngest Furness was already an apprentice in the office of the

Philadelphia-based architect John Fraser (1825–1906). In the same essay, Furness wrote of Fraser politely but without the enthusiasm he bestows upon Hunt, noting that Fraser was “…an architect of some repute, and fairly successful from whom I hoped to ‘learn the use of my instruments,’ as the phrase was” (351). Clearly, Furness regarded Fraser as a yeoman-like practitioner whose tutelage provided the means to an end in the cursory learning of his profession, while he regarded Hunt as a master and catalyst.

In his tribute to Hunt, Furness continued by relating that:

Not long after this, in 1855, my brother, Horace, received such enthusiastic accounts of Mr. Hunt as a teacher of Architecture from two of his Harvard Classmates, Charles Gambrill and Henry Van Brunt, who had just entered Hunt’s newly opened Studio, that my Father decided to ask Mr. Hunt to receive me also as a pupil. (352)

Edmund Quincy, George Post, and William Robert Ware also joined this first cohort of students in Hunt’s atelier. It is interesting—perhaps telling—to note that, like Furness,

Van Brunt and Ware were sons of Unitarian ministers.

In addition to having his talents shaped and honed by Hunt, Frank Furness was exposed to the work of the painters who lived and worked in the Studio Building. Most of these artists were members of the Hudson River School of landscape painters, many of whom had studied—as had William Henry Furness, Jr.—at the Düsseldorf Academy.

First emerging in the 1830s, the movement was at its height in the 1850s. Frederick

Church, among the most renowned painters of the Hudson River School, resided in the

Studio Building. At the time of Furness’s arrival in New York, Church’s monumental painting The Heart of the Andes was displayed prominently in Church’s atelier, where it was viewed by thousands of visitors (Orlowski 1986, 159).

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Church and fellow members of the Hudson River School not only devoted themselves to the depiction of unspoiled landscape but often did so on a grand scale, thereby emphasizing its transcendent and sublime power and primacy—its evocation of the divine as manifested on Earth. This reverence for nature found literary correlation, and perhaps inspiration, in the words of Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, and Whitman.

These writers represent the Transcendentalist tradition in American literature.

Hunt closed his studios when the Civil War broke out in 1861. Returning to

Philadelphia, Frank Furness joined the city’s elite Sixth Pennsylvania Cavalry, informally known as Rush’s Lancers. For three years, Furness was engaged in active combat, fighting to preserve the Union and abolish slavery, his father’s overarching cause.

Furness’s active and brave service in the Union army—particularly his contributions to the Northern victory at Trevilian Station in 1864, the Civil War’s largest and bloodiest all-cavalry battle—were recognized in 1899 with the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Furness’s military service further sharpened his determined character and gruff comportment (Lewis 2001, 54). He forged ties during his years in the cavalry that continued throughout his life and which did much to establish the outlines and networks of his personal life as an adult and his nascent career in architecture. For example, although largely not a “club man”—unlike so many Philadelphians of his time and class—Furness in May 1865 joined the Union League, which was founded in 1862 by supporters of the Union cause and quickly became the Philadelphia’s most prominent club, a grand bastion of the city’s overwhelmingly Republican political, business, and social elite. Its members included a substantial number of Rush’s Lancers, many of whom were to become key clients for Furness or provided connections to customers.

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After the Union victory, followed by a brief stint working in New York as principal assistant in Hunt’s reopened studio, Furness returned to Philadelphia to marry

Fannie Fassitt (1844–1920) in late 1865. Also at this time, Furness joined in partnership with his former mentor, George Hewitt, establishing in Philadelphia an architectural firm that blended French Beaux-Arts formalism and English “reform” inclinations, introducing to Philadelphia a singular interpretation of Modern Gothic architecture just as the city was emerging as a major industrial center.

Furness, along with H. H. Richardson, was nominated for membership in the

American Institute of Architects in 1866. He was nominated by Charles Gambrill and

Emlen Littell, slightly older architects he met while living in New York. A native

Phildelphian and graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Littell (1838–1891) was a committed Gothic Revivalist and an adherent of England’s Oxford Movement, which sought to reintroduce to the Anglican Church liturgy and ritual derived from Catholicism.

In architecture, the inclinations of the Oxford Movement were expressed in the Gothic

Revival espoused and manifested by the British architect and critic Augustus W. N.

Pugin (1812–1852), and which was first brought to America by the British émigré

Richard Upjohn (1802–1878). Especially prominent among Upjohn’s projects was

Trinity Church in New York, which was completed in 1846 for a wealthy Episcopal congregation, and which stood as the city’s tallest structure prior to the completion of the

New York World Building in 1890. A soaring cathedral patterned closely after Medieval

Gothic precedents, Trinity Church set the example for thousands of churches—Episcopal, initially, and later nearly all Protestant denominations as well as Catholicism—built in the United States in the nineteenth century.

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Although he established his practice in New York, Emlen Littell’s first major commission was in Roxborough, then a relatively rural area immediately outside of

Philadelphia. Littell was asked to prepare plans for this commission, Saint Timothy’s

Episcopal Church, in 1861, while serving in the Union army. The church was consecrated on July 18, 1862. Littell sent detailed instructions, including correspondence and drawings, for the construction and decoration of Saint Timothy’s from wherever he was stationed during his military service. For St. Timothy’s, Littell designed a modest but exquisitely detailed house of worship inspired by the Gothic parish churches of rural

England. In doing so, Littell extended a pattern in what would become suburban

Philadelphia first established in 1846–1850 with the building of the Church of Saint

James the Less. Saint James the Less was built by Philadelphia architect John Carver

(1803–1859) after plans supplied by the English architect George Gordon Place. Place was associated with the Cambridge Camden Society (later the Ecclesiological Society), which was resolute in promoting “authentic” Gothic styles for the liturgical, sacramental worship favored by the “High Church” Anglicans and emerging Anglo-Catholicism promoted by the Oxford Movement.

Though not much discussed, and not documented (as is characteristic regarding

Furness), the influence of Saint James the Less and Saint Timothy’s appears evident in

Frank Furness’s first commission, the Germantown Unitarian Church and his later, mature masterwork for the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia. What distinguished

Furness’s work from Gothic Revivalists such as Pugin, Upjohn, and Littell was as much religio-philosophical as architectural. The faith in which he was raised was resolute in its rejection of liturgy and sacrament. Indeed, Unitarianism was the rationalist and anti-

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ritualistic product of centuries of religious dissent against the Church of England. These dissenters came to be called Puritans because their fervent intent was to “purify” the

Anglican Church of beliefs and practices they believed to be unscriptural and “lingering vestiges of Roman Catholicism” (Prothero 2007, 267). In regard to architecture, Furness found inspiration not in the desire to return to a Gothicism that was deemed to have been perfected in the past, but in the view that the Gothic approach and style was well-suited for adaptations that met evolving, contemporary needs. If Emerson represented the latest evolution in Unitarian thought, it was the English art-critic and (in today’s terms) public intellectual John Ruskin (1819–1900) who set the stage for making Gothic modern.

Emerson, Ruskin, and the Development of the “Furnessque”

The Furness family was centrally involved in American literary society and the

Transcendentalist tradition. It was Emerson who first brought the writings of Thoreau and

Whitman to the attention of the Reverend Furness and his family. In a letter to the

Reverend Furness dated October 1, 1855, Emerson asked, “”Have you read that wonderful book—with all its formlessness & faults ‘Leaves of Grass’?—“(H. H. Furness

1910, 107). It is known that the Reverend Furness met Thoreau in 1854 when the latter visited Philadelphia to deliver a lecture at the Academy of Natural Sciences (Thomas

1996, 27, footnote 36). As noted earlier, Walt Whitman knew and interacted with the

Furness family—Reverend Furness and Horace Howard Furness certainly, and it is likely that Frank Furness made his acquaintance, at the very least (Traubel 1914, 3:520).

Whether visitors or family members, gifted and dynamic personalities filled the

Furness home. In person or by reputation, the leading literary figures of the day were

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celebrated and given pride of place in the Reverend’s household. Frank Furness’ character was shaped by the thoughts and examples significantly influenced by these towering personalities.

In published essays, Furness recommended the use of natural motifs in design.

“Hints to Designers”—one of only two extant articles written by Frank Furness—was published in Lippincott’s Magazine in May 1878 (reprinted in Thomas 1996, 345–350).

In it, Furness instructs aspiring practitioners of the “applied” arts to “Take as a model some simple leaf or flower—plant-form is the clearest of all the numerous volumes that kind Nature offers to the student of ornamentation…” (348). He continues by noting that

“In all cases the student must go for knowledge to the fountain-head, Nature” (348) and

“The color of your flower-model is perfect in its combinations. Nature never makes a mistake in taste (so-called)” (349). In this extended ode to nature’s inspirations, Furness goes on to contrast the lessons proffered by nature with those presented by men, a comparison that does not favor the man-made:

Be sure that the designer who goes directly to Nature for his outlines and combinations of colors will arrive at infinitely more satisfactory than those achieved by following blindly in the footsteps of any human being, master of his art although that being be. Learn that Nature in any one flower—gorgeous poppy, cool white calla or unobtrusive daisy—presents every hour of the day a different combination of color for the instruction of those who seek it earnestly at her all- bounteous hands” (349–350).

This overarching emphasis on nature is overtly Emersonian. In his essay

“Nature,” published in 1836, Emerson wrote, “It seems as if the day was not wholly profane, in which we have given heed to some natural object” (Emerson and Thoreau

2011, 192). Frank Furness’s high regard for nature as preeminent muse is foreshadowed in Emerson’s writing is statements such as “Only as far as the masters of the world have

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called in nature to their aid, can they reach the height of magnificence” (193). Emerson’s view of nature as divine, his ambivalence toward an overtly theistic understanding of the divine, and his emphasis on nature-loving humanism is captured in the following words,

“Nature is loved by what is best in us. It is loved as the city of God, although, or rather because there is no citizen” (195).

Emersonian thought was central to the development of American architecture.

Among those renowned architects profoundly influenced by Emerson were Henry

Hobson Richardson (1838–1886), Louis Sullivan (1856–1924), and Frank Lloyd Wright

(1867–1959). Again, it seems worth noting that both Richardson and Wright were

Unitarians. Unlike Richardson, Sullivan, and Wright, however, Frank Furness had the unique opportunity to assimilate Emerson’s thoughts not only by reading his essays but during discussions in the Furness home, often with Emerson himself present and taking part, and in the Reverend Furness’s sermons. Indeed, Emerson presented the young Frank with a stereoscope, of which in a letter to Emerson dated August 25, 1854, the Reverend

Furness wrote, “I never told you of Frank’s great pleasure in the stereoscope. It was in his hands for days—” (Furness 1910, 97).

If Emerson’s imprint could be considered an outsize part of Frank Furness’s birthright, that of John Ruskin was integral to his upbringing—not quite from birth, but from early in his formative years. William Henry Furness, Jr., purchased a copy of

Ruskin’s The Seven Lamps of Architecture for the Furness home upon the book’s publication in 1849, when Frank was but ten years old (Lewis 2001, 15). Ruskin, an architectural theorist, likely had a more direct impact on Furness’s architectural practice than did Emerson. With that said, Ruskin’s and Emerson’s messages were thoroughly

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compatible and even mutually reinforcing. Ruskin was a proponent of the Gothic, particularly the Gothic architecture of Venice, as a historic form that was uniquely appropriate for the design of contemporary structures of all types. Ruskin wrote in “The

Nature of Gothic,” which first appeared as a chapter in his book The Stones of Venice, published in 1853, “For in one point of view Gothic is not only the best, but the only rational architecture, as being that which can fit itself most easily to all services, vulgar or noble”, for “…it is one of the chief virtues of the Gothic builders, that they never suffered ideas of outside symmetries and consistencies to interfere with the real use and value of what they did” (Ruskin 1960, 168). It was Ruskin’s championing of the Gothic as a highly adaptable form that made possible the popularity of something that seemed like a non sequitur: a medieval building style deemed the ideal mode for modern (as of the nineteenth century) architecture.

The link between Emerson and Ruskin is that core of Ruskin’s appreciation of the

Gothic was the Gothic’s foundation in nature—not only in inspiration found in natural, organic forms, but in the way a knowledgeable and skilled craftsman used natural materials in ways that honored and made the most of their essential qualities. Ruskin wrote, “To the Gothic workman the living foliage became a subject of intense affection, and he struggled to render all its characters with as much accuracy as was compatible with the laws of his design and the nature of his material…” (172). Ruskin identified the six qualities of the Gothic spirit as “Savageness, Changefulness, Naturalism,

Grotesqueness, Rigidity and Redundance” (160). While Furness’s work has not been described as rigid or redundant, the adjectives “savage,” “changeful,” naturalistic,” and

“grotesque” all apply to Furness’s oeuvre.

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Ruskin’s influence is often discussed in terms of establishing the aesthetic and perspectives of late-nineteenth-century architectural, decorative—and, sometimes, utopian social—developments such as the overlapping Aesthetic Movement (1870s and

1880s, roughly), Eastlake Style (1870s), and the Arts and Crafts Movement (1860 to

1910, approximately). However, his theories are part of what was already an enormously active and influential period in architectural history, the English Gothic Revival, which was well underway by the time Ruskin began publishing his essays. Augustus W. N.

Pugin (1812–1852), an architect who began designing in the Gothic mode in the 1830s and whose culminating masterpieces are the interior of the Palace of Westminster and its

Elizabeth Tower—popularly known as Big Ben—work completed between 1844 and

1852.

However, Ruskin was not a fan of Pugin, whom he regarded as too doggedly and narrowly devoted to reproducing Central and Northern European (as opposed to

Venetian) Gothic precedents. Ruskin was not an architect, but a theorist and essayist.

What he saw in the Gothic was not something to be “revived” in an unaltered form, but a style that lent itself to synthesis, innovation, and expressivity.

Ruskin’s view of the Gothic shared much in common with the philosophy of

Emerson and other Transcendentalists, a cohort that very much included the Reverend

William Henry Furness. In a letter to his family sent from Toledo, Spain, on December

16, 1855, Horace Howard Furness wrote of the cathedral known as “The Escurial”:

“[J]ust multiply your ideas of Gothic architecture, its grotesqueness, its rich traceries, its grace, everything that makes it Gothic & therefore makes it superior to all other architecture….” (Furness 1922, 1:62).

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In keeping with championing nature, Transcendentalism urged vitality and a sense of quest in human life. Emerson wrote in “The Transcendentalist,” his lecture and essay of 1842, “The Transcendentalist adopts the whole connection of spiritual doctrine. He believes in miracle, in the perpetual openness of the human mind to new influx of light and power; he believes in inspiration, and in ecstasy” (Buell 2006, 111). While

Transcendentalism did not align itself with a particular style of architecture, it did emphasize the spiritual and moral nature of creative expression. Emerson wrote in his essay “Art” of 1841, “what is that abridgement and selection we observe in all spiritual activity, but itself the creative impulse?” (Emerson and Thoreau 2011, 1) and that in art is

“A moral confession of moral nature, of purity, love, and hope…” (Emerson and Thoreau

2011, 4). Emerson wrote, as well, that “…the artist must employ the symbols in use in his day and nation, to convey his enlarged sense to his fellow-men. Thus the new art is always formed out of the old” (Emerson and Thoreau 2011, 1). This last statement is especially pertinent to this analysis, with its focus on an architect of Transcendentalist

Unitarian background who forged a unique body of work by adopting and adapting approaches and forms current in then contemporary progressive architectural circles,.

Frank Furness’s design for Congregation Rodeph Shalom—and related structures, interiors, and furniture built over the course of the 1870s—are most often described as

“Moorish.” This may be a misnomer, and is certainly an oversimplification. It is instructive to consider what Ruskin wrote about his favored Venetian Gothic and how these impressions may have informed Furness’s vision. Ruskin wrote in The Stones of

Venice, “We are now about to enter upon examination of that school of Venetian architecture which forms an intermediate step between the Byzantine and Gothic forms;

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but which I find may be conveniently considered in its connection with the latter style”

(Ruskin 1960, 157). Thus, the “Eastern” or “Oriental” elements that, in theory, distinguished Rodeph Shalom from Central and Western European church architecture were very much part of the “Venetian Gothic” celebrated by Ruskin, whose ideas inspired by the development of a “Modern Gothic” style by English and American architects such as Furness. In short, the non-Western “exotic” may be viewed as a component of Ruskin’s vision of an ideal architecture, and that of his followers.

Ruskin further underscored his perception of Venice as a place where Eastern and

Western architectural influences met and blended:. He wrote that the Venetians were “the only European people who appear to have sympathized to the full with the great instinct of the Eastern races. They indeed were compelled to bring artists from Constantinople to design the mosaics of the vaults of St. Mark’s.… (Ruskin, 153). He described the eclectic yet distinctive elements of Venice’s historic architecture by noting that “The

Christian Roman and Byzantine work is round-arched, with single and well-proportioned shafts; capitals imitated from classical Roman…and large surfaces of walls entirely covered with imagery, mosaic, and paintings…” (Ruskin, 20). The “round-arch” referred to by Ruskin is relevant to Furness’s design for Rodeph Shalom which, in addition to being described as Moorish, has been discussed as representative of rundbogenstil, or

“round-arched style.”

Rundbogenstil became prominent in the Germanic lands in the mid-nineteenth century and—because it did not employ pointes arches, an element that was central to the

Gothic, which was, in turn, closely associated with Christianity—was the preferred mode for the grand synagogues built in that era. Further to this phenomenon, rundbogenstil

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incorporated Islamic, Byzantine, and Romanesque elements. The resulting evocation of the “Eastern” and the “ancient” heightened the sense of its suitability for a Jewish house of worship.

What Ruskin praised, in words that Furness read at home and at Hunt’s studio in

New York, was not the soaring “pure” and “high” Gothic of a German, French, or

English cathedral. Rather, it was the hybrid style of St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice (figure

11), where European, North African, and Middle Eastern forms and motifs met and forged a style that was relatively low-slung, irregular, and sprawling when compared with

Gothic architecture as it developed elsewhere in Europe, and was rich with ornament, pattern, and color. What came to be called “Ruskinian Gothic” and “Modern Gothic,” which was most popular in the late-Victorian period from 1860 to 1890, was eclectic in its ornate, brash, often extravagant ornament; featured highly polychromatic masonry, brickwork, and tiles; and conveyed an earth-bound sense of the massive and heavy than the light, heaven-soaring verticality and laciness of the “high” Gothic cathedral.

Works in the Ruskinian style were just beginning to be built in New York prior to and during the years of Frank Furness’s study in Hunt’s studio—from 1859 to 1861, and again in 1865 following his service in the Civil War—and prior to his commission for

Rodeph Shalom. The Unitarian Church of All Souls (figure 12), designed by Jacob Wrey

Mould and built in 1855, was the first Ruskin-inspired edifice in the United States. Peter

Bonnet Wight’s National Academy of Design followed, with great fanfare, in 1863–1865

(figure 13). Intriguingly, and surprisingly, Leopold Eidlitz’s and Henry Fernbach’s design for Temple Emanu-El (figure 14), completed in 1868, appears to have influenced

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not only Furness’s composition for Rodeph Shalom but—and perhaps to a greater degree—that of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (O’Gorman 1973, 32).

Figure 11: St. Mark’s Basilica, Venice, built 1084–1117, photograph c. 1895 (Unknown photographer; collection of Matthew F. Singer)

Figure 12:Unitarian Church of All Souls, New York, 1855, Jacob Wrey Mould (Image: Unitarian Church of All Souls, New York)

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Figure 13: National Academy of Design, New York, 1863–1865, Peter Bonnet Wight (Unknown photographer/collection)

Figure 14: Temple Emanu-El, New York, 1868, Leopold Eidlitz (Image: Congregation Emanu-El, New York)

Emerson spoke primarily to rebirth of a vibrant soul through spiritual searching and receptivity and intellectual rigor and honesty. Ruskin urged for reviving the soul and society through the powerful and positive lessons to be learned through careful reconsideration and revamping, looking to past precedents with an eye to present and future realities, of the places where people lived and gathered. Ultimately, Emerson and

Ruskin were concerned with reform, assessing the individual’s and society’s current state and determining and forging a path to improvement. Furness learned from both Emerson

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and Ruskin. Through the singular nature of his upbringing, he was immersed in their thoughts. But his vision was his own and of a piece with his personality and character.

Furness was an architect—a “street preacher,” as termed by his father. As discussed in coming pages, his sermons can be heard in great buildings…and in chairs. His message can be seen in every detail—from masonry to furniture—of his first major commission, a temple designed and built for Congregation Rodeph Shalom between 1868 and 1871.

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Chapter 6. THE MOORISH-GOTHIC-TRANSCENDENTALIST SYNAGOGUE:

FRANK FURNESS DESIGNS CONGREGATION RODEPH SHALOM

Frank Furness designed and constructed for Congregation Rodeph Shalom a house of worship that was a material manifestation of the era’s most forward-looking theories regarding architecture and design. These theories proclaimed the positive moral and educational influence and sense of uplift that well-designed buildings and decorative- arts had upon and brought about in those who inhabited, used, or simply viewed them.

From its founding in 1795 to the completion of Furness’s design in 1871, Rodeph Shalom transformed existing spaces and structures into its place of worship. As its membership grew, the congregation moved from storefronts to a series of converted churches of increasing size. With the temple designed by Frank Furness, Rodeph Shalom had its first opportunity to build a spiritual home that reflected how the congregation viewed itself and how it wished to be viewed by the broader community.

What Furness produced was a rare, essentially unprecedented, site in

Philadelphia. As discussed, Furness’s Rodeph Shalom is most often described, colloquially, as “Moorish,” and—among those with a specialist knowledge of architecture—as rundbogenstil (round-arch style). Although developed in Central

Europe, rundbogenstil corresponds to Ruskin’s Venetian Gothic and the English

Aesthetic Movement’s delight in the “exotic drama” of Moorish forms (Johnson 1986,

152). The development of rundbogenstil corresponded with, and was perhaps encouraged by, a boom in the building of synagogues. This boom resulted from and reflected improved sociopolitical conditions for Jews in both Europe and the United States, and a

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concomitant rise in economic status. At the time of Rodeph Shalom’s construction, two rundbogenstil buildings could be found in Philadelphia, one of which was a synagogue—

Congregation Mikveh Israel (built in 1859 and later razed)—and the other the Academy of Music (built in 1855–1857). Furness’s design for Rodeph Shalom was more ambitious and fully developed than that of Mikveh Israel and decidedly more exotic than the

Academy of Music, which is rundbogenstil mixed with neoclassical elements.

Yet the artfully arranged stone, mortar, and glass of Rodeph Shalom’s enigmatic new house of prayer gave physical expression to the progressive, reformist edge of

Jewish theology and practice. Despite its seeming exoticism, the temple also spoke to the

Americanization of Philadelphia’s Jews. It is notable that—minus its Moorish and other exotic flourishes—Rodeph Shalom is the mirror image of the Episcopal Church of the

Holy Trinity, which was and remains located on Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square (see figures 15 and 16 for comparison). As an architecturally imposing house of worship built for Episcopalians, who were at the time indisputably America’s religious elite, in what became Philadelphia’s most fashionable address, the Church of the Holy Trinity may have represented the aspirations of the socially rising members of Rodeph Shalom. The church’s prominent tower was designed and built by Furness’s junior partner, George

Hewitt, in 1868, just one year before the construction of Rodeph Shalom began.

Moreover, the temple designed by Furness for Rodeph Shalom was the first definitively physical and durable evidence of an ecumenical alliance that, at the time, could likely only have happened in America: the union of two accomplished, scholarly, and bravely principled clergymen—one Reform Jewish, the other Unitarian Christian—their families, and their congregations.

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Figure 15: The Church of the Holy Trinity, 1856–1859, John Notman; tower added in 1868, John Fraser (Courtesy Tom Crane)

Figure 16: Congregation Rodeph Shalom, Frank Furness, 1868–1871 (Courtesy Congregation Rodeph Shalom, Philadelphia)

Despite his being a young man just beginning his career, Frank Furness was the only architect considered seriously for the design and construction of Rodeph Shalom’s temple (Lewis 2001, 77). Rabbi Marcus Jastrow and Rodeph Shalom showed prescience

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and wisdom in their selection of Furness, for he is now firmly fixed in the pantheon of

America’s greatest and most influential architects.

The “brilliant combinations of materials” (Smith 1953, 303) for which Furness came to known and celebrated were fully evident in Rodeph Shalom, despite it being

Furness’s first substantial commission. Furness displayed precocity in designing the temple, and the temple was, in turn, a precocious yet fully realized material expression of the more broadly emerging religious, philosophical, and social trend among the most religiously liberal Americans—Reform Jews, Unitarians, and Ethical Culturalists—to recognize and act upon their shared emphases on rational, universal religion that discarded ritual while embracing and emphasizing ethical, socially conscious behavior as the true expression of religious feeling.

The temple designed by Frank Furness for Rodeph Shalom cannot be analyzed and interpreted properly without knowledge of the development of Reform Judaism in the nineteenth century. It began in Germany as an effort to bring Jewish theology, ritual, and style of worship into alignment with the practice and intellectual and philosophical underpinnings as well as the aesthetics of contemporary Protestantism. Adopting

Protestant forms was not simple emulation. It was intended to reflect German Jewry’s long- and hard-fought battle for emancipation and citizenship (a process that began in

1808 but was not fully realized until the unification of Germany in 1871), their embrace of enlightenment, generally, and high regard for German culture, specifically. Thanks to

American separation of church and state and the resulting freedom of congregations and denominations to make changes in their doctrines and practices at will, the process of

Reform proceeded quickly and often dramatically among American Jews in the mid-

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through later-nineteenth century, when the overwhelming majority of the country’s Jews were of German origin or descent and had assimilated and, to a great extent, prospered.

