Church History Studies in Christianity and Culture 2009-2

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HURCH HISTOR S TUDIES IN C H R I S T I A N I T Y AND C ULTURE

AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CHURCH HISTORY VOLUME 78, NUMBER 2 JUNE 2009

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THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CHURCH HISTORY PRESIDENT CHARLES H. LIPPY, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

PRESIDENT-ELECT RICHARD P. HEITZENRATER, Duke University

EXECUTIVE SECRETARY KEITH A. FRANCIS, Baylor University

EDITORS JOHN CORRIGAN AMANDA PORTERFIELD Florida State University

MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL Class of 2009 JOHN M. GIGGIE PATRICIA Z. BECKMAN TIMOTHY TSENG J. PATOUT BURNS CANDY GUNTHER BROWN Class of 2010 CHRISTOPHER BEELEY KATHLEEN SPROWS CUMMINGS STEVEN L. OLSEN QUINCY D. NEWELL Class of 2011 MARGARET BENDER SUSAN E. SCHREINER SCOTT W. SUNQUIST FR. AUGUSTINE THOMPSON, O.P. Council Student Representative 2009–2010 BRANDON BAYNE

The Society was founded in 1888 by Philip Schaff, was reorganized in 1906, and was incorporated by act of the Legislature of the State of New York in 1916.

Vol. 78

June 2009

No. 2

CHURCH HISTORY Studies in Christianity & Culture

Published quarterly by THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CHURCH HISTORY

# 2009, The American Society of Church History

CHURCH HISTORY

Studies in Christianity and Culture

Editors John Corrigan Amanda Porterfield

Senior Assistant to the Editors Monica Reed

Assistants to the Editors Brooke Sherrard Shaun Horton Tammy Heise

FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY Associate Editors Elizabeth A. Clark Thomas Noble Carlos Eire Hugh McLeod Dana Robert Myung Soo Park Enrique Dussel

Duke University Notre Dame University Yale University University of Birmingham Boston University Seoul Theological University Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico

CHURCH HISTORY (ISSN 0009-6407)

ARTICLES 261 Preacher Politics and People Power: Congregational Conflicts in New York City, 1810– 1830 KYLE T. BULTHUIS 283 “Unashamed of the Gospel”: Johann Hinrich Wichern and the Battle for the Soul of Prussian Prisons ALBERT WU 309 An Egyptian in China: Ahmed Fahmy and the Making of “World Christianities” HEATHER J. SHARKEY 327 Caring Beyond National Borders: The YMCA and Chinese Laborers in World War I Europe PETER CHEN-MAIN WANG 350 Christianizing the Klan: Alma White, Branford Clarke, and the Art of Religious Intolerance LYNN S. NEAL

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES 379 381 384 386 387 390 392 394 396 399

Conway, Colleen M., Behold the Man: Jesus and Greco-Roman Masculinity.................................................................... L. Stephanie Cobb Martin, Dale B., Inventing Superstition from the Hippocratics to the Christians ................................................................ Svetla Slaveva-Griffin Kahlos, Maijastina, Debate and Dialogue: Christian and Pagan Cultures, c. 360 –430........................................................................... Jeremy Schott Gwynn, David M., The Eusebians: The Polemic of Athanasius of Alexandria and the Construction of the “Arian Controversy”.......... Rebecca Lyman Wormald, Patrick, and Janet L. Nelson, eds., Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World ............................................................Geoffrey Koziol Loud, G. A., The Latin Church in Norman Italy .................. Neslihan Senocak Purkis, William J., Crusading Spirituality in the Holy Land and Iberia, c. 1095–c. 1187 ........................................................ Christopher Tyerman Watkins, Carl S., History and the Supernatural in Medieval England ................................................................................ Jeffrey Burton Russell Clark, James G., The Culture of Medieval English Monasticism...................... ........................................................................................ Sharon K. Elkins Burton, Janet, and Karen Sto¨ber, eds., Monasteries and Society in the British Isles in the Later Middle Ages........................................ James M. Powell

401 403 406 406 409 411 413 415 419 421 423 425 427 429 432 433 436 438 440 442 444 447 449

Bourdua, Louise, and Anne Dunlop, eds., Art and the Augustinian Order in Early Renaissance Italy .................................................... Joseph P. Byrne Evangelisti, Silvia, Nuns: A History of Convent Life, 1450–1700.................... ................................................................................ Sherri Franks Johnson Giffords, Gloria Fraser, Sanctuaries of Earth, Stone, and Light: The Churches of Northern New Spain, 1530–1821 .............................Peter W. Williams Durston, Alan, Pastoral Quechua: The History of Christian Translation in Colonial Peru, 1550–1650.....................................Michael A. Uzendoski Jackson, Nicholas D., Hobbes, Bramhall and the Politics of Liberty and Necessity: A Quarrel of the Civil Wars and Interregnum........................... ..................................................................................... William M. Abbott Roeber, A. G., Ethnographies and Exchanges: Native Americans, Moravians, and Catholics in Early North America................... Katherine Carte´ Engel Fea, John, The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in Early America ..........................Kerry Walters Ruffin, J. Rixey, A Paradise of Reason: William Bentley and Enlightenment Christianity in the Early Republic ..................................... Kirsten Fischer Irons, Charles F., The Origins of Proslavery Christianity: White and Black Evangelicals in Colonial and Antebellum Virginia. ............ John B. Boles Byrnes, Joseph F., Catholic and French Forever: Religious and National Identity in Modern France............................................... Edward J. Woell Callahan, Richard J., Jr., New Territories, New Perspectives: The Religious Impact of the Louisiana Purchase .................................. Michael Pasquier Ramsay, Jacob, Mandarins and Martyrs: The Church and the Nguyen Dynasty in Early Nineteenth-Century Vietnam...................................Jean Michaud Monroe, John Warne, Laboratories of Faith: Mesmerism, Spiritism, and Occultism in Modern France.............................................. Bret E. Carroll Farmer, Jared, On Zion’s Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape. .....................................................................Quincy D. Newell Maffly-Kipp, Laurie F., and Reid L. Neilson, eds., Proclamation to the People: Nineteenth-Century Mormonism and the Pacific Basin Frontier.................. ....................................................................................Randi Jones Walker Davis, Morris L., The Methodist Unification: Christianity and the Politics of Race in the Jim Crow Era. ....................................Richard J. Callahan, Jr. Hall, Amy Laura, Conceiving Parenthood: American Protestantism and the Spirit of Reproduction...................................................Margaret Bendroth Bergunder, Michael, The South Indian Pentecostal Movement in the Twentieth Century................................................................................... Dale T. Irvin Chandler, Andrew, The Church of England in the Twentieth Century: The Church Commissioners and the Politics of Reform, 1948–1998................................................................. William H. Petersen Lamb, Matthew L., and Matthew Levering, eds., Vatican II: Renewal Within Tradition......................................................................Maura Jane Farrelly Garrard, John, and Carol Garrard, eds., Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent: Faith and Power in the New Russia............................................... John D. Basil Umble, Diane Zimmerman, and David L. Weaver-Zercher, eds., The Amish and the Media ................................................................Kristy Nabhan-Warren Kriebel, David W., Powwowing among the Pennsylvania Dutch: A Traditional Medical Practice in the Modern World .......................... Gary L. Ebersole

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Rommen, Timothy, “Mek Some Noise”: Gospel Music and the Ethics of Style in Trinidad.........................................................................Ennis B. Edmonds McGuckin, John Anthony, The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to its History, Doctrine, and Spiritual Culture .................. Robert R. Phenix, Jr. Gonza´lez, Ondina E., and Justo L. Gonza´lez, eds., Christianity in Latin America: A History ............................................................Iain S. Maclean Worcester, Thomas, The Cambridge Companion to the Jesuits.......................... ......................................................................................... Hilmar M. Pabel Fitzgerald, Timothy, Discourse on Civility and Barbarity: A Critical History of Religion and Related Categories ....................................... Kathryn Lofton Conser, William H., Jr., and Rodger M. Payne, eds., Southern Crossroads: Perspectives on Religion and Culture. ............................. Charles F. Irons Robert, Dana L., Converting Colonialism: Visions and Realities in Mission History, 1706–1914......................................................Emma Wild-Wood O’Toole, James M., The Faithful: A History of Catholics in America................ ..........................................................................................Sharon M. Leon Cohen, Charles L., and Paul S. Boyer, eds., Religion and the Culture of Print in Modern America ................................................................... Peter J. Wosh Hankins, Barry, American Evangelicals: A Contemporary History of a Mainstream Religious Movement................................... Lewis V. Baldwin Kalu, Ogbu, African Pentecostalism: An Introduction.............. Dana L. Robert

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BOOKS RECEIVED

485

SOCIETY NOTICES

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Church History 78:2 (June 2009), 261– 282. # 2009, American Society of Church History doi:10.1017/S0009640709000481 Printed in the USA

Preacher Politics and People Power: Congregational Conflicts in New York City, 1810–1830 KYLE T. BULTHUIS

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HE 1812 Methodist Episcopal Church general conference in New York City proved contentious. In his journal entry of May 17, Bishop Francis Asbury recorded that the conference participants hotly debated the power of the denomination’s bishops, particularly regarding their unchecked right to appoint lesser ministers to positions of authority. While spirited, the disagreements did not deeply divide the contestants. That evening Asbury ate dinner with seventeen ministers, many of whom had fought on opposite sites. Asbury commented, “We should thank God we are not at war with each other, as are the Episcopalians, with the pen and the press as their weapons of warfare.”1 The previous year a great pamphlet war had engulfed New York City’s Episcopalians regarding the appointment of an assistant bishop. The dispute dominated events at Trinity Church, the city’s flagship parish, leading to the ouster of several vestrymen and the dismissal of an assistant minister. But Asbury’s fervent hope for harmony within his own flock proved short-lived. By decade’s end Asbury was dead, and New York City’s Methodists divided over issues of the power of the ministers and control over congregational property. A working-class, uptown contingent formed the Methodist Society, prizing its democratic independence from the church’s wealthier elites. This conflict among white church leaders contributed to the departure of the city’s African Methodists, who found few ministers willing to champion their rights in the dispute. Frustrated by a lack of opportunities for leadership, leading black Methodists formed the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in New York, achieving denominational independence in 1822.

1 Journal of Francis Asbury, Sunday, 17 May 1812, 3:327. On some of the Methodists’ disputes regarding church polity at this time, see Abel Stevens, Life and Times of Nathan Bangs, D.D. (New York, 1863), 196 passim.

Kyle T. Bulthuis is a visiting assistant professor of history at the University of Northern Colorado. This essay was awarded the Sidney E. Mead Prize for graduate student research.

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The conflicts in these three New York churches paralleled church conflicts nationwide. In the early Republic national denominations and local congregations suffered multiple schisms and divisions. Some historians attribute such battles to the effects of the American Revolution, noting that politicized struggles wracked social and civic institutions as well as churches.2 Other scholars have analyzed the social and class divisions of the contending parties, arguing that, attracted to evangelical morality, entrepreneurial capitalists drove the schisms.3 In this study I examine three local cases of division occurring in the second two decades of the nineteenth century in New York City. The local and personal connections at play in these congregational conflicts help fully illustrate the process of schism that occurred in American churches. Within the early Republic city, expansive urban growth fed social tensions, which shattered church leaders’ attempts at control and unity. Churches ultimately resolved these local divisions by affirming an ultra-local identity—victory accompanied each side that had a clearer institutional identity and more professional clergy. The clarification of institutional identity, however, created clearer boundary lines at the local level, and local congregations achieved greater autonomy and control than previously. By the end of this period churches were more professional and bureaucratized than before, but also locally focused: these developments occurred alongside but not completely within the political effects of the American Revolution or the economic effect of a Market Revolution. The congregations examined here diverged in class and racial composition, but all shared institutional beginnings in the Anglican Church. Trinity Episcopal Church was the oldest. Formed in 1697 during the Crown’s attempt to establish a Church of England in New York, throughout the eighteenth century Trinity represented stability and social prominence. The church owned great wealth, holding vast tracts of land that indicated its privilege. Some of the city’s most prominent families sat in its pews. After the Revolution, the Loyalist sympathies of the church’s ministers and many prominent laity disrupted its prominent position, but by 1810 Trinity had regained its elite status as a church of the rich and powerful. 2

Nathan Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989); Joyce Appleby, Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000). A related argument placed in a larger context is Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1992). 3 Paul E. Johnson, A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, 1815–1837 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978); Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788–1850 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984). For a larger study on America’s social and economic transformation that includes an examination of religion, see Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1846 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).

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Methodism had its origins in the Church of England. In 1768 John Street Methodist Chapel formed from members nominally affiliated with Trinity Church. As the first Methodist religious body in the Americas, important Methodist leaders from England paid visits there. In 1784 American Methodists independently organized as a denomination. By that decade’s end, the city’s inhabitants viewed John Street no longer as a fledgling chapel but as a church in its own right. Somewhat of an anomaly, John Street housed some of the town’s wealthiest Methodists. Methodism generally attracted lower orders to its services, however, and farther uptown more working men attended the newer chapels there. Both Episcopal and Methodist churches welcomed blacks to worship. But widespread racism in America made biracial worship difficult. The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, or Mother Zion, started, much like John Street, as an informal chapel where blacks held separate worship services beginning in 1796. By 1810 it had a separate meeting space but remained under the institutional authority of white Methodist church leaders. Black tradesmen and artisans led the church when white ministers were not present—as free and skilled workers, their middling status placed them at the top of the emerging black community. The social landscape of the city shaped the politicized disputes that wracked these three congregations. In the 1810s the city suffered through war and recession, all the while expanding in population. Poorhouse rolls grew dramatically. Even so, economic opportunities continued to beckon, as many Americans abandoned their farms for the city. New York State’s construction of the Erie Canal foreshadowed the promise of transformative wealth. Faced with daunting social problems and daring economic answers, the city’s churchmen promoted their own grandiose aims, which spawned backlashes from within and without their congregations. This context of opportunity alongside social unrest frames the ecclesiastical conflicts that wrenched apart the churches.4

I. PEN AND PRESS AS WEAPONS OF WARFARE: EPISCOPALIAN ELITES VERSUS THE CLERGY ON BISHOPS AND BIBLE SOCIETIES The Episcopalian war of papers that Asbury mentioned in his journal seems trivial today, for it only concerned the appointment of an assistant bishop. 4 Campbell Gibson and Kay Jung, Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals by Race, 1790 to 1990, and by Hispanic Origin, 1970 to 1990, for the United States, Regions, Divisions, and States (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Census Bureau, 2002); Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789– 1860 (New York: Knopf, 1986), 8, 32. A description of the expansion of New York City’s economy is found in Robert Greenhalgh Albion, with Jennie Barnes Pope, The Rise of New York Port, 1815– 1860 (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1939).

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But the fierce and wide-ranging debate suggests that the issue cut far deeper than the nominal cause. The struggles centered on Trinity Episcopal parish, northern Episcopalianism’s flagship church and a symbol of clerical prestige. Trinity often asserted authority beyond its local status: a large colonial-era land grant gave it control over great wealth. And the New York State diocese’s first bishops were also head pastors at Trinity, symbolizing the intertwined power of local and regional church authorities. In 1811, with New York Bishop Benjamin Moore’s health failing, Episcopalian leaders nominated Trinity assistant minister John Henry Hobart to serve as assistant bishop to Moore. Hobart’s Trinity colleague, Cave Jones, published a pamphlet objecting to Hobart’s election. Jones did not object to Hobart’s qualifications but to his character, which he called smallminded and vindictive. Jones recommended a more experienced, better tempered, and less partisan candidate for assistant bishop than Hobart.5 Trinity’s vestry censured Jones for publicly voicing his complaints, and John Henry Hobart ascended to the position of assistant bishop on May 29, 1811. Hobart immediately called a vestry meeting, which organized a council of ministers to fire Jones. Bishop Moore heard the case in November 1811 and released Jones from his contract with Trinity. Jones refused to resign and published another pamphlet that questioned Moore’s authority. Jones argued that, since former bishop Samuel Provoost was still alive, Benjamin Moore was effectively an assistant bishop with no right to hold termination hearings. Ignoring his retirement, Provoost jumped into the controversy and wrote Jones a letter counseling him to disregard his dismissal.6 Rejecting Hobart’s actions as punitive, some parishioners took Jones’s side. From summer 1811 to spring 1812, Episcopal clergy and laity held a flurry of public meetings and penned scores of pamphlets. In April 1812, Jones’s legal counselors agreed to arbitration with Trinity’s vestry to settle the matter. The following October, New York’s Supreme Court heard the case. The court upheld Jones’s termination but awarded him $7500 plus his salary through his dismissal date on November 5, 1811.7

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Cave Jones, “A Solemn Appeal to the Church Being a Plain Statement of Facts in the Matters Pending between Dr. Hobart with others, and the Author” (New York, 1811), 3, 6–9, 23–25, 30, 26, 85. 6 Morgan Dix, A History of the Parish of Trinity Church in the City of New York, 5 vols. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1898–1906), 2:216, 2:222– 225. Cave Jones, “Dr. Hobart’s System of Intolerance Exemplified in the Late Proceedings against His Colleague, the Author” (New York, 1811). Jones argued several points, among them being that his dismissal hearings were invalid because they were not impartial. 7 Matthew L. Davis, “Report of the Case between the Reverend Cave Jones and the Rector and Inhabitants of the City of New-York in Communion of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of New York” (New York, 1813); Dix, History of Trinity Church, 2:225– 226.

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During these events, pamphleteers debated a range of issues: who was truly bishop; the relationship between Trinity, its chapels, and the city’s other Episcopal churches; the right of parishioners to protest clerical actions or clergy to hold termination meetings; and the efficacy of Hobart’s own ordination.8 To modern sensibilities the voluminous exchanges seem a tempest in a teapot. Indeed, church historians have dismissed the HobartJones dispute as a conflict of personality.9 But the battles reveal larger divisions over social privilege and clerical control. Hobart led Episcopal scholars in formulating a High Church theology that championed Episcopalian superiority and separation from other Protestant denominations. This theology emphasized the apostolic succession of the church’s bishops: the continuity of church leaders from the time of Christ to the present. In the early Republic, High Church theology contained a unique historical context that differed from past Anglican thought. The American Revolution irrevocably severed ties between church and state. The church thus rejected all trappings of establishment and instead acted as a sacramental haven in a lost world. Hobart’s vision broke with the eighteenthcentury practice that allowed leading laity to run the church. In return, the clergy made few claims on the secular world in which the laity worked and lived. Although politically quietist, the High Church vision demanded that the laity eschew social activities that polluted the apostolic church’s purity. High Church clergy specifically denounced ecumenical missions, for they entailed cooperation with impure sects.10 Hobart’s theology carried social ramifications, for groups in the Jones case took sides based on their reactions to the High Church platform. Most clergy supported 8 For examples of anti- and pro-Hobart perspectives, see “The Resolutions Adopted at a Meeting of the Episcopalians at Mechanic Hall also Two Letters from the Honorable John Jay to the Reverend Cave Jones” (New York, 1812), 10–12; An Episcopalian, “A Plain Address to Episcopalians on the Proposed Meeting at Mechanic-Hall” (New York, 1812); “The Charter of the Rector and Inhabitants of the City of New-York; Communion of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of New-York: Commonly Called the Charter of Trinity Church, with Notes by an Episcopalian of the City of New-York” (New York, 1813); A Friend to Truth [John Henry Hobart], “The Charter of the Corporation of Trinity Church Defended against the Attacks of a Late Pamphlet” (New York, 1813); Hieronymous, “Serious Thoughts on a Late Administration of Episcopal Orders, Submitted to the Calm Reflection of the Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America” (New York, 1812); John Bowden, “The Essentials of Ordination Stated, in a Letter to a Friend; on the Subject of the Right Reverend Bishop Hobart’s Consecration” (New York, 1812); John Henry Hobart, “A Defence of the Essentials of Ordination in Answer to a Pamphlet Entitled Serious Thoughts on a Late Administration of Episcopal Orders” (New York, 1812). These are a few examples; pamphlets flooded the presses between 1811 and 1813. 9 See, for example, Dix, History of Trinity Church, 2:216–226. 10 On High Church theology, see Robert Bruce Mullin, Episcopal Vision/American Reality: High Church Theology and Social Thought in Evangelical America (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986).

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Hobart. Clergymen comprised nearly half of the witnesses for Hobart in his court case. These included Thomas Lyell, rector of Christ Church, whose Methodist background did not prevent him from taking an anti-Methodist High Church position. Trinity’s notable exception, Abraham Beach, was an older minister who had served under Samuel Provoost, the previous bishop, in the 1780s.11 Most women also supported Hobart. Jones’s lawyers asked witnesses to provide the names of pro- and anti-Hobart congregants. No witness listed a female congregant supporting Jones, whereas half of Hobart’s known supporters were women. Peter Augustus Jay wrote that a majority of Trinity’s congregants refused to hear Jones preach. According to the communicant lists, most of these disgruntled congregants were women. As some historians have revealed in other studies, under a strong clergy, women’s membership outpaced men’s while powerful lay domination led to a more balanced sex ratio. As a proponent of a robust High Church theology, Hobart’s activism may have suppressed male membership. His enthusiasm did not affect female membership: Hobart’s High Church vision led a pious woman like Elizabeth Seton to great spiritual heights. Seton eventually converted to Roman Catholicism and became the first American-born saint in the Catholic Church, but Hobart first stirred her spiritual experience.12 By contrast, wealthy and prominent Episcopalian men led the opposition to Hobart. One quarter of the men who signed public resolutions supporting Jones also appeared on Edward Pessen’s list of the 200 wealthiest New Yorkers in 1828, with property assessments of at least $50,000. Many belonged to Episcopal congregations with more evangelical leanings than High Church Trinity. Peter G. Stuyvesant, for example, founded St. Mark’s, the city’s second Episcopal parish incorporated independently of Trinity. Stuyvesant came from one of the oldest, most distinguished, and wealthiest families in the city, and he owned vast tracts of land just north of the city’s boundary. Another Jones supporter and prominent non-Trinity Episcopalian vestryman, Nicholas Fish, had married Stuyvesant’s sister Elizabeth and also held great wealth in real estate.13 Other anti-Hobart partisans served on Trinity’s vestry in the 1780s and 1790s, when the connections between a compliant clergy and strong laity 11

Hobart supporters are found in Davis, “Report of the Case.” Davis, “Report of the Case”; Peter Augustus Jay to John Jay, 31 January 1812, John Jay Papers, Butler Library, Columbia University; Patricia U. Bonomi, Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, and Politics in Colonial America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Curtis D. Johnson, Islands of Holiness: Rural Religion in Upstate New York, 1790– 1860 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989); Mullin, Episcopal Vision/American Reality. 13 Edward Pessen, Riches, Class, and Power: America before the Civil War ([1973] reprint, New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1990), 320–322; David Hackett Fischer, The Revolution of American Conservatism: The Federalist Party in the Era of Jeffersonian Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 301. 12

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were more secure. These included Thomas Farmar and James Farquhar, who organized a rally on Jones’s behalf, and John Jay, who wrote a public letter supporting Jones. Their relationship with Samuel Provoost differed greatly from their experience with Hobart. Provoost became Trinity’s rector after the Revolution because he was the only Whig priest in revolutionary New York, a position that won him lay support. He was related by marriage to many of his congregants. And he had offered sermons that were undeniably safe— that is, theologically orthodox and emotionally unchallenging. From old and established Episcopal families, the men who worked with Provoost in the 1790s preferred his easygoing authority within the church hierarchy.14 Although charged with protecting the church’s interests, even Trinity’s vestry suffered divided loyalties and only tepidly supported the assistant bishop. Vestry members Frederick de Peyster and Francis Dominick signed the petition on Jones’s behalf; both lost in the vestry elections of 1812. Garrit H. Van Wagenen testified on Jones’s behalf at the trial; he also ended his term of service in 1812. Other vestry members remained neutral, unwilling to wholly support Hobart. John Jay’s son, Peter Augustus Jay, wrote to his father that Jones should not be “sacrificed to Hobart’s resentment.” And although Rufus King testified on Hobart’s behalf, his fastidious legalistic testimony indicated a judiciously moderate position. King remained friends with Jones, and he fulfilled his duty to dismiss Jones with great reluctance. King’s patronage later allowed Jones to gain employment in Brooklyn as a naval chaplain.15 Although the Jones case receded, another pamphlet battle renewed the social fissures opened in the Hobart-Jones controversy. The issue concerned Episcopalian involvement in evangelical benevolent and reform societies. After 1800, individuals crossed Protestant denominational lines to organize benevolent societies. They sought to evangelize the nation’s large unchurched populace. Such societies promoted ostensibly nondenominational ways for Christians to unite in action. Bible societies printed and distributed copies of the scriptures. Tract societies disseminated religious and moral reading materials to schools, churches, and interested individuals. Sunday school and educational societies funded ministers and teachers, and provided them with religious instructional materials. These groups began locally, but 14 “Resolutions Adopted at a Meeting of the Episcopalians at Mechanic Hall,” 10– 12. John Henry Hobart replied to Jay in “Remarks on the Honorable John Jay’s Letter, to the Reverend Cave Jones; In a Letter to a Friend” (New York, 1812). Hobart mildly rebuked Jay for commenting from afar on matters of which he had little knowledge. 15 Davis, “Report of the Case”; Peter Augustus Jay to John Jay, 31 January 1812, John Jay Papers; Dix, History of Trinity Church, 2:225–226. King’s testimony may have been legalistic in part because he delivered it in writing, since by the time of the trial he was in Washington serving as a U.S. senator.

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in the 1810s proponents called for national organizations to centralize their scattered efforts.16 In 1816, the American Bible Society (ABS) formed, uniting disparate statelevel Bible societies in a national organization based in New York City. New York had become America’s publishing center, and most ABS board members resided in or near the city. Trinity vestryman Peter Jay praised the new Protestant unity that such an organization promised: When we consider the multiplied divisions which exist in this extensive country; the animosities of political parties, the multitude of our religious sects, the local interests and jealousies, that have so often impeded or defeated the most salutary undertakings, we have reason to be astonished at the perfect unanimity, which has, in this instance, prevailed among delegates from widely distant parts of the union, and of various political and religious denominations. Jay argued that the ABS’s central aim could smooth the nation’s political and religious divisions. By distributing “the Holy Scriptures without note or comment,” unity could be achieved.17 Hobart supported evangelization efforts, as long as they remained explicitly Anglican.18 Hobart feared that ecumenical organizations were Trojan horses for anti-Episcopalian Presbyterians. In a message to New York’s Episcopalians, Hobart opposed his laity’s participation in the ABS. He argued that support for the ABS drew funds away from Episcopalian evangelizing efforts. Further, ABS support indirectly aided anti-Anglican Presbyterians, who joined the society in far greater numbers.19 William Jay replied to Hobart’s open letter with his own public response. Son of John and brother of Peter, William’s family had never fully warmed to the High Church position. William lived outside the city and attended a parish in Bedford that his family long patronized personally, embodying a position similar to that of Episcopalian leaders at Trinity in the 1780s and 1790s. In 16 Peter J. Wosh, Spreading the Word: The Bible Business in Nineteenth-Century America (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994), 40. On benevolent societies, see Clifford S. Griffin, Their Brothers’ Keepers: Moral Stewardship in the United States, 1800– 1865 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1960); Charles J. Foster, An Errand of Mercy: The Evangelical United Front 1790– 1837 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960); Ronald G. Walters, American Reformers, 1815–1860 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978). 17 “Proceedings of a Meeting of the Citizens of New-York and Others, Convened in the City-Hall on the 13th of May, 1816 at the Request of the Board of Managers of the American Bible Society, with the Speeches of George Griffin and Peter A. Jay, Esquires Delivered on the Occasion” (New York, 1816), 9 –10. 18 In 1809 Hobart established the Bible and Common Prayer Book Society, which distributed the standard Episcopalian church liturgy with the Bible. 19 Wosh, Spreading the Word, 121; John Henry Hobart, “An Address to Episcopalians on the Subject of the American Bible Society” (New York, 1816). The address is dated 11 May 1816.

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his scornful pamphlet, Jay mocked Hobart’s contention that Episcopalians needed the Book of Common Prayer, a liturgical order of worship, to interpret divine scripture. He also argued that support for the Episcopalian society diluted donations’ effectiveness, for the cost of including prayer books with Bibles cut donations by half.20 As in the Jones case, reply followed reply. Jay’s and Hobart’s pamphlet skirmishes continued into the 1820s. As in the Jones controversy, the rhetoric turned personal and ugly. But unlike the Jones case, Hobart’s adversaries did not withdraw from the church, and Hobart could not expel them. Both sides claimed victory, and ultimately both won church historians to their respective sides. Outside the narrow confines of ecclesiology, however, few historians found significance in the debates.21 Social tensions at Trinity connect the seemingly unrelated battles in the Jones case with the disputes over joining benevolent societies. Laity who supported Jones in his complaint against Hobart openly broke with the High Church attempt to limit interdenominational involvement. They eagerly participated in the benevolent organizations.22 While few in number, Trinity parishioners who joined the ABS were important church and community leaders. John Jay served as the society’s nominal president in the 1820s, and Peter A. Jay served on its board of directors.23 Former Trinity vestrymen and Jones supporters Frederick de Peyster and George Warner also served on the board. A parishioner who had remained neutral in the Jones case, Matthew Clarkson, also joined the American Bible Society, as did John Watts, who served on Trinity’s vestry and the American Bible Society board at the same time. The explicitly evangelical goals of the American Bible Society attracted ministers who had remained on the sidelines in the Jones case, including the former Methodist Thomas Lyell, and James Milnor, who

20 An Episcopalian [William Jay], “An Answer to Bishop Hobart’s Pastoral Letter, on the Subject of Bible and Common Prayer-Book Societies, by an Episcopalian” (New York, 1815). 21 For an example of the exchanges, see William Jay, “A Reply to a Second Letter to the Author; from the Right Rev. Bishop Hobart, with Remarks on His Hostility to Bible Societies with His Mode of Defending It; and Also on His Vindication of the Reverend Mr. Norris’s Late Pamphlet” (New York, 1823). High Churchman Morgan Dix declared Hobart the clear winner in Dix, History of Trinity Church, 3:5– 6; E. Clowes Chorley argued that Jay struck a lasting blow for freedom of conscience in Men and Movements in the American Episcopal Church ([1946] reprint, Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1961), 281– 282. 22 Historians who have noted this elite participation in benevolent societies have attributed the efforts at evangelization as attempts to control unruly lower orders. The classic formulations of this social control interpretation are found in Foster, Errand of Mercy, and Griffin, Their Brothers’ Keepers. 23 John Jay, The Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay, vol. 4, ed. Henry P. Johnston (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1893), 459 –461. Due to poor health, John Jay attended few meetings and issued his annual presidential addresses in absentia.

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later led Low Church opposition to Hobart’s theology from St. George’s parish.24 Ultimately, however, most of Trinity’s ABS participants became marginalized in their own parish. Many, such as Frederick de Peyster or John Jay, came from the older revolutionary generation and died by 1830. Others joined new parishes, alternatives to Trinity. These included George Warner, who helped erect Trinity’s first evangelical rival, Christ Church, and Peter Stuyvesant, who built Saint Mark’s on family land. Thus Hobart’s attempt to centralize church control under a High Church model of clerical supremacy met with partial success. Most of Trinity’s parishioners obeyed their rector’s High Church example. But not all New York City parishes emulated Trinity. Ministers and parishioners controlled their local parishes and refused to submit to the authority that Trinity’s leaders expected. And after Hobart, New York diocesan bishops did not double as Trinity rectors, clearly drawing lines of authority for future disputes.

II. PRIMITIVE SIMPLICITY OR LEARNED POLISH: DOWNTOWN AND UPTOWN METHODISTS ON ORGANIZATION AND STYLE The case of Trinity Episcopal reveals that ecclesiastical battles often carried the seeds of social and personal conflicts within them. This was also true of New York City’s Methodists, white and black, who suffered schisms in the late 1810s and early 1820s. In contrast to Episcopalian clerical battles, Methodist disputes involved the laity more directly. Methodist lay discontent drove the Stilwellite schism. As with Trinity, social tensions colored theological concerns. The conflict included issues of class resentment, for Methodists feared privilege and worldliness as signs of sin and spiritual decline. New York City’s Episcopalians blurred local and regional authority in the parish of Trinity Church, for their diocesan bishop also served as parish minister, and Trinity’s wealth often funded projects for the diocese as a whole. New York Methodists also blended the boundary lines of authority. By 1810 the New York Methodists were in a single conference consisting of seven church congregations. A council of ministers ran the affairs of the conference as a whole. They did not represent any single congregation and in fact rotated among them in their preaching duties. As it was the oldest 24 A list of active ABS board members is found in Wosh, Spreading the Word, 38. Pewholders and vestrymen at Trinity can be found in Trinity Church Pew Rents before 1828, Trinity Church Archives, and Berrian, Historical Sketch, 358– 365. I am also indebted to Kristen Miller, archivist at the American Bible Society archives, for compiling a list of early ABS board members that I used to supplement Wosh’s list.

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Methodist church in the city, some Methodists believed John Street held extra sway over the ministers; the resulting conflict between congregations expressed resentment over this structure. In 1810 Methodist authorities sent the young minister Nathan Bangs to New York City, placing him in charge of the city circuit. As preacher-incharge, Bangs served as the first among five equals who rotated among the city’s seven churches. Bangs viewed the emotional excesses in the city’s Methodist services with alarm: “I witnessed a spirit of pride, presumption, and bigotry, impatience of scriptural restraint and moderation, clapping of the hands, screaming, and even jumping, which marred and disgraced the work of God.” Bangs called a citywide meeting at which he read passages of the Methodist Discipline that insisted on order and decorum at worship services.25 Bangs held the disciplinary meeting at John Street, a church where fewer revivals took place. John Street’s downtown congregation was composed largely of women, who as in the Episcopalian example tended to support the clergy. The church’s location in the lower wards also meant that the Methodist society’s wealthier individuals, including most of its merchants, called it home. In short, John Street members welcomed a message that stressed order and discipline. Bangs later wrote that the older preachers and older, more established members backed his actions.26 Bangs’s biographer wrote that he succeeded in calming the society. Opposition proved to be brief and ineffectual, and nearly all the church’s ministers backed his efforts. But not all the church’s laity felt the same. In fact, the disagreement over order in the church grew into a greater dispute over wealth and display in the church. In this latter conflict Bangs’s victory became ambiguous.27 The new dispute began inauspiciously. By 1818, John Street chapel needed repair. Led by wealthy members who attended that chapel, Methodist city trustees decided to build a larger building with greater ornamentation on the site. The call for ornamentation strikes the modern observer as modest, for the new building’s neoclassical design exposed simple angles and straight lines. But to some Methodists, who gloried in the stories of Wesley’s followers meeting in homes and in rigging lofts in the 1760s, the erection of a new building appeared presumptuous, as did hints that the new edifice would have a carpeted altar. Most distressing were rumors that the church 25

Stevens, Life and Times of Nathan Bangs, 183–184. Ibid. On the social composition of John Street relative to its Methodist neighbors, see Kyle T. Bulthuis, “Four Steeples over the City Streets: Trinity Episcopal, St. Philip’s Episcopal, John Street Methodist, and African Methodist Episcopal Zion Churches in New York City, 1760–1840” (Ph.D. diss, University of California, Davis, 2007), chapters 2 and 3. 27 Stevens, Life and Times of Nathan Bangs, 185–186. 26

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would hold pews instead of seats. If the trustees charged pew rents, these Methodists feared that wealthy members would grow proud and become deaf to the gospel while poor congregants might be forced outside the building, unable to hear the message at all.28 While making plans for John Street’s rebuilding, New York Methodist leaders proposed to change the society’s accounting structure. Previously, congregations collected offerings for local expenses. Whatever remained they sent to the trustees, who distributed it to the ministers as salaries. In 1819, trustees requested that the churches send collections directly to a board of stewards, who forwarded the money to ministers’ salaries. Because the New York Methodist society ran a deficit, the new arrangement required local congregations to request loans from the central board of trustees for their expenses.29 Many non-John Street Methodists linked the two issues together, finding a sinister combination in trustee proposals. While their congregations pinched pennies, the trustees and ministers increased the society’s debt to rebuild an old chapel in grand fashion. One group of dissenters feared that Methodist preachers aimed to control all property, to deed the titles of the churches to the ownership of the General Conference. When Methodist leaders attempted to pass a bill in the state legislature to reorganize their proposed property arrangements, the discontented members left, denouncing resorting to secular laws as a “step toward popery.”30 Nathan Bangs labeled those departing discontents “uptown” members because of their location north of John Street. They also acquired the name Stilwellites after the minister who led them, William M. Stilwell.31 In 1820, they incorporated themselves as the Methodist Society of New York. The very name elicited memories of primitive Methodism. The parent church’s title “Episcopal” reflected an unwelcome hierarchy. Even the title “Church” referred to an institutionalism, formal and dead, that Stilwellites rejected in favor of the more organic term “society.”32 The calls for simplicity and purity resonated with many. 28 Ibid., 225. The issue of pew rents was an old one among Methodists generally and in New York City in particular, for by 1796 some members feared John Street would implement pews and rents. See Samuel A. Seaman, Annals of New York Methodism, Being a History of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the City of New York from A.D. 1766 to A.D. 1890 (New York, 1892), 137. 29 Seaman, Annals of New York Methodism, 215–231. 30 Ibid.; Samuel Stilwell, Historical Sketches of the Rise and Progress of the Methodist Society, in the City of New-York (New York, 1821). See also William R. Sutton, Journeymen for Jesus: Evangelical Artisans Confront Capitalism in Jacksonian Baltimore (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press), 75–78. 31 Also prominent in the group was Samuel Stilwell, William’s uncle and a longtime Methodist layman. 32 Stilwell, Historical Sketches, 11– 12.

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About three hundred individuals joined the Stilwellites, including two former Methodist Episcopal Church trustees. No Stilwellite membership rolls survive, although I compiled a list of Stilwellites from indirect evidence.33 The list reveals a major preponderance toward laboring status. Nearly 90 percent of the group worked as artisans, cartmen, or unskilled laborers. The only professionals, a minister and a doctor, both served as the society’s preachers. The only retailers were small dry-goods or grocer operations; none were upwardly aspiring merchants.34 The group’s geographic organization was equally striking. The overwhelming majority of Stilwellite leaders came from two churches: Forsyth Street and Allen Street. Both lay close together, as Allen Street formed in 1810 as an outgrowth of Forsyth. Two other leaders attended churches north of the city. None attended the John Street Church downtown. Like their leaders, the group’s rank and file lived near these same streets: Allen, Stanton, Forsyth, Division, Spring, Bowery, and Rivington. Although working class, Stilwellites were well established in the city. Over 85 percent of the male Stilwellites appear in a city directory. Few were so destitute or transient as to pass from the eyes of the directory tabulators.35 Stilwellite polity recalled an older Methodist vision of lay leadership. The laity worked closely with ministers to govern the society. The lay community chose new ministers, and class members chose their own leaders. The church order dictated that no rules could be altered without the consent of a majority of lay individuals. Peers, not ministers, solved internal 33

Several class leaders’ names were crossed out in the 1819 class lists. Most of these were Stilwellite (they appeared in Stilwellite publications or on the Methodist Society’s new charter), so I assumed that x’s by names indicated defection. The story of the returning defectors is found in Stevens, Life and Times of Nathan Bangs, 234–235. Bangs estimated that 70 members and three class leaders returned to the mother church. I found just over 30 names listed together in the probationer lists, returning with three former Stilwellite class leaders. Although many other names are listed as probationers under the three Stilwellite leader names, they are placed singly or in small groups in the lists; each individual’s entrance into the church may therefore not have reflected status as a former Stilwellite but rather as a new probationary member. I compiled the list determined to err on the side of caution. 34 Members 1819; Probationers 1822–1832; Stewards, Exhorters, Leaders, Local Preachers 1818–1835; in Methodist Episcopal Church Records, vols. 75, 76, 79, respectively, New York Public Library. Trustees’ names are available in Office of the County Clerk, New York County, Religious Incorporations 1784–1836 vol. 1, New York Municipal Archives. Longworth’s American Almanac, New-York Register, and City Directory, for the Forty Fourth Year of American Independence (New York, 1819); Longworth’s New York Directory, for the Forty Seventh Year of American Independence (New York, 1822). 35 William Stilwell, the group’s minister, attended John Street in the 1810s. Forsyth had been called the Bowery chapel in its first years. The city’s second chapel, its working-class composition is explained in Bulthuis, “Four Steeples,” ch. 2. Methodist Episcopal Church Records, vols. 75, 76, 79, New York Public Library; Longworth’s New-York Directory, 1819, and Longworth’s New-York Directory, 1822. On church locations and founding dates, see Seaman, Annals of New York Methodism, 110, 152, 155, 180–181.

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disputes.36 Geography, not ministers, determined class composition. Paralleling early Methodism, women voted for new ministers. Husbands and wives also entered classes together, ending the rigid sex separation that had marked American Methodist practice since the Revolution.37 Although the Stilwellite Methodists occupied a vastly different social space than did Hobart’s opponents at Trinity, both groups blurred denominational boundaries. Both opposed the clergy’s aims toward greater ministerial oversight. At Trinity, leading men joined with leading men from other churches in ecumenical, nondenominational ventures that evangelized the lower orders. The uptown Methodists supported their own versions of ecumenicity: the Stilwellites balked at Methodist Episcopal Church attempts to limit the use of Methodist church buildings to Methodist services only. Stilwellites also held a close affinity for others outside orthodox Christian faith, particularly the Quakers. In an account of the group’s origins, Samuel Stilwell praised the early Quakers for having “the piety and the simplicity of the Gospel.”38 And in the Friendly Visitor, William Stilwell stressed the common bonds uniting Christians, including ties between Quakers and Methodists. By comparison, Methodist standard-bearer Francis Asbury judged that the Quakers’ unorthodoxy barred them from true salvation in Christ.39 Perhaps as many as two thousand Methodists in greater New York City agreed with Stilwellite principles. But in striving for primitive simplicity, Stilwellite sympathizers could not achieve organizational unity. Primitive Methodists failed to create a common institution at an 1826 conference and splintered into local, congregational gatherings.40 The Stilwellite movement did not last beyond the first generation. William Stilwell led his New York congregation until his death, when most members returned to the Methodist Episcopal Church.41 The Stilwellites failed to win local and lay control over the city churches, but in the aftermath of the controversy Methodists increased local church authority as a way to manage their charges efficiently. Elders found it difficult to administer the city society as a whole, since the city’s Methodists now 36

Trials were to be held by three, five, or seven members of the same sex as the disputants. Discipline of the Methodist Society, 1, 13; Sutton, Journeymen for Jesus, 78. That men and women entered classes together is deduced from the list of the defecting Stilwellites, who entered mixed-sex classes in the Methodist Episcopal Church. 38 Stilwell, Historical Sketches, 9. 39 Seaman, Annals of New York Methodism, 215–231; Friendly Visitor vol. I (1825); Journal of Francis Asbury, 3:265. The Friendly Visitor was William Stilwell’s attempt to reach a wider audience with nondenominational stories of moral instruction and uplift. 40 Sutton, Journeymen for Jesus, 94. 41 Seaman, Annals of New York Methodism, 215 –231; Stevens, Life and Times of Nathan Bangs, 234– 235. 37

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numbered in the thousands, in more than a half-dozen congregations. Before 1820, New York preachers listed all classes (prayer meetings) or members together in indistinguishable groups. Each class attained a label as male or female, white or black, but lacked geographic specificity. Shortly after the Stilwellite secession, city ministers recorded classes by church location, linking each class to a specific congregation. In the following decade, local churches gained the control over their own finances that the Stilwellites unsuccessfully sought.42 The Stilwellite-John Street controversy illustrates the local nature of political and theological church battles. The uptown attempt to keep purity within the church against ostentatious displays of wealth, fashion, and aggressive ministerial authority found a willing audience in a specific geographic space. That space contained a self-conscious community of laborers whose ethic blended Methodist and laboring assumptions. Outside that space, however, Stilwellites gained little support and could not sustain a lasting denomination. A ministry committed to greater centralization won out over supporters of local control. But in the process, the ministry gave up at-large oversight, moving instead to a more congregational model. Episcopalians and white Methodists disagreed over the amount of ministerial control, but the majority of each group sided with their ministry. The ministry’s professional organization gave it an advantage over lay opponents, no matter how sincere or authentic they strove to be. A similar dynamic occurred in the black Methodist church, even as that group’s ministry had only recently organized and had tenuous professional credentials. In the struggle, Mother Zion’s ministers acquired professional accreditation even as they drew the boundaries of their church.

III. CONDUCTED WITH SOLEMNITY AND SATISFACTION: BLACK METHODISTS NEGOTIATE THEIR INDEPENDENCE In 1796, a group of black Methodist men successfully petitioned Methodist leaders for the right to hold worship meetings separate from the white-run church. In 1800 blacks erected a chapel, and in 1801 they incorporated their congregation independently of the white institution. But Mother Zion, as the New York congregation was later called, remained institutionally under the white church.43 White ministers regularly officiated at Mother Zion to ensure orderly worship. Because no black lay preachers had advanced to the 42 Classes were intense small groups, usually sex- and race-segregated, intended for members to pray and grow spiritually. Early Methodists often identified more with classes than with specific congregations or church buildings. 43 In these years the congregation was often called the African Chapel or the Zion Chapel.

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position of elder, white ministers also officiated over sacraments of the Lord’s Supper and baptism. This status of half-freedom for the black church existed for nearly two decades, when white Methodists’ disputes forced black leaders to consider a new status for themselves and their church. During the 1810s, black church leaders divided over the course their congregation should take. White New York Methodists wished for Mother Zion’s ministers to remain with them, while Philadelphia’s black church appealed to pan-African unity and asked the New York church to join them. Although some individuals found these appeals attractive, most of Zion’s leaders rejected both paths. The allure of autonomous spiritual leadership swayed Zion to declare independence. Wishing to exercise their spiritual gifts without outside oversight, Zion’s African Methodist leaders steered a course toward institutional autonomy. The move toward independence did not occur immediately. Shortly after 1810, a dispute revealed discontent within the black Methodist church. Two of Zion’s preachers left to build a new church with John Edwards, a white artisan and former Quaker. Abraham Thompson and June Scott had been senior ministers at Zion, the first to gain preaching licenses from white leaders. They had also actively aided in the formation of black benevolent organizations. The venture soon collapsed, apparently because Edwards exhibited signs of mental instability. Shortly afterward Thompson returned to Mother Zion, but Scott never returned.44 This dispute arose because the black church had not solved issues of financial independence and racial identity. Like many poorer Methodist churches, Mother Zion could not afford to pay its ministers. Edwards promised Thompson and Scott regular salaries. The offer of pay tempted those balancing duties to family and the ministry, especially those, like Thompson and Scott, with limited prospects of employment. Abraham Thompson appeared in the 1796 city directory as a laborer, and June Scott did not even appear in the 1795 or 1796 city directories, suggesting transient status.45 Less obvious in Edwards’s proposal were intangible attractions of interracial worship. A former Quaker, Edwards willingly approached blacks to lead his new church. Perhaps Scott and Thompson, older men who had once experienced interracial worship, wished to recapture the earlier Methodist racial unity. Abraham Thompson was probably the first black man to join 44 Rush, Short Account, 27– 28. The Thompson-Scott defection must have occurred between 1810, when the two represented Mother Zion for the African Marine fund, and 1819, when Rush narrates the conflict with the Bethelites, during which Thompson weighed in as an active participant. 45 Andrews, Methodists, 321, n. 144; David Longworth, 1796 New-York City Directory; Rush, Short Account, 28.

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John Street’s Methodist classes in 1785.46 As other blacks left the white church, Thompson lingered. When Francis Asbury granted black church leaders James Varick and William Hamilton the right to worship separately in 1796, Thompson remained in the white-run church.47 Racial unity had disappeared from the city’s Methodist churches, which separated black and white classes in the 1780s. The creation of the African Methodist Zion church meant that worship services, as well as classes, divided into white and black sections. By the 1810s only three black classes met regularly under white leaders; two of them were at John Street, downtown.48 In the city churches, segregation had become the norm. Having no other biracial option in Manhattan, Abraham Thompson limped back to Mother Zion.49 In 1796, black leaders successfully established classes apart from white leadership. The departing blacks were dominated by artisans. Now in the 1810s, the artisanal community within Mother Zion pushed for full institutional independence. Many of Zion’s ministers and lay leaders held skilled occupations. James Varick was a shoemaker and William Hamilton a carpenter. William Miller, who headed Zion’s daughter church, Asbury, was a cabinetmaker.50 Black artisans possessed a greater confidence and stronger financial position than their unskilled colleagues. These characteristics translated into bolder political stances. Occupational differences did not automatically create differences in ideology—tobacconist Peter Williams, Sr., did not share his artisan brothers’ radical faith, as he remained close to white church leaders. But the insecurity of non-artisan work led some African Methodists away from institutional independence. The promise of security in biracial worship tempted Abraham Thompson, a laborer. Another unskilled worker, exhorter George White, avoided political questions. White’s unwillingness to grapple with slavery may have led to a divide with leaders like Hamilton, who promoted antislavery measures.51

46 The single name “Abraham,” suggesting slave status, appears in both the 1785 and 1786 class lists. 47 Methodist society class records, 1796, Methodist Episcopal Church Records, vol. 241, New York Public Library. 48 Methodist Episcopal Church Records, vol. 79, New York Public Library. 49 George White, A Brief Account of the Life, Experience, Travels, and Gospel Labours of George White, an African (New York, 1810). 50 B. F. Wheeler, The Varick Family in America, with Many Family Portraits (Mobile, Ala., 1906), 15; on the social status of departing blacks in 1796, see Bulthuis, “Four Steeples,” ch. 2. 51 Hamilton strongly identified with his status as a carpenter and an artisan. When neighbors sued Hamilton for the “nuisance” of working in a wooden building, thus creating a fire hazard, the court acquitted him, citing the “generality of mechanics” who faced similar circumstances. Hamilton’s artisan status won an innocent verdict, trumping animosity that his neighbors

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George White’s example is instructive, for he remained on the margins at Zion and later broke with that body. Three times White approached white elders to request a promotion from the position of exhorter, which only allowed him to share his testimony, to local preacher, which enabled him to publicly interpret scripture passages. With little support from black leaders, however, White struggled to gain a foothold in the Methodist ministry. Unlike native New Yorkers James Varick and William Hamilton, White hailed from the South, having been freed in Virginia at his master’s deathbed conversion. White held no skilled trade, unlike many other African Methodist leaders. As an itinerant preacher he gathered fruits from outside town to peddle upon his return to the city. He also worked as an oysterer, which required little initial skill.52 Two outside parties attempted to pull New York’s African Methodist community in different directions in the late 1810s. Richard Allen’s vision of a pan-African Methodist alliance attracted many Zionites. The emerging Stilwellite schism also caused many of Zion’s members to reconsider their church’s status in the white Methodist society. Zion emerged from these struggles with a new corporate, institutional independence and identity as a center of African Methodism in New York. This identity depended on established ministers, however, and caused others to leave the church. Like Trinity’s opponents of Hobart and the Methodist Stilwellites, social position influenced religious allegiance. Richard Allen founded Philadelphia’s Bethel Church, the nation’s first independent black Methodist church. Seeking to expand his denomination, Allen used Zion’s discontented members to enter New York’s mission field. In 1819, former Zionite William Lambert traveled to Philadelphia, where Allen ordained him to the position of traveling preacher. Lambert had unsuccessfully applied for the ministry from his New York brethren. Upon returning, he established a church under Allen’s authority. George White aided Lambert in setting up Bethel Church on Mott Street. Because White and Lambert had been Zionites, New York’s African Methodists took the affront personally. Zion’s leaders forbade its ministers to preach at Bethel and denied Bethelites preaching privileges at Zion.53

directed at his race. City Hall Recorder, March 1817, recounted in Howard B. Rock, Artisans of the New Republic, 170. 52 White, Brief Account. 53 The prohibition extended to Asbury, Zion’s daughter chapel: Rush, Short Account, 32–33. On this and the following events, see also Carol V. R. George, Segregated Sabbaths: Richard Allen and the Emergence of Independent Black Churches 1760–1840 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 99–103. In Journeymen for Jesus, 75–77, Sutton identifies the African Methodists as a

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Black Methodists temporarily forgot Allen’s machinations when William Stilwell approached the Zionites in July 1820 with news of his group’s departure. That year Stilwell had been the elder in charge of the African churches, and he hoped to induce the black church to join his fledgling denomination. Stilwell explained that the Methodist Episcopal Church had turned to the New York state legislature in an attempt to give the ministers more control over church property. The warning resonated with the African Methodists. Zion’s charter held that its property belonged to its lay trustees, who were limited to members of the African race. If white ministers successfully seized Zion’s holdings, it would destroy any power African Methodists had gained in the last quarter century. The white church continued to hold spiritual primacy, as its ministers determined which men could be ordained to preach and its elders periodically presided over black services. Blacks controlled their church property but little else.54 Mother Zion’s leaders met with the Methodist Episcopal Church elders to confirm Stilwell’s story. Their fears confirmed, the Zionites explored options that would allow their ministers, deacons in Methodist nomenclature, to be elevated to elders. Once raised to the status of elder, Mother Zion’s leaders could ordain ministers on their own, not requiring approval from outside clergy and allowing for a self-perpetuating ministry. In the meantime, the Zionites asked Stilwell to preside over their church services for the next year. Even so, the break with the white church was not final; Zion’s leaders continued to consult with the Methodist Episcopal Church for the next two years.55 Zion’s leaders temporarily relaxed their animosity toward Richard Allen’s group. Several Zion ministers attended Allen’s Bethel Church services. Some sat near the altar behind the pulpit, lending Allen an unspoken yet powerful support. Zion’s leading minister, James Varick, introduced Allen at a meeting, notwithstanding his earlier resolve to withhold fellowship to the Allenites. But the collegiality with Allen’s group soon dissipated. The Zionites approached Allen to request that he promote their deacons to elder, but Allen refused unless they placed their church under his authority. As with Zion’s initial break with the white church in the 1790s, New York’s male African Methodists wished to “exercise their spiritual gifts,” to hold positions of prestige and control in their own church. In a subsequent

branch of Stilwell’s group. However, evidence indicates the Zionites made autonomous decisions apart from Stilwell and the plebeian church. 54 Rush, Short Account, 34– 35. 55 Ibid., 35–37.

