Religion and Memory in American Public Culture, 1890-1920
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Religion and Memory in American Public Culture, 1890-1920 Author: Sarah K. Nytroe Persistent link: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/1967 This work is posted on eScholarship@BC, Boston College University Libraries. Boston College Electronic Thesis or Dissertation, 2009 Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. Boston College The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Department of History RELIGION AND MEMORY IN AMERICAN PUBLIC CULTURE, 1890-1920 a dissertation by SARAH K. NYTROE submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2009 © copyright by SARAH KIMBERLY NYTROE 2009 Abstract Religion and Memory in American Public Culture, 1890-1920 by Sarah K. Nytroe Dissertation Advisor: Professor James M. O’Toole This dissertation examines the ways in which Catholics, Mormons, Pentecostals, Lutherans, and Congregationalists repositioned themselves in American life and culture during the Progressive Era. Between 1890 and 1920, the place of these religious communities in American society became less secure as faith and religious practice became increasingly individualized. In response, churches reasserted their place in American society through deliberate reconstructions of the past to recreate their religious and historical identity. Through pageants, parades, poetry, and orations, they publicly displayed and celebrated their place in America and their contributions to the making of the nation. Specifically, they argued that religion and national progress went hand in hand. Progress needed religion. As such, the clerical and lay members of these communities constructed collective religious memories that strayed from historical reality in order to reinforce present needs and concerns. Perpetuating these often times misleading memories helped them to navigate the murky waters of modernity including theological change, societal prejudice, industrialization, and war by supplying them with the space to sustain the cultural legitimacy of their community. By examining religious experience via the lens of memory this dissertation illustrates how religious communities pursued an active role in America at a time when society increasingly disregarded the relevance of religion. Table of Contents Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………… ii Introduction…………………………………………………………………….. 1 Chapter One – Making America Catholic: American Catholics and the Columbus Quadricentenary, 1892-1893……………………………….. 24 Chapter Two – Taming the Past for Utah’s Future: Mormons and the Pioneer Jubilee, 1897…………………………………………………… 86 Chapter Three – Coming Full Circle: Early Pentecostals and the Azusa Street Revivals, 1906-1909……………………………………... 153 Chapter Four – Celebrate the Sixteenth Century to Transform the Twentieth Century: Lutherans and the Reformation Quadricentennial, 1917…………………… 221 Chapter Five – Pilgrim Principles and Character for the Twentieth Century: Congregationalists and the Pilgrim Tercentenary, 1920-21……………….. 289 Conclusion – Religion and American Society: Then and Now…………………………... 357 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………… 370 i Acknowledgments I confess, I rarely read the acknowledgement sections of historical monographs. When my first book is published – notice my optimism – I’m sure future students, colleagues and non-academics will not read mine either. I do, however, want to express my gratitude to those people who have been with me through my seven years as a graduate student. I would like to thank friends and scholars in the Boston College History Department. First, I am especially grateful to my dissertation committee – James O’Toole, David Quigley, and Franziska Seraphim. It has been a pleasure and a privilege learning from you and working with you, first during my comprehensive exams, then during my research, and finally while I wrote the dissertation. Your critical reading of my project, consistent urgings to look beyond religion to the larger narrative of American history, and your encouragement were beyond valuable in assisting me through the past several years. Second, I also received helpful feedback and priceless support from friends in the department. Brooke Barbier, especially, has been a dear friend and a respected colleague who served as an intellectual springboard. I would also like to thank Bethany Tanis, Amanda Bidnall, and Greg Walsh. I am also grateful for the financial support I received with the summer fellowship from the Boston College History Department and the research expense grant from the Graduate Student Association at Boston College. A Cushwa Center Research Travel Grant allowed me to conduct research at the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the Archives of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. ii Last, but not least, I would like to thank my family, especially my mom and dad, for their continued love and support over the past several years. I’m sure when I was a little kid and thought it was a good idea to display my artistic skills by keying the red family Ford station wagon, little did they imagine that I might be able to put my thoughts and ideas to a more practical, intelligent, and less maddening end. You have always encouraged me to pursue my interests and seek a path in life that would bring me fulfillment and happiness, even if that meant sending me 1,500 miles from home. So thank you. iii Introduction “Religion is the greatest fact of History.” John Henry Barrows (1893) “Memory is what we now have in place of religion.” Court of Memory, James McConkey (1983)1 In the preface to his two-volume collection containing the history and major papers delivered at the World’s Parliament of Religions, John Henry Barrows, minister of Chicago’s First Presbyterian Church and Chairman of the Parliament’s General Committee, confidently declared “Religion is the greatest fact of History.”2 Over the course of seventeen days, delegates of the American Protestant, Roman Catholic, Jewish, and the relatively small Buddhist and Hindu traditions attended sessions in which speakers vividly illustrated that religion advanced both religious and civic progress in the world. Edward Everett Hale, himself a prominent orator from Boston, echoed Barrows’ sentiment in his address entitled “Spiritual Forces in Human Progress.” Like Barrows and the other delegates in attendance, Hale argued that religion was the handmaiden of progress. They walked hand in hand throughout the course of world and particularly national history. Surveying the previous century Hale vigorously proclaimed that, “All that the world owes to America it owes to the spiritual forces which have been at work in the United States.” Next, Hale turned towards the coming century and the continued role that religion and “spiritual forces” would play in the realms of international relations, 1 John Henry Barrows, preface to The World’s Parliament of Religions: An Illustrated and Popular Story of the World’s First Parliament of Religions, Held in Chicago in Connection with The Columbian Exposition, 1893, ed. John Henry Barrows (Chicago: The Parliament Publishing Company, 1893), vii; and James McConkey, Court of Memory (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1983), 224. McConkey recollected this statement from another book. He is currently a professor emeritus of English at Cornell University. Court of Memory, along with his collection of essays entitled Anatomy of Memory: An Anthology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), demonstrates McConkey’s fascination with the biological, psychological, emotional, social, and historical factors that account for the creation of personal memories. 2 Barrows, The World’s Parliament of Religions, vii. 1 education, healthcare, and “social rights.” The progress in these areas of society would not merely be the result of “physical” but rather of “spiritual… discovery and material progress.”3 Although brief, Hale’s address spoke not only to the major impulse behind the Columbian Exposition and the World’s Parliament of Religions but also to the mood of many American religious communities between 1890 and 1920. As the religious communities at the center of this study asserted, religion – particularly their brand of religion – imparted cultural and civic blessings that had served as a solid foundation for social and political progress in the past and could remain so in the future. While Barrows and his religious counterparts lauded the prominent role of religion, the last decades of the nineteenth century also brought a challenge to the authority of religion as faith became increasingly privatized. Unlike the American religious representatives at the Parliament, who made their opinions regarding the relation between religion and progress quite clear, American cultural historian Michael Kammen points to a contrasting trend at the turn of the twentieth century. Ample evidence exists in the enshrinement, critical evaluation, and opposition to the past to suggest that Americans were engaged with history more than ever. The same could not be said for religion. As the cultural and moral cachet of religion waned, Kammen argues, a “spiritual crisis occurred.”4 This turn to the past, via a critical or nostalgic eye, was crucial to the construction and transformation of American national identity based upon conscious efforts of remembering and forgetting. Amid an intellectual atmosphere of growing uncertainty about the relevance of faith, national tradition served as a 3 Edward Everett Hale, “Spiritual Force in Human Progress,” in The World’s Parliament of Religions,