As in Germany, Protestantism was the dominant religious culture in America, and it is a

Protestant template that comfortable American Jews followed as they sought to blend into

American society while maintaining their Jewish faith.

Furness’ temple was akin to a Gothic basilica but without the transept. It soared, and the tripartite layout of its sanctuary—a central nave flanked by aisles—was reflected in the massing of its front façade. The basilica form was, in the mid to late-nineteenth century United States, closely associated with large Protestant churches. However, it was not eschewed by the growing and prospering Jewish congregations of the era. “Basilica” or “cathedral” synagogues signaled Jewish assimilation into the largely Protestant mainstream culture and the filial relationship between Judaism and Christianity. They announced, as well, the emergence of a Jewish “elite,” albeit one that often existed parallel to, but not integrated with, its Protestant counterpart.

Eighty-three feet wide, the front, Broad Street-facing façade of Furness’s design for Rodeph Shalom featured a steeply pitched roof and projecting gables over its central entrance and the flanking entrance to the south.12 A 125-feet-high tower topped by an blue blue and white striped onion-dome rose on the north side of the façade, completing the three-part composition that echoed the nave-with-side-aisles (or, “three-aisle basilica” form) sanctuary within (figure 17). The façade was complex and highly articulated. The central entrance had monumental doors flanked by columns topped with ornate capitals supporting a substantial and detailed architrave that, in turn, was surmounted by the

12 Details regarding the dimensions and exterior and interior color schemes of Frank Furness’s design for Rodeph Shalom were reported in Philadelphia’s Evening Telegraph on Thursday, September 8, 1870, p. 8. 135

projecting, gabled canopy. The canopy featured a disk incised with a dense decorative pattern and set within a horseshoe arch and surrounded from sides to top by radiating blocks of stone in alternating, high-contrast light buff and dark red shades.

Simultaneously exaggerated and abstracted, the decorative patterns on the capitals, disk, and throughout the structure were based on floral-shapes that evoked both

Gothic and Moorish precedents while embodying the Transcendentalist emphasis on nature as a starting-point for the artist’s individualistic elaboration. Furness’s design for

Rodeph Shalom includes no Jewish symbols or signifiers other than a scriptural passage in Hebrew incised as part of the decoration on the temple’s Broad Street façade

(accompanied with its translation, “This House Shall Be Called a House of Prayer for All

Peoples”), and two six-pointed Stars of David on a relatively modest reader’s desk. As is evident in his work and stated in his essay “Hints for Designers” (reprinted in Cohen,

Lewis, and Thomas’s 1996 Frank Furness: The Complete Works), Furness believed that design must be derived from nature. This was likely informed, to at least some extent, by the Transcendentalist conception of nature as the ultimate expression of the Divine. It is, therefore, reasonable to understand the proliferation of floral- and plant-inspired decorative patterns incorporated throughout Rodeph Shalom as a form of religious iconography.

The tower includes an entryway, completing the façade’s symmetry. Its massive, four-sided base flared into an octagon as it reaches upward, culminating in the plump, striped dome. While so-called “onion domes” are found in Moorish and Byzantine architecture, the example on Furness’s Rodeph Shalom and other synagogues of the era and later is in keeping with those on Russian Orthodox churches. This seems an odd

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reference to evoke. Moorish forms linked the much-heralded liberated, enlightened experience of the Central and Western European and American Jew with that of their co- religionists during Jewish Golden Age in Muslim Spain, dating roughly from the eighth through thirteenth centuries. However, it is difficult to determine what positive associations the Germanic Jews of Rodeph Shalom would have seen in a Russian

Orthodox ecclesiastical form. While the Jewish population was large and vibrant in the

Russian “Pale of Settlement,” the vast territory annexed by Russia in 1795 from the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, it was also deeply oppressed, poverty stricken, and “backward” in the prevailing view of German and German-American Jews of the nineteenth-century.

It is the horseshoe arches that Furness incorporated prominently in the design of

Rodeph Shalom that have encouraged the structure’s designation as Moorish. However, beyond the exotic notes struck by the horseshoe arches and the onion-dome, the temple has much more in common with a Gothic Revival church. In addition to its basilica shape and massing and its verticality, the temple features steep gables, stained-glass rose- windows, and buttresses along its sides. The fenestration of the second-storey of the gabled entrance of the temple’s south entrance and its tower are trios of narrow vertical windows with simple (that is, non-horseshoe) round tops; these trios are crowned with three ocular windows set in a triangular pattern. This composition is seen in Gothic

Revival and other churches of the time.

Rodeph Shalom’s large sanctuary accommodated more than 1,600 individuals—a reflection of the congregation’s burgeoning membership and its correlation in prominence with architecturally notable and socially prestigious Protestant houses of

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worship such as the Church of the Holy Trinity, the sanctuary of which accommodated

1,500. Furness’s Rodeph Shalom reflected the growth, growing prosperity, and, likely, the social aspirations of Philadelphia’s Jewish community.

The arrangement of seating in the sanctuary of Furness’s Rodeph Shalom was nearly identical to that of the Church of the Holy Trinity (see figures 17 and 18). Each has a wide central aisle leading to the chancel or bimah (which is, most specifically, a reading platform); primary seating areas on either side the central aisle; narrower side aisles flanked by additional seating; and balconies or “galleries” with still more seating.

In sum, the main floor of each sanctuary had the composition of a three-aisle basilicas but did not include transepts and were built in a modern, auditorium style with views unobstructed by the columns or piers that would partially separate side aisles and seating from the central areas (or “nave”) in a traditional basilica.

The interior arrangement of the temple made clear the congregation’s “reform” orientation. Traditional synagogue design places the Holy Ark that holds the Torah at the sanctuary’s eastern end with a bimah standing toward the center of the space. Furness’s

Rodeph Shalom presents the Holy Ark and the bimah together on a massive chancel at the east end of the sanctuary. Arranging the sanctuary so that the congregants’ attention focused on a single “stage” followed the custom of Protestant and Catholic ecclesiastical architecture.

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Figure 17: View of the sanctuary designed by Frank Furness for Rodeph Shalom (Courtesy Congregation Rodeph Shalom, Philadelphia)

Figure 18: Seating plan for the Church of the Holy Trinity (Courtesy Church of the Holy Trinity, Philadelphia)

As noted, both Rodeph Shalom’s and the Church of the Holy Trinity’s sanctuaries included balconies with additional seating. In traditional synagogues, women sat in balconies and behind screens. Rabbi Jastrow’s original intention was for men and women

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to sit together on the main floor of the sanctuary, but separated by the central aisle. This was the practice not only in Reform temples in Germany, but in German Lutheran churches. Accounts vary, but it appears that if Jastrow’s vision for separate seating by gender was instituted in Rodeph Shalom’s new temple, it did not last long. Rodeph

Shalom’s members, like other “reforming” American Jews, demanded the adoption of the

“family pew,” in which men, women, and children could sit together.

In Furness’s design for Rodeph Shalom, the (literally and figuratively) overarching centrality of this area was emphasized by a square-shaped, richly decorated, polished bronze canopy that is topped by an octagonal tower (figure 19)—a structure so monumental and elaborate that it registers as a building within a building. Philadelphia’s

Evening Telegraph described the interior of Rodeph Shalom in an article dated

September 8, 1870:

The cutting of the ornamental stone-work in intricate figures is very beautiful. The interior is finished with handsome frescoing in crimson blue and gold from the floor to the peak of the roof. The windows are of pressed stained glass set in lead and mounted directly into the stone-work. (8)

As the Saturday morning Sabbath service was the primary service of the week (later efforts shifted emphasis to Sabbath eve services on Friday evenings and, among the most

“radical” Reform congregations, to Sunday mornings) rays from the East-rising sun streaming through a stained-glass rose-window above the onion-dome further highlighted, literally, the chancel and the activities that took place upon it. As this pairing of the Holy Ark and the bimah on an elevated chancel became the norm in Reform,

Conservative, and some Orthodox Jewish synagogues, the entirety of this stage-like area came to be referred to as the bimah.

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These architectural changes were not introduced merely to mimic the prevailing layout of Protestant churches, although that was certainly part of the motivation. They also signaled changes to the structure and ambiance of worship services that were key to nineteenth-century Reform Jewish ideals and goals. Emphases on decorous behavior and streamlined ritual are reflected in the Holy Ark and bimah’s placement on a single chancel. This eliminated the traditional marching of the Torah from one to the other in order to read from it—as well as the surge in conversation and movement (during the march, or hakafa, male worshippers positioned themselves so as to touch the Torah with fringes of their prayer-shawls, or tallit, and then kiss those fringes in a sign of reverence; women touched the Torah with a prayer-book)—that tended to accompany this procession.

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Figure 19: View of the chancel (bimah) with the suite of furniture designed by Frank Furness for Congregation Rodeph Shalom (Courtesy Congregation Rodeph Shalom, Philadelphia)

The largest freestanding element on the chancel is an enormous pulpit. Sermons delivered in the vernacular (in German Jewish-American congregations such as Rodeph

Shalom, the “vernacular” was initially German, which later gave way to English as the critical-mass of congregants evolved from immigrant to native-born) were central to the synagogal changes desired by Reform Jews. Sermons, beyond the occasional exposition on a passage of Torah, had not been part of traditional Jewish services. Mirroring

Protestantism, nineteenth-century Reform Jews looked for their worship experience to

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include—indeed, often to be centered upon—an erudite and engaging sermon that touched upon religious as well as topical matters.

Delivering sermons, leading worship services, providing pastoral care, and serving as spokesmen for their congregations and communities were nineteenth-century innovations that reflected a dramatic shift in the role of a rabbi. Throughout Jewish history in the Diaspora—that is, following the destruction of the Second Temple in 70

C.E.—rabbis were men who demonstrated the highest levels of knowledge and scholarship in regard to the Torah and Talmud (known as the “Written Law” and “Oral

Law,” respectively). In a practice traditionally regarded as originating with Moses, these men received semichah—“the laying on of hands,” or ordination—and were selected for regional and central councils known as sanhedrin. Their purpose was to teach and to serve as judges in matters of Jewish law. They did not lead worship services. Every

Jewish male was expected to be sufficiently educated and experienced in Jewish law, ritual, and worship to lead services; all that was required for communal worship was a minyan (quorum) of ten Jewish men.

This changed in nineteenth-century Europe as newly assimilating and “reforming”

Jews grew less literate in Jewish law and practice—and therefore less able to lead worship—and desired synagogues that were not only architecturally on par with Christian churches but, like churches, were led by professional clergy. Marcus Jastrow was then a recently emergent type—the “pulpit rabbi.” This new rabbi—typically accompanied by a cantor—was the active point of focus for his congregants, who were largely passive

“audience members” during services. The central, elevated, and elaborate bimah placed at the front of the sanctuary and the imposing pulpit underscored the reform rabbi’s

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preeminence and performative role in the context of worship. The bimah was the domain of the rabbi and cantor. As can be seen in the photograph of Rodeph Shalom’s bimah

(figure 19), it contained just two chairs. As designed by Frank Furness, these chairs— throne-like, their dramatically curvilinear scrollwork accented with what appears to be silver-leaf or an otherwise metallic coating, and with exaggeratedly high, peaked backs that stood more than six-feet tall—underscored the centrality of their occupants: the rabbi and cantor.

Strikingly prominent in the composition atop the chancel are organ pipes. To a great, and perhaps surprising, degree, the inclusion of an organ was the single most definitive distinction between a Reform and traditional synagogue. The organ not only heightened the aesthetics of the service—it was typically accompanied by a mixed- gender choir that sang Jewish liturgical compositions informed by European classical music—but lent further strength to efforts to foster decorum. Traditionally, the Jewish service did not proceed with all congregants praying in unison as led by a rabbi. Instead, each congregant made his or her way through liturgy largely at their own rate.

Intermittently, phrases were chanted by a chazan (“cantor,” in more formal milieu, but more typically a layman with a strong voice who was able to lead prayer) to let participants know where they should be, if only approximately. The organ, along with a rabbi or officially designated “Reverend” (a title often given to non-ordained spiritual leaders of American Jewish congregations in the period before 1840, when ordained and fully educated rabbis began to arrive in the United States) who led the service with authority, ensured that worship proceeded in unison.

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This move to a service structure in which all participated at the same pace was reinforced by the introduction of prayers read in the vernacular (again, in keeping with the pattern of assimilation, “vernacular” first meant German and, later, English) by the entire congregation. The organ, choir, and congregants all joined in the singing of hymns in Hebrew, German, and English (the latter often adapted from the Episcopal hymnal).

Large, hammer-beam trusses spanned the ceiling of the sanctuary and emphasized the three-part organization of seating below. Such trusses were redolent of Gothic

Revival churches. In the case of Rodeph Shalom, the trusses curved to form a bit more than a half-circle—that is, they formed horseshoe arches—creating a hybrid Gothic-

Moorish form. The edges of the trusses were notched to form a scalloped-texture and appearance that further departed from the Gothic norm to exoticize the space, as did stenciled ornament in keeping with Moorish and Byzantine precedent (O’Gorman 1973,

32).

Unfortunately, no records remain that document the precise motivations of Rabbi

Marcus Jastrow and Congregation Rodeph Shalom’s selection of Frank Furness to design its first purpose-built synagogue. Therefore, I cannot assert with authority what Jastrow and the Congregation were seeking. Jastrow was certainly familiar with the rundbogenstil synagogue built on Berlin’s Oranienburgerstrasse (figures 20 and 21), the largest synagogue in the world when completed in 1866—the year of Jastrow’s immigration

(Krinsky 1985, 265–270). If Jastrow sought to emulate the Berlin synagogue, Frank

Furness realized the rabbi’s desires. With that said, in addition to illustrations of

European developments Furness may have seen in the day’s architectural periodicals and other publications. In addition, he had first-hand exposure to New York’s Temple

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Emanu-El, which was similarly influenced by the Oranienburgerstrasse Synagogue and other recently built European rundbogenstil temples.

Figure 20: Façade of the Oranienburgerstrasse synagogue Berlin, 1866, Eduard Knoblauch. Note that while the towers at the building’s front corners are octagonal and topped by domes (as at Rodeph Shalom), the dome is round, as opposed to the onion shape used by Furness at Rodeph Shalom. (Unknown artist/collection)

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Figure 21: View of the sanctuary of the Oranienburgerstrasse synagogue Berlin, 1866. There are marked similarities between the Oranienburgerstrasse sanctuary and that of Rodeph Shalom—particularly the elaborate canopy over the Holy Ark—the Oranienburgerstrasse’s arches are half-round rather than horseshoe shaped, and the dome atop the canopy is also half-round, unlike the onion-shaped dome atop the canopy at Rodeph Shalom. (Unknown artist/collection)

It must be remembered that Furness was the son of a Unitarian minister and that matters of morality and honest were central to his life and work. As such, he was an architect particularly well-suited to designing houses of worship for reform-minded religious groups such as Congregation Rodeph Shalom. What Furness created—and what the congregants of Rodeph Shalom regarded as their spiritual home for more than 50 years—was a temple and its furnishings that embodied a modern, progressive, trans-

Atlantic, and unfailingly unified and cohesive approach to reform in life, design, and religion. When considered in light of the specifics of Furness’s life and influences, the temple he designed for Rodeph Shalom speaks as much to the New England

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Transcendentalist philosophy in which he was raised and English and American perceptions of the Gothic as a template for modern architecture as it does Jewish religious reforms and new approaches to synagogue design that originated in Central Europe.

Furniture Designed by Frank Furness for Rodeph Shalom

The synagogue designed by Frank Furness for Rodeph Shalom may, indeed, be characterized as rundbogenstil or Moorish. However, the synagogue—and, to a greater extent, its furnishings—could be described, perhaps more accurately and specifically, as

Modern Gothic. Furness was a noted Anglophile. Modern Gothic, the Aesthetic

Movement, and the Arts and Crafts Movement all were developed first in England and quickly adopted and adapted by progressive American architects, a group in which

Furness rapidly became prominent. Indeed, as art historian Marilynn Johnson notes, “The most successful American interpretations of the Talbert style of Modern Gothic was apparently the result of a collaboration between a highly skilled Philadelphia cabinetmaker and carver, Daniel Pabst, and Frank Furness, a Philadelphia architect”

(Bolger 1986, 146; whether the suite of furniture at Rodeph Shalom is a product of

Pabst’s workshop is a matter of debate). Historian William Harbeson expands upon this idea by noting that, through Furness, Pabst, and like-minded others, Philadelphia was a city that was particularly receptive to the Modern Gothic style (Harbeson 1943, 227–

253).

Modern Gothic was characterized by low-relief medieval-esque decoration, incorporation of (loosely interpreted) Gothic forms, and (in most cases) monumentality, rectilinearity, and an architectonic quality. The fiercely individualistic Furness took the

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Modern Gothic style and shaped it according to his vision. Similarly, Furness would likely have taken the architectural program desired by a congregation and produced a building that met both his clients’ expectations and represented, seemingly without compromise, Furness’s distinct—indeed, aggressive—style. As decorative arts historian

Wendy Kaplan observed, “[M]any pieces of [Furness’s work] are playfully over- constructed. Furness was a design reformer but did not follow any one philosophy. The man who ‘made buildings out of his head’ did the same for furniture” (Kaplan 1987,

1091). Especially remarkable it is that, while Rodeph Shalom was Furness’s first major commission, the architect’s “characteristic detail [is] already in hand” in its furniture, as noted by architectural historian George E. Thomas.13

Sadly, Furness’s temple was razed in the mid-1920s to make way for a much larger, multifunctional, and more fashionable (Gothic-oriented Victorian eclecticism was decidedly out of style in the Roaring ‘20s) synagogue designed by the Philadelphia architects Simon & Simon. All that remains of Furness’s temple is a suite of furniture—a pulpit, reader’s desk, and two chairs—that he designed for the sanctuary’s bimah (figure

19). This group is complemented by a brass-plated ner tamid (Eternal Light) that was likely specified for purchase in its entirety by Furness or assembled from pre- manufactured parts (figure 22). With the exception of the pulpit, the suite of furniture and

Eternal Light now have (somewhat diminished) pride of place in the current temple’s chapel (figure 23). The pulpit (figure 24) has pride of place in the expansive entry-lobby that is a key feature of a major addition, renovation, and reorientation and reorganization of the interior spaces (with the exception of its sanctuary) of Rodeph Shalom’s current temple, which was designed and built by Simon & Simon Architects in 1927–1928.

13 E-mail from George E. Thomas to the author, April 25, 2012. 149

Completed in 2015, this latest major architectural undertaking by Rodeph Shalom was designed and overseen by the Philadelphia-based firm Kieran Timberlake.

Figure 22: Ner tamid (Eternal Light) designed or purchased by Frank Furness for Congregation Rodeph Shalom, brass-plated iron and glass (Photograph: Matthew F. Singer)

Figure 23: Furness’s furnishings for Rodeph Shalom (with the exception of the pulpit) in the chapel of the congregation’s current temple, designed by Simon & Simon Architects, 1927–1928 (Photograph: Matthew F. Singer)

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Figure 24: Pulpit designed by Frank Furness for Congregation Rodeph Shalom, walnut, 55-1/2 x 73 x 40” (Photograph: Matthew F. Singer)

To a degree not seen in the United States until Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) arrived at the fully realized philosophy and approach of his “Prairie Style” in the earliest years of the twentieth century14, the temple and furnishings designed by Furness for

Rodeph Shalom were seamlessly of a piece. They were elements of a gesamtkunstwerk, a total work of art. In shape, proportions, and decorative motifs, the furniture echoes the building. It is architectonic not only in its decided evocation of the mass and rigorous composition and construction of architecture, but in replicating—on a scale that is monumental when compared to most furniture—the exterior and interior forms and decoration of the building it furnished.

14 The term “Prairie Style” is most often used to describe homes designed by Wright and those he influenced. In the context of this dissertation, it is especially important to note that Wright designed and built public buildings in the Prairie Style. The first of these is Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois, the Unitarian congregation of which Wright was a member. Unity Temple, built between 1905 and 1909, will be discussed in the concluding chapter of this dissertation. 151

The furniture designed by Furness for Rodeph Shalom reflects a unique history, or, as we will see, a confluence of histories. To understand the furniture Furness designed for Rodeph Shalom’s bimah, a suite that is the only three-dimensional evidence of a singular temple now lost to the past, one must consider historic developments in

Philadelphia and beyond, the totality of Furness’s vision for Rodeph Shalom, and the reformist spirit that flourished in matters as seemingly disparate as religion and design in the final third of the nineteenth century.

The pulpit—the place of oratory from which the “call to prayer” is issued—flares dramatically, echoing the flaring of the minaret-like tower but in a greatly exaggerated manner. The pulpit is seventy-three inches broad at the top, but just fifty inches wide at the bottom. Like the exterior and interior of the temple, it features scalloped arches and incised or low-relief decoration, including abstracted floral forms and rosettes that echo the temple’s prominent rose-window. Arrayed across the pulpit’s front, three stout, engaged columns give the appearance of supporting the massive spread of the pulpit and the moral gravitas it represents. Of course, they are merely decorative and support nothing, but they resonate with similar columns that flank the synagogue’s entrance and support the elaborate, dome-topped canopy that soars above the chancel.

Squat columns are a leitmotif in Furness’s work, appearing repeatedly in his buildings, including what is widely considered his masterpiece, the Pennsylvania

Academy of the Fine Arts, which was completed in 1876. Furness’s columns bear no resemblance to the Greek orders. They are, in fact, streamlined and machine-like, evoking energy-producing pistons (figure 25). This industrial feeling is further

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emphasized with decorative elements that look like ball-bearings circling the spaces between the columns’ shafts and capitals.

Figure 25: Detail of the pulpit showing engaged columns, fretwork, and scalloped horseshoe arches (Photograph: Matthew F. Singer)

The pulpit’s abstract floral and rosette designs are rendered in what is called fretwork or pierced-work. The designs are cut into one piece of wood with a jigsaw, and that stencil-like piece of wood is then placed atop a solid piece of wood. On the pulpit, the recessed sections—the expanses of solid piece made visible by the fretwork—and, thus, the designs, are emphasized with greenish-blue and red paint.15 The combination of nature-inspired decoration and the industrial feel evoked by the pulpit’s squat, piston-like columns topped with capitals distinguished by a ball-bearing motif gives shape to

Furness’ simultaneous engagement with both the organic and machine-made. In this, it is

15 According to David deMuzio, the former Senior Conservator of Furniture and Woodwork at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (now the Director of the Mount Pleasant Foundation, Spring Grove, Virginia) who visited Rodeph Shalom with the author on April 5, 2012, the paint on both the pulpit and the reader’s desk appears to be original or, at least, very old, as evidenced by the crazing of its surface. Per the Evening Telegraph’s description published on September 8, 1870, the color scheme of Rodeph Shalom’s interior was blue and gold. 153

ecclesiastical and architectural testimony to the validity of Leo Marx’s concept of the

“machine in the garden” as an idea and image that evokes how the “pastoral ideal” that is central to America’s self-interpretation was transformed , in often grudging but ultimately creative ways, by the impact of industrialism in the Victorian era (Marx 1964, 4).

As discussed previously, the Torah—the scroll containing the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures—is removed from its ark to be read from the reader’s desk.

Furness’s design for Rodeph Shalom’s reader’s desk (figure 26) was far less elaborate than that of the pulpit. It is forty-three and one-half inches high and wide, and twenty- eight inches deep. Its block-like rectilinearity suggests solidity and permanence, characteristics central to the Modern Gothic mode in which Furness worked. Its stolid, sturdy profile echoes the foundational and fundamental centrality of the Torah in Jewish belief, study, philosophy, and worship.

Figure 26: Reader’s desk designed by Frank Furness for Congregation Rodeph Shalom, walnut, 43-1/2 x 43-1/2 x 28” (Photograph: Matthew F. Singer)

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In his suite for Rodeph Shalom, Furness achieved this light-and-dark effect by painting the designs rendered through pierced-work. Like the pulpit, the reader’s desk also features painted fretwork, albeit to a far lesser degree. Its pierced forms are limited to small shapes, reminiscent of fleur-de-lis, that repeat in a horizontal line toward the top of the desk. Prominent are two relatively large six-pointed stars—Stars of David— accompanied by dart-like flourishes and circles, set within panels on the front of the desk.

The Stars of David on the reader’s desk constitute the only overt Jewish iconography in the suite. The color-scheme of the paint on the desk is green and red. Although surely unintentional, this scheme and the particular composition of the dart and circle forms surrounding the stars remind the contemporary viewer of the conventions of Christmas decorations, and of holly in particular. With that said, the green and red paint are most likely not original to the piece. As can be seen in the photograph of the suite as it was placed on the bimah of Furness’s temple (figure 19), the furniture was highlighted with metallic accents.