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congregational meeting the people rejected both union with Richard Allen’s group and remaining under the authority of the white Methodists.56 Some Zionites considered leaving Methodism and approached Bishop Hobart at Trinity Episcopal Church to request ordination for their deacons. Abraham Thompson particularly opposed this move. Christopher Rush, later a bishop in the Zionite denomination, attributed this opposition to Thompson’s belief that the Africans should not go to a white bishop given Allen’s availability. Thompson, however, had earlier attempted to form a new church with a white artisan. Thompson may have chosen to remain loyal to the Methodist discipline. As Zion’s oldest minister, Thompson held the closest ties to Zion’s Methodist roots at John Street.57 Episcopalian ministers hesitated to support an independent black ministry and suggested the Zionites return to William Stilwell.58 Mother Zion’s leaders gave audience to Stilwell, who had retreated from his earlier attempt to unite with New York’s black Methodists. Now Stilwell only wished to persuade them that his status as elder was sufficient to ordain them as elders. Stilwell argued that no bishop, whether Methodist or Episcopal, was required. Nonetheless, the Methodist Episcopal Church again entered the picture, as Bishop William McKendree stated that he could not have elders ordained immediately but promised to look into the matter and have an answer for the Zionites at the next annual conference. Zion’s members proceeded to elect Abraham Thompson and James Varick as elder candidates after the Sunday service on October 1, 1820. The two men then began their service as elders, yet awaited official ordination “by the hands of a proper authority.” The Methodist Episcopal Church stalled for another two years, until the African Methodists had had enough. Three Stilwellite ministers finally ordained Zion’s elders in June 1822, thereby creating an independent black ministry.59 Mother Zion remained firmly Methodist in its steps toward independence and embraced a hierarchical understanding of Methodist church polity. Mother Zion’s leaders insisted on gaining proper ordination from other ministers, preferably bishops, to become independent. Even in separation 56

Ibid., 33, 39. Rush notes that the Mott Street Bethel Church was consecrated on 23 July 1820, the week after Stilwell approached the Zionites. Varick opened the service for Allen “the second or third Sunday night” after the consecration. Facing white confiscation of black church property, early opposition to Allen briefly faded. 57 Rush, Short Account, 39. The first black Episcopal Church in America formed this way when Philadelphia Episcopalians induced former Methodist Absalom Jones to form a church under white authority. Thompson’s hesitation also paralleled Philadelphia, for Allen rejected Episcopalian overtures, preferring to remain Methodist. 58 Hobart was out of town; his ally (and ex-Methodist) Thomas Lyell suggested that the Zionites turn to Stilwell. 59 Rush, Short Account, 45, 78.

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they followed an order and a discipline that implied an acceptance of spiritual hierarchy. Zion’s independence differed from the Stilwellite vision of a democratic, egalitarian Christianity.60 Zion’s leaders remained committed to a specific, traditional form of theology and order, with a denominational identity and a hierarchical ecclesiastical structure. Zion’s independence reflected the ecclesiastical maneuverings of an acculturated, male, artisan leadership to retain its power within a recognizably Methodist tradition. Christopher Rush’s description of the service that elected Varick and Thompson could apply to the entire episode: “The whole process was conducted with much apparent solemnity and satisfaction.”61 In its path to independence, Zion followed clergy who steered a path between white control over their church and union with other black Methodists. Zion’s ministers excluded black laity committed to interracial worship, including Peter Williams in an earlier episode and the two black classes who remained at John Street.62 Abraham Thompson similarly found himself on the outside when he considered interracial cooperation in the 1810s. Zion’s leaders also rejected black Methodists who sought a pan-African connection with Richard Allen’s group. Zion’s leaders slighted clergy like William Lambert and George White, who convinced few other black New York Methodists to join them. The desire of Mother Zion’s existing ministers to preserve their own prestige and independence ensured a separate denominational status for the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Such status remained orthodox, disciplined, and hierarchical in structure.

IV. CONCLUSION By 1830, these three New York churches settled their conflicts over authority, authenticity, and prestige. John Henry Hobart’s High Church vision, which divorced the social and spiritual connection of the Federalist-era church, won out at Trinity. A silent majority of middle-class men and middling and upper-class women sided with Hobart and his High Church clerical allies, against tepid resistance from elite men who had previously dominated the city’s Anglican churches. Led by their downtown, John Street members, Methodists embraced a formal bureaucratized organization that included expanded educational programs and larger financial projects. The Stilwellites supported the working-class ethic in the uptown chapels that preferred antiformalism in worship and promoted a primitive, humble simplicity in the 60 In Journeymen for Jesus, Sutton argues a common identity between the Stilwellites and African Methodists. 61 Rush, Short Account, 34; quote on 46. 62 On Williams and the John Street blacks, see Bulthuis, “Four Steeples,” ch. 3.

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church. New York’s African Methodists used the uptown schism as a launching point for their own independence but did not accept the Stilwellites’ democratized vision. Rather, African Methodists adhered carefully to forms of order in their church. An independent Mother Zion joined neither New York’s white Methodists nor Philadelphia’s black ones. In all these cases victory went to the groups with greater clerical support and a more focused denominational identity: High Church Episcopalian clergy, Methodist Episcopal Church ministers, and African Methodist Episcopal Zion preachers. Excluded were those acting in the name of lay interest— Stilwellites and Jones supporters—and those who promoted a more nebulous sense of interdenominational or interracial cooperation—Stilwellites, American Bible Society supporters, biracial Methodists, and Allenites. While social tensions began the conflicts, they were solved by a greater bureaucratization and rational order in the church: Episcopalians separated the power of bishop and local minister, white Methodists granted their congregations more local independence while spearheading greater missionary efforts, and black Methodists organized and clarified their status as an independent denomination. In these cases, churches followed the path paralleled in the worlds of business and government. Bureaucratization, not democratization or social control, drove ecclesiastical change in the early Republic.

Church History 78:2 (June 2009), 283– 308. # 2009, American Society of Church History doi:10.1017/S0009640709000493 Printed in the USA

“Unashamed of the Gospel”: Johann Hinrich Wichern and the Battle for the Soul of Prussian Prisons1 ALBERT WU

“We are only Protestant men unashamed of the Gospel, whose honor and abundant scandal we willingly and patiently carry.” —Johann Hinrich Wichern, 1861

O

N August 23, 1859, a death occurred in the prison at Moabit, a largely working-class neighborhood in Berlin that housed the largest penitentiary of its time.2 An inmate named Jacobi attacked and wounded a fellow inmate, forcing the prison warden, Ku¨gler, and the prison supervisor, Brother Anton, to intervene. When Jacobi showed no signs of calming down, Ku¨gler and Anton tried to force Jacobi into a straitjacket. During the struggle, Ku¨gler shot and killed the inmate.3 The news astonished Johann Hinrich Wichern, a conservative Lutheran pastor who oversaw the management of the prison. A rising star within the Protestant establishment and a founding member of the Protestant “Inner Mission,” Wichern had been appointed in 1857 to the Ministry of the Interior by King Frederick William IV to tackle the problem of reforming the Prussian prison system. Wichern envisioned a complete transformation of the Prussian system through the adoption of the Pennsylvania system of complete solitary confinement, with Wichern’s own religious organization, the Brotherhood of the Rauhen Hauses, running the prison administration. 1 I am particularly grateful to my mentor, Margaret L. Anderson, without whom this paper would never have seen print. I am grateful to Hartmut Lehmann, Jacob Mikanowski, Raphael Jung, Moritz Deutschmann, Margaret Tillman, Ti Ngo, Roy Chan, and Elizabeth Blackmar for conversations and support, as well as to the anonymous reader and editors who helped sharpen the argument. I am also grateful to the American Society of Church History for allowing to me to present this paper at the annual winter conference, and for those at the panel who helped further sharpen the argument. I began this paper during Gerald Feldman’s last seminar, and it is with great fondness that I dedicate this paper to his memory. 2 A full account of the incident can be found in “Kreisschwurgericht zu Berlin. Sitzung vom 16. Dezember 1859,” in Preußische Gerichtszeitung 1:57 (1859): 3– 4. 3 Friedrich Oldenberg, Johann Hinrich Wichern: Sein Leben und Wirken, bd. II (Hamburg: Agentur des Rauhen Hauses, 1887), 285.

Albert Wu is a graduate student in history at the University of California, Berkeley.

283

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News of Jacobi’s death arrived at an inopportune time—Wichern was in the midst of preparing for a parliamentary debate that would determine the future of his organization’s role in the Prussian prison system. The shooting sparked a slew of energetic criticisms from the liberal opposition both in the press and in the Prussian House of Deputies (Haus der Abgeordeneten). After vigorous debate, Wichern’s prison reforms were rejected.4 This article attempts to recount the story of Wichern’s prison reforms from their inception to their defeat in parliament in 1862. The history of prisons has captured the attention of scholars of many regions since the publication of David J. Rothman’s influential 1971 study of American prisons, The Discovery of the Asylum.5 Influenced by Michel Foucault’s investigation of asylums in Madness and Civilization, Rothman saw the creation of penitentiaries in Jacksonian America as a form of social control in a period when fears of social chaos abounded. Foucault himself would soon turn to a study of prisons in Discipline and Punish.6 A flurry of studies covering prisons in Europe and America followed, describing the changes within systems of confinement and providing a fuller picture for understanding the social and political dynamics of punishment and power.7 Wichern’s battle for the Prussian prisons reflects Rothman’s and Foucault’s narratives. Wichern certainly was interested in using the prisons as a site of social control and hoped to use the prisons to advance his dreams of a complete moral rehabilitation of society. Yet, I hope to show that a different set of questions—about the appropriate place of religion within state institutions— also animated the arguments surrounding prison reform in Prussia. Even though Wichern and his opponents debated the type of punishment system to which to adhere—the Pennsylvania system or the Auburn system—the more hotly contested topics in the prison debates revolved around the question of who had 4 William O. Shanahan, German Protestants Face the Social Question: The Conservative Phase 1815–1871 (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1954), 299. 5 David J. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston: Little Brown, 1971; reprint with new introduction, 1990). Rothman’s new introduction in the 1990 reissue edition of The Discovery of the Asylum, xiii –xliv, maps out the historical landscape well. Another good overview of the historiography of prisons can be found in Thomas Nutz, “Global Networks and Local Prison Reforms: Monarchs, Bureaucrats and Penological Experts in Early Nineteenth-Century Prussia,” German History 23:4 (October 2005): 431– 460. 6 Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir: naissance de la prison (Paris: Gallimard, 1975). 7 For the English case, see Michael Ignatieff, A Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 1750–1850 (New York: Pantheon, 1978); for the French case, see Patricia O’Brien, The Promise of Punishment: Prisons in Nineteenth-Century France (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982). The best synthetic work on the German case is Thomas Krause, Geschichte des Strafvollzugs. Von den Kerkern des Altertums bis zur Gegenwart (Darmstadt: Primus Verlag, 1999). A general overview of the history of prisons from ancient times to the present is Norval Morris and David J. Rothman, ed., The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

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the right to oversee prisons, and whether private religious organizations such as the Brotherhood of the Rauhen Hauses should be allowed to supervise them. By studying these debates, I hope to engage the literature of nineteenthcentury secularization. In his study of religion and American public life since the 1870s, the sociologist Christian Smith proposes the idea of a “secular revolution” to challenge our traditional notions of the secularization narrative. To Smith, “the secularization of American public life was in fact something more like a contested revolutionary struggle than a natural evolutionary progression.”8 Smith argues that this “secular revolution” arose at mid-century out of a “rebel insurgency,” instigated by a network of activists who were “largely skeptical, freethinking, agnostic, atheist, or theologically liberal,” and who opposed the mainline American Protestant establishment.9 In some ways, Smith’s model can help explain Wichern’s story. Wichern’s prison reforms lost due to concerted efforts by liberals to oppose the influence of conservative religious reformers and organizations within the Prussian state system. The year Wichern’s prison reforms were defeated, liberalism enjoyed a particular potency within the government—the conservative Prussian King Frederick William IV had just died, and liberals had won unprecedented success at the polls, gaining major ground in the parliament. “Secularization,” here defined as the strict separation between private religious groups and state institutions, was not an inevitable or a natural progression of “modernity” and “industrialization,” but rather the result of a much-contested battle and struggle. The prison was one site in this multi-front war. These “secular liberals” were not part of a systematic program that categorically rejected religious influence within the state, as Wichern’s opponents consisted of liberal Protestant pastors as well as atheists. They did belong, however, to a generation that had experienced the disillusionment, as well as the political repression, that followed the failed revolutions of 1848. The failures of 1848 created what Andrew Lees has described as a “spirit of division” among the various liberal camps. Nonetheless, they were united in common cause against reactionary conservatives who continued to guard access to political power.10 Liberals opposed, as Konrad Jarausch and Larry Eugene Jones have described, “the unholy trinity of feudalism, absolutism,

8 Christian Smith, “Introduction: Rethinking the Secularization of American Public Life,” in The Secular Revolution: Power, Interests, and Conflict in the Secularization of American Public Life, ed. Christian Smith (Berkeley: University of California Press), 1. 9 Smith, “Introduction,” in The Secular Revolution, 1– 2. 10 Andrew Lees, Revolution and Reflection: Intellectual Change in Germany During the 1850’s (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), 186.

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and religious orthodoxy.”11 Wichern thus stood as a cultural and political symbol of the reactionary policies that had thwarted the revolutionary impulse of 1848. Moreover, Wichern’s opponents found in his religious pietism a specific grievance that they could exploit. As Michael B. Gross has shown, liberals were deeply anxious and fearful of the Catholic revival that swept across German lands after 1848.12 To liberals, Wichern’s organization resembled a Catholic order, with its hierarchical structure and charismatic religious message. Liberals thus merged their traditional anti-Catholic antipathy with their larger attacks on reactionary monarchists and thus described Wichern’s Brotherhood as royalist, secretive, powerful, reactionary, “fanatical,” exclusive, superstitious, and “Catholic.” Secularization within the Prussian prisons was thus a byproduct of the political battles between liberal and conservative factions to gain control of various state institutions. In Wichern’s case, the religious conservatives, not the secular liberals, tried to transform the institutional culture of the prisons and alter the relationship between private religious organizations and state institutions. With Wichern’s defeat, the prisons remained institutionally the same as before; the “secular revolution” did not bring about a radical reform of the prison system. In this story, the religious conservatives were the failed “revolutionaries.” Wichern’s story thus shows that in Prussia a “religious revolution” existed alongside the “secular revolution.” Christopher Clark has argued that the historiography of post-1848 Europe has incorrectly portrayed the 1850s as an age of reaction, political stasis, and repression. A recent revisionist trend, on the other hand, sees post-1848 European states as dynamic and ambitious, implementing “innovative programs in the spheres of public relations, education, and infrastructural reform” to combat upheaval and revolution.13 Wichern’s prison reforms were part of this larger movement, and his life reflects this conservative energy that attempted to reorder society. This article hopes to capture the dynamic political culture that existed within the Prussia of the late 1850s and to complicate our notions of the post-1848 era as a conservative, even reactionary, time period.

11 Konrad Jarausch and Larry Eugene Jones, “German Liberalism Reconsidered: Inevitable Decline, Bourgeois Hegemony, or Partial Achievement?” in In Search of a Liberal Germany: Studies in the History of German Liberalism from 1789 to the Present, ed. Konrad H. Jarausch and Larry Eugene Jones (New York: Berg, 1990), 22. 12 Michael B. Gross, The War Against Catholicism: Liberalism and the Anti-Catholic Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004), 23. Gross provides an excellent historiographical overview of the literature on German liberalism in his introduction. 13 Christopher Clark, “Re-Reading the 1850s: The European Revolution in Government,” unpublished paper presented 27 November 2006 at the Institute for European Studies, University of California, Berkeley. Clark cites the recent work of Richard J. Evans, Abigail Green, and David Barclay as part of this attempt to recast Prussia as an innovative and dynamic governmental force.

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The battle between Wichern and the liberals can also be seen as a precursor to Otto von Bismarck’s Kulturkampf of the 1870s and 1880s.14 While Bismarck inflamed anti-Catholic sentiment in his attempt to limit the influence of the Catholic clergy within his new empire, many of his future liberal allies drew on the same prejudices when they labeled Wichern’s evangelical brotherhood “Catholic.” Distaste for Catholicism helped mobilize the party of progress for its larger project of secularization, which set out to free public life from the inappropriate influence of both churches. The victory liberals achieved over Wichern in Prussia’s prisons would embolden them for the greater battle to come. More important, Bismarck’s Kulturkampf was a conflict over the boundaries between church and state, as Bismarck tried to legally restrict the influence of the Catholic Church within the German Reich. Wichern’s struggle less than twenty years earlier traversed similar grounds, as Wichern opponents tried to prevent Wichern’s voluntary religious organization from gaining wider influence within the Prussian state. With Wichern’s case, the Prussian liberals succeeded in checking the expansion of the influence of Wichern’s Brotherhood within state institutions. Twenty years later, on the other hand, Bismarck would fail to curtail the power and popularity of the Catholic Church that he so hoped to suppress.15

I. PRISONS AND PRISON REFORMERS IN THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY To begin, what compelled prison reformers such as Wichern to cry out for an overhaul of the prison system? In the late 1790s and early 1800s, Prussia witnessed a massive spike in crime and vagrancy when Junker landlords closed off common land, forcing many landless laborers to wander and roam as a living.16 The number of inmates had almost doubled from 9,785 prisoners in 1838 to 16,280 in 1851. That number almost doubled again within three years. By 1854, 26,825 prisoners were imprisoned in penitentiaries 14

There has been a large range of literature on the Kulturkampf. Some of the most important works are Jonathan Sperber, Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984); Margaret L. Anderson, Windthorst: A Political Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981); David Blackbourn, Class, Religion, and Local Politics in Wilhelmine Germany: The Centre Party in Wu¨rttemberg before 1914 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980). 15 For Bismarck’s failure, see Ronald Ross, The Failure of Bismarck’s Kulturkampf: Catholicism and State Power in Imperial Germany, 1871– 1887 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1997). 16 Richard J. Evans, Tales from the German Underworld: Crime and Punishment in the Nineteenth Century (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998), 26.

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and prisons.17 Penitentiaries and prisons were overcrowded, unsanitary, and neglected. Combined with shoddy nourishment, hard labor, and strict discipline, high morbidity and mortality rates ravaged the imprisoned population.18 Inmates had a life expectancy of about thirty years, less than half that of an individual who lived in society at large.19 Prison confinement was mostly collective (Gemeinschaftshaft), while solitary confinement (Einzelhaft) was reserved for special or dangerous prisoners and extraordinary circumstances. Prisoners were not separated by sex, age, or degree of crime. Prisons were not “total institutions”—most prisons made no effort to regulate the daily routines of their inmates.20 In the bigger penal institutions, prison personnel usually consisted of a prison director, several wardens (Aufseher) who were responsible to a chief warden (Oberaufseher), a doctor, a teacher, a clergyman, and several inspectors.21 The director controlled all facets of the prison’s operations. Due to an 1842 Cabinet order, which guaranteed military officers with more than twelve years of service a retirement position in a penal institution, about 80 percent of the wardens were military pensioners (Militaranwa¨rter).22 Underpaid, the prison personnel worked brutally long hours, sometimes having to clock in fourteen-hour shifts without a break.23 Relations between prisoners and prison personnel were tense. A prison director reported in 1861 that wardens held a “virtually intuitive hatred against everyone, what the convicts stood for, and what they had accomplished.”24

17

Thomas Berger, Die Konstante Repression: Zur Geschichte des Strafvollzugs in Preussen nach 1850 (Frankfurt: Verlag Roter Stern, 1974), 38. 18 Berger, Die Konstante Repression, 103. For more exact figures, see Franz von Holtzendorff, “Morbidita¨t und Mortalita¨t in den Gefa¨ngnissen,” Handbuch des Gefa¨ngnisswesens, vol. 2 (Hamburg: Verlag von J. F. Richter, 1888), 438– 472, 456. The mortality rate from 1858 to 1863 in Prussian penitentiaries averaged 31.6 (deaths/1000), more than three times the mortality rate of the general population, which averaged about 10 (deaths/1000). To compare that in a contemporary perspective, the highest death rate in the world in 2006 was in Swaziland at 29.74 (deaths/1000). Germany in 2006 had a death rate of 10.62, while the United States had a death rate of 8.26: data taken from the CIA World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/ factbook/rankorder/2066rank.html. 19 v. Holtzendorff, “Morbidita¨t und Mortalita¨t,” 456. 20 See Sebastian Scheerer, “Beyond Confinement? Notes on the History and Possible Future of Solitary Confinement in Germany,” in Institutions of Confinement: Hospitals, Asylums, and Prisons in Western Europe and North America, 1500–1950, ed. Norbert Finzsch and Robert Ju¨tte (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 349–361, 350. See also Randall McGowen, “The Well-Ordered Prison,” in The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society, ed. Norval Morris and David J. Rothman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 82. 21 Berger, Die Konstante Repression, 48. 22 Ibid., 49. 23 Ibid., 52. 24 Ibid., 51.

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Observing these terrible conditions, German reformers drew on the work of other European and American prison reformers for inspiration.25 One of the most important early German prison reformers was Nikolaus Heinrich Julius (1783– 1862). Julius, along with Karl Anton Josef Mittermaier, is often credited as the founder of German penology (Gefa¨ngniswesen or Gefa¨ngnisskunde). Julius traveled throughout Europe and North America, learning about the prison systems in twelve different countries. In 1827, Julius conducted a series of public lectures on prison reform that were also published and widely read.26 These lectures introduced German readers and listeners to the ideas of the religious reformers John Howard and Elizabeth Fry in England, as well as the work of the Quakers at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. He also translated Gustave Beaument and Alexis de Tocqueville’s report on American prisons into German.27 In 1839, he published the influential book North America’s Moral Condition (Nordamerikas sittliche Zusta¨nde) in which he wrote about the advantages of implementing the Pennsylvania system of complete isolation into the German prison.28 Julius attracted a large audience with his lectures and writings. Among his audience sat the young Wichern and the future King Frederick William IV.29

II. WICHERN,

THE INNER

MISSION,

AND

PRISONS

Wichern had earned a name for himself in religious circles in 1832 when he founded the Rauhe Haus in Horn, a suburb of Hamburg.30 Convinced that children could only live morally and spiritually righteous lives when they were separated from the rampant immorality of city life, Wichern used a small farmhouse as the base for his “redemption home” for the younger

25

For a concise history of prison reform and its international “network,” see Nutz, “Global Networks and Local Prison Reforms.” 26 Nikolaus Heinrich Julius, Vorlesungen u¨ber die Gefa¨ngnis-Kunde oder u¨ber die Besserung der Gefa¨ngnis und sittliche Besserung der Gefangenen, entlassenen Stra¨flinge usw. (Berlin, 1828). 27 Scheerer, “Beyond Confinement?” in Institutions of Confinement, 352. 28 Nicholas Heinrich Julius, Nordamerikas sittliche Zu¨stande. Nach eigenen Anschauungen in den Jahren 1834, 1835 und 1836, 2 vol. (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1839). 29 The best account of Frederick William IV and his reign is David Barclay’s Frederick William IV and the Prussian Monarchy 1840–1861 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). 30 The standard Wichern biography is Martin Gerhardt’s Johann Hinrich Wichern: Ein Lebensbild, 3 vols. (Hamburg: Agentur des Rauhen Hauses, 1927). Another classic biography is by Friedrich Oldenberg, Johann Hinrich Wichern: Sein Leben und Wirken, 2 vols. (Hamburg, Agentur des Rauhen Hauses, 1887). Oldenberg was a contemporary of Wichern’s and worked for the Rauhe Haus in Hamburg. The classic English account of Wichern’s life is found in Shanahan, German Protestants Face the Social Question, 71– 98.

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generation.31 The Rauhe Haus functioned as a substitute family for abandoned children, with Wichern as the patriarchal head of the household. The Rauhe Haus soon became the “most influential social enterprise in Protestant Germany” as it moved its operations beyond Hamburg.32 By 1847, sixty-four “Houses of Salvation” existed in Germany, and Wichern’s efforts had “become the focal point for Protestant social reform activity.”33 In order to support the expanding operations, Wichern employed a team of “lay brothers,” men who had dedicated their lives to Christian ministry but had not obtained theological degrees. The Rauhe Haus became a center for the specialized training of the “Brothers of the Rauhen Hauses,” preparing them for mission work in urban areas or to be supervisors in evangelical orphanages.34 The Brothers underwent rigorous, strict Christian training so that they could later become heads of newer, independent branches of the ministry. Wichern published his first writings on prison reform in 1844 in the Fliegende Bla¨tter, the official propaganda newsletter that he founded in the same year. Wichern wrote that Christians needed to turn their attention to the welfare of prisoners. Wichern criticized previous attempts at prison reform, which had all been performed by the state, involved overhauls of the physical system of prison, and were unconcerned with the improvement of the prisoner’s moral condition. The Church could fill this gap, and Wichern called on pastors to raise the consciousness among their parishes of the dire situations within prisons.35 Wichern was particularly obsessed with the problem of released convicts and their reintegration into society.36 Statistics demonstrating the pervasiveness of relapsed cases indicated to Wichern the glaring shortcomings of the current prison system—it had failed to enact any form of true moral rehabilitation. He believed that if the prison system became truly Christian, the problems of moral relapse would disappear; all prisoners, as long as they received the Gospel of Christ, could be reformed. For Wichern, the social problems of poverty, crime, and broken families originated from the increasing secularization of society. The “Social Question” was at heart a moral one. Wichern believed that the miseries of society had to be combated with works of Christian charity and faith; a moral revitalization of the individuals in 31 David Crowner and Gerald Christianson, introduction to “Johann Hinrich Wichern,” in The Spirituality of the German Awakening (New York: Paulist Press, 2003), 229–241, 232. 32 Shanahan, German Protestants Face the Social Question, 76. 33 Edward Ross Dickinson, The Politics of German Child Welfare from the Empire to the Federal Republic (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), 13. 34 Shanahan, German Protestants Face the Social Question, 78. 35 Johann Hinrich Wichern, “Asyl in Glu¨ckstadt,” in Sa¨mtliche Werke 6, edited by Peter Meinhold (Berlin: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1973), 17. 36 Wichern, “Asyl in Glu¨ckstadt,” in Sa¨mtliche Werke 6, 17.

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society would solve society’s ills. Wichern saw his work as standing at the front lines of a battle with forces of secularism—the diabolical enemy of atheism and socialism had to be defeated.37 In 1844, with approval and support from Frederick William IV, Wichern launched the Inner Mission, an effort to recapture the lost hearts of German Christians who had been baptized but had fallen away from the faith. The Inner Mission targeted the German proletariat.38 The Inner Mission functioned as a loose federation that united all of the 1,500 Christian philanthropic societies in Germany. Wichern hoped to use the Inner Mission to foster Protestant church unity among German Protestant states.39 Wichern’s dream was to create a nationwide German Protestant church that would ultimately revitalize all of Christendom. Having worked among the Hamburg proletariat, Wichern sympathized with socialist concerns for social justice and care for the poor, and he even considered the Inner Mission a form of “Christian socialism.”40 Yet he attacked German socialism for its atheism, calling socialism a “caricature of truth.”41

III. EIGHTEEN FORTY-EIGHT AND

THE

PRISON QUESTION

Wichern’s fears of socialism seemed to be validated in 1848 when revolutions swept across Europe. Wichern participated actively in a circle of Protestant “elites” that mounted an energetic counter-revolutionary response to the events of 1848.42 Conservative Protestant leaders organized the Wittenberg Kirchentag in September 1848 as a platform for exploring Protestant unity in the midst of this revolutionary upheaval. Wichern became an instant celebrity among Protestants at the Wittenberg conference. Over Luther’s grave, he delivered a rousing address—later called “the Protestant Manifesto”—attacking the dangers of revolution and the atheism of the left. Wichern called for Protestant unity and wider moral concern for the poor and the suffering. Protestants needed to win the lost hearts of the German proletariat through Christian charity and individual conversion. Of course, the organization that could best administer this form of social salvation was Wichern’s own, the Inner Mission. The assembly 37

Shanahan, German Protestants Face the Social Question, 83. The standard history of the Inner Mission is Martin Gerhardt, Ein Jahrhundert Innere Mission, 2 vols. (Gu¨tersloh, 1948). 39 Shanahan, German Protestants Face the Social Question, 81. 40 Maria Klu¨gel, Wichern: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Sozialpolitik (Berlin: Verlag des Evangelischen Bundes, 1940), 167. 41 Gerhardt, Ein Jahrhundert der Innere Mission, 52. 42 Robert Bigler, The Politics of German Protestantism: The Rise of the Protestant Church Elite in Prussia, 1815–1848 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), 262. 38

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accepted the resolution that a temporary organization, the Central Committee for the Inner Mission (Centralausschuss fu¨r die innere Mission), be formed to carry out this momentous task of evangelization throughout all the German lands. The Fliegende Bla¨tter became the official news organ for the Central Committee in 1849.43 Wichern now possessed a larger platform that could help realize his plans to re-convert German Christendom. Reform of the prison system lay at the heart of Wichern’s vision for the Inner Mission. One of the largest and most neglected sectors of the poor and dispossessed, Wichern believed, dwelled within prison walls. In July of 1851, with the enthusiastic sponsorship of the Prussian king, Wichern embarked on an investigative tour of prisons in Westphalia, the Rhineland, Saxony, and Brandenburg.44 Wichern visited twenty-four cities and inspected all forms of penal facilities, including corrections facilities, jail cells, and penitentiary houses. Wichern described his experience of stepping inside prison rooms filled with “women of all ages, incarcerated for infanticide and carnal felonies, serving their sentences against every Godly or man-made law with thieves, swindlers, perjurers, and sinners of all sorts.”45 The living conditions were horrendous, as he often saw “more than fifty prisoners sleeping together, accustomed to living without any possible form of moral protection.”46 He described the institutions as the “great ruins of Christendom” and “the greatest irony the state has erected against itself.”47

IV. MOABIT AND

THE

BROTHERHOOD

To Wichern and his supporters, then, the first order of reform was to create a new, state-of-the art prison. In 1842, the minister of the interior had ordered that a new prison be built in Berlin’s industrial neighborhood, Moabit. Completed in 1849, the Moabit prison was a replication of the “Model Prison” at Pentonville, England.48 The Pentonville prison enforced a strict form of solitary confinement—prisoners were isolated from one another day and night, from the moment of their entrance into prison until their release. In 1846, Georg Varrentrapp, a physician who helped Julius publish some of his writings, organized the First International Prison Reform Conference in 43

Shanahan, German Protestants Face the Social Question, 213. Gerhardt, Johann Hinrich Wichern, 2:283–287. Johann Hinrich Wichern, “Die Behandlung der Verbrecher in den Gefa¨ngnissen und der entlassenen Stra¨fline,” in Sa¨mtliche Werke 6, 32. 46 Wichern, “Die Behandlung,” in Sa¨mtliche Werke 6, 32–33. 47 Gerhardt, Johann Hinrich Wichern, 2:283–284. 48 Wolfgang Scha¨che and Norbert Szymanski, Das Zellengefa¨ngnis Moabit: Zur Geschichte einer Preussischen Anstalt (Berlin: Transit Buchverlag, 1992), 15. For a history of the Pentonville Prison, see Michael Ignatieff, A Just Measure of Punishment. 44 45

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Frankfurt. A total of seventy-seven reformers from twelve countries, including Russia, Denmark, France, Britain, and America, attended the conference. At the conference, the reformers debated the problem of solitary confinement and its implementation. The application of at least some form of solitary confinement within the prison system had achieved “ideological dominance” among most prison reformers as the best way to improve prison conditions and enact moral rehabilitation.49 Solitary confinement provided an instant benefit of classification, as the me´lange of offenders who lived together in collective confinement could now be distinguished from one another, thus allowing for a more systematic application of punishment. The separation of inmates would also help criminologists and moral statisticians with the classification and quantification of the different “moral characters” of the convicts. Just as zoologists were able to classify different types of plants and animals, criminologists likewise believed they could differentiate between “professional” criminals, “casual” offenders, and “born criminals.”50 Solitary confinement was thus seen as a necessary step toward creating a more wellordered, scientific, and “progressive” prison. Yet, the most heated disagreements between contemporary penologists came between supporters of the Auburn system and the Pennsylvania system. Both systems had the stated goals of reforming prisoners but employed drastically different methods of punishment. The Pennsylvania system instituted complete isolation day and night for prisoners as prisoners would work in their individual cells. The Auburn system also proposed the use of solitary confinement, but only at night. During the day, prisoners performed hard physical labor under total silence, enforced through corporal punishment.51 At the center of the debate between the two systems lay a contest between “physical” and “moral” concepts of reform.52 As Thomas Nutz argues, supporters of the Pennsylvania system, such as Wichern, took the soul as the starting point for reform. These supporters thus hoped to inculcate Christian morality through total solitary confinement, as prisoners would receive biblical instruction and engage in penitential reflection within the confines of their cells. On the other hand, the Auburn system took the physical body as the starting point for punishment. Supporters of the Auburn system hoped to 49 Albert Krebs, “Die ‘Erste internationale Versammlung fu¨r Gefa¨ngnisreform, zusammengetreten September 1846 in Frankfurt am Main,’” in Festschrift fu¨r Gu¨nter Blau zum 70. Geburtstag am 18. Dezember 1985, edited by Hans-Dieter Schwind et al. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1985), 641. 50 Richard Wetzell, Inventing the Criminal: A History of German Criminology, 1880–1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 21– 31. 51 Nutz, “Global Networks,” 440– 441. 52 Ibid., 443.

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inculcate external markers of “good conduct marked by industriousness, cleanliness and order.”53 The Auburn system regarded the prison as primarily a place for behavioral correction, rather than moral rehabilitation. The Pennsylvania system also represented a radical departure from previous forms of punishment. Implementing the Pennsylvania system would require a complete upheaval in not only prison architecture, but also in institutional culture, bureaucratic training, and administrative oversight. The Auburn system, in principle, resembled European prison practices that had been used since the end of the eighteenth century.54 Supporters of the Auburn system argued that existing institutions could be presented as a modern “penitentiary system” with little change and upheaval.55 Frederick William IV supported the Pennsylvania system enthusiastically and wanted to implement it throughout Prussia. He enlisted Wichern’s help.56 Frederick William assigned Wichern the task of preparing an investigative report on the effects of solitary confinement in Moabit.57 This report, submitted to the king four months later in October 1854, signaled Wichern’s first official foray into what would turn out to be a prolonged battle for control of the Prussian prison system. Wichern blamed the failure of Moabit to implement solitary confinement on the prison personnel. The prison directors, clergy, and doctors “spoke unanimously against complete isolation, or the Pennsylvania system.”58 Yet, Wichern observed that the prison directors and supervisors were not categorically opposed to solitary confinement, as they spoke openly of their support for “partial solitary confinement” (Halbisolierung) and were more than willing to place rowdy and difficult prisoners in solitary confinement. Wichern thus wrote that the “difference between the Pennsylvania system and the Moabit way of treatment was that prisoners in the former stood under the order of law while prisoners in the latter were subject to the arbitrary will of the prison directors.”59 What was really needed in prisons, Wichern argued, was a radical change in prison administration and personnel. The staff must act as “one organism, and its work over the prisoners must be an organic, unified whole that presents itself in all ranks of the organization.”60 Individual visitations from Christian citizens 53

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. 56 Oldenberg, Johann Hinrich Wichern, 2:215. 57 Ibid., 2:216. 58 Wichern, “Separatvotum zu dem Kommissionsbericht u¨ber die neue Strafanstalt zu Moabit, die Durchfu¨hrung des pennsylvanischen Systems daselbst und die in Moabit vorgekommenen Wahnsinnsfa¨lle und Selbstmorde,” in Sa¨mtliche Werke 6, 61. 59 Ibid., 63. 60 Ibid., 73. 54 55

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were no longer adequate to provide for the growing prison population and its needs. Instead, the prison population now required a systematized form of spiritual care and help for its prisoners. The personnel needed to be “familiar with the living quarters of sin, apostasy, and misery in the commoner’s life” and to be “as well prepared as teachers and preachers are for their jobs.”61 Here lay the essential difference between Wichern and his opponents. For Wichern, the prison needed trained Christian ministers, not state bureaucrats, to run the prisons. The prisons needed the Brothers of the Rauhen Hauses. Wichern also hoped to radically transform the prison system into a training ground for good Christians. Under Wichern and the Brotherhood’s administration, a successfully rehabilitated inmate released from Moabit would not only never commit a crime again but also would be a committed Christian convert. Frederick William IV accepted Wichern’s recommendations and three days later decreed that the Pennsylvania system had to be instituted throughout Moabit by the beginning of 1857.62 A new set of personnel would be equipped with the training necessary to run the system.63 Wichern called this news a “birthday gift that had truly been sent from God.”64 Wichern recognized that this would drastically alter the relationship between church and state, writing that it would be “the first time that the State would have formally entitled a Protestant body to administer prison care.”65 He further called for a disciplined, orderly, and detailed reconfiguration of Moabit’s education system. Wichern drew out floor plans for the classrooms, with thirty-six to forty-two seats in the classroom cells; he planned for six classes of about sixty-six inmates, each receiving between five and six hours of instruction a week, primarily based in religious instruction. The instruction would last for the entirety of the prisoner’s sentence.66 Wichern’s Brotherhood was installed into the prison system with little resistance. On July 5, 1856, a cabinet decree announced that the Brothers of the Rauhen Hauses had been called to take over the administration of the Moabit prison. The cabinet also appointed Director Schu¨ck of Schweidnitz, whom Wichern had recommended, to the post of prison director.67 Schu¨ck was “familiar with the Pennsylvania system and convinced of its advantages.”68 Brother Anton, a member of the Brotherhood, was appointed 61

Ibid., 75. Thomas Nutz, Strafanstalt als Besserungsmaschine. Reformdiskurs und Gefa¨ngniswissenschaft 1775– 1848 (Mu¨nchen: Oldenbourg 2001), 365–366. 63 Gerhardt, Wichern, 2:374; Oldenberg, Johann Hinrich Wichern, 2:225– 226. 64 Gerhardt, Wichern, 2:375. 65 Wichern, “Gutachten u¨ber die Neuorganisation des Personals der Strafanstalt zu Moabit,” Sa¨mtlicke Werke 6, 81. 66 Gerhardt, Wichern, 2:376. 67 Ibid., 2:377. 68 Nutz, “Global Networks,” 456. 62

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as prison supervisor. Elated and “surprised,” Wichern wrote to his wife that the “Brotherhood had earned a great victory.”69 In total, the Prussian state employed thirty-nine Brothers at Moabit—twenty-five as wardens (Aufseher), eight as vice wardens, two as work masters (Werkmeister), two as superintendents (Oberaufseher), and one as the police inspector.70 By the end of 1856, the Brothers had been fully integrated into Moabit. The start of 1857 also signaled a new beginning for Wichern’s career. Ever since 1854, the King had mentioned the possibility of bringing Wichern into the Prussian Ministry of Internal Affairs. With the Brothers installed in Moabit, Frederick William IV approved Wichern’s appointment to the Prussian civil service on December 3, 1856. Wichern would receive a three thousand Thaler salary, almost a thousand Thaler more than his fellow colleagues in the civil service.71 Wichern earned the title of “Referee for the Office of Penal Institutions and Poor Relief” (Vortragender Rat der Strafanstalten und des Armenwesens).72 He earned a permanent home in Berlin but continued to split time between his work in Berlin and in Hamburg. He was also appointed to the Prussian Oberkirchenrat, the governing body of all Protestant churches in Prussia. In two speeches celebrating his induction into the Ministry of the Interior, Wichern tied together all of his thoughts in a triumphant pronouncement. The Germans stood at a new historical juncture where the gospel and Christian love could completely transform the prison system and improve the welfare of prisoners. Christians had neglected the prison question for centuries, and it was only now that “prisoners had become for Christian folk a great and holy challenge of love.”73 Wichern’s life’s work and ambitions seemed to be unfolding successfully before his eyes—he now had a complete, state-supported institution to enact his plans, a national platform to institute his envisioned reforms, international connections with other reformers, and a king that supported his every move. Little did he know that he was also standing at the apex of his career and influence. There was nowhere to go but down.

V. THE LIBERAL OPPOSITION Wichern’s grand plans were soon put on hold. On October 6, 1857, Frederick William IV suffered a stroke, paralyzing him and rendering him unable to 69

Gerhardt, Wichern, 2:377; Oldenberg, Johann Hinrich Wichern, 2:226. Gerhardt, Wichern, 2:404. Berger, Die Konstante Repression, 148. See especially footnote 3. 72 Gerhardt, Wichern, 2:404– 405. 73 Wichern, “Gefangenenfrage in der Geschichte und im Evangelium,” Sa¨mtliche Werk 6, 100. 70 71

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govern. His brother William took over as regent and officially became prince regent a year later. Moreover, the November 1858 elections signaled the beginning of the New Era of liberal confidence. As a result, in the Prussian Landtag, the number of conservatives decreased from two hundred to fewer than sixty while liberal candidates increased from sixty to about two hundred and ten.74 The Ko¨lnische Zeitung wrote that a “joyful feeling of deliverance” among the liberals accompanied the change.75 The failures of the 1848 Revolutions, coupled with almost a decade’s worth of state repression, had left liberals in disarray, divided both ideologically and socially. Yet, despite the fragmented nature of the liberal program, they were united in their “common hostility” to two groups—monarchists and Catholics.76 During the 1840s, religion had become an increasingly political issue, as Frederick William IV, a pious man, embarked on a concerted effort to revitalize Christianity and strengthen the ties between monarchical power and religious belief.77 During the 1848 revolutions, the Camarilla, a counterrevolutionary group surrounding Frederick William IV, systematically set out to restore monarchical power and frustrate liberal attempts at constitutional reform.78 The Camarilla became closely tied with the newspaper Kreuzzeitung, which became the main conservative news organ. Liberals viewed these conservative efforts with suspicion, as they believed Frederick William IV was trying to create a theocracy. Instead, they hoped that religion would be maintained within the private sphere, outside of politics. Wichern had deep ties with the Kreuzzeitung and became a symbol for both the restoration of monarchical power and conservative efforts to bind “throne and altar.” Moreover, for liberals, Wichern’s Brotherhood, with its pietistic rhetoric and hierarchical structure, looked suspiciously like a Jesuit order. Protestant liberals and conservatives were traditionally anti-Catholic, and the decade after 1848 saw a widespread Catholic revival throughout German lands as Catholics engaged in an energetic attempt of evangelization. Protestant liberals and Catholics both feared the Catholic revival that swept throughout Prussia, and they ratcheted up their anti-Catholic rhetoric in response.79 To liberals, 74

James Sheehan, German History, 1770– 1886 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 863, 869–888. Hajo Holborn, A History of Modern Germany: 1840–1945 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1959), 131. 75 Quoted in Sheehan, German History, 863. 76 James Sheehan, German Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 90. 77 See Barclay, Frederick William IV, especially chapter 4, “Monarchy and Religious Renewal, 1840–1850,” 75–98. 78 Barclay, Frederick William IV, 159. For more on the Camarilla, see Barclay, Frederick William IV, 153–184. 79 Gross, War Against Catholicism, 99–100.

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Wichern’s rhetoric of “revival” and “pietism” sounded exactly like the fire and brimstone homilies that Catholic revivalists preached in their missionary crusades.80 Moreover, with Wichern at its head, not only did the Brotherhood have access to the center of Prussian political power, it also had a charismatic figure who maintained a rigid patriarchal hierarchy, which liberals also viewed as resembling a Catholic order. Wichern and his Brotherhood thus became an obvious political enemy, as he simultaneously stood for both reactionary monarchist politics and the threat of pietistic, “Catholic,” revivalism. When the prison warden, Ku¨gler, a member of Wichern’s brotherhood, shot and killed the inmate Jacobi in August 1859, liberals got the scandal they wanted. The event became a flashpoint, because now liberals had a concrete instance of Wichern’s misuse of power. The news made a great splash in the liberal press, which lambasted the Brotherhood for its abuse of prisoners. To liberals, the event proved the unchecked nature of Wichern’s power within the state system and further demonstrated the problem of unchecked monarchical expansion. The Hamburger Reform called for the removal of Wichern from the Prussian State Department.81 One of the most vicious attacks against the Brotherhood appeared in the Ko¨lnische Zeitung. In an editorial on October 18, 1859, the editors wrote that they supported solitary confinement and had awaited with “joy” for the improvement of the prison system. The Ku¨gler case exposed the “arrogant and imperious” nature of the Brothers, who, through a “sad abuse of power,” had shot and killed the victim.82 Solitary confinement was not the problem here, the editors claimed, but rather it was the arrogant Brothers, who had abused the system and operated without checks and balances.83 In a personal meeting with Wichern, the historian Theodor Mommson made his “violent antagonism” (heftigen Widerspruch) toward Wichern’s Christian evangelicalism clear.84 Karl Anton Mittermaier, an influential law professor at Heidelberg, wrote in his short pamphlet, The Current Condition of the Prison Question (Der Gegenwa¨rtige Zustand der Gefa¨ngnißfrage), that “the Ku¨gler case demonstrated little against solitary confinement, but rather that the wardens had amassed great power, and that a danger existed—an abuse

80 For more on the Catholic revival of the post-1848 period, see Gross, War Against Catholicism, 29–73. 81 Gerhardt, Wichern, 3:199. 82 “Die Einzelhaft und die Bru¨der des Rauhen Hauses,” Ko¨lnischen Zeitung, Beilage nr. 293, 22 October 1859, 4. 83 Ibid. 84 Gerhardt, Wichern, vol. 3, 204. “Violent antagonism” was Gerhardt’s description, not Mommsen’s.

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of power could occur in the absence of necessary self-restraint.”85 In another tract Mittermaier called the Brotherhood a Protestant “Order.” He criticized their “mystical, impractical outlook,” their one-sided education, their “soul hunting” (Seelenja¨gerei) and “fanatical proselytizing fury” ( fanatische Bekehrungswut).86 Even though Mittermaier supported the general program of instituting solitary confinement within the prisons, as well as Wichern’s larger project of providing stronger moral rehabilitation for prisoners, he made it clear that Wichern’s Brotherhood was not suited for the job. Wichern’s Brotherhood had operated outside the boundaries of legality within the Prussian state system. The most fervent and vocal critic of Wichern and the Brotherhood was Franz von Holtzendorff, a young professor at the Friedrich-Wilhelm University in Berlin. Holtzendorff was extremely close with Mittermaier, as he had studied at Heidelberg with Mittermaier in 1849, and Mittermaier would later recommend him for a post upon completion of his Habilitation.87 Holtzendorff shared Mittermaier’s hatred of the Rauhe Haus Brothers. In a letter to Mittermaier, Holtzendorff described Wichern’s Brotherhood as “a Church sect” that was “generally hated.” Holtzendorff criticized Wichern’s Brotherhood for monopolizing the administration of prisons and for its desire to censor public dissent over their practices.88 In a brochure, Holtzendorff criticized Wichern’s Brotherhood for being a burden on the state’s finances.89 Under Wichern’s administration the cost of each prison cell rose to an ungainly one thousand Thaler, due to the high salaries and training costs the Brothers incurred.90 Holtzendorff compared Wichern’s Brotherhood with “religious orders in the Catholic Church, who usurp the direction and rule of the institution.”91 Holtzendorff further criticized the Brotherhood for its narrow religious outlook, referring to its members as “zealots who tortured the consciences of the inmates (Gewissenspolterer).”92 85

Karl Josef Anton Mittermaier, Der gegenwa¨rtige Zustand der Gefa¨ngnißfrage mit Ru¨cksicht auf die neuesten Leistungen der Gesetzgebung und Erfahrungen u¨ber Gefa¨ngnißeinrichtung mit besonderer Beziehung auf Einzelnhaft (Verlag von Ferdinand Enke, 1860), 38. 86 Gerhardt, Wichern, 3:200. 87 For a brief biography of Holtzendorff, see Lars Hendrik Riemer, “Holtzendorff, Franz von,” in Lars Hendrik Riemer, ed., Das Netzwerk der “Gefa¨ngnisfreunde” (1830– 1872): Karl Josef Anton Mittermaiers Briefwechsel mit europa¨ischen Strafvollzugsexperten, vol. 1 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2005), 249– 251; 251. 88 Riemer, Mittermaiers Briefwechsel, 1:255. 89 Franz von Holtzendorff, Gesetz oder Verwaltungsmaxime? Rechtliche Bedenken gegen die Preußische Denkschrift betreffend die Einzelnhaft (Berlin: Lu¨deristz’sche Berlagsbuchhandlung, 1861). 90 Ibid., 12. 91 Ibid., 13. 92 Ibid.

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Even though they did not support the Pennsylvania system, Mittermaier and Holtzendorff did agree with Wichern that some form of solitary confinement would be beneficial to the moral rehabilitation of the prisoner. They also agreed that some form of religious education was necessary in the prisons. What they did oppose, however, was the specific type of religious conservatism that Wichern and his followers brought into the prisons. Wichern’s religion was pietistic and evangelical, a far cry from the cultural Protestantism that Mittermaier and Holtzendorff supported. Moreover, they were particularly offended by Wichern’s undemocratic and anti-liberal politics. The tightly disciplined, patriarchal, highly secretive character of the Brotherhood seemed particularly worrisome to Mittermaier and Holtzendorff, and they feared that the Brotherhood, if left unchecked by legal regulations, would be able to wield its power without oversight and accountability.

