Other Dimensions of Urbanizing America

1. Other Dimensions of Urbanizing America Chapter 11

2. Encountering world religions • Missionary work both home and abroad brought many American Protestants into contact with different, sometimes entirely foreign faith traditions; often to both desired and undesired effect • Foundations like the YMCA, YWCA and the Student Volunteer Movement were intended to train students as missionaries to exist in foreign countries, in order that they could also subtly counteract the inroads made by “immigrant” religions (Judaism, Roman Catholicism) in America • However, oftentimes such experience in mission field abroad gave missionaries a more sympathetic view of religions other than their own • Thus, “intellectual diversity” (156) was occurring both outside and inside the United States

3. Events in the American-Global Religious Encounter • The growth of comparative religions and comparative theology/philology in the academy opened up the world to “new expression[s] of diversity” (156) • Students of such subjects were able to see the inherent similarities between religions as well as (or sometimes over and against) their differences • The World’s Parliament of Religion of 1893 marked a watershed moment for comparative religionists, or simply those seeking a greater ecumenism in American attitudes • This event brought together people of myriad faith, though the star was Swami Vivekananda who spoke about the possibility of a universal religion, made possible by the universal religious consciousness inside all people • It did have its critics; Dwight Moody was concerned with the influx of non-Christian faiths and how such diversity would affect the general project of home missions

4. Women and Religion • The term “separate spheres” is often used to describe the division between the home (women’s sphere) from the world outside (men’s sphere); each sphere encompassed a particular gender-specific work • Since women were seen as naturally religious, the work of religion, including the raising of moral and upright children, became a feminine occupation; men were increasingly factored out of child nurture in the nineteenth century • “True womanhood” reflected the idea that a woman was inherently nurturing, domestic and pious • Focus on these gender distinctions tends to obscure the experience of women of varying ethnicities and religious backgrounds (I.e. all those who were not white and Protestant) • African-American women and Catholic women, who were usually required to work outside the home, didn’t fall neatly into the category of the “true woman”

5. Women’s Rights • Over time, the domestic sphere came under fire as a confinement rather than an elevation of women’s ability • Activists like Elizabeth Cady Stanton recognized that women were denied basic rights (I.e. the right to vote) that were awarded to men • Religion became both the enemy and the means to women’s salvation from subjugation • Stanton also blamed the church as stultifying to women, focusing her animus at the Bible, to which she eventually provided an alternative woman-friendly Scripture, appropriately entitled Woman’s Bible • Frances Willard, leader of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, used the moral impetus of Christianity to fight against the liquor trade and simultaneously salvage family life from male vice • Both Jewish and Catholic women ventured out of the home and into the workforce as well, subverting cultural taboos that married women to the home when they married their husbands

6. Male Response • In the face of growing infringement of women on “men’s” sphere, men retrenched and determined to create a set of exclusive fraternal societies (which were often set on excluding not just women, but minorities and people “different” from them) • Catholic men formed their own fraternal orders, namely the Knights of Columbus and African-American men founded Prince Hall masonic lodges • These fraternal societies were known for the ritualistic and religious overtones, often requiring men to go through a “rebirth” upon entry • Muscular Christianity, preached by men like Billy Sunday, was “designed to appeal to men as a men attempted to counter trends that saw women as the bulwark of organized religion and exemplars of genuine spirituality” (164)

7. Native American Religions • Following the dislocation of tribal peoples due to governmental policy for national expansion, there was an effort to “revitalize” tribal life; the influence of Christianity was often evident • Millennialism became a common theme • Smohalla, a Wanapum prophet who experienced visions, urged his tribe to cast of Euro-American ways while simultaneously adopting a millennialist vision wherein Native Americans would prevail over their European oppressors • Wovoka, founder of the Ghost Dance, consciously combined a Christian understanding of God and eschatology with militaristic rhetoric and tribal dance; his efforts were violently suppressed at Wounded Knee in 1890 • Rituals involving peyote and sweat lodge purification rites were intended to invoke experience of the supernatural variety; Comanche Quannah Parker turned these rituals into the Native American Church

8. Retreat from the City: Bible Conferences and Retreats • During the late 19th-century, the focus shifted from saving souls to nurturing those that were already saved • The means of maintaining faith began to become standardized in the form of regular camp meetings, an institutionalized Holiness Movement, the Sunday School program and a general interest in the Bible* (out of the latter grew dispensationalism and various institutes devoted specifically to work on the Bible, see pp. 168-9 for more) • Soon, there were established semi-permanent venues to do so, usually outside the city and often in the summer