The pair of chairs (figure 27) designed by Furness feature many of the characteristics and motifs found in the pulpit and reader’s desk. Each measuring seventy- three and one-half inches high, twenty-seven and three-quarters inches wide, and twenty- three and fifteen-sixteenth inches deep, they are monumental and emphatically rectilinear. As with the other pieces, their design incorporates scalloped arches, fretwork as well as incised and low-relief decoration, and columns (albeit elongated in keeping with the verticality of the chairs). Their architectural quality is reinforced by peaked tops that match the angles of the temple’s pitched roof. Now upholstered in cloth, the seats of the chairs were likely, based on other examples by Furness, originally upholstered in

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leather. The chairs rest on sturdy, square, chamfered legs, between which span scalloped arches. The chair’s arms are thick cylinders, with the same machine-like quality as the columns, which feature small rosettes carved into their ends. Like the pulpit, the pair of chairs merge the medieval with the modern and nature with industry.

In the upper-center of the chairs’ backs is the chairs’ primary design: large scalloped arches surrounding a floral shape that appears to be inspired by the anthemion or palmette (figure 28). This deduction is reinforced by the inclusion of a sculpted, rather than pierced, and less abstracted anthemion placed above the arch and just below the peak of each chair. The anthemion is a motif drawn from Greek and Roman Classical architecture. It, therefore, might seem an unlikely choice for the decoration of chairs designed in the Modern Gothic mode. However, given that the anthemion was inspired by the leaves of palm trees, it fits with Furness’s focus on nature as the source for ornament. Moreover, Furness abstracted and otherwise reimagined the anthemion to a degree that renders the form purely his own.

Figure 27: One of a pair of chairs designed by Frank Furness for Congregation Rodeph Shalom, walnut, 73-1/2 x 27-3/4 x 23-15/16 (Photograph: Matthew F. Singer)

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Figure 28: Anthemion, or palmette, designs. The example in the lower-right corner is closest to the design gracing the chairs. Illustration from A Handbook of Ornament by Franz Meyer, 1898.

The chairs have seen the most regular and prominent use in the current Rodeph

Shalom. They have long been placed in the chapel; the reader’s desk joined them there as part of a recent renovation of that space. Before that, it was used in a more modest and less visible fashion in a passageway leading from the temple’s side entrance to its sanctuary. There, the reader’s desk provided a surface for the distribution of service programs, brochures, flyers, and prayer-books. The pulpit was kept in storage for many decades, as the congregation—until recently—had a second site in suburban Elkins Park, which drew enough congregants to eliminate High Holiday “overflow” at Rodeph

Shalom’s Broad Street temple. Today, the chairs appear at first glance to be in the best condition, but, in reality, depart most from Furness’s conception of them. The chairs seem to be made of a darker, finer wood than the other pieces—particularly the reader’s desk. However, the entire suite is made of walnut, and the chairs were simply stained to appear darker at some point in their history. Most unfortunately, the paint that once

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accented the fretwork anthemion was so thoroughly stripped that not a trace remains. The polychromatic decoration of the chairs is obvious in the historic photographs of the sanctuary, as observed by David DeMuzio, former Senior Conservator of Furniture and

Woodwork at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.16

Beyond the Synagogue: “Moorish” Forms in Other Furness Commissions

On a more positive note, the chairs provide insight regarding how the furniture designed by Furness for Rodeph Shalom—indeed, the synagogue in its entirety—fit in the architect’s larger body of work. A fascinating comparison is found in armchairs designed by Furness for the dining room of his brother, the Shakespearian scholar Horace

Howard Furness, and his family (figure 29). These chairs are nearly identical in proportion, composition, and decoration to those at Rodeph Shalom. They are distinguished only by lower backs and brackets, rather than scalloped arches, between their chamfered legs. The armchairs date to circa 1870, when Rodeph Shalom was under construction.

Figure 29: Chair designed by Frank Furness for Horace Howard Furness, ca. 1870 (Private collection)

16 DeMuzio made this observation during his April 5, 2012, visit. At the time, DeMuzio was The Elaine S. Harrington Senior Conservator of Furniture and Woodwork at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He is now the director of the Mount Pleasant Foundation at Mount Pleasant Plantation, Surry County, Virginia. 158

In 1870–1871, as part of a larger remodeling project that included the above- mentioned dining room, Frank Furness designed a library for Horace Howard and his wife. This library is replete with massive bookcases. The doors of these bookcases feature glass windows, the framing of which suggest Alhambra-like portals topped by scalloped horseshoe arches (figure 30).

Of greatest interest, even curiosity, is a massive and densely ornamented and articulated desk that is now in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (figure

31). This desk, in the words of DeMuzio, is “shrunken monumental architecture.” A particularly large scalloped arch surrounds the space between the shelves below the desk’s top, through which one places his or her legs when seated. The exceptionally high back of the desk is divided—in a characteristically architectonic manner—in three parts, as is the façade of Rodeph Shalom and that of the Church of the Holy Trinity. The center, and broadest, section of the back is topped by a roof-like peak. Unique to this desk are three angels, each one reaching upward from the center of its section of the tripartite back. The angels on either side hold aloft lamps, while the angel in the center holds a clock. In the context of this desk-as-temple-or-church, the angels provide illumination and an organizing structure for life—that is, time (which also suggests intimations of mortality—an unlikely, but perhaps not wholly unexpected, consideration for a

Shakespearian scholar).

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Figure 30: Library designed by Frank Furness for Horace Howard Furness, 1870–1871 (Image: Athenaeum of Philadelphia)

Figure 31: Desk designed by Frank Furness for the library of Horace Howard Furness, made by Daniel Pabst, ca. 1870 –1871 (Philadelphia Museum of Art: Gift of George Wood Furness)

As this discussion indicates, there was little difference between Furness’s suite for

Rodeph Shalom’s bimah and furniture he designed for some other settings. All of

Furness’s furniture could be described as Modern Gothic, which was a “reform” mode of design and one manifestation of the Aesthetic Movement of the 1870s and 1880s.

Modern Gothic is also considered a precursor of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Even the horseshoe-arch—the defining characteristic of the synagogue-appropriate rundbogenstil—was likely discovered by Furness in the English design-reformer Bruce

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Talbert’s book Gothick Forms Applied to Furniture (published in 1867, two years prior to the beginning of work on Rodeph Shalom) rather than any survey Furness made of trends in synagogue architecture.

Further evidence that Moorish forms were an ongoing element in Furness’s architectural vocabulary, as opposed to anomalies employed solely in the design of

Rodeph Shalom, is the library in a home at Fifteenth and Walnut streets in Philadelphia that distiller and wine-importer Henry C. Gibson hired Furness to modernize. A board member of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Gibson was an art collector with a particular taste for the exotic—views of Istanbul, Venice, and points East were prominent in his holdings (Lewis 2001, 83). Inspired by admiration for the exotic design of Rodeph Shalom, Gibson contacted Furness’s firm in 1870 (83).

In photographs illustrating the book Artistic Houses (George William Sheldon.

1883–84; see figure 32), the Gibson House library evokes the combination of exoticism and Victorian excess that has made Frederic Church’s Olana—a “Persian”-style, fortress- like mansion—a landmark destination. Built between 1870 and 1891, Olana was a product of precisely the same cultural moment and aesthetic impulses as the Gibson

House, albeit vastly more dramatic in its siting and grander in scale. Alas, the eclectic

Gibson House, incorporating Egyptian Revival and Gothic as well as Moorish elements, no longer stands. As seen in Artistic Houses, its library featured arches that were not only horseshoe-shaped but scalloped, like those in Rodeph Shalom and its furnishings (unlike those in Rodeph Shalom, however, the arches in the Gibson library are pointed rather than purely rounded). With that said, the arches and other decorations in the Gibson library are more highly articulated than those in Rodeph Shalom—perhaps reflecting

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what was possible when a wealthy client of decided tastes focused his own and a similarly inclined architect’s energies on a single room rather than a vast structure.

Figure 32: Henry Gibson house, library, 1821–1872. (Artistic Houses, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1883–1884)

The columns supporting the pointed horseshoe arches share the piston-like quality of those in Rodeph Shalom, but are crowned by more highly carved capitals of floriated design that are akin to the Corinthian order but shorter. Similarly, the decorative patterns in the libraries wooden surfaces appear drawn from the same sources as those in Rodeph

Shalom but are carved in low-relief rather than rendered in fretwork. The ceiling-fixture that hangs above the centrally placed, Furness-designed table in the Gibson library is fascinating, particularly vis-à-vis Rodeph Shalom’s Eternal Light (ner tamid) and the lights that project from the desk designed by Frank Furnace for his brother, Horace. Like the temple’s ner tamid, the Gibson fixture’s decoration includes flourishes of Greek-like ornamental shapes painted or printed on to its flat surfaces. But the Gibson light is far more elaborate in its detailing and incorporates more components, such as small busts of

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distinctly Egyptian appearance. These echo the inclusion of fully three-dimensional, sculptural, metal, and figurative angels that hold aloft globe-shaped lamps and a clock in

Horace Howard Furness’s desk, while evoking a non-Classical, “exotic” and “Eastern” antiquity.

Furness’s employment of Moorish forms extended beyond Rodeph Shalom and residential libraries to two distinctly public, high profile commissions: the restaurant at the Philadelphia Zoological Gardens (1875–1876; demolished) and the Brazilian Pavilion built for the Centennial Exposition of 1876—the first world’s fair held in the United

States. The porch of the zoo’s restaurant (figure 33) featured not only scalloped horseshoe arches; its corners are marked by gazebo-like spaces topped by pillowy onion- domes very much like the one above the bimah at Rodeph Shalom.

Figure 33: Restaurant at the Philadelphia Zoological Gardens, 1875–1876 (Image: Zoological Society of Philadelphia)

The Brazilian Pavilion (figure 34) was a neo-Moorish extravaganza, more consistently Alhambra-esque than anything discussed earlier in this analysis. Deploying the Moorish style in designing and building the Brazilian Pavilion seems like an odd choice. Perhaps the rationale is found in Brazil’s origin as a Portuguese colony and, thus, its link to the Iberian Peninsula.

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Figure 34: The Brazilian Pavilion at the Centennial Exhibition, Philadelphia, 1876 (Image: George E. Thomas)

Philadelphia’s ability to successfully conceive, organize, build, and present the

America’s world’s fair reflects the rich tradition of broad and active participation of the city’s elite in benevolent societies and social clubs. rank Furness maintained only one long-term club membership, and that was with the Social Arts Club. The club was founded in 1875 for the purpose of allowing “…businessmen, intellectuals, and artists to socialize in a congenial, friendly atmosphere” (www.rittenhouseclub.org). Its cofounders were Dr. William Pepper, Jr., provost of the University of Pennsylvania, and the previously discussed physician S. Weir Mitchell. (Pepper, Mitchell, Horace Howard

Furness, and Morris Jastrow, Jr., were central figures in the “Furness-Mitchell Coterie,” a group of friends connected to varying degrees and in varying combinations through professional ties and familial relations and connections; the Furness-Mitchell Coterie is discussed in Chapter 8). Through Mitchell, the Social Arts Club was an extension of

Furness’ familial milieu. Through Pepper, the club connected to Furness’s professional present and future, as he came to serve as de facto official architect for the University of

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Pennsylvania from, roughly, 1883 to 1891. The Social Arts Club was renamed the

Rittenhouse Club when it moved from Chestnut Street to 1811 Walnut Street (on

Rittenhouse Square) in 1878.

Although a bastion of Philadelphia’s elite, the Social Arts Club/Rittenhouse Club was not the preserve of those committed to the status quo, at least in regard to aesthetic and cerebral matters. The intent of the Social Arts Club was to advance the city’s intellectual, cultural, and artistic life. As such, it was a center for the reform-minded—as demonstrated by its hiring of Furness to renovate its interior, develop a new façade, and design its furnishings. A desk (figure 35) designed by Furness for the club’s new home hearkens to the Moorish-cum-Modern Gothic-cum-Transcendentalist furniture designed—simultaneously, circa 1870—by Frank Furness for Rodeph Shalom and the library of Horace Howard Furness. It is massive and rectilinear. Brackets between the table’s solid, four-square legs and its elaborate, multi-layered top section are lightly curved and notched, recalling Rodeph Shalom’s scalloped arches. Completing the effect is wood cut in a zigzag pattern that decorates the underside of the architrave upon which the table’s top rests and visually connects the two brackets. Decoration is flat, abstracted, and derived from natural forms. As on the furniture designed for Rodeph Shalom and

Horace Furness—and unlike that of the Gibson library—decorative forms are created through fretwork or rendered in shallow incising.

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Figure 35: Desk and chair, Social Arts Club, 1878 (Unknown photographer/collection0)

Furness’s incorporation of Moorish forms was not an anomaly limited to the design of Rodeph Shalom’s temple to conjure the Jewish Golden Age in Muslim Spain.

Whether focusing his sensibility on the design of a house of worship, a home, places of public entertainment and gathering, or the setting for a social association committed to cultivation and progress, Frank Furness worked with a remarkably consistent visual and material language. Throughout the 1870s, and reemerging in 1891 with Furness’s design for the chapel at Mount Sinai Cemetery, this language included, indeed was laden with,

Moorish forms.

By advocating the East-meets-West admixture of Venetian Gothic as the timeless and infinitely adaptable architectural style ne plus ultra, Ruskin provided Furness with the philosophical and aesthetic underpinnings for incorporating so-called Moorish and

Byzantine forms in his work. British designers such as Bruce Talbert and Christopher

Dresser presented examples of “Modern Gothic” and “Reform” furniture with Moorish details. Furness likely had Ruskin, Talbert, and Dresser in mind when beginning his design for Rodeph Shalom. However, the Moorish-Gothic hybrid that was Furness’s

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Moorish Rodeph Shalom synagogue far exceeded anything seen and discussed by Ruskin or imagined by Dresser and Talbert. Furness’s employment of the Moorish for Rodeph

Shalom, once again citing his particularly well-realized scalloped horseshoes arches as exemplary manifestations of this impulse, was unparalleled in the United States (its only possible rival may have been the rundbogenstil Orinienburgerstrasse synagogue in

Berlin).

Other American architects and builders incorporated the characteristic Moorish horseshoe arch in their designs for synagogues. But it was Furness, perhaps because of the handsome budget and apparent freedom in design extended to him by Rabbi Jastrow and his congregation, who built a gesamtkunstwerk in which the Moorish blended with

Gothic and other influences seamlessly and with vigor. Moorish tropes repeated, emphatically but gracefully, in the design of the temple’s exterior, within its sanctuary, and echoed in the pulpit, chairs, and other furniture designed for the bimah.

Furness’s continued use of his singular take on the Moorish in widely ranging commissions suggests that he took great pleasure in developing the form and using it, time and again, to distinguish architectural programs large and small, sacred and secular, public and domestic. It seems safe to argue that Furness did not simply see the Moorish as the source of an occasional flourish from the past and points far away and exotic.

Rather, the Moorish appeared central to Furness’s vision for a new architecture—an architecture of reform. Furness employed “Moorish” elements to varying degrees, but always the Modern-Gothic approach, in the ecclesiastical architecture he designed for

Jews and Unitarians—and “secular churches” of art and knowledge—through the end of the nineteenth century.

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Chapter 7. BUILDING LIBERAL RELIGION: FRANK FURNESS’ COMMISSIONS FOR UNITARIANS, JEWS, AND “THE TEMPLE OF THE FINE ARTS,” 1866–1892

Congregation Rodeph Shalom is described as Furness’s first major commission by scholars who have led in the study of the architect’s work, including George E.

Thomas and Michael J. Lewis (Thomas 1996, 150; Lewis 2001, 77–78). With this said, in addition to several residences, there were two more substantial structures, both churches, that preceded Rodeph Shalom in Furness’s oeuvre (Thomas 1996, 146–149). The

Episcopal Church of the Holy Apostles, built between 1868 and 1870 at Twenty-First and

Christian streets in Philadelphia, while credited to the firm of Fraser, Furness, and

Hewitt, was designed by George Hewitt, specifically (149). The modestly scaled, but stylistically significant, church built for the Unitarian Society of Germantown (Greene

Street and Chelten Avenue; figure 1) in 1866 and 1867, was the work of Frank Furness alone (146). Thus, Furness’ work for the Unitarians of Germantown and vicinity was the first expression of Furness’ own approach to ecclesiastical architecture.

The Episcopal Church of the United States was and is a member of the Anglican

Communion, which originated with the Church of England. Although what would become the United States was initially established as colonies by dissenters from the

Church of England—the Puritans in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania’s Quakers—the

Episcopal Church evolved into the most socially prestigious and influential religious denomination in the United States over the course of the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth century, in response to a growing sense of spiritual malaise among its clergy and most engaged laypeople, the nineteenth-century Anglican church looked backward to the roots in the Catholic Church (from which Henry VIII broke, establishing the

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independent Church of England in 1534; Prothero 2007, 219). Traditional Catholic worship and rituals and their requisite ceremonial objects, which came to their aesthetic fruition in the Gothic Middle Ages, were embraced by Anglicans as the means to reinvigorate the church as it moved forward. This theological and liturgical approach captured the imagination and inspired the creations of the most progressive, inventive, and reformist English architects, designers, and critics of the period, including

Christopher Dresser, Charles Eastlake, William Morris, A.W.N. Pugin, John Ruskin, and

Bruce Talbert. And so it did Frank Furness, who carried this Episcopal sensibility into the similarly prosperous, culturally sophisticated, and English-derived realm of Philadelphia

Unitarianism and—as we saw in Rodeph Shalom—the emerging elite of Americanizing

Jews.

An English, Gothic Parish Church in Philadelphia: The Unitarian Society of

Germantown

The Unitarian Society of Germantown was a direct offshoot of the First Unitarian

Church of Philadelphia. Its founders were members of First Unitarian who wanted a place of worship closer to their homes in a developing district at the outskirts of the city.

Located six miles to the northwest of central Philadelphia, Germantown has a long and distinctive history. German Quaker and Mennonite families established the borough in

1681. It was the first-settlement of the large and influential linguistic, ethnic, and cultural group that came to be known as Pennsylvania-German or, colloquially, Pennsylvania-

Dutch. Germantown remained an independent borough until 1854, when it—and every area then within the County of Philadelphia but not yet part of the city—was absorbed by

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Philadelphia. That same year, the Chestnut Hill Railroad began service between northwest and Center City Philadelphia.

Like neighboring Chestnut Hill and Mount Airy, Germantown evolved into a leafy suburban “bedroom community,” albeit one within the city’s limits, during the second-half of the nineteenth century. The church designed by Furness for the Unitarian

Society of Germantown was in the style of a rural English Gothic parish church (figure

36). In the mid-nineteenth century, this form became a popular style for houses of worship built by the Episcopalian elite in Philadelphia’s emerging suburbs and farther outlying areas dotted with the country retreats of the wealthy.

Figure 36: The Unitarian Society of Germantown, Philadelphia, 1866–1867 (Image: Unitarian Society of Germantown)

In Church and Estate: Religion and Wealth in Industrial-Era (2013), Thomas

Rzeznik delineates the appeal of the parish church type of structure for prosperous, established Philadelphians. He notes that it “helped facilitate class formation among the elite” by linking them with England’s landed, rural gentry (Rzeznik 2013, 77). It was distinctly formal, substantial, and “churchly,” as opposed to the plain “meeting-house” style preferred by Pennsylvania’s Quakers and New England’s Congregationalists and

Unitarians. These qualities evoked, for those thriving in industrial-era Philadelphia, “a

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sense of permanence and prestige” (88). Moreover, it addressed and expressed evolving religious ideology and practice. American Episcopalians were following the lead of their

English Anglican counterparts by reintroducing “high-church,” Catholic-like ritual into their worship. The English Gothic parish church lent itself to such ritual while lacking undesirable, overt associations with Roman Catholicism (89).

The building of the Episcopal church Saint James the Less (figure 37) in 1846 in the city’s East Falls section (situated between Center City and Germantown, Mount Airy, and Chestnut Hill), represents a milestone in the history of American ecclesiastical architecture, particularly that of the Gothic Revival. Built by the architect John Carver,

Saint James the Less was based on measured drawings taken by George Gordon Place at

Saint Michael’s, Longstanton, Cambridgeshire—a thirteenth-century early English

Gothic parish church. These drawings were commissioned by the scholarly

Ecclesiological Society (founded by students at Cambridge University as the Cambridge

Camden Society in 1839), which studied Gothic architecture and objects and promoted the employment of the Gothic style by their fellow nineteenth-century Anglicans. Saint

James the Less was the first church in the United States built according to plans supplied by, and with ongoing supervision from, the Ecclesiological Society. The Historic

American Buildings Survey declares it the “first pure example of a Medieval parish church in America.”

Like Saint James the Less, Furness’s design for the Unitarian Society of

Germantown featured a low-sloping roof uninterrupted by clerestory windows, buttresses, and a tiered bellcote. Perhaps giving a foretaste of his mature sensibility,

Furness placed the bellcote to the side of the Germantown church’s front elevation,

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creating an asymmetrical and relatively low-slung composition. In contrast, Saint James the Less is perfectly symmetrical, with its bellcote centered on the front façade and soaring above the ridge of the roof.

Figure 37: Church of Saint James the Less, Philadelphia (1846–1850), designed by John E. Carver after drawings by George Gordon Place (Image: Tom Crane)

Saint Timothy’s Episcopal Church in Philadelphia’s Roxborough neighborhood

(again, located to the northwest of Center City), was built in the English Gothic parish- church style by the architect Emlen T. Littell (1838–1891) in 1862 and 1863—just shortly before Furness designed and built the Germantown Unitarian church. Slightly older than Furness, Littell befriended the younger architect and championed him, nominating Furness (and H. H. Richardson) for membership in the American Institute of

Architects in 1866.

Saint Timothy’s is low-slung, buttressed, and its original design (it was altered and expanded by Littell in 1885 and 1886) featured a bellcote (figure 38). In addition to

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these characteristic features of the English parish church, Saint Timothy’s included a front entry porch and—built at one corner of its front façade during the 1885–1886 expansion—a tower that was massive in width but truncated. Thus, Saint Timothy’s has stylistic and chronological links with Furness’s designs for the Unitarian Society of

Germantown and the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, which was built in 1885 and

1886. Indeed, the tower at Saint Timothy’s has at times been misattributed to Furness, although its true authorship is unequivocally proven in surviving drawings by Littell

(Moss 2005, 290).

Figure 38: Saint Timothy’s Episcopal Church, Roxborough, Philadelphia (1862–1863, 1885–1886), designed by Emlen T. Littell (Image: Saint Timothy’s Episcopal Church, Roxborough, Pennsylvania)

The church designed by Furness for the Unitarian Society of Germantown no longer stands. The Society’s current building, dedicated in 1928, is Georgian in style.

Though a relatively modest structure, Furness’s design for the Germantown Society is significant, for in it he introduced the Gothic style to Unitarian church architecture in

Philadelphia. Indeed, as an American Unitarian church built in the Gothic mode, it was preceded only by the Unitarian Church of Charleston, a cathedral-style structure 173

completed in 1854. Furness’s choice of parish-church Gothic for the Unitarian Society of

Germantown speaks to the ascendance of the Gothic Revival, in general, and its popularity among the elite—Episcopalians first and foremost, followed shortly by

Unitarians and others. Primarily through the connections of George Hewitt, the firm of

Fraser, Furness, & Hewitt designed and built a steady stream of Episcopal churches and related projects. Among these is the prominent tower built in 1868 as an addition to the

Church of the Holy Trinity (illustrated on page 131as a mirror image of Furness’s design for Congregation Rodeph Shalom).

Though grander in scale and a prime example of Furness’s fully developed mature style, Furness’s design for First Unitarian was—like his work for the Germantown

Society—an exercise (albeit a greatly elaborated one) in the parish-church style. The broad Gothic Revival, and the emergence in America of churches based on precedents built in the English countryside in the fourteenth-century and earlier, were developments promulgated first by English Anglicans and their American Episcopalian siblings. This took place in the nineteenth century, a time when the Anglican church was looking toward and striving for a revitalized future and working to achieve it by reviving and adapting forms from the (perhaps idealized) past. Representing the highest tier of the

Protestant hegemony in England and the United States, Anglicanism (the state religion of

England) and Episcopalianism held outsize influence in their respective societies.

It must be noted that while many Anglican and Episcopal churches were embracing a neo-Catholic (“High-Church”) ritualism, this development was not necessarily accompanied by a “return to tradition” in terms of belief and other theological concerns. The “Broad Church” movement—of which Philadelphia’s Church of the Holy

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Trinity on Rittenhouse Square was a prominent advocate and bastion—allowed for diversity of opinion and approach among clergy and laity to ritual, doctrine, theology, ecclesiastical authority, and biblical interpretation. “Broad Church” congregations mixed

“High” and “Low” forms according to the eclectic and individualistic preferences of their members. The popular “Broad Church” movement came to be regarded as a “liberal” approach to Episcopalianism and a precursor of the “Social Gospel” movement. As such,

“Broad Church” Episcopalians were sympathetic “fellow travelers” for Unitarians and

Reform Jews.

The “Temple of Art”: The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

This chapter is devoted to the ecclesiastical architecture Frank Furness designed and built for Philadelphia’s Jewish and Unitarian communities. Discussion of a secular building such as the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts might, therefore, seem out of place. However, the Academy and other great public museums established in the

United States and Europe in the nineteenth century were seen in a spiritual light. They were conceived as places of gathering where examples of great art presented in awe- inspiring buildings would nurture and teach personal and public ethics and morality.