VI. PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES AND “BROCHURE WARS” In January 1861, Frederick William IV died, leaving Wichern without his greatest source of support. The government, under pressure from the upper house, decided to resolve the debate over whether Wichern’s Pennsylvania system should be implemented systematically throughout Prussia.93 Wichern thus entered into his first protracted parliamentary battle on June 3, 1861. Progressive members of parliament, such as Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch, immediately attacked the Brothers, questioning whether a religious organization such as the Brotherhood should remain in the prison system.94 Schulze himself had been persecuted and harassed by police after 1848, and he viewed conservative reactionaries with contempt. Deeply anti-Catholic, Schulze was suspicious of all types of superstitious belief and hoped to inculcate more scientific belief into the state administration. He thus wondered if allowing the Brotherhood into the prisons would be equivalent to permitting the Jesuits to run a prison administration. Wichern defended the Brotherhood, claiming that his opponents had mischaracterized the nature of his organization.95 Wichern declared that religious orders indeed did not belong in penal institutions because religious orders were subject to the authority of the church, not the state.96 Wichern argued that a real difference existed between the Brothers of the Rauhe 93

See Wichern, “Denkschrift u¨ber die Einzelhaft,” in Sa¨mtlicke Werke 6, 279– 302. Stenographische Berichte u¨ber die Verhandlungen des Preußisches Landtages, Haus der Abgeordneten (hereafter cited as SBAH), June 3, 1861, 1576. 95 Wichern’s speech can be found in two places, in the SBAH, 3 June 1861, 1576–1585, and as “Zur Frage der Einzelhaft: Rede, gehalten in der 62. Plenarsitzund des Preußischen Abgeordnetenhauses,” in Sa¨mtlicke Werke 6, 303 –324. I provide numbers for both versions. 96 Wichern, “Zur Frage der Einzelhaft,” 319; SBAH, 3 June 1861, 1583. 94

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Hause and a Catholic religious order.97 The Brotherhood consisted of lay, nonordained, voluntary members, independent of any church institution, and, in the case of the Moabit prison, the state had complete oversight over the Brotherhood. Catholic orders that served in prisons, on the other hand, were part of the Catholic Church; a parallel situation between Protestant and Catholic relief services would only arise if the Catholic Church developed religious relief organizations independent of the Catholic hierarchy.98 Nonetheless, Wichern proclaimed, his followers were not unafraid to bring their religion into state service, as they were “Protestant men, unashamed of the Gospel.”99 Wichern thus employed the same amount of anti-Catholic rhetoric that the liberals used to attack him. He agreed with liberals that Catholic orders, if allowed into the Prussian state department, would be a pernicious influence. However, he rejected the liberal characterization of his Brotherhood as an “order.” The proposal soon came to a vote. Both parts of the proposal passed, meaning that solitary confinement would eventually be regulated and instituted throughout the whole Prussian system. Wichern was delighted, calling it “a great victory for solitary confinement and for the Rauhe Haus.”100 Yet, the victory was brief and illusory. The proposal had been vague, and the House of Representatives needed to decide on the specifics of how solitary confinement should be regulated and whether Wichern’s Brotherhood would be entrusted with administering the prisons. Several weeks after Wichern’s parliamentary victory, Holtzendorff published a new pamphlet, The Brotherhood of the Rauhen Hauses, a Protestant Order in the State Service.101 In this pamphlet, Holtzendorff dedicated the entire text to exposing the dirty secrets of Wichern and the Brotherhood.102 Holtzendorff portrayed the Rauhe Haus as a strictly controlled, disciplined, and secretive patriarchal organization that forbade dissenting voices within the ranks. Holtzendorff compared Wichern’s communications with the brothers with the pope’s pastoral letters and encyclicals; they were similar in that they both “sought to assert a certain higher authority over Order brothers and a monopoly over truth.”103 97 Wichern’s speech can also be found in two places, in the SBAH, 3 June 1861, 1590– 1591, and as “Zur Frage der Ta¨tigkeit religio¨ser Genossenschaften in Strafanstalten. Diskussionsbeitrag in der 62. Planarsitzung des Preußischen Abgeordnetenhauses,” in Sa¨mtliche Werke 6, 325–327. 98 Wichern, “Zur Frage der Ta¨tigkeit religio¨ser Genossenschaften in Strafanstalten,” in Sa¨mtliche Werke 6, 326; SBAH, 3 June 1861, 1591. 99 Wichern, “Zur Frage der Einzelhaft,” 320; SBAH, 3 June 1861, 1583. 100 Gerhardt, Wichern, 3:233. 101 Franz von Holtzendorff, Die Bru¨derschaft des Rauhen Hauses, ein Protestantischer Orden im Staatsdienst. Aus bisher unbekannten Papieren dargestellt (Berlin: Lu¨deritz’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1861). 102 Gerhardt, Wichern, 3:235. 103 Holtzendorff, Die Bru¨derschaft des Rauhen Hauses, 13.

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Holtzendorff concluded that the Rauhe Haus Brotherhood was a “Protestant Order,” a “Church community grounded on peculiar principles and subordinate to specific rules and exercises, deviant from the general Protestant church communities.”104 The Order presented a danger of the “highest degree” because the “Oberconvictmeister of the order” also stood “at the pinnacle of the Prussian prison administration.”105 Employing even more fervent antiCatholic rhetoric, Holtzendorff wrote that the Brothers were just as dangerous to the Prussian state as the Jesuits. Material interests prevented these “hypocrites” from leaving the state services, since they enjoyed numerous government benefits—high salaries, protection, staff, and cheap housing. He cited numerous luminaries of the prison reform world, including Mittermaier and Julius, as having spoken out against the Brotherhood.106 Holtzendorff’s pamphlet ignited a public relations firestorm. Wichern denounced Holtzendorff’s claims as “lies and treacheries” in the Fliegende Bla¨tter.107 A “brochure war” ensued, as Wichern enlisted several of his friends to defend him in print. Wichern beseeched the aging Julius to pen several pieces of support in the Hamburgischer Correspondent and in the Allgemeine Preußische Zeitung.108 The conservative Kreuzzeitung supported Wichern in several editorials in July 1861.109 In quick succession, Friedrich Oldenberg, a member of the Brotherhood and Wichern’s later biographer, Professor Hugo Bo¨hlau, law professor at Halle, and Hermann Ortloff, a Privatdozent of law, produced brochures defending the Rauhe Haus.110 Further articles summarizing these brochures appeared in the Allgemeine Preußische Zeitung and the Neue Evangelische Kirchenzeitung.111 All of the brochures and articles, with Oldenberg’s being the most defiant, attacked Holtzendorff for his gross mischaracterization of the Brotherhood’s nature, further claiming that the Brotherhood was in no way similar to a Catholic order. On October 12, 1861, another incident broke out in Moabit that further fueled opposition to the Brothers. An unsupervised convict named Brose drank an unknown quantity of alcohol, became drunk, and called for a drink of water. The supervisor Brother Anton, also involved in the Ku¨gler

104

Ibid., 34. Ibid., 35. Ibid., 45. 107 Holtzendorff to Mittermaier, 17. 10. 1861, in Riemer, Mittermaiers Briefwechsel, 1:295. 108 Gerhardt, Wichern, 3:237. Holtzendorff also mentions this in a letter to Mittermaier, in Riemer, Mittermaiers Briefwechsel, 1:296. 109 Gerhardt, Wichern, 3:237– 238. 110 Ibid., 3:238. 111 Ibid. 105 106

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incident, transferred him to a different prison cell but ignored his pleas for water. The wardens found Brose dead the next morning.112 News of the mishap further galvanized Wichern’s opponents, who now included the entire liberal establishment—the liberal press, important penologists such as Mittermaier and Holtzendorff, and famous prison directors from Baden and Saxony.113 Holtzendorff himself responded with another brochure in January 1862, repeating his accusations of the Brother’s negligence and misuse of power.114 The radical Westfa¨lische Zeitung in Dortmund published an article on “the Propaganda of the Rauhen Hauses,” exaggerating in its report Wichern’s salary as six thousand Thaler, double what he actually received, and falsely reporting that he had taken a six-month paid vacation.115 The liberal press was thus not so much interested in criticizing the presence of religion within the prison but rather what they saw as the collusion between religious pietism and political privilege. The liberal press did not engage Wichern’s Brotherhood in a debate over policy issues. Instead, the debate was waged over whether Wichern’s ideological temperament, and its character as a group, belonged within the Prussian prison system. Wichern himself was unmoved by these attacks and remained convinced both of the nobility of his message and the integrity of the Brotherhood. He saw the prevalence of these attacks as further proof of the de-Christianization of German society. He called his opponents a “coalition of democracy, liberalism, bureaucracy, and skepticism, along with hypocrisy and Jesuitism.”116 In the Fliegende Bla¨tter he explained that for years the press had donned an increasingly hostile stance toward “things that freely and wholeheartedly professed the Gospel.”117 Despite his “expectation” of these attacks, Wichern was nonetheless heartbroken by the criticisms. In his diary, he wrote, “As I stand in the state service, I myself am a prisoner. As I remain loyal and fastidious, the more I have silenced myself and come to tolerate these accusations and lies against the Brotherhood and myself.”118

VII. PARLIAMENTARY DEFEAT It was with this mindset that Wichern entered into his second parliamentary battle on October 2, 1862. Wichern knew that his chances of prevailing were 112 Ibid., 3:244. Holtzendorff also mentions the incident in a letter to Mittermaier, 17 November 1861, in Riemer, Mittermaiers Briefwechsel, 1:296–297. The account is the same as Gerhardt’s. 113 Gerhardt, Wichern, 3:245. 114 Ibid., 3:244. 115 Ibid., 3:243. 116 Ibid., 3:246. 117 Wichern, “Besprechung der Schrift von Friedrich Oldenberg,” 332. 118 Oldenberg, Johann Hinrich Wichern, 2:301.

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slim. On May 19, Prussian liberals in state election had won a resounding victory, winning more than two-thirds of the seats in parliament in a coalition with the center left and progressive parties. In August 1862, the Budget commission proposed that Wichern’s contract to oversee Moabit be terminated for the upcoming year.119 Wichern took the floor and launched into a two-hour defense of the Brotherhood. Wichern argued that his accusers had never clarified what they meant when they called the Brotherhood “Pietists.” Pietism, to Wichern, had always stood for the principles of the Protestant Reformation, in which the Christian enjoyed a direct personal relationship with God; in this sense, “Pietism would be nothing else other than a living, vibrant Christianity.”120 The representatives reacted loudly when Wichern commented, “if the men of the Rauhen Hauses were Pietist, then the whole Landeskriche, along with the state institutions with which it was associated, should be considered Pietist as well!”121 After Wichern’s speech, representative Heinrich Krause, a Protestant theologian, attacked the whole idea behind the Inner Mission. Krause explained that the Inner Mission was a “fanatical” attempt to convert a “pagan world” (Heidenwelt) to Christian behavior, and that the propagators of the Inner Mission assumed that a “great mass of immorality” existed and needed to be rectified.122 Allowing this type of religious conviction to run penal institutions, Krause argued, “is extremely dangerous.”123 The prisoners were already disaffected when they entered prison, Krause argued, and he further claimed that the prisoners should be allowed to choose the type of religious instruction they desired, rather than having a particular religious outlook imposed on them.124 Representative Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch pressed even further, arguing that prison personnel should consist of bureaucrats who worked for the state, not members of a religious organization such as the Brotherhood. Schulze hoped to remove religion from the prisons altogether but continued his attack by questioning the nature and character of the Brotherhood. Schulze asked the House if it was willing to allow this “foreign establishment” (ausla¨ndische Anstalt), over which the state had no true control, such an influential position within the Prussian prison system.125 Schulze thus argued

119

Gerhardt, Wichern, 3:251. SBAH, 2 October 1862, 1988. 121 Ibid., 1989. 122 Ibid., 1999. 123 Ibid. 124 Ibid. 125 Ibid., 2002. 120

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that the Prussian state had to promote its own training systems so that it could completely oversee, control, and direct the prisons. Wichern’s final defense caused a sensation in the House. Wichern argued that the only way to ensure that released prisoners would not break the law again was to enact some type of “improvement” (Besserung) in their character. This type of “improvement” was only possible through the “creation of a new life, which can only be born in the freedom of Christian faith.”126 Only Christianity, Wichern maintained, could prevent criminals from breaking the law again. This type of effective ministry existed in Moabit, through the help of the Brotherhood of the Rauhen Hauses. The atmosphere in parliament had grown increasingly unruly, as several representatives continued speaking for and against the Brotherhood. Finally, the vice president called the motion to a vote. The Budget Committee’s Report passed by a majority; the Brotherhood’s contract was not extended. Wichern’s Brotherhood was removed from the Prussian prisons.

VIII. CONCLUSION Wichern’s parliamentary defeat demonstrated that liberals cared more about limiting the influence of a particular kind of religion in the Prussian civil service than they did about attacking the Pennsylvania system. Holtzendorff, for example, disagreed with Wichern’s support of the Pennsylvania system but focused his attacks on the secretive, Pietist, and “Catholic” qualities of the Brotherhood, rather than on the actual policies that Wichern proposed. Thus, many of Wichern’s reforms remained an integral part of the prison system. Even by the turn of the century, solitary confinement remained unregulated by definite laws. In a 1906 assessment of Wichern’s prison reforms, the lawyer Dr. G. von Rohden wrote, “Many of Wichern’s stances on solitary confinement remain entrenched within the German prison system.”127 The removal of the Brotherhood from the Prussian prisons thus signaled a temporary end to Wichern and Frederick William IV’s “religious revolution.” In 1857, with Frederick William IV active and the conservatives in power, Wichern and his Brotherhood seemed unstoppable. Yet, within a short span of five years, Wichern’s star had fallen and his prison reforms were discredited. Wichern’s defeat attests to the vitality of the Prussian parliamentary system in the 1850s. Prussian political culture was by no means stagnant or backward but rather was a dynamic exchange, and a battle 126

Ibid., 2003. G. von Rohden, “J. H. Wichern und die Preußische Gefa¨ngnisreform,” Zeitschrift fu¨r die Gesamte Strafrechtswissenschaft 26 (1906): 218. 127

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of ideas and opinions existed between liberals and conservatives. The story also demonstrates the confidence that liberals exuded in the New Era as they challenged the Prussian conservative establishment without fear or remorse. Yet, this liberal victory represented a “path not taken” in Prussia’s attempts at modernizing its prisons. In defeating Wichern’s Brotherhood, the liberal opposition rejected the option of modernizing the state apparatus through the reliance on independent, voluntary organizations. Instead, the state retained full control of the prison system, and all of the prison personnel remained as state employees. Wichern’s approach to religion was in many ways a fundamentally modern one, as he developed the Brotherhood of the Rauhen Hauses into a voluntary organization separate from traditional Church institutions.128 Whereas one’s participation in the religious organization was traditionally determined by birth, or by the parish one was born into, Wichern’s Brotherhood transformed religious participation into something based on individual choice, instead of traditional or birth ties to a religious community. The debates in parliament thus clarified the need to demarcate, in the case of prisons, the boundaries between the private and the public sector and, more specifically, the boundaries between church and state. These lines were not always so clearly delineated in other states at the time. In America, for example, voluntary religious societies continued to assert themselves within the administration of state prisons. The Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, which consisted largely of Quakers, advocated the building of Eastern State Penitentiary and the implementation of solitary confinement. After the building was completed, the Quakers became outside overseers and tended to the penitentiary.129 In America, then, the prison system had a mixed character, where private religious organizations and state institutions combined to administer the prisons. A different model that Prussia could have considered was Jeremy Bentham’s proposal of privatizing the prison system. Bentham had proposed the complete removal of state influence from his Panopticon, arguing that the Panopticon “was to be run entirely by private contract management.”130 In the Panopticon, these private organizations would don a religious guise. Bentham believed that religious education was an integral part of the reform curriculum, and prisoners would be required to receive a moral education. He wrote that the “necessity of a Chapel is a point rather to be assumed than 128

I am grateful to Margaret Lavinia Anderson for providing this insight. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, “Pennsylvania Prison Society: Background note,” accessed online http://www.hsp.org/files/findingaid1946prisonsociety.pdf, 3. 130 Gertrude Himmelfarb, “The Haunted House of Jeremy Bentham,” in Victorian Minds (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), 42. 129

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argued.”131 Bentham’s model was eventually rejected, and the British government remained in control of the administration of the British penal system. Yet, through the influence of Elizabeth Fry and the Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline and for the Reformation of Juvenile Offenders, private religious groups had a heavy hand in the reform of the British penal system.132 In Prussia, the defeat of Wichern’s Brotherhood signaled an end to this mixture of state and private religious administration within the prison system. Prison administration would remain solely within the jurisdiction of the state, and prison inspectors would be state bureaucrats. Without a doubt, Prussian prisons continued to display many “religious” characteristics, such as the use of solitary confinement and the employment of prison chaplains. Even though liberals’ opinions varied on the amount of religious influence that should be allowed in the prisons, they did agree that the prison administration should remain solely within the hands of the state and not be controlled by voluntary religious organizations such as Wichern’s Brotherhood. Thus, prison administrators retained their status as state employees, and the line between church and state was thus demarcated clearly within the Prussian state system. Only a decade later, during the Kulturkampf, liberals and conservatives forged an alliance that would have seemed impossible in the 1860s. Secular liberals maintained their stance of removing what they deemed inappropriate forms of religion from public life, as they opposed any form of “superstition.” Conservatives, on the other hand, fueled by their anti-Catholicism, rejected the synergistic relationship between church and state that they had supported only two decades previously. As he tried to limit the influence of Catholicism within state institutions such as schools, Bismarck’s ethos echoed that of Holtzendorff and the liberals in the 1850s and their attempts to eliminate the influence of certain types of religious observance within state prisons. The liberals in the 1860s and Bismarck both hoped to use the state, as well as parliamentary politics, to rein in religion that they deemed subversive and dangerous to the state’s interests. Furthermore, much of Bismarck’s Kulturkampf drew on the battles waged in the 1860s. Anti-Jesuit rhetoric, which permeated the parliamentary rhetoric of Wichern’s time, prefigured Bismarck’s Jesuit Law of 1872, which banned the Jesuits from the German Empire.133

131 Robert Alan Cooper, “Jeremy Bentham, Elizabeth Fry, and English Prison Reform,” Journal of the History of Ideas 42:4 (October– December 1981): 675–690, 677. 132 Cooper, “Bentham, Fry, and English Prison Reform,” 688 –690. 133 For more on the Jesuit Law of 1872, see Ro´isı´n Healy, The Jesuit Specter in Imperial Germany (Leiden: Brill, 2003).

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Whereas the liberals in the early 1860s hoped to remove Wichern from power as a defensive check against further conservative control of Prussian institutions, Bismarck’s Kulturkampf was offensive in nature, as he hoped to use the Kulturkampf to destroy the Catholic strongholds in the south in newly unified Germany. Unlike the liberal success ten years earlier of preventing Wichern from gaining control of Prussian prisons, Bismarck’s attack on the Catholic Church ultimately failed. The Catholic Church was able to mobilize a deeply rooted popular resistance to Bismarck’s attacks, and Bismarck’s Kulturkampf became unpopular.134 Wichern’s Inner Mission, on the other hand, was never able to muster the same type of popular response to liberals the way the Catholic Center party was able to mobilize popular Catholicism in the 1870s. With the removal of the Brotherhood from the prisons, Wichern’s hopes of a Protestant revivalism, sweeping through every corner of German society, would soon fade into memory.

134 For the popular resistance to the Kulturkampf, see David Blackbourn, Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Nineteenth-Century Germany (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994).

Church History 78:2 (June 2009), 309– 326. # 2009, American Society of Church History doi:10.1017/S000964070900050X Printed in the USA

An Egyptian in China: Ahmed Fahmy and the Making of “World Christianities” HEATHER J. SHARKEY

“In my early years in Changchow there were still some of Dr. Fahmy’s students in practice in the town, and plenty of people, patients and church members, who remembered him with much gratitude and affection. I think you will be glad to know that . . . there will also be people in Changchow who never knew Dr. Fahmy but who nevertheless will be giving thanks for the work which he started and from which they and many others have benefited over the years.” —D. J. Harman to Mrs. Johnston (granddaughter of Ahmed Fahmy), dated Eltham, London, November 14, 1987

I. AHMED FAHMY IN

THE

MISSIONARY CONTEXT

Ahmed Fahmy, who was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1861 and died in Golders Green, London, in 1933,1 was the most celebrated convert from Islam to Christianity in the history of the American Presbyterian mission in Egypt. American Presbyterians had started work in Egypt in 1854 and soon developed the largest Protestant mission in the country.2 They opened schools, hospitals, and orphanages; sponsored the development of Arabic Christian publishing and Bible distribution; and with local Egyptians 1

University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies, Council for World Mission Archives (henceforth SOAS CWM), Annotated Register of L.M.S. Missionaries, 1796–1923, Appendix A, p. 176 #854, “FAHMY, Ahmed.” This LMS register states that he was born in 1860. However, Edinburgh University records, completed in Ahmed Fahmy’s own hand, declare that he was born on August 25, 1861: Edinburgh University Library, Special Collections (henceforth EUL), records of “Preliminary Examination and Course of Study [Medicine]” for Ahmed Fahmy, “Medical Graduates 1886,” shelf mark Da 43. 2 The American Presbyterian mission was substantially larger than the mission of the Church Missionary Society. Moreover, after Britain invaded and occupied Egypt in 1882, the Americans did not have to struggle as CMS missionaries did to dissociate themselves from colonial authorities. On the CMS in Egypt, see Matthew Rhodes, “Anglican Mission: Egypt, A Case Study,” paper delivered at the Henry Martyn Centre, Westminster College, Cambridge University, May 2003, available at http://www.martynmission.cam.ac.uk/CMRhodes.htm.

Heather J. Sharkey is an associate professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania.

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organized evangelical work in towns and villages from Alexandria to Aswan. In an age when Anglo-American Protestant missions were expanding across the globe, they conceived of their mission as a universal one and sought to draw Copts and Muslims alike toward their reformed (that is, Protestant) creed. In the long run, American efforts led to the creation of an Egyptian Evangelical church (Kanisa injiliyya misriyya) even while stimulating a kind of “counterreformation” within Coptic Orthodoxy along with new forms of social outreach among Muslim activists and nationalists.3 The American Presbyterians in Egypt did not focus on Muslim evangelization until after the British Occupation of 1882 when Protestant missionaries, buoyed by the waves of British imperial expansion, entered their own period of rhetorical and tactical muscle flexing. Ahmed Fahmy’s conversion, which occurred in 1877, therefore predated the British Occupation and the missionary turn toward Muslim evangelization by five years. Since there are no signs in missionary records that the Americans had actively tried to convert him, and since the missionaries appeared to greet his declaration of Christian faith with a degree of surprise, Ahmed Fahmy was in some sense an accidental convert. He was certainly one of a relatively small group: according to the missionary Andrew Watson, writing in 1906, the American Presbyterians in Egypt had reported just 140 converts from Islam in the mission’s first half-century in Egypt, though some of these people, Watson noted vaguely, had reverted to Islam.4 Judging from his papers surviving in London, Ahmed became a committed evangelical Christian and went on to pursue his own mission in southeastern China under the auspices of the British interdenominational London Missionary Society (LMS). Many Egyptian Protestants (and especially those who had come from Coptic backgrounds) became lay evangelists or evangelical church pastors over the years, but not until 1953 did another Egyptian evangelical attain the status of “missionary” in the ranks of Anglo-American counterparts.5 In this regard Ahmed Fahmy was decades ahead of his time, and his pursuit of a career with the British LMS mission explains why American Presbyterians celebrated his case for so long.6 Since the 1990s leading scholars have recognized the transnational dimensions of missionary encounters. They have traced, for example, the 3 Heather J. Sharkey, American Evangelicals in Egypt: Missionary Encounters in an Age of Empire (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008). 4 Andrew Watson, “Islam in Egypt,” in S. M. Zwemer, E. M. Wherry, and James L. Barton, eds., The Mohammedan World of To-Day (New York: F. H. Revell, 1906), 23– 29. 5 Donald Black, “Board of Foreign Missions of the United Presbyterian Church of North America, 1954–1958: Reflections of the Executive Secretary,” unpublished typescript, n.d.; and Ralph McLaughlin, “Important Event in the Nile Valley,” United Presbyterian, 30 November 1953. 6 Watson, “Islam in Egypt,” 36.

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social and historical links that connected nineteenth-century British missionaries in southern Africa and the Caribbean to churches and societies in Britain, or American missions in the Ottoman Levant to earlier missions to Native Americans.7 A few have scanned the history of single mission societies as they operated globally in places as far afield as India, Polynesia, and Australia, or have brought new attention to bear on the interrelated history of British imperial and Protestant missionary expansion.8 Still others have scrutinized the local implications of transnationalism. For example, one historian has considered how, in what is now Nigeria, Yoruba-speaking evangelists, who worked for a British mission society, seeded changes at the grass roots while establishing a new Yoruba culture of writing by means of the reports they prepared for and sent to London.9 The ambitious goal of all these works has been to cast light on the presentation, transmission, and reception of Christianity, often while considering how, through churches and other social spaces, non-Western peoples made Christianity, and Christian cultures, their own.10 Yet even relative to these richly detailed case studies, the story of Ahmed Fahmy appears special because it illuminates transnationalism on so many fronts. His life and career linked three separate missions (the missions of the United Presbyterian Church of North America [UPCNA] and the Reformed Church in America [RCA], as well as the LMS11), two mission fields (Egypt and China), two major missionsponsoring countries (the United States and Great Britain), and even two world religions (Islam and Christianity).

7 Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination, 1830– 1867 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002); John L. Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, 2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991 and 1997); Paul Stuart Landau, In the Realm of the Word: Language, Gender, and Christianity in a Southern African Kingdom (Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1995); Ussama Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008). 8 On the LMS, for example, see Anna Johnston, Missionary Writing and Empire, 1800–1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); and an earlier work, Jon Bonk, “‘All Things to All Men’: Protestant Missionary Identification in Theory and Practice, 1860– 1910: with special reference to the London Missionary Society in Central Africa and China,” Ph.D. diss., University of Aberdeen, 1982. A recent work on the British imperial aspect of missions is Andrew Porter, Religion versus Empire? British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700–1914 (New York: Manchester University Press, 2004). 9 J. D. Y. Peel, Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000). 10 Lamin Sanneh, Whose Religion Is Christianity? The Gospel beyond the West (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2003). 11 The UPCNA was an antecedent church of what is now the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and sponsored missions to Egypt, northern India (later Pakistan), Sudan, and Ethiopia. Ahmed Fahmy served as a doctor to missionaries of the RCA in the Amoy district of China; his second wife was also an RCA missionary.

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Ahmed Fahmy was both a one-man exemplar of Christian transnationalism and the product of our modern age of globalization. He did not, however, represent a unitary “global Christianity,” if that term is meant to imply either some kind of religious homogenization across continents or regions, or some kind of non-Western religious bloc.12 Just as cultural theorists recognize that modern globalization has not led to cultural uniformity but rather has made people “aware of new levels of diversity” even within worldwide webs of interdependency,13 so some historians of religion now argue for the existence of “world Christianities,” with an emphasis on the plural, as a way of recognizing the cultural diversity inherent in the world’s Christian communities.14 Yet if Ahmed Fahmy’s career does not support the idea of a blurring or converging global Christian culture, it does nevertheless illustrate the complex and at times intersecting paths of change that missionary efforts pushed forward. On the more personal level, Ahmed Fahmy’s experiences in Egypt also offer insights into the social (re)invention of the convert. His short career as a convert in Egypt, which lasted less than a year (1877 – 1878) before he fled to Britain, confirms the idea that conversion, across cultures and periods, is a process, and not a spiritual event or flashpoint.15 Conversion is, moreover, an intensely social process, involving not just the individual convert but also the convert’s family and community. In Ahmed Fahmy’s case, conversion led to his rupture from Egypt’s Islamic society. Far from being a mere abstraction of belief, Ahmed Fahmy’s conversion therefore demanded that he address his own “problems of self-identification in a shattered social world.”16 This article first describes Ahmed Fahmy’s experiences as a convert in Egypt and the implications of his conversion for the American Presbyterian mission in that country. It then considers his career in China by assessing his work, impact, 12 Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Frans Wijsen and Robert Schreiter, eds., Global Christianity: Contested Claims (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007). 13 Mike Featherstone, Undoing Culture: Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity (London: Sage, 1995), 13– 14. See also Arjun Appadurai, “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy,” in Mike Featherstone, ed., Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity (London: Sage, 1990), 295– 310; and Arjun Appadurai, ed., Globalization (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001). 14 Sheridan Gilley and Brian Stanley, eds., World Christianities, c. 1815– 1915 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 15 Lewis R. Rambo, Understanding Religious Conversion (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993). On the idea of conversion as a “self-constitutive act,” see also Simon Coleman, “Continuous Conversion? The Rhetoric, Practice, and Rhetorical Practice of Charismatic Protestant Conversion,” in Andrew Buckser and Stephen D. Glazier, eds., The Anthropology of Religious Conversion (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 15–27. 16 Robert W. Hefner, “Of Faith and Commitment: Christian Conversion in Muslim Java,” in Robert W. Hefner, ed., Conversion to Christianity: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives on a Great Transformation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 99–125.

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and place within the British mission that originally deployed him. Ultimately, the career of Ahmed Fahmy was both unique and representative. His experience of converting from Islam to Christianity in Egypt and then of becoming a medical evangelist in China (where he appears to have been the only non-Anglo listed on the LMS roster of “English” missionaries17) made him a rare cultural hybrid, indeed, one of a kind. Yet, the trajectories of his emigration from Egypt, together with his participation in a global missionary movement, made him an embodiment of an Anglo-American Protestant movement that was fostering the plurality of “world Christianities.”18

II. AHMED FAHMY IN EGYPT What do we know about Ahmed Fahmy? From American Presbyterian missionary sources, including the diaries of missionaries who described his conversion as it unfolded, we can gather that he came from an upstanding and prosperous Muslim family that owned estates in Minya (Middle Egypt) and a residence in Cairo. Ahmed himself had studied for a time at al-Azhar, the venerable Sunni Muslim university mosque, and had some knowledge of English and French. His father held the respected post of chief clerk in a Muslim court of appeal. Ahmed had two brothers, named Muhammad and Mahmud, and all three of them had attended the American mission boys’ school in Cairo: this would have been in the 1870s, when wealthy Muslim students were beginning to attend missionary schools in greater numbers, encouraged by parents who wanted sons and daughters to learn European languages and gain exposure to Western ideas.19 One of Ahmed’s brothers was even working for the American missionaries in Minya at the time Ahmed professed his Christian belief. About Ahmed’s mother, the missionary sources only say that she grieved upon his baptism and pled with him to recant.20 In 1875, when Ahmed was fifteen, the mission hired him to teach Arabic to one of the new female missionaries, Miss Margaret Smith (1847 – 1932), and 17

SOAS CWM, Annotated Register of L.M.S. Missionaries. Gilley and Stanley, eds., World Christianities. 19 Elizabeth Kelsey Kinnear, She Sat Where They Sat: A Memoir of Anna Young Thompson of Egypt (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1971). See p. 36 regarding Muslim females attending American mission schools in the 1870s. In 1878, on his matriculation papers for Edinburgh University, Ahmed wrote that he had attended the American mission school in Cairo for nine years: EUL, Records for Ahmed Fahmy, “First Matrics 1878,” shelf mark Da 34. 20 The three most important sources are: Andrew Watson, The American Mission in Egypt, 1854 to 1896, 2nd ed. (Pittsburgh: United Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1904), 305–311; Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia (henceforth PHS), RG 58-1-10: Anna Young Thompson Papers, Diary, 1872–1880; PHS RG 210-3-6: Andrew Watson, Diaries, July 1877– December 1877. 18

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they read various devotional books together, including a daily chapter from the Bible. “After several months with Miss Smith,” the senior missionary Andrew Watson wrote, “he began to ask questions, and finally he became satisfied as to the truth of Christianity.” When Ahmed professed faith and underwent baptism in 1877, Watson added, “news of his defection from the religion of his fathers spread rapidly through the city.”21 Thus Ahmed became an apostate, violating the Muslim doctrine and popular belief that conversion into Islam was permitted but conversion out was not. Theoretically, scholars point out, the Islamic legal tradition provided apostates with opportunities to recant but failing that cited death as the ultimate sanction for renouncing Islam;22 in practice, in the Egypt of Ahmed Fahmy, the first line of sanction was pressure—intense pressure to recant under threat of assault and possible death.23 The goal for Muslim society—and indeed more specifically for Ahmed’s family—was to return the apostate, alive and whole, to the fold. American missionaries described the pressures that Ahmed faced after his baptism, along with his efforts to take sanctuary in the mission house. Missionaries reported that Ahmed’s brothers and friends came to plead with him after his baptism. When that failed, they reported, some friends and relatives dressed up as peasants, waited outside the mission house, and kidnapped him by hauling him away in a horse-drawn wagon. Thereupon they confined him in his father’s house. The missionaries appealed to American and British consuls, who interceded with the Khedive Isma’il (ruler of Egypt, 1863 – 1879) and his government to extract information and guarantees for Ahmed’s safety. Yet Egyptian authorities reportedly said that Ahmed’s father had “a right to retain him” while the consuls declared it “a very delicate case.”24 Andrew Watson, the primary missionary source on this issue, concluded that the Egyptian government “would rather have the name of religious intolerance than do justice.”25 The missionary Anna Young Thompson (who had also studied Arabic with Ahmed Fahmy) wrote in her diary at the time that a certain “Sharif Pasha” sought help against the missionaries from the Khedive, who ambiguously declared, “There is freedom of religion; nothing can be done.” Sharif Pasha also appealed to the rector of al-Azhar, who reportedly said that Ahmed should be burned.26 21

Watson, The American Mission in Egypt, 305 –307. See chapter 4, “Apostasy,” in Yohanan Friedmann, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam: Interfaith Relations in the Muslim Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 121–159. 23 Heather J. Sharkey, “Muslim Apostasy, Christian Conversion, and Religious Freedom in Egypt: A Study of American Missionaries, Western Imperialism, and Human Rights Agendas,” in Rosalind I. J. Hackett, ed., Proselytization Revisited: Rights, Free Markets, and Culture Wars (London: Equinox, 2008), 139– 166. 24 PHS RG 210-3-6: Andrew Watson, diary entries for December 22 and December 25, 1877. 25 PHS RG 210-3-6: Andrew Watson, diary entry for December 24, 1877. 26 PHS RG 58-1-10: Anna Young Thompson, diary entry for November 19, 1877. 22

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Meanwhile, Andrew Watson claimed, the family variously threatened to kill Ahmed (according to one version, by hiring Greek thugs to do him in, and later by threatening to poison him), hired a sheikh to write amulets to restore his Muslim faith, and forced him to sign a document of recantation in the office of the chief of police. Eventually he got word to the missionaries that his Christian faith was intact and escaped to one of their houses.27 News of Ahmed Fahmy reached the young Lord Aberdeen, who happened to be in Egypt on his honeymoon. This was the seventh Lord Aberdeen, also known as John Campbell Hamilton-Gordon, who went on to serve as governor-general of Canada from 1893 to 1898.28 His father, the fifth Lord Aberdeen, had been a devout evangelical Christian who was passionate about ministering to the British poor and who was inspired by the Ragged Schools Movement.29 The elder Aberdeen had gone to Egypt in the early 1860s in an attempt to recover from what was probably tuberculosis. There he developed friendships with American Presbyterian missionaries and with them launched an initiative to distribute Arabic Bibles in Upper Egypt.30 This fifth Lord Aberdeen had died in 1864, thirteen years before Ahmed Fahmy’s conversion. Yet when his son, the seventh Aberdeen, arrived in Egypt as a honeymooner in 1877, he sought out his father’s old friends among the American Presbyterians and heard about Ahmed Fahmy’s travails. Aberdeen decided to take the young man under his wing and arranged his escape from Egypt—claiming in his memoirs that he found an English sea captain to collude with them, smuggled Ahmed Fahmy on board, and foiled an Egyptian search party. Lord Aberdeen then arranged for Ahmed Fahmy to study medicine in Scotland and supported him for the decade that followed. Lord Aberdeen’s memoirs, written in 1925 and reflecting primarily on his career in Canada, constitute a valuable source about Ahmed Fahmy and his career as an e´migre´.31 27

Watson, The American Mission in Egypt, 305–311. The fourth Lord Aberdeen served as prime minister of Britain from 1852 to 1855, and along with Lord Elgin (of Elgin Marbles fame) also excavated and shipped Greek antiquities to the U.K. The fifth Lord Aberdeen was an evangelical Christian interested in poor relief and Bible distribution. The sixth Lord Aberdeen, eldest son of the evangelist, died off the coast of Galveston, Texas, while working incognito as a sailor. 29 C. J. Montague, Sixty Years in Waifdom, or, The Ragged School Movement in English History (1904), reprinted with an introduction by Katharine F. Lenroot (Montclair, N.J.: Patterson Smith, 1970). This movement strongly influenced the British missionary Mary Whately in Egypt: M. L. Whately, Ragged Life in Egypt, and More About Ragged Life in Egypt, new ed. (London: Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday, 1870). 30 The Rev. E. B. Elliott, ed., Memoir of Lord Haddo, in His Latter Years, Fifth Earl of Aberdeen, 5th rev. ed. (London: Seeley, Jackson and Halliday, 1869); and Heather J. Sharkey, “American Missionaries, the Arabic Bible, and Coptic Reform in Late Nineteenth-Century Egypt,” unpublished paper. 31 John Campbell Gordon, Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair, and Ishbel Gordon, Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair, “We Twa”: Reminiscences of Lord and Lady Aberdeen, 2 vols. (London: W. Collins Sons & Co., 1925). 28

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Four points regarding Ahmed Fahmy’s experience in Egypt deserve closer attention: First, as part of the effort to persuade Ahmed Fahmy to recant, Ahmed’s family enlisted help from Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838 – 1897), the most famous Muslim activist of the late nineteenth-century Islamic world, and a man who became closely identified with the pan-Islamic, Muslim anticolonial, and Muslim modernist movements.32 (Afghani still has many supporters today; for example, the Swiss Muslim thinker Tariq Ramadan [b. 1962] cites him as a major inspiration.33) Strikingly, the American missionaries held Afghani in contempt because they regarded him, in Andrew Watson’s words, as “more of an infidel than a Muhammadan.”34 Nearly a century later, one Middle East historian wrote in a similar vein that Afghani practiced a “false but shadowy devotion” for the sake of his activism.35 Anna Young Thompson, a young missionary who overheard the discussion that occurred in the mission house, described in her diary the appearance of this “learned Moslim man known as ‘The Philosopher’ for his much & overwhelming talk & arguments, [a man] from Persia or Afghanistan . . . who can argue that there is a God or that there is none.” She heard them discussing Christ, Muhammad, the Bible, and Voltaire and added, “Our friends said these men had no religion, that they were nearly infidels. But Ahmed’s father had sent them to talk and he Ahmed was not afraid to answer them.”36 Afghani’s cameo appearance in the story of Ahmed Fahmy offers a neat illustration of the intersecting global histories of Islam and Christianity, on Egyptian soil, in this period. Second, American missionaries lost touch with Ahmed Fahmy after his departure from Egypt and were only dimly aware of his subsequent career as a missionary in China. Nevertheless, American Presbyterians continued to cite the case of Ahmed Fahmy in subsequent histories of the mission, to view his experience as a case study in the trials facing Egyptian converts from Islam, and to connect his experiences to the struggle for what they called religious liberty in Egypt. In important ways he embodied both the missionaries’ hopes and disappointments in Egypt. For example, in 1907, thirteen years before he inaugurated the American University in Cairo, Charles R. Watson (the son of the mission leader Andrew Watson) 32 Nikki R. Keddie, An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religious Writings of Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). 33 Ian Buruma, “Tariq Ramadan Has an Identity Issue,” The New York Times Magazine, February 4, 2007; Tariq Ramadan, Western Muslims and the Future of Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 34 Watson, The American Mission in Egypt, 308. 35 Elie Kedourie, Afghani and Abduh: An Essay on Religious Unbelief and Political Activism in Modern Islam (New York: The Humanities Press, 1966), 45. 36 PHS RG 58-1-10: Anna Young Thompson, diary entry for November 15, 1877.

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concluded that the case of Ahmed Fahmy “showed that the day had passed when a Moslem could be legally put to death in Egypt for becoming a Christian, but it also revealed the power of Islam and its relentless hostility toward Christianity.”37 American missionaries continued to celebrate Ahmed Fahmy’s conversion for years to come, describing his case even in the mission’s centennial history published in 1958.38 Yet they appear to have believed that, as the son of a well-to-do and well-connected Muslim family, Ahmed Fahmy was able to persist in being a Christian and to go on to a missionary career because he left Egypt. Ahmed Fahmy certainly gained, through emigration, the freedom to reinvent himself as an English-speaking evangelical Christian. Third, the idea of Egyptian emigration to North America appears to have been in the air when Ahmed Fahmy’s baptism occurred. This idea gained momentum so that, by the late twentieth century, encounters with American mission-founded institutions, and above all with mission schools, eased the path of emigration for Egyptians, both Muslim and Christian, to the United States.39 The missionary Anna Young Thompson confided to her diary on November 17, 1877, that Ahmed’s brothers accused him of converting merely so that he could “marry an American wife, & go to America & get an education.”40 And indeed, his relationship with Margaret Smith— officially just a relationship between tutor and student—may have contributed to his evangelical turn. According to Thompson, Ahmed’s own family believed that physical or romantic attraction was at play, and suggested marriage to a suitable Egyptian woman as a possible cure for his malaise.41 As it happened, Ahmed went to Scotland, not the U.S., for an education. But twenty-eight years later, following the death of his first, Scottish wife in a cholera epidemic, Ahmed did marry an American—in a Protestant union church in Hong Kong—and only then made his way to America.42 Finally, among indigenous Egyptian Christians (that is, Copts) in the nineteenth century, hybrid identities were becoming more common—and more accepted—as missionary activities inspired some Egyptian Christians to leave Coptic Orthodoxy for Protestant or Catholic churches. In the late nineteenth century, Copts of all sectarian backgrounds were also increasingly 37 Charles R. Watson, Egypt and the Christian Crusade (New York: Young People’s Missionary Movement, 1907), 174 –177. 38 Earl E. Elder, Vindicating a Vision: The Story of the American Mission in Egypt, 1854– 1954 (Philadelphia: The United Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, 1958), 76–77. 39 Sharkey, American Evangelicals in Egypt, 3, 7, 229– 230. 40 PHS RG 58-1-10: Anna Young Thompson, diary entry for November 17, 1877. 41 PHS RG 58-1-10: Anna Young Thompson, diary entry for December 24, 1877. 42 SOAS CWM, Annotated Register of L.M.S. Missionaries, 1796–1923, Appendix A, p. 176 #854, “FAHMY, Ahmed.”

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intermarrying, producing hybrid Catholic-Orthodox, Protestant-Catholic, and Protestant-Orthodox households. Church authorities (Orthodox, Protestant, and Catholic alike) were often unhappy about these “mixed marriages” but had no legal power to prevent them.43 By contrast, Egyptian Muslim authorities and families, often backed up on the ground by local police forces, did have considerable legal and social power to prevent Muslim apostates from retaining or gaining their social footings and from establishing hybrid Muslim-Christian households.44 In short, there was no culture of live-and-let-live that would have allowed a Muslim-born (and high-born) man like Ahmed Fahmy to carve out a Christian existence in Cairo. When he jumped on the ship in Alexandria harbor, Ahmed Fahmy may have believed that staying Christian would mean leaving Egypt and creating a career, family, and community anew.

III. AHMED FAHMY

IN

CHINA

Information about Ahmed is scanty for the ten years after his departure from Egypt. An LMS register of missionaries records that after reaching Britain early in 1878 he began to study medicine and liberal arts in Edinburgh. Edinburgh University records confirm that he matriculated in 1878 and completed his qualifying medical examinations in 1886.45 On January 20, 1887, he married Mary Auchterlonie Chalmers in Edinburgh; twenty days later, he and his bride sailed for China.46 On April 1, 1887, the couple arrived in Amoy, Fukien (Fujian) province, and set out to open a new mission station in the nearby city of “Chiang Chiu” (also known as Changchew, or Zhangzhou), thereby becoming, according to the LMS sources, the “first foreigners” in that locale.47 Missionaries described Zhangzhou at the time as a prosperous, but still very provincial, small city located in southeast China; it had a strong agricultural base and centuries-old connections to the silk trade. Its residents, whom an LMS chronicler described as “proud and haughty,” and as having “the most supreme contempt for foreigners,” greeted the arrival of Ahmed and Mary Fahmy, 43

Ibid., 73– 76. Islamic law stipulates that Muslim men can marry Christian women, but that Christian men cannot marry or remain married to Muslim women. If a married Muslim man converts to Christianity and persists in his apostasy, then an Islamic court can unilaterally divorce him from his Muslim wife. 45 EUL, Records for Ahmed Fahmy, “Preliminary Examination and Course of Study [Medicine],” in “Medical Graduates 1886,” shelf mark Da 43. 46 SOAS CWM, Annotated Register of L.M.S. Missionaries, 1796–1923, Appendix A, p. 176 #854, “FAHMY, Ahmed.” 47 The Chronicle of the London Missionary Society, vol. XI, 1902, pp. 160 and 204, announcing the death of Mary Fahmy of “Chiang Chiu.” 44

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and of missionaries in general, with some hostility.48 In 1987, one hundred years after the couple’s arrival in Zhangzhou, one of their missionary successors in the city looked back on the missionary enterprise and remarked, “Foreigners, then in the 1880s, were not welcomed generally [in Zhangzhou], and Dr. Fahmy was stoned on occasion.”49 Information on Ahmed Fahmy grows richer after 1887, when he began to send letters and reports from China to the LMS headquarters in London. In Zhangzhou, Ahmed opened the town’s first Western hospital, which he called in colloquial Chinese the “Hokim I-Kuan” or the “Gospel Healing House.” Papers show that he was the driving force and organizational dynamo behind this venture until his retirement in 1919. Ahmed Fahmy wrote so much like an English evangelical missionary of this period and, indeed, he signed all his papers “A. Fahmy” (thereby reducing his quintessentially Muslim given name, Ahmed, to an initial) that one might never have known that he began his life in Egypt.50 Judging from his writings, his cultural conversion from Egyptian-Muslim to Anglo-Christian was, by the time he reached China, substantial. “The Hospital work is divided into two distinct, though naturally and intrinsically intermingling, departments,” he wrote in an 1888 report, “. . . the evangelistic and the medical. While the former is doubtless the main and grand object of the Institution, the latter is nevertheless the practical expression of God’s ‘good will toward men,’ and men’s fraternal love toward one another; and is also the Door thro’ which we usher in these long-benighted heathen within hearing of the ‘Glad news of Salvation.’”51 He wrote in an 1891 report, meanwhile, From the outset I have kept it steadily before me that, while the object of the hospital is to relieve suffering, its chief end is the salvation of souls. To attain this object services are held, in the hospital Chapel, morning and evening; 48 Richard Lovett, The History of the London Missionary Society, 1795–1895, vol. 2 (London: Henry Frowde, 1899), 487–488. 49 SOAS, papers of Dr. Douglas Harman and Mrs. Gladys Harman, MS 380815/1/1: “A History of Mission Medical Work in Changchow Fukien, China II”: A Letter from Gladys Busby, 18 February 1987. 50 An isolated reference to his Muslim origins did appear in his first year as an LMS missionary: this was in the society’s Chronicle for 1888—the same volume that reported his establishment of the Zhangzhou hospital. Ahmed Fahmy disputed the claim of a church canon who had suggested that conversion to Islam (apparently among practitioners of local religions) could be a stepping-stone to Christianity, and who had claimed that slavery and polygamy had little foundation in Islamic religion: Ahmed Fahmy, “South China, Work for the Medical Missionary” and “Mohammedanism as it Is” in the Rev. George Cousins, ed., The Chronicle of the London Missionary Society for the Year 1888 (London: London Missionary Society, 1889), 175– 176, 326–327. 51 A. Fahmy to the Rev. Wardlaw Thompson, London Mission, Foreign Secretary, dated Chiangchiu, S. China, London Mission Hospital, 31 January 1889, in SOAS CWM China—Fukien, reports, box 1, file 96, 1888.

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“Thirty Years in Changchow: A Beloved Physician,” by C. G. Sparham, photograph taken at Ahmed Fahmy’s retirement party in Zhangzhou, south Fukien, China, on December 12, 1918. Reproduced from the London Missionary Society/Council for World Mission Archives.

and daily the inpatients are taught to read and to commit to memory hymns and passages of Scripture. Again, on outpatients’ days, special evangelistic services are held; and as many of the outpatients as possible are conversed with individually. I always lay much stress on dealing with individual souls, and, while I do not deny the value of preaching from Platforms, I can never be persuaded that it can ever equal, in China at least, where people are so spiritually dull and utterly indifferent to all that concerns the higher life, conversational teaching.52 With his comments on the spiritual “dullness” of the Chinese, Ahmed Fahmy sounded the tone of cultural imperiousness that was common among so many British and American missionaries of this era.53 What impact did Ahmed Fahmy have on the Zhangzhou community, and how did his work relate to the LMS mission that sponsored him? Here, too, a few points are salient. 52 A. Fahmy to the Rev. R. Wardlaw Thompson, dated Chiang-chiu Hospital,10 January 1891, SOAS CWM China—Fukien, reports, box 1, file 98, 1890. 53 See, for example, accounts in Jane Hunter, The Gospel of Gentility: American Women Missionaries in Turn-of-the-Century China (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1984).

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First, Ahmed Fahmy influenced the culture, practice, and business of local medicine, and judging from his reports and from the assessment of one of his successors, he did so with little help from the LMS.54 He performed appendectomies, removed tumors and gallstones, operated on eyes, amputated limbs, treated fractures, did plastic surgery on faces, and more. He carried out and promoted smallpox vaccinations and—at a time when Protestant missionaries were speaking out loudly against the British opium trade55—treated recovering opium addicts. Perhaps most significantly, he trained young Chinese men as his medical assistants, and by 1896 several of these had become Christians and had gone on to establish their own “medicine shops” in the town. (This missionary practice of training local assistants may help to explain why, by 1900, Chinese Protestants throughout the country were disproportionately represented in professions like medicine.56) Ahmed Fahmy claimed that he had to keep training new assistants because these local medicine shops, which he likened in 1902 to “branch dispensaries” of his hospital, were so lucrative.57 By 1908, Ahmed reported, thirteen medical shops were being operated in Zhangzhou, all of them by his own former assistants or by those who had trained with other missions.58 By 1913, all five of his new trainees were secondgeneration Chinese Christians, and one of these was the son of a woman who had recovered from an opium addiction and had then embraced Christianity.59 Judging from Ahmed Fahmy’s letters and reports, his hospital treated mainly poor and humble people and had a clientele that was mainly illiterate. On occasions when a high-ranking “mandarin” sought treatment, it earned special mention in his reports.60 Most of his patients were male: out of 2,885 new patients treated in 1896 (out of 12,349 total cases), only 528, or 18

54 SOAS, papers of Dr. Douglas Harman and Mrs. Gladys Harman, MS 380815/1/1: “A History of Mission Medical Work in Changchow Fukien, China II”: A Letter from Gladys Busby, 18 February 1987. 55 Kathleen L. Lodwick, Crusaders against Opium: Protestant Missionaries in China, 1874– 1917 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995). 56 Ryan Dunch, Fuzhou Protestants and the Making of a Modern China, 1857– 1927 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001), xvii, 36. 57 A. Fahmy, “Report of the Chiang-Chiu Hospital for 1902,” in SOAS CWM China—Fukien, reports, box 3, file 110, 1902. 58 A. Fahmy to the Rev. G. Cousins, dated L.M.S. Chiang-Chiu, Amoy, 18 April 1908, in SOAS, CWM South China—Fukien—Incoming Correspondence, box 9, folder 1, 1908. 59 A. Fahmy, “Report of the Changchowfu Hospital for 1913” in SOAS CWM China—Fukien, reports, box 4, file 121, 1913; and letter from Ahmed Fahmy to the Rev. Frank Lenwood, London Mission, Chanchowfu [sic], Amoy, 13 January 1913, in SOAS CWM China—Fukien—Incoming Correspondence, box 11, folder 1, 1913. 60 A. Fahmy to the Rev. R. Wardlaw Thompson, dated London Mission, Chiangchiu, Amoy, 30 December 1893, in SOAS CWM China—Fukien, reports, box 2, file 101, 1893.

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percent, were women.61 In the long run, Ahmed Fahmy’s hospital became the foundation for a joint Protestant hospital in Zhangzhou, operated by the LMS, the English Presbyterians, and the RCA, though Japanese bombs destroyed this hospital during World War II.62 His American widow, Susan Rankin Duryee Fahmy (1864– 1961), provided a bequest that enabled missionaries to build a new hospital in Zhangzhou, though the Communist Chinese government eventually nationalized it.63 In the 1980s a small group of retired American and British missionaries went to Zhangzhou and visited the government hospital that had evolved from Ahmed Fahmy’s efforts.64 It is much harder to assess the impact that Ahmed Fahmy had on the propagation of Christianity in Zhangzhou and its environs. In 1893 he reported that just twenty-four people, out of 13,145 patients treated during the previous year, had registered a turn to Christianity.65 He acknowledged that his medical work was just one part of the process by writing, in 1917, Actual conversions in the wards is a veritable rarity [sic], notwithstanding the oft repeated assent of the hearers to all you say to them on matters of faith and belief. And so I for one, at any rate, do not believe in hospital conversion, in the sense of sudden awakening to spiritual verities, and giving up of old beliefs long ingrained into their very being and forming as it were an essential part of their nature. Those who know the Chinese as I do can scarcely believe that conversion, as we understand it, is possible within the short time such patients usually remain with us in the hospital. And so I always look to the churches, to which such cases are entrusted, to lead such adherents on to the goal we all have in view. The time needed is inevitably long, and the effort required undoubtedly great before the lost sheep is brought back to the fold.66 His papers suggest that he devised his own system for evangelical outreach. Thus he required each patient who came to his hospital to attend daily hymn-singing and worship services, and he made sure that illiterate patients 61

“Report of the Chiangchiu Hospital for the year ending December 31st, 1896,” in SOAS CWM China—Fukien, reports, box 2, file 104, 1896. 62 SOAS, Papers of Dr. Douglas Harman and Mrs. Gladys Harman, MS 380815/1/1: “A History of Mission Medical Work in Changchow Fukien, China III,” description of events from 1941 to 1951 and from 1985. See also Norman Goodall, A History of the London Missionary Society, 1895–1945 (London: Oxford University Press, 1954), 189– 190, 518– 519. 63 SOAS, papers of Dr. Douglas Harman and Mrs. Gladys Harman, MS 380815/1/2: D. J. Harman to Mrs. Johnston, dated Eltham, London, 14 November 1987. 64 SOAS, papers of Dr. Douglas Harman and Mrs. Gladys Harman, MS 380815/1/1: “A History of Mission Medical Work in Changchow Fukien, China III,” description of events from 1941 to 1951 and from 1985. 65 A. Fahmy to the Rev. R. W. Thompson, dated London Mission, Chiangchiu, Amoy, China, 19 January 1893, in SOAS CWM China—Fukien, reports, box 2, file 100, 1892. 66 A. Fahmy, “Report of the Changchow Hospital for the year ending December 31, 1917,” in SOAS CWM China—Fukien, reports, box 4, file 125, 1917.

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were taught to memorize colloquial Chinese hymns. In a 1900 report he explained further that “every inpatient when discharged is given a letter of introduction to the preacher of the church nearest his home. By this means we are enabled to follow up many of the cases who wd [sic] otherwise be lost as possible fruits of our labours.”67 Like missionaries around the world, Ahmed Fahmy sometimes despaired over the paucity or slow rate of conversions, even as he noted in reports to London special cases of people who, feeling miraculously cured, embraced Christianity and in his words renounced or destroyed their “idols” and “ancestral Tablets.”68 Eventually a small Christian community took root in the town, clustered around churches that missionaries founded. Douglas Harman, who regarded himself as Ahmed Fahmy’s successor and who worked as a medical missionary in the town from 1939 to 1950 (when missionaries were forced to leave China), recalled the presence of a thriving and close-knit Chinese Protestant community in Zhangzhou. Harman’s papers show that in the 1980s—after a gulf of silence that had extended some thirty years—he and his missionary colleagues were able to reestablish contact with the children and grandchildren of Chinese Christians they had known. (Harman claimed, too, that many of the elderly Chinese Christians he had known during his own missionary career had remembered Ahmed Fahmy with particular fondness).69 The situation that Ryan Dunch described, vis-a`-vis Chinese Protestants in Fuzhou (another city in Fujian province) before and after the Nationalist Revolution of 1926 – 1927, sounds potentially applicable to Zhangzhou: the Chinese public’s openness to a Protestant civic vision may have ended in the late 1920s, but Chinese Protestantism persisted. “There were twice as many Protestants in China in 1949 as in 1927,” Dunch observed, “and there were at least ten times as many at the end of the 1990s as there were in 1949.”70 Ahmed Fahmy’s relationship to the British LMS mission and to British society at large was fascinating but also sad. He became increasingly detached from the LMS, which struggled with problems of finances. LMS contributions to Ahmed’s hospital declined until, by 1902, Ahmed had devised a scaled system of fee-paying among patients that enabled him to make his hospital wholly self-supporting.71 Even then, he noted in 1903, 67 A. Fahmy, Chiang-chiu Hospital report for the year ending 31 December 1900, in SOAS CWM China—Fukien, reports, box 2, file 108, 1900. 68 A. Fahmy, Report of the Chiang-chiu Hospital for 1901, SOAS CWM China—Fukien, reports, box 2, file 109, 1901. 69 SOAS, Papers of Dr. Douglas Harman and Mrs. Gladys Harman, MS 380815, including correspondence from Jessie Platz. 70 Dunch, Fuzhou Protestants and the Making of a Modern China, 194– 195. 71 A. Fahmy, Report of the Chiang-Chiu Hospital for 1902, SOAS CWM China—Fukien, reports, box 3, file 110, 1902.

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only half the hospital’s funding came from patient fees (which he waived for about the 6 percent of patients who were deemed poorest); Ahmed raised the other funds by serving as a physician to missionaries of the RCA.72 Thus the missionary experience as he knew it, in Egypt as later in China, was intrinsically ecumenical and Anglo-American. Ahmed Fahmy’s hospital operated on the margins of the LMS mission while Ahmed himself lived, in some ways, on the margins of British society. Clearly there were those who registered his origins in Egypt. Consider the fate of his Scottish wife, Mary, who had worked as a schoolteacher for the mission (but without being recognized and salaried as a “missionary”) ever since reaching China in 1887. According to Lord Aberdeen, when Mary Fahmy died in a cholera epidemic in 1902, the British consul “prevented her burial in the British cemetery” on the grounds that her husband, Ahmed, was not a British subject himself. Ahmed had to bury her instead on a piece of land on the city fringes, on a plot over which buildings and roads were eventually built.73 Similarly, Ahmed had registered his eldest son as a British national during a furlough in Scotland but had not done the same for his younger children, so that British consular officials in China later refused to register them as British subjects in the opening years of the twentieth century. Lord Aberdeen, by this time retired as governor-general of Canada, stepped in to help, claiming in his memoirs that he “had much correspondence with the Foreign Office, whose officials were quite friendly, but could not find means to over-ride the action of the British Consul [in China], which was technically correct.” Aberdeen also wrote that, “When the Boxer riots arose, fresh difficulties presented themselves, for Dr. Ahmed Fahmy and his family and hospital had no right to British protection.” Aberdeen managed to persuade the Foreign Office “to send a letter to the British Consul requesting him [sic]”—as opposed to requiring him—“to give protection to Dr. Fahmy and his mission [hospital].” Aberdeen added, “Ultimately the question of his nationality was solved through his marriage to an American lady as his second wife, and subsequently he became an American citizen.”74 His second wife, ne´e Susan Rankin Duryee, had been an RCA missionary in Amoy, and they met at interdenominational Protestant missionary meetings in the district.

72

A. Fahmy, “Decennial report of the Changchow Hospital, 1900–1910,” in CWM China— Fukien, reports, box 4, file 118, 1910. 73 Gordon and Gordon, “We Twa,” vol. 1, 182– 184. A later reference to the built-over burial site appears in D. J. Harman to Mrs. Johnston (granddaughter of Ahmed Fahmy), dated Eltham, London, 14 November 1987, SOAS, papers of Dr. Douglas Harman and Mrs. Gladys Harman, MS 380815. 74 Gordon and Gordon, “We Twa,” vol. 1, 182– 184.

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Ahmed Fahmy’s children, all born in China, fared differently. His younger son, Eric Fahmy, was deemed British enough to fight with British troops in World War I, where he died in France.75 His elder son, Ernest Chalmers Fahmy, whom he had managed to register as British during a furlough, played on the Scottish national rugby team and went on to become a distinguished obstetrician and gynecologist in Edinburgh, at one time serving as president of the Edinburgh Obstetric Society.76 His daughter, Alice Duryee Fahmy, was American, and settled in her mother’s home state, New Jersey.77 His family, like much of the Protestant missionary movement itself, was Anglo-American.

IV. CONCLUSION: AHMED FAHMY AND THE MAKING OF WORLD CHRISTIANITIES The best most historians can usually do in tracing the global diffusion of Christian cultures through missions is to study individual organizations like the London Missionary Society, which operated in places as diverse as China, Botswana, and Samoa. Ahmed Fahmy offers us a one-man tracing of the Anglo-American missionary movement in this seminal period: we can approach the study of the global diffusion of Christianity through his life and career. He places Egypt at the center of a world that had Britain and North America on one side and China on the other. As the prote´ge´ of American missionaries who found a place among British evangelists, he rationalizes the term “Anglo-American” with reference to the modern Protestant missionary movement and illustrates the import of the trans-Atlantic alliance. He shows how a missionary encounter in Egypt was able to have ramifications for a later missionary encounter in China and draws together, though his personal experiences, the modern histories of Islam and Christianity. For all these reasons, Ahmed Fahmy is an exemplar of “world Christianities,” and of transnational linkages, in our current age of globalization. Yet his life and career also point to the challenges that faced 75

The Chronicle of the London Missionary Society, vol. XXIII (New Series), 1915: “Killed in action in France on September 25, 1915, Sergeant Eric P. Fahmy, 8th Battalion Seaforths, elder son of Dr. A. Fahmy, Changchowfu, Amoy, China, aged 24.” 76 Ernest Chalmers Fahmy (d. 1982) co-authored, with William Francis Theodore Haultain, AnteNatal Care: A Practical Hand-Book of Ante-Natal Care and the Abnormalities Associated with Pregnancy (Edinburgh: E. & S. Livingstone, 1929). Also, see details by searching for “Ernest Fahmy” on the rugby website at http://www.scrum.com (accessed 6 January 2009). Detailed information on his career appeared in an obituary published in the Edinburgh University Journal (1983). 77 Letter from Jessie Platz to Douglas and Gladys Harman, dated Hanover, Pa., 13 July 1988, in SOAS, papers of Dr. Douglas Harman and Mrs. Gladys Harman, MS 380815/1/1.

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him as a convert who sought not only social acceptance, but social inclusion, within the British circles he entered upon fleeing Egypt. Ahmed Fahmy’s Christianity, moreover, was the product of an imperial age. The geographic sweep of his career crossed the length of the British Empire and moved within the orbit of the Anglo-American Protestant missionary movement that followed in the empire’s footsteps. Even if, as one historian has claimed, many English-speaking missionaries regarded their “relationship with empire as deeply ambiguous at best” and were sometimes inclined to hold anti-colonial sentiments,78 the experience of a convert like Ahmed Fahmy serves as a reminder that British authorities—or missionaries—abroad could be not only imperial, but imperious. The universalism of the missionaries’ Christian message worked in tension with the cultural biases and social hierarchies that were inherent in colonial encounters. Ahmed Fahmy became a leader in the local missionary community of Zhangzhou, China, and distinguished himself in his medical work. LMS records never emphasized his Egyptianness or his non-Britishness, although an LMS historian, writing in 1954 (twenty-one years after Ahmed’s death, and a few years after the lapse of the foreign missions in mainland China) did refer to Ahmed Fahmy’s origins in a Muslim family while praising his medical enterprise.79 On paper, as “A. Fahmy,” Ahmed looked and sounded as British as any other LMS missionary. Yet Lord Aberdeen attested that origin and nationality did matter. Officially Ahmed Fahmy became a Christian, a missionary, and an American, but he never managed to become English or British. His inability to secure British citizenship, despite his close identification with Britain and with a British mission society, shows that his own cultural and social conversion had limits. In some sense, he remained to the end of his life on the margins, neither really Egyptian nor really English.

78 79

Porter, Religion versus Empire?, 13. Goodall, A History of the London Missionary Society, 189–190.

Church History 78:2 (June 2009), 327– 349. # 2009, American Society of Church History doi:10.1017/S0009640709000511 Printed in the USA

Caring Beyond National Borders: The YMCA and Chinese Laborers in World War I Europe1 PETER CHEN-MAIN WANG

I

T is well known that 175,000 Chinese laborers worked for Allied troops in Europe during World War I.2 This phenomenon has been recorded in major WWI histories and has become the topic of monographs in Chinese and Western languages.3 Chinese laborers solved the Allied problem of a serious manpower shortage and made contributions to military fieldwork, construction, and factory work.4 Comparatively speaking, few scholars have 1 The author would like to take this opportunity to thank the Hoover Institution for its grant and for visiting researcher status, which allowed him to conduct this research at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. 2 There is no way to know the exact figure of Chinese laborers in Europe, or in France. Different sources give a range between 135,000 and 200,000. G. H. Cole, a major contemporary YMCA worker in France, said the Chinese laborers in France totaled about 140,000: G. H. Cole, “With the Chinese in France,” 12 (n.d., preserved at The Kautz Family YMCA Archives of the United States, Minneapolis, Minn., hereafter YMCA Archives of the USA). Chen Ta suggests the number of 150,000 (100,000 for the British, 40,000 for the French, and 10,000 for the Americans): Chen Ta, Chinese Migrations, with Special Reference to Labor Conditions (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1923), 143– 144. Thomas LaFargue thought there were 150,000 Chinese laborers with the British and gave the total number of the Chinese laborers as 200,000: Thomas LaFargue, China and the World War (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1937), 151. Professor Chen San-ching thinks there were about 175,000: see Chen San-ching, “Jidujiao Qingnianhui yu Ouzhan huagong” (YMCA and Chinese Laborers in Europe in WWI), Bulletin of the Institute of Modern History 17a (June 1988): 55. A more recent study says there were 135,000 Chinese workers in France: Paul J. Bailey, Reform the People: Changing Attitudes Towards Popular Education in Early Twentieth-Century China (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1990), 234. 3 The best Chinese work on this topic is Chen San-ching, Huagong yu Ouzhan (The Chinese Labor Force in the First World War) (Taipei: Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, 1986), while the leading work in English is Michael Summerskill, China on the Western Front: Britain’s Chinese Work Force in the First World War (London: Michael Summerskill, 1982). Nicholas John Griffin deals with British use of the Chinese laborers in his dissertation, “The Use of Chinese Labor by the British Army, 1916–1920” (Ph.D. diss., University of Oklahoma, 1973). It seems the earliest academic work on this topic is Judith Blick’s article “The Chinese Labor Corps in World War I,” Papers on China 9 (1955): 111 –145. 4 In addition to the Chinese, there were other foreign laborers in France, such as Indians, Spaniards, Portuguese, and Indochinese. One scholar argues that, in terms of quantity and wage, the Chinese were the most ideal for the Allied forces: Nicholas J. Griffin, “Britain’s Chinese Labor Corps in World War I,” Military Affairs 40:3 (October 1976): 104.

Peter Chen-main Wang is a professor at the Graduate Institute of History at National Central University, Taiwan.

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paid attention to the Christian work among the Chinese laborers, which gave them considerable comfort and assistance and which laid the foundation for other service to Chinese laborers in France.5 Though some people have a general understanding that the Young Men’s Christian Association (including the British YMCA and the International Committee of the YMCA in North America) was the most active and energetic group in offering assistance to the Chinese laborers, little has been written that explains the YMCA operations among the laborers, preventing a fair and thorough evaluation of the YMCA’s service to the Chinese laborers. This paper, based on material from the American YMCA Archives, the Canadian Church Archives, and some Chinese writings on this topic, attempts to investigate the origin, operation, and development of this YMCA international project and to assess its significance in church history and in modern China. Although this paper will focus on the YMCA in China, it is important to note that the Y was an internationalist organization that pioneered in the employment of indigenous personnel all over the world. The YMCA was ahead of denominational mission agencies on that score, and its commitment to multiculturalism is an important backdrop to this paper. This is an important point, for when the call went out to the YMCA in China to support the movement, there were already Chinese YMCA leaders in place who responded to the call. The YMCA worked incredibly hard, through its agents like Sherwood Eddy, Fletcher Brockman, and others, to cultivate local leaders. The internationalist matrix was already being established by the Y, not only in China but in India and elsewhere.

I. THE BACKGROUND OF CHRISTIAN SERVICE TO THE CHINESE LABORERS Christian involvement in the Allied warfare effort, in fact, was not initiated by the churches. It came from the other direction. The British government, from the beginning, employed a very delicate scheme to manipulate the churches and missionaries for its purpose. As early as 1916, when the British government faced a great manpower shortage and began to contemplate how 5 Chen San-ching wrote a follow-up article after completing Huagong yu Ouzhan that deals with the YMCA service in the Chinese Labor Corps. Chen San-ching, “Jidujiao Qingnianhui yu Ouzhan huagong” (YMCA and Chinese Laborers in Europe in WWI), 53– 70. Nicholas John Griffin also wrote an article dealing with Christian efforts for the Chinese laborers: “Chinese Labor and British Christian Missionaries in France, 1917–1919,” Journal of Church and State 20:2 (Spring 1978): 287– 304. A Canadian scholar approaches this issue from Canadian sources: Margo S. Gewurtz, “For God or for King: Canadian Missionaries and the Chinese Labour Corps in World War I,” in China Insight: Selected Papers from the Canadian Asian Studies Association Annual Conference Proceedings, 1982– 1984, ed. Min-sun Chen and Lawrence N. Shyu (Ottawa: Canadian Asian Studies Association, Carleton University, 1985), 31– 55.

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to get laborers from China, the military suggested that British missionaries in China could lend a hand in this matter. In addition to recruiting Chinese laborers, the missionaries were also employed to pacify the Chinese laborers in Europe. The British military leadership proved correct in utilizing missionary assistance in China. Unlike in the late nineteenth century, missionaries enjoyed a respectable status in early twentieth-century China.6 The Chinese, in turn, would not cast any doubt on causes advocated by the missionaries. This was especially true of the British Baptists who carried out Christian work and “won a degree of respect and even of affection among the people of Shantung [Shandong], Shanhsi [Shanxi], and Shensi [Shaanxi] provinces.”7 These particular provinces produced strong-bodied man capable of performing hard work. Therefore, the Baptists, together with other denominations, were, in the eyes of the British military, in a good position to assist the British government in the raising of the Chinese Labor Corps.8 In December 1916, the British Legation in Peking issued a formal and urgent call to British missionaries of military age in North China to join the task of creating battalions of the Chinese Labor Corps.9 To avoid any backlash over this matter, the military carefully screened out those missionaries deemed politically too liberal, progressive, or pacifist. Then, the British legation persuaded fifteen or so missionaries to accept this task and assured them that “what was requested them was compatible with their sacred calling. . . . Their work would aid the Allied war effort and would in addition redound to the credit of themselves and the faith that they served.”10 By January 1917, John Jordan, the British minister in Peking, reported to London that “we have recently started recruiting propaganda through the medium of local British Missionaries.”11 This project was successful. According to a modern scholar specializing in Baptist history, 6 The first two decades of the twentieth century were generally recognized as the “golden decades” in church history in China because the old adverse Chinese context had changed tremendously after the Boxer Rebellion. All previous anti-Christian sentiments quickly declined. Not only did the officials and gentry not dare to launch attacks on the churches, but also Confucianism, the very foundation of the Chinese traditional ideology, was put aside when the civil service examination was abolished in 1903. In the eyes of the Chinese youth, Christianity, together with western science and technology, became a source of wealth and power and suddenly was quite popular in China. 7 Griffin, “The Use of Chinese Labor by the British Army, 1916– 1920,” 206. 8 Colonel Charles Robertson, a military attache´ attached to the British legation in Peking who played a significant role in the raising of the Chinese Labor Corps, communicated with his colleagues about this matter in December 1916: Griffin, “Chinese Labor and British Christian Missionaries,” 290. 9 Gewurtz, “For God or for King,” 32. 10 Griffin, “Chinese Labor and British Christian Missionaries,” 290 –291. 11 Ibid., 291.

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of “an estimated seventy thousand Chinese enrolled in Shantung [Shandong] province, many thousands owed their decision to serve the British to the direct influence of local Baptist clergy.”12 In addition to serving as propagandists, some missionaries made a further step in helping those Chinese laborers settle into the barracks used for their accommodation in Wei-Hai-Wei, the departing port of Shandong province.13 Though there is no way to evaluate the missionary influence on the recruitment of Chinese laborers, church material did reveal that the missionaries made an effort in this matter.14 The recruiting and employment of thousands of Chinese laborers, who were mostly illiterate and had never had contact with the outside world, was no easy task for the Allies.15 Again, the British military thought about their China missionaries who were able to speak Chinese and were familiar with Chinese customs and culture. The War Office in London was afraid that the missionary presence in the labor corps might have some bad influence, preventing commanders from utilizing the Chinese to the maximum degree. Therefore, the qualifications they set for choosing the missionaries for command positions in the Chinese Labor Corps were “religious orthodoxy and doctrinal dependability, solid Anglo-Saxon cultural background, and desire to participate in the mission of ‘civilizing’ and controlling the Chinese.”16 The War Office successfully convinced various missionary societies of the compatibility between religious and patriotic duty in assisting in the employment of the Chinese laborers.17 However, because of the limited number of missionaries in China and also because of the careful selection of 12 H. R. Williamson, British Baptists in China: 1845–1952 (London: Carey Kingsgate Press, 1957), 100. 13 Griffin, “Britain’s Chinese Labor Corps in World War I,” 103. 14 In fact, many sources indicate that Hui-min Company was a major agent in recruiting laborers in China. Professor Chen San-ching gives a good description of the recruiting of Chinese laborers in his book: see Chen, Huagong yu Ouzhan, chapter 2. Based on Western material, Summerskill also gives a picture of their recruitment in China: Summerskill, China on the Western Front, chapters 7 – 8. 15 Though “recruitment” is used in this article, the formal usage of the British government is “enrollment.” “Recruitment” means “the War Office would have to accept lengthy residual responsibilities and obligations for the welfare of the men and their families,” while “enrollment” “implied an element of voluntarism.” In this way, the Chinese laborers “were completely at the disposal of the British with little or no hope of any formal recourse to their own government or its representatives.” For a detailed discussion of this issue, please see Griffin, “Britain’s Chinese Labor Corps in World War I,” 103. 16 Griffin, “The Use of Chinese Labor by the British Army, 1916–1920,” 213. 17 The missionary societies, including the Baptist Missionary Society, the Christian Missionary Society, and the China Inland Mission, did have some reservations about the invitation from the military. However, they gave up their hesitation because the military repeatedly gave them patriotic stimulus, evangelic vision, and assurance that it would offer protection to the Chinese laborers: ibid., 208– 211.

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the missionaries by the military, the British military accepted very few missionaries for the job as recruiters. Only thirteen former Baptist missionaries were allowed to accompany the Chinese to France as uniformed officers.18 As for the most active Christian group involved with the Chinese laborers, the YMCA, the War Office began considering its recreational programs for the Chinese laborers as early as December 1916. However, the field officers, for reasons unknown, initially rejected the voluntary service of the YMCA to the Chinese labor corps.19 It is said that the British army command had resisted Chinese-speaking Y secretaries, “fearing that sympathy would dilute discipline.”20 Some “unofficial” YMCA activities were held for the Chinese labor corps in late 1917, but it took a long while for them to be formally accepted and become a major factor in bringing comfort and stability to the Chinese laborers. The YMCA faced a similar situation in French camps. The French authorities were greatly suspicious of YMCA work and thought the Y people, who might spread ideas of strikes and anarchism, would interfere in their administration of the Chinese laborers. After some negotiation, the French officers allowed some initial development of Y services for Chinese laborers in late November 1917.21

II. DIFFICULTIES IN THE EMPLOYMENT OF CHINESE LABORERS IN FRANCE The ideal of a massive Chinese labor force in France was hard to transform into reality. The arrival of more and more Chinese laborers in France early in 1917 soon imposed a tough task on the British and French authorities. It was generally estimated that more than 80 percent of these laborers were illiterate.22 In addition to these illiterate farmers, there were also “students, 18

Ibid., 211. According to a YMCA source, the rejection story goes like this: “As the Chinese were streaming into France early in 1917, a Y.M.C.A. Secretary [James Webster], who had been a Missionary in Manchuria, was standing beside the railway at Etaples one day, when to his astonishment, a trainload of Chinese pulled in and stopped in front of where he was standing. He did not know what dialect they spoke but thought he would try the one he had learned and see if they understood him. To his delight he found they came from the North and that they understood one another perfectly. They had a chat. Soon the train started and the whole crowd waved their hands eagerly to their new found friend. As he stood long looking after the departing train the old love for these people rose in his heart and he longed to do something for the homeless lonely men. In that look of love was born the Chinese Y.M.C.A. in France. On his initiation application was made to the military authorities for permission to do Y.M.C.A. work among the newly arrived Chinese. The reply was a flat refusal”: Cole, “With the Chinese in France,” 14. 20 Charles W. Hayford, To the People: James Yen and Village China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 24. 21 Shi Yixuan, “Faguo liengshi foxin zhi huagong qingnianhui baogao” (Report of the Chinese Labor YMCA in Teysin, Lyons, France), Qingnian jinbu 15 (July 1918): 61. 22 Cole, “With the Chinese in France,” 20. 19

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unemployed minor officials, soldiers, and poverty-stricken lower degreeholders (xiucai).”23 They knew nothing about Europe and its languages and had not had any opportunity to become familiar with European culture. The tremendous cultural and linguistic barriers between the Chinese laborers and their commanding officers created many misunderstandings that, together with mismanagement and racial attitudes on the part of Allied officers, caused numerous conflicts, strikes, and mutinies among the Chinese labor corps. The Chinese laborers in France, generally speaking, were organized into different camps under the command of three countries. The British had twenty-three camps located in Northern France, the French eighty-seven camps, and the United States ten camps. When the American Expeditionary Forces came to France, they borrowed 10,000 Chinese from the French. The size of the camps varied. Seven British camps had more than 3,000 men per camp, while many others varied from 100 to 1,000.24 The French camps were small in size, varying from 25 to 2,000, scattered over wider areas.25 The “principal” American camps had about 1,500 each.26 The Chinese laborers in British camps were divided into companies with 500 each, which were further divided into four platoons and again subdivided into sections.27 Since the Chinese were not combatants, they, based on their contracts, were not used close to the Front. Generally speaking, they were “engaged in the handling of military supplies at ports and bases, in repairing roads and building railways, handling munitions, and even digging trenches. After the Armistice, they were sent up to the devastated areas in large numbers where they were engaged in reconstruction and salvage.”28 While the Chinese were provided with food, clothes, lodging, and the agreed salary, the treatment and working conditions varied in each camp, and conflicts occurred not long after their arrival. Basically, the French treated the Chinese 23 Bailey, Reform the People, 234. In other sources, it mentions that many of them had been members of Zhang Xun’s army: Summerskill, China on the Western Front, 151, and Dwight W. Edwards, “The Chinese Labourer in France in Relation to the Work of the Young Men’s Christian Association. Report to the International Committee of Young Men’s Christian Association of North American of Special Mission of Dwight W. Edwards in France April 13– May 11th [1918]” (YMCA Archives of the USA), 24. Zhang Xun started an abortive attempt to restore the Manchu dynasty in July 1917. 24 Chen, Chinese Migrations, 144. 25 Ibid. According to a report from the French minister of war written in spring 1918, there were “18 places where there are 1000 up of Chinese and 39 places where there are from 100 to 1000”: Edwards, “The Chinese Labourer in France in Relation to the Work of the Young Men’s Christian Association,” 19. 26 Chen, Chinese Migrations, 144. 27 Blick, “The Chinese Labor Corps in World War I,” 117. 28 William Howard Taft, et al., eds., Service with Fighting Men: An Account of the Works of American Young Men’s Christian Associations in the World War (New York: Association Press, 1924), 2:364.

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laborers in a democratic and sympathetic manner and did not subject the Chinese to strict military discipline. They were allowed to move around locally after working hours or on holidays and to travel to other cities once they obtained a pass. They were not required to march when they went to work but walked informally to the factories. According to a modern researcher, the Chinese “had an easier relationship with their French employers, who were less troubled by the difference between races.”29 This is in contrast to the British camps, where the laborers were a part of the military organization and were subjected to military discipline. Naturally the Chinese resented the limitations imposed on them.30 Even after working hours, the Chinese had to stay in the camps. Only one-tenth of them could leave at a time. They could only move within three miles of the camp.31 A YMCA secretary once said, “Except in the devastated area the men were kept in barbed wire enclosures, much like prisoners of war, and were allowed into the French villages only on special passes and for good conduct.”32 This YMCA worker regretted the confined living of the Chinese laborers, as “it was almost criminal to keep 500 strong healthy men in an enclosure week after week with nothing to do in leisure time but twiddle their thumbs. Of course they would get into mischief.”33 Some of the British officers felt no sympathy toward the Chinese. An American YMCA secretary described a British camp with 1,000 Chinese laborers in his report: The other side thrust upon them is that of the treatment by the noncommissioned officers who supervise their work as a rule. They understand no Chinese language and as little of the Oriental nature. The consequence is that they are too much the slave driver, who cursing and maligning, forces them to their work.34 According to another observer, the Chinese laborers were seen “marching daily to work at the vehicle repair shops in Rouen.”35 The officers seldom associated with laborers and revealed only racial contempt for the Chinese.36 According to a British officer, he and the other officers “vied with each other for the greatest number of canes broken on backs, legs, shins, and heads. Humiliation, 29

Summerskill, China on the Western Front, 151. R. M. Hersey, “General Statement Regarding the Y.M.C.A. Work for the Chinese Laborers in France” (March 1919), 7 (YMCA Archives of the USA). 31 Chen, Huagong yu Ouzhan, 122. 32 Cole, “With the Chinese in France,” 12. 33 Ibid., 19. 34 Edwards, “The Chinese Labourer in France in Relation to the Work of the Young Men’s Christian Association,” 19. 35 Summerskill, China on the Western Front, 150. 36 Chen, Huagong yu Ouzhan, 123. 30

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however, was found to be the most effective type of punishment, and it was used liberally.”37 A YMCA volunteer, T. F. Tsiang (Jiang Tingfu), observed that “the French officers were much less race conscious. They were more democratic in their manners and took a more paternalistic interest in their laborers. The British stood on their dignity as officers, and perhaps as white men, most of the time.”38 Under these circumstances, conflicts and disturbances occurred from time to time in the Chinese labor camps, especially in the British battalions. One source indicates that “from 1916 through 1918 twenty-five disturbances were recorded by the Chinese labor commissioners, including four riots, seven strikes, two fights among laborers, three violations of company rules, and two cases of ‘conspiracy against the company.’”39 The consequences of these conflicts were tragic. It is reported that “between June 1917 and June 1918, ten Chinese workers were executed for infractions of discipline.”40 More were fined and imprisoned. Quite a few sources talk about the frequent occurrence of disturbances. For example, “Before the YMCA arrived on the scene, there were riots and strikes almost every few days; many of these were simply the result of language difficulties and misunderstandings on both sides.”41 A few examples of the disturbances will help us better understand the language and cultural barriers. The most famous occurred when a British officer shouted to his labor force “Let’s go” when he wanted the laborers to move. The Chinese did not understand English, and the word “go” sounds like “dog” in Chinese. The result was that all the Chinese refused to work that day.42 Another strike occurred when the Chinese laborers were fed horse meat.43 In a similar circumstance, “when one company was moved to a new locality, it happened that after a long march through the mud and rain they came to their destination only to learn that the commissariat had not arrived and that no provision had been made for their food or camp. It was too much for the men and they rebelled, running in every direction, completely disbanding.”44 A further example is related to Chinese cultural custom:

37

Blick, “The Chinese Labor Corps in World War I,” 124 –125. Chen, Chinese Migrations, 147. Blick, “The Chinese Labor Corps in World War I,” 128 –129. 40 Hayford, To the People, 24. 41 Blick, “The Chinese Labor Corps in World War I,” 128. 42 R. M. Hersey, “Annual Report Letter, R. M. Hersey to the International Committee of the Young Men’s Christian Association of North America,” received 14 November 1919, p. C1 (YMCA Archives of the USA). 43 Blick, “The Chinese Labor Corps in World War I,” 129. 44 R. M. Hersey, “Annual Report Letter,” 8. 38 39

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In one company, one of the officers knew a little Chinese and was greatly appreciated by the men [Chinese laborers]. The men grew fond of him and when the announcement was made that he was to be transferred to another center, they decided to accompany him to the station. It happened that he left early in the morning, but in their desire to show a proper Chinese spirit they were mustered out before daylight on the parade ground. . . . [The] major in charge ordered the men to return to their headquarters. The rudeness of the command was greatly resented by the men, all of whom went on strike.45

According to Chinese custom, when a friend bids farewell the host should “song” him (see him off). Since the Chinese laborers treasured their friendship with the departing officer, they got up early to see him off at the hour of his departure. They did not mean to act contrary to rules, and they were deeply offended by the rough and inconsiderate treatment they received.46 Hard, boring, and long work, confinement inside the barbed wire of the camps, and the lack of recreational facilities in the camps led the laborers to seek entertainment through various vices. Gambling, according to several sources, was considered the most serious vice among the Chinese laborers. The gambling was so rampant that a great number of laborers lost their salaries in one or two days after payday.47 Some who lost their money turned to violence.48 Some who were in debt would try to escape from their creditors by submitting themselves to the authorities, expecting to be transferred somewhere else to work.49 Another prominent vice among the Chinese laborers was prostitution. Many of them visited local brothels and contracted venereal diseases.50 When five hundred Chinese laborers were relocated to another area, some French prostitutes moved along with them.51 Laborers also engaged in excessive drinking, fighting, burglary, and rape.52 45

Ibid., 6– 7. Cole, “With the Chinese in France,” 15. 47 According to the testimony of a Chinese interpreter, “About 15,000 francs are paid each month to the men of our company. In two days 10,000 francs are in the hands of a half dozen men. In one day more at least 8,000 francs are in the pocket of one man”: Paul Patton Faris, “Friends for the Chinese in France,” The Continent 49:45 (November 7, 1918): 1261. 48 Cole, “With the Chinese in France,” 17– 18. 49 I. H. Si, “With the Chinese Laborers ‘Somewhere’ in France,” The Chinese Students’ Monthly 13:8 (June 1918): 449. 50 A source indicates that at least 20% were doctoring themselves for venereal disease: Blick, “The Chinese Labor Corps in World War I,” 122. According to a letter from the Royal Army Corps, the second major problem was homosexuality: Gewurtz, “For God or for King,” 41. 51 Edwards, “The Chinese Labourer in France in Relation to the Work of the Young Men’s Christian Association,” 4. 52 Chen San-ching has listed a number of vices among the Chinese laborers: see Chen, Huagong yu Ouzhan, 136–139. 46

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The British officers recognized the roots of the problem and, in fact, clearly knew what should be done to remedy the situation. Lieutenant-Colonel Bryan Fairfax, the British officer in command of the Chinese Labor Corps, set out 20 causes which he regarded as contributing to the unrest. . . . Eight of these concerned the quality of those administering the Chinese Labour Corps. He felt that there had been insufficient recognition of the need for ‘specialist human machinery’; by this he meant people who could move easily among the Chinese, listening to their grievances and explaining to them what work was required, and how it should be accomplished.53 However, these requirements were too high to be reached by the British officers themselves. Up to May 1918, there were about fifty or sixty missionaries working among the Chinese laborer battalions of 100,000.54 At this time, the British authorities had to appeal again for the assistance of Christian organizations.

III. THE YMCA SERVICE GOES BEYOND NATIONAL BOUNDARIES By 1918, the Chinese laborers had become a serious headache for the British military instead of a major labor force for the Allied cause. The morale of the Chinese labor battalions, it was said, was so low that it had reached a crisis point. According to a Canadian reporter, “in a short time the Chinese Labor Corps as a whole was not working up to much more than fifty percent of efficiency.”55 At this time, the British National Council of the YMCA opened work in thirty centers, though it had not received formal permission.56 Its excellent performance in adjusting disputes and strikes and in raising the morale of the Chinese laborers attracted attention from the military authorities. The British military leaders finally made up their minds to let Christian people take over the matter of raising the morale of the Chinese laborers. On February 12, 1918, the adjutant general, Sir Nevil Macready, sent the British National Council of the YMCA a letter asking them to take sole responsibility for “entertainment, recreation and canteen work for the Chinese Labour Corps with the British Expeditionary Force.”57 Of course, 53

Summerskill, China on the Western Front, 154. Edwards, “The Chinese Labourer in France in Relation to the Work of the Young Men’s Christian Association,” 4. 55 O. D. Austin, “From Far Cathay and Back Again,” Canadian Herald, November 1919, 110. 56 Taft, Service with Fighting Men, 2:365. 57 A. Philip Jones, Britain’s Search for Chinese Cooperation in the First World War (New York: Garland, 1986), 188. For the related information on the church side, please see United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, Board of Foreign Missions, Presbyterian Church in Canada, Chinese Labor Corps in France. 79.201C-File 1, 1917. “Statement in regard to Y.M.C.A. Work for Chinese in France.” 54

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this work was beyond the ability of any single Christian organization or denomination. The British YMCA did not let this opportunity slip away. They on the one hand accepted this assignment from the government and on the other appealed to their Christian brothers domestically and internationally. On March 14, 1918, the British YMCA invited 11 missionary societies to meet to discuss the call from the government.58 They reached two unanimous resolutions that developed into the involvement of the International Committee of the YMCA in North America in this project and later significantly changed the life and morale of the Chinese laborers in France. The first resolution was “that the British Missionary Societies be invited to provide 40 missionaries as their quota for carrying on this work, recalling men from China if necessary.”59 With the second resolution, they also appealed to their religious brothers in North America “to secure the cooperation of Canadian and American Missionary Societies to take an equal share with the British Societies in this all important task.”60 Based on the second resolution, Dr. Ritson, chairman of the Standing Committee of the Conference of British Missionary Societies, sent a dispatch two days later to Dr. James Barton, Chairman of the Committee of Counsel and Reference of Mission Boards of America. Ritson informed their American brothers about these two resolutions:

Meeting representing eleven British Missionary Societies unanimously resolve British should provide forty missionaries for Y.M.C.A. to work among Chinese in France. This will necessitate recalling missionaries from China. We also decided to request you to arrange that vernacularspeaking missionaries shall be available for this urgent unique opportunity.61

58 The societies who sent representatives to the meeting were the British and Foreign Bible Society, the Religious Tract Society, the China Inland Mission, the Baptist Missionary Society, the English Presbyterian Mission, the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, the Primitive Methodist Missionary Society, the Church Missionary Society, the London Missionary Society, the Fellowship for Christian Service, VMMS, and YMCA. Besides these, representatives of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts and the Ny Fiangonana Frenjy Malagasy (FFMA) had been consulted, and they were in agreement with the decision of the meeting: United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, Board of Foreign Missions, Presbyterian Church in Canada, Chinese Labor Corps in France. 79.201C-File 1, 1917. Dr. Ritsen to Dr. Barton, 18 March 1918. 59 The proviso with this resolution was that those missionary societies that attended the meeting might not use the same 40 the whole time, but they “shall use men who have returned from the China field or who happen to be on furlough and make up the number with men specially drawn from the field for varying periods”: ibid. 60 Ibid. 61 United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, Board of Foreign Missions, Presbyterian Church in Canada, Chinese Labor Corps in France. 79.201C-File 1, 1917. James L. Barton to Dear Brethren, 26 March 1918.

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Upon receiving this dispatch, Barton first consulted with the International Committee of the YMCA and obtained its agreement to take charge of this matter. Though it is not clear why Barton would contact that group first, there are two possible reasons for doing so. First, he acted in accordance with the British cable about applying “Y.M.C.A. work” to the Chinese laborers in France. (Though the YMCA was first founded by a British citizen, George Williams, in London, it soon had a faster and greater development in America under the title of the International Committee of the YMCA in North America.)62 Second, the International Committee had already undertaken work for the Chinese under French command.63 Then, Barton sent an open letter on March 26 to all mission boards of North America to urge all mission boards carrying on work in China to enter into correspondence at once with Edward C. Jenkins of the International Committee. In this way, the International Committee gradually assumed the leading role in giving assistance to the Chinese laborers in France. At this juncture Dwight W. Edwards, Y secretary of the Peking Association, was sent by the International Committee to France to investigate the field and to start YMCA work for the Chinese laborers.64 Edwards stayed in France from April 13 to May 11 and presented the International Committee a thorough report that in turn became the major basis for the development of this project in France. Edwards raised eight compelling reasons for undertaking work among the Chinese laborers. First, the Chinese laborers were suffering socially, physically, and psychologically, and they badly needed YMCA work to improve their conditions; second, the situation presented a great missionary opportunity that was good not only for these laborers but also for Christian development in China in the long run; and third, it was a golden opportunity to provide the Chinese laborers with a favorable impression of the West that would forward the Western civilization among their countrymen.65 The YMCA work for the Chinese laborers was seriously understaffed in France. At the time of Edwards’s investigation, 27 huts and 13 marquees, or canteens, are being operated, all but two of which are in the L. of C. There is a staff of 18 Chinese-speaking workers, 62 “At the beginning of the War, there were over 600 branches in Britain, with 146,000 members, and over 1,900 branches in the U.S.A., with 456,000 members”: Summerskill, China on the Western Front, 171–172. 63 Taft, Service with Fighting Men, 2:365. 64 Two months before the British invitation, the International Committee had begun to work out sending a secretary to supervise association work for Chinese laborers in France: “Correspondence with New York in regard to Edwards’ trip to France” (YMCA Archives of the USA). 65 Edwards, “The Chinese Labourer in France in Relation to the Work of the Young Men’s Christian Association,” 2 –6.

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only one of whom, Major J. H. Wallace, General Supervisor has had any Association experience. Non-Chinese-speaking workers are being temporarily used to meet the emergency.66 After carefully going over the situation place by place, Edwards saw the need for 127 new Chinese workers for the project. The British Missionary Societies could supply thirty of them, and the remainder could come from the United States and China.67 In regard to the type of Chinese secretaries, Edwards emphasized the following characteristics: 1) sound Christian character; 2) ability to speak any Mandarin dialect and English; 3) tact, or recognizing the necessity of not interfering with military discipline in any way; and 4) experience that would justify belief in their being able to do a good job.68 Two important suggestions in the Edwards report are worth attention. The first was unification of the work for Chinese in France. Because YMCA services were conducted among the British, American, and French armies, there were “three distinct branches of service, each independently controlled, organized, financed and staffed.”69 The second was to get the support from the Chinese Christians—to mobilize a coordinated effort from the Chinese YMCA to link up the work in France with that in China.70 Comparatively speaking, the latter issue was more successfully executed and had significant consequences in the future. The International Committee was enthusiastic about the vision to take care of the Chinese laborers, to implant civil, Western, and Christian influences in those laborers, and to let the laborers become messengers in transmitting their understanding of the West and Christianity to their native people. In order to realize this vision, the committee needed to have a great number of Chinese Christians devote themselves to this project. For this purpose, the International Committee did a great deal to stir up a sense of mission in the Chinese YMCA members to get their full cooperation. This was shown in the frequent exchange of cables and letters between the International Committee and the Chinese YMCA. For example, E. C. Jenkins wrote to C. W. Harvey, the major American secretary in China: We believe, however, that the situation in France is of great importance to China; otherwise we would not be spending so much time and energy in 66

Ibid., 6. Ibid., 16. 68 Ibid. 69 Ibid., 20. 70 Ibid., 21–22. Edwards even provided a clear suggestion of how to do this by writing: “To help me in this large problem of getting men and supplies and arousing interest and support from the Christian agencies in China, it would be of great help to have strong letters from Dr. Mott to David Yui, C. W. Harvey, and E. C. Lobenstine, urging careful consideration of this need.” 67

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attempting to meet the calls for men. . . . I do not believe, however, that you men appreciate fully the opportunity before the Association in France.71 John R. Mott also urged David Yui (Yu Rizhang), general secretary of the Chinese YMCA, to give full cooperation to this project by saying, “I have discussed all phases of the subject with him [Edwards] and have requested him to lay before you the reasons why we deem it urgently desirable that the Association Movement in China put itself strongly behind this undertaking. I am confident that you and those associated with you will recognize the strategy and providential character of this effort and that you will gladly do all in your power to ensure its highest success. I pledge you my full cooperation in helping to make possible the desired results.”72 Two American YMCA secretaries toured China to share their experiences in France in order to effectively arouse the interest and enthusiasm of the Chinese people for this project. When Edwards went to Shanghai after his French mission, a special meeting of Executive Committee and national secretaries was called. Edwards “gave a very full account of the conditions among the laborers and the work now being carried on by the Association for them and the plans of the International Committee for extending this work.”73 Another American secretary went to China in late 1918 for the same purpose. Through the arrangement of the International Committee, W. W. Peter, a China Y secretary who would finish his studies at Harvard Medical School in June 1918, would go to France “to deliver health lectures in the Chinese language to the Chinese laborers” and “to carry the facts [as] regards this work back to China and present them in such a way before leaders in that country that it will be able to recruit the number of workers that are being obtained from that country for the Chinese Labor Battalions.”74 The response to the appeal of the International Committee and to the lectures of the two American secretaries in China was extremely warm. Right after the special meeting in Shanghai, a committee in charge of the “Chinese Labor Division” was formed to enlist secretaries in China for the work in France, with Edwards as executive secretary and Hening as business secretary.75 This committee even set a goal of sending 100 men to France as YMCA

71 “E. C. Jenkins to C. W. Harvey, May 14, 1918” (Chinese Labor Battalions) (YMCA Archives of the USA). 72 “John R. Mott to David Yui, May 18th, 1918” (Chinese Labor Battalions) (YMCA Archives of the USA). 73 “Chas. W. Hening to Dr. John R. Mott, August 1, 1918” (Chinese Labor Battalions) (YMCA Archives of the USA). 74 “Information Concerning Dr. W. W. Peter, Chinese Labor Battalions [November 1918]” (YMCA Archives of the USA). 75 Ibid.

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secretaries.76 Twenty-nine Chinese YMCA secretaries were sent in 1918 and early 1919 to join the Y service to the Chinese laborers in France.77 Further evidence of the effective appeal to the Chinese in connection with the Chinese laborers in France was the raising of $180,000,000 for the united war work campaign. At the end of the campaign, China’s contribution was $1,360,000.78 This was a splendid testimony to China’s faith in the YMCA organization. One requirement for YMCA workers in France was the ability to speak both Mandarin and English.79 Initially, the International Committee appealed to Chinese Christian students in the United States. The International Committee did get about forty Chinese students who put their studies on hold and answered the call. Though it was not clear how the International Committee mobilized the Chinese students in the United States to join their service in France, the major organ of the Chinese Students’ Organization echoed this invitation in its “Editorials”: These common laborers in France are the messengers of the wider world just as the crusaders once were in the late centuries of the Middle Ages. This leads us to say that when an opportunity comes to us so that we may help to make their stay abroad profitable, it is highly necessary that we give it careful consideration. The International Committee of the Young Men’s Christian Association has issued a call for a number of Chinese students to go over to France as secretaries of the Association. We hope our student body will give it the rightful support.80 Through the mobilization of the International Committee, there were 109 YMCA secretaries working for the Chinese laborers. According to a report in mid-1919, sixty-one of them were in the British area and thirty-five in the French area. Thirteen had yet to be assigned.81 S. J. Chuan, the general secretary of the Christian work among Chinese students in France, reported in mid-July 1919 that there were seventy-four Chinese student secretaries.82 76 “David Z. T. Yui to W. W. Peter, September 7, 1918” (Chinese Labor Battalions) (YMCA Archives of the USA). 77 Chen Weixin, “ZhuFa Huagong qingnianhui jiyao” (Summary of YMCA Work for the Chinese Laborers in France), Zhonghua Jidu jiaohui nianjian (China Church Year Book), No. 6 (1921), 208–210. 78 Young Men’s Christian Association with the Chinese Labor Corps in France (Paris: Herbert Clarke, 1919), 10. 79 It is very interesting to note that many British YMCA workers in the Chinese Labor Battalions were not able to speak Chinese: Summerskill, China on the Western Front, 172. 80 “Editorials,” Chinese Students’ Monthly 13:16 (April 1918): 301. 81 Hersey, “General Statement Regarding the Y.M.C.A. Work for the Chinese Laborers in France,” (March 1919), 7. 82 “Y.M.C.A. Chinese Section, Report of Conference of Workers held at Peronne on 23/24 July 1919,” 31 (YMCA Archives of the USA).

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Twenty-nine of them came directly from China, thirty-nine were from the United States, five were from the United Kingdom, and one was a Chinese student studying in France.83 Those 109 Y secretaries did tremendous YMCA service that immediately solved many conflict issues, created better understanding with the laborers, and offered basic education to the Chinese laborers. Praise of the Y secretaries’ performance was recorded numerous times in various YMCA and Allied documents. The YMCA work could be divided into three categories: educational, recreational, and religious. The educational function included offering various courses, such as Chinese, English, French, history and geography, and mathematics. Many lectures on public affairs, citizenship, health and hygiene, and the meaning of the world war were designed to help the Chinese laborers when they went back to China. James Y. C. Yen’s experimental teaching of the basic Chinese characters proved a great success, and his Chinese Laborers’ Weekly was a useful instrument in arousing interest in studying Chinese and in bringing the modern world to these laborers. As for the recreational activities, although many of the Chinese did not care for athletics after ten hours of manual labor each day, some of them enjoyed playing soccer, indoor baseball, basketball, and volleyball while many others played Chinese chess, kite flying, and other games. Amateur theater performances by laborers themselves attracted a great deal of attention from other laborers. As for the religious aspect, these Y secretaries offered sermons, Sunday services, Bible classes, prayer meetings, and even baptisms. Although some camps were not allowed to hold religious services, the secretaries still tried to offer Christian influence on a personal level. In addition to the above activities, a home letter-writing service offered by the Y secretaries was also deeply appreciated by the laborers.84 The unification of the work for the Chinese in France, urged by Edwards, was not so successful. While the International Committee won full support and cooperation from the American area and the French area, they encountered unexpected complications with the British YMCA. When R. M. Hersey was sent by the International Committee to coordinate the Y work in France, he found that Mr. McCowan, who then took charge of the British work for the Chinese as well as the general work, “has never been enthusiastic about close 83 The number of the Chinese student secretaries was slightly different in various sources. Some said there were over forty from the United States while some said 39 and some 38. Chuan (Quan) said “more than 40”: ibid. However, an American source gave a number of 38: Taft, Service with Fighting Men, 2:365. The reason I use the number 39 is because if we are certain that 29 were from China, 5 from the United Kingdom, and 1 from France, the rest of them must number 39. 84 The Y service for the Chinese laborers can be found in many works, such as Shi Yixuan, “Faguo liengshi foxin zhi huagong qingnianhui baogao,” 61– 63; Blick, “The Chinese Labor Corps in World War I,” 126–128; Summerskill, China on the Western Front, 170– 174; Chen, “Jidujiao Qingnianhui yu Ouzhan huagong,” 53– 70; and many church materials.

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cooperation, and has preferred to consider the Chinese work as a British enterprise.”85 Further complicating cooperation were the facts that a British secretary who was asked to keep separate accounts for the Chinese work failed to do his duty and that shipments designed for the Chinese work were used extensively for the British association.86 Even when the British Association encountered a great financial difficulty in 1919 and asked the International Committee for a loan of 10,000 pounds to help it over a crisis until the end of the year, Mr. McCowan still turned down having one central office despite the potential for unifying the Chinese Department.87 Apparently the representative of the International Committee was a little less confident in the British Association and suggested that his home Committee give “support to the Chinese work in the British area, but that all funds be administered through the International Committee Treasurer.”88 While the leader of the British YMCA recalled its wartime service in retrospect, he gave much credit to his own side. For example, in the matter of getting Chinese secretaries from China, he said, “For these Chinese huts we needed Christian men of their language. We communicated with the Y.M.C.A. headquarters in Shanghai, and they sent over a number of Chinese secretaries who proved a very great help.”89 This account completely ignored the great efforts of the International Committee during this time.

IV. EFFECTS OF

THE

YMCA SERVICE

TO

CHINESE LABORERS

The YMCA work won much praise from numerous writers and scholars for its service to the Chinese laborers. However, very few people are aware that this international operation strongly influenced the Chinese students in the United States and the Chinese YMCA. This section, mainly based on church material, will investigate to what extent the YMCA service and experience influenced the Chinese students and how the Chinese YMCA responded to the challenges and shaped a new development in China. As for the Chinese YMCA secretaries, whether from China directly or overseas students, they did not have much previous experience with Chinese laborers. Their services in France became a self-education. For many of them, it was the first time they were associated with foreign missionaries in the field. What they saw with their own eyes about missionary service for 85 Hersey, “General Statement Regarding the Y.M.C.A. Work for the Chinese laborers in France,” (March 1919), 5. 86 Ibid., 5– 6. 87 Ibid., 6. 88 Ibid., 14. 89 Summerskill, China on the Western Front, 172.