While located in the hearts of large cities, their great mass, dramatic siting, and carefully considered interior plans, features, and finishes provided aesthetic uplift in a hushed atmosphere removed from the bustle of city streets. In the art they exhibited and collected, the palace- or church-like grandeur of their architecture inside and out, and in their very being as massive and successfully realized civic undertakings, they both embodied and encouraged social improvement. With that said, the more than a bit elitist

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thoughts of the erstwhile socialist John Ruskin wrote in 1880 make clear that this “social improvement” was a top-down endeavor: “The first function of a museum…is to give example of perfect order and perfect elegance, in the true sense of that test word, to the disorderly and rude populace” (Ruskin 1908, 247). With continued social condescension, but returning to his central theme—the primacy of nature and the uplift derived through its study—Ruskin expounded a bit more generously, “And the right function of every museum, to simple persons, is the manifestation to them of what is lovely in the life of

Nature, and heroic in the life of Men” (251).

The intertwined relationship among art, nature, and religion—and personal betterment through the ordered example of perfect and elegant objects—which was at the heart of John Ruskin’s legacy (if not always his own words) lends itself to thinking of art museums as secular churches (Orlowski pp. 224–225). The “museum as church” appears to be the guiding concept for the museum and school designed and built by Frank Furness with George Hewitt. The religiosity and spiritual import of the Academy’s new building was made clear by an invocation delivered by the Reverend Doctor Morton as recorded in the booklet Inauguration of the Building of the New Building of the Pennsylvania

Academy of the Fine Arts, 22 April 1876. Morton stated:

Bless, O Lord, the labors of those who have builded this house as a home of Art, and cause it to become a place of praise to the setting forth of the glory of Him who hath clothed heaven with a vesture of clouds, and robed earth in the garments of beauty, and endowed man with the ability to see, and wonder, and worship. May those who study and seek to imitate those works of majesty and grace grow in love of the purity of thy nature and the beauty of holiness…Grant this, O Lord, For Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen. (Furness 1876, 3–4)

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Figure 39: The front façade of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, facing east on Broad Street. Note Gothic elements—including a rose-window—in the central block, Moorish details in the arches above the windows in the side blocks, and the French mansard roofs. (Image: Tom Crane)

Perhaps not surprisingly, the extended remarks given by the Reverend Furness at the building’s dedication invoke spirit and religion in a more universalistic and less overtly religious (Christ-centric, specifically) manner than Morton. Furness honored and celebrated the moment with the following words:

These walls, hung all around with the offerings of genius, shall hereafter echo to the voices of wisdom and learning…But at this hour we are here simply to take glad and grateful note of one cheering event, and accomplished fact: the successful completion of this Temple of the Fine Arts, and to dedicate it with fervent prayers and good wishes to the spirit of Beauty, of which these Arts are the handmaidens. (Furness 1876, 10)

The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is the oldest, continuously operating museum and school of art in the United States. It was founded as a museum in 1805 by a group of artists and businessmen led by the painter and scientist Charles Willson Peale and sculptor William Rush. In 1810, the Academy became a school of art, as well. Its

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first home was a neoclassical building at Tenth and Chestnut streets; this building was destroyed by fire in 1845 and reconstructed. Needing additional space and with the prospects and possibilities promised by the coming Centennial Exhibition of 1876—the first world’s fair held in the United States—the Academy planned for a new building in a new location.

Growing in population and prosperity, Philadelphia expanded westward. Broad

Street became a major thoroughfare for transportation in the second half of the nineteenth century and a highly desirable location for business and residential building. It became home to prominent cultural and social institutions such as the Academy of Music (1855–

1857), the Union League (1865), and the Masonic Temple (1873). In 1871, construction began on Philadelphia’s massive, elaborate City Hall, located in what was formerly

Center Square, which Broad Street flowed around. As discussed, Rodeph Shalom was built in 1868–1871, less than one mile north of the future site of the Pennsylvania

Academy. The Pennsylvania Academy was, thus, the second major contribution Furness made to the cityscape presented by Philadelphia’s Broad Street during its period of ascendancy.

What the Reverend Furness described as “the Temple of the Fine Arts” was both a symbol and product of a growing, bustling city and refuge from it. Referring to the

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts as an extension of Furness’s First Unitarian

Church would be an exaggeration, of course, but one with merit. As indicated by his participation in the opening ceremonies of the Academy, the Reverend Furness had a well-developed reputation as one of the most knowledgeable, active, and articulate champions of art and architecture in Philadelphia. First Unitarian congregants were

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leading members of the Academy’s board of directors from 1811 through 1876 (the year the Frank Furness-designed building was completed) and beyond. Among the PAFA board members and officers who were also First Unitarian congregants were Rembrandt

Peale, an artist and son of PAFA co-founder Charles Willson Peale; James McMurtrie; the artist Thomas Sully; the merchant John Vaughan; John Towne, co-founder (with

Samuel Merrick) of the Southwark Foundry for machine and boiler manufacturing; and the artist John Sartain (Geffen 1961, 288–289). Peale, Sully, and Sartain were not only leaders in Philadelphia’s artistic and cultural life—as demonstrated in their service on

PAFA’s board—but working artists whose creative achievements place them prominently in the history of American art. They were joined in membership at First Unitarian by painters Hugh Bridport and William Henry Furness, Jr. (252); the daguerreotypist

Simeon Collins (259); and engravers Samuel Carpenter, Cephas Childs, Gideon Fairman,

Robert Lovett, Joseph Pease, Samuel (Kenneth) Sartain, Henry Saulnier, Asa Spencer,

Charles Toppan, and William Tucker. As Philadelphia’s long-established and thriving center for art exhibition and education, the Pennsylvania Academy was likely well- known to the aforementioned individuals. William Henry Furness, Jr., completed his early study in painting at the Academy. His portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1867) was presented to the Academy as a gift from Horace Howard Furness in 1899.

In June 1871, the Academy issued an invitation to Philadelphia architectural community to submit designs for the new building. Frank Furness, then working in partnership with George W. Hewitt (1841–1916), won the competition and received the commission. As was the case with the Unitarian Society of Germantown and Rodeph

Shalom, strong connections between the Furness family and members of the

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commissioning organization may have facilitated Frank Furness’s selection. PAFA’s

Building Committee included three First Unitarian congregants: John Sartain, discussed above; Clarence H. Clark; and Fairman Rogers, who was Frank Furness’ childhood friend and brother-in-law—his sister, Helen Kate, married Horace Howard Furness (Orlowski,

218).

The architectural brief for the Academy was straightforward. The lecture rooms, studios, library, and other spaces required for the school were to be located on the first of two floors (Orlowski 27). The top floor was to be devoted to gallery spaces for the

Museum. Furness’s response to that program was remarkably exotic, its dramatic blending of disparate elements into a cohesive design beginning on the front façade. A tall central pavilion projects slightly from two identical wings of lesser height, creating a broad, symmetrical composition that stabilizes and provides expanses of relatively undecorated surfaces that serve to frame what is overall a decidedly active and varied

“face” greeting visitors and passersby on Broad Street.

A single, largely Gothic composition dominates the central block, beginning at street level and continuing to the roofline. It is a monumental pointed arch—albeit one that is slightly more broad and rounded than usual, giving it something of the exotic

“eastern” appearance of the rundbogenstil style—composed of numerous components drawn primarily, but not exclusively, from the language of Gothic architecture. The first- floor’s primary component is an entryway composed of paired doors with rather squat columns topped by Gothic capitals—that is, columns much like those used throughout

Rodeph Shalom—standing between and beside them (figure 40). Engraved into the shallow arch of the heavy cornice above the doors is PENNSYLVANIA/ACADEMY OF

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THE FINE ARTS rendered in two lines of highly stylized, aggressively angular and pointed lettering. Pointed sculptural elements on the underside of the cornice and elsewhere on the façade—such as above the paired-windows on each flanking block, which are topped by tri-part rounded arches set within broad, pointed arches—echo the scalloping on Rodeph Shalom’s rounded arches, particularly the trusses that support the ceiling of the temple’s sanctuary (figure 41).

On the second floor, above the entrance, a broad and massive pointed arch contains an elaborate window-composition in which five bulb-point vertical components are topped by a rose-window. Furness’s design for Rodeph Shalom featured rose- windows on its eastern and western facades. His earlier design for the Unitarian Society of Germantown included a small-rose window within a larger window composition, and rose-windows featured prominently on the front and rear facades of First Unitarian

Church of Philadelphia. Indeed, of the sixteen churches illustrated and discussed in Frank

Furness: The Complete Works, Revised Edition (Thomas 1996), eleven include rose- windows. None of his hundreds of non-ecclesiastical commissions do, with the exception of the Pennsylvania Academy and the University of Pennsylvania Library. These two buildings—which stand to this day as the most prominent of Furness’s masterworks— were conceived and discussed as secular cathedrals: the Academy a cathedral of art, the

Library a cathedral of knowledge.

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Figure 40: Main entrance to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (Photograph: Matthew F. Singer)

Figure 41: One of paired windows on the lower, flanking blocks of the Pennsylvania Academy’s front facade (Photograph: Matthew F. Singer)

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The Academy is crowned by a mansard roof, evoking the Lescot Wing of the

Louvre, which was built in the mid-sixteenth century, and French seventeenth-century

Baroque and nineteenth-century Second Empire design. Among the mansard-topped

Second Empire landmarks with which Furness would have been well acquainted were the nineteenth-century additions to the Louvre designed by Hector Lefuel (1810–1880), in whose atelier Furness’s primary mentor and instructor, Richard Morris Hunt, worked.

Hunt had a supervisory role in the building of Lefuel’s designs for the Louvre, particularly the Pavillon de la Bibliothèque. Closer to home, Peter Bonnet Wight’s

National Academy of Design, New York (figure 13), featured a mansard roof and was built between 1863 and 1865, while Furness was an apprentice in Hunt’s atelier. Furness first saw drawings for the National Academy in 1861 (Orlowski, 225). Leopold Eidlitz and Henry Fernbach’s design for New York City’s grand Temple Emanu-El (figure 14), which was completed in 1868 and likely served as a reference point for Furness as he developed Rodeph Shalom starting that same year, was capped by a mansard roof.

Comparing Temple Emanu-El with the Pennsylvania Academy is revealing. The temple’s soaring cupolas and spires give it a vertical presence. Viewed without them, Emanue-El’s tripartite massing and the Gothic composition the façade of the central block—including a rose-window set within a massive pointed-arch—presages Furness’s design for the

Pennsylvania Academy.

The mansard roof atop the central, tall block of the Academy is edged with spiky sculptural elements pointing up and down from the outline of the eave. This embellishment was common for mansard roofs, but Furness’s deployment of it was far

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more complex and dense than usual. He created in stone an elaborate form of the jigsaw- like “gingerbread” wood decoration associated with late-Victorian domestic architecture.

Like Rodeph Shalom, the Pennsylvania Academy reflects Furness’s inventive, highly individualistic embrace of the Modern Gothic and that style’s roots in the

Byzantine-influenced Gothic architecture of Venice, which was emphatically celebrated by Ruskin. The October 1876 issue of Potter’s American Monthly said of Furness’s eclectic approach to the Gothic and Byzantine as evidenced in the Academy: “The style of architecture appears to baffle the critics. One calls it ornamented Gothic; another nearly touches correctness in calling it ‘Byzantine or Venetian’; perhaps we may come still nearer the truth in designating it as a combination or patchwork style.”

In keeping with the nineteenth-century revival of the Byzantine and Venetian, and as with Rodeph Shalom, its façade was made polychromatic and highly textured through the use of a broad range of stone, brick, and tiles. The Academy represents a further elaboration of the aesthetic and philosophical sensibilities to which Furness first gave shape in his earlier design for Rodeph Shalom. Architectural details that are unique to

Furness and were first seen at Rodeph Shalom, such as squat columns, are evident in the exterior and interior design of the Academy. Unlike the synagogue, the Academy’s remarkably complex yet coherent façade is dramatically three-dimensional, with projecting and receding elements that—as the sun moves across the sky over the course of a day—create a changing canvas of light and shadow.

Since the Pennsylvania Academy’s school occupied the majority of the building’s first-floor, the visitor to the Museum had to ascend to the second storey to reach its galleries. Furness made the most of this transition from the workaday world into the

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“transcendent domain of art” (Orlowski, 229) by creating a grand stairway so dazzling in its visuals, proportions, and combinations of materials that it transformed mounting steps into a ceremonial procession and spiritual ascent (figure 42). Whether stone, brick, tile, or bronze, every surface on the floor, steps, and walls is covered with or shaped into ornament based on stylized plant forms, in keeping with the Ruskinian and Emersonian emphasis on nature as the inspiration for all things (figures 43 and 44). Above the stairs is a massive dome painted deep blue with gilded stars (figure 45). Thus, the visitor ascends from the familiar, earthly beauty of foliage to the more mysterious, sublime promise of the celestial.

Figure 42: Central stairway of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, view from first to second floor (Photograph: Matthew F. Singer)

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Figure 43: In the Pennsylvania Academy’s central stairway, one of a group of oversize light-fixture composed of dramatically stylized plant-forms rendered in bronzes (Photograph: Matthew F. Singer)

Figure 44: Stylized floral and geometric patterns carved in stone in the central stairway of the Pennsylvania Academy (Photograph: Matthew F. Singer)

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Figure 45: View on the second floor of the Pennsylvania Academy, looking over the central stairway. The dome above the stairway—painted deep-blue with gilded stars—is visible at the top of this photo. The rose-window featured on the Academy’s front- façade is visible through the central arch. (Photograph: Matthew F. Singer)

Furness employed the same vocabulary of distinctive architectural components in composing the Academy’s exterior façade and interior galleries. These include broad, somewhat rounded pointed-arches, squat columns with Gothic columns, and a colorful, varyingly textured mix of materials. Unique to the galleries of the Academy when it was built are exposed steel I-beams at ceiling level that make clear how structure was built and supports itself (figure 46). It is this revealing of structural elements that would typically be hidden—and incorporating them into the layered decoration of the building’s interior in a manner that presages the Modern architectural dictate “form follows function”—that garners for Furness’s Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts its status as proto-Modernist.

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Figure 46: On the second floor of the Pennsylvania Academy, structural I-beams are left exposed and incorporated into the design of highly decorative columns, capitals, and bracketed cornice elements. (Photograph: Matthew F. Singer)

Thus, Furness’s Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is emblematic of an idea that seems like a non sequitur—Ruskinian neo-Gothicism laid the groundwork for

Modernism. It did, though, through overarching emphases on “truth to nature” and

“honest construction.” The Academy is an early example, as well, of a museum serving as secular cathedral. Furness’s Academy, however, makes the connection between museum and church in an inarguably overt—and revivalist, albeit modified—manner.

The connections begins with the massive Gothic composition on the front façade, continues up a literal stairway to heaven, and ends at the terminus of the second-floor galleries with a Gothic rose-window and trinity of pointed arches. To underscore the potential for moral uplift and instruction that Victorians expected of art, the Academy’s exterior and interior architecture encouraged the visitor’s experience of its galleries to be that of a meaning-laden procession rather than a casual stroll.

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The Pre-Raphaelite Meeting-House: First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia

Figure 47: First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia as originally built, including a distinctive high-peaked, semi-detached tower a was removed in the 1920s. (Image: First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia)

Frank Furness was awarded the commission to design and build a new home for the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia on December 11, 1882. With it came the unique opportunity to create a new home for the congregation his father led and made flourish for fifty years; a church of a denomination whose values shaped his worldview; a church in which his moral/ethical sense and aesthetic sense could be expressed without compromise. What Furness produced was a highly individualistic, even eccentric, exterior containing an expansive sanctuary that, while vivid in painted hue and stained- glass decoration, evoked senses of modesty, humanism, and egalitarianism. Furness’ First

Unitarian is a Gothic church that decisively upends any and all expectations for a Gothic

Revival house of worship. It is too large and quirkily elaborate to fit the mold of the modest but dignified rural parish church. At the same time, its emphatic horizontality—

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its exterior made unmistakably weighty and Earth-bound through expanses of masonry that vary in texture but are unbroken by fenestration or any form of tracery—could not be further removed from the crystalline soaring of the characteristic Gothic cathedral.

Inside and out, Furness drew from a strictly Gothic vocabulary in designing First

Unitarian. The church preaches in a single language—the unmistakably Furnessque approach to Modern Gothic, with “modern” and “Gothic” emphasized and eclecticism rigorously avoided. There are no vestiges of the Moorish and Byzantine forms he first employed at Rodeph Shalom, or the French and classical components—and lingering suggestions of Moorish-Byzantine influence—incorporated into the composition of the

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

The exterior of First Unitarian appears to be an assemblage of highly geometric and seemingly unrelated masses (figure 47). Its most distinctive element—a monumentally broad-based tower that is open to the air at street-level, resting heavily on columns that look to be fighting to resist complete compression, and is topped by a exaggeratedly tall and steep roof yet, in aggregate, reads as unequivocally squat—is barely attached to the rest of the structure. The tower was seen as so anomalous by later leadership of the church and the architects they hired for upkeep and renovations that it was removed in 1921 (Moss 2005, 204).

This visually challenging and active exterior belies the serene yet open and lively sanctuary awaiting immediately inside the doors of the covered and colonnaded open-air masonry porch (figure 48). (Both this porch and squat tower are unusual, but have some precedent in less aggressively realized elements found at Emlen Littell’s St. Timothy’s in

Roxborough). The liveliness of the sanctuary is the product of a high-contrast color-

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scheme; a profusion of particularly bright and bold stained-glass works (soon to be discussed at greater length); circular, suspended electric light fixtures; and inventive handling of functional supports, particularly the trusses that uphold its roof and allow for an auditorium that is wide but has very few, very minimal sightline-obstructing piers.

Though, at first glance, the sanctuary reads as a straightforward rectangular hall, it is subtly cruciform in its plan, with shallow transepts and a chancel that is barely recessed and only slightly elevated from the floor. The central rows of pews are very broad; there is no processional aisle in the middle of the sanctuary. Relatively large in scale—with seating for 900 people—the sanctuary does not lack in adornment and embellishment. Its walls are a blue that is simultaneously deep and bright, a color much like the celestial domed ceiling atop the central stairway at the Pennsylvania Academy. The ceiling and the looping, arching hammer-beam trusses that support it (echoing those at Rodeph

Shalom) are painted a deep red and stenciled in gold with a repeating pattern of gold shapes.

Figure 48: Sanctuary of the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, view from entry toward chancel (Courtesy Tom Crane)

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The chancel at First Unitarian and the bimah at Rodeph Shalom present a study in contrasts. At Rodeph Shalom, the grand and elaborate bimah underscores new developments in Jewish religious practice and life. It makes clear the rabbi’s function as prayer-leader and orator—remembering that both service-leading and the regular delivery of sermons were innovations introduced in the nineteenth century by Jewish reformers.

Similarly, the incorporation of oversize, non-functional organ pipes above the bimah’s canopy emphasized the reforming innovation of instrumental music provided by an organ, which complemented the singing of a cantor and/or the new practice of employing a full, mixed-gender, professional choir. The exterior and interior splendor of Rodeph

Shalom, and particularly that of its silver-accented bimah structure, proclaimed the congregants’ status as citizens living in legal equality with their Christian fellow-citizens and their rising social and economic status.

The chancel at First Unitarian, while handsome, achieves the opposite effect. It contradicts the expectations for such a space in a Christian church. It is just four steps higher than the sanctuary floor (figure 49). Other than the table-like pulpit/reader’s desk

(figure 50), it includes nothing to focus attention on the minister. The chancel does not indicate the presence of an organ or use of a choir. The organ is housed in a modest, discrete loft in the west transept. The choir sits together in a section of the sanctuary’s pews. This wide-open, minimal, low-slung chancel expresses egalitarianism by minimizing the separation of laity from clergy. Further, by omitting a loft for choir and organ, the composition of the chancel elides further architectonic elaboration.

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Figure 49: View from the sanctuary of First Unitarian of the steps leading to the chancel. On floor-level is a Communion table designed by Frank Furness for the church. (Photograph: Matthew F. Singer)

Figure 50: A full view of the pulpit/readering desk showing how its design integrates with the steps leading to the chancel. The slanting lectern atop the pulpit is not currently in use and, based on the top surface of the pulpit, appears not to be part of Furness’s design. (Courtesy Cervin Robinson)

As with Rodeph Shalom, Furness designed furniture for First Unitarian that is very much apiece with the church’s architecture and decoration. While Rodeph Shalom’s

Furness-designed furnishings are monumental and rectilinear, First Unitarians’ are more so. Also unlike their counterparts at Rodeph Shalom, the table and pulpit are a single dark stain and do not include painted areas. The vertical surfaces of the Communion table are

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articulated with projecting and receding elements. The projecting parts are relatively narrow relative to the recessed surfaces, giving them the appearance of engaged piers.

They feature naturalistic floral decoration that is carved in low-relief but fully modeled, unlike the flat, abstracted floral decoration on the furniture as well as the exterior and interior surfaces at Rodeph Shalom. The pulpit is decidedly architectonic. The pier-like projections are interrupted in the bottom-half of the pulpit by a sloping element that echoes the roof above the masonry-built but open-air porch on the church’s front façade.

They are topped by brackets supporting a projecting cornice, again in keeping with the church’s exterior architecture.

Figure 51: A corner-view of the pulpit. Note the naturalistic carving of the decorative floral forms and architectonic elements incorporated into the vertical surfaces, such as the brackets beneath the projecting desktop. (Photograph: Matthew F. Singer)

Other than the radiating cross on the pulpit and the subtle, manipulated cross- shape of the masonry elements that support the trusses (figure 52), the Furness-designed architecture, furniture, and other decorative elements of First Unitarian lack Christian iconography, just as Jewish iconography is all but absent from his designs for Rodeph

Shalom. Again, in keeping with Transcendentalist thought and the legacy of Ruskin’s 194

philosophy, iconographic decoration is derived from and celebrates nature. There is something of a spire atop the summit of First Unitarian’s front façade, but it culminates in a floral form rather than a cross (figure 47; a similar element topped the no-longer-extant tower).

Figure 52: Carved in stone, one of the cruciform supports for First Unitarian’s system of hammered-beam trusses (Photo: Matthew F. Singer)

As conceived by Furness, and as it stands today, First Unitarian is rich with stained-glass. However, when the church was first built, the sixteen lights in its sanctuary were filled with clear leaded-glass windows designed by Furness. Two of these windows remain, one each in the east and west transepts (figure 53). True to Furness’ precedent, these widows consist of abstract geometric patterns that set-off the featured form: a flower with leaves—a flattened version of the carved foliage on the furniture.

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Figure 53: Ornamental leaded-glass window designed by Frank Furness for First Unitarian, 1886. 13’ x 5’. (Photo: Matthew F. Singer)

Today, First Unitarian’s sanctuary is lit by sun filtered through stained-glass windows designed by Tiffany Glass Company, J. Powell & Sons, and John La Farge.

Most prominent and characteristic of First Unitarian is the stained-glass work of Henry

Holiday (1839–1927), who was employed by J. Powell & Sons before opening his own studio. Furness’s preferred stained-glass maker, Holiday early in his career was associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement. He was a long-time friend of Edward

Burne-Jones (1833-1896) whom he replaced at J. Powell & Sons, Dante Gabriel Rossetti

(1828–1882), and William Holman Hunt (1827-1910) (Bryant 2013, 173–174). Holiday received his initial artistic training from Will Cave Thomas (1820–1896?), a Pre-

Raphaelite and close friend of Ford Madox Brown (1821–1893), who was—like Burne-

Jones, Rossetti, and Hunt—a Pre-Raphaelite luminary. Holiday departed from pure Pre-

Raphaelitism to pursue a more naturalistic style after a trip to Italy in 1867 (174).

However, the work by Holiday first shown in the U.S. and seen by Furness—as part of a display presented by J. Powell & Sons at the historic Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition

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of 1876—was at least a decade old and very much in the Pre-Raphaelite mode (177).

Through his exposure at the Centennial Exhibition, Holiday became a favorite of both

Furness and the proponents of liberal “Broad Church” Episcopalianism, the ideology and approach that prevailed at both Holy Trinity Episcopal Church on Philadelphia’s fashionable Rittenhouse Square (just a few blocks from First Unitarian) and the aforementioned St. Timothy’s in Roxborough (169). Furness presented Holiday with his first American commission—Boy Christ, 1877, for the Episcopal Church of Our Savior,

Jenkintown (177).

With Furness’ direct input as client, or the guidance he gave other clients, six of the sixteen windows that grace the sanctuary of First Unitarian are the work of Henry

Holiday (179–189). The first Holiday window installed reflects Furness’ influence on a patron, Enoch Clark. Lead Me in Thy Truth (1886) was commissioned by Mr. Clark in memory of his wife, Sarah Crawford Clark. The second Holiday window was the first connected directly to the Furness family. Charity (1887; figure 54) was commissioned by

Frank Furness and donated by friends of the church as a memorial to Annis Pulling Jenks

Furness, the wife of the Reverend William Henry Furness, and mother of the architect and his siblings, William Henry Furness, Jr., Horace Howard Furness, and Annis Lee

Furness Wister. It shows what is identifiably Mrs. Furness, who died in 1885, distributing food and clothes to the needy.

Charity was followed by The Good Shepherd (1888–1889; figure 55), commissioned as a memorial for Samuel and Elizabeth Bradford by their children. Mr.

Bradford was treasurer and director of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad and, in that

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capacity, a major patron of Frank Furness. The window illustrates and bears words from

Psalm 23 (“The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want…”).

Figure 54: Charity, 1887, Henry Holiday for J. Powell & Sons, 13’8’’ x 8’10” (Photograph: Matthew F. Singer)

Figure 55: The Good Shepherd, 1889–1890, Henry Holiday for J. Powell and Sons, 13’ x 5’1”, (Photograph: Matthew F. Singer)

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Like Charity, Holiday’s third commission for First Unitarian, Christ Blessing the

Children (1901–1902), is a massive—ten feet by ten feet— complex, and multi-figured.