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their fellow countrymen cleared up many past misunderstandings and left a strong impression on them. For example, a student who was educated at a mission school in China held grudges against the missionaries and the foreign invasion of China in the nineteenth century. When he came to France and worked with the foreign YMCA secretaries, he changed his attitude: Undoubtedly those experiences here have made me able to sympathise with the missionaries and their work in China. I was against missions and missionary work, but since coming to France that has entirely changed. This experience has made me realise what sacrifice and difficulties all of the missionaries must have undergone to do their work for our fellow countrymen in China.90 Through working with foreign YMCA secretaries, some Chinese students found the meaning of life for themselves. A student shared that he came to France not primarily to serve his fellow countrymen, but to try to “find himself.” After rendering a year’s service in France, he was very happy because “he could say confidently that he had found himself—not through his own ability but through the work that his British and American associates were doing.”91 The Y work of foreign secretaries also stimulated the passion of Chinese students to serve their own countrymen. The first Chinese student secretary in France observed: What has China done for these men? Aside from placing an attache´ in Paris to take charge of the complaints of all the Chinese scattered in more than seventy different places, our Government has done nothing whatsoever in their interests. Neither have any individuals or organizations in China been public-spirited enough to take an interest in the Chinese laborers in France. When we come to think what the United States has done, and is still doing, for her men in France, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves for our indifference toward the welfare of our men here.92 Even at the end of his one-year contract, a Chinese student determined to be the last to leave the Chinese work in France “because there are so many Americans and Britishers who are not our fellow countrymen, staying here at Greater sacrifice, for the sake of the welfare of our fellow countrymen, and for that I believe it is my duty to stay in this work until everybody is gone.”93 In fact, this passion was even shared by many other students who did not 90 “Y.M.C.A. Chinese Section, Report of Conference of Workers held at Peronne on 23/24 July 1919,” 31. 91 Ibid. 92 Si, “With the Chinese Laborers ‘Somewhere’ in France,” 452. 93 “Y.M.C.A. Chinese Section, Report of Conference of Workers held at Peronne on 23/24 July 1919,” 31.

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come to France. Quite a few articles written by Chinese students in the United States urged their fellow students to pay attention to the future of China and to their own countrymen.94 Generally speaking, the Chinese student secretaries recognized the poor condition of the Chinese labor class and the usefulness of the Y work in France, and they therefore promoted a mass education movement in China. Sixty Chinese student secretaries held a three-day meeting in April 1919 at Versailles to exchange viewpoints and experiences and to contemplate the application of their work to China. One of their resolutions was “to petition the national Committee of China to immediately devise ways and means to project the hut idea in France to China for the uplifting and education of the masses.”95 This resolution was further developed into a well-designed memorandum under the title of “The Y.M.C.A. Hut as an Agency of Mass Education in China.”96 The consensus of the student secretaries was that the Chinese masses must be educated and enlightened if China were to move toward democracy, peace, and justice. As James Yen said many years later about what he learned in France, “I discovered the ignorance not of the coolies but of the intellectuals like myself.”97 This awakening of the Chinese students was very significant and greatly influenced the Mass Education movement and also the development of the Chinese YMCA in China. The service for the Chinese laborers proved an important turning point in the development of the YMCA movement in China. When urgings from the United States arrived at the headquarters in Shanghai, the Chinese YMCA responded warmly. Not only were twenty-nine secretaries sent, but also many materials for recreational and educational purposes were shipped to France. In the fundraising movement that followed, the Chinese Y also played an important role in contributing fourteen times the assigned goal of $100,000 to the united war work campaign. However, none of the above can be compared with the Mass Education Movement that had its origin in labor service in France and became a major project of the Chinese YMCA over the next fifteen years. The success of teaching Chinese laborers in France, possibly together with the memorandum of the Chinese student secretaries, was very encouraging to the leaders of the Chinese YMCA. David Yui, the general secretary of the Chinese YMCA who received his master’s in education at Harvard, wanted to apply the same method in China. Yui long believed that the greatest 94

Most of these articles were published in The Chinese Students’ Monthly and The Chinese Students’ Christian Journal. 95 [S. J.] Chuan, “A Brief Report of the Versailles Conference for the Chinese Secretaries of the Chinese Department of the Y.M.C.A. in France,” 5 (YMCA Archives of the USA). 96 I. H. Si, C. H. Wang, and T. F. Tsiang drafted this memo and published it in The Chinese Students’ Christian Journal 6:2 (November 1919): 83–85. 97 This quotation is from Hayford, To the People, 30.

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handicap to the progress of the Chinese nation was the illiteracy of the vast majority of China’s people. Yu therefore decided to “put the Association’s energy and resources behind a mass education experiment.”98 He recruited those Chinese secretaries who had worked in Europe, such as James Y. C. Yen and Daniel Fu (Fu Ruoyo), and he established the section of mass education under the Education Department of the Chinese YMCA. The experimental campaigns were so successful that James Yen was invited to assume the general secretaryship of the National Mass Education Association in 1923. Yet the Chinese YMCA continued to promote the Mass Education Movement and even further expanded it to the Citizenship Education Movement, which gave the knowledge and training of citizenship to the common people.99 The Mass Education program of the YMCA was very popular and, in the report of Daniel Fu in 1935, a quarter million people had attended the schools of mass education of the Chinese YMCA.100 The International Committee also advised the Chinese YMCA to give follow-up attention to the returned laborers so that they could share their French experience with the people around them. On October 7, 1918, John R. Mott informed David Yui that “it is, therefore, a matter of paramount importance that the home forces must be mobilized as soon as possible in order to be ready to conserve and utilize whatever results the work in France shall yield. Many of the laborers will return to China and all of them will have received some idea at least of the Y.M.C.A.”101 Though a general survey of the YMCA service for the returned laborers is still needed, many YMCA letters and reports from various parts of China indicated the Y’s immediate attention to the laborers. When the returned laborers began to arrive in China in early March 1919, the Chinese Y assigned Mr. Todnem of the Tsinanfu (Jinanfu) Association to assist the follow-up work in Shandong.102 The follow-up activities could be divided 98 Shirley S. Garrett, Social Reformers in Urban China: The Chinese Y.M.C.A., 1895– 1926 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970), 157–158. 99 For a general introduction to the development of the Mass Education Movement and later the Citizenship Education Movement of the Chinese YMCA, see Peter Chen-main Wang, “Yu Rizhang yu kongmin jiaoyu yundong (David Yui and the Citizenship Education Movement),” in Jidujiao yu Zhongguo xiangdaihua guoji xueshu yantaohui lunwenji, ed. Lin Zhiping (Proceedings of the International Symposium on Christianity and the Modernization of China) (Taipei: Cosmic Light, 1994), 499–530. 100 Fu Ruoyu, “Qingnianhui duiyu pingmin jiaoyu zhi gongxian” (The Contributions of the YMCA to Mass Education), in Zhonghua Jidujiao qiannianhui wushi zhounian jiniance (The Memorial Volume of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Young Men’s Christian Association of China) (Shanghai: Young Men’s Christian Association of China, 1935), 48. 101 “John R. Mott to David Z. T. Yui, October 7, 1918” (Chinese Labor Battalion) (YMCA Archives of the USA). 102 “David Z. T. Yui to W. W. Lockwood, March 10th, 1919” (Chinese Labor Battalion) (YMCA Archives of the USA).

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into two steps. The first was to offer a place for the laborers to get together for lectures, socials, movies, Bible study class, etc. The second was to arouse the conscience of the Christian church in Shandong so that the church workers could take this opportunity to invite those returned laborers to their churches.103 In addition to Shandong, letters from Wuhan also reported the follow-up work. Charles C. Shedd, Y secretary in Hankou, wrote, An emergency program for returned laborers from France has grown into a work requiring the full and part time of several secretaries. Card records have been prepared for over 300 men, quite a number have found employment through our office, others have come for help in getting their finances adjusted, a few were persuaded to open savings accounts with their money earned overseas, and no end of other services have been rendered these men who are struggling against great odds to readjust themselves to their old life. We will soon open quarters in another section of the city where we will be able more adequately to carry on our employment, educational, religious, and recreational programs for them.104 The next step in taking care of these laborers was to launch programs for workers and farmers in the Chinese YMCA. As Mott explained to Yui, “Upon their return they will form a splendid field for rural or industrial Y.M.C.A. work in China.”105 Thus the Industrial Department and programs for farmers of the Chinese YMCA were born. In July 1920, David Yui described their follow-up work for returned laborers as leading them in many centers into rural districts, and the Chinese YMCA was going to study the possibilities of that field and prepare for developing it.106 In fact, the rural program and the industrial program were the two new major services of the Chinese YMCA in the 1930s and 1940s.107

V. CONCLUSION Scholars have not reached a consensus on the labor service of the Chinese YMCA in World War I. Some scholars downplay the Y’s contribution 103

“David Z. T. Yui to W. W. Lockwood, March 28, 1919” (Chinese Labor Battalion) (YMCA Archives of the USA). 104 “Charles C. Shedd to Dear Friend, August 3, 1920” (Chinese Labor Battalion) (YMCA Archives of the USA). 105 “John R. Mott to David Z. T. Yui, October 7, 1918.” 106 “David Z. T. Yui to D. W. Lyon, July 7, 1920” (YMCA Archives of the USA). 107 As for industrial service of the YMCA in China, see Robin Porter, Industrial Reformers in Republican China (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1994), 29–46. A recent book deals with Christian efforts with farmers in Republican China: see Liu Jiafeng, Fuyin yu li: zaihua nongye chuanjiao zhi yanjiu (Gospel and Plow: A Study of Preaching the Gospel to Farmers in China) (Taipei: Cosmic Light, 2006).

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because it neither led to the growth of a Christian population in Shandong nor gave any demonstration of civil spirit at the places where laborers returned home.108 Some do credit the Y service for bringing comfort to the laborers and cultivating Chinese youth through their participation.109 While it is unwise to assess the impact on those 175,000 Chinese laborers, it will be feasible, from the point of view of Chinese church history, to give an evaluation of the Chinese YMCA service to the Chinese laborers in France, which was extraordinarily important and meaningful. First, this was the first time that Chinese Christians went abroad in large scale to answer the call of an international Christian movement. In the past, China was a mission field that was only a receiver of the Gospel together with missionary aid, charity, and service. Chinese seldom played a meaningful role in the missionary enterprise and thus did not earn much respect from missionary circles. However, the participation of the Chinese Christians in this Y project demonstrated the spiritual maturity of the Chinese Christians. From another perspective, if Chinese Christians, or the Chinese YMCA, did not actively join the service to the Chinese laborers, they not only would have been looked down on by missionaries but they also could not have reached their people in such a meaningful way. Second, this was the first time that Chinese Christians worked together with foreign missionaries. In the nineteenth century, Chinese Christians could only serve as missionary assistants in Christian societies. In most cases, the Chinese Christians simply accepted orders from the missionaries. However, during World War I their participation in the Y service in France earned praise from all the missionaries. They were taken as equal partners and were deeply valued for their performance. This was especially significant because even the American secretaries and British secretaries could not share in the YMCA project in France in a fully cooperative spirit. Third, although the YMCA was an organization that placed strong emphasis on noninvolvement in politics, the Chinese Christians who participated in this project were motivated by patriotism and love for their countrymen. They cared about national pride and would not let the performance of the Chinese laborers bring any humiliation to China. This should occupy special attention because it happened even before the May Fourth movement. Chinese Christians demonstrated their love toward China and their caring for countrymen even across national borders, not as a “denationalized” group, which is how they were portrayed by anti-Christians in the 1920s. 108 For this kind of opinion, see Blick, “The Chinese Labor Corps in World War I,” and Griffin, “The Use of Chinese Labor by the British Army, 1916– 1920.” 109 For this positive opinion, see Chen, “Jidujiao Qingnianhui yu Ouzhan huagong,” and Gewurtz, “For God or for King.”

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Finally, the Chinese YMCA members’ work among the labor service was just one contextualization of their service in China. They were not limited to the spiritual, moral, intellectual, and recreational aspects of the youth. They were able to develop new programs that were relevant to the changing times. After the service to laborers in France, the Chinese YMCA created programs for industrial laborers and also for farmers, showing its versatility in serving China.

Church History 78:2 (June 2009), 350– 378. # 2009, American Society of Church History doi:10.1017/S0009640709000523 Printed in the USA

Christianizing the Klan: Alma White, Branford Clarke, and the Art of Religious Intolerance LYNN S. NEAL

A

CCORDING to the biblical book of Daniel chapter 3, King Nebuchadnezzar, who ruled the Babylonian Empire where the Jews lived in exile, commissioned the building of a ninety-foot golden image and commanded the people to worship it. Refusal to comply meant one’s death in a fiery furnace. While most obeyed the king’s dictate, the story recounts how Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego, Jews who worked for the king, refused to worship the image and remained loyal to their God. In response, the king bade his men to stoke the furnace and burn the defiant rebels. To the king’s amazement, the trio appeared unscathed amid the redhot flames, and he glimpsed a mysterious fourth figure with them. Seeing this, the king called the men to come out of the furnace and they emerged unharmed, protected, according to the text, by the fourth figure, an angel. The story depicts Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego as heroes who withstood the forces of evil and witnessed the power of their God. It speaks to the fidelity of these men and to the intolerant nature of Nebuchadnezzar’s faith. While this passage and its lessons may be familiar to many, in the 1920s they gained additional meanings that provide us with important insights into the workings of religious intolerance in the United States. In Branford Clarke’s “The Men Who are Refusing to Bow to the Great Image” (figure 1) from Alma White’s 1925 book The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy, we see, in graphic detail, the story of Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego overlaid with the mission of the second Ku Klux Klan. Under the arched and star-spangled banner decorated with the fiery cross and the Constitution, representing the Christian Klan and the democratic United States, respectively, the scene unfolds. The small pathway in the center of the foreground draws the viewer’s eye to the “golden image” that dominates the horizon line. However, in this case, the “golden image” being worshiped by the large population is not the false God of Nebuchadnezzar, but rather the false God of Catholicism—the pope—indicated by the word “Rome” on the statue’s base, as well as by the figure’s accoutrements, the large cross held in his hand and the triregno on his head. A fiery furnace labeled “temporal power” and situated adjacent to the papal idol suggests not only

Lynn S. Neal is an assistant professor of religion at Wake Forest University.

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Fig. 1. Branford Clarke, “The Men Who are Refusing to Bow to the Great Image,” from Alma White, The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy (Zarephath, N.J.: The Good Citizen, 1925), 74.

the pope’s desire for and attainment of political power, but also that his power rests on both the idolatry of Catholics and the persecution of Protestants. The foreground of the image depicts the heroes as well as the other villains of the story. On the right, the artist names those forces whose loyalty to the pope threatens the very foundations of orthodox Christianity and the American nation. First in line and most visible is a man on bended knee. The hand on his jaw signals his reflective and attentive attitude toward the idol while the letters “K of C” appear prominently on his back and reveal his identity to the viewer. He represents the Knights of Columbus—a group Klan members deemed subversive because they believed it to be the pope’s army operating in the United States. Next to the Knight of Columbus is a kneeling figure with arms outstretched labeled “Tammany,” most likely a representation of New York Governor Al Smith, a Catholic presidential candidate in the 1920s whom the Klan opposed. The figure’s presence evokes the corruption of the Tammany Hall political machine that dominated New York City politics in the late nineteenth century, a ring that some feared was run by and for Irish

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Catholics.1 The inclusion of this reference suggests that the Klan believed political machines and Catholic corruption continued to operate and threaten American democracy. If one looks carefully, two additional yet unnamed foes appear on the far right. Like the other villainous figures, the man directly to the right of “Tammany” kneels but, unlike with his counterparts, the viewer can discern his facial features, namely his stereotypical, caricatured profile. His large hooked nose identifies him as a Jewish man. He is, it seems, in the Klan’s eyes, disloyal to his Jewish past and to his jealous God, and, even more troubling, he has joined forces with Catholics.2 Farthest to the right, another foe is shown—a flapper. She has bobbed hair and a low-cut bodice, both features connoting the corruption of her morality and modesty. She, like the others, this Klan image asserts, has been seduced by Catholicism and the corrupt forces it has unleashed on American society. To the far left of the center path, one last ally of Catholicism lurks on bended knee: “Booze.” As debates about Prohibition raged in the 1910s and 1920s, the Klan upheld the “dry” position and often recruited its members through local temperance movements. They impugned Catholicism for its “wet” stance, stating that it violated biblical teaching and harmed innocent women (who were the victims of drinking men). Taken all together, the image presents an overwhelmingly corrupt and powerful Catholicism, one that has assembled a vast array of allies and recruited legions of loyal nameless and literally faceless followers to accomplish its mission of “temporal power.” However, despite these numerous foes, the image also reminds the viewer of how this biblical story ends. It is a story of perseverance, of remaining faithful even when confronted by the powerful and overwhelming forces of evil. To recall this message of hope, the artist placed three Klansmen, representing the faithful trio of Daniel, prominently in the left foreground of the image. Like Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego, they refuse to bow to the papal idol and appear to be moving away from its corrupting presence. The artist reinforced this sense of their faithfulness to Christianity and the United States by including potent symbols of each entity, the clearly labeled “Holy Bible” and the highly visible flag. The three appear wary, yet protective of these symbols, as they remove themselves from “Rome’s” evil. In the

1 Notably, the political cartoons of Thomas Nast were central to bringing down Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall. For more, see Charles Press, The Political Cartoon (London: Associated University Presses, 1981), chapter 9, and Roger A. Fischer, Them Damned Pictures: Explorations in American Political Cartoon Art (North Haven, Conn.: Archon, 1996), chapter 1. 2 For more on the portrayal of Jews, see John Appel and Selma Appel, “Anti-Semitism in American Caricature,” Society (November–December 1986): 79–84.

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accompanying text, Alma White exclaimed: “These men will burn rather than bow to the Romish gods and their triple-crowned head in the Vatican.”3 In its fusing of biblical myth, American identity, and Klan ideology, this image raises important questions about the history of religious intolerance in the United States. These questions are not new, and many scholars have provided valuable insights into the Ku Klux Klan and the religious dimensions of nativism as part of their more comprehensive accounts, from John Higham’s Strangers in the Land to Lynn Dumenil’s The Modern Temper to David Chalmers’s Hooded Americanism. For example, Higham emphasizes anti-Catholicism as one prominent strand in nativist rhetoric, Dumenil explores how “the Klan’s promise to promote Protestant religion and moral ideas had a far-flung appeal” in her study of the 1920s, and Chalmers records the Klan’s popularity among Protestant denominations— Baptist, Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, and Methodist—as part of his stateby-state history of the movement.4 This scholarship provides a firm basis for and broad introduction to the topic; however, it does not offer a more specific examination of religious intolerance, incorporate visual culture as a source, or include detailed analyses of how people constructed and persuaded many of their position’s validity, if not of its religiously justified character. In response, this case study seeks to enhance our understanding of these less investigated issues by examining the illustrations of Branford Clarke, as published in Alma White’s three pro-Klan books—The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy (1925), Klansmen: Guardians of Liberty (1926), and Heroes of the Fiery Cross (1928). This focus demonstrates the significance of visual imagery as a type of primary source “that illuminate[s] the past in ways speeches, sermons, letters, and laws may not.”5 In addition, foregrounding visual culture provides a way to look more specifically at the machinations 3

Alma White, The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy (Zarephath, N.J.: The Good Citizen, 1925), 78. John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1955), 5 –6; Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), 237; David M. Chalmers, Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan, 3rd ed. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1987), 245. Others have focused on the causes of religious intolerance. For example, John Higham often explains its rise and fall in terms of economic depressions. In contrast, others argue that intolerance and prejudice happen in good times and bad, during periods of prosperity and those of poverty. They conclude that no rational cause exists: see Frederic Cople Jaher, A Scapegoat in the New Wilderness (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), 2, and Ernest Volkman, A Legacy of Hate (New York: Franklin Watts, 1982), 8, 300. 5 Louis P. Masur, “‘Pictures Have Now Become a Necessity’: The Use of Images in American History Textbooks,” The Journal of American History 84:4 (March 1998): 1410. See also Thomas Milton Kemnitz, “The Cartoon as a Historical Source,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 4:1 (Summer 1973): 81– 93. 4

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of religious intolerance (defined as “prejudice against individuals or groups based on religious convictions, affiliations or practices, which can manifest as violent action and/or intimidation, with the intent to deny the right to practice religion freely”).6 It affords us a glimpse into how religious individuals use visual culture to “configure [intolerant] social worlds” and create negative “ways of seeing.”7 Specifically, this article explores how Clarke’s illustrations, in conjunction with White’s words, Christianized the Ku Klux Klan and demonized Catholicism. It analyzes how this imagery became a weapon to delineate boundaries between orthodoxy and heresy, good and evil, insiders and outsiders, and thus helps discern the art of religious intolerance in America, the ways religious intolerance is disseminated and replicated. This analysis, I suggest, not only contributes to our understanding of how the second Ku Klux Klan articulated its Protestant American identity, it also reveals two patterns that deepen our understanding of how religious intolerance functions and could thus provide a basis for future comparative work. First, the Bible emerges as a vital element in the dissemination of the Klan’s intolerant Protestant vision. While White repeatedly referenced the Bible to buttress her views, Clarke used it to create a set of images that “proved” the Klan’s virtue and Catholicism’s vice. Given the power of the Bible in American culture in the 1920s, the selective artistic inclusion of its contents and the text itself provided Clarke with an effective way to establish the Klan’s religious status and persuade others of the rightness of his vision. Second, the employment of visibility and invisibility constitutes a central component in the promulgation of their message.8 For example, Alma White’s writings highlighted the Klan’s biblical heritage while downplaying its violent character; however, Clarke’s artistic rendering of this interpretation (and others) constructed a particular way of seeing the world. His imagery functioned as a visual shorthand, an artistic stereotype that helped readers quickly and easily differentiate hero from villain, religious insider from religious other. Through their combined efforts, they sought to maintain the “social and symbolic order”—Protestant dominance of the American landscape.9 This case study, then, challenges us to reflect on the 6

See “Portraits of Hate, Lessons of Hope,” ,http://www.fightingreligiousintolerance.org.. David Morgan, The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 9, 25, 31. The phrase “ways of seeing” and the concept comes from David Morgan, The Sacred Gaze, 34, 115; Richard Dyer, White (New York: Routledge, 1997), 83; and Richard Dyer, The Matter of Images: Essays on Representation (New York: Routledge, 1993), 16. 8 For more on visibility and invisibility in representation, see Dyer, Matter of Representation, 16, 19, 141. 9 Stuart Hall, ed., Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE, 1997), 258– 259. 7

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art of religious intolerance in the United States. By doing so, we can better understand how religious intolerance functions and make visible its pervasiveness in American Christianity and in American history.

I. THE PROGRESSIVE ERA

AND THE

PILLAR OF FIRE

As seen in figure 1, in the eyes of writer Alma White and artist Branford Clarke, more than “gaiety” and “prosperity” characterized the roaring twenties.10 The “Progressive Era” represented anything but progress to these seminal members of the Pillar of Fire Church. Established by Alma White in 1901, the denomination split from Methodism and adhered to the Holiness doctrines of its fiery female leader.11 These perfectionist principles led Alma White to challenge the status quo throughout her life (1862–1946). Upset with the “corruption” of Methodism and its constraints on women as preachers and leaders, she founded her own denomination. Not content to simply preach on Sunday mornings, she took her message across the country and across the Atlantic. Along the way she founded colleges, operated radio stations, wrote books, and published newspapers.12 She was, quite simply, a powerful force in the early twentieth-century Holiness movement and in conservative Protestantism more broadly. William Seymour of Azusa Street fame, like many others in the early twentieth century, visited her Denver mission. However, much to Seymour’s dismay, she eventually became the “earliest and bitterest critic” of pentecostalism, and she was also known for her opposition to that “necromancer” Aimee Semple McPherson.13 In their vocal criticisms, Alma White and her Pillar of Fire denomination sought to protect their vision of “pure” Christianity from the corrosive forces that existed within and without— pentecostals and modernists, Catholics and Jews (to name only a few). In many ways, then, the Pillar of Fire denomination belongs squarely in the emerging fundamentalist camp of the early 1900s, defined by historian George Marsden as “militantly anti-modernist Protestant evangelicalism.” He writes that “fundamentalists shared with the discontented intellectuals of the 1920s, if little else, a sense of the profound spiritual and cultural crisis of the 10

Paul L. Murphy, “Sources and Nature of Intolerance in the 1920s,” Journal of American History 51:1 (June 1964): 61. 11 For more on the Holiness movement, see Vinson Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Movement in the United States (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1992), and Charles Edwin Jones, Perfectionist Persuasion: The Holiness Movement and American Methodism, 1867–1936 (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1974). 12 For more on the life of Alma White, see the following: Susie Cunningham Stanley, Feminist Pillar of Fire: The Life of Alma White (Cleveland, Ohio: Pilgrim, 1993); Alma White, The Story of My Life and the Pillar of Fire, Volume I (Zarephath, N.J.: Pillar of Fire, 1935); Alma White, The Story of My Life and the Pillar of Fire, Volume II (Zarephath, N.J.: Pillar of Fire, 1935). 13 Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Movement in the United States, 143, 199.

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twentieth century.”14 This attitude of militancy and perception of crisis characterized Alma White and her Pillar of Fire Church, evidence of which can be seen in figure 1. In response to the changing social and religious mores of the time, they upheld conservative Protestant morality with their “dry” stance and anti-flapper attitudes.15 The Pillar of Fire Church also endorsed the authority of the Bible, and White’s sermons and publications document her veneration of the Bible even as they preserve her attacks on modernists’ sins, including movies, cards, and dancing.16 However, while White’s teachings reflected central dimensions of fundamentalism, her biographer Stanley notes that she also differed from it in important ways. Unlike many in the movement, Alma White upheld women’s right to preach and vote, endorsed premillennialism yet rejected dispensationalism, and continued her attempts to transform society while other fundamentalists retreated from the public stage.17 She did not back down or shy away from perceived threats or challenges; rather, she met them publicly with her vast arsenal of books, newspapers, radio sermons, and extensive travels. Notably, for Alma White and the Pillar of Fire, modernism was not the only threat that needed to be met. Between 1820 and 1920, 33.6 million immigrants to the United States had brought with them “foreign” loyalties and “foreign” religions.18 Catholicism was the most religiously and politically dangerous of these “foreign” entities. Like other anti-Catholics before and after, White condemned Catholicism for its “rejection” of the Bible, its hierarchical structure, and its valorization of the papacy. She feared the “temporal power” that “Rome” supposedly sought and wielded—the use of its loyal followers to erase the separation of church and state in a quest for national and world domination. Her accusations echoed historic anti-Catholic charges, and at the time she was far from alone or unique in her intolerant views.19 The 1910s 14 George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of TwentiethCentury Evangelicalism, 1870–1925 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 3– 4. 15 Alma White, Klansmen: Guardians of Liberty (Zarephath, N.J.: The Good Citizen, 1926), 98; C. R. Paige and C. K. Ingler, eds., Alma White’s Evangelism: Press Reports, Volume I (Zarephath, N.J.: Pillar of Fire, 1939), 219. 16 Alma White, Short Sermons (Zarephath, N.J.: Pillar of Fire, 1932), 88; Alma White, Radio Sermons and Lectures (Denver: Pillar of Fire, 1936), 241. While published in the 1930s, these texts represent collections of sermons that White gave over a period of several years. 17 Stanley, Feminist Pillar of Fire, 3 –4. 18 Jay P. Dolan, The American Catholic Experience: A History from Colonial Times to the Present (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), 127. Alma White made numerous references to immigration as a problem; see, for example, Klansmen, 101, and Heroes of the Fiery Cross (Zarephath, N.J.: The Good Citizen, 1928), 115– 132. 19 White, The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy, 8, 26, 90; White, Klansmen, 15–16, 139; and White, Heroes of the Fiery Cross, 123. Very little of Alma White’s accusations against Catholicism are new. As John Higham writes, “Hardly any aspect of American xenophobia over its course from the eighteenth to the twentieth century is more striking than the monotony of its ideological refrain. Year after year, decade after decade, the same charges and complaints have sounded in

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saw the passage of the Espionage and Sedition Acts, which granted the U.S. government increased power to identify and punish “disloyal” residents, and this decade also witnessed the emergence of successful immigration restriction legislation, which culminated in the passage of the Johnson-Reed Act in 1924.20 Historian Paul Murphy writes of the 1920s: “That decade, despite its surface prosperity and supposed gaiety and exuberance, was characterized by waves of public intolerance seldom felt in the American experience.”21 The rise of the second Ku Klux Klan, reorganized by William J. Simmons in 1915, speaks to the accuracy of Murphy’s claim. By the 1920s, estimates put Klan membership between four million and six million.22 Mainstream white Protestant men and women populated the organization, and its scope was national. The reincarnated Klan’s appeal, as seen in figure 1, rested in large part on its identity as the defender of Protestantism and America. Klan chronicler Wyn Craig Wade writes, “While fundamentalism would make a controversial, often divisive contribution to religion in twentieth century America, its most critical impact on our social and political history was that, without it, the Ku Klux Klan could never have enrolled the fantastic numbers nor have gained the remarkable power it wielded between 1922 and 1925.”23 Historian Lynn Dumenil also acknowledges this intimate connection between Protestantism and the Klan. She states: “Although not all Klansmen or Klanswomen were fundamentalists, they shared with fundamentalists a concern over ‘the weakened influence of Protestantism.’ Throughout the country the Klan played upon this theme, describing the order in religious terms with revivalistic fervor.”24 As seen here, scholars have acknowledged the pivotal role of religion in the Klan, but the depth and dimensions of this link often remain unexplored. Rather than assuming the perspicuity of this relationship or writing off the Klan’s Protestantism as a guise for its hatred, I focus on this issue by examining how White and Clarke defined the Klan in Christian terms and worked to persuade others to see it in the same way. For Alma White and many other conservative Protestants, the Ku Klux Klan represented God’s response to the various problems confronting Christianity in

endless reiteration”: Strangers in the Land, 31. For more on the number and power of Klanswomen, see Kathleen M. Blee, Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). 20 Higham, Strangers in the Land, 209 –210, 203, 311, 324. 21 Murphy, “Sources and Nature of Intolerance in the 1920s,” 61. 22 Wyn Craig Wade, The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), 183; Alan Goldberg, Hooded Empire: The Ku Klux Klan in Colorado (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981), vii. 23 Wade, The Fiery Cross, 169; Higham, Strangers in the Land, 293. 24 Dumenil, The Modern Temper, 237.

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the 1910s and 1920s. The divine had “raised up” the Klan to combat the enemies threatening Christian civilization (the United States).25 In the Klan, White and Clarke saw a Christian organization through which society could be transformed. People needed to act, and Alma White urged them to do so as she spread her intolerant views through sermons, The Good Citizen, and her books endorsing the Klan.26 She wrote: “The creation of sentiment must precede a victory, and somebody must begin it.”27 Create sentiment she did. Invective and inflammatory accusations permeate her written legacy; however, Clarke’s illustrations made visible her written and spoken desires. More than her writings, his art Christianized the Klan and disseminated a negative vision of the Catholic other.

II. ALMA WHITE’S WORDS AND BRANFORD CLARKE’S IMAGERY While Alma White left a voluminous body of written work by which we can document her life and legacy, much less is known of the Reverend Branford Clarke, who illustrated her many publications. Most often referred to (if at all) as the “Pillar of Fire Artist,” he emigrated from England in 1913 and was likely converted during one of White’s many trips to London. He became minister of the denomination’s Brooklyn Church in 1921, but little else has been found or written about Branford Clarke.28 What we do have, as seen in figure 1 and the other illustrations cited throughout this article, is his artistic legacy as preserved in White’s texts. Alma White does not tell us exactly how she viewed Clarke’s work or recount the details of how they worked together. She neither writes about the images nor does she directly call the reader’s attention to them. Other than his credit on the title page and his signature in the drawings, Branford Clarke’s name is never mentioned, but that does not mean that his images were an obscure or unimportant component. Given what we know of 25

White, The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy, 101. In the 1920s, the Pillar of Fire was the only denomination to publicly endorse the Klan. 26 I have been unable to locate a library with a complete collection of White’s The Good Citizen, a nativist periodical she published from 1913 to 1933. Branford Clarke illustrated this newspaper, and many of these images were then used in White’s pro-Klan books. For example, the August 1925 issue (volume 13, no. 8) features four of Clarke’s drawings, three of which later appeared in Klansmen. 27 White, Heroes of the Fiery Cross, 41. 28 “Obituary for Rev. Branford Clarke,” The New York Times, 8 July 1947, 23; C. R. Paige and C. K. Ingler, eds., Alma White’s Evangelism: Press Reports, Volume I, 203. Clarke’s hymns can be found in Alma White and Arthur K. White, Cross and Crown Hymnal 2nd Edition (Zarephath, N.J.: Pillar of Fire, 1943), 62, 158, 261, 316, 325. His “perambulatory pulpit” merits a mention in James Hale’s Marketing Mobiles: The Wonderful Wacky World of Promotional Vehicles, 1903–2000 (Dorchester, U.K.: Veloce, 2006), 11, and his artwork also appears in Arthur Sears Henning’s article “How La Follette Dug His Political Grave,” Chicago Daily Tribune, 31 January 1954, G14.

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White’s autocratic leadership style, it is doubtful that any of Clarke’s artwork was published without her request and imprimatur. Indeed, White’s stern portrait, labeled “Bishop Alma White, A.M.,” along with letters of endorsement by prominent Klansmen prominently placed at the start of all three pro-Klan books, imbues their written and artistic contents with a sense of authority.29 In addition, White’s inclusion of Clarke’s illustrations seems to indicate that, like other Protestants of her time, she “accept[ed] the power of artistic imagery to influence thought and behavior.”30 Sheer numbers alone provide ample evidence of this view. For example, of the 174 pages in her 1926 volume, Klansmen: Guardians of Liberty, thirty-eight of those feature full or halfpage illustrations by Branford Clarke. The similarly sized Heroes of the Fiery Cross and The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy both contain at least twenty. Furthermore, in all three of White’s pro-Klan books, chapter titles often echo and draw attention to the primary illustration included within each. For example, only a few pages of the chapter “Bow or Burn” deal explicitly with the story of Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego, but this is the element of the chapter illustrated and reinforced by the title, as seen in figure 1. Other chapters evince a similar alignment of title and illustration—“Jonah—the Jew—A Fugitive from God,” “A New Star Baffles Rome,” and “The Hebrew Rock.”31 The evidence suggests that Clarke’s artwork mattered. It added “something more, something not in the text”: a visualization of the Klan as the defender of Protestant America and the religious other as dangerous, foreign, and un-Christian.32 To accomplish this, Clarke built on and utilized the conventions established by the work of political cartoonists and novel artists in the “Golden Age of American Illustration,” 1880 – 1914.33 Unlike political cartoons that often function independently of the text in a magazine or newspaper, Clarke’s work illustrates the points made in White’s texts.34 However, while Clarke’s art shares this commonality with novel illustration, his drawings utilize the conventions of the cartoon genre. For efficacy, cartoons rely on “instant recognition.” They therefore use “the familiar,” whether “stock situations,” negative stereotypes, or popular 29

Morgan, The Sacred Gaze, 76, 105. David Morgan, Protestants and Pictures: Religion, Visual Culture, and the Age of American Mass Production (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 323. 31 White, The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy, 5 –6; White, Klansmen, 5– 6. 32 Miller, Illustration, 102– 103; Paul C. Gutjahr, An American Bible: A History of the Good Book in the United States, 1777–1880 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999), 56. 33 Helen Goodman, “Women Illustrators of the Golden Age of American Illustration,” Woman’s Art Journal 8:1 (Spring– Summer 1987): 13. 34 For more on the relationship between author and illustrator, see J. Hillis Miller, Illustration (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), and J. R. Harvey, Victorian Novelists and Their Illustrators (New York: New York University Press, 1971). 30

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CHURCH HISTORY

symbols.35 As seen in figure 1, Clarke’s illustrations employ popular symbols and stereotypes—the flag, the Bible, the “Jewish” nose, the pope’s “triple crown”—to make their point. Like political and humorous cartoons, Clarke’s work “conveys its message quickly and pungently.”36 These characteristics of the cartoon genre make it, according to historian Thomas Milton Kemnitz, a medium that “can match any other media for invective and is an excellent method for disseminating highly emotional attitudes.” He adds, “the cartoon is also an ideal medium for suggesting what cannot be said by the printed word.”37 Clarke’s images, then, made visible what White may have deemed too dangerous or inflammatory to vocalize. Indeed, they often embellished her writings and at times included additional scenes and interpretations. This is not to say that White and Clarke worked at cross-purposes, but rather to suggest the power of Clarke’s drawings to shape their pro-Klan message and influence readers. “People,” as art historian David Morgan writes, “tend to believe what they see.”38 Clarke’s illustrations provided a visual accompaniment that seems to overpower White’s words. Not bound by prolonged theological invective or detailed biblical exegesis, Clarke reduced the complexity of White’s compositions to easily discernible, yet powerful, symbols filled with religious meaning. Using elements from the Bible, as well as the strategy of visibility and invisibility, Clarke’s artistic endeavors “ma[d]e their claims more fetching, authoritative, or trustworthy.”39 He created a body of work that functioned as immediate “proof” of the Klan’s divine sanction and Catholicism’s evil intent.

III. THE BIBLE

AND THE

AMERICAN RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE

As mentioned previously and seen in figure 1, the Bible played a central role in White and Clarke’s Christianization of the Klan. Scholars have long recognized the intimate and intense relationship between the Bible and the American people. “For almost all varieties of Americans, the Jewish-Christian Scriptures have provided a vast reservoir of themes, phrases, meanings, and habits of thinking”—“Scripture,” according to Mark Noll and Nathan Hatch,

35 Appel and Appel, “Anti-Semitism in American Caricature,” 82; Fischer, Them Damned Pictures, 122. 36 Kemnitz, “The Cartoon as a Historical Source,” 84. Also, see J. A. Mitchell, “Contemporary American Caricature,” Scribner’s Magazine 6:6 (December 1889): 729. 37 Kemnitz, “The Cartoon as a Historical Source,” 84. 38 Morgan, The Sacred Gaze, 39. 39 David Morgan, The Lure of Images: A History of Religion and Visual Media in America (New York: Routledge, 2007), 2.

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“has been nearly omnipresent in the nation’s past.”40 Puritans and enslaved Africans invoked it, Elizabeth Cady Stanton revised it, and Isaiah Thomas illustrated it. Whether in nineteenth-century literature, twentieth-century Christian romances, or contemporary Jesus films, the Bible constitutes a visible and vital part of American life.41 Its interpretations and uses are vast, varied, and powerful. “The Bible is an engine of civilization, an inspiration to nation building, a treasure of literary allusion, a cudgel for ideological bludgeoning, a source of private consolation, a staple of public ceremony, and much more.”42 For our consideration, it functions as a vehicle for claiming and establishing religious legitimacy. For example, new religions and religious organizations, from the Klan to Christian Identity, from Oneida Perfectionists to Mormons, “affirm[ed] the Bible as Scripture,” even as they developed new interpretations and at times “additional scriptures.”43 Historically, the appeal to biblical authority has been a powerful force in American culture. For Mormons and Oneida Perfectionists it provided a familiar foundation from which to assert authority and build their alternative religious visions.44 For others, the Bible has served as evidence to buttress their bigoted causes. For example, the “curse of Ham” was a “stock weapon” used to defend slaveholding Christianity in the nineteenth century, while Christian Identity’s “two-seed theory” interpretation of Genesis is currently used to demonize Jews.45 Similarly, defenders of the second Ku Klux Klan used the Bible to secure the Klan’s status as both American and Christian and thus proclaim the righteousness of its cause. This tactic proved especially powerful as the Bible’s authority took on added significance in the 1910s and 1920s. During this time the fundamentalist/ modernist controversy raged, and the Pillar of Fire denomination reached its peak. As debates swirled about the nature of the Bible and the status of miracles, Alma White and her Pillar of Fire Church, like other 40

Nathan O. Hatch and Mark A. Noll, The Bible in America: Essays in Cultural History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 3, 4. 41 Melanie J. Wright, Moses in America: The Cultural Uses of Biblical Narrative (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 6. See also Allene Stuart Phy, ed., The Bible and Popular Culture in America (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985); Giles Gunn, ed., The Bible and American Arts and Letters (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983); Gutjahr, An American Bible; and Lynn S. Neal, Romancing God: Evangelical Women and Inspirational Fiction (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). 42 Mark A. Noll, “The Bible in America,” Journal of Biblical Literature 106:3 (September 1987): 501. 43 Ernest S. Frerichs, ed., The Bible and Bibles in America (Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1988), 8. 44 Ibid. 45 Stephen R. Haynes, Noah’s Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slavery (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 8, and Michael Barkun, Religion and the Racist Right (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997).

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CHURCH HISTORY

fundamentalists, held fast to the centrality of the Bible. “The Bible,” White stated, “was written for all ages, and is not a difficult book to understand.” A few pages later, she added, “The Scriptures are our only infallible authority for faith and conduct.”46 In a world questioning the Bible’s veracity and status, she styled herself, her denomination, and the Klan as the defenders of the biblical text. The Bible, White insisted, provided a clear and necessary guide for individual and national life. It contained answers to problems, patterns to discern, and prophecies to be fulfilled. She read the Bible as an archetypal historical-prophetic text that revealed God’s manner of working in the world—past and present. Her repeated use of the phrase “in all ages,” and her claim “that the principles for which the Ku Klux Klan is contending are not new, that the powers of evil have long fought against these principles all down the ages” reveal this typological hermeneutic.47 According to Alma White, the patterns seen in biblical history repeated themselves in American and world history. Just as God called prophets in the Bible to gather his people, he summoned Luther to lead the Reformation and “raised up” the Klan to save America.48 Through this hermeneutic, White combined the ideology of the Klan with American identity and biblical history. Her interpretive task, then, was to make readers aware of the many correspondences between the biblical text and their contemporary context.49 However, it was Branford Clarke who brought this biblical vision to life. In White’s three pro-Klan books, fourteen of Clarke’s illustrations explicitly invoke the Bible—eight depict scenes from the Old Testament, while six portray facets of the New. Those representing the Old Testament focus on prophets and heroes—Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego (as seen in figure 1) as well as Elijah, Elisha, Jonah, Samson, and Gideon. Two feature 46 White, The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy, 14, 17. George M. Marsden highlights perspicuity and immutability as the two identifying features of conservative Protestant biblical understanding in “Everyone One’s Own Interpreter?: The Bible, Science, and Authority in Mid-NineteenthCentury America,” in The Bible in America: Essays in Cultural History, ed. Nathan O. Hatch and Mark A. Noll (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 80– 81. 47 White, Klansmen, 8; White, Heroes of the Fiery Cross, 11; White, The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy, 6. Kathleen Biddick describes typology as follows: “Christian typology posits the theological supersession of the Christian Church over Israel. Christians believed that the New Testament superseded the Hebrew Bible and redefined it as the Old Testament. Exegetically it maps the figures of the Old Testament onto their fulfillment in the New Testament”: see her monograph, The Typological Imaginary (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 4 –5. Also see Leonhard Goppelt, Typos: The Typological Interpretation of the Old Testament in the New ([1939] Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1982), and Richard M. Davidson, Typology in Scripture (Berrien Springs, Mich.: Andrews University Press, 1981). In White’s case, typology is not limited to biblical interpretation; for her the Bible provides the pattern, or type, which is later duplicated in American and world history—the antitype. 48 White, Heroes of the Fiery Cross, 8. 49 White, The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy, 6; White, Klansmen, 63.

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Jericho’s walls being toppled. With the exception of Jonah (a figure White interpreted as symbolic of the Jews), Clarke portrayed these biblical heroes as Klansmen leading the “white-robed army” to victory over the forces of evil, Catholicism. Half of the New Testament illustrations feature familiar scenes—Jesus feeding the multitudes, the parable of the Good Samaritan, and the Scarlet Woman of Revelation 17—while the other three are more obscure representations. Like their Old Testament counterparts, these illustrations blend the world of the Bible with the empire of the Klan. In recent years, art historians, including David Morgan and Sally Promey, have provided valuable insights into the power of visual culture in American religious history, while scholars of the Bible and art have examined prominent Bible illustrators such as Gustav Dore´, Bernard Plockhorst, and Johann Heinrich Hofmann, along with analyzing biblical themes in the work of famous artists. Yet, the intersection of the Bible and intolerance in visual culture, particularly in the work of less prominent artists, remains understudied.50 Nevertheless, Clarke’s work seems to function in ways similar to those explored by previous scholars. For example, historically, Bible illustrations emphasized the importance of research and accuracy so as to “underline the trustworthiness of the biblical message and promised interpretive insights.”51 Clarke’s drawings featuring biblical subjects connote a similar sense of historicity and dependability. They are clearly set in Palestine, and the landscape, with its hills, lakes, and pathways, is portrayed as real and tangible as if to affirm the Bible’s truth and reliability. While not overly detailed, his work still denotes the land’s significance and reality. They seem to “suspend time” and present an “eternal moment” as if they were documentary evidence of the Bible’s historical truth and the Klan’s Christian lineage.52 Clarke’s illustrations enhance the credibility and accessibility of White’s work by literally showing the connections between the Bible and the Klan.

50

Ljubica D. Popovich, “Popular American Biblical Imagery: Sources and Manifestations,” in The Bible and Popular Culture in America, ed. Allene Stuart Phy (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 193–233. See Morgan, Protestants and Pictures, and Sally M. Promey, “The ‘Return’ of Religion in the Scholarship of American Art,” The Art Bulletin 85:3 (September 2003): 581– 603. In addition, some scholars are researching themes of conflict in visual culture; however, the role and representation of religion in those conflicts is not prominent: see Patricia Johnston, ed., Seeing High & Low: Representing Social Conflict in American Visual Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). 51 Gutjahr, An American Bible, 64; Morgan, Protestants and Pictures, 296; Morgan, The Lure of Images, 96–97. 52 Miller, Illustration, 66; Masur, “Pictures Have Now Become a Necessity,” 1421.

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IV. THE BIBLE

IN

PICTURES FOR KLAN EYES53

By depicting Klansmen and Catholics within the landscape and stories of the Bible, Branford Clarke merged the past and present in a way that emphasized the Bible’s authority, the Klan’s legitimacy, and Catholicism’s deviancy. Through his appropriation of the Bible and manipulation of visibility, he portrayed Klansmen as the defenders and inheritors of the biblical text while Catholics appear vague and threatening, unbiblical and idolatrous. Through the symbols and stories of the biblical text, and the Bible itself, Clarke strengthened White’s intolerant message. Moreover, he shaped that message by providing readers with a visual shorthand of her words. “Pictures,” David Morgan writes, “are not merely illustrations of nonvisual events, such as ideas, personalities, or nations, but one powerful way in which ideas, personalities, and nations happen.”54 Clarke’s visual imagery helped religious intolerance happen. It reduced White’s writing to evocative and familiar symbols set within known biblical frames. In doing this, he both simplified and expanded on her message—he reduced it to its core and infused it with religious meaning. He helped foster religious intolerance by envisioning a world that valorized Protestant power, demonized Catholic faith and, ultimately, justified religious violence. Two illustrations from The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy, one from the Old Testament and one from the New, demonstrate these patterns and reveal the importance of Clarke’s imagery as a source of study. Chapter 7, titled “Gideon’s Army of 100 Percenters,” begins with a description of Gideon’s accomplishments in the biblical book of Judges. He was, White declared, “raised up to save the Hebrew nation from being completely swallowed up in Baal worship.” White praised Gideon’s razing of the altars of Baal and his building of an altar to Jehovah. She then mentioned how Gideon, like Moses and the Klan, “had to work under cover of night” to accomplish his goals, and proceeded to establish more parallels between the biblical text and the contemporary Klan. Gideon’s army (represented by the barley cake), she asserted, is the “white-robed army” of the Klan. They will “roll into the camp, knock down the tents and put the enemy to flight.” She then concluded the chapter with a prayer-like sentiment—that the Klan, like Gideon, will “destroy the altars of un-Americanism” and “build up the places of true worship.”55 For White, the Klan’s purposes and activities duplicated those of a biblical hero. By establishing this correspondence, she

53 This subtitle plays off the title of Kenneth N. Taylor’s devotional book, The Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes (Chicago: Moody, 1971). 54 Morgan, The Sacred Gaze, 33. 55 White, The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy, 55–58.

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Fig. 2. Branford Clarke, “Gideon’s Barley Cake,” from Alma White, The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy (Zarephath, N.J.: The Good Citizen, 1925), 58.

hoped to persuade readers that the Klan, like Gideon, was justified in its actions and should be emulated. Branford Clarke’s illustration “Gideon’s Barley Cake” (figure 2) appears on the fourth page of this five-page chapter, and in many ways it “presents” the picture that White’s words “evoke.”56 The caption under the image— “Gideon’s barley cake (K.K.K.) rolls into the camp of the enemy (Judges 7).—See preceding page”—alerts readers to the importance of the text in its decoding. It explicitly refers them not only to White’s words but also to the biblical passage—book and chapter. The caption cements her interpretation and Clarke’s in the Bible. Not only does this authorize Clarke’s art, it attempts to rein in any unwarranted interpretations of his work and deter those who may be tempted to look at the pictures and skim the text.57 However, vastly deviant interpretations seem unlikely, as Clarke’s 56 57

Miller, Illustration, 67. Morgan, The Sacred Gaze, 76, 105.

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illustration remains faithful to White’s words in a number of ways. The laughing moon indicates, like White’s text, that this confrontation occurs under the protection of night. The barley cake is clearly labeled “K.K.K.,” and Gideon’s army is indeed dressed in the white robes of the Klan. Lastly, Clarke’s inclusion of the American flag makes explicit White’s prayer-like words about America at the end of the chapter. Together White’s words and Clarke’s art purposefully re-imagine a biblical passage to create a way of seeing the Klan as a divinely justified fighting force. However, while Clarke’s art does not subvert White’s words, his illustration includes details not mentioned in the surrounding pages that enhance the intolerant vision being disseminated. For example, White never directly described Gideon as a Klansman, but Clarke depicted him as one. Also, White only mentioned “Rome” and its nefarious schemes twice in this chapter, and she did not situate “Rome” in direct relationship to the Gideon story. Obviously, if one reads the entirety of White’s work, “Rome’s” enemy status is clear; however, at the same time, lest the reader forget, Clarke’s art makes this enemy real in his artwork in a way that White’s chapter does not. The tent being crushed by the K.K.K. barley cake is identified as “Political Rome,” and spilling out of it are its minions—the Knights of Columbus and Tammany (as in figure 1). These elements identify Catholicism as a threat that must be defeated, and Clarke’s portrayal of the religious other attempts to ease any discomfort with this violent notion. He refused to feature ordinary Catholics who may have elicited reader sympathy but instead highlighted the supposed powerful Catholic forces in a stereotypical fashion. They appear as hapless caricatures who command great numbers— simultaneously bumbling and dangerous. By doing so, Clarke’s illustration incites fear and denies Catholicism a human face (even the immense Catholic crowd in figure 1 appears indistinct yet mob-like). In this way, Clarke provided readers with a visual shorthand to the conflict, one that revealed the Catholic threat and justified, if not divinized, action against it. The image reinforces this sense of divine sanction as the Klan appears powerful, organized, and biblical. In the right foreground Gideon possesses biblical weapons not mentioned in White’s text—the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of truth of Ephesians 6:16 – 17. Noticeably, these biblical weapons appear opposite the “superstitious” trappings of Catholicism—Holy Water and a cross. The size of the sword, helmet, and shield dwarf that of the Holy Water and cross, connoting the former’s power and virtue. And their position on the right only reinforces this interpretation. As in figure 1, “Gideon’s Barley Cake” employs the visual idiom of idolatry to signal Catholicism’s religious outsider status.58 58

Ibid., 117, 124, 125.

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In both of these illustrations, Clarke used familiar and evocative symbols, as well as biblical elements, to disseminate his pro-Klan message in a quick and effective manner. Unlike White’s words, he literally showed readers. In his visual imagery, the biblical and therefore Christian character of the Klan is clear while Catholic reliance on people and things other than the Bible denotes their idolatrous and un-Christian character. Clarke’s illustrations made visible the religious and political threat posed by Catholicism while simultaneously showcasing the patriotism and Protestantism of the Klan. His art visually demarcated the difference between insider and outsider, Christian and non-Christian. He used American and biblical symbols to create a simplistic and stereotypical vision of the religious other. “This is the most important function of the stereotype: to maintain sharp boundary definitions, to define clearly where the pale ends and thus who is clearly within and who clearly beyond it.”59 This boundary creation recast the victims of religious intolerance as villains. In these scenes, the religious outsiders were depicted as power-hungry threats to the American (and Christian) way of life, a force that must be stopped. Given the way humans “create their worlds by visual means,” Clarke’s rendering of a visual stereotype of both Catholic and Klansman through the Bible was a powerful tool with which to advance his cause.60 By providing readers with a visualized biblical framework, his artistic additions constructed a way of seeing the world that justified religious intolerance. Similar patterns emerge in the next chapter, titled “Feeding the Multitudes.” In these pages White discussed the “miraculous growth of the Invisible Empire.” People, she proclaimed, are being “enlightened” by the Klan while Catholicism seeks to keep them in “ignorance, superstition, and tyranny.” However, she insisted, despite “Pagan Rome’s” best efforts, “our great army of patriots”—the Klan—will vanquish Catholicism and transform the country. “The multitudes,” she wrote, “are everywhere falling in line” with the Klan.61 In White’s view, Catholicism appeared ignorant and idolatrous in contrast to the Klan’s intelligence and faithfulness. Clarke’s illustration, figure 3, comes on the third page of this five-page chapter. Nowhere in the chapter, except in this image and its caption, is the feeding of the five thousand mentioned and only White’s last sentence, which references the word “multitudes,” remotely recalls this gospel account. As with figure 2, Clarke’s illustration exceeds the words written in White’s text. He developed White’s nascent idea of the Klan’s dissemination of truth through this biblical passage. The image works visually in vertical thirds, and 59

Dyer, The Matter of Images, 16; Morgan, The Sacred Gaze, 115. Morgan, The Sacred Gaze, 25. 61 White, The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy, 61– 65. 60

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Fig. 3. Branford Clarke, “Then He Took. . .,” from Alma White, The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy (Zarephath, N.J.: The Good Citizen, 1925), 63.

its composition leads the viewer’s eyes immediately to Jesus and the disciples in the dominant middle third. White does not refer to Jesus at all in her chapter, but Clarke’s illustration prominently features him wearing robes with a halo around his head. As in the biblical account, Jesus has five loaves of bread, but in this instance they bear the label “Tenets of the K.K.K.,” and he distributes them to his Klansmen disciples, who then feed the multitude. In case the viewer fails to discern Clarke’s meaning, the caption explains. Parts of Luke 9:16 are quoted—“Then he took the five loaves and two fishes . . . and blessed them . . . and gave to the disciples to set before the multitude”—followed by the statement: “In like manner is the truth being carried to the people by the Ku Klux Klan.” As with figures 1 and 2, White’s text and Clarke’s image worked together and used the Bible to sanctify the Klan’s cause, but in this case, White’s words seem muted when compared with Clarke’s more strident and explicitly biblical tones. Clarke’s illustration seems to overshadow White’s text and, to some extent, speak independently of it. By invoking a familiar biblical passage and placing Jesus amid Klansman disciples, Clarke’s work translated

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White’s writing into “a potent weapon” that spoke loudly about the legitimacy and sanctity of their message.62 Similar to his other works, he constructed this religiously intolerant way of seeing, in part, through the use of visibility and invisibility. For example, Catholicism is absent from figure 3, but presumably it remains a threat in viewers’ minds from reading White’s words and seeing Clarke’s other illustrations. Indeed Catholicism’s invisibility seems to reinforce the sense of threat and need for vigilance. In the 1920s, one could not readily identify the Catholic other—Catholics did not bear distinguishing features and therefore could remain an undetected and subversive power. In response, Clarke’s illustrations sought to help people see the threat they posed. However, at the same time, the other’s absence allowed the viewer to imagine and endow it with threatening qualities. Thus Catholicism’s simultaneous visibility and invisibility made it a canvas onto which viewers could cast their fears. Even when Catholicism appears, in figures 1 and 2, it remains a vague yet threatening force. Ordinary Catholics remain indistinct or even invisible and their visualized beliefs menacing. For example, Clarke included very specific symbols and labels—the pope, Holy Water, and the Knights of Columbus— to highlight Catholicism’s supposed idolatry and desire for power, but nothing in them explains Catholic doctrines or proves the threat that these symbols suggest. Historical data and detailed explanations about Catholicism are noticeably absent. Yet Clarke employed these visual cues, this artistic shorthand, as a type of evidence to persuade viewers of an alleged historical truth—that Catholics were unbiblical and posed a threat to Protestant America. In the context of White’s texts, this visual imagery, like photographs, hoped to function as “the quintessential objective document” and persuade readers (in a way that words could not) to believe in this simultaneously biblical and American world.63 Clarke’s portrayal of the Klan used these same techniques. In many of his drawings, including figure 3, the Klan dominates the image, a visibility that emphasizes its power and might, while Protestant symbols reveal its alleged virtues. However, except for their wearing of hoods and working at night, the Klan’s tactics and tenets are concealed. In this way, Clarke masked the intolerance of the Klan; its hatred and violence remained invisible. Similarly, 62 Mitchell, “Contemporary American Caricature,” 728. Interpreting Jesus in terms of one’s own context and ideology is certainly not unique. Rolf Lunde´n writes that “at various points in history, Jesus has been made into a monk, a soldier, a social radical, a guerilla fighter, and a hippie. In the twenties, as I have shown, he was a businessman”: see his Business and Religion in the American 1920s (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1988), 105. 63 Lawrence W. Levine, “The Historian and the Icon: Photography and the History of the American People in the 1930s and 1940s,” in Modern Art and Society: An Anthology of Social and Multicultural Readings, ed. Maurice Berger (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), 183.

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in figure 3, Jesus distributes the “Tenets of the K.K.K.,” but they are not defined. Neither is the nature of Protestantism. Clarke used Jesus and the “Holy Bible” to denote the Klan’s Christian faith, but the character of this Jesus and the content of this Bible, as well as the Klan’s tenets, are left un-illustrated. This tactic simultaneously sanctified the Klan’s mission yet allowed viewers to ascribe their own religious particularities and presumably virtues to Jesus, the Bible, and the Klan. Clarke’s disclosure and concealment, as well as his simultaneous reduction and expansion of White’s message, provided readers with a biblically justified intolerant way of seeing the world. The art of religious intolerance as promulgated by Clarke and White rested on this ability to reframe reality—to construct a different vision of the world. This vision claimed historical and religious veracity but relied on suggestive and vague argumentation. It invoked the Bible as authoritative but excluded the Exodus story and the Golden Rule. It relied on the appropriation, representation, and re-contextualization of supposed evidence. Clarke’s illustrations played a central role in this process. His visual shorthand simplified the complexities involved, making the Klan-Catholic conflict easy for readers to decode.64 He employed powerful symbols to make the alleged threat of the Catholic other visible and tangible while concealing the Klan’s intolerance. Indeed, he re-envisioned it as benevolence and faith, which he accomplished, in part, through his appropriation of biblical elements. Juxtaposing Klansmen and Bible heroes, the hills of Palestine and the flag of America, demonstrated for readers steeped in Christianity the righteousness of his cause. Clarke’s visual culture appealed to emotions of patriotism and fear, but more than that, it drew on the Bible. Protestant Christianity’s association with this sacred text became the religious norm to which all others were compared and, not surprisingly, these others fell short.65 In the end, he constructed an imagery of desire, one that not only included the Bible, but also the United States.66

V. BIBLE HISTORY IS AMERICAN HISTORY IS KLAN HISTORY67 White and Clarke’s appropriation of the Bible was not restricted to the bravery of prophets or the landscape of Palestine. The prominence of the flag in figures 64

Dyer, The Matter of Images, 12. Similar tactics are used in representations of race and heterosexuality: see Richard Dyer, White, 10–13, 42, 45, 70. 66 Morgan, The Lure of Images, 132–133. 67 This subtitle corrupts Ann Braude’s title to her seminal essay, “Women’s History Is American Religious History,” in Retelling U.S. Religious History, ed. Thomas A. Tweed (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 87–107. 65

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1, 2, and 3 demands a closer look at how they envisioned the United States in relation to the Bible and the Klan. In both her words and his images, America is portrayed as an entity to be protected and defended given its embodiment of the Christian principles of liberty and democracy. White rooted these claims in her interpretation of the American past. She stated that these “heroes and heroines of the Cross,” the Puritans, “did not come to America as mere sightseers or adventurers; they came to establish principles that would liberate the human race from the tyranny of the Old World.”68 Similarly, in another passage, White wrote, “The United States was founded upon the principles of the Protestant faith.”69 George Washington provided additional “proof” of this as White recounted how he “stooped and kissed the Bible” upon taking his presidential oath. In the 1920s, for White and Clarke, this heritage—an America based on biblical Christianity—appeared to be in jeopardy as “Rome,” “the arch foe of liberty,” sought “to take the Bible, not only out of our public schools, but from our homes and churches” and “to wrench the government from the hands of Protestants and make it subserve the purposes of the Vatican.”70 White’s words and Clarke’s art sought to persuade others that, if Catholicism were not stopped, Christian America would be lost. America and her history, then, emerged as a dominant refrain in White’s writings and Clarke’s illustrations. For them, the nation’s past, as with the Bible, became a kind of sacred text from which they could glean historical patterns and heroic examples. Just as Klansmen peopled the landscape of ancient Palestine, they also appeared in the annals of American history. Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and George Washington joined ranks with Gideon, Samson, and Jesus—they all belonged to the Klan. By merging the American past and the Klan’s present, White and Clarke attempted to convince readers of the Klan’s legitimacy through its historicity and sanctity. It also served as a call to action. “We need more than a display of national colors,” White insisted; what was needed was “a real infusion of patriotic blood in to the veins of our people.”71 The Klan already had it. Others were clearly anemic. To help infuse readers with this patriotic fervor and intolerant Protestant vision, White added to The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy with Klansmen: Guardians of Liberty and Heroes of the Fiery Cross. Throughout these works, White emphasized the Klansman’s willingness to sacrifice himself for the principles of the American nation, democracy and liberty. Features of Clarke’s art highlighted this as well. In Klan iconography, the hood 68

White, Klansmen, 42. White, The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy, 62. 70 White, Klansmen, 45, 47. 71 White, Klansmen, 43– 44; see also Higham, Strangers in the Land, 205–206. 69

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concealed members’ individual identity and symbolized their supposed selflessness, and the fiery cross represented their apparent willingness to sacrifice themselves for the greater good—both common elements in Clarke’s illustrations.72 His work suggested that, like Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego, and like Jesus, Klansmen were willing to die. “Sacrifice,” White wrote, “is the most priceless of all the jewels of liberty.”73 In addition to these biblical comparisons, White emphasized the connection between sacrifice and liberty embodied in those responsible for the country’s founding: Revolutionary War heroes. Chapter titles, including “The Price of Liberty,” “Klansmen of the Revolution,” “Faith of our Fathers,” and “True Heroism,” reveal the importance she placed on this national event.74 White also highlighted this connection between the country’s past and the Klan’s present by describing their shared genealogy. “Many people today,” she explained, “are unable to trace the origin of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan back to the early settlers of our country, whose spirit and principles have been brought down from the Revolutionary times to the present day. Since the first efforts were made by the colonists to throw off the yoke of tyranny placed upon their necks by George III, 100 percent Americans have been the most conspicuous characters in our history.”75 In other words, White re-narrated history. She constructed a world in which American heroes and heroines were members of the Klan. She claimed that American history is Klan history. Clarke’s work made this history come alive and provided visual evidence that it was “true.” The creation and dissemination of this re-envisioned history can be seen most forcefully in figure 4, “The Boston Tea Party.” In this image, the wooden dock focuses one’s attention on the Klansmen’s defiant activity— dumping the Brits’ heavily taxed tea into the waters below. The figures work furiously and fearlessly to accomplish their goal. White’s accompanying text describes the scene: “The Klansmen, under the leadership of Samuel Adams, made up their minds to do the unloading in their own way. A great Klavern was held in the Old South Meeting House to determine what could be done. That night a band of citizens in full regalia rushed down to the wharf and emptied every chest of tea, nearly $100,000 worth, into the harbor.”76 There is no question about their identity and their relationship to the Klan. White’s words harmonize perfectly with Clarke’s depiction. They leave little room for confusion or misinterpretation: in this re-imagined history, members of the Boston Tea Party were Klansmen. So, too, was Paul Revere (see 72

Blee, Women of the Klan, 38. White, Heroes of the Fiery Cross, 41. White, Klansmen, 5 –6; White, Heroes of the Fiery Cross, 5. 75 White, Klansmen, 49. 76 Ibid., 53. 73 74

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Fig. 4. Branford Clarke, “The Boston Tea Party,” from Alma White’s Klansmen: Guardians of Liberty (Zarephath, N.J.: The Good Citizen, 1926), 54.

figure 5).77 Together White and Clarke constructed a vision of the Klan as an inheritor of this patriotic legacy, that the Klan, like these Revolutionary heroes, was defending the nation’s liberty. For White the equation was simple: “The parallel between the Klansmen of the Revolution and those of today is obvious to anyone who has eyes to see.”78 With Clarke’s artwork it would indeed be difficult, if not impossible, for those with eyes to miss it. However, equally if not more important when analyzing figure 4 is the illustration’s border. Here we again see Clarke’s use of symbolic shorthand, especially the Bible. He situated the Klan’s fiery cross opposite the American flag, suggesting their equal status and mutual goals. He often placed the fiery cross of the Klan opposite and equal to icons of the United States, including the Constitution, the Liberty Bell, the flag, the American Eagle, and the Capitol Building (figures 1 and 2). The symbols of each entity usually fill the top two corners while the symbol of Protestant Christianity, an open Bible, often occupies the top or bottom center (figures 2 and 3). In “The Boston Tea Party,” the “Holy Bible” in the border’s center anchors the picture, invites viewers in, and upholds its centrality. Its 77 78

White, Klansmen, 56; White, Heroes of the Fiery Cross, 40. White, Klansmen, 60.

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Fig. 5. Branford Clarke, “Paul Revere’s Ride,” from Alma White’s Klansmen: Guardians of Liberty (Zarephath, N.J.: The Good Citizen, 1926), 57.

positioning also highlights the Bible’s relevance to history and frames the Klan’s Christian character. Even more, the Bible provides the scene’s foundation and authorizes the illustration’s contents. The Bible literally opens up a pathway into American history as if to say biblical history is American history is Klan history. Through these historical and symbolic combinations, Clarke provided the actions of the Klan, past and present, with a blessing both patriotic and divine. He produced visual documentation of a history that never happened. Given the power of the Bible and “the capacity of images to influence” one’s perspective, Clarke’s illustrations constituted an influential weapon with which to attack Catholicism and defend the Klan.79 By placing the Bible alongside symbols of the United States and the Klan, Clarke reinforced their alignment with one another—their common cause, the sense that one necessarily implied the others.80 The positioning of these three icons on or near the border suggests that one should view the enclosed scene in light of their intermingled and seemingly interchangeable meanings. For example, figure 6 depicts a Klan initiation ceremony. The diagonal block of unoccupied space in the foreground combined with the oval-shaped ring of cars in the crowd of Klansmen immediately draws the eye to their fiery 79

Morgan, The Sacred Gaze, 68. For more on the “conflation” of biblical and American iconography, see Morgan, The Sacred Gaze, 220–255. 80

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Fig. 6. Branford Clarke, “Open-air Initiation of K.K.K. under the Light of the Fiery Cross,” from Alma White, The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy (Zarephath, N.J.: The Good Citizen, 1925), 24.

cross. However, the points of this cross direct one’s attention to the icons in the banner that frames the scene. To the right and the left of the cross Clarke placed men emblematic of American freedom: George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. These men are connected by another American symbol, the flag, which is, in turn, held together through the power of the Bible. The Bible’s location in the middle seems to suggest its ability to unify, to hold things together, and its placement directly above the fiery cross connotes its blessing upon the Klan’s endeavors. These symbols combine to create a framework that signals that the scene within—a Klan initiation—is both biblical and American. The banner acts as a blanket that encompasses the event within its protective patriotic and divine folds. White’s words only reinforce this interpretation. In the paragraph surrounding this illustration, she wrote: “A few faithful followers of the lowly Nazarene have been contending for the faith once delivered to the saints, against papal mobs who have torn down gospel tabernacles, wrecked buildings and imprisoned Protestant worshipers. There are times when, overwhelmed with gratitude to God, I wonder if it is an illusion of the mind or actually true that the

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rescuers of the Constitution and the faith of the Revolutionary fathers are at hand.”81 This quote and Clarke’s image re-envisioned the past to sanctify the Klan’s actions in the present. Together White’s words and Clarke’s art combined the Bible with American history to redeem their cause and disseminate religious intolerance. They reimagined historical events and appropriated biblical elements to “prove” that the Klan was patriotic and Protestant. Their work offered an intimate and visible connection—a historical link—between the Bible, America, and the Klan. Clothing Gideon in Klan robes, giving Jesus Klan disciples, and renarrating the Boston Tea Party removed the distance between past and present, between the Bible and America. It helped make the Klan a plausible choice. Knowing that some doubted the Klan’s fidelity to Christianity and the nation, Clarke and White created a written and visual culture that challenged these uncertainties.82 In this vision, Clarke’s artwork satisfied readers’ “demand[s] for documentation, the[ir] hunger for authenticity.”83 His illustrations showed in a powerful way that the Catholic other was idolatrous, un-Christian, and foreign while the Klan was seemingly unassailable—it was biblical, it was Christian, it was American. The efficacy of White and Clarke’s message rested, in part, on their ability to claim interpretive power over the past, both biblical and American. By asserting authority over Bible stories and patriotic symbols, they not only delineated the parameters of Christianity, but they also defined America and what it meant to be American. In turn, this vision allowed them to label Catholics as religious and political threats, and justified violent action against them. They created a religiously intolerant way of seeing the world.

VI. CONCLUSION These examples reveal the importance of images as sources for the study of religious intolerance; however, they also demonstrate how White’s words and Clarke’s imagery combined in various ways to create a persuasive and powerful message of religious intolerance. Sometimes Clarke’s work harmonizes perfectly with White’s words while at other times Clarke’s artistic melody seems to dominate.84 While neither duplicates the other, their different melodies show some of the complicated arrangements and compositions that disseminated Protestant religious intolerance in the 1920s. For White and Clarke, religious belief, fervent nationalism, and the Klan 81

White, The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy, 24–25. Dyer, The Matter of Images, 146. 83 Levine, “The Historian and the Icon,” 184. 84 Miller, Illustration, 102–103. 82

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creed went together—and they were by no means alone in this stance, given the Klan’s immense popularity among Protestants. As an advertisement for The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy in White’s periodical The Good Citizen boasted: “First edition of 11,000 exhausted in three weeks, second edition now ready.” Another stated, “We have never put out a book that has had such a sale. Six hundred and fifty copies were sold at a Klan gathering in a few hours. Others have sold 150 to 200 in a single evening. It sells itself.”85 There was, it seems, a ready audience for White and Clarke’s carefully crafted message. The Klan’s popularity rested, in large part, on its ability to invoke and promote a variety of causes. Historian Alan Goldberg states, “The Klan offered a program of Americanism, militant Protestantism, fraternity, order, religious intolerance, and racial purity—a plethora of causes from which to choose.”86 White’s typological hermeneutic and Clarke’s artistic interpretations functioned similarly. They disseminated a multifaceted message that addressed religion and politics, America and the Bible, Jesus and the Klan, good and evil. However, even as one could read about this fusion of causes in White’s writings, Clarke’s illustrations offered something more. Through his use of the Bible and the technique of visibility/ invisibility, he created a visual shorthand that offered ease of access and clarity of vision. People did not have to wonder. They could clearly distinguish the heroes from the villains, the insiders from the outsiders. They were provided with a way of seeing that divinized the Klan’s mission, sacralized the American nation, and demonized the Catholic Church. In this way, he helped make the Klan an attractive religio-political option and contributed to the religious intolerance that characterized much of the 1920s. While White, Clarke, and the second Ku Klux Klan faded from the American scene in the 1930s, their work illuminates how some Protestants wielded the art of religious intolerance in the 1920s and raises areas for future research. It demonstrates the power of visual culture in creating religiously intolerant ways of seeing the world. In addition, their efforts suggest that religious intolerance functions, in part, through strategies of disclosure and concealment, visibility and invisibility, demarcating boundaries and blurring distinctions. It tries to quell any questions that may arise. It aims to play on one’s emotions and simply “presents” the supposed truth.87 It also highlights the centrality of sacred texts, in this case the Bible, in disseminating religiously intolerant visions. Biblical passages, symbols, and figures provided Clarke and White with potent ways to claim legitimacy (religious 85 “Klansmen Take Notice!” The Good Citizen 13:8 (August 1925): 5, and “A Marvelous Sale,” The Good Citizen 13:8 (August 1925), 10. 86 Goldberg, Hooded Empire, 10–11. 87 Deborah E. Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (New York: The Free Press, 1993), 2, 5.

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and political) and thereby further their cause. They prompt us to question whether and how others in American history have promulgated religious intolerance in similar ways. We may be tempted, as John Higham writes, to dismiss this vision as the work of “crackpots.” However, he reminds us that “nativism as a habit of mind illuminates darkly some of the large contours of the American past; it has mirrored our national anxieties and marked out the bounds of our tolerance.”88 We cannot shy away from or write off the work of men and women like Branford Clarke and Alma White. Examining their way of seeing reveals aspects of how people create and replicate religious intolerance, then and now. They provide us with a glimpse into those contours and teach us how religion often functions as a way for people to exorcise their fears and exercise their power. Scholar Deborah Lipstadt writes that “the historian’s role has been compared to that of the canary in the coal mine whose death warned the miners that dangerous fumes were in the air.”89 Perhaps White and Clarke represent our canaries. They remind us of the persistence of religious intolerance in the United States and the need to study it.

88 89

Higham, Strangers in the Land, x. Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust, 29.

Church History 78:2 (June 2009), 379– 477. # 2009, American Society of Church History Printed in the USA

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES doi:10.1017/S0009640709000535

Behold the Man: Jesus and Greco-Roman Masculinity. By Colleen M. Conway. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. xii þ 258 pp. $65.00 cloth. In the early twentieth century, churchmen such as Warren Conant sought to virilize Jesus in the hopes of bringing men back to the church. Later in the twentieth century, some feminist theologians sought to uncover a feminine agenda in Jesus’ ministry to support modern women’s issues. Colleen Conway’s book Behold the Man shows that gender has been a central concern in representations of Jesus from the beginning. Conway begins by reviewing ancient constructions of masculinity and illustrating these constructions with “case studies” of Caesar Augustus, Philo’s Moses, and Philostratus’s Apollonius. Even for scholars familiar with this material, a close reading of these chapters is beneficial because Conway reminds her readers that there were multiple—and sometimes competing— models of masculinity in antiquity and that “marginalized gender discourses” (as opposed to the “hegemonic masculinity” of the imperial project) could be used to resist imperial power without rejecting gender ideology altogether. Among the undisputed Pauline epistles, Conway focuses particularly on the Corinthian correspondence and Galatians. She argues that since Paul mentions the crucifixion most frequently when his masculinity is being questioned, references to the crucifixion bolster Paul’s masculine status. Overall, Conway sees Paul’s Christology as akin to imperial apotheosis traditions and, therefore, she does not read the Pauline traditions as countercultural or as subverting hegemonic masculine ideology. Conway begins her analysis of each Gospel by investigating how the titles applied to Jesus masculinize him. In Mark, the titles show Jesus’ divine status and ruling authority. Jesus’ miracles are to be understood as challenges to Roman imperial power. The healing of the Gerasene demoniac, for example, is described as a “thinly veiled ‘exorcism’ of Roman military occupation” (94). Mark’s relationship with hegemonic masculinity is ambiguous, however, as the passion narrative makes clear: at his death, Jesus is filled with fear and anguish. Conway suggests that the noble death tradition might alleviate some of this tension. She surmises that the ambiguous portrayal of Jesus’ masculinity may be attributable to the recent display of Roman power in Jerusalem. Matthew focuses on Jesus as a skilled teacher, which was a masculine quality. Conway argues that Jesus’ teachings are not countercultural because

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they espouse traditional virtues (for example, self-control and leniency). Jesus’ teachings on family and asceticism, while in tension with hegemonic masculinity, are similar to the masculine ideology of the moral philosophers. Here, then, Conway illustrates the importance of acknowledging varieties of masculinizing discourses. Luke’s masculinizing tendencies are seen in his focus on education, government, and cult. The emphasis on education assures “the reader of the characters’ training in masculinity” (129). The titles applied to Jesus (especially “savior”), along with the ascension narratives, link Jesus to the divinized emperor. The focus on the Temple connects Jesus to cultic worship (just as the emperor was depicted as a pious priest). Perhaps more than any of the other texts explored, Luke-Acts, according to Conway, presents Jesus in the garb of the emperor, the preeminent earthly example of virtue. John’s Jesus is carefully masculinized by comparison; Jesus is superior to, and therefore manlier than, those around him. Conway argues, for instance, that the resurrection account in John is qualitatively different from the apotheosis traditions of Paul and the Synoptics (and of other divine men) because Jesus is returning whence he came rather than being rewarded for heroic or virtuous behavior. The hypermasculinity of John’s Jesus is unsurprising: if God occupies the perfect end of the gender gradient, then a high Christology necessitates a superior masculinity. Conway employs postcolonial theory most directly in her analysis of Revelation, utilizing especially the notion of mimicry. Conway shows how John’s paradoxical representations of Jesus—as imperial judge and vengeful warrior—may expose “the gap between Roman masculine ideology and imperial practice” (174). The divine vengeance central to Revelation, in other words, is not in line with hegemonic masculinity, but it may have associations with imperial action. Not all scholars will agree with Conway’s specific conclusions. She argues, for instance, that readers could overlook feminizing elements in Mark’s passion account by reading it as a noble death. Alternatively, she suggests that Jesus must be feminized in relation to God, who represents perfect masculinity. Neither of these elements, however, is found in the quintessential noble deaths of Socrates, Cato, or Seneca. The noble death tradition, as typically understood, highlights one’s nobility, self-control, and courage in the face of death. The noble death, therefore, may not have been as obvious an option for ancient readers as Conway suggests, and thus we must still account for the ambiguously gendered messiah in Mark. Since it is Luke’s redaction of Mark, furthermore, that depicts Jesus’ as a noble death, we may surmise that at least one early reader (that is, Luke) did not see Mark as successfully employing that tradition. Conway also argues that Luke “finds ways to depict all the leading figures as literate men” (129). While she notes that

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Luke explicitly labels Peter and John as uneducated in Acts 4:13, this statement is too quickly dropped in favor of an emphasis on the quality of the apostles’ speeches. If the education system transmitted hegemonic masculinity, and if Luke emphasized literacy as a way to demonstrate masculinity, we surely must contend with the illiteracy of these two major characters. Conway’s study is important because it reveals the complex strategies of masculinization employed by New Testament authors. These alternative models of masculinity have been read as Christian counterculturalism, an interpretation Conway rightly rejects. Equally important, Conway shows that the gendered representations of Jesus are significant not only for Christology; they also help portray individual Christians—for example, Paul—and Christians in general as “manly” (that is, virtuous). Conway’s discussion of how masculinity was transmitted from culture to individual is an especially welcome addition to scholarship. Behold the Man should be read by advanced undergraduate students (occasionally Greek and Latin terms are untranslated), graduate students, and professionals interested in the use of gendered rhetoric in early Christianity, as well as by those interested in constructions of masculinity in antiquity. L. Stephanie Cobb Hofstra University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000547

Inventing Superstition from the Hippocratics to the Christians. By Dale B. Martin. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004. xii þ 307 pp. $18.95 paper. This book has many unique characteristics, from its subject matter to its style. It examines the history and development of the concept of superstition from the Hippocratics to the Christians in a comprehensive tour de force of ancient poetry, medicine, philosophy, history, and religion. The book is written in a delightful style that combines just the right amount of scholarly expertise and entertaining storytelling. It will be of interest to specialists in classics, religion, and philosophy, as well as to the general reader who is curious to have a peek into Greek and Roman daily and intellectual life. In scholarship, the subject of superstition in classical antiquity is usually a part of larger studies of mythology, literature, science, religion, ritual, or magic. Naturally, this secondary treatment has deprived the subject of deeper understanding and more visibility. Martin’s book breaks the ground of studying the concept of superstition in its own right as the forerunner of the

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Luke explicitly labels Peter and John as uneducated in Acts 4:13, this statement is too quickly dropped in favor of an emphasis on the quality of the apostles’ speeches. If the education system transmitted hegemonic masculinity, and if Luke emphasized literacy as a way to demonstrate masculinity, we surely must contend with the illiteracy of these two major characters. Conway’s study is important because it reveals the complex strategies of masculinization employed by New Testament authors. These alternative models of masculinity have been read as Christian counterculturalism, an interpretation Conway rightly rejects. Equally important, Conway shows that the gendered representations of Jesus are significant not only for Christology; they also help portray individual Christians—for example, Paul—and Christians in general as “manly” (that is, virtuous). Conway’s discussion of how masculinity was transmitted from culture to individual is an especially welcome addition to scholarship. Behold the Man should be read by advanced undergraduate students (occasionally Greek and Latin terms are untranslated), graduate students, and professionals interested in the use of gendered rhetoric in early Christianity, as well as by those interested in constructions of masculinity in antiquity. L. Stephanie Cobb Hofstra University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000547

Inventing Superstition from the Hippocratics to the Christians. By Dale B. Martin. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004. xii þ 307 pp. $18.95 paper. This book has many unique characteristics, from its subject matter to its style. It examines the history and development of the concept of superstition from the Hippocratics to the Christians in a comprehensive tour de force of ancient poetry, medicine, philosophy, history, and religion. The book is written in a delightful style that combines just the right amount of scholarly expertise and entertaining storytelling. It will be of interest to specialists in classics, religion, and philosophy, as well as to the general reader who is curious to have a peek into Greek and Roman daily and intellectual life. In scholarship, the subject of superstition in classical antiquity is usually a part of larger studies of mythology, literature, science, religion, ritual, or magic. Naturally, this secondary treatment has deprived the subject of deeper understanding and more visibility. Martin’s book breaks the ground of studying the concept of superstition in its own right as the forerunner of the

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important role the concept plays in the history of Christianity and, especially in its formative period, on the background of ancient paganism. The book begins by introducing the concept of superstition in the context of Christian ritual practices and their misunderstanding by the officials in the Roman Empire. The second chapter discusses the difficulties of defining the meaning of “superstition” in antiquity. Unlike today, the term “superstition” with its closest Greek equivalent deisidaimonia had a conflicting spectrum of meanings, ranging from expressing piety and religiosity to expressing excessive fearfulness of the supernatural. The third chapter examines the presentation of the concept of deisidaimonia as excessive fearfulness of the supernatural in the fourth century B.C.E., in the Characters of Theophrastus, the pupil and successor of Aristotle in the Lyceum. The chapter offers an interesting glimpse of everyday life in Athens and its cultural conventions. The fourth chapter traces the origin of the concept in the Hippocratic writings and especially in the treatise On the Sacred Disease, which argues against laymen’s supernatural explanation of epilepsy. The chapter also engagingly portrays the intellectual fervor with which medicine had to define itself as a separate discipline from philosophy, magic, and astrology. The fifth chapter analyzes the uses of deisidaimonia in Plato and Aristotle, with primary emphasis on the foundation of the critical assessment of myth in Plato and on the teleological systematization of the universe and human society in Aristotle. In opposition to the philosophers’ rationalization of men’s attitudes toward the gods, the sixth chapter reinstalls the notion of the ambivalence of the term deisidaimonia, as presented, in the first century B.C.E., in the works of Diodorus Siculus. Depending on the context, Diodorus uses deisidaimonia to mean “piety” or “superstition.” He provides an overwhelming number of examples for each interpretation and, most important, leaves the question of the particular meaning of the word open to his audience to decide. This freeinterpretation approach stands in stark opposition to the philosophers’ attempt at rationalization of men’s relations with the gods. In chapter 7, this new approach opens the possibility for Plutarch, in the first century C.E., to reintroduce the question of deisidaimonia on the philosophical stage as laymen’s “ignorance about the true nature of the gods” (95). In chapter 8, Martin brings his study back to the medical field, this time in the figure of Galen, who lived only a few decades after Plutarch. Contrary to the intolerant views toward superstition of his Hippocratic predecessors, Galen, true to the cultural and conceptual complexity of late antiquity, expresses both reverence and skepticism toward the gods. Chapters 9 and 10 shift the focus from the medical and private spheres to the strongly politicized fear of ill divine intent at Rome. In the truly Roman phenomenon of politicization, Martin finds the roots of the Romans’ persecution of Christianity. Chapter 11 presents Origen’s defense of Christianity from the Roman accusations of superstition

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by countering that all pagan worship is based on superstition and that all daimons are evil. The question of the status of daimons is the subject of chapter 12, which focuses on the Neoplatonic understanding of a complex hierarchy of daimons and the heightened superstitions of the late ancient philosophers. Martin rightfully perceives these changes to be a result of the shifting political, ideological, and philosophical paradigms of the times. The last chapter brings the investigation full circle by demonstrating how Christians in the second and third centuries C.E., in the figure of Eusebius of Caesarea, perceive Greek and Roman religious beliefs and cults as superstition. This circular thematic arrangement, from the Romans’ charges of superstition against the Christians to the Christians’ charges of superstition against the Romans, highlights one of the underlying theses of the book, that the history of the concept of superstition in antiquity explains the reasons for the failure of what Martin calls “the Grand Optimal Illusion” of ancient Greece and Rome. Ancient philosophy, according to the author, conceived of the universe, on the grand scale of things, as good simply because it “ought to be so” (227). This conception did not provide a persuasive rational explanation of the imperfect, and even at times capricious, nature of human existence in antiquity. It is also an illusion, Martin argues, because the ancient philosophers did not find an actual proof of their speculations. While I agree with Martin’s assessment of the ancients’ attempts at understanding the universe and men’s relation with gods as grand and optimal, I am not convinced it is an illusion because of the lack of factual data. Don’t we today also suffer from superstitions although we have all the scientific data to prove them insubstantial? Perhaps the answer to the question of superstition lies in humans’ attempts at procuring divine good will or at least controlling the unpredictable events in life. It is apparent from the above summary that the greatest achievements of the book are its encyclopedic wealth of information and Martin’s pioneering work at reconstructing a concept that has a meaning that was, in antiquity, ambivalent at best. The clear and concise style of the book is also impressive. I must admit that the thematic arrangement of the chapters creates the notion of disjointedness in the beginning of the book. For example, the chronological beginning of Martin’s analysis—the use of the concept by the Hippocratics—is not introduced until chapter 4, after the chapters that discuss the Roman perception of Christianity as superstition, the problems of definition, and Theophrastus’s use of deisidaimonia. This chronological meandering may distract a reader who is not closely familiar with ancient history and literature. But Martin has set up an ambitious goal in this book, and he has achieved it meritoriously. Svetla Slaveva-Griffin Florida State University

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CHURCH HISTORY doi:10.1017/S0009640709000559

Debate and Dialogue: Christian and Pagan Cultures, c. 360– 430. By Maijastina Kahlos. Ashgate New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology, and Biblical Studies. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2007. x þ 215 pp. $99.95 cloth. Maijastina Kahlos sets out to explore the discursive construction of Christian and pagan identities in early Christian polemical and apologetic literature. In the introduction, Kahlos discusses some classic interpretive problems posed by early Christian apologetics. Christian apologists argue against a highly contrived “paganism” that usually bears only a distorted relationship to the material realities of traditional religious practice. Apologetic literature (and particularly the post-Constantinian texts that are the focus of Kahlos’s study), moreover, presents a triumphalist historical narrative of Christianization that influences modern understandings of the history of late ancient religions. Thus, by laying bare the strategies by which late ancients constructed pagan-Christian difference, Kahlos seeks to “attain a deeper wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstsein, a historical-effective consciousness of Christianity” (5). The book’s second chapter, “Constructing and Deconstructing Dichotomies,” examines the various binary oppositions that Kahlos locates at the core of Christian apologetic discourse. Such dualistic thinking, the author points out, is not uniquely Christian, but is one example of “the basic antithetical structure of thinking” (11). Modern scholars must avoid reiterating the binary oppositions of early Christian discourse in their studies of late ancient religions, Kahlos continues, but to do so they must grapple with alternative terminologies that are often problematic in other ways, such as “polytheism,” “traditional cults,” and so forth. Kahlos recognizes that discourses based on rigid dichotomies are inherently unstable. Drawing on Derridean insights into the diffe´rance characteristic of all discursive constructions, Kahlos points to the inherent instability of early Christian rhetorics of difference. Here Kahlos introduces the concept of “incerti,” “those unclassifiable and indefinable individuals who appear in the grey area between hard-line polytheism and hard-line Christianity . . . and who elude the rigid pagan-Christian dichotomy” (31). As subjects who deny and challenge the ostensible certainty of the pagan-Christian dichotomy, incerti catalyze rhetorics of anxiety on the part of Christians and “pagans.” It was the reality of incerti, Kahlos argues, that motivated rhetorics about apostates, false converts, and “crypto-pagans.” The subsequent four chapters enumerate and discuss various rhetorical elements in late fourth and early fifth century Christian apologetics. Kahlos’s main focus is on Latin apologists, especially Augustine, although some major Greek apologists (for example Justin, Origen, and Eusebius) are cited and discussed as well.

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The book is somewhat under-theorized. Kahlos is clearly familiar with theories of discourse and methodologies of discourse analysis and ideology critique. The coinage of the category “incerti,” moreover, is intriguing, but one wonders what interpretive work this category can do that has not already been or could not be accomplished with existing vocabularies and theories of hybridity. Indeed, Kahlos notes the similarity between the concept of incerti and hybrids. The author may prefer the use of a Latin word to describe a phenomenon in Latin Christian literature to terminology used to theorize modern and postmodern (particularly postcolonial) subjectivities. But here the author misses an important opportunity to develop the wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstsein advocated in the introduction. What relationships might there be, for example, between modern discourse on hybrids and hybridity and late ancient rhetorics concerning incerti? Finally, it is not quite clear whether incerti are understood to be the rhetorical product of Christians’ oppositional discourses, or whether fears and anxieties about apostates and crypto-pagans were prompted by “real,” historical hybrids. Throughout the book, it is unclear exactly how the author understands the relationship between Christian apologetic discourse and the production of Christian (and pagan) subjectivities. Kahlos offers discourse analysis as a corrective to early and mid-twentieth century narratives of Christianization. Late twentieth-century applications of discourse analysis to early Christian literature, however, are sparsely represented in the notes and bibliography. It is surprising, for example, not to find at least a passing reference to a work like Averil Cameron’s Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). The book also ignores a great deal of more recent scholarship on identity formation, subjectivity, and hybridity in early Christianity. Kahlos’s theorization of incerti, for instance, could have benefited from Daniel Boyarin’s well-known recent work on hybridity and mimicry in Christian and Jewish heresiological discourses (Borderlines: The Partition of JudaeoChristianity [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004]) or Judith Lieu’s recent study of early Christian identity formation (Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004]). The middle of the second chapter offers a good philological account of the Latin and Greek vocabularies of religious and cultural difference employed in early Christian apologetics, while the last four chapters of the book provide a survey or outline of rhetorical strategies in Latin apologetic literature and could serve as a useful reference. Jeremy Schott University of North Carolina at Charlotte

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The Eusebians: The Polemic of Athanasius of Alexandria and the Construction of the “Arian Controversy.” By David M. Gwynn. Oxford Theological Monographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. xv þ 286 pp. $85.00 cloth. The Council of Nicaea has been a traditional watershed for ecclesiastical history, if not Christian identity itself, but for the past twenty-five years “the Arian controversy” has been in the grip of revisionism, according to which many theological conflicts happened but most of them had little to do with the historical Arius. As a further revision, David Gwynn’s contribution is to expose the historiographical pitfalls of the traditional binary opposition of Nicene and Arian theologies by examining the polemical construction of a political and theological party called “the Eusebians” by Athanasius. To trace this construction he first gives a thorough and critical overview of the chronology of the polemical works of Athanasius. The second part is a summary of the construction of a “party” labeled “the Eusebians” and its association with “Arian theology.” The final section of the book is a historical examination of the evidence concerning the theologies of Arius and others associated together to show the construction of “Athanasian Arianism” as a polemical tool to discredit all opponents to the bishop of Alexandria. He concludes that “the Eusebians” were not an actual party engaged in subversive activity against Athanasius nor were they “Arian” as traditionally defined. In all three sections Gwynn reviews much current scholarship surrounding these familiar texts and figures, which makes his book an important resource for Athanasius and the fourth century. The analysis of polemical rhetoric has become an important, if difficult, part of historical revision. Although most scholars now would no longer use the term “Arian” or use Athanasius without suspicion except in a dogmatic context, Gwynn’s detailed presentation of the creation of “the Eusebians” is very helpful, if the conclusions are necessarily limited. Acknowledging Athanasius’s construction of a heretical party ultimately cannot negate that a number of bishops were in fact allies against him, though it does refine our perception of a “party.” Acknowledging Athanasius’s exaggeration of certain understandings of “created” does not negate the objections of many to Nicene formulas or to Athanasius in particular. These refinements as a result of rhetorical criticism ironically throw the actions of Athanasius into higher relief and raise further questions about the usual narrative of the fourth century. If Athanasius uses polarization as a technique to create a heretical party or to construct a heresy of the mutable creature (“Athanasian Arianism”), can polarization still be claimed as his motivation? Gwynn is very careful to underline the sincerity of the Alexandrian: “He wrote as a bishop and a theologian engaged in a life or death struggle for his own

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conception of the Christian religion” (6); “Athanasius was sincere in his denunciation of men he believed held a theology that struck at the very heart of the Christian faith” (245; cf. 169). His “polarized ontology” did not allow distinctions (234). These assertions are commonplaces made of Athanasius contra mundum, but they could just as well emerge out of his own rhetorical self-presentation. Just as we may not embrace without skepticism “the Eusebians” as an ecclesiastical party, then perhaps we should exercise as much agnosticism as to the motivations of Athanasius. Just as we should grant a spectrum of theologies among the “Arians,” we should hesitate to equate the theology of Athanasius with the traditional reception of Nicaea in later Christianity (170, 237). The continuing recovery of the multiple theologies and alliances of both non-Nicenes and neo-Nicenes in the fourth century together with Gwynn’s analysis must only increase our historical unease about Athanasius. A useful question may be to discern when he does not polarize, such as in his alliance with Marcellus of Ancyra or at the terminological compromises in Alexandria in 362. Episcopal polemics after all were both political and theological. Gwynn has done much else in his book, and he begins to raise these questions about the “historical Athanasius” toward the end, but I think they are more pervasive and essential to his argument than he is prepared to admit. New methods of rhetorical analysis make us more aware of the intentions and limitations of traditional theological formulas, and therefore must raise critical questions about their authority. Rebecca Lyman Church Divinity School of the Pacific

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000572

Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World. Edited by Patrick Wormald and Janet L. Nelson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. xiv þ 266 pp. $110.00 cloth. On the face of it, the Carolingian “lay intellectual” would seem an unpromising topic for investigation, an oxymoron wrapped in an anachronism. Nevertheless, the category proves immensely valuable, in part because we learn so much from the points of congruence and divergence. The laypeople we meet in these pages may not have been intellectuals in the manner of Bernard-Henri Le´vy, but they still thought actively and creatively about society and its problems and wrote for a public that understood what they were writing about. This was obviously true for Einhard (discussed by David Ganz), but equally so for Nithard (discussed by Stuart Airlie) and even Dhuoda

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conception of the Christian religion” (6); “Athanasius was sincere in his denunciation of men he believed held a theology that struck at the very heart of the Christian faith” (245; cf. 169). His “polarized ontology” did not allow distinctions (234). These assertions are commonplaces made of Athanasius contra mundum, but they could just as well emerge out of his own rhetorical self-presentation. Just as we may not embrace without skepticism “the Eusebians” as an ecclesiastical party, then perhaps we should exercise as much agnosticism as to the motivations of Athanasius. Just as we should grant a spectrum of theologies among the “Arians,” we should hesitate to equate the theology of Athanasius with the traditional reception of Nicaea in later Christianity (170, 237). The continuing recovery of the multiple theologies and alliances of both non-Nicenes and neo-Nicenes in the fourth century together with Gwynn’s analysis must only increase our historical unease about Athanasius. A useful question may be to discern when he does not polarize, such as in his alliance with Marcellus of Ancyra or at the terminological compromises in Alexandria in 362. Episcopal polemics after all were both political and theological. Gwynn has done much else in his book, and he begins to raise these questions about the “historical Athanasius” toward the end, but I think they are more pervasive and essential to his argument than he is prepared to admit. New methods of rhetorical analysis make us more aware of the intentions and limitations of traditional theological formulas, and therefore must raise critical questions about their authority. Rebecca Lyman Church Divinity School of the Pacific

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000572

Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World. Edited by Patrick Wormald and Janet L. Nelson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. xiv þ 266 pp. $110.00 cloth. On the face of it, the Carolingian “lay intellectual” would seem an unpromising topic for investigation, an oxymoron wrapped in an anachronism. Nevertheless, the category proves immensely valuable, in part because we learn so much from the points of congruence and divergence. The laypeople we meet in these pages may not have been intellectuals in the manner of Bernard-Henri Le´vy, but they still thought actively and creatively about society and its problems and wrote for a public that understood what they were writing about. This was obviously true for Einhard (discussed by David Ganz), but equally so for Nithard (discussed by Stuart Airlie) and even Dhuoda

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(discussed by Janet Nelson), who expected her son to show her handbook to others. As Scott Ashley puts it in his fine contribution on Æthelweard, they were “public moralists” (243). Demonstration of their degree of engagement and their intelligence and learning is a welcome corrective to received opinion. Equally interesting is the fact that “lay” is shown to be such a wholly anachronistic category for the ninth and tenth centuries. The articles make it clear that specialists on the Gregorian Reform have it right: the divide between “lay” and “clerical” was an eleventh-century program. The ninth and tenth centuries saw it much differently. Here, too, Ashley has a nice formulation: “‘Lay’ and ‘ecclesiastical’ were less antagonistic and impermeable orders than complementary and overlapping identities” (238 – 239). Einhard is again an obvious example, and again far from unique: Nithard’s epitaph at Saint-Riquier lauded him as being both brave in battle and knowledgeable in sacred wisdom (54). Several conditions made the overlaps possible. The most important was the centrality of the court as the arena of childhood education and later political advancement, for it fostered constant interaction among members of the elite (whether “lay” or “clerical”). Interaction at court thereby helped create an educated “lay” audience that understood ecclesiastical discourse intelligently and with a sense of social urgency. As Nelson shows, even Dhuoda was formed by the court and may have written to reform it. In Michael Wood’s interpretation, the great reforms of Æthelstan’s reign reflected the king’s own decisions and values, but they were implemented by those who had received their formation in Alfred’s court. A second important factor was the close relationships between lay patrons and monasteries. Here Valerie Garver’s reading of the Life of Liutberga of Windenhausen is very revealing, first in its evidence for women teaching women, but even more in its depictions of close, ongoing interactions between lay aristocrats and convents. The result of such interactions was what Nelson calls “a shared scientia” (117). One should come away from this volume with heightened respect for its sophistication. We are now used to evidence that the later medieval laity had quite a deep understanding of the Catholic faith, partly as a result of mendicant preaching and devotional innovations. It therefore comes as something of a surprise to read Celia Chazelle’s magnificent exegesis of an ivory crucifixion scene originally made for Charles the Bald (now the cover of the Pericopes of Henry II in Munich). Not only are its scriptural, sacramental, and ecclesiological allusions immensely challenging intellectually, but they also anticipate some of the most important later devotional iconographies, particularly with respect to the Eucharist. Nelson similarly insists on Dhuoda’s sophistication and originality, as does Paul Kershaw for Eberhard of Friuli—Kershaw arguing that Eberhard not only understood but sympathized with Gottschalk of Orbais’s teaching of double

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predestination, as he actively sought a copy of Hrabanus’s difficult De laudibus sanctae crucis. (Kershaw also makes the tantalizing suggestion that warriors like Eberhard might have been particularly drawn to Gottschalk’s strong doctrine of predestination because its fatalism would have matched that of men whose lives were at risk in every battle.) Despite the collection’s title, three of its ten substantive articles do not concern the Carolingians at all but rather tenth-century England. This reflects the interests of the late Patrick Wormald, who originally convened the papers that these articles develop; for Wormald understood that the West Saxon legal and monastic reform was built on Carolingian precedents. The three articles on England more than confirm his insight, with the kind of concrete analysis at which Wormald excelled: for instance, Michael Wood traces a poem personally associated with Æthelstan to a manuscript brought to England by his tutor, John the Saxon. But the three essays are also interesting within a purely English context: thus, David Pratt’s careful demonstration of the mind behind Alfred’s recasting of Boethius and Augustine; Wood’s reconstruction of the distinctive piety underlying Æthelstan’s innovative political program; and Ashley’s discovering intelligent purpose in the very characteristics for which Æthelweard is usually disparaged. These articles also agree with the more properly “Carolingian” contributions in at least one particularly important way: so far as the category “lay intellectual” applies to the period, it applies only to a very narrow segment of the laity. We are not dealing with the laity as a whole, not even with the aristocracy as a whole. Three of those discussed were kings; all the others had unusually close ties with the royal family, at least by patronage and often by kinship. This was true of Einhard, Nithard, Eberhard, Dhuoda (certainly through her husband), and famously Æthelweard. It was also true of Liutberga’s patron Gisla (daughter of the quasi-royal Saxon chieftain Hessi). Several authors suggest a thoughtprovoking explanation: scientia was a royal virtue. In his contribution, Thomas F. X. Noble defines the attributes of a “secular sanctity” that was thought to characterize the virtuous noble and notes that these were not just royal virtues but virtues believed necessary to those counts (and ealdormen) who shared the royal ministry. Thus, to write for the public welfare, to act as patrons for the writing of books, and to be able to understand the exegesis of Bede or Hrabanus was to show that one had a king’s responsibilities and a king’s virtues. It is surely not a coincidence, then, that the aristocratic leaders who replaced the Carolingians or who began to rule provinces in the style of kings came from these very same families or from families much like them. Geoffrey Koziol University of California, Berkeley

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The Latin Church in Norman Italy. By G. A. Loud. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. xviii þ 581 pp. $140.00 cloth. Being a fruit of many years of research, The Latin Church in Norman Italy is a true gem of scholarship by a distinguished scholar who has already published extensively on medieval southern Italy. It is a volume that packs in an enormous amount of original research and knowledge and is a great resource for both historians of medieval Italy and of the medieval Church and religion. At the time of the Norman conquest of southern Italy, while the mainland south consisted of predominantly Greek-rite Christians, the island of Sicily had a majority population of Muslims. Hence, the Normans were faced with the task of establishing and strengthening the Latin Church amid the followers of the Eastern Church and of Islam. This was quite a different task than the one early medieval rulers had embarked on among the pagans of northern Europe. As Loud writes in the introduction, “If one fundamental theme can be identified in the history of Southern Italy under the Norman Rulers, it would probably be the growing predominance of the Latin Church” (4) and, in 577 pages, he tells precisely the account of the rise of the Latin Church in Norman Italy at a time when the Roman Church itself was going through very significant changes. Loud starts by setting the scene with an account of the institutional Church and monasteries in southern Italy before the Normans. We are confronted with a region of “cultural, linguistic and religious confusion” (15) that remained politically unstable before the coming of the Normans, suffering from the invasions of Lombards, Muslims, and the occasional alliances of the German kings and local princes against the Byzantine rule. The survey of monastic establishments in this period concentrates more around a few great ones like Montecassino or St. Vincent on Volturno, whose extensive lands made them a popular attraction to the Muslim invaders. The Latin episcopal organization still had a long way to go, due to competition from the better established Byzantine Church. The Norman conquest in the first half of the eleventh century, the subject of the second chapter of the book, had both positive and negative aspects with regard to the Church in southern Italy. Initially, it was so destructive to both the old monastic establishments and papal lands that Pope Leo IX found the remedy in a military expedition against Normans in 1053 that resulted in the defeat of the papal forces. The papal recognition given to Robert Guiscard afterward, however, slowly changed the Norman relations with the Church. In fact, the second half of the chapter presents Normans as founders, patrons,