It and The Good Shepherd are the most overtly religious, and specifically Christian, stained-glass windows in First Unitarian. It illustrates Matthew 19:14 (“Suffer the Little

Chilldren To Come unto Me…”) and was presented in memory of Robert Shaw Sturgis and Susan Brimer Sturgis by their children. To accommodate the size of the composition, two lights were connected to form a single opening. This required a structural change to the church that Furness oversaw—a chord of wood at the bottom of a roof truss was replaced by a tie-rod.

Figure 56: Christ Blessing the Children, 1901–1902, Henry Holiday Studio, 10’ x 10’. (Photograph: Matthew F. Singer)

Tragedies in the family of Horace Howard Furness are memorialized in Woman

Enthroned (1906; figure 57) and Woman Enthroned, with Lillies (1910; figure 58). The

1906 Woman Enthroned was commissioned by Horace Howard Furness in memory of his wife, Helen Kate Rogers Furness (1837–1883). Her husband’s partner in Shakespeare

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scholarship, Helen Kate’s window is inscribed with a quote from King Lear, “Thoult come again never never never never never.” Highly Medieval, it and Woman Enthroned, with Flowers have no obvious religious content. The 1910 Woman Enthroned was commissioned by Horace Howard Furness in memory of his only daughter,

Caroline Augusta Furness Jayne (1873–1909). It bears a quote from William

Wordsworth’s poem “Desideria”: “Neither present time nor years unborn can to my sight that heavenly face restore.” The thrones in both works recall the high-backed chairs designed by Frank Furness for Rodeph Shalom.

Figure 57: Woman Enthroned, 1906, Henry Holiday Studio, 13’ x 5’ 11”. This window was commissioned by Horace Howard Furness as a memorial to his wife, Helen Kate Rogers Furness. (Photograph: Matthew F. Singer)

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Figure 58: Woman Enthroned with Lilies, 1910, Henry Holiday Studio, 12’ x 5’. This window was commissioned by Horace Howard Furness in memory of his daughter, Caroline Furness Jayne. (Photograph: Matthew F. Singer)

In 1910, Horace Howard Furness applied to First Unitarian’s trustees for permission to commission a third window recalling the memory of a female family memory—his sister, Annis Lee Furness Wister (1830 1908.) In what must have been a series of exchanges that were awkward and painful for all involved—this request was denied (169). With this, the relationship between the Furness family and the First

Unitarian Church of Philadelphia came to an end.

Judging by remaining documents, Frank Furness was prolific in designing buildings but nearly inactive in writing about them. Contemporary documentation of his creative approach, working methods, and how he or his clients understood and interpreted his work is startlingly lacking. In this context, in particular, his choice of Henry Holiday as his preferred stained-glass artist speaks volumes through resulting commissions and in the person of Holiday, his art, clients, and words. Whether “Broad Church” Episcopalians

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or Unitarians, Holiday’s clients were theological liberals and social reformers. While maintaining a neo-Medieval or Pre-Raphaelite character in its combination of pure color and bold outlines, Holiday’s art was modern in its naturalism. Its figures looked like identifiable individuals, as seen in the memorials for Annis Furness, Helen Rogers

Furness, and Carolyn Furness Jayne.

Holiday stated his own reformist thoughts about art and society clearly in his book Stained Glass as an Art (1896):

But selfishness, though it reigns unchecked in the market, has not yet destroyed the heart of man, and this will sooner or later (God grant that it may be soon) overthrow the tyrannical profit- system which controls and thwarts its better desires and makes our daily work an engine of the Devil, Mammon…. Is this a digression?...To those who regard art as an expression of the best that is in us, and composition as a means towards the fuller expression of that best, these reflections go straight to the heart of the matter. (Holiday 1896, 23

This is a cry for a society-wide moral and ethical correction, the core goodness of humankind, mutual responsibility, brotherhood, and a belief that such ideals can be captured in and communicated through art.

I conclude this discussion of First Unitarian and its program of stained-glass by citing two last examples of which Holiday would likely not approve on artistic grounds while supporting their sentiments and what they represent. The most prominent stained- glass work in First Unitarian’s sanctuary is a large rose-window placed above the chancel—the terminus of the sightlines of every person in the pews. Kneeling Angel and

Cherubim (1889; figure 59) is the earliest stained-glass work by Tiffany Glass Company to be found in Philadelphia. It was commissioned as a memorial for the sugar-refiner

Barnabas H. Bartol by his wife and children. The angel is a woman. Outstretched

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between her hands is a scroll or banner that reads a universalist message from Matthew

5:8: “Blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God.”

Figure 59: Kneeling Angel and Cherubim, Tiffany Glass Company, 11’. (Photograph: Matthew F. Singer)

Currently removed from the church for the sake of repair and conservation is the rose window on the building’s front façade. The work of John La Farge and installed in

1891, its subject is the Hebrew prophet Isaiah as depicted by Michelangelo in the Sistine

Chapel (figure 60 shows both the stained-glass in the midst of its restoration as well as the image by Michelangelo that inspired it). Michelangelo presented the prophet with a book in hand—it seems safe to conjecture that it is the book most likely in such a context, the Bible—his fingers holding it open to a page while a cherub claims his attention.

Based on the shading of the image, the cherub is gesturing to the light. It is especially notable, then, that the Reverend Furness began his sermon “The Blessings of Abolition”

(1860) with these words:

In the fifty-eighth chapter of the book of Isaiah, the prophet assures his countrymen, if they will loose the bands of wickedness and undo the heavy burdens, and let the oppressed go free, and break

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every yoke, that then THEIR LIGHT SHALL BREAK FORTH AS THE MORNING. (Furness 1860, 1)

The prophetic passage that Furness capitalized for emphasis tells of enlightenment and emancipation achieved through ethical human action.

We do not know whether these words, specifically, inspired the prominence and particular placement of Isaiah at First Unitarian. It is the sole stained-glass work—a large rose-window with seven foils, at that—on the south-facing front façade of the church, occupying the central space above the main entrance on the major thoroughfare of

Chestnut Street. It is interesting to remember that other words of Isaiah announce the universalist nature and mission of the temple designed by Frank Furness for Rodeph

Shalom: “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all people.” Again, as there is no extant documentary evidence, we cannot know whether this coming together of Jewish and Catholic precedents on the front of a liberal Protestant house of worship was intentional. Nonetheless, it conjures Isaiah’s humanistic and revolutionary prophetic voice and the ecumenical spirit of a group of late nineteenth century Philadelphians.

Figure 60: Isaiah, 1891, John La Farge. This figure shows the stained-glass in the midst of its restoration (left) and the image by Michelangelo that inspired it. (Image: Joe Beyer Studio)

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A Moorish Bungalow for Eternal Rest: Mount Sinai Cemetery

Frank Furness designed and built the chapel and mortuary building at

Mount Sinai Cemetery in 1891–1892 (figures 61 and 62). He sited it to be visible from

Bridge and Cottage Streets on the far edge of the Philadelphia’s Frankford section— which was then at the rural outskirts of the city. The chapel at Mount Sinai echoes, in its style, the grand and picturesque temple built by Frank Furness for Congregation Rodeph

Shalom in 1868–1871. Like Furness’s Rodeph Shalom, Mount Sinai’s chapel is, loosely,

Moorish. The clearest indication of Moorish inspiration that distinguishes Furness’s work for Rodeph Shalom and Mount Sinai is his use of “horseshoe” shaped arches. Horseshoe shapes appear throughout the design of Rodeph Shalom. At Mount Sinai, the form is most evident in the shape of the Chapel’s windows (figure 48). While stylistically related, Mount Sinai’s chapel is far from Rodeph Shalom in miniature. As discussed, although deemed Moorish because of its horseshoe arches, Rodeph Shalom design was an amalgam of styles, and its plan was identical to a basilica.

Figure 61: Mount Sinai Cemetery, chapel and mortuary, built in 1891–1892 (Image: Philadelphia Museum of Art)

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Figure 62: View of the entrance to chapel at Mount Sinai Cemetery (Photograph: Matthew F. Singer)

Figure 63: Mount Sinai Cemetery, interior view of chapel (Image: Cervin Pobinson)

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Figure 64: Horseshoe-arch windows and entry at Mount Sinai Cemetery chapel (Image: Philadelphia Museum of Art)

As noted and illustrated on pages 157–166, Furness employed the Moorish motifs developed at Rodeph Shalom in building projects throughout the 1870s, including high- profile structures such as the restaurant at the Philadelphia Zoo (1875–76) and the

Brazilian Pavilion at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. However, Furness did not use Moorish styles in the 1880s or later—with the exception of Mount Sinai’s chapel. Perhaps, because the Chapel was the second, and final, Jewish house of worship designed by Furness, he returned to the precedent established with Rodeph Shalom.

Perhaps his contacts at Mount Sinai—who, again, were members of Rodeph Shalom— wanted to establish visual continuity and connection between the synagogue and the cemetery.

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Mount Sinai’s Chapel and Rodeph Shalom differ greatly in their profile. Rodeph

Shalom was vertical with a dominant single, steeply pitched roof, its height emphasized and extended with a soaring tower topped by an onion-dome. The Chapel is horizontal with wide-sloping, hipped rooflines. The Chapel’s breadth is extended by its plan. Where

Rodeph Shalom was predominantly one large rectangular block, the Chapel is cruciform in plan, with a larger, higher central portion bisected by smaller, lower projections that function as a public entrance on the southwest side of the building, and provide access to the mortuary on the northeast. Rodeph Shalom’s roof stops once it reaches the building exterior walls. The chapel’s roof extends into overhanging eaves. Such eaves are in keeping with the architecture of the Arts and Crafts Movement, which was coming fully into vogue in the 1890s.

In its low-slung, spreading horizontality, Mount Sinai’s chapel could be interpreted as an early example of the American Arts and Crafts (or Craftsman) bungalow. Although it became a ubiquitous presence in newly developing areas of

American cities and towns after World War I, the bungalow form—derived from South

Asian architecture—started to appear in Britain and the United States in the late- nineteenth century. Like Mount Sinai, the bungalow is primarily a single-storey building with wide, sloping rooflines that are often hipped. The bungalow—like Mount Sinai’s chapel—has deeply overhanging eaves, typically “supported” by purely decorative brackets.

What is the significance of the specifics of the plan and details of Mount Sinai’s chapel? They make clear that, while nodding to his earlier work, Furness designed the

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chapel very much for the particulars of its site and in keeping—indeed, in advance—of changing architectural tastes.

Mount Sinai Cemetery Association was founded in 1854. By the time Furness conceived and completed its chapel and mortuary building in 1891-92, the concept of the

“cemetery park” or “garden cemetery” had long been in prevailing currency. Laurel Hill, established in 1836, was Philadelphia’s first garden cemetery. As opposed to a utilitarian burial-ground with closely clustered graves marked by simple tombstones or flat markers—and located within Center City with its rapidly growing population and booming trade and manufacturing areas—Laurel Hill was established on ground that had been preserved in its more-or-less natural state. It is now adjacent to Fairmount Park, the largest municipal park in the United States. Designed by the prominent architect John

Notman, Laurel Hill was distinguished by vigorously well-maintained, dramatically rolling grounds with picturesque views of the Schuylkill River. It was crisscrossed with promenades and smaller pathways, offering routes to graves marked by often substantial monuments that were obelisk-shaped, featured sculptures, or were otherwise artistic or architectural. As the nineteenth century continued, and the number of its socially ambitious millionaires increased, temple-like, stone mausoleums were built. Laurel Hill, like Mount Sinai and other “garden cemeteries,” was a place of leisure and recreation.

This is the social and cultural context in which Mount Sinai Cemetery was founded and evolved, and for which Frank Furness designed its chapel and mortuary.

Mount Sinai Cemetery—located at the city’s outskirts—was a place where city-dwellers could, quietly and meditatively, engage with and enjoy fresh air and carefully cultivated

“nature” and admire artistic and architectural adornments while paying respects to and

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remembering loved ones lost. Its chapel—while a substantial edifice built in gravitas- evoking stone and designed in a way that invoked the past—underscored and enhanced the bucolic setting and how people experienced it.

The Arts and Crafts Movement, along with promoting the value of the handcrafted and the dignity of the craftsperson, was driven by and actively encouraged a

“back-to-nature” ethos. At Mount Sinai, Frank Furness fused this ascendant worldview and way of life with a style—the “Modern Gothic” Moorish—that he introduced to

Philadelphia two decades earlier. What he created was a sturdy and distinctively detailed structure that blended with its setting in nature. As a mortuary, it provided space for the unpleasant necessities of preparing the dead for burial. As a chapel, it was domestic in scale and appearance, a welcoming, familiar, and comfortable place for mourners to gather.

Figure 65: Home for Aged and Infirm Israelites, Jewish Hospital, 1888 (Image: Lawrence S. Williams, Inc.)

Frank Furness was not a “church architect.” Of the 679 projects listed in Frank

Furness: The Complete Works (Thomas 1996, 145–346), 24 are specifically religious

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structures: A Jewish synagogue (Rodeph Shalom) and chapel (Mount Sinai); two

Unitarian churches (First Unitarian and Germantown Unitarian); and Protestant Episcopal churches comprising the overwhelming majority of the balance (further evidence of a connection between Philadelphia’s Unitarians—or at least Frank Furness—and

Episcopalians, as discussed in relationship to Henry Holiday). Rodeph Shalom was

Furness’ first major commission and it led to an ongoing professional connection with the city’s Jewish leadership. Furness designed ten non-religious buildings for Philadelphia’s

Jewish community; all were facilities for the Jewish Hospital.

The Home for Aged and Infirm Israelites (1888) is one example (figure 65). Note the horseshoe-arch window surrounds, which recall in 1888 his 1868–1871 design for

Rodeph Shalom and presage his 1891–1892 chapel for Mount Sinai Cemetery. But this modest, utilitarian structure has rather unexpected elements echoing other Furness projects. Like the Pennsylvania Academy, it has a mansard roof. Like the Library at the

University of Pennsylvania (1888–1891), it has a pronounced curving element. Like

Mount Sinai’s chapel, it has a domestic feel and carved supports under spreading eaves.

Furness’ architectural vocabulary was eclectic, idiosyncratic, and individualistic. At its core, however, was his unique approach to the Modern Gothic style, which was inspired by the East-meets-West qualities of the Venetian Gothic celebrated by John Ruskin.

Gothic architecture was developed for churches and reached its apotheoses in the magnificent cathedrals built in the Middle Ages.

The Reverend Furness referred to architects and their creations as “street preachers.” In the case of Frank Furness and many other forward-looking architects of the

Victorian period who employed Gothic forms for all manner of modern purposes—

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including educational, mercantile, industrial, medical, and residential in addition to ecclesiastical—the reverend’s characterization was especially apt. They lined the burgeoning streets of America’s rapidly growing Industrial Age cities with buildings that, even when intended for the most modern and profane—or simply prosaic—use, evoked the Medieval and the sacred. .

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Chapter 8. TO BE ETHICAL, CULTURED, CONTEMPORARY…AND

GENTEEL: THE FURNESS-JASTROW CIRCLE AND THE SEARCH FOR

SPIRITUAL, SOCIAL, EDUCATIONAL, AND ARTISTIC MEANING

Frank Furness was commissioned to design and build a central, state-of-the-art library for the University of Pennsylvania in 1888. His brother Horace Howard Furness was a trustee of the university (1880–1904) and chair of its library committee. “The life and soul of a University lie in its Library,” H. H. Furness wrote to his friend Dr. William

Pepper (1843–1898), a professor of clinical medicine at Penn. “The larger the Library the grander, and more enduring and more far-reaching the influence of the University”

(Furness 1922, 1:267). In 1881, Pepper was elected provost of the university, a position in which he remained through 1894. Fairman Rogers (1833–1900) was the chair of the university’s building committee during the commissioning and construction of its library.

Rogers was the heir to an iron-making fortune, a civil engineer, a professor and trustee at

Penn, a lifelong member of First Unitarian Church, and a lifetime friend of H. H. Furness.

Rogers, as chairman of the building committee of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine

Arts, oversaw the process which resulted Frank Furness’ firm, Furness & Hewitt, received the commission in 1871 to design PAFA’s new home. The relationship between the Rogers and Furness families grew more intimate when H. H. Furness married Rogers’ sister, Helen Kate (1837–1883).

Frank Furness’ receipt of the commission may appear nepotistic and incestuous, or simply in keeping with the patterns of recommendation that build an artist’s patronage.

As a practical matter, however, it should be noted that Furness previously built two

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libraries—a renovation for the Mercantile Library (1873) and an entirely new structure for the Library Company of Philadelphia (1879–1880)—that deployed what were then the most advanced approaches in library design. The library designed by Furness for

Penn is distinctly ecclesiastical in appearance, very much in Furness’ characteristic

Modern Gothic style, although—unlike earlier work such as the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts—thoroughly monochromatic in rusty red and has fewer variations in texture (figure 66). The late Dr. John McCoubrey (1924–2010), a long-time and much accomplished professor of art history at Penn, described it as “a collision between a cathedral and a railroad station.”17 Furness collaborated on technical aspects of the library with Melvil Dewey (1851–1931), the librarian and educator who developed the Dewey

Decimal System.

Figure 66. The Anne and Jerome Fisher Fine Arts Library, University of Pennsylvania, 1888–1891, Frank Furness, exterior view of front entrance (Image: Tom Crane)

, Furness’ design for the library incorporates components that he employed throughout his career and echo those of the ecclesiastical buildings discussed in the

17 As confirmed in an 3-26-15 e-mail from art- and architectural-historian Michael Lewis, professor at Williams College and author of Frank Furness: Architecture and the Violent Mind (2001). 214

preceding chapter. Like Rodeph Shalom and First Unitarian, a tower is a strong presence on the front façade. Here, however, Furness places it at the center of the main block and further emphasizes this centrality with a large window arrangement that includes a pair of round-arched windows and is crowned by a rose-window. This particular arrangement recalls the elaborate fenestration on the front façade of the Pennsylvania Academy of

Arts of 1876, the first of Furness “secular cathedrals.” The tower projects from the front façade on one side (north; seen on the left in figure 66) and is engaged with the façade on the other (south) side. It has a flat top that is embellished with crenellations akin to those on the roofline of the Pennsylvania Academy.

To the right of the tower, a broad and squat covered-entry projects furthest forward from the primary plane of the building. It recalls the open-to-the-air yet chunky, grounded, and enclosing semi-detached tower and entry that was, before its demolition in the 1920s, the most distinctive element of Furness’ design for First Unitarian. Set within the gable above the round-arched entry pass-through is an inset, three-foil terracotta design filled with low-relief and stylized floral shapes. This nature-derived decoration recalls, and represents Furness’s further exploration, of a form first employed by Furness at Rodeph Shalom and elaborated and refined at the Pennsylvania Academy.

To the left of the tower is the library’s most visually distinctive component: an extended rectangular component that ends in a half-circle, like the apse of a church.

Within this is the library’s dramatic reading-room (figure 67). In place of the chapels that would fill the semicircular terminus of a French basilica’s chevet, Furness designed a series of private seminar rooms (Lewis 201, 180). To the right of the (south) of the library’s central block is the most technically and structurally inventive element of its

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design. Furness, working with Dewey, conceived stacks that could be extended (at least as far as available land permitted) as the library’s collection grew.

Figure 67: The semi-circular, chevet-like reading-room of the library designed by Frank Furness for the University of Pennsylvania (Image: Ralph Lieberman)

Morris Jastrow, Horace Howard Furness, and the “Furness-Mitchell Coterie”

In 1888, Morris Jastrow (figure 68), son of the rabbi whose congregation awarded

Frank Furness his first major commission, became a librarian at Penn. The junior Jastrow was a graduate of Penn and first joined the university’s faculty in 1885 as an instructor of

Semitic languages. He was Penn’s first Jewish faculty member, becoming a full professor in 1891, specializing in Arabic, rabbinic literature, Semitics, and Assyriology. His courses in the history of religion and comparative religion were among the earliest such offerings in the United States. The junior Jastrow served as both a librarian and curator of

Middle Eastern objects at Penn, as the university’s collection of antiquities was housed at the Frank Furness-designed library until the first phase of Penn’s Museum of

Archaeology and Anthropology opened in 1899. Morris Jastrow was appointed Penn’s librarian-in-chief in 1898.

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Morris Jastrow and his wife, the former Helen Bachman, were close friends of

Horace Howard and Helen Kate Furness. They were, indeed, members of the “Furness-

Mitchell Coterie,” a group of leaders in literature, medicine, anthropology, and

Philadelphia’s upper-class society that by the turn of the twentieth century dominated

Philadelphia’s cultural and intellectual life and was recognized nationally and internationally in their time as leaders (Van Ness 1985, 1; 10).

Figure 68: Morris Jastrow (Image: University of Pennsylvania Archives)

Members of the Coterie included S. Weir Mitchell, a physician, scientist, best- selling novelist and poet, Penn trustee, and vice president of the University Museum;

Horace Howard Furness (figure 69); Agnes Repplier, a popular essayist; William Pepper;

Agnes Irwin, headmistress of a leading girls’ school (the Agnes Irwin School), first dean of Radcliffe College, and—with fellow Furness-Mitchell Coterie member Sarah Butler

Wister—co-author of a book on women’s history; Talcott Williams, a newspaper editor and first dean of Columbia University’s School of Journalism, and a leader in the

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professional fields of archaeology and paleontology; William H. Furness III—H. H.

Furness’s son, explorer and anthropologist; Morris Jastrow; Ellis P. Oberholtzer, a well- known historian, and director of Philadelphia’s historical pageants; Felix E. Schelling,

Professor of English who established Penn’s Department of English; Owen Wister, an author of best-selling novels including The Virginian; Annis Lee Furness Wister —sister of Horace Howard and Frank, and translator of more than 40 German romantic novels;

Horace Howard Furness II, H. H. Furness’s son and editor with H. H. of the New

Variorum Edition of Shakespeare’s Works, a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania and donor of the Furness Memorial Library; Horace Jayne, H. H. Furness’s son-in-law, dean of the college of the University of Pennsylvania, member of the board of managers of the Department of Archaeology and Paleontology and the University Archaeological

Association; Sarah Butler Wister, mother of Owen Wister, literary critic for leading magazines, author, and historian; and Sara Yorke Stevenson, an archaeologist, a founder of the University Museum with William Pepper, curator at the University Museum, and the first woman to receive an honorary degree from Penn (Van Ness, 10–12).

Figure 69: Horace Howard Furness (Image: University of Pennsylvania Archives)

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As this list of the Coterie’s members makes clear, its members were notably active in literature, education, history, archaeology, anthropology, and medicine. Given the period in which it flourished, the group is relatively well-balanced in gender—five women and twelve men. Five were descendants or, in the case of Horace Jayne, married to a descendant of William Henry Furness. Through Frank and Horace Howard Furness’ sister, Annis Lee Furness Wister, further familial connections are made to the large, long- established in Philadelphia, and prominent Wister/Wistar clan of German Quaker origin.

The Furness-Mitchell Coterie began to form in the 1870s. By the turn of the twentieth century, it was the dominant force in Philadelphia’s intellectual and cultural life, and a distinctly upper-class one at that (Van Ness 10). In its literary output, the group represented what George Santayana dismissively referred to as the “Genteel Tradition”

(Van Ness 1). Their fiction and poetry avoided “vulgar” topics and—in setting, plot, themes, characters, and language—presented an idealized, even escapist, perspective on life. As T. J. Jackson Lears writes in No Place of Grace (1981), “As the United States became the most aggressively expansionist society in the world, American literature increasing celebrated a sentimental vision of mutually dependent social relations” (Lears

1981, 17). Lears goes on to note that those working in the Genteel Tradition viewed their creations as realistic and modern:

In the name of ‘realism,’ fiction concerned itself largely with decorous conversation s and parlour intrigues; the domestic problems novel became the self-proclaimed ‘modern’ mode…Genteel literature, like the idealized domestic circle, became a portal of escape from the economic realm of strife and struggle. (17)

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This dynamic of looking to an idealized past to find ways to move forward in Industrial Age modernity parallels the paths trod by simultaneously forward- and backward-looking nineteenth-century aesthetic reformers and progressives who spawned the Gothic Revival, Modern Gothic, Pre-Raphaelitism, and the Arts and Crafts Movement. All sought to correct the excesses, exploitation, and perceived tastelessness of industrialism and mass-production and -consumption by presenting alternatives that emphasized values of craftsmanship, cultivation, quality, heritage, and posterity.

Frank Furness worked in this vein, albeit in a decidedly individualistic, idiosyncratic, and even contrarian mode. It is seen in all of his buildings, and the progressive nature of what would otherwise appear to be a regressive stance is made material in his design for the library at Penn. Its appearance evokes both a Gothic basilica and a train station. Its design was informed and reflected by the newest conceptions of how a library should function and the infrastructure and facilities required for such optimal use.