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and endowers of monasteries. While Loud suggests that this was not just due to spiritual motives, he does not get into a discussion of what other possible reasons might have affected such benevolence and patronage. Certainly, the papacy figures largely in any discussion of the Church in southern Italy, and Loud devotes two separate chapters to this subject, exploring the symbiotic relationship between the papacy and the Norman rulers, as well as between the papacy and the Church in Norman Italy. The reforming popes of the eleventh century paid many visits to the South, which sometimes took the form of a refuge, and Norman rulers used their alliance with the popes to legitimize their rule, although Loud is careful to iterate that they had in no sense depended on such approval. Both of these chapters are of great interest to scholars studying the Church reforms of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, as southern Italy makes a perfect case study of the ambitions of reforming popes. In the last chapter, titled “Latins, Greeks and non-Christians,” Loud surveys interactions between the Greek and Latin clergy, which testifies to his argument that “whatever the theological problems that sometimes complicated relations between Rome and Constantinople, both Latins and Greeks still considered themselves to be part of the same Church” (500). The accounts of the conversions of Muslims to Christianity, and Muslim officials in the Norman palaces who were only nominally Christians, are of great interest. The other chapters in the book are titled “The Kings of Sicily and the Church,” “The Church and Military Obligation,” “The Secular Church,” and “Monasticism.” In the conclusion, Loud reads the bitter fallout of Frederick II and Innocent III as an anticlimax of a “golden” period of a warm relationship forged between the kings of Sicily and the papacy, particularly after the Treaty of Benevento in 1156 (524). Overall, The Latin Church in Norman Italy is a marvelous read, written in consistently clear prose, full of interesting detail and anecdotes. The volume comes with an impressive bibliography featuring primary sources of the greatest variety, particularly rich in chronicles, six appendices, and a subject index. Perhaps the only desideratum on the part of the reader is a separate chapter surveying what is now fashionably called “popular religion.” While Loud covers the institutional church and monastic organization most admirably, it would have been nice to know whether the heterogeneity of religious establishments in southern Italy gave way to some pious practices peculiar to its Christian inhabitants, or whether the surviving sources allow an in-depth study on this topic at all. Nonetheless, this is a book that will deservedly be mined by scholars of diverse interests for many generations. Neslihan Senocak Columbia University

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Crusading Spirituality in the Holy Land and Iberia, c. 1095– c. 1187. By William J. Purkis. Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell, 2008. xii þ 215 pp. $90.00 cloth. In this lucid and measured monograph, William Purkis seeks to define a distinctive crusade spirituality in the near century between the First and Third Crusades. As a member of what has recently been described as the “idealist” school of crusade historians, Dr. Purkis bases his approach on two allied assumptions: that crusaders were primarily motivated by religious impulses and that these laymen’s motives can be recovered from a study of the literary, historical, administrative, and academic apologetics of clerical observers and commentators. The preaching and propaganda surrounding the First Crusade, and, it is argued, the lay response, were characterized by an innovative emphasis on Christo-mimesis, imitatio Christi, and on crusaders following the vita apostolica, both central themes of concurrent movements of church, especially monastic and papal, reform. Tangible and intellectually accessible shape was lent to these ideals by the centrality of the Jerusalem pilgrimage and the implications of adopting the cross in following Christ (the injunction in Matthew 16:24). These elements distinguished Urban II’s crusade from previous and other contemporary penitential wars and battles against infidels and lent an unmistakable coherence to this new activity. However, the legacy of the First Crusade did not survive unaltered. While the ingredient of pilgrimage remained essential, the aspect of the vita apostolica faded. By the 1140s and the preaching of the Second Crusade, a wholly different spiritual slant was introduced by the Cistercians Bernard of Clairvaux and his pupil Eugenius III that contradicted the idea that a temporary lay commitment to the way of the cross implied full, that is, spiritual Christo-mimesis. That, so Purkis interestingly argues, Bernard reserved for the new religious order, the Templars. Crusading, in Bernardine thought, earned participants the chance of salvation but not through imitatio Christi, the emphasis in preaching for the Second Crusade resting more on the deeds of ancestors and personal spiritual opportunity as well as pilgrimage. In that sense, crusading from the 1140s to 1180s (such of it as there was, mainly teased out from reactive papal rhetoric) shed much of its original monastic flavor. The study is completed, possibly somewhat awkwardly, by a sort of extended two-chapter case study or appendix on crusade spirituality in Iberia in which Purkis follows recent trends in seeing no firm evidence of crusade institutions (notably pilgrimage as well as Jerusalem indulgences) being applied to wars with Muslims until the 1120s. By the 1140s, even this influence had been transformed from association

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with the Holy Land, with Iberia seen as a fresh route east, to more localized formulations of Iberian crusading as an end in itself, a progression associated with the developing military cult of St. James. This is a thoughtful, useful, and well-ordered discussion that fits into a number of current debates on the nature of crusading and its relation with changes in western European spirituality. Purkis’s close analysis of a number of texts, some unfamiliar, will be welcomed. His scheme allows new insights into details such as the role of crusade stigmata, the authenticity of the “crusade” letter of Sergius IV, some of the texts in the mid-twelfth century Liber Sancti Jacobi, and the ideological elements in the campaigns in the Balearic Islands. Of wider interest will be the comments on the Cistercian effort to shift the emphasis within crusade propaganda, if not ideology, and the contrast between the theology of crusading and the Templars. However, in the end, although persuasively put, some doubts may persist. The idea that the First Crusaders were consciously abandoning home and family to follow Christ ignores the large numbers of wives and children that a wide variety of sources attest went on the expedition. Imitatio Christi was conspicuous by its absence from Urban II’s crusade letters, possibly the most direct, authentic evidence of his thought from 1095 – 1099. Similarly, the language of pilgrimage is less prevalent in the earliest pieces of evidence for the First Crusade (again, see Urban’s letters) than Purkis suggests. The depiction of crusading as pilgrimage fails to consider some difficulties. If the crusade was distinctive because it was specifically a pilgrimage war, not just a holy or penitential war to Jerusalem, why were the ceremonies of taking the cross and crusaders adopting the symbols of pilgrimage repeatedly kept separate (as by Louis VII in 1147, or Frederick Barbarossa in 1188/9, and Richard I 1187/90 and Philip II 1188/90)? This is not to say Purkis is misled, merely that it is not as clear-cut an alliance as he maintains. Of more concern perhaps is the view that most crusaders necessarily shared the ideas of the clergy. Was this true of the violent iuvenes or those whose thoughts left no trace in monastic charters because they did not borrow money from monasteries? For every pious crusade veteran such as Odo Arpin, returning to his monastery, was a Thomas of Marle or Raimbold Croton whose spirituality, judged by their actions, appears far less altered by their experiences in the east. The First Crusade in action and organization, as opposed to image, was not a monastery on the march. Were confraternities on crusade really a deliberate evocation of the unanimiter of the vita apostolica? Sources indicate that pragmatic reasons may have counted at least as heavily, and confraternities mirrored arrangements in lay society just as much as in religious communities. Some may regard Purkis’s view of the spiritual imperatives and patterns as too rigid, mechanistic, and narrowly sourced. Here lies a basic interpretive issue. While Purkis admits (55) that

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his arguments can tend to the circular—clerical interpretation being used to confirm lay reality, which confirms clerical interpretation—his defense may not convince everyone. His historical approach appears constrained by a self-validating academic circle, as suggested by the names Jonathan RileySmith, Marcus Bull, Norman Housley, and Jonathan Phillips. At issue is not just the nature of the evident relation between clerical literary sources and the lay context, but also questions of how historians think medieval society, including crusading, actually worked and the extent to which it can be understood on the terms and through the dialogue of a self-conscious clerical intellectual elite. For all that, historians of the early crusades and of twelfthcentury spirituality will benefit from Purkis’s lively suggestions. Christopher Tyerman University of Oxford

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000602

History and the Supernatural in Medieval England. By Carl S. Watkins. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought Fourth Series 66. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. xii þ 277 pp. $99.00 cloth. This important book is marked by sophisticated reflection, thorough and wide use of sources, and crisp writing. It is in the best tradition of Sir Richard Southern, Robert Brentano, Caroline Bynum, and Nancy Partner. Do not read the abstract and wordy chapter 6 in lieu of the preceding chapters, which are richly textured with both insight and specific examples. Carl Watkins shows that medieval writers did not divide events into “natural” and “supernatural” the way moderns do but treated the “supernatural,” magic, wonders, miracles, and demons in diverse ways. There was no “superstitious medieval worldview” on such subjects. Watkins studies English chronicles from about 1050 to 1215: Orderic Vitalis, Walter Map, William of Malmesbury, Gervase of Tilbury, William of Newburgh, William of Poitiers, John of Salisbury, and Gerald of Wales, among others. The chronicles, he argues, illustrate the existence of “practical theology” at the interface of abstract theology and daily practice. The term “supernatural” was rarely used before Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century, and he used it primarily to describe the actions of God’s grace beyond the natural course of events. The modern use of the term to designate “stuff we can’t believe in because of our naturalist worldview” creates a problem. Watkins avoids such dead ends by demonstrating the

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his arguments can tend to the circular—clerical interpretation being used to confirm lay reality, which confirms clerical interpretation—his defense may not convince everyone. His historical approach appears constrained by a self-validating academic circle, as suggested by the names Jonathan RileySmith, Marcus Bull, Norman Housley, and Jonathan Phillips. At issue is not just the nature of the evident relation between clerical literary sources and the lay context, but also questions of how historians think medieval society, including crusading, actually worked and the extent to which it can be understood on the terms and through the dialogue of a self-conscious clerical intellectual elite. For all that, historians of the early crusades and of twelfthcentury spirituality will benefit from Purkis’s lively suggestions. Christopher Tyerman University of Oxford

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000602

History and the Supernatural in Medieval England. By Carl S. Watkins. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought Fourth Series 66. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. xii þ 277 pp. $99.00 cloth. This important book is marked by sophisticated reflection, thorough and wide use of sources, and crisp writing. It is in the best tradition of Sir Richard Southern, Robert Brentano, Caroline Bynum, and Nancy Partner. Do not read the abstract and wordy chapter 6 in lieu of the preceding chapters, which are richly textured with both insight and specific examples. Carl Watkins shows that medieval writers did not divide events into “natural” and “supernatural” the way moderns do but treated the “supernatural,” magic, wonders, miracles, and demons in diverse ways. There was no “superstitious medieval worldview” on such subjects. Watkins studies English chronicles from about 1050 to 1215: Orderic Vitalis, Walter Map, William of Malmesbury, Gervase of Tilbury, William of Newburgh, William of Poitiers, John of Salisbury, and Gerald of Wales, among others. The chronicles, he argues, illustrate the existence of “practical theology” at the interface of abstract theology and daily practice. The term “supernatural” was rarely used before Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century, and he used it primarily to describe the actions of God’s grace beyond the natural course of events. The modern use of the term to designate “stuff we can’t believe in because of our naturalist worldview” creates a problem. Watkins avoids such dead ends by demonstrating the

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sophistication and diversity of views among the English chroniclers. Augustine’s views were in the minds of most of the chronicles and were particularly strong in Walter Map’s. God created nature, so that everything that occurs is natural. Miracles are natural processes speeded up. Other wonders would be naturally explainable if we only knew enough. The exception to this schema was the demonic. The Devil and his demons twist nature to their own evil ends, and humans can use their free will to promote either God’s will or Satan’s. Thus the two categories are the good natural and the evil demonic. Orderic, Map, and Robert Grosseteste generally followed this schema. But other chroniclers noted marvelous events that seemed to have no moral point. A man of Bristol who, while fishing in the Irish Sea, drops a knife into the sea—and finds that the same knife has crashed through the window onto his own kitchen table at home (213). What use could either God or the Devil have for such a bizarre event? The chroniclers offer a variety of solutions. The more Augustinian ones would argue that such events are caused by demons for the purpose of bewildering human minds. If the event occurred, it was the work of demons, or else it was an illusion visited by the demons on the deluded fisherman. Such chroniclers impressed morals onto tales of wonder. Watkins shows, however, that a shift appeared in the period 1050 – 1215, with more and more chroniclers such as Gerald of Wales reporting stories that they had from reliable witnesses that indicated a neutral set of events between the natural and demonic. Eventually, as the proto-science of the Middle Ages developed into the naturalist science of the seventeenth century, such marvels were incorporated into the naturalist view and were placed into one of two categories: the impossible and therefore false; or the true for which some sort of scientific explanation was possible. Watkins’s chroniclers coped with related ideas in their own time, such as the difference between magic and religion and the remnants of pagan beliefs. Watkins argues that modern historians claiming that medieval Europe was not thoroughly Christianized simply invented medieval paganism. Such historians posit a gulf between the religion of the theological elite and “popular religion,” but Watkins shows that the chronicles reveal a sort of consensual religion, “a single community of Christian believers bound together by shared belief, ritual and practice” (9). Setting aside the perennial question of how to define paganism, there was little of it in any sense by the eleventh century. Prohibitions found in lists of penances or in decrees against pagan practices were simply copied from ancient Christian texts composed at a time when paganism had been a real threat. In 1050 – 1215 the church was not concentrating on paganism but on the reform and standardization of Christian education, practice, and doctrine. Whatever unchristian practices existed in the period are much better called “magic” than paganism. The classic definition between religion and magic is

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that religion asks for the deity’s help, whereas magic is intended to compel nature. Often the lines between magic and religion were and are blurred, as when reciting a prayer or wearing a medal is believed to cause a practical effect. Some magic or technology proves to work better than others, but the essential act is the same. Watkins adds to the literature about medieval “ghosts,” or at least apparitions. In high theology an apparition could not be neutral, but on the level of practical theology ghosts might be a part of nature as yet not understood: they might be from heaven or purgatory rather than hell, or they might fall into the ambiguous zone of the natural. Watkins illumines the question of evidence and witnesses. Emphasis on the demonic declined, and wonders were more and more included among morally neutral events that fell into “‘nature’ as an intellectual category” (134) into which events could be fit. As wonders were examined as part of nature, a more careful evaluation of evidence was required. In the early part of Watkins’s period, it was not uncommon for chroniclers to be prisoners of their ambiguities, reporting second- or third-hand evidence with the disclaimer that they could not vouch for it. Later, as wonders were included in the natural order, willingness to report them grew, while at the same time the testimonies of witnesses were much more thoroughly scrutinized. Some writers warned against rejecting an event just because you have never experienced anything like it yourself, an attitude that sometimes led to atheism: “Hard empirical evidence stood theology and philosophy on their head. Things once suspended between fabula and relatio autentica were rehabilitated as historical facts” (223). Watkins’s views are often persuasive as well as original, and they ought to provoke much discussion. Jeffrey Burton Russell University of California, Santa Barbara

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000614

The Culture of Medieval English Monasticism. Edited by James G. Clark. Studies in the History of Medieval Religion 30. Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell, 2007. xvi þ 224 pp. $85.00 cloth. This collection of essays appreciative of English medieval monasteries gives ample evidence of their cultural vitality right up to their dissolution under Henry VIII. In the title essay, James G. Clark provides an overview of changing monastic beliefs and values—“monastic mentalities”—between the Conquest and the Dissolution, an appraisal that is possible now that

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that religion asks for the deity’s help, whereas magic is intended to compel nature. Often the lines between magic and religion were and are blurred, as when reciting a prayer or wearing a medal is believed to cause a practical effect. Some magic or technology proves to work better than others, but the essential act is the same. Watkins adds to the literature about medieval “ghosts,” or at least apparitions. In high theology an apparition could not be neutral, but on the level of practical theology ghosts might be a part of nature as yet not understood: they might be from heaven or purgatory rather than hell, or they might fall into the ambiguous zone of the natural. Watkins illumines the question of evidence and witnesses. Emphasis on the demonic declined, and wonders were more and more included among morally neutral events that fell into “‘nature’ as an intellectual category” (134) into which events could be fit. As wonders were examined as part of nature, a more careful evaluation of evidence was required. In the early part of Watkins’s period, it was not uncommon for chroniclers to be prisoners of their ambiguities, reporting second- or third-hand evidence with the disclaimer that they could not vouch for it. Later, as wonders were included in the natural order, willingness to report them grew, while at the same time the testimonies of witnesses were much more thoroughly scrutinized. Some writers warned against rejecting an event just because you have never experienced anything like it yourself, an attitude that sometimes led to atheism: “Hard empirical evidence stood theology and philosophy on their head. Things once suspended between fabula and relatio autentica were rehabilitated as historical facts” (223). Watkins’s views are often persuasive as well as original, and they ought to provoke much discussion. Jeffrey Burton Russell University of California, Santa Barbara

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000614

The Culture of Medieval English Monasticism. Edited by James G. Clark. Studies in the History of Medieval Religion 30. Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell, 2007. xvi þ 224 pp. $85.00 cloth. This collection of essays appreciative of English medieval monasteries gives ample evidence of their cultural vitality right up to their dissolution under Henry VIII. In the title essay, James G. Clark provides an overview of changing monastic beliefs and values—“monastic mentalities”—between the Conquest and the Dissolution, an appraisal that is possible now that

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scholars have shifted their attention from treasures, “the cultural remains,” to the monastic communities that created them. Clark sees the “culture of cenobitic life” envisioned in the Benedictine Rule evolving dynamically, permitting “certain universal values” to coexist with those of “distinct cultural environments” shaped by “gender, economic conditions, or social status” (4, 5). One development Clark highlights is an increased emphasis on reading: the pursuit of learning “more than any other pattern of life . . . separates the nuns of the later Middle Ages from their predecessors” (14). The resultant “cultural exchanges between the cloister and the world” were positive because they required nuns and monks to participate in “a process of critical engagement” (17) about what to accept or reject, a discernment that permitted innovation in spiritual literature, liturgy, and art. “There can now be no doubt,” Clark concludes, “that the treasures recovered from the ruins of the religious houses after 1540 were not the fossils of a long forgotten world but fragments of a cultural tradition that—at the time of its destruction—was still very much alive” (18). The essays are arranged under four types of cultures—observant, learned, of women, and of community—though often the articles seem more about books read, art observed, and liturgy performed than about monastic culture more broadly conceived. That is partly because, as G. R. Evans explains, medieval monks and nuns did not have a word for culture understood as a “set of assumptions hanging together in the make-up of persons or systems” and “determining their ways of approaching and doing things.” Their word was cultus—like our word culture, one of the “metaphorical developments of cultura” (cultivation or tillage)—and it “meant simply ‘worship.’” Despite the terminological disjunction, Evans sets out to discover how some monks “understood what they were doing”; he finds in the writings of Anselm of Canterbury and Aelred of Rievaulx the cultural assumption that “monks are to be occupied in a spiritually profitable way at all times” (75– 76). Another author who also explores culture as a set of assumptions—Julian Haseldine in “The Monastic Culture of Friendship”—also relies heavily on the writings of Anselm and Aelred. Haseldine challenges the claim that Aelred was an advocate of friendships based on strong personal and emotional bonds, our modern, romantic notion of friendship. Rather, Aelred’s ideal friends were those who aided him on his journey to God, friends fully in keeping with the Benedictine Rule, examples of a “distinctively monastic culture of friendship” (179). Concerned about our tendency to read into medieval texts our assumptions about sexuality and friendship, Haseldine also cautions against interpreting Aelred’s statement that he had close ties with a man before becoming a monk as evidence that they were sexually intimate; in Haseldine’s view, Aelred’s remark may not

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even have been autobiographic. Haseldine would apparently not be a promoter of modern devotion to Aelred, the Homosexual Saint. To get at “monastic mentalities,” several authors consider what monks and nuns might have read and how they interpreted it. A. J. Piper, looking at the study of scripture in the monastery of Durham, and R. M. Thomson, considering the education of monks at Worcester about 1300, move from descriptions of what writings were available to a discussion of what their use says about the monasteries’ “learned culture.” Nuns’ intellectual achievement in the later medieval period is reassessed by David Bell, who shows ways it has been seriously underestimated. Mary Elder illustrates one of these ways in “Private Reading in the Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century English Nunnery”: the greater orientation toward the individual, usually seen as a decline of monastic ideals, might instead have given nuns privacy that permitted more reading and study. In the diocese of Winchester in 1517, nuns received from their bishop, at their request, a new translation of the Benedictine Rule; Barry Collett identifies how the translation reflects the distinct culture in which it was embedded. Art is the topic of two essays. Using the notebook of a fifteenth-century monk at Canterbury, Joan Greatrex explores the theological significance of twelve cathedral windows. Similarly, Miriam Gill relates complex wall murals to what monks read, revealing “a self-consciously erudite form of art” that used scripture in ways akin to that “quintessential monastic practice of lectio divina” (71). It was the monasteries’ vitality, not their decadence, that may have sped their demise, or so Roger Bowers argues in “An Early Tudor Monastic Enterprise: Choral Polyphony for the Liturgical Service.” Bower describes the half century before the Dissolution as a time of stability and even economic prosperity for the great monasteries that offered elaborate liturgies with polyphonic music and virtuous soloists. Henry may have acted in haste to dissolve the monasteries once he had decided to do so because delaying would give the monastic liturgical revival time to gain even more momentum and support. The collection concludes with J. D. North’s essay on “Monastic Time.” After the invention in the late thirteenth century of the fully mechanical clock, monastic time quit being measured in unequal hours (each hour being an equal percentage of day or night). Having the hours equal in length brought a profound shift to the monastic daily rhythms. But monks and nuns continued to “measure out time in hours and minutes” to pay “homage to the work of the Creator of the world” and to summon members to the worship of that Creator (211), a central component of monastic culture. Sharon K. Elkins Wellesley College

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doi:10.1017/S0009640709000626

Monasteries and Society in the British Isles in the Later Middle Ages. Edited by Janet Burton and Karen Sto¨ber. Studies in the History of Medieval Religion XXXV. Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell, 2008. xiv þ 258 pp. $95.00 cloth. The fifteen essays in this volume are a sample of the issues that are of concern to historians of monasticism in the post-Knowles period. Of course, the Dissolution of the monasteries cannot be entirely left out of a volume that deals with the later Middle Ages and the conditions leading up to it, but it does not occupy center stage. These essays are tied together by a common interest in relations between the monasteries and the laity. They are organized into six topics, beginning with the “Meeting of the Worlds” and continuing with “Religious Houses and their Patrons and Benefactors,” “Female Communities: Nuns, Abbesses and Prioresses,” “Monasteries and Education,” “Monasteries and Urban Space,” and “Religious Houses in the Regions.” Of these, the first and last contain papers that differ from one another, but that is not to say that they do not make interesting contributions to the collection. Following a brief introduction, Karen Sto¨ber discusses the social networks of late medieval Welsh monasteries. The subject is challenging since the majority of houses were of Anglo-Norman foundation. Her essay has a very interesting section on the patronage of the Welsh bards by monasteries. Implied but not developed is the question of the role of monasticism in the integration of eastern and northern Wales into the Anglo-Norman political sphere. Julie Kerr provides a picture of the importance of Cistercian hospitality in putting up travelers, which played an important social role and commanded favorable comment even after the suppression. Emilia Jamroziak discusses the delicate position of Cistercian houses in the border region between England and Scotland, comparing it with the situation in Pomerania. Her theme is the impact of the fragmentation of power on the Cistercians in these situations. In the final paper in the first section, Martin Heale deals with the selection of monastic superiors in late medieval and early Tudor England. This essay raises the question of whether the involvement of laity in monastic affairs created a condition that made the suppression easier. Neale seems to think not, but he concludes that “the growing dependence of the heads of religious houses on the Tudor government in the generation leading up to the Dissolution should be seen as an important factor” (65). The most obvious connections between monasticism and the laity were patronage and the continuing gifts made to the monasteries. One feature of ´ the essays in this volume is brought out in a special way in Colman O

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Clabaigh’s essay on the Franciscan House in Adair. It was founded and supported by the Fitzgerald family, the earls of Kildare, and by various branches of the family. As we have noted in the case of Wales, given the tenuous situation of the native rural populations, monasticism depended on the support of foreigners. The example of Wombridge shows that it was not merely the great families, but also members of the middling ranks, who founded religious houses. But Michael Hicks emphasizes the increased cost of supporting religious houses in the later Middle Ages. As a result, they became more dependent on smaller donors. This is reflected in the increase in chantries and the trend toward the bundling of donations. The following section on female communities shows that to an even greater extent they were dependent on support from the lower nobility and from women. The question of gifts at entry looms much larger in these communities than in those of men, as Janet Burton makes clear. The need for astute leadership, able to play in the world of politics, is the theme of Kimm Perkins-Curran’s essay, which sheds additional light on Chaucer’s, and others’, representations of prioresses. Traditionally, there has been considerable emphasis on the role of monasteries in education, but the emphasis has almost always been on the preservation of knowledge through the copying of manuscripts. James Clark, following the work of scholars like Nicholas Orme (English Schools in the Middle Ages [London: Methuen, 1973]), focuses our attention on their role in secular education in the later Middle Ages. He sees a fundamental change in the attitude of the monks toward education beginning in the thirteenth century. In the fourteenth century, there is more evidence of their desire to be teachers. He singles out St. Albans as an example. This development continued right up to the Dissolution. In his essay, Glyn Coppack illustrates the role of the Carthusians in the book industry, including early printing, which went far beyond the production of individual works. The final sections are less cohesive. Jens Ro¨hrkasten chronicles the efforts of the Franciscans to steer a course through a lay society that was increasingly more influential. Sheila Sweetinburgh discusses the problem confronted by the late arrival of the Austin Friars in Canterbury and their need to negotiate for space. Nicholas Orme takes us into a truly marginal society in Cornwall and the problems confronted by monasticism. This essay raises an interesting point regarding relations between English monasticism and the continent just prior to the Dissolution. In the final essay, Claire Cross discusses the last years of the Cistercian Abbey of Roche in Yorkshire. She makes it clear that, with the accession of Mary to the throne, there was a resurgence of traditional religious services. While Roche offered no resistance to the Dissolution, the evidence suggests that there was little enthusiasm for it locally. The overall picture that we gain from this

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collection of essays is of a continuing traditional religiosity that was quite content to ride the waves when needed but showed no significant desire for change. This does not mean that the picture is one of stagnation, intellectual or otherwise. Rather, the result is much as we might expect. Reformation from the top and from a limited body of supporters produced a much weaker church, deprived of a critical part of its former self. This collection supports the view that the orders provided an important link between the clerical church and the laity. James M. Powell Emeritus, Syracuse University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000638

Art and the Augustinian Order in Early Renaissance Italy. Edited by Louise Bourdua and Anne Dunlop. Church, Faith, and Culture in the Medieval West. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2007. xvi þ 236 pp. $99.95 cloth. Art historians Louise Bourdua and Anne Dunlop have collected ten papers on a subject in Italian early mendicant art that has been underdeveloped by Italian and Anglophone scholars. While the interrelationships of the Dominican and Franciscan orders with religious art have a long history, apart from papers delivered at two seminal conferences in the early 1990s, Augustinianinspired and patronized art has received short shrift. All of the mendicant orders used and encouraged the use of art for teaching, and the influence of this impetus on late medieval and early Renaissance style and content, especially in Italy, remains a matter of active debate. This collection of original essays thus addresses both the lacuna in Augustinian studies and that in the mendicants-and-art debate. The historical certainty surrounding the founders and the relatively late foundations of the Dominicans and Franciscans stands in contrast to the shakier identity of the Augustinians, whose namesake had died nearly a millennium before the fourteenth century. Indeed, “Augustinian” referred to two distinct organizations—Hermits and Canons—that coalesced in the Great Union of 1256, which created a single order with two branches. Since Bishop Augustine historically had lived with his canons in Hippo Regius, but never as an anchorite, the Hermits had an especially weak hold on their eponymous “founder.” Several of the essays explore the uses of art by the Hermits to emphasize their rootedness in Augustine and the superiority of the hermitic tradition in general. Cordelia Warr explores the role of the

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collection of essays is of a continuing traditional religiosity that was quite content to ride the waves when needed but showed no significant desire for change. This does not mean that the picture is one of stagnation, intellectual or otherwise. Rather, the result is much as we might expect. Reformation from the top and from a limited body of supporters produced a much weaker church, deprived of a critical part of its former self. This collection supports the view that the orders provided an important link between the clerical church and the laity. James M. Powell Emeritus, Syracuse University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000638

Art and the Augustinian Order in Early Renaissance Italy. Edited by Louise Bourdua and Anne Dunlop. Church, Faith, and Culture in the Medieval West. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2007. xvi þ 236 pp. $99.95 cloth. Art historians Louise Bourdua and Anne Dunlop have collected ten papers on a subject in Italian early mendicant art that has been underdeveloped by Italian and Anglophone scholars. While the interrelationships of the Dominican and Franciscan orders with religious art have a long history, apart from papers delivered at two seminal conferences in the early 1990s, Augustinianinspired and patronized art has received short shrift. All of the mendicant orders used and encouraged the use of art for teaching, and the influence of this impetus on late medieval and early Renaissance style and content, especially in Italy, remains a matter of active debate. This collection of original essays thus addresses both the lacuna in Augustinian studies and that in the mendicants-and-art debate. The historical certainty surrounding the founders and the relatively late foundations of the Dominicans and Franciscans stands in contrast to the shakier identity of the Augustinians, whose namesake had died nearly a millennium before the fourteenth century. Indeed, “Augustinian” referred to two distinct organizations—Hermits and Canons—that coalesced in the Great Union of 1256, which created a single order with two branches. Since Bishop Augustine historically had lived with his canons in Hippo Regius, but never as an anchorite, the Hermits had an especially weak hold on their eponymous “founder.” Several of the essays explore the uses of art by the Hermits to emphasize their rootedness in Augustine and the superiority of the hermitic tradition in general. Cordelia Warr explores the role of the

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order’s habit as an expression of identity. In the wake of the Union, Hermits and Canons fought over retaining one or the other’s traditional garb and sought to distinguish themselves visually from the expanding Dominicans. The decision had artistic ramifications, as Augustinian saints, no less than the good bishop himself, would have to be clad distinctively as well. In her study of the placement and iconography of the monumental sculpted arca, or freestanding tomb and funerary monument, that marks Augustine’s tomb in Pavia’s church of San Pietro in Cielo, Bourdua further develops the dynamics of the intra-order rivalry and the use of iconography—Augustine as hermit—to establish identity. Cathleen Hoeniger’s examination of Simone Martini’s panel portrait of the prior general Blessed Agostino Novello (d. 1310), today in Siena’s Pinacotheca, emphasizes its role in the order’s attempt to establish a civic cult of Agostino in the city near which he died and in which he remains buried. No less than other Catholic orders, the Augustinians wanted to add their heroes to the festal calendars of fourteenth-century Italy and to the canon of universal saints. She outlines the process and interprets the panel as an introduction of the man and his purported miracles to the Sienese, who were encouraged to adopt him and venerate him as a patron who combined the active life of a friar with the contemplative spirituality of the hermit. Dunlop discusses the portrayal of another exemplary Augustinian, Nicholas of Tolentino, who was the first canonized Augustinian (1446). She focuses on the cycle of Nicholas’s life at Tolentino’s Cappellone, probably from the 1320s. It is accompanied by similar cycles of the lives of Christ and Mary and was probably meant to be seen as running in parallel, as an imitatio Christi. Like Agostino’s portrait, this narrative series was part of an effort to canonize an Augustinian, an effort that only bore fruit after Nicholas gained notoriety as a plague saint. Roberto Cobianco discusses Raphael’s earliest documented work, the Nicholas of Tolentino altarpiece in Citta` di Castello, and its origins in a processional banner celebrating the saint’s canonization in 1446. Diana Norman contributes a short study of the iconography and patronage of the panel of St. Anthony Abbot (by Bartolo di Fredi?) in the church of San Agostino, Montalcino. Though she believes the patron to be a laywoman, Norman ascribes the image and dossal narrative scenes to support for eremetic Augustinian identity. Janis Elliot approaches the now lost but photographically preserved choir frescoes in the Augustinians’ Eremitani, or hermitage church, in Padua. In her analysis and interpretation, she also picks up the theme of hermetic Augustinian self-identity and self-promotion in the face of competing mendicants’ efforts. She links the pictorial program’s main features, the Passion of Christ and Last Judgment, to Augustine’s discussion of these subjects in his City of God and Literal Meaning of Genesis, Book 12. Since

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the Judgment scene typically is situated near the door opposite the altar, and since Augustine does discuss both the Passion and Judgment in tandem in Genesis, Elliot sees the Eremitani’s arrangement as a bold theological statement on Augustine’s behalf, an example of the fourteenth century’s “new Augustinianism.” While she mentions the relation of the judgment to funerary chapels in the church’s apse, she fails to develop the Eucharistic relevance of both pictorial themes. Catherine Harding keeps us in the Eremitani, discussing the astrological imagery of the seven planets ruling the seven ages of humans. In this early product of her research, she concludes that the pictorial juxtapositions were meant as a “visual exercise” of the type Augustine prescribed for disciplining the will and vision for the visio Dei. Ian Holgate studies the cult of St. Monica, Augustine’s mother, whose remains were discovered in Ostia in 1430. Immediately the Chapter General required every Augustinian church to display an image of her. Holgate works with Antonio Vivarini’s portrait in Sto. Stefano in Venice. He relates it to both the Augustinians’ female Third Order and to female devotees, lay and religious, more generally. A small panel showing her vesting her son with the order’s robe and distinctive belt serves to link both her and the order to the great bishop and saint. Finally, Donal Cooper takes another apocryphal event, Augustine’s ecstatic vision of the Trinity, and examines it in light of the Franciscans’ use of Francis’s visions and stigmata. He connects the story to passages in Confessions (IX: “charity wounds the heart”) and De Trinitate, and notes that it is the source of the Order’s pierced heart emblem. Joseph P. Byrne Belmont University

doi:10.1017/S000964070900064X

Nuns: A History of Convent Life, 1450 –1700. By Silvia Evangelisti. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. x þ 303 pp. $21.95 cloth. One of the achievements of Silvia Evangelisti’s book on nuns in the early modern era is that readers will come away with a sense of the complexity of convent life. In this work of synthesis, Evangelisti draws on a wide array of scholarship on monastic women to examine both the interior dynamics of nunneries and the interaction between cloistered nuns and the world around them.

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the Judgment scene typically is situated near the door opposite the altar, and since Augustine does discuss both the Passion and Judgment in tandem in Genesis, Elliot sees the Eremitani’s arrangement as a bold theological statement on Augustine’s behalf, an example of the fourteenth century’s “new Augustinianism.” While she mentions the relation of the judgment to funerary chapels in the church’s apse, she fails to develop the Eucharistic relevance of both pictorial themes. Catherine Harding keeps us in the Eremitani, discussing the astrological imagery of the seven planets ruling the seven ages of humans. In this early product of her research, she concludes that the pictorial juxtapositions were meant as a “visual exercise” of the type Augustine prescribed for disciplining the will and vision for the visio Dei. Ian Holgate studies the cult of St. Monica, Augustine’s mother, whose remains were discovered in Ostia in 1430. Immediately the Chapter General required every Augustinian church to display an image of her. Holgate works with Antonio Vivarini’s portrait in Sto. Stefano in Venice. He relates it to both the Augustinians’ female Third Order and to female devotees, lay and religious, more generally. A small panel showing her vesting her son with the order’s robe and distinctive belt serves to link both her and the order to the great bishop and saint. Finally, Donal Cooper takes another apocryphal event, Augustine’s ecstatic vision of the Trinity, and examines it in light of the Franciscans’ use of Francis’s visions and stigmata. He connects the story to passages in Confessions (IX: “charity wounds the heart”) and De Trinitate, and notes that it is the source of the Order’s pierced heart emblem. Joseph P. Byrne Belmont University

doi:10.1017/S000964070900064X

Nuns: A History of Convent Life, 1450 –1700. By Silvia Evangelisti. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. x þ 303 pp. $21.95 cloth. One of the achievements of Silvia Evangelisti’s book on nuns in the early modern era is that readers will come away with a sense of the complexity of convent life. In this work of synthesis, Evangelisti draws on a wide array of scholarship on monastic women to examine both the interior dynamics of nunneries and the interaction between cloistered nuns and the world around them.

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A particular strength of the book is the impressive amount of geographical and chronological territory that it covers—the stated historical scope is the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries, but Evangelisti also draws on literature from the high Middle Ages that helps provide a sense of continuity and change in nuns’ lives. Her study spans much of Western Europe and also integrates recent scholarship on Catholic nuns and nunneries in the Americas. Though specialists in the study of women’s monasticism may be familiar with much of the literature on which Evangelisti draws, it is a useful overview of current scholarship. The seven chapters of the book can be grouped into three areas of inquiry. The first two chapters deal with the rules, customs, and structures that defined everyday life for nuns. The next three chapters treat the cultural life of nuns and nunneries. Finally, the remaining two chapters cover the expansion of nuns’ sphere of influence—first in the attempts of some groups to maintain active and open communities and second in the expansion of new orders within Europe and in colonies in the Americas. A strong thread that ties these themes together is the impact of the CounterReformation and the increased emphasis on enclosure in this period. In keeping with her overall approach of presenting the complexity of monastic life, she argues that Tridentine reforms were part of “a . . . continuous tension between enclosure and the push towards a more open model of religious life” (6). The first two chapters, “On Nuns and Nunneries” and “Cloistered Life,” explore the everyday lives of nuns. Chapter 1 describes who nuns were and what they did, paying attention to ideals and realities of convent life. This includes a discussion of the social background of nuns and the stratified nature of convents, as well as the varying degrees of volition in religious professions. Evangelisti explores the diversity of attitudes toward the enforcement of enclosure in Catholic areas and the disbanding of nunneries in Protestant lands, giving examples of communities and individuals who welcomed changes along with those who fought for the status quo. Chapter 2 focuses on the buildings that defined monastic life for women—the structures that were meant to keep them secluded from the world, but that did not prevent interaction with family members and patrons. Religious women remained integrated into family and other social networks. Chapters 3 (“Voices from the Cloister”), 4 (“Theatre and Music”), and 5 (“The Visual Arts”) focus on expressive and creative works by religious women. In chapter 3, Evangelisti discusses nuns’ writing, including visionary literature, chronicles of their own convents or of the world beyond, works of poetry or literature, and treatises on a wide range of matters. Chapter 4 treats performing arts, including the role that plays served in educating nuns as well as the audience who sometimes watched through the grille. Plays and musical compositions demonstrate exchange between nuns

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and the outside world. Nuns published their works or performed them for an audience; composers wrote music for nuns. Similarly, some religious women displayed an awareness of trends in visual art. In addition to their own artistic endeavors, nuns hired prominent craftsmen to build additions to their convents, to create furniture for them, and to adorn their walls with pious and not-so-pious images. Some commissioned art to show acceptance of reform; others used images of powerful and devout women to protest Tridentine decrees. Chapters 6 and 7 investigate the efforts of some nuns to expand their influence, whether this involved missionary activity in Europe and the Americas, or pressing to maintain open communities that would allow them to engage in teaching or ministering to the poor and sick. Chapter 6 (“Expansion: Nuns Across the Globe”) discusses the foundation of new orders, such as the Discalced Carmelites and the Ursulines in Spain and Italy, respectively. These orders expanded throughout Catholic Europe, then to French, Spanish, and Portuguese colonies in the Americas. In chapter 7 (“Open Communities for Women”), Evangelisti examines the attempts of some groups to maintain open communities by organizing as lay sisters with simple vows. These efforts had varying degrees of success depending on the social status of women in the communities and the mission in which they were engaged. Moreover, attempts to enforce enclosure waned in the seventeenth century due to an increased need for the social services these nuns could provide to areas devastated by the Thirty Years’ War. A work of this scope presents organizational challenges. This is particularly the case in the first two chapters. For example, though Evangelisti describes the ideal of communal monastic life without private property in the first chapter (28 ff.), in the second chapter she discusses the allocation of cells of varying sizes as private property within the monastery, adorned with family items that reinforced divisions in social status. This seems an appropriate subject in a chapter on the physical cloister, but a brief reference to such practical matters also might have informed the discussion of the daily lives of nuns in ideal and reality. Perhaps the main missed opportunity in this book is the lack of a conclusion—the last chapter is an epilogue that provides a quick bridge from the eighteenth century to the present. Given Evangelisti’s wide-ranging and thorough exploration of current research on early modern nuns in the Catholic world, a conclusion that could bring together threads of the various chapters of this work and highlight a few research areas the author considers to be understudied would be extremely useful. Sherri Franks Johnson University of California, Riverside

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Sanctuaries of Earth, Stone, and Light: The Churches of Northern New Spain, 1530 – 1821. By Gloria Fraser Giffords. The Southwest Center Series. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2007. xiv þ 467 pp. $75.00 cloth. This impressive volume is an extremely thorough catalog of the elements of the religious material culture of northern New Spain, which includes the southwestern portion of what is now the United States. Giffords is an art conservator who begins with a useful discussion of the geography and economics of artistic production in the Spanish colonies and the process of transmission of dictates and patterns from an already multicultural Iberian source to both the core and periphery of the northern reaches of Spain’s New World empire. Most of the book consists of chapters that provide a profusion of detail—including copious black-and-white photographs and line drawings— about every imaginable aspect of colonial religious art and architecture, including church plans and designs, construction elements, furnishings, ornament, liturgical apparatus, vestments, and devotional objects. Separate chapters provide glossaries of religious symbolism and iconography. Cemeteries and death-related objects are only dealt with briefly. The author provides little analysis along the lines of religious studies per se, but practitioners of that discipline will find much useful practical information and perhaps inspiration for their own work in this cornucopia of detail. Peter W. Williams Miami University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000663

Pastoral Quechua: The History of Christian Translation in Colonial Peru, 1550 – 1650. By Alan Durston. History, Languages, and Cultures of the Spanish and Portuguese Worlds. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007. ix þ 395 pp. $42.00 paper. As the initial sentence of Durston’s book points out, the appropriation and use of indigenous languages for religious purposes was “one of the most telling features of Spanish colonialism” (1). It is appropriate and interesting that Durston approaches this problem from the complex notion of “translation,” which, as the book shows, is both a microcosm of and a means of furthering unequal social relations between Spaniards and Quechua-speaking Andeans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Durston combines knowledge of Quechua language and linguistics with a sophisticated account of the history

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collection here provides essential insight into the ways the introduction of Christianity shaped Pacific cultures, but also the ways in which Pacific cultures adapted and shaped Christian movements and practices in their territories. Mormonism provides a useful lens for understanding these developments because it is on the one hand a branch of Christianity, and on the other a completely different approach to the older traditions. Many of the authors compare Mormon missionary efforts to similar missionary movements undertaken by American and European Protestants, giving us new insights into both efforts, and, particularly in Madsen’s essay, insights into the role of women in these enterprises. Some of the works, such as Taylor’s essay about LeGendre, connect religious movements with political and economic developments, giving us new insights into the interplay of cultures transforming the Pacific region in the nineteenth century. The Meiji rejected Christianity and Mormonism on their road to participation in the modern era as a world power, but Taylor points out the influences of LeGendre’s Mormon thinking on his advice to the Meiji, which they in turn adopted. As with any collection of essays, there is unevenness. Some of the journals from which these essays come are more specialized than others, and the authors sometimes assume the reader will be familiar with Mormon terms and concepts. Some of the essays are more critical or analytical than others. Despite this, all of them enlighten us about eastward as well as westward influences. All of them give us a deeper and more complex picture of Mormonism as a tradition developing in relationship to the cultures it encountered and attempted to convert with varying degrees of success. In these essays, Mormonism becomes part of a larger history of Christianity as a diverse and global body of religious traditions. Finally, all of them remind us that the Pacific Basin frontier is as much a part of American and world history as the Atlantic Ocean or the Mediterranean Sea. Randi Jones Walker Pacific School of Religion

doi:10.1017/S000964070900078X

The Methodist Unification: Christianity and the Politics of Race in the Jim Crow Era. By Morris L. Davis. Religion, Race, and Ethnicity. New York: New York University Press, 2008. viii þ 199 pp. $45.00 cloth. Methodism occupies a central place in American religious history, and continued reexaminations suggest that there is still much to learn from

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Methodism’s development. It is exactly Methodism’s centrality that makes it an important site for exploring the intersections of religion, culture, and politics in America, suggests Morris L. Davis in The Methodist Unification. Positioning the Methodist Church as the self-described “custodian” of American Christian civilization, and closely analyzing the deliberations of the Joint Commission on Unification of the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in a series of meetings held between 1916 and 1920, Davis’s book aims to show “the ways in which the language of race is both a sign of and an integral presence in the broader, more public, and more pervasive language of Christian nationalism” (8). The story that Davis unfolds is a fascinating one. The primary problem that the Joint Commission needed to deliberate concerned how to deal with race in the newly unified church. Race was a source of the church’s split in 1844, and reorganizing required reopening the question of race in a new era. The members of the Joint Commission were highly aware of public perception. Thus, they felt an urgency concerning the goal of unification, which could serve as an example to a nation trying to overcome the wounds of Reconstruction, while they also were concerned with presenting an appropriate model for racial relations to a white American public. Here discourses of doctrine, theology, nation, and race came together in complicated ways. The Joint Commission’s deliberations reveal that social concerns about race held sway over doctrinal and theological ones, but that those social concerns had to be “explained in terms of some kind of acceptable Christian discourse” (128). What is perhaps most intriguing about Davis’s analysis is the way that talk about race seldom centered on issues of spiritual equality, instead focusing on the on-the-ground social implications of ecclesiastical equality. Drawing his evidence almost completely from the Proceedings of the Joint Commission’s six meetings (the book is organized around these moments), Davis traces discourses on race through a variety of transformations. In the first meeting of the Joint Commission, the language of institutional unity and national space overcame theological and doctrinal issues in the name of expediency. The discourse focused on the morality of a racially divided union, based on the then-current concept of “racial consciousness” that asserted the distinctiveness of different races and the importance that each develop fully its own integrity without dilution through miscegenation or cultural assimilation. Both the MEC and the MECS, and the majority white and minority black members of the Joint Commission, participated in the discourse of race consciousness. However, by the end of their second meeting in 1917, new tensions emerged over differences concerning how to reorganize the church and where African Americans would fit in the “unification.”

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By the third meeting in 1918, “social equality” became the dominant frame. Both black and white members of the Joint Commission agreed with theoretical and scientific arguments that the social equality of the races would be a danger to both the church and America. But by the final three meetings, as the terms of the debate shifted to the languages of nationalism, patriotism, and mission activity, the two black delegates were no longer in agreement with the white membership. Having sacrificed in the recent war, they argued, African Americans were full members of the nation and should be recognized as such. White representatives, meanwhile, called on blacks to accept, as their patriotic duty, a “separate but equal” relation to the primary white Central Jurisdiction of the united church. In the end, black Methodist conferences in the United States were categorized in the same way that foreign mission conferences were, as an Associate General Conference, separate from the white conferences. This final proposal was not acted on for another decade, but it was finally approved by both the MEC and MECS in 1935 as the “Plan of Union.” The MEC and MECS, along with the Methodist Protestant Church, finally merged in 1939. Davis’s study convincingly shows how “the Methodist Church, one of the largest, wealthiest, and most powerful religious institutions in America, was born as a fully racialized Christian institution” (128). The institutional organization of the church incorporated the racial politics of Jim Crow America even as it sought to overcome racially based division. Davis notes, in the epilogue, that the malleability of the concept of race was, perhaps ironically, the reason for the reification of racial structures. If the meaning of race was fixed, it would have had to be faced head-on instead of slipping away into other discourses. Race was most powerful in its silence, as racial discourse was shaped by structures of implied whiteness. Here is where Davis’s story potentially has the most to lend scholars outside the realm of Methodist history, yet Davis does not explore these wider topics as thoroughly or creatively as he might. His limited range of sources allows for interesting insight into the particular discourses on race in the unification process, but it would have been a more widely compelling story if he expanded his view beyond the purely discursive realm into the social history that frames so much of his argument. But perhaps it is unhelpful to ask an author to write a book that he did not set out to write. The Methodist Unification underscores the immense power that race has held in American, and Methodist, consciousness, and its ability to shape the politics of both church and state. Richard J. Callahan, Jr. University of Missouri

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prospects for the future of pentecostalism in South India, does he clearly acknowledge the oppression and exclusion of the subaltern groups from leadership in the pentecostal churches in South India that has taken place. Other observers of this history, such as Geomon K. George or Yesunatha Das, have not been as reluctant to identify the conflict and criticize the continuing impact of caste within the life of the pentecostal churches as well as in the historiography of pentecostalism in South India (see Geoman K. George, Religious Pluralism: Challenges for Pentecostalism in India [Bangalore: Centre for Contemporary Christianity, 2006], and Yesunatha Das, “An Evaluation of the History of Pentecostal Dalits in Kerala,” unpublished Th.M. thesis, South Asian Institute of Advanced Christian Studies, Bangalore, 2001). The book’s second section identifies several areas of beliefs and practices that Bergunder distills from the history of these churches. This section contains a number of insights into the life and work of these churches. One of the most important concerns the manner in which pentecostalism in South India has effectively engaged popular Hindu religiosity around belief in and, more important, exorcism of evil spirits. Another issue is the continuing problems of South Indian pentecostal churches’ dependence on foreign sources of funding, especially from the United States. A third is the ambiguity regarding pentecostal participation in traditional Indian cultural practices such as arranged marriages. These are but some of the insights that emerge from this important study of South Indian pentecostalism, a book that belongs on the syllabus of any course on global pentecostalism today. Dale T. Irvin New York Theological Seminary

doi:10.1017/S000964070900081X

The Church of England in the Twentieth Century: The Church Commissioners and the Politics of Reform, 1948– 1998. By Andrew Chandler. Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell, 2006. xii þ 546. $65.00 cloth. The author succeeds in making this long and unusual history an interesting read. As a piece of ecclesiastical history it is, of course, important for laying out the financial foundations and functions of the Church of England over a contemporary half-century. Fiscal history is not often, however, riveting. While that term may be too strong a claim for this work, it is, nevertheless, a fascinating study rooted in extensive archival research.