Viewing Furness-Mitchell Coterie as modern and progressive is less complicated when considering the non-literary passions and pursuits of the Furness-Mitchell Coterie’s members. A genteel author, S. Weir Mitchell was also a doctor and scientist. Horace

Howard Furness and Horace Howard Furness II took a rigorous, critical approach to

Shakespeare scholarship. The essays of the feminist Agnes Repplier focused on literary criticism as well as comments on contemporary life. William Pepper was a physician and, during his tenure as Penn’s provost, oversaw dramatic expansion of the university. Morris

Jastrow pioneered the field of comparative-religion, a modern, objective, academically

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rigorous approach to the study of religion. Agnes Irwin was a hands-on proponent and facilitator of women’s education and, with Sarah Butler Wister, women’s history. Talcott

Williams was an accomplished leader in journalism, education, and archaeology. Jastrow,

Pepper, William Henry Furness II, Horace Jayne, and Sara Yorke Stevenson all were professionally active in the rapidly advancing fields of anthropology and archaeology.

Exemplar and Enigma: Morris Jastrow’s Evolution from Religious Leader to

Scholar of Religion

Morris Jastrow’s background and upbringing made him an extremely unlikely

Philadelphia cultural leader and secular academic. He was born in Warsaw, Poland, the first son of a German-Jewish rabbi whose expected career path was to assume his father’s long-held pulpit at Congregation Rodeph Shalom.

The junior Jastrow did, in fact, serve as the assistant-rabbi at Rodeph Shalom, but for just one year. When he delivered the sermon Jews and Judaism from his father’s pulpit on December 9, 1886, he presented not only his final sermon as the temple’s assistant rabbi, but his final discourse as a member of the clergy. He was already teaching in an adjunct capacity at Penn. Upon his resignation from Rodeph Shalom, he became a full professor.

But it was service as the spiritual leader of Rodeph Shalom—rather than filling an academic post, no matter how ably—for which Morris Jastrow was born, bred, trained, and educated. Jastrow’s sermon, and his resignation, caused quite a stir. The sermon drew so much attention that it was printed as a pamphlet of twenty-three pages that sold for ten cents apiece. Despite the length of his discourse, Jastrow never quite said why he was

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resigning. What he did say was that one’s stated beliefs and practice should be consistent, and that a spiritual leader and his congregants should be in agreement about their beliefs and practices. But he did not say what his personal beliefs were.

Raised in an atmosphere of intellectual freedom and religious ecumenicalism, a product of Philadelphia private schools and the University of Pennsylvania, Morris

Jastrow studied for rabbinic ordination at the moderately progressive Jewish Theological

Seminary18 in Breslau beginning in 1881 and earned his doctorate from the University of

Leipzig in 1884. He augmented his education in Breslau and Leipzig with study at the universities of Strasbourg, Paris, and Leiden. Foregoing the pulpit for the academic lectern was a personal decision, certainly. But Jastrow’s choice echoed and repeated the experiences and actions of other young Americans of liberal religious inclinations—

Reform Jews and Unitarians, in particular—who pursued advanced religious studies in

German universities.

Germany—the University of Berlin, specifically—became a desired place of study for aspiring American ministers of liberal inclinations as early as 1815 (Dorrien

2001, xvi). They were drawn to the University of Berlin by its grounding in a modern, critical approach to the study of scripture and its reputation for intellectual and academic freedom. A group of scholars and theologians—prominent among them Friedrich

Schleiermacher (1768–1834), a leading proponent of the Higher Criticism and liberal theology—founded the university in 1810.

18 The seminary was founded in 1854 through a bequest from the German businessman Jonas Frankel (?– 1846) who was a supporter of Abraham Geiger (1810–1874). Geiger is regarded today as a figure central to the development of Reform Judaism. Zecharias Frankel (1801–1875), who was key to the development of the “positive Historical”—now referred to as Conservative—movement in Judaism, was the seminary’s first president. 222

Germany’s universities introduced what was variously called “Higher Criticism” or the “scientific” or “historical” method of scriptural study, and religion in general, in the early decades of the nineteenth century and deepened and expanded this approach in ensuing decades. In his book The Study of Religion (1901), Jastrow shared this description of the historical method as it applied to religion:

[T]he fundamental method of this method is the careful and impartial accumulation of facts, and what is more, the facts of religion everywhere. Starting out without bias or preconceived theory, the historical method aims at determining as accurately as possible what are the beliefs, what are the rites, what the aspirations of any particular religion or system of religious thought. (Jastrow 1901, 19)

As this statement makes clear, the historical method embraced by Jastrow was a scholarly, academic approach to religion, not a spiritual one.

More broadly, the historical method developed in Germany is an approach to literary analysis focused on determining the origins of a text. As applied to scriptural studies, it examines the books of the Bible in the context of other texts written at approximately the same time, previously, or in later years. In sum, the historical method focuses on the sources of a document to determine who wrote it, when it was written, and where.

The German historical method was adopted by other European universities by the mid-nineteenth century and, in America, made some important inroads at Harvard, which was the center for the training of Unitarian ministers. To this, however, religious historian

John Dorrien offers the following qualification: “Aside from Unitarian Harvard, academe was off-limits to American theological progressives for most of the nineteenth century.

Even at Harvard it was a conservative version of Unitarianism that prevailed, as Emerson

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famously protested” (Dorrien, xxii). It was not until the turn of the twentieth century that the historical method began to be adopted by other American universities, with Morris

Jastrow at the forefront of this development. Jastrow’s Study of Religion provides a comprehensive overview of the development of this relatively new realm of study, giving full credit to the German academic mindset for the breakthroughs in thought and pedagogy represented by the historical method:

It is not by accident that German scholarship gives the impulse to viewing in the light of history the course and development of religion. The seriousness and sobriety of the German mind revolted against the hostile attitude towards religion which culminated in the cynicism of the French materialists, while the freedom of research, which had become more firmly established in Germany in the eighteenth century than in England, enabled even the theologians to throw aside the bonds of tradition, where tradition conflicted with ascertained facts. A reconciliation between the hostile and the exclusive attitude toward religion was sought in treating religions as an integral part of human history, and in an endeavour to trace through the religious history of mankind the natural development of certain religious ideas common to the human race. (Jastrow 1901, 29)

As summarized by Jastrow, the historical method sought to bridge the gap between traditional belief—faith—and the scientific development that led to the rejection of religion among many of the educated and the intelligentsia. It achieved this by applying modern, “scientific” methods to the study of religion, particularly the analysis of religious texts. The development of the “Higher Criticism” discussed here was a source of consternation for existing, organized religious bodies. It sometimes led to crises of faith among the very individuals whose knowledge and consciousness it was intended to raise: those in or preparing for the pulpit.

A pattern emerged among Americans intending to be clergy, or already clergy, abandoning their ministerial hopes or established ministries after prolonged engagement with the modern German approach. Among Unitarians, perhaps the best-known example

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is Emerson, who “got his Kant and Schleiermacher mostly secondhand” (Dorrien 2001, xvii). Emerson resigned from the ministry in 1832 and spent the many remaining years of his life as one of America’s most influential thinkers, authors, and lecturers. In his controversial, contentious, and challenging 1836 address to the graduating class of

Harvard Divinity School, Emerson said:

And now let us do what we can to rekindle the smoldering, nigh quenched fire on the altar. The evils of the church that now are manifest. The question returns, What shall we do? I confess, all attempts to project and establish a Cultus with new rites and forms, seem to me vain. Faith makes us, and not we it, and faith makes its own forms. All attempts to contrive a system are as cold as the new worship introduced by the French to the goddess of Reason— to-day, pasteboard and filigree, and ending to- morrow in madness and murder.

I look for the hour when that supreme Beauty, which ravished the souls of those eastern men, and chiefly of those Hebrews, and through their lips spoke oracles to all time, shall speak in the West also. The Hebrew and Greek Scriptures contain immortal sentences that have been bread of life to millions. But they have no epical integrity; are fragmentary; are not shown in their order to the intellect. I look for the new Teacher, that shall follow so far those shining laws, that he shall see them come full circle; shall see their rounding complete grace; shall see the world to be the mirror of the soul; shall see the identity of the law of gravitation with purity of heart; and shall show that the Ought, that Duty, is one thing with Science, with Beauty, and with Joy. (Buell, 144–145)

Emerson’s assertions are somewhat self-contradictory—he seems to exhort and yearn for a return to the passionate faith experienced by the ancient prophets, while in preceding and succeeding breaths rejecting the idea of developing new religious modes based on reason and declaring that the Hebrew and Christian scriptures hold no “epical integrity.”

Nonetheless, he concludes the above passage by calling for a new religious understanding that is at one “with Science, with Beauty, and with Joy.” This is the Emersonian message

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and vision pursued by Transcendentalist Unitarian ministers such as William Henry

Furness who, unlike Emerson, remained in the ministry and devoted to their religion.

Of the four sons and heirs apparent to the pulpits of America’s leading rabbis of the mid–nineteenth century—a quartet that includes Morris Jastrow—only one, Emil

Hirsch (1851–1923), became and remained a rabbi. Like Marcus Jastrow, Emil Hirsch’s father, Samuel, arrived in Philadelphia from Germany in 1866 at the call of a

Philadelphia congregation in the midst of reform—Keneseth Israel. Like Morris Jastrow, the junior Hirsch studied at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Berlin.

Notably, Hirsch was perhaps the most radical Reform Jewish cleric of all time. He led his congregation—Chicago’s Sinai Temple, where he served as spiritual leader for more than forty years—in changing its primary worship service from Friday night or Saturday morning to Sunday. Most radically, Hirsch omitted the Torah Ark—and, most significantly, the Torah scrolls—from the first synagogue constructed under his direction in Chicago. The scrolls holding the Pentateuch are Judaism’s most sacred objects; their contents are the core of Jewish belief and thought across denominational boundaries; and the receptacle that holds the scrolls—the aron ha-kodesh, or Holy Ark—is typically monumental, ornate, and the physical and spiritual focus of Jewish ecclesiastical architecture. Hirsch could not have found a more iconoclastic means of physically expressing the disparity between his views and those of traditional—and even liberal—

Judaism.

Recognized in his lifetime as a leading Assyriologist, Jastrow was a prolific author. Aspects of Religious Belief and Practice in Babylonia and Assyria (1911) is perhaps his quintessential and best-known magnum opus. It was preceded, however, by

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The Study of Religion, which offers great insight to the intellectual and theological climate of Jastrow’s own era and offers, despite Jastrow’s best intentions to explore his topic “without bias or preconceived theory,” glimpses of the author’s beliefs. The Study of Religion documents and analyzes the development of the German historical method; argues the case for the adoption of the historical method and broad-based religious study for clergy and laity alike (a case made in opposition to what was then, in the U.S., the prevailing practice of training and educating individuals only in the beliefs and practices of the religion or denomination to which they belonged); and presents detailed recommendations for how the historical method, and the general study of religion, should be incorporated into the curricula of American and European colleges, universities, and seminaries. Reflecting the flow of ideas back and forth across the Atlantic, the Study of

Religion was published in London.

Jastrow, as an American of German heritage (although he was, in fact, born in

Warsaw during his father’s rabbinic tenure in that city; he emigrated to America with his family at age 5) who pursued higher studies in Germany and other European countries and then returned to America to establish his professional and personal lives, had a unique opportunity to compare the Old World with the New, particularly as someone passionately interested in religion and as a Jew. His observations are recorded in archived correspondence and The Study of Religion.

Among the most significant troves of Jastrow’s archived correspondence— particularly pertaining to Judaism and Jastrow’s experience of and responses to European higher education—is that between him and Henrietta Szold (1860–1945), which is in the collection of the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati and collected and printed in

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Henrietta Szold: Life and Letters (1942; Marvin Lowenthal, editor). A tireless champion of Zionism (she founded the women’s Zionist organization Hadassah) and the plight of the Jewish poor, Henrietta Szold was the daughter Rabbi Benjamin Szold of Baltimore.

Rabbi Szold and Rabbi Marcus Jastrow held markedly similar perspectives on the degree and manner in which American Judaism should reform. The two rabbis became close collaborators, colleagues, friends and, ultimately, in-laws when Szold’s daughter Rachel wed Jastrow’s son Joseph, a psychologist who was the first recipient of a doctorate in psychology from Johns Hopkins University.

Despite his enthusiasm for German education, Jastrow believed that Judaism’s

“future greatness” and “enthusiasm for and attachment to the Jewish religion” as residing in and emanating from the United States (Wechsler 1985, 346; Szold Papers, October 18,

1882). Presciently, and eerily, Jastrow declared in a letter to Henrietta Szold that “the future of Judaism depends on America” (ibid). Jastrow saw significant obstruction to

Judaism’s progress in Germany, and boon to its florescence in the United States, in the government mandating of and intervention in religion found in Germany and other

European countries, contrasted with the separation of church and state guaranteed by the

U.S. Constitution (Jastrow 1901, 301). He identified a counterintuitive aspect of

American society: the lack of government involvement in religion fostered an exceedingly active religious culture in the U.S. and a pervading religiosity among its people. In Europe, changes proposed for the privileged state religions of Europe or the tolerated minority religions required government approval. Without such constraints, religions in America—whether new or old, hegemonic or dissenting—developed and evolved at the communal, congregational, and even individual level.

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A profound impediment to the advancement and well-being of Jews and Judaism in Germany was the country’s long-held anti-Semitism, which was particularly virulent in the 1880s at the time of Jastrow’s studies. He wrote to Szold that his American idea “of perfect popular government” was so inherent to his thinking that it was all but impossible for him to understand how “people can allow their natural privileges of freedom to be taken away from them, how they can recognize anyone as superior merely by birth- position to anyone else (Wechsler 1985, 344; Henrietta Szold Papers, December 23,

1883). Noting the link between the anti-Semitism he experienced in the United States and in Germany, Jastrow observed that American cities with large German populations were centers of anti-Semitism (Wechsler 1985, 345; Szold Papers, March 5, 1882). With that said, Jastrow does not hold America above reproach or dismiss Germany out of hand. He complains to Szold of America’s “one-sided” emphasis on “applied” rather than

“abstract” sciences “owing to the vicious principle of utilitarianism so general in this country.” The philosophically inclined Jastrow declares “Oh, for a little German idealism” (Quoted in Wechsler; Morris Jastrow to David Gordon Lyon, September 27,

1885, David G. Lyon Letters, c. 1884–1913, Harvard University Archives, HUG 1541)

Nonetheless, it is in America that Jastrow found fertile ground both for the growth of liberal religion—as informed by the historical method—to achieve its fullest bloom, and in the possibility for Jews to live as normal citizens, to be simply Americans of the

Jewish faith. While notably disregarding those of African descent, Jastrow writes approvingly of the tolerance and patriotism bred of America’s diversity:

The national conditions prevailing in the United States may be regarded as an extreme instance of the extent to which the process of racial intermingling may be carried. Celts, Teutons, Anglo-Saxons, Semites, and

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the Romanic nations have been combined to produce a nation possessing as strong a sense of unity as has ever existed. (Jastrow 1901, 86)

Regarding his own experience of engagement with religion, it seems that for

Morris Jastrow the historical method—representing logic, reason, and objective study and thought—was a religion unto itself. He writes approvingly of the involvement of

American clergy and laity in the study of religion and lauds both for pursuing what he believes are the two primary objectives of such study. The first is determining “the nature, scope, and achievements of the religious spirit in all its various manifestations, from the earliest times to the present” (Jastrow 1901, 394). This thought presages the title and subject of William James’s enormously influential treatise The Varieties of

Religious Experience, which was published in 1902. Jastrow continues by noting that the second overarching goal of the study of religion is “the cultivation of that spirit of intense sympathy” and “mutual esteem” that will lead to “peace among nations and good-will among individuals” (ibid).

Despite the value its author placed on academic objectivity, the passage above betrays something of the optimistic, and highly personal, zeal of one awaiting a messianic age of harmony, understanding, tolerance, and equality among humankind. For Morris

Jastrow, the historical method—born in Germany and flourishing in America and elsewhere—held the promise of personal, ethnic, national, and international salvation.

The Ethical Culture Society of Philadelphia

In another case among the four rabbinic heirs—that of Felix Ader (1851–1933), the son of Rabbi Samuel Adler of New York City’s Temple Emanu-El—the result of

European study was the formation of a new religion. German-inspired, American-born,

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and universalist in its orientation, Adler’s Ethical Culture Society was founded in New

York in 1876. Ethical Culture was established as a non-theistic, non-creedal religion that held the perfectibility of human behavior as its highest ideal. In doing so, Adler realized

Emerson’s vision of, and call for, “a pure ethical religion” (Radest, 9).

Felix Adler was born in Germany in 1851 and, with his family, emigrated to

America in 1857 when his father, Samuel Adler, was elected to the pulpit of New York’s

Temple Emanu-El. Emanu-El was then, and remains, the largest Reform Jewish congregation in the United States. After graduating from Columbia, with the expectation that he would follow in the rabbinic path of his father and grandfather, Adler proceeded to Germany. He received his his Reform-specific rabbinic training in Berlin and completed his secular doctoral studies at the University of Heidelberg, from which he graduated in 1872.

Immersed in the German-developed Higher Criticism and the philosophy of

Emmanuel Kant, Adler came to the conclusion that, while a solid basis in logic and science could not be found in any known religion, belief in and adherence to universal and eternal Moral Law was both valid and desirable for the individual, societies, and humanity. Not surprisingly, Adler’s overarching loss of faith in religion and embrace of universal principles was accompanied by a rejection of his own ethno-religious background in Judaism and Jewishness. Looking at the wildly disparate living, working, and economic conditions brought about by industrialism and capitalism, Adler developed sympathy for the laboring classes and came to view socialism and the availability of education to all as antidotes to the ills of contemporary society.

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Upon returning to New York, Adler delivered— on October 11, 1873—just one sermon at Temple Emanu-El. In this sermon, titled “The Judaism of the Future,” he advocated for a religion without ritual or creed, and which did not require theistic belief but united and encouraged humanity in pursuing ethical living and moral social action.

The content of the sermon—along with the fact that Adler never mentioned the word

“God”—prompted an uproar at Emanu-El. The prevailing thought among the congregation was that Adler was unfit for the temple’s pulpit, a sentiment with which

Adler agreed. At the same time, his discourse impressed and was received enthusiastically by many members of the congregation, including its president, the banker and businessman Joseph Seligman.

To provide Adler with employment, sympathetic members of Emanu-El arranged for and underwrote for him a non-resident professorship of Hebrew and “oriental” literature at newly founded Cornell University (Radest 1969, 18). Adler was a controversial figure even at nonsectarian Cornell. The initial grant that funded Adler’s position at the university covered a three-year term; the grant was reoffered at the end of those three years, but it was declined by the university.

Undeterred, Adler presented his vision for a new religious order called Ethical

Culture on October 15, 1876 before a large, subscription-paying audience in New York’s

Standard Hall. Ethical Culture’s only requirement of future members would be a commitment to morality as the guiding force in life. Its primary activity would parallel the practice and experience of going to church. Sunday lectures—or “platforms”—would focus on sermon-like lectures and include inspiring music and readings. The Society would create holidays that coincided with the primary ones of Christianity but had no

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theological implications. Ceremonies for life-cycle events such as marriage, child naming, and funeral services would be developed by the Society, and a Sunday School would be inaugurated that focused on the moral codes of the great religions (5–6). In

February 1877, with Seligman’s financial backing, Adler incorporated the Society for

Ethical Culture.

In 1879, Adler was elected president of the Free Religious Association (FRA), which—composed of liberal Unitarians, Quakers, Reform Jews, and others inspired by

Emerson’s faith in humankind— sought to develop a rational, scientific, and universal approach to (loosely interpreted) theistic faith. Adler left his post at the FRA in 1882 because of the association’s lack of engagement with social concerns and his non-theistic worldview. However, his tenure with the FRA cemented Adler’s personal relationship and Ethical Culture’s organizational connections with liberal Unitarians and

Unitarianism. Ethical Culture drew its adherents and admirers primarily from the most radical representatives of Reform Judaism and Unitarianism. Of the four Leaders (the term by which the Society refers to its ministers) initially accepted and trained by Felix

Adler, two were former Unitarian ministers and all, of their own volition or at Adler’s insistence, studied in German universities. Although none of Ethical Culture’s first generation of Leaders was Jewish, the majority of the Society’s founding and early members were well-established American Jews of German background.

Ethical Culture’s membership drew nearly exclusively from the most radical adherents of Unitarianism and Reform Judaism, but the majority the majority of the

Society’s founding and early members were well-established American Jews of German background. Despite this, and Adler’s own Reform Jewish background, there were no

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Jews in his initial group of four “Leaders” (the Ethical Culture equivalent to clergy).

William Salter and S. Burns Weston (both of whom would serve as leaders of the

Philadelphia society) were Unitarian graduates of Harvard Divinity School (Salter’s father was a Congregationalist minister). Walter Sheldon and Stanton Coit were non- ordained Protestants greatly influenced by Emersonian thought. All, during their prior educational experience or during their training and apprenticeship with Adler, studied at

German Universities. This list of the Ethical Culture Society’s earliest Leaders suggests that Adler’s progressive views did not include feminism—all of the Leaders were men.

Adler’s concept of Ethical Culture is drawn from German-developed Reform

Judaism’s particular emphasis on ethics and Kant’s conclusions that the existence of a deity or immortality cannot be proven but the benefits of practical reason and morality are clear and can be established without a theological basis. American Unitarian ministers, in the course of their rigorous religious education, also would have been exposed to Kant’s philosophy, but came to revere and uphold the philosophy and vision of one of their own: Ralph Waldo Emerson. Before 1850, Emerson had called for a purely ethical religion and, in his essay On Music, spoke of a “new church founded on moral science” (Emerson and Thoreau 2001, 612).

Through the specific events that led to its founding, Ethical Culture can be described as an outgrowth of Reform Judaism. This may be safely asserted when taking into consideration not only Felix Adler’s ethno-religious background but his upbringing as the son of a prominent rabbi, his rigorous and advanced Jewish education, and his own ordination as a rabbi. Moreover, Reform Judaism as it developed in the nineteenth century took a trajectory that differed from ethical culture only in that it remained theistic

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and maintained a sense of Jewish particularism—disavowing the idea of Jews as the divinely Chosen People, but embracing the concept of Jews being “A Light unto the

Nations” in spreading ethical-monotheism. It had already eschewed most ritual; introduced instrumental music; dramatically streamlined the Jewish liturgy, translated it into poetic English that typically was read responsively, alternating between the rabbi

(often referred to as the “reverend,” reverend doctor,” or “minister”—depending upon level of education and whether the individual had received official Jewish ordination;

“minister” was used by those who had not); removed from the liturgy references to

Jewish “chosenness,” overtly supernatural matters (such as the dead returning to life with the coming of the messiah), the idea of a personal messiah, and an overarching longing for return to the land of Israel. Reform Judaism (like Unitarianism) believed that it had already achieved the status of a “universal religion” that emphasized “deed before creed” and deemphasized the idea of Jews as a particular ethnic group. Further underscoring the

Jewish nature of New York’s Ethical Culture Society was its membership, which was drawn overwhelmingly from the congregants of Temple Emanu-El.

Thus, as it spread, Ethical Culture tended to attract individuals from the most assimilated, prosperous, and educated portions of the upwardly-mobile German Jewish community. Ethical Culture had intellectual prestige and the involvement of elite gentiles. Social status was a particular concern for America’s German Jewish community in the ea that coincided with the emergence of Ethical Culture. Between 1881 and 1925, some 2,500,000 fled the dire conditions of Russia’s Pale of Settlement and settled in the

U.S., concentrating heavily in the major port cities of the middle to northern East Coast, particularly New York, followed by Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston. Their arrival

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was met by a wave of anti-Semitism . These newly arriving Jews were typically poor and either deeply pious in their religious practice and belief or radical in their political views.

They and, by association, all Jews were met with a wave of anti-Semitism. America’s established and prospering German Jewish community reacted with alarm and, while coming to the aid of their co-religionists, were eager to distance themselves from them and the growing, negative popular perception of Judaism and “Jewishness.” At the same time, these assimilated American Jews of German heritage likely felt a certain comfort and sense of continued Jewish loyalty in Ethical Culture because of its German Jewish roots and the essential fact that it was not a form or even an offshoot of Christianity

(unlike Unitarianism, for example). Ethical Culture’s intellectual prestige and the involvement of elite gentiles in the society was likely attractive to some acculturated

German Jews. Although, in fairness to the intellectual and philosophical integrity of the

German Jews who were so prominent among Ethical Culture’s early adherents, their affiliation with the new movement may have simply reflected changes in their religious sensibilities and beliefs.

In 1885, Philadelphia became the third city in which an Ethical Culture Society was successfully launched (the second being Chicago in 1882). The Philadelphia Ethical

Society appears to have had a commitment to printed materials and records since its beginning. Reviewing the surnames (and also taking into account given names when they are included in full; in many cases only first initials are provided) of a printed list of the

42 individuals who joined the society in its first year (1886–1885), as many as 18 were

Jewish (nearly 43%). Among these likely-to-possible Jewish surnames are Eisenmann,

Herzberg, Kind, Loeb, Rosenau, Rosendale, Salinger, Sinzheimer, Sternberger, and

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Wolff. Horace Traubel, the Whitman acolyte who went on to become the editor and primary writer of The Conservator—which functioned as the society’s unofficial organ for a number of years—was “half-Jewish” by heritage if not upbringing.

Comparing the Philadelphia Ethical Society’s 1885–1886 membership list with the list of Rodeph Shalom’s members in 1881that is included in Edward Davis’ The

History of Rodeph Shalom Congregation (1926, 154–155) presents one possible cross- affiliation: an S. Sternberger appears in Rodeph Shalom’s record and a Samuel

Sternberger in that of the Ethical Society. Cross-referencing the list of First Unitarian’s members in Elizabeth Geffen’s Philadelphia Unitarianism yields one interesting overlap:

John Sartain (Geffen 1961, 251-277; the list is organized by occupation and covers the period from 1796 to 1860). A longtime and staunch member of First Unitarian, Sartain was an accomplished engraver who established an artistic familial dynasty (see Katharine

Martinez and Page Talbott’s Philadelphia’s Cultural Landscape:The Sartain Family

Legacy, 2000). He was notably active in Philadelphia’s cultural and educational affairs, holding various offices with the Artists' Fund Society, the School of Design for Women, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, among other organizations and institutions.

Sartain directed the art department of the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.

The Furness and Jastrow families are not represented in the Ethical Society’s membership lists but they do appear frequently in Horace Traubel’s reporting in The

Conservator.

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Horace Traubel and The Conservator

Morris Jastrow never became a Leader in the Ethical Culture Society, but it must have engaged his interests and sympathies for his belief in the centrality and power of ethics was profound:

The union of ethics with religion has produced the feeling in the human race of the sanctity of the individual. The ‘categorical imperative’ of Kant is the finest fruit of this union; and the ability of the modern social reformer to appeal to the sense of right, pure and simple, existing in a community, is equally a direct outcome of the education of the race through the divine sanction established for the right and the good, for purity and justice. (Jastrow 1901, 212)

As reported in The Conservator, a monthly periodical published between 1890 and 1919 by Walt Whitman-acolyte Horace Traubel that began as an unofficial house-organ of

Ethical Culture in Philadelphia and elsewhere, Jastrow lectured regularly during the society’s platforms. For example, per The Conservator, we know that Jastrow spoke about his own calling—“The Study of Religion”—on January 25, 1891. On March 18,

1891, Jastrow presented “an informal but valuable talk” on “Babylonian Ethics.”

Per The Conservator, Morris Jastrow taught at the Society’s short-lived School for Philosophy and Applied Ethics, which met in Plymouth, Massachusetts, during the summers of 1891 to 1895. The April 1891 issue lists Jastrow among the faculty teaching the history of religions. The June and July 1891 issues note his discourse on “The Gods,

Spirits, and Beliefs of the Babylonians and Assyrians” presented on July 3at the School of Applied Ethics, In addition, Jastrow contributed to The Conservator articles such as

“The Ethics of the Babylonians,” which was featured in the December 1891 edition.

The Conservator reported regularly on the proceedings of Ethical Societies nationally and internationally—Ethical Culture societies were established in London in

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1890; Berlin in 1892; the International Ethical Union was established in Eisenach,

Germany, in 1893; a society was founded in Vienna in 1894; in Lausanne and Zurich later in the 1890s; Tokyo in 1898; and Auckland, New Zealand in1906. It included in- depth recounting of the proceedings and the specifics of sermons and lectures delivered in the Unitarian churches of Philadelphia—First Unitarian and the Reverend Furness primary among them—southern New Jersey, and northern Delaware. It expressed a desire to share news and thought coming from Quaker and Universalist congregations, noting that it made inquiries to those in the Philadelphia religions but received no responses. In the Reform Jewish fold, it concentrated largely on “radical” Reform

Keneseth Israel, but Rodeph Shalom and Marcus Jastrow did have a regular presence in

The Conservator.

The pages of The Conservator were a forum of goodwill both between different

(albeit always liberal) faiths and among bodies within a given faith which pursued progress in varied manners and to varying degrees. Its 1890 cover story was written by the Reverend Furness and focused on the positive qualities of Jews and Judaism. In the

June 1890 edition, Rabbi Jastrow wrote approvingly of Rabbi Joseph Krauskopf, who was elected to the pulpit of Keneseth Israel in 1887. That the Reverend Furness, and particularly Rabbi Jastrow, presented their thoughts in The Conservator—and thereby not only acknowledged but supported the Ethical Society, at least to some degree—was most unusual. As discussed, the Ethical Society was established by disaffected, radical

Unitarians and Reform Jews and continued as a destination for that cohort. As an offshoot of Reform Judaism, Ethical Culture was seen as not only competition for the

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hearts and minds of liberal, assimilated Jews, but—in its non-theism—as something near to heresy.

Horace L. Traubel (1858-1919) was an American essayist, poet, magazine publisher, author, proponent of the single-tax movement, and was closely associated with the Arts and Crafts Movement. He is best known today as a devoted and intimate acolyte of Walt Whitman (1819–1892) and a legal executor of Whitman’s estate and, as a personal and passionate commitment, a “conservator” and proponent of the poet’s legacy. Traubel was born in Camden, New Jersey, to Maurice Traubel, a lithographer, and the former Katherine Grunder. Maurice was a German Jewish immigrant and

Katherine was of German background. Traubel said of himself, reflecting both his Judeo-

Christian attachments and the humanism that superseded them:

I am a half Jew. My father came of Jewish, my mother of Christian, stock. I am a half-breed…Long before I came along in the family roster my father had ceased to be a Jew and my mother had ceased to be a Christian. I was never taught either Jew or Christian. I was let alone. My father said: ‘You will find out yourself what I am…I guess I’m neither all Christian nor all Jew. I guess I’m simply all human. (Karsner 1919, 41).

Traubel visited Whitman almost daily and began taking notes in 1888. He wrote

Walt Whitman in Camden, the nine-volume biography documenting Whitman’s years in

Camden, New Jersey, from 1873 to his death in 1892, with a particular period on

Whitman’s four final years (the period in which Traubel recorded the thoughts shared by

Whitman during his visits). Whitman’s poetry, beginning with Leaves of Grass in 1855— which inspired both exuberant positive response and hostile controversy—was regarded as a latter-day manifestation and development of Emersonian Transcendentalism. In a letter dated October 1, 1855, Emerson himself wrote approvingly to William Henry

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Furness, “Have you read that wonderful book—with all its formlessness & faults—

‘Leaves of Grass’?” (Furness 1910, 1907). Whitman’s poetry celebrated humanity, nature, life, the pleasures of the senses at a time when sensuality was repressed and considered immoral, and both mind and spirit.

Traubel published The Conservator with his wife, Anne Montgomerie, from 1890 until the time of his death, their daughter, Getrude, joined the masthead in 1906 when she was only 14. The Conservator was devoted to the literary and artistic avant-garde and socially progressive—indeed, radically socialist in the American context—thought. In its first five years, it functioned—as we’ve seen—as an unofficial publication of the Ethical

Culture Society and a forum for dissemination of news about advances in liberal religious activity. In 1895, Traubel and others broke from Ethical Culture and established the

Fellowship for Ethical Research and the Walt Whitman Fellowship: International, which evolved into a quasi-religious organization. In Worshipping Walt: The Whitman Disciples

(2008), Michael Robertson writes:

Traubel became immersed, much sooner than most Americans, in a modern world where all that had seemed solid melted into air. The women and men in his circle questioned everything: religion, politics, gender roles, marriage, the family, and sexuality…[H]is Conservator writings subtly supported the free-love ideology of early twentieth-century sex radicals. (Robertson 2008, 268.

Whitman’s sexuality has long been debated (140–144), but his poetry is unequivocal in invoking love between men in terms that seem overtly physical and romantic. There is speculation about the nature of Traubel’s relationship with Whitman; it was certainly one of mutual love. Later in life, as recorded in correspondence, there were distincrly romantic overtones in Traubel’s relationships (as recorded in correspondence) with James

William Wallace, a British architect, Whitman disciple, and advocate of “ethical

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socialism” (Robertson , 198–225), and the American socialist leader and five-time presidential candidate Eugene Debs (1855–1926) (255). Traubel’s correspondence with

Gustave Percival Wiksell—a Boston dentist, poet, and Whitman disciple—speak explicitly and unequivocally of a physical relationship, one in which lovemaking was an expression of mystical union (269–271).

Traubel’s sensibilities and his life as lived embraced utopianism along with socialism, universal ethical religion, and a Whitman-derived sense of spiritual sexuality.

During the years 1903 to 1907 Traubel was associated with another literary magazine,

The Artsman, which he edited along with the exceedingly prominent Philadelphia architect William Price (1861–1916) and Hawley McLanahan. The Artsman was associated with Rose Valley, a utopian community developed in 1901 by William Price as an expression of the Arts and Crafts Movement, employing single-tax movement economics, and reflecting the vision of a socialist utopia that William Morris rendered in his book News from Nowhere (1890). Supporters of Rose Valley included Samuel and

Joseph Fels (1860–1950 and 1853–1914, respectively), brothers of German Jewish background who were partners in the successful Philadelphia-based soap manufacturer

Fels & Co., best known for Fels-Naptha soap. Besides soap, Samuel Fels is best known as a generous philanthropist who generously supported Jewish, civic, educational, medical, and musical activities, organizations, and institutions. Joseph Fels and his wife,

Mary (1863–1953), were devoted and enthusiastic philanthropists, as well, but with a distinctly reformist orientation. They were avid and active advocates of the single-tax movement, Ethical Culture (which they joined in 1889–1890), and, later, Zionism.

Samuel’s wife, Jennie May, joined the Ethical Culture Society in 1886–1887.

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The Contemporary Club

In October 1886, Horace Traubel, S. Burns Weston (the Leader of the

Philadelphia Ethical Society), George M. Gould, Horace Traubel, and S. Burns Weston met to discuss the formation of a social and literary club in Philadelphia. The first meeting of the yet-to-be-named Contemporary Club was held at the Philadelphia Ethical

Society on November 3, 1886.19 The basic guidelines for the club, as determined at this first meeting, were that it would be open to both women and men of any profession and meetings would be held during the winter "season" of November to April. At its third meeting in January 1887, the group named itself the Contemporary Club and elected officers, with Daniel G. Brinton as president. The club limited its membership to 200 people, a number it reached during the 1897–1898 season.

The Contemporary Club was a direct outgrowth of the Ethical Society of

Pennsylvania, as indicated by the involvement of Weston and Traubel, and its cultural and civic interests overlapped with those of the Ethical Society. The Contemporary Club, however, had no religious component. Its early members included Rudolph Blankenburg

(1843–1918) a businessman and manufacturer who was elected mayor of Philadelphia, and served successfully, from 1912–1916 on an anti-corruption, reform platform. Due to his steadfast and relentless commitment to reform, Blankenburg was nicknamed “The

Old War Horse of Reform” and “The Dutch Cleanser.” He married Lucretia Mott

Longshore (1845–1937) who, as her name indicates, was a member of a long- distinguished Philadelphia Quaker family and was active in women’s suffrage and other reform movements.

19 The Contemporary Club’s records are in the collections of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 243

It is at the Contemporary Club, rather than its parent Ethical Society, that we find the nearly full affiliation of the Furness-Mitchell Coterie. Agnes Irwin, Morris Jastrow

(who later served as the club’s president), Horace Jayne, S. Weir Mitchell, William

Pepper Agnes Repplier (another future president of the club), Felix Schelling, and Talcott

Williams (whose wife is listed as the club’s corresponding-secretary) are listed in the club’s 1890 annual-report. Other Contemporary Club members as of 1890 who are notable in the context of this study, and otherwise, include Furness-family relation H.

LeBarre Jayne; Reverend Joseph May, who succeeded William Henry Furness in the pulpit at First Unitarian; Emily Sartain, a painter, printmaker, and daughter of John

Sartain; Walt Whitman; and, of course, S. Burns Weston and Horace Traubel of the

Ethical Society. Typically Jewish surnames among the membership in 1890 include

Cohen, Heilprin, and Rosengarten.

In its 1890 annual, the club describes itself as being:

[O]rganized to furnish a platform from which workers and investigators, in all fields, could present the result of their labors, and to supply a common meeting ground for men and women engaged in widely different phases of human activity in a great city…. (25)

In its listing of the season’s programs are a poetry reading by Walt Whitman; Joseph

Jastrow—Morris’ brother, a psychologist—addressing “Recent Phases of Psycho-

Physics”; Morris Jastrow on a panel discussing “Books Which Have Helped Me”; and

Reverend Ames and Agnes Repplier on Robert Browning.

Listed as members in the 1892–1893, are William Salter, Weston’s successor as

Leader of the Ethical Society; and Simon Stern, perhaps the same individual who was previously mentioned as a possible cross-affiliated member of the Rodeph Shalom and

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the Ethical Society. The season’s programs included Walt Whitman and William Henry

Furness speaking in memory of Abraham Lincoln; Furness-Mithell Coterie member

Owen Wister discussing “Henrik Ibsen, the Dramatist”; Julia Ward Howe (1819–

1910)—abolitionist, social activist, poet, and author of “The Battle Hymn of the

Republic”—on the theme of “The Salon and Its American Possibilities”; a panel including Talcott Williams and Katherine Cohen discussing “The Conditions and

Training of American Art at Home and Abroad”; Talcott Williams on the theme of “The

Newspaper and the Magazine”; and Morris Jastrow joining the reverends S. D.

McConnell and J. S. MacIntosh exploring the topic “The Next Step in Christianity.”

The club remained quite active through World War II. But after the war, membership apparently began to dwindle, and the club met with financial hardship. These factors may have contributed to the club ceasing operations sometime in the early 1950s.

The 1895–1896 and the 1896–1897 annuals are especially interesting in regard to

Philadelphia and American Jewish history. Among the newly listed members are Mayer

Sulzberger (‘95–’96) and Solomon Solis Cohen (‘96–’97). With Cyrus Adler, Sulzberger and Solis Cohen formed the core of the “Philadelphia Group” of intellectual and scholarly, nationally prominent Jewish communal leaders. Their contributions to

American Jewish life include the Young Men’s Hebrew Association, American Jewish

Historical Society, Jewish Theological Seminary (the seminary of the Conservative

Jewish movement), American Jewish Committee, Gratz and Dropsie Colleges, Jewish

Publication Society, Jewish Chautauqua, and the Baron de Hirsch Fund, among other organizations, institutions and endeavors. Jewish surnames added in from 1895 through

1912 include another Cohen, Singer, Frankel. The prominent businessman and reform-

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minded philanthropist Samuel Fels (Fels-Naptha Soap), of German-Jewish origin, joined in 1912.

Notable programs—telling in their emphasis on reform, progress, social concerns, and modernity— over the same period include Morris Jastrow discussing “The Value of the Study of Comparative Religion” (January 8, 1895); Felix Adler on the theme of “The

Accepted Moral Code, and Some of Its Literary Assailants” (December 11, 1905); Louis

Brandeis addressing “Old Age Pensions”; Mayor Rudolph Blankenburg reviewing “Two

Years of a Reform Administration” (his own); Joseph Jastrow on “Psychical Evidences of

Survival”; Talcott Williams and Morris Jastrow on “The Near-Eastern-Question”; and a remarkable panel composed of Walter Pach, George Bellows, Violet Oakley (a member and future president of the Contemporary Club), Thomas Craven, Henry Gibbons, and

John McIlhenny discussing “Modern Art and Its Later Tendencies.”

It was at the Contemporary Club in Philadelphia, in the two decades on either side of the twentieth-century’s turn, that the process begun by William Henry Furness and

Marcus Jastrow—and even earlier by the Reverend Furness and Rebecca Gratz—came to fruition. Jews and Christians of various along with freethinkers and others came together on a common ground of social equality and , moved by the joined spirits of intellectual inquiry and cultural exploration, shared forward-looking thoughts on art, learning, and life.

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Chapter 9. CONCLUSION

My goal in this dissertation was to document and interpret the roots and outcomes of the strong, and heretofore unexamined, personal, professional, and congregational links that connected Rodeph Shalom, First Unitarian, and the Ethical Society in nineteenth-century Philadelphia. I examined how these relationships paralleled, and, as I discovered, presaged the late nineteenth century Reform Jewish and Unitarian rapprochement identified by Benny Kraut.

A progressive Jewish rabbi and a Transcendentalist Unitarian minister met in

Philadelphia circa 1866. The rabbi was a newly arrived immigrant from Germany. The minister was a product of America’s oldest and originating Anglo stock—Puritan. The native was drawn to the newcomer through intellectual, academic, and theological curiosity. The rabbi was steeped in a revolutionary, rigorous, “scientific” way of studying the Bible that recognized it as the work of humans but saw in it the spark of divinity.

Both men were idealists. Both were pragmatic. Both were men of principle who survived threats to their freedom and even their lives for the sake of what mattered to them most— the well-being of others even more oppressed.

The first product of their friendship was a Jewish temple designed and built for the rabbi’s congregation by the minister’s son. This was the first of many major buildings imbued with both the architect-son’s strong individualism and his full assimilation and synthesis of ideas about art that celebrates and is true to nature and uplifts the spirits of the people who view it and—as the art is architecture—find shelter within it.

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Rabbi Marcus Jastrow, the Reverend William Henry Furness, and the architect

Frank Furness formed a triad connected by profession, intellect, belief, aesthetics, and human sympathy. From them grew a network of people—their families, first and foremost, their congregations, their co-religionists, professional colleagues, patrons, admirers, the like-minded, and beyond. This ever-expanding group of people—mixed in ethnicity, religion, nationality and, at least to a degree, race— shared space and company in the rabbi’s Congregation Rodeph Shalom, the minister’s First Unitarian Church of

Philadelphia, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the library of the University of Pennsylvania, and seemingly countless other structures built by the minister’s architect sun for the sake of medicine, learning, cultural gathering and display, business, manufacturing, transportation, and simply living—homes.

They gathered, as well, in places not built by the architect or imagined by the minister and rabbi for new purposes: to practice a universal religion without belief in the divine; to witness, discuss, and explore the moment when the proto-modern gave way to the modern, and when reform turned into progressivism

A stunningly disparate range of ideas and movements in society, art, and philosophy are a part of the story that began with the rabbi and minister.

Transcendentalism. Pragmatism. Progressivism. The Gothic Revival. The Aesthetic

Movement. Arts and Crafts. Modernism in art and all things. Abolitionism.

Emancipation. Reconstruction. Jim Crow. Industrialism. Capitalism. Socialism. Free

Love. Same-sex love. Reform Judaism. Conservative Judaism. Orthodox Judaism. Anti-

Semitism. Philo-Semitism, of sorts. Assimilation. Nativism. Unitarianism. Trinitarianism.

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Broad Church Christianity. Darwinism. Social Darwinism. Anti-Social Darwinism.

Industrialism. Realism. Gentility. Rebellion.

In addition to the building of a synagogue, the meeting of the rabbi and minister led to the coming together of their congregations—Christian and Jewish, English and

German in origin, “old stock” and newcomers—to sacralize and celebrate their shared national secular holiday, Thanksgiving. References to Union Thanksgiving Services continued in the Rodeph Shalom Annual through its eighteenth edition (5671/1910-11).

Thus, if the idea of Philadelphia’s Unitarians joining the congregants of Rodeph Shalom in a service appropriate to the national holiday of Thanksgiving began in the early

1870s—as the historical record documents—it was a practice that continued for some forty years or more. Those who attended the Union Thanksgiving Services are no longer with us, gone for one or two generations. Nonetheless, it seems strange that this shared history is not mentioned in the two published histories of Rodeph Shalom (Davis 1926;

Hochman 1995) or Elizabeth Geffen’s Philadelphia Unitarianism, 1796–1861.

Moreover, no one remembers this long and broad epoch in Philadelphia’s history, not even those who are active in as members or lead as clergy at Rodeph Shalom, First

Unitarian, or the Ethical Society. Nor do those who find visual delight and mental stimulation at the Pennsylvania Academy or those seeking and gathering knowledge and creating new thought at what is now the University of Pennsylvania’s fine-arts library.

How was this lost from the collective memory? Changes in sensibility. Changes in taste. Changes in fashion. Frank Furness’s architectural vision fell deeply out of fashion for decades—three quarters of a century or more—before it was reappraised and reappreciated. His historically based, eclectic, and expressive approach to form following

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function was replaced with modernism’s ahistorical, undecorated realization of the same impulse. The effort to create a universal religion was dropped in light of twentieth- century horrors that began with World War I. Disparate individual and organizational attempts at social betterment for all through reform was replaced by political progressivism and, ultimately, the post-New Deal idea of a government-provided social safety-net, however tenuous it may become.

Finally, there is the matter of class. Despite their diversity in backgrounds, the people examined in this discussion were elite—in financial resources, in education, in intellect, in creativity. They wanted the best for “the people,” but they were not of “the people.” The organizations and institutions they founded or joined were exclusive, whether intentionally or by the vagaries of human nature. For as broad as their network grew—and their very real contributions to the city, its people, and society beyond— perhaps it remained too insular to leave a lasting impression in public consciousness?

Epilogue

The rapprochement between Reform Jews and Unitarians—and its tentative embrace of Ethical Culturalists, at least in Philadelphia—has passed. But Congregation

Rodeph Shalom, the First Unitarian Church, and the Ethical Humanist Society remain viable, and even vital, organizations in Philadelphia. Similarly, the religious movements they represent—Reform Judaism, Unitarian Universalism, and the Ethical Culture

Society, respectively—continue to contribute to American religious life as decidedly liberal religions.

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To demonstrate what once was achieved by liberal religion, I examined, in this dissertation, past developments in Philadelphia. This epilogue presents an update on the present state of liberal religion in Philadelphia and beyond. Philadelphia is prominent among the largest, most diverse, and long-established metropolitan areas in the United

States. It is a city that has experienced substantial revitalization and growth over the past two decades. This is true particularly in Center City Philadelphia and environs, which were and remain home to the congregations at the heart of this study: Rodeph Shalom, the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, and the Ethical Society. Given its historical role in the development of liberal religion, Philadelphia is a fitting locus for this study.

The three congregations at the core of this study stand in good stead—one (the

Ethical Humanist Society) is stable; the First Unitarian Church and Rodeph Shalom are thriving. Rodeph Shalom in the second decade of the twenty-first century is experiencing particularly robust growth, which reflects and is encouraging concomitant improvements to, and expansion of, its physical facilities, organizational components, and programs.

Despite the well-being of these congregations and the denominations they represent, liberal religion in America is, on the whole, existing in greatly reduced circumstances. “By the end of the nineteenth century, liberalism was truly ecumenical,”

Paul Rasor states in Faith without Certainty: Liberal Theology in the 21st Century (2005,

162). This liberal orientation continued well into the twentieth century. Mainline

Protestant, liberal Jewish, and progressive Catholic leadership and laity alike “…have been in the forefront of liberal issues, from civil rights in the 1950s, opposing the

Vietnam War in the 1960s, nuclear weapons build-ups in the 1970s, to Central American military policy in the 1980s” (Cimino 2002, 141).

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The First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, Congregation Rodeph Shalom, and the Ethical (now Ethical Humanist) Society of Philadelphia are simultaneously singular and representative institutions. When founded in 1796, the First Unitarian Church of

Philadelphia was not only the first such church in Philadelphia, but the first church anywhere to include the word “Unitarian” in its name (having developed from

Congregationalism [Dorrien 2006, 455], the oldest Unitarian churches are in New

England, but were not named Unitarian). Today, it is the only Unitarian church in Center

City Philadelphia; the Unitarian Society of Germantown and the Church of the

Restoration in the Mount Airy section of Philadelphia are the only other Unitarian congregation within the city’s limits.

Established in 1795, Congregation Rodeph Shalom is the oldest, still extant

Ashkenazic congregation in the Western Hemisphere. (Ashkenazic congregations founded in the Caribbean earlier in the eighteenth-century have since vanished or were absorbed into, or merged with, their Sephardic counterparts.) Today, Rodeph Shalom is the only Reform Jewish congregation remaining in Philadelphia; others founded in the city relocated to suburban areas decades ago.

Formed in 1885, the Ethical Society of Philadelphia persists as the only Ethical

Culture congregation in Philadelphia. It is one of only twenty-five Ethical Culture societies in the United States.

Religion, as it appears to exist in America today, is for those who hold reactionary rather than progressive views in regard to politics and theology (two spheres of thought and action that have become inextricably linked). Thus, it is surprising to learn that

“liberal religion”—that is, religion that is not orthodox or fundamentalist—was

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normative in the mainstream of America’s Judeo-Christian tradition and its mainline

Protestant and Jewish denominations from the final third of the nineteenth century to well into the mid-twentieth century. Those on the socio-political right and left may be startled to learn that this longstanding and widespread liberal-religious tradition viewed and views scripture as a source of insight and uplift written by humans as they pondered the divine; values deed over creed; and believes the most important, indeed religious, act is one that reflects commitment to ethics and social justice. They may be shocked to learn that millions of American religious liberals fill the pews of liberally religious houses of worship on Friday and Saturday as well as Sunday.

America’s “mainline” Protestant denominations—United Methodist, Evangelical

Lutheran,Presbyterian, Episcopal, American Baptist, United Church of Christ, Disciples of Christ, Quakers, and the Reformed Church—have, on the whole, been relatively liberal in theological and political orientation since the rise of the Social Gospel movement in the early-twentieth century (Dorrien 2003, 98-99; Cimino 2002, 141). Mainline

Protestantism is the religious context for 14.7% of the American population. If we add to their number Reform, Reconstructionist, and Conservative Jews (1.7%); Buddhists (.7%);

Unitarian-Universalists and other members of “liberal faiths” related to the Christian tradition (1.0%); adherents of New Age spirituality (.4%) and the “religious unaffiliated”

(22.8%) and “nothing in particular” (15.8%) among the cohort of “religious liberals,” we can quantify religious liberals as constituting 57.1 % of the population..20 If we consider that many Catholics, members of Orthodox churches (affiliation with which, in

America, may be more reflective of ethnic background rather than religious belief),

20 Unless noted otherwise, all statistics cited in this paper are drawn from the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey conducted in 2015 by the Pew Research Center for Religion and Public Life. 253

Muslims, and Hindus may—in their personal orientations—take a liberal approach to their religions, than the number of liberally religious Americans might is likely in the range of 60% to 70% of all Americans. Finally, as demonstrated by the Ethical Culture

Society, the Society for Humanistic Judaism, and other avowedly “humanistic,” “non- theistic,” and “secular” religious groups, there are atheists and agnostics (7.1% of

Americans) who are, in a meaningful sense, “religiously” affiliated—thereby increasing, albeit slightly, the number of Americans who participate in liberal religion.

All of this begs the question: if well more than half of Americans are religious liberals—albeit to greater or lesser degrees—why do their voices seem to be absent from public discourse, as demonstrated by Perry and bemoaned by Weiner? Why is “liberal religion,” an approach to faith dating to the eighteenth century in the modern, post-

Enlightenment West, and which dominated American religious thought just a century ago

(Dorrien 2006, 528), an oxymoron in the contemporary context?

Reform Judaism is the largest stream in American Judaism, representing 0.7% of the United States population—some 2,250,09421 individuals (Reform is followed by

Conservative Judaism at 0.5%; despite its name, Conservative Judaism is also part of the liberal stream within Judaism). Congregation Rodeph Shalom is thriving, with 1,170 member households, which corresponds to some 3,000 persons (this and other congregational and denominational figures are as of March 24, 2016). Its membership has

21 This and the figure for the those who identify themselves as Unitarian-Universalists were determined by multiplying the United States’ population in 2015—311,000,000 per the U.S. Census Bureau—by the percentages of the U.S. population affiliated with each group as reported in the Pew Forum’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey of 2007. Membership figures for Congregation Rodeph Shalom, the First Unitarian Church, and the Ethical Society were supplied by their senior clergy—Rabbi William Kuhn, the Reverend Nathan Walker, and Hugh Taft-Morales, respectively—during interviews conducted on November 30, 2011 (Kuhn and Taft-Morales) and December 3, 2011 (Walker). New interviews were conducted with Rabbi Kuhn on March 24 and Taft-Morales on March 23, 2016.

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grown 33 percent over the past five years. It has opened a freestanding early-learning center and completed, in fall 2015, a $15 million expansion and renovation of its landmark building designed by Kieran Timberlake Architects.

Unitarian-Universalists and members of other “liberal faiths” related to the

Christian tradition are 1.0 percent of the population, or some 3,214,420 individuals. The membership of the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia stands at 220 individuals, representing a 44 percent increase since 2007. It is a nationally recognized trendsetter in

“online ministry” and innovations in worship and congregational engagement.

Ethical Culture is very much a minority religion, both in its number of adherents and in its anomalous status as a “nontheistic” religion (it should be noted, in this context, the development of an organized Humanistic Judaism movement, which is secular and non-theistic; it is represented in Greater Philadelphia by Shir Shalom congregation in

Cheltenham). As Felix Adler said—and as was repeated during an interview on

November 30, 2011, with the Philadelphia Ethical Humanist Society’s Leader, Hugh

Taft-Morales—"Ethical Culture is religious to those who are religiously minded, and merely ethical to those who are not so minded." The Philadelphia Society has 80 members, and the national organizations it represents, the American Ethical Union, has

2,200 members.22

However, as stated by the theologian Gary Dorrien in The Making of American

Liberal Theology: Crisis, Irony, and Postmodernity, 1950–2005, in the later twentieth century “[L]iberal theologians saw their house shrink while evangelicals redefined the sociological meaning of ‘mainline Protestantism’” (Dorrien 2006, 538). The liberally

22 This number was supplied by a representative of the American Ethical Union during a telephone conversation on December 14, 2011. 255

religious of today long “…for the time when American religious leaders were identified with causes like social justice, civil rights, union organizing, and the peace movement– not anti-abortion battles, school-prayer campaigns, and attacks on gay rights” (Cimino

2002, 138). As Dorrien summarizes the state of religious liberalism from the final third of the twentieth century to the present, “[L]iberal theology was a strategy to keep increasingly secular modernists in the church, but by the 1970s they were gone. Thus liberal theology lost its institutional mission” (Dorrien 2006, 515).

Hugh Taft-Morales of the Ethical Humanist Society cites a challenge to the mission of liberal religion that took place well before the ascendancy of secularism. “The liberal religions of the late-nineteenth century came into a society that was brutal to those without means,” he notes, and adds, “Liberal religion was part of the Progressive

Movement. Once a safety-net was established by the government, liberal religions became more client oriented.”

What accounts for the decline in prominence and influence of liberal religion in the United States? As we attempt to answer this question, examine the challenges and opportunities faced by liberal religion in the early twenty-first century, and consider the future of liberal religion, I will quote liberally (pun unintended) from Cimino and Lattin;

Gary Dorrien’s The Making of American Liberal Theology: Crisis, Irony, and

Postmodernity, 1950–2005 (2006); Philip Jenkin’s The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (2007); and Paul Rasor’s Faith without Certainty: Liberal

Theology in the 21st Century (2005).

Dorrien asks, “If liberal theology had almost nothing to say and no market for its wares, why was so much of it still being written? How was one to explain that it was still

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pursued so vigorously in dense, complex, sometimes passionate works?” (Dorrien 2006,

522). Thinking and writing about the future of religion appears to be a burgeoning field— the authors cited here are not alone in their inquiry. But all are representative, even exemplary, of the endeavor to assess the present state—and, based upon that assessment, make projections for the future—of religion.

Returning to what history indicates is a decline in the fortunes of liberal religion,

Jenkins reminds us that “In numerical terms alone, liberal Protestantism has never represented a mainstream of Christianity, or even a majority, and as time goes on, the relative significance of that tradition will decline even further” (Jenkins 2007, 9). Does this contradict statements made and cited earlier in this paper? Perhaps. But the answer may be found in those statements, which speak to the perspectives of the clergy and leadership of the various religious groups, rather than the laity, those that fill (or fail to fill) the pews. Similarly, “theology” and “theologians” are words cited frequently in the earlier quotes. However, as succinctly stated by Cimino, those who attend church, synagogue, temple, or mosque “…seek to feel God’s love, not understand church theology” (Cimino 2002, 57). Dorrien explored and delineated this dichotomy: “To most progressive theologians, the challenge of appropriating multiple perspectives became the new sine qua non of progressive theology. Besides making theology more complicated, however, the pluralization of academic theology deepened its alienation from the churches and the dominant culture [emphasis added]” (Dorrien 2006, 528). Bringing specifics to his argument, he continues:

While liberal theology became more liberationist, feminist, environmentalist, multiculturalist, and postmodernist, the mainline Protestant churches accommodated mild forms of feminism and

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environmentalism, battled annually over gay rights, and often swung toward greater homogeneity and confessional identity.(Dorrien 2006, 528)

Three late-twentieth/early-twenty-first-century trends are working against liberal religion. The first is the ever-growing number of people, particularly the young, who describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” The second is conservatism in politics. While “liberal religion” and “liberal politics” are not synonymous, they are now definitively intertwined. Reform Judaism, Unitarian-Universalism, and Ethical Culture, as well as mainline Protestant denominations such as the United Church of Christ

(Congregationalist), are committed to liberal stands on the most politically divisive issues of our time: reproductive choice and marriage equality and legally mandated civil, equal rights for gays and lesbians. In a broader sense, as noted by Hugh Taft-Morales, “The anti-government mindset of the post-Reagan era has made liberal religion political and placed the liberally religious in political opposition to what is claimed to be the dominant mindset.” The third trend challenging liberal religion is secularism, the rejection of religion. Dorrien provides context for both secularism and conservatism, making them two sides of the same coin in the context of liberal religion and its discontents:

The old liberalism was about meeting the challenge of modernity, but the new liberalism had to grapple with religious and cultural pluralism. Postmodernized Americans, faced with a wider array of religious options than their parents, increasingly opted for dogmatic certainty or secular disbelief. (Dorrien 2006, 537)

I have discussed how mainline Protestant denominations, beginning with the

Social Gospel movement, have been liberal in orientation. However, many-to-most of today’s megachurches are either not aligned with mainline denominations or affiliate with the more conservative groups among them, such as Southern Baptists. Considering the mix of individualism and conservatism prevalent in the contemporary psyche of the

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United States, Cimino notes that “Megachurches embody the consumerism, eclecticism, and conservatism shaping the religious future. They are the evangelical answer to Home

Depot” (Cimino 2002, 56).

When asked what religious groups could be viewed as peers of, or partners for,

Reform Judaism, Rodeph Shalom’s Senior Rabbi William Kuhn answered insightfully and revealingly. “Socioeconomically, Reform Jews—who tend to be upper-middle class—have much in common with Episcopalians and Presbyterians, but not necessarily in regard to politics or religion,” Kuhn said. He continued, “Reform Judaism and

Unitarianism have much in common ideologically.” Putting aside possible differences in ideology and politics, it is notable that the denominations mentioned by Kuhn are among

Protestantism’s “culturally elite” which, per Cimino and Lattin, is composed of

Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Unitarians (Cimino 2002, 100).23

Noting the tension between the elite status of those affiliated with liberal religion and its activist, socially conscious stance, Rasor writes “Religious liberals have tended to come from the educated classes of society and sometimes the ruling classes. In many ways they have often represented the very establishment they seek to critique” (Rasor

2005, xii).

Evangelical and fundamentalist megachurches are populist and popular, representing more Americans than any other religious group. According to the Pew

Forum’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, 25.4% of Americans are affiliated with evangelical churches and , as stated, 14.7% are associated with the mainline Protestant denominations. Given the nature of their faith, it is not surprising that evangelicals are

23 It is important to note that, while derived from Protestantism, Unitarian-Universalism is no longer considered Christian, for it does not conceive of Jesus as divine. It is not a member organization of the National Council of Churches. 259

more devoted to religion and religious life, but the specific statistics bear consideration.

When asked to rate the importance of religion in their lives, 79% of evangelicals answered “very important,” a response shared by 53% of mainline Protestants, 55% of

Catholics, and 35% of Jews (Unitarians-Universalists are included in the category

“Unitarian and Other Liberal Faiths” in the Pew survey; 25% of respondents in that category said that religion was “very important” to them). Fifty-eight percent of evangelicals report attending religious services “at least once a week”; the same can be said of 33% of mainline Protestants, 39% of Catholics, 19% of Jews, and 16% of those designated as “Unitarians and Other Liberal Faiths.”

Per Jenkins, mass does not correspond with class in public perception: “Despite its immense popularity in North America, evangelical and fundamentalist religion often tends to be dismissed as merely a kind of reactionary ignorance” (Jenkins 2007, 186). If educational attainment can be considered a reliable barometer of intelligence, statistics bear this out in part: 7% of evangelicals have post-graduate degrees, versus 14% of mainline Protestants and 10% of Catholics. Eastern faiths—often the religions of immigrants or the children of immigrants—rank significantly higher, with 48% of

Hindus, 20% of Buddhists (a group that includes many native-born Americans raised in other faith traditions [Cimino 1998, 22]) holding post-graduate degrees, as do 31% of

Jews. Income distribution is similarly arrayed: 14% of evangelicals earn more than

$100,000 annually, as do 23% of mainline Protestants, 19% of Catholics, 44% of Jews,

36% of Hindus, and 13% of Buddhists.

Rabbi Kuhn notes of liberal Judaism, “I think about how to get people excited about a religion as autonomous as Reform Judaism. There are no demands coming from

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the religion—the demands are meant to come from inside the individual. How do we get people to feel inspired to do something as Jews that will make the world a better place?”

It seems safe to suggest that leaders of other liberal religious groups share the same concern—and Cimino and Lattin assert that that this is cause for worry in the realm of liberal religion. “In the new millennium,” they write, “churches that demand the most from their members will be the ones most likely to grow” (Cimino 2002, 65).

Reform Judaism, Unitarian-Universalism, and Ethical Culture all have developed sets of principles meant to define their movements and inspire their adherents. Taft-

Morales goes so far as to suggest that Ethical Culture does, in fact, have a creed, if

“creed” is defined as a set of values that is shared. This creed emphasizes the inherent worth of every individual, the importance of social justice, ethical relationships, and nurturing community. Again, it seems safe to say that Reform Jews and Unitarian-

Universalists share this creed. In his interview with the author, Taft-Morales emphasized that “Open inquiry and freedom of thought, conscience, and speech trump creed.” Once more, it is likely that Reform Jews and Unitarian-Universalists would concur. Worth noting, too, is the emphasis placed on open inquiry and freedom of thought, conscience, and speech, which are central to secular higher-education.

Rasor states the pitfall of the lack of absolute creed and concomitant practices and rituals in liberal religion: “Many people come to liberal congregations to free themselves from what they often describe as the suffocating conformity of doctrine in other traditions. Yet once there, they sometimes find that the absence of a prescriptive belief system leaves them feeling adrift in the religious sea” (Rasor 2005, viii–ix). This seems particularly problematic for Unitarian-Universalism, which has grown increasingly “post-

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Christian” and humanistic (Dorrien 2006, 7), and Ethical Culture, which is nontheistic and devoid of ritual (other than the rituals one develops as ways of living—such as attending, if one is a devoted Ethical Culturalist, the Society’s Sunday Platforms).

Only 11% of all Jewish-Americans believe that scripture is the word of God and should be taken literally. Most crucially, only 37% say they are absolutely certain in their belief in God. Nonetheless, Reform Judaism is theistic, its worship is structured by liturgy, and many congregations have re-introduced a range of previously discarded practices and rituals. While fully professing and demonstrating liberal outlooks in matters of faith, it operates in a relatively traditional and structured framework. This may—if we accept Cimino and Lattin’s theory regarding the success of those religions and denominations that place demands on their congregants, and Rasor’s observation about the anomie felt by those new to liberal religion—account for the size and strength of

Rodeph Shalom and Reform Judaism relative to their Unitarian-Universalist and Ethical

Culture counterparts. This may account, as well, for Reform Judaism not being cited as a peer or partner religion by Hugh Taft-Morales and the Reverend Walker (Taft-Morales mentioned Humanistic Judaism as a companion group for Ethical Culture). While liberal in belief and worldview, Reform Judaism maintains a sense of tradition and formalism in its worship, which includes much “god-talk.”

Cimino and Lattin expand upon their hypothesis that those congregations which

“demand the most from their members will be the ones most likely to grow” by suggesting:

Those [congregations] with rigorous religious practices and strict membership requirements discourage “free riders,” people who take advantage of religious benefits such as wedding and funeral services without making a commitment to the congregation. (Cimino 1998, 65)

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If one accepts this premise, it seems appropriate to consider the matter of membership dues. Rodeph Shalom, like most other established Jewish congregations—which, since

Mordecai Kaplan first promoted the concept in the 1920s, serve as “synagogue-centers” that offer not only prayer services, but study programs, performing and visual arts activities and presentations, sports, and events of a purely social nature, and feature the requisite facilities and staffing—have set dues structures that are higher than those of most churches. (It should be noted that Rodeph Shalom has long been committed to welcoming and accommodating all those who wish to become members, regardless of financial status.) Although a philosophy not likely to be promoted by a rabbi or any spiritual leader, it can be argued that there is a positive correlation between a member’s financial investment in a congregation and his or her personal commitment to that congregation. Of course, and conversely, logic posits that those of modest resources are unlikely to join congregations with substantial dues, thereby rendering those congregations—unintentionally—as houses of worship for the relatively elite few.

Will liberal religion remain the religion of the few because of the (typically) high socioeconomic status of its adherents, the lack of firm demands placed on those adherents, and the great overlap between “religious liberals” and those who are simply secular? If the status quo continues, the answer is likely “yes.” Yet, despite the apparent popularity of evangelicalism and fundamentalism, the 2007 Pew “Religious Landscape

Study” shows that the majority of Americans hold religious beliefs that are essentially liberal. Seventy percent of those surveyed said that “many religions can lead to eternal life,” 68% percent said “there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of my religion,” and a total of 58% said that scripture is either the “word of God, but not

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literally true word for word” (30%) or a “book, written by men, not the word of God”

(28%).

The post-Christian, broadly inclusive, decidedly multicultural character of contemporary Unitarian-Universalism would seem to position it well for those seeking spirituality free of denominational doctrine or even precedent. Reverend Walker notes that, “We are not bound by liturgy, so Sunday worship is used to address moral issues.”

Reverend Walker, who is just 35, addresses those issues in an informal and decidedly modern, while culturally eclectic, style. He does not preach from the pulpit, and the words, music, and practices (such as meditation) that compose First Unitarian’s services are almost as likely to be drawn from Eastern and Native American sources as well as contemporary American culture—as evidenced by the increasing inclusion of secular

“alternative rock” in First Unitarian’s services—as they are from Unitarian-

Universalism’s Protestant heritage.

As noted earlier, First Unitarian is a recognized trendsetter in “online ministry.”

As Reverend Walker remarked, online ministry “put First Church on the map.” Its website is highly interactive and First Unitarian makes full use of social media such as

Facebook and Twitter. Sermons and other events are recorded and posted online; 44,628 individuals have listened to them since 2007. In all, First Unitarian’s website has had

107,000 unique visitors since 2007, representing 143 countries. Reverend Walker has been invited by groups from nine U.S. states to discuss the potential and implementation of online ministry.

For Hugh Taft-Morales, the greatest opportunity for the future of the Ethical

Humanist Society of Philadelphia and Ethical Culture nationally is the growing number

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of Americans who are religiously unaffiliated—16.1% according to the Pew poll. For him, Ethical Culture represents a chance for those who are non-theistic to experience a religion-like sense of fellowship and community on their own, secular terms. “The challenge is to return to that sense of interconnectedness,” he said in our interview.

Ethical Culture, Reform Judaism, and Unitarian-Universalism place high value and devote much of their energy and resources to social-action. Reverend Walker notes that some 2,200 individuals visit First Unitarian each week, the majority of whom are those in need who come for social rather than religious services. Rodeph Shalom and the

Ethical Humanist Society are member congregations of P.O.W.E.R.—Philadelphians

Organized to Witness, Empower and Rebuild—which is a faith-based community organizing group composed of some 35 congregations representing a cross-section of the city’s socioeconomic, cultural, and religious constituencies as well as its profusion of markedly divergent and diverse neighborhoods. P.O.W.E.R. is the local chapter of the national organization PICO—People Improving Communities through Organizing—a national, non-profit, interfaith network with affiliates in most major cities in the United

States.

We return to the question “Where is the voice of liberal religion in contemporary

America?” Rabbi Kuhn, Reverend Walker, and Mr. Taft-Morales agree that conservatives have displayed a much greater ability to convey their messages than have liberals. All stated a desire for more interfaith partnership and activity. As indicated,

“interfaith” means something much different in the early decades of the twenty-first century than it did in the late decades of the nineteenth century and early decades of the twentieth century—an epoch that led to the triumph of the triad of “Protestant, Catholic,

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and Jew,” as identified and analyzed by Will Herberg. Revisiting (albeit unknowingly) the spirit of the joint Thanksgiving services conceived by Rabbi Jastrow and Reverend

Furness in the nineteenth century, First Unitarian organized and presented—with support from Philadelphia’s Center City Residents Association (CCRA)—the first “Interfaith

Thanksgiving Eve Service by Candlelight” on November 23, 2011. Members of Jewish and Unitarian-Universalist congregations were joined by those from Methodist, Baptist,

Christian Science, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopal, and Catholic churches, the Ethical

Humanist Society, as well as Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, and other organizations based in

Asian religious practices and philosophies. (Rodeph Shalom was not among the participating congregations, as it is located outside of the CCRA’s definition of Center

City.) Amidst such diversity, there is, arguably, less pressure to conform into the hegemonic “civic religion” often referred to—but perhaps little discussed or questioned—as the “Judeo-Christian” tradition in America.

Why does the continued existence of liberal religion matter? Because religion continues to shape and inform social thought and, therefore, the conditions in which humans live and the ways they act as individuals, groups, and nations. Jenkins observes,

“[T]he critical frontiers around the world are not decided by attitudes to class or dialectical materialism, but by rival concepts of God” (Jenkins 2007, 189). Reverend

Walker addresses this reality in the recently published Whose God Rules? Is The United

States a Secular Nation or a Theolegal Democracy? (2011), co-edited by Walker and

Edwin J. Greenlee with a foreword by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Whose

God Rules? explores the ways in which the United States, while without an official state

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religion, allows public officials to employ theology in its democratic process, thus bringing religious impact to law, life, and polity.

Given America’s oft-mentioned status of the most religious among the Western nations, this is likely—dare we say certain?—to continue for the foreseeable future.

Liberal religion is not rigorous in its demands, not punctilious about its means of worship, but all indications point to it requiring a certain intellectual rigor, accompanied by an emphasis on ethics. All of the above pertains to Reform Judaism, Unitarian-

Universalism, and Ethical Culture. This emphasis on ethics, and the related engagement with social-justice, has contributed to the abolition of slavery, the improvement of conditions for industrial workers, women’s rights, and the civil-rights of African-

Americans. Today, the liberally religious are at the forefront—or in the firing lines—of contemporary matters such as equality for gays and lesbians, environmental concern, and the uplift of an underclass that appears to be entrenched, demoralized, and disenfranchised (often in practice as well as metaphorically).

This study began in the nineteenth-century with the encounter in 1820s

Philadelphia between a newly arrived Transcendentalist Unitarian minister and members of the city’s then tiny community of Americanized or rapidly assimilating Jews. Formal, institutional engagement between Philadelphia’s progressive Jews and Unitarians began in the late 1860s, and the related establishment of Ethical Culture in Philadelphia dates to the 1880s.

Transcendentalist Unitarianism, Reform Judaism, and Ethical Culture were part and parcel of the nineteenth-century’s multivalent “reform” movements and the more cohesive activities of the late-nineteenth/early-twentieth-century Progressive movement.

267

While not panaceas, these groups did serve to improve the lives of Americans.

Nineteenth-century liberal religion evolved into the early-twentieth-century’s Social

Gospel movement. The ideals of the Social Gospel movement can be seen in the goals of the New Deal. Liberationist theology did, indeed, lead to liberation, as evidenced by the achievements of the African-American civil-rights movement, feminism, and “marriage equality” and other LGBTQ causes.

With its lack of dogma and demands, liberal religion presents conceptual and practical challenges to engagement. Many may find its extant modes of worship—de- ritualized, “rational,” and reserved—less than compelling. With that said, it must be noted that these modes are being reconsidered and are, in many cases, evolving rapidly towards increased expressivity, informality, and the re-introduction of rituals long discarded. But liberal religion provides community for those who are both religiously oriented, progressively inclined (in political and religious terms), socially minded—and often, as hoped—personally active in social causes. This is a cohort as necessary to contemporary society as it was to that of the nineteenth. Still and small its voice may be, although its desire is to speak with energy and emphatically. It is a voice that has proven itself worthy of attention, of hearkening.

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Matthew F. Singer VITA

Education 2016 Ph.D., American Studies, The Pennsylvania State University-Harrisburg 1992 M.A., American Studies, The Pennsylvania State University-Harrisburg 1985 B.A., Communication Studies, 1985, Pennsylvania State University-University Park

Awards 2016 Sue Samuelson Award for Academic Excellence in American Studies, Pennsylvania State University 2015 Dunn Family Award for Jewish Studies, Pennsylvania State University-Harrisburg, 2013 Raphael Patai Prize for Jewish Folklore and Ethnology, Honorable Mention Paper: 2013 Pennsylvania State University-Harrisburg Alumni Award, 2013 2013 Pennsylvania State University-Harrisburg, School of Humanities Alumni Award,

Publications “In Other Words: The Spirit of Fraktur in Modern and Contemporary Art,” in Framing Fraktur, Judith Tannenbaum, ed. Philadelphia: Free Library of Philadelphia and University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015 “In Other Words: The Spirit of Fraktur in Contemporary Art,” The Magazine Antiques, March/April 2015 Shelley Spector: Keep. Philadelphia: Spector Projects, 2015 “Building Sensation: The Visions of Christopher Haas,” DINOSAUR magazine, August 2014 “Sam Still Calculates the Edge,” DINOSAUR magazine, January 2014 Jim Winters: Presence (exhibition brochure/catalogue). Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art, 2013 Wimpel! Wrapped Wishes, exhibition catalogue (co-author with Wendi Furman). Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art, 2009 “Virgil Marti: Pouf.” Philadelphia: Philadelphia Home Magazine, fall 2008 “The Dufala Brothers: Hammer with Oversize Handle.” Philadelphia: Philadelphia Home Magazine, spring 2008 “Seeing is Believing: The Breathtaking Work of Philadelphia Stained-Glass Artist Judith Schaechter.” Philadelphia: Philadelphia Home Magazine, winter 2008 Deirdre Murphy: Artifice, catalogue essay. Philadelphia: Bridgette Mayer Gallery, 2008 (In)finite Place: Elyce Abrams, Paul Oberst, Rebecca Rutstein, exhibition catalogue. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art and Bridgette Mayer Gallery, 2008 “You People”: Phil Blank, exhibition brochure. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art, 2008 A Kiss for the Mezuzah, exhibition catalogue. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art, 2007 Rebecca Rutstein: Abyss, catalogue essay. Philadelphia: Bridgette Mayer Gallery, 2007 Jim Houser: THIS BEATING HEART ACTS AS A TIMER, exhibition brochure. Philadelphia: Painted Bride Art Center, 2007 “Jonathan Adler: The Making of a (New) Modern Master.” New York: Modernism Magazine, Fall 2005