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Chandler acknowledges the difficulties in his most helpful introductory essay: narrative history is not in vogue, much less institutional history. By contrast, he notes that much of life is experienced as narrative and most of us live and work in institutions. Thus, “I have sought to fashion a narrative which articulates an over-arching argument about this distinctive institution and its place in the Church it sought, often laboriously, even thanklessly, to serve.” The work of the Church Commissioners arose out of a foundation in the context of the post-war Labour governments of 1945 – 1951 and the new primacy of Archbishop of Canterbury Geoffrey Fisher. Chandler’s thesis is that the body was a pragmatic liberal bureaucracy that “existed not merely to maintain arrangements but actively to reform them.” The “arrangements,” of course, had to do with nothing less than “the making, organising and spending of money, all in the name of the mission of the Church” (3). What was being rationalized for the latter half of the twentieth century were the endowments of the Church of England that had been reorganized in the early nineteenth century under the Ecclesiastical Commission. In turn, that body was a reform of the early eighteenth-century Queen Anne’s Bounty, itself a reform of the medieval endowments dating from the Tudor reformations. The contemporary story follows the successes of investment by the church commissioners during the commission’s first three decades and the application of the fruits of that investment for raising the standard of clerical stipends, providing pensions, repairing or enhancing the church’s fabric, and underwriting domestic, communion-wide, and foreign missions. The tensions of these decades are also investigated in regard to the General Synod’s criticisms of the commission. As the church of England’s governing body, the Synod appeared jealous of the largely independent commission. Two issues stand out in the analysis: the Synod’s embarrassment at the sheer amount of money that investments were making during the six years and moral concern over apartheid and Church investments in South Africa. In explicating the details of this story, Chandler addresses the complex ethical issues as they played out between the General Synod and the commissioners. The chronology of Chandler’s work is, quite logically, fixed by the terms of successive archbishops of Canterbury: Geoffrey Francis Fisher (1945 – 1961), Arthur Michael Ramsey (1961 –1974), Frederick Donald Coggan (1974 – 1979), Robert Alexander Kennedy Runcie (1979 – 1991), and George Leonard Carey (1991 – 1998). The archbishops were at the head of both the General Synod and the commissioners—in some respects an uncomfortable position. One of the factors differentiating Chandler’s work from the usual ecclesiastical histories is that the “heroes” are not the usual suspects. This appears clearly as he shows the organizing genius of Fisher and his attention to detail in regard to the commissioners’ work. In other histories, while his

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efficiency is often noted in passing, Fisher is usually characterized as less than engaging. Contrast this with Ramsey, whom we are (for reasons of his theological restatement, manifest spirituality, and ardent ecumenism) usually inclined to regard highly. Here he appears, however, as one embarrassed by the financial side of things, leaving the work largely to others, and faulted for not seeing its importance in the mission of the Church. Chandler’s concluding chapters deal with the financial crisis of the 1970s, the inflationary spiral of the 1980s, and the recession and slow recovery of the 1990s. Also evident in the telling of the story is the gradual alleviation of frustration and suspicion between the commissioners, on one side, and the General Synod, on the other. This work is, as it were, still in progress. The problem remains one in which the commissioners attempt to “steer a steady course” in a situation where “so much in British Christianity [is] losing its vital force” (481). In addition to an extensive bibliography, the book ends with four important appendices that serve to relieve the text of overburdening detail in regard to relevant personnel and legal measures. William H. Petersen Bexley Hall Seminary

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000821

Vatican II: Renewal Within Tradition. Edited by Matthew L. Lamb and Matthew Levering. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. xxvi þ 462 pp. $29.95 paper. Two thousand and eight marked the fortieth anniversary of a number of significant events—the Tet Offensive in Vietnam; the American massacre at My Lai; the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy; the student occupation of the University of Nanterre; and, of course, the opening of Hair on Broadway. It was also the fortieth anniversary of Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI’s encyclical “On the Regulation of Birth.” This document was hailed by conservative Catholics as reaffirming the Church’s traditional teachings on marriage, the family, and contraception. It was also condemned by liberal Catholics like Karl Rahner, Leo Joseph Suenens, and Charles Curran, who believed the encyclical was a betrayal of the progressive promise of the Second Vatican Council, which had just concluded three years earlier. It is fitting, therefore, that 2008 should have brought us an examination of Vatican II—and, specifically, the question of whether the sixteen documents released by that council represented a radically new path for the Catholic

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itself quaint and anachronistic in the process. New media and technological transformations make it even more critical now to bring greater historical clarity and specificity to the relationship between religion and print. This book makes a good start in that direction. The field awaits a broader, clearer, and more comprehensive synthesis. Peter J. Wosh New York University

doi:10.1017/S000964070900095X

American Evangelicals: A Contemporary History of a Mainstream Religious Movement. By Barry Hankins. Critical Issues in History. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008. xiv þ 209 pp. $34.95 cloth. American evangelicalism has been the subject of scores of books and articles since the 1970s. Most of these studies focus on doctrinal or theological standards, and denominational and ecclesiastical variations, with some attention to the public resurgence of evangelicalism, developing trends in growth and expansion, and the evolving definitional and identity crisis. Barry Hankins’s American Evangelicals breaks in some ways with this pattern, offering instead a more historical approach to evangelical Christianity in the United States. Hankins, a professor of history and churchstate studies at Baylor University, reminds us that evangelicalism in contemporary America is incomprehensible apart from a serious study of the historical, cultural, and political forces and realities that gave rise to and shaped it over the last three centuries. Hankins takes a structural approach in explaining how evangelical positions on a range of hotly contested issues, such as science, race, gender, and politics, began and evolved up to the present time. He actually advances a threefold thesis. First, “there is much more complexity and diversity among evangelicals” (ix) than we have been led to believe. Second, evangelicals have always been “quite at home in the culture” (ix), despite being in tension at times with the culture. Finally, “evangelicals are not fundamentally different from other Americans, at least when it comes to a highly individualistic view of life” (x), a contention that is clearly open to debate. In any case, Hankins supports his claims quite well by drawing on evangelical biographies, regional studies, and numerous secondary works in the field of American evangelicalism. However, the book could have benefited from a greater reliance on primary source materials.

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Chapter 1 begins, quite appropriately, with some attention to the First and Second Great Awakenings and how they inspired the beginnings of evangelicalism in America. The chapter flows well and is easy to read, in part because Hankins identifies the essentials of evangelicalism, making special mention of Biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism, and activism. But the effort is slightly marred by a lack of serious analytical depth. The content of the chapter, with endnotes, is only eighteen pages in length, and this is most certainly problematic given the sheer magnitude of the subject matter. Also, Hankins should have included a piece on Puritanism as his first chapter, while turning to the Awakenings as the focus of a second chapter. As so much of the scholarship shows, the Puritan awakening, as it unfolded in England and subsequently in the American colonies, gave birth to the kind of revivalistic spirit and fervor that made the First and Second Great Awakenings possible. The second chapter traces the rise of theological modernism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with some attention to the emergence of fundamentalism and neo-evangelicalism as well. Hankins offers a clear and compelling definition of theological liberalism, defining it as “the adjusting of religious ideas to modern ways of thinking, the idea that God is immanent and is revealed in cultural development, and the belief that civilization was progressing toward the kingdom of God” (19). Fundamentalism’s emphasis on the inerrancy and authority of scripture, the virgin birth, Christ’s substitutionary atonement, the bodily resurrection, and the authenticity of the miracles of Jesus also are highlighted, and so is the rise of neo-evangelicalism as a reaction against the extremes of fundamentalism. Hankins argues that developments in this period constituted the origins of the “culture wars” (19) or faith conflicts. Clearly, he rejects the view, put forth in James D. Hunter’s Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (New York: BasicBooks, 1991), that the culture-war divide originated in the context of religious pluralism in the colonial period, a position that appears more defensible. Chapters 3 through 6 treat a number of highly contested issues that support Hankins’s claims about the continuing trend toward “culture wars” since the early years of the twentieth century. The battle over science as it has advanced from the anti-evolution controversies of the 1920s to the current debates about intelligent design is covered, and so are the conflicts over endtimes prophecy, racial justice, gender equality, gay rights, and the proper role of religion and religious symbolism in the public or political arena. Hankins is correct in saying that evangelicals today are often angry about the teaching of evolution in public schools, abortion rights, gay marriage, and the removal of religious symbols from public spaces, but his claims at many points seem to undermine a significant component of his thesis, that evangelicals are fundamentally the same as other Americans.

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The seventh and final chapter was obviously inspired by a reading of Mark A. Noll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1994). Hankins affords rich insights into the diversity and complexity within the evangelical subculture as a whole, giving some attention to the ways in which fundamentalists and evangelicals critique each other. In Hankins’s estimation, the levels of diversity and complexity, which are too often ignored or trivialized, reveal a lack of consensus in the larger American culture. Hankins writes well and apparently has a strong grasp of the many issues and problems as they have unfolded in the history of American evangelicalism, but the topics he explores deserve more than the kind of superficial treatment he provides. Even so, the book has something to offer those who have little knowledge of evangelical Christianity, and it is most suitable for undergraduate courses on the subject and for ordinary persons in churches. It serves quite well as an introduction to the history of American evangelicalism. Lewis V. Baldwin Vanderbilt University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000961

African Pentecostalism: An Introduction. By Ogbu Kalu. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. xvi þ 360 pp. $24.95 paper. A leading historian of African Christianity, Ogbu Kalu’s scholarly contributions range from early works on historiography and on Nigerian Presbyterianism to a recent overview text and collections of wide-ranging essays on history, religion, and politics. This timely book published by a major press will bring his scholarship to the attention of a wider audience. More than an overview of African pentecostalism, the book places the subject into the contexts of African history, religions, globalization, and contemporary historiographic trends. Kalu deftly and seamlessly moves among history, theology, and social theory, and thus examines the subject from multiple angles within an integrated framework. Throughout the book, Kalu’s central argument is that pentecostalism should be considered an African religion that flows from African roots and addresses African issues and realities. He thus enters current debates over pentecostal identity by insisting that local continuity take precedence over foreign origins and global flows. The book is divided into four sections. The first section discusses the historical origins of African pentecostalism. His periodization demonstrates its origins in religious Ethiopianism, local revival

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CHURCH HISTORY doi:10.1017/S0009640709000651

Sanctuaries of Earth, Stone, and Light: The Churches of Northern New Spain, 1530 – 1821. By Gloria Fraser Giffords. The Southwest Center Series. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2007. xiv þ 467 pp. $75.00 cloth. This impressive volume is an extremely thorough catalog of the elements of the religious material culture of northern New Spain, which includes the southwestern portion of what is now the United States. Giffords is an art conservator who begins with a useful discussion of the geography and economics of artistic production in the Spanish colonies and the process of transmission of dictates and patterns from an already multicultural Iberian source to both the core and periphery of the northern reaches of Spain’s New World empire. Most of the book consists of chapters that provide a profusion of detail—including copious black-and-white photographs and line drawings— about every imaginable aspect of colonial religious art and architecture, including church plans and designs, construction elements, furnishings, ornament, liturgical apparatus, vestments, and devotional objects. Separate chapters provide glossaries of religious symbolism and iconography. Cemeteries and death-related objects are only dealt with briefly. The author provides little analysis along the lines of religious studies per se, but practitioners of that discipline will find much useful practical information and perhaps inspiration for their own work in this cornucopia of detail. Peter W. Williams Miami University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000663

Pastoral Quechua: The History of Christian Translation in Colonial Peru, 1550 – 1650. By Alan Durston. History, Languages, and Cultures of the Spanish and Portuguese Worlds. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007. ix þ 395 pp. $42.00 paper. As the initial sentence of Durston’s book points out, the appropriation and use of indigenous languages for religious purposes was “one of the most telling features of Spanish colonialism” (1). It is appropriate and interesting that Durston approaches this problem from the complex notion of “translation,” which, as the book shows, is both a microcosm of and a means of furthering unequal social relations between Spaniards and Quechua-speaking Andeans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Durston combines knowledge of Quechua language and linguistics with a sophisticated account of the history

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of Christianity in the Andean world. His work is based on historical work (part I) and the actual analysis of Pastoral Quechua texts in terms of linguistics, genres, themes, and contexts (part II). Chapter 1 discusses the development of language ideologies in Europe and their relationship with religious practices upon the coming of the Spanish to the New World. There is a discussion of the language situation in the preHispanic Andes, and the situation is one of considerable diversity with regard to Quechua dialects and other indigenous languages. Durston argues against attributing a primordial status to Cuzco Quechua, which, following Mannheim, is considered just one of the many dialects of “Southern Peruvian Quechua” (37). How Cuzco Quechua became associated with the origins of the language family and elevated socially above other Quechuas was the result of a long process involving the creation and propagation of “Standard Colonial Quechua,” a standardized version of the Cuzco dialect. This new Quechua dialect was used only for colonial and religious purposes. Standard Colonial Quechua did not significantly alter the spoken landscape of Quechua, nor did it usher in a major language shift in the Andean world. Standard Colonial Quechua, however, did have significant effects on the development of Quechua literacy and the psychology of the speakers of other Quechua dialects. In Durston’s words, “colonial pastoral translation is at the root of the persisting myth of the primacy of Cuzco Quechua, and this myth has arguably had very negative repercussions for the linguistic selfesteem of the vast majority of Quechua speakers” (49). Chapter 2 focuses on the years of the 1550s and the 1560s and the history and politics of beginning efforts at creating pastoral texts in Quechua. This beginning period was more diverse, accommodating of Andean concepts, and experimental. Chapter 3 looks at the 1570s and 1580s and the key transformations of the pastoral regime ushered in by Viceroy Francisco Toledo and the arrival of the Jesuits onto the scene. These set the stage for the Third Council of Lima, which created an official corpus of catechetical texts and reforms that sought to curb resurgences of old ideas. An official Quechua and an official Aymara were selected, and “the use of all other Quechua or Aymara cartillas, translations . . . and basic catechetical texts in general was prohibited” (89). The pastoral regime implemented policies assuring non-variation “even in a single syllable” (102), as variation endangered the resurgence of past notions. Chapter 4 is about the politics of vernacular competence, which, as Durston shows, was somewhat limited and problematic. Chapter 5 is about the “heyday” of Pastoral Quechua, which Durston contends was from the 1590s through the 1640s. Here Durston mentions and discusses the publication and political context of a significant corpus of Colonial Quechua texts, all studied in detail by the author. The epilogue to this chapter discusses mid- and late colonial developments and the decline in the production of new pastoral Quechua texts.

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Part II begins with a chapter on Pastoral Quechua linguistics, and Durston confronts the complexities of dialectology and orthography in the formation of Pastoral Quechua. Durston raises the issue of whether Pastoral linguists really knew Quechua grammar well, especially the category of grammar that linguists refer to as “evidentials”—a class of suffixes that specify the source of information in relation to the speakers. The orthography developed was more useful to Spanish speakers. The system employed Spanish loan words for key Christian concepts such as God and praying but also co-opted other Quechua terms with religious significance. Chapter 7 discusses genres, poetics, and the textual styles of Pastoral Quechua. Hispanic thought and categories were dominant in the translation process, but some texts displayed daring syncretisms of terms, styles, and metaphors. Durston provides a nice description of the differences of poetic style between the Western and Quechua traditions, and he shows in detail the pervasive use of widespread Quechua conventions of parallelism and couplets in pastoral Quechua poetics, a use that gave “gravity” to Christian ideas (236). Chapter 8 looks at how the root metaphors of Christianity— God, Christ, and Mary—were translated in Quechua texts. The death of Christ was translated through Andean tropes of spilling blood and the association of that blood with rivers and irrigation. Also, Christ’s power was explained through a rich Quechua vocabulary of ritual sacrifice. Marian themes were expressed through Andean tropes of flowers. Pastoral Quechua iconography portrayed Andean religious symbols, such as the sun, in Christian scenes. This iconographic and metaphorical encompassment signaled that Andean religion was “already essentially Christian” (270). Chapter 9 is about performance and context and involves a detailed discussion of catechesis and liturgy—those processes that guided the control of behavior through metadiscourses, time, and space. The conclusion is very helpful in tying together what is a dazzling amount of information. Durston clarifies that the story of Pastoral Quechua was an institutionalized effort to create a limited-use language rather than to allow Quechua to become a full-fledged Christian language. As a language intended to create proper religious piety, Pastoral Quechua was managed and controlled only by religious specialists in a well-defined hierarchy. This history explains a lot about the contemporary dynamics of the Quechua world, which, for lack of space, I cannot discuss here. Durston’s achievement, which is a major contribution, is to show us the detailed and complex inner workings of the Spanish theory of domination through Quechua translation. The book is highly recommended. Michael A. Uzendoski Florida State University

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409

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000675

Hobbes, Bramhall and the Politics of Liberty and Necessity: A Quarrel of the Civil Wars and Interregnum. By Nicholas D. Jackson. Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. xvii þ 331 pp. $104.00 cloth. A common problem for intellectual historians is the extent to which a scholar’s abstract reasoning is affected by surrounding circumstances. The positions taken by Thomas Hobbes and John Bramhall in their debates during the English Civil Wars and Interregnum have been thoroughly dissected by modern logicians, but few if any such critics have shown, to the extent that Nicholas Jackson does, how those positions may have resulted from the pressure of immediate conditions. Any attempt to sort out the motives behind thinkers’ conclusions can draw accusations of excessive speculation, but Jackson admits his guesswork through the incessant use of such phrases as “one might surmise” and “one could argue” as he ably synthesizes philosophical criticism and historical analysis. This valuable study complements recent work on Hobbes by Jon Parkin and George Wright, and on Bramhall by John McCafferty and Jack Cunningham. In addition to its detailed chronological account of the works of Bramhall and Hobbes, it draws on works or correspondence by William Laud, Edward Hyde, Brian Duppa, Robert Baillie, Samuel Pepys, William Cavendish Earl of Newcastle, and many others. Its use of secondary sources is similarly comprehensive. In the first chapter Jackson gives a brief account of Bramhall’s career from 1633 to 1641. The next three chapters describe the activities of Bramhall during the Civil War and of Hobbes during the 1630s and early 1640s, including Hobbes’s Elements of Law and De Cive and Bramhall’s Serpent Salve, and also each scholar’s ties to the Earl of Newcastle, who brought them together in Paris for their 1645 debate on free will. Jackson ties that debate to the Arminian-Calvinist conflict of the 1630s, using “arminianism” in its broadest sense, as adherence to the entire Laudian ecclesiastical program and not simply as a belief in free will. Chapters 3 and 4 describe the debate of 1645 – 1646 while chapters 5 and 6 describe the two men’s activities in the royalist exile community between 1646 and 1651 and their increasing acrimony as each jostled for position near the future Charles II. Chapters 7 and 8 examine the activities of both men in the mid- to late 1650s as their debates, hitherto unpublished, broke out in six printed tracts. Again Jackson provides a rich historical background to the quarrel, noting other issues that concerned each man during this period. Chapter 9 deals with their situations during the Restoration and Hobbes’s reply to Bramhall’s final sally. Jackson concludes with an excellent discussion of the quarrel in

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the context of long-running trends within Anglicanism and European intellectual life. While the chronological organization of the book is effective, there is a regrettable degree of repetition. Better editing could have reduced the length considerably with no sacrifice of content. For Jackson, the two scholars’ “most personal and bitter disagreement concerned the relationship between political and religious authority” (2). Again and again as he takes us through the lengthy dispute, Jackson reiterates that Hobbes, though an absolutist, was not truly a royalist, and that Bramhall’s defense of jure divino episcopacy was part of a constitutional royalism that defended the right of the subject to lawful disobedience. In 1640–1642, according to Jackson, Hobbes’s rejection of jure divino episcopacy placed him on the side of the puritan opponents of episcopacy, and thus made him no “royalist” because he opposed the ecclesiastical government of his sovereign (57). Jackson therefore rejects A. P. Martinich’s description of Hobbes as “committed to the cause of the king” (Hobbes [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999], 121). It is no surprise that Hobbesian theories could be used both for and against the Stuart cause, but when Jackson writes that “Hobbes wrote Leviathan seemingly Janus-faced . . . in such a way as to allow for submission to any winner of the grand power struggle in England” (179), he may be overemphasizing the pressure of politics and underestimating the philosopher’s intellectual integrity. There is a pejorative connotation to Jackson’s description of him as “the consummate chameleon . . . the master theorist—and practitioner—of self-preservation” (179). Similarly, in speculating that parliamentary opposition to episcopacy was based less on religious principles than on more immediate motives, such as annoyance at a perceived obstructionist bloc in the House of Lords or resentment of lower-class clerics rising to high social status (11), Jackson underestimates the sincere anticlericalist opposition to the wielding of any coercive power by clergymen regardless of whether that coercive power was part of their spiritual functions or wielded through temporal offices. Members of Parliament and Hobbes (see Leviathan III, 42) could seek to strip away this coercive power and still support “episcopacy” by asserting that they were turning the bishop back into what he had been in primitive times: simply a preacher and chairman over ministerial synods. Some MPs who were willing to accept such an episcopacy in early 1641 (Viscount Falkland, Sir Ralph Hopton) later fought for Charles I in the Civil War. Inasmuch as Jackson himself notes the “incoherence” and “disunity” of royalism (17, 61), we should not find it extraordinary that Hobbes, like many others, was royalist only to a degree, and ultimately Jackson does speculate that he was “more royalist than not” (273). Nor should it surprise us, however, that Hobbes’s definition of episcopacy could amount to the de facto abolition of episcopal government as it existed in 1640.

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Jackson hammers at Hobbes’s inconsistency in other respects, in particular his willingness as a layman to pronounce on religious matters while affirming the exclusive right of the monarch to make such pronouncements through “duly ordained Ecclesiastics” (74). This, of course, is one of Bramhall’s criticisms, and while other Hobbes scholars have noted inconsistency in Hobbes’s philosophy, Jackson’s relentless emphasis on it in the context of the debate with Bramhall suggests a view that the bishop was the more principled of the two. This view is consonant with Jackson’s diction, in which Hobbes’s polemic is described with far more vividly negative metaphors than is Bramhall’s. If this does reveal a judgment in the bishop’s favor, however, it is one that Jackson backs up with meticulous analysis. William M. Abbott Fairfield University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000687

Ethnographies and Exchanges: Native Americans, Moravians, and Catholics in Early North America. Edited by A. G. Roeber. Max Kade German-American Research Institute Series. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008. xxiv þ 217 pp. $45.00 cloth. This interesting new collection of essays explores the question of “how people came to interpret exchanges” (x) between white missionaries and native peoples during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The focus here is equally on the process of intercultural exchange in the past and on the various methods by which historians and ethnographers of the present interpret those exchanges. Indeed, the essays presented here, introduced by A. G. Roeber, grew out of a conference held at the publication of a new translation of Moravian missionary David Zeisberger’s diaries covering the period between 1772 and 1781 (The Moravian Missionary Diaries of David Zeisberger, 1772 – 1781, ed. Hermann Wellenreuther and Carola Wessel, trans. Julie Tomberlin Weber [University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005]). As a result of this textual and methodological focus, many of the essays deal with “the issue of texts, translations, and the challenge multiple languages posed in European-Native American exchanges” (xiii). As Roeber’s concise introduction explains, most of the essays take as their subject missions to native communities in the mid-Atlantic, including seventeenth-century Jesuit missions, eighteenth-century Moravian missions, and, in a particularly compelling essay by Alyssa Mt. Pleasant, early

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Jackson hammers at Hobbes’s inconsistency in other respects, in particular his willingness as a layman to pronounce on religious matters while affirming the exclusive right of the monarch to make such pronouncements through “duly ordained Ecclesiastics” (74). This, of course, is one of Bramhall’s criticisms, and while other Hobbes scholars have noted inconsistency in Hobbes’s philosophy, Jackson’s relentless emphasis on it in the context of the debate with Bramhall suggests a view that the bishop was the more principled of the two. This view is consonant with Jackson’s diction, in which Hobbes’s polemic is described with far more vividly negative metaphors than is Bramhall’s. If this does reveal a judgment in the bishop’s favor, however, it is one that Jackson backs up with meticulous analysis. William M. Abbott Fairfield University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000687

Ethnographies and Exchanges: Native Americans, Moravians, and Catholics in Early North America. Edited by A. G. Roeber. Max Kade German-American Research Institute Series. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008. xxiv þ 217 pp. $45.00 cloth. This interesting new collection of essays explores the question of “how people came to interpret exchanges” (x) between white missionaries and native peoples during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The focus here is equally on the process of intercultural exchange in the past and on the various methods by which historians and ethnographers of the present interpret those exchanges. Indeed, the essays presented here, introduced by A. G. Roeber, grew out of a conference held at the publication of a new translation of Moravian missionary David Zeisberger’s diaries covering the period between 1772 and 1781 (The Moravian Missionary Diaries of David Zeisberger, 1772 – 1781, ed. Hermann Wellenreuther and Carola Wessel, trans. Julie Tomberlin Weber [University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005]). As a result of this textual and methodological focus, many of the essays deal with “the issue of texts, translations, and the challenge multiple languages posed in European-Native American exchanges” (xiii). As Roeber’s concise introduction explains, most of the essays take as their subject missions to native communities in the mid-Atlantic, including seventeenth-century Jesuit missions, eighteenth-century Moravian missions, and, in a particularly compelling essay by Alyssa Mt. Pleasant, early

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nineteenth-century missions to the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) in New York. This territory is, Roeber argues, important for two reasons. First, the Moravians and Jesuits who produced the documents upon which most of these essays are based displayed “an intensified interest . . . in the language, religion, and political organization of the First Peoples they encountered in North America” (x). Their records have therefore been used for ethnographic purposes that may at times be at odds with the missionary contexts of their production. Second, despite the richness of these records, which were produced centuries into the colonial project, “many of our deepest impressions about these first exchanges continue to be guided by the Spanish contacts in the Caribbean, Meso, and South America, or English experiences in Virginia and Massachusetts” (xi). The later moments of contact between natives and Europeans represented here offer a very different perspective on the complexity of inter-ethnic relations. Collectively, these essays seek to challenge paradigms of contact within missions and too-easy assumptions about the texts produced there. Several of the more specialized pieces deal with the problem of understanding the kinship structure among the Delaware peoples where David Zeisberger worked. These essays draw on Moravian records, and each asks, implicitly or explicitly, how reliable those sources truly are. Hermann Wellenreuther examines Zeisberger’s description of the succession of head chiefs and argues that the missionary’s diaries “force us to historicize the Delaware nation” (47). He suggests that the internal political structures of the Delaware changed over time, so that the structures modern historians identify cannot be assumed outside any specific historical context. Robert S. Grumet, on the other hand, uses the Zeisberger diary in tandem with other sources to outline a sketch of the various structures that organized Delaware societies. His anthropological approach is quite at odds with Wellenreuther’s historical one, but it provides a wealth of valuable information about the “guiding set of principles determining ancestry, descent, affiliation, and social control” (51) among the Delaware and about how contact with missions challenged those principles. The third essay in this conversation comes from Siegrun Kaiser and examines the relationship between clan membership and political strategies among the Munsee across centuries of history. As Roeber points out, these scholars disagree about both terminology and methodology, but their combination here illustrates the breadth of questions that must be asked about Moravian missions and about the sources they left before any overarching interpretation of the period can be achieved. The rest of the essays in the collection ponder this same territory of text and contact in creative ways. Dominique Deslandres reminds readers that, while the Jesuit records may appear to have an ethnographic bent when describing native peoples, “Missionaries and theologians tried their best to integrate this radically different example of humanity into a familiar system of thought” (75). In other words, even in identifying the natives’ otherness, missionaries placed their

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subjects into a fundamentally European context. Christopher J. Bilodeau weaves a fascinating tale of how Jesuit missionaries to the Wabanaki sought to control their subjects through internal policing, the use of the state, and, ultimately, deception. Walter W. Woodward follows on recent scholarship emphasizing the importance of sound in history to argue that the Moravians’ use of music in their own worship and in missions may have provided an important “intercultural bridge” (140). These contributions are well written and insightful. Taken as a whole, this collection brings needed scholarly attention to important epistemological and historical questions for mission and native history. If the religious contexts from which missionaries and natives operated is less well examined (excepting Deslandres’s contribution), the authors may certainly be forgiven; their task was substantial enough. Several of the essays, especially those offered by Bilodeau and Mt. Pleasant, provide readable illustrations of substantive issues that would be appropriate for undergraduates. The more technical discussions offered by other pieces will be of interest to specialists. Finally, the comparative perspective enabled by essays that span more than a century and several different religious traditions provides fertile territory for those seeking broad questions. Katherine Carte´ Engel Texas A&M University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000699

The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in Early America. By John Fea. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. 272 pp. $39.95 cloth. Most immediately, John Fea’s The Way of Improvement Leads Home is a biography of the eighteenth-century Presbyterian preacher best remembered today because of his detailed diary account of life on a Virginia plantation. Fithian (1747–1776), who was a tutor for Southern aristocrat Robert Carter III’s children during 1773–1774, recorded observations about plantation life, slavery, and religion that are still of interest to students of late colonial America. But Fea’s book is also a biography of the American Enlightenment in the years immediately preceding the Revolution. Fea sees Fithian as representative of the struggle that many mid-eighteenth-century Americans went through to accommodate two worldviews, Christianity and the Enlightenment, that converged on some points but wildly clashed on others. In examining the life of this “ordinary farmer,” Fea—contrary to the

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BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

subjects into a fundamentally European context. Christopher J. Bilodeau weaves a fascinating tale of how Jesuit missionaries to the Wabanaki sought to control their subjects through internal policing, the use of the state, and, ultimately, deception. Walter W. Woodward follows on recent scholarship emphasizing the importance of sound in history to argue that the Moravians’ use of music in their own worship and in missions may have provided an important “intercultural bridge” (140). These contributions are well written and insightful. Taken as a whole, this collection brings needed scholarly attention to important epistemological and historical questions for mission and native history. If the religious contexts from which missionaries and natives operated is less well examined (excepting Deslandres’s contribution), the authors may certainly be forgiven; their task was substantial enough. Several of the essays, especially those offered by Bilodeau and Mt. Pleasant, provide readable illustrations of substantive issues that would be appropriate for undergraduates. The more technical discussions offered by other pieces will be of interest to specialists. Finally, the comparative perspective enabled by essays that span more than a century and several different religious traditions provides fertile territory for those seeking broad questions. Katherine Carte´ Engel Texas A&M University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000699

The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in Early America. By John Fea. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. 272 pp. $39.95 cloth. Most immediately, John Fea’s The Way of Improvement Leads Home is a biography of the eighteenth-century Presbyterian preacher best remembered today because of his detailed diary account of life on a Virginia plantation. Fithian (1747–1776), who was a tutor for Southern aristocrat Robert Carter III’s children during 1773–1774, recorded observations about plantation life, slavery, and religion that are still of interest to students of late colonial America. But Fea’s book is also a biography of the American Enlightenment in the years immediately preceding the Revolution. Fea sees Fithian as representative of the struggle that many mid-eighteenth-century Americans went through to accommodate two worldviews, Christianity and the Enlightenment, that converged on some points but wildly clashed on others. In examining the life of this “ordinary farmer,” Fea—contrary to the

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somewhat reified analyses of the Enlightenment offered by Henry May or Peter Gay—wishes to underscore the claim that, at least on this side of the Atlantic, “an Enlightenment life was complex and complicated” (7). The story of Fithian’s short life can be told quickly. Born in southwestern New Jersey—in the Cohansey (or “Cohansie,” as Fithian invariably spelled it) River area, a region that he loved and pined for during his times away from it— Fithian underwent a conversion while in his late teens that moved him away from following in his father’s yeoman steps. He studied at a Presbyterian academy in nearby Deerfield and then moved on to the College of New Jersey (Princeton) at the late age of twenty-three. Upon graduation, Fithian returned home for a year and then headed south to the Carter plantation. In 1775 and 1776, Fithian stumped as an itinerant Presbyterian preacher in Virginia and Pennsylvania, married, joined the New Jersey state militia when war erupted, and died of dysentery in October 1776, less than a year after his marriage. What is not so easily told are the paradigmatic tensions in the American Enlightenment that Fithian’s life displayed. The Enlightenment ethos, for example, championed a nonparochial cosmopolitanism. The enlightened person was supposed to wean himself of loyalty to specific places and climes in order to become a citizen of the world. But Fithian, reflecting the values of the rural culture that birthed and reared him, never managed to liberate himself from a deep love for his own little neck of the world in Cohansey. Whenever he left it— either to improve his mind at the College of New Jersey, to follow his religious calling by preaching in the Shenandoah and Susquehanna valleys, or to enlist in the New Jersey militia—his homesickness was sometimes nearly unbearable. Then there is the tension between the Enlightenment’s fidelity to this world— its exploration and celebration through natural philosophy and its improvement through a struggle for the political rights discovered by reason—and Presbyterianism’s fidelity to the other world of God’s Kingdom. The two worldviews espoused different understandings of humankind’s proper “home,” and Fithian was sometimes torn between his loyalties to both. On the one hand, he preached God’s Kingdom from the itinerant’s pulpit. On the other hand, he wholeheartedly supported the war with England because he believed it to be a struggle for enlightened values such as liberty. But he also tried to hedge his bets by believing that the Revolution was divinely inspired. Perhaps the most painful tension exemplified by Fithian involves the uneasy relationship between his Enlightenment-bred progressivism and his Presbyterian sense of human fallenness. A central tenet of the Enlightenment was the perfectibility of humanity through the education of reason and the cultivation of virtue—or what can generically be called “self-improvement.” Fithian was enough of a child of the Enlightenment to take this principle seriously. But it did not sit well with the Presbyterian story of human depravity and the necessity for an eschatological cleansing of creation. As Fea notes,

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“Philip sought the Enlightenment with every ounce of his being and yet wholeheartedly rejected its most fundamental teachings about where human history was heading. This was the great paradox of an eighteenth-century enlightened life” (213). Readers primarily interested in the history of Christianity in late colonial America will find Fea’s analysis of orthodoxy and the Enlightenment especially interesting. Fea resists oversimplifying the occasionally compatible but usually uneasy relationship between the two. Because of the hold of Christianity on colonial culture, the Enlightenment never gained a secure foothold in the popular mind (although in the first fifty years of the young Republic, Enlightenmentinspired deism gave Christianity a run for its money). But the influence of the enlightened ethos on the Christian worldview was nevertheless profound, giving rise, as Fea writes, to “compromises between world citizenship and local attachments, and between Christianity and the modern age” that eventually culminated in the emergence of American civil religion (215, 214). Thanks to Fea’s careful study, the Presbyterian who called Cohansey home becomes one of our “best windows into the way the Enlightenment in America was lived” (215). Author Fea, who teaches at a college geographically close to the Upper Susquehanna Valley where Fithian traveled and preached in mid-1775, writes of his subject with eloquence, insight, and obvious affection (he refers to Fithian by his first name throughout the book). The book is well documented, with 35 pages of finely printed endnotes, and is illustrated. One of the most fascinating illustrations is a chalk drawing of Fithian, apparently drawn toward the end of his life. The sketch is disconcerting, revealing a young man with intense, wide-open eyes and determined, pursed lips. It is the face of someone accustomed to living with unresolved, and perhaps unresolvable, loyalties. Kerry Walters Gettysburg College

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000705

A Paradise of Reason: William Bentley and Enlightenment Christianity in the Early Republic. By J. Rixey Ruffin. Religion in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. x þ 267 pp. $65.00 cloth. Although Reverend William Bentley (1759 – 1819) of Salem, Massachusetts, disliked the radical deist critique of Christianity that Thomas Paine presented in his Age of Reason, Bentley, a loner theologically as well as socially, might well have agreed with Paine that “my own mind is my own church” (Eric Foner, ed., Thomas Paine: Collected Writings [New York: The Library of

415

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

“Philip sought the Enlightenment with every ounce of his being and yet wholeheartedly rejected its most fundamental teachings about where human history was heading. This was the great paradox of an eighteenth-century enlightened life” (213). Readers primarily interested in the history of Christianity in late colonial America will find Fea’s analysis of orthodoxy and the Enlightenment especially interesting. Fea resists oversimplifying the occasionally compatible but usually uneasy relationship between the two. Because of the hold of Christianity on colonial culture, the Enlightenment never gained a secure foothold in the popular mind (although in the first fifty years of the young Republic, Enlightenmentinspired deism gave Christianity a run for its money). But the influence of the enlightened ethos on the Christian worldview was nevertheless profound, giving rise, as Fea writes, to “compromises between world citizenship and local attachments, and between Christianity and the modern age” that eventually culminated in the emergence of American civil religion (215, 214). Thanks to Fea’s careful study, the Presbyterian who called Cohansey home becomes one of our “best windows into the way the Enlightenment in America was lived” (215). Author Fea, who teaches at a college geographically close to the Upper Susquehanna Valley where Fithian traveled and preached in mid-1775, writes of his subject with eloquence, insight, and obvious affection (he refers to Fithian by his first name throughout the book). The book is well documented, with 35 pages of finely printed endnotes, and is illustrated. One of the most fascinating illustrations is a chalk drawing of Fithian, apparently drawn toward the end of his life. The sketch is disconcerting, revealing a young man with intense, wide-open eyes and determined, pursed lips. It is the face of someone accustomed to living with unresolved, and perhaps unresolvable, loyalties. Kerry Walters Gettysburg College

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000705

A Paradise of Reason: William Bentley and Enlightenment Christianity in the Early Republic. By J. Rixey Ruffin. Religion in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. x þ 267 pp. $65.00 cloth. Although Reverend William Bentley (1759 – 1819) of Salem, Massachusetts, disliked the radical deist critique of Christianity that Thomas Paine presented in his Age of Reason, Bentley, a loner theologically as well as socially, might well have agreed with Paine that “my own mind is my own church” (Eric Foner, ed., Thomas Paine: Collected Writings [New York: The Library of

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America, 1995], 666). At least this is the impression we get from the erudite, beautifully written, and much-needed biography of Salem’s prolific proponent of “Christian naturalism.” Based largely on Bentley’s published four-volume diary (some 2,300 pages) and his 1,200 handwritten sermons, J. Rixey Ruffin has reconstructed the intellectual and social life of a free-thinking Unitarian, one whose views of a fully human Jesus and a noninterventionist God placed him on the outermost edge of Christianity. What Ruffin finds is a declension story: in the two decades after Bentley took over the pulpit of Salem’s East Church in 1783 and began preaching his version of rational religion, his wouldbe converts rejected his Socinian version of an entirely human Jesus and the notion that God had not intervened in the world since biblical times. As Salem’s mainstream liberal Protestants clung to the supernatural beliefs they preferred, Bentley found himself increasingly isolated and irrelevant, occupying “a category of Christians that was his alone” (61). Bentley “had created a new interpretation, a new faction of Christian ontology of which he was the only representative” (72). He was “a one-man faction of reasonable Christianity” (76). Bentley’s theology did take risks, but he was neither unprecedented nor alone, as Ruffin points out elsewhere in the book. Inspired by the Socinian Unitarianism coming out of England, especially that of Joseph Priestley and Theophilus Lindsey, Bentley joined forces with his former college roommate and lifelong friend, James Freeman of Boston’s King Chapel, to disseminate the many Unitarian sermons and tracts arriving from England. If Bentley was indeed “the only person who believed what he did about the attributes and powers of God” (76), he certainly did not know it. His own reworked catechism and hymnal, without any Trinitarian references, went through numerous printings, and the minister could hope that some in his congregation were persuaded by what he preached with conviction for thirtyfive years. Ruffin makes clear that Bentley had good reason to feel appreciated rather than isolated in his Salem community. Principled and outspoken in his stand on religious tolerance, Bentley argued for the rights of those he disagreed with (Universalists and Catholics, for example) to worship as they pleased. He was explicitly anti-dogmatic, allowing the baptism of children whose parents were not baptized. He also performed baptisms at a person’s home and on days other than Sunday. “Most radically of all,” Ruffin explains, Bentley “was willing to baptize children born or conceived out of wedlock without requiring a confession of sin by the parents” (84). Sympathetic to sinners who made mistakes, Bentley believed the desire to act virtuously was enough to merit baptism for oneself or one’s child. And so it was that Bentley baptized more children in Salem than any other minister. Bentley had not always shown such generosity of spirit, and Ruffin documents the dramatic shift in Bentley’s perceptions of hierarchy and social

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

417

justice. In the 1780s, Bentley was an aspirant to elitism from Harvard who blamed the poor for the “miserable life which their vices have brought upon them” (57). He found it “highly scandalous” that the wandering poor should seek relief in Salem and “that our public street should be infested with vagabonds” (57). Bentley also denounced Shays’s Rebellion as a lawless and sinful “war against society,” and he lectured his congregants that “our social happiness will ever be commensurate with our submission to the established authority” (60). But, in the 1790s, Bentley’s views took a turn. He supported the French revolution even when others became disenchanted. And when, during the embargo of 1794, American merchants chose self-interest over the good of the commonwealth, Bentley was deeply disillusioned. He distanced himself from the wealthy and their pursuit of property, seeing instead— apparently for the first time—how the poor were unfairly disadvantaged. By the late 1790s, Bentley had shed his former allegiance to the Great Chain of Being. Rousseau was right; social hierarchy was a human construction, and inequalities of wealth should be reduced. Ruffin admirably combines the intellectual, social, and political history of Salem in the 1790s. We learn that Bentley became Salem’s spokesman for republicanism, publicizing his views from the pulpit as well as in the local Republican newspaper, the (misnamed) Impartial Register. By 1800, “Bentley’s congregants were poised to join the party whose ideology he had been preaching for so long” (143). He made “good friends” (143) along the way, one of whom, an East Church parishioner named Jacob Crowninshield, was elected to Congress in 1802. Two years later, congressmen elected Bentley chaplain of the House of Representatives, an honor Bentley declined (just as he turned down the offer in 1805 to teach at the proposed college in Washington), presumably because he felt comfortable, needed, and effective in Salem. Ruffin credits Bentley with playing “a singularly important role” in the rise of the Republicans in Salem (153). Bentley’s importance as a public figure makes all the more intriguing Ruffin’s depiction of the 40-something Bentley as a lonely and marginalized figure when the book closes in 1806. (Bentley would live 13 more years, “cut off completely from his liberal colleagues, isolated, ridiculed, and despised” [183].) Ruffin asserts that “Bentley’s brand of Republicanism—a rational, libertarian, Christian Republicanism—had come to an end.” Now that the party had gone mainstream, “they no longer needed a fringe radical who was becoming something of an embarrassment” (163). It is true that the congregation at East Church was shrinking when other churches in town were growing. But why were Bentley’s Socinian views so off-putting now, when they had not been in the years before? (For an account of how Arian Unitarians in America sidelined and sabotaged the Socinian Unitarianism imported by Priestley, see Jerome D. Bowers, Joseph Priestley and English

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Unitarianism in America [University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008].) Ruffin’s answer has to do with what more orthodox versions of Christianity offered the faithful: “real psychological relief could be gained from a conviction in the universality of the depraved material soul and the promise of heavenly bliss for converted Christians regardless of station” (168). Because Bentley’s rationalism held no such emotional solace, it “failed at providing what the faithful seek from their faith” (174). Ruffin attributes Bentley’s social isolation to his theology—the minister experienced a belated fall from social grace due to his barren Christology. To those who wonder whether Bentley’s personality had anything to do with his shrinking popularity, Ruffin has an answer: rational religion has emotional repercussions for its adherents. Ruffin, who likely knows Bentley’s writings better than anyone else, describes Bentley as emotionally impoverished and unable to experience real passion. But just after saying that Bentley himself admitted, or at least feared, that his “unlimited commitment to the rational life has left him unable to fall in love” (172), Ruffin shows that Bentley did fall in love, and that “his heart had broken” (173). This odd contradiction may have its source in Ruffin’s own assessment of rational religion. He repeatedly asserts that “Christian naturalism failed” (170, 173, 174). For Ruffin, rationalist religion “removed much of the ability that Scripture does have to instruct, console, and, indeed, enlighten” (174 – 175). Rationalism’s theology and theodicy remain without meaning, without divine purpose, offering its adherents “a universe governed by a God unable or unwilling to help them” (179). The book’s title, A Paradise of Reason, turns out to be tongue in cheek. Ruffin’s forthright critique of Bentley’s Socinianism may distract readers more sympathetic to the idea and its longtime champion in Salem’s East Church. Even so, Ruffin’s opinions do not detract from the power of the book to illuminate the life and times of an important and previously overlooked figure of the American Enlightenment. This is a carefully researched and vividly presented history of a man whose unorthodox religious beliefs and republican politics both contrasted with and significantly influenced Salem’s Arminian and Federalist majority. Ruffin shines in his re-creation of the social and religious world of Salem in the early Republic, and he has reintroduced us to a figure worth studying for the creative and possibly idiosyncratic ways he melded rationality and religion. A Paradise of Reason will prove valuable for scholars of American Protestantism, Enlightenment-era ideas about reason and revelation, and political culture in the early Republic. Kirsten Fischer University of Minnesota

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

419

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000717

The Origins of Proslavery Christianity: White and Black Evangelicals in Colonial and Antebellum Virginia. By Charles F. Irons. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008. xiv þ 366. $24.94 paper. In the kind of detailed study long overdue, Charles Irons focuses on the development and character of biracial Protestant Christianity in pre-Civil War Virginia. Using a wide variety of sources, including manuscript church minutes, denominational newspapers, private letters and diaries, and printed sermons and biographies, he reconstructs the close interactions between black and white members in the three dominant churches of the region, the Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian, with most emphasis on the first two, which had the majority of worshipers both black and white. He begins with the early Baptist and Methodist ministers eagerly reaching out to gain black converts, but he rightfully cautions against the modern tendency to exaggerate the antislavery sentiment of the early ministers and their consequent moral retreat as they accommodated to the reality of the slave power. He also highlights the involvement of slaves in the so-called white evangelical churches of the Old South, although his emphasis is solely on Virginia. While he is aware that many blacks worshiped in the invisible church of the hush arbor, he makes it quite clear that the normative worship experience of antebellum slaves—at least in the first third of the nineteenth century—was in officially white churches. Blacks often outnumbered whites in these churches, and though they sat segregated in balconies or in the back pews, they heard the same sermons, took communion with whites, joined and were released from churches in the same fashion, and participated in church disciplinary procedures. Perhaps blacks from a variety of plantations and farms sitting together made these segregated spaces an important arena for the creation of a sense of black community; it was the safest place for blacks to meet other blacks from across the countryside. If so, it would not be the first time that slaves made of their situation something that whites would never have suspected. Irons’s interpretation is careful and nuanced. He does not portray the white attitude toward black members as solely instrumentalist—the church simply as an agent of social control—nor does he depict black involvement as solely passive. Clearly, many evangelical ministers sincerely cared for the souls of the blacks in their midst, and it is impossible to explain blacks’ attraction to the church if they did not find authentic meaning there. Whatever the law said about slaves as property, white evangelicals understood that blacks were people in the eyes of God, and the slaves found an important degree of

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CHURCH HISTORY

moral agency in, for example, their participation in church disciplinary proceedings. Ironically, even as the whites used the heartfelt involvement of slaves in the churches as putative evidence of the providential purpose of the institution—a God-sent means of converting Africans—the presence of black members in many ways shaped the theology, the practice, and the tone of the church services. In ways whites could not have foreseen, the presence of blacks in the officially white churches influenced how those churches responded to the blacks in their midst. Irons shows how, after Nat Turner’s Rebellion, cautious whites withdrew some of the privileges previously allowed black Christians and began a more concerted effort to control the slaves’ religious practice by means of white missionaries and white-supervised black churches associated with white churches. While many blacks still worshiped in officially white churches, increasingly blacks practiced their faith with surprising autonomy in these nominally white-supervised churches. Blacks in cities and larger towns controlled quite independent black churches, and of course many rural blacks found their spiritual homes in hush arbors, although some seemed to worship in the invisible church and the more visible biracial church as well. But however blacks related to white churches, their very numbers and sincerity forced white accommodation; the presence of black evangelicals in ways profound and minor helped shape the practice and outreach of white evangelicals. And the whites’ felt need to promote black Christianity as a way of justifying the institution of slavery and refuting abolitionist charges against the failures of the white churches required that whites support the existence of black preachers, to a degree promote literacy for black ministers, and accept surprising degrees of independence for blackdominated churches. And at least in Virginia, according to Irons, the evangelical defense of slavery as a divinely supported institution did not lead to automatic support for secession. Irons as a modern historian obviously is fully aware of the racism, the elitism, and the self-serving rhetoric common to antebellum white evangelicals, but he does not categorically dismiss their stated concerns for blacks as sheer hypocrisy or resort to reductionism when analyzing either black or white responses to Christianity. I do wish he had said more about the theology and ecclesiology of the completely independent black churches and denominations that emerged during and after the Civil War. He reports that in the antebellum churches the blacks were more raucous at outdoor baptisms and sang with more emotion, but were the emergent post-Civil War black denominations, at the heart of their faith and practice, significantly different from their predecessor antebellum white denominational homes? Not all questions are answered, but this is a carefully argued, impressively researched, persuasive book. If at times it more confirms and deepens what

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we knew than really offers a fundamentally revisionist view, perhaps that only makes it more convincing and valuable. John B. Boles Rice University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000729

Catholic and French Forever: Religious and National Identity in Modern France. By Joseph F. Byrnes. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005. xxiii þ 280 pp. $55.00 cloth. Although secular republicanism remains a topcoat for contemporary France, beneath this veneer lie traces of a twisted and troubled relationship between it and Roman Catholicism. In a sharp study of this difficult topic, Joseph Byrnes provides some fascinating vignettes of how this liaison developed, what complications arose between the two interlocutors, and how—despite serious fractures—Catholic belief and practice continued to shape French national identity throughout the modern era. Byrnes argues that the association between the nation’s majority religion and its modern republicanism was characterized by three distinct stages between 1789 and 1940: an irreparable divorce during the Revolution; a mutually hostile defense from the Napoleonic regime to the eve of World War I; and a challenging de´tente that first emerged in 1914 and endured until the occupation and collaboration of World War II. By no means was the divorce between Catholicism and republicanism a fait accompli when the Revolution began. If anything, national unity was usually expressed in and through Catholic belief and practice, especially since this religion was one of the few amalgams that held France together during the Old Regime. All of that changed, however, with passage of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and the subsequent anticlericalism that arose at about the same time as the First Republic. Here Byrnes focuses on the most pro-revolutionary priests, who not only renounced their sacerdotal vows in 1793 and 1794 but also went on to marry. Some of these clerics, however, later retracted their renunciations and returned to their ministries, in part because official attempts to displace Catholicism with republican religious creations in the latter part of the Revolution failed so miserably, as Byrnes makes clear. Both developments nonetheless generated a deep cultural divide among the masses and elite alike in early nineteenth-century France. Using Francois-Rene´ de Chateaubriand and Antoine-Louis-Claude Destutt de Tracy

421

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we knew than really offers a fundamentally revisionist view, perhaps that only makes it more convincing and valuable. John B. Boles Rice University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000729

Catholic and French Forever: Religious and National Identity in Modern France. By Joseph F. Byrnes. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005. xxiii þ 280 pp. $55.00 cloth. Although secular republicanism remains a topcoat for contemporary France, beneath this veneer lie traces of a twisted and troubled relationship between it and Roman Catholicism. In a sharp study of this difficult topic, Joseph Byrnes provides some fascinating vignettes of how this liaison developed, what complications arose between the two interlocutors, and how—despite serious fractures—Catholic belief and practice continued to shape French national identity throughout the modern era. Byrnes argues that the association between the nation’s majority religion and its modern republicanism was characterized by three distinct stages between 1789 and 1940: an irreparable divorce during the Revolution; a mutually hostile defense from the Napoleonic regime to the eve of World War I; and a challenging de´tente that first emerged in 1914 and endured until the occupation and collaboration of World War II. By no means was the divorce between Catholicism and republicanism a fait accompli when the Revolution began. If anything, national unity was usually expressed in and through Catholic belief and practice, especially since this religion was one of the few amalgams that held France together during the Old Regime. All of that changed, however, with passage of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and the subsequent anticlericalism that arose at about the same time as the First Republic. Here Byrnes focuses on the most pro-revolutionary priests, who not only renounced their sacerdotal vows in 1793 and 1794 but also went on to marry. Some of these clerics, however, later retracted their renunciations and returned to their ministries, in part because official attempts to displace Catholicism with republican religious creations in the latter part of the Revolution failed so miserably, as Byrnes makes clear. Both developments nonetheless generated a deep cultural divide among the masses and elite alike in early nineteenth-century France. Using Francois-Rene´ de Chateaubriand and Antoine-Louis-Claude Destutt de Tracy

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CHURCH HISTORY

as the intellectual exemplars of such divergence, Byrnes explains that despite Napoleonic attempts to iron over Catholic-republican differences, a cultural battle ensued in which education and politics served as a no man’s land for the remainder of the century. This is not to suggest, though, that French nationalism and Catholicism were polar opposites during this time. On the contrary, French Catholics were foremost in expressing nationalistic sentiment, especially through—as deftly shown by Byrnes—pilgrimages to Lourdes, Paray-le-Monial, and Chartres. Catholic educational institutions, moreover, were instrumental in spreading the mother tongue to many parts of the nation, particularly before the advent of compulsory and free primary education during the Third Republic. Even so, Catholic clerics sometimes defended local languages at a time when government officials saw a thoroughly Francophonic patrie as a cornerstone of nation building. Byrnes cites the Second Empire’s example of Alsace, where the local clergy sought to maintain the German language through school pedagogy and catechisms, yet he also points to Roussillon, where clerics promoted French in preference to Catalan. When taken together, the two regional examples illustrate the difficulties of making fast conclusions about how nineteenth-century Catholicism thwarted the growth of a national identity, or for that matter encouraged it. As contentious as educational issues were between Catholics and republicans, the Dreyfus affair, the outlawing of some religious congregations, and the abrogation of the Napoleonic Concordat made their antagonism even worse. Still, Byrnes reminds us that with the German threat looming in 1914, a truce among contentious French politicians—the union sacre´e—not only was able to hold throughout the war, but ultimately contributed to the allied victory. Through war memoirs composed by priests, seminarians, and anticlerical public instructors, Byrnes reveals how the union may have looked on the battlefield, specifically in how both religious- and secular-oriented soldiers grew respectful of their cultural adversaries, despite maintaining or even strengthening their own ideologies. Byrnes argues that the peaceful co-existence of Catholics and secular republicans persisted during the inter-war period, thanks to the likes of Emile Maˆle, a scholar of medieval art and architecture who, in spite of being a product of France’s thoroughly secular public educational system, reinforced national identity through extolling the medieval (and therefore Catholic) glory of French patrimony. Maˆle’s exaltation of France’s Gothic and Romanesque heritage, according to Byrnes, helped construct a national identity upon which both Catholics and the secularized could agree. For all of its merits—the volume of research and the author’s audacity in tackling such a formidable topic are among the most noteworthy—Byrnes’s study comes up short in two ways. First, the disconnectedness between the

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various subjects considered, not to mention the chapters in which they are discussed, impairs the study’s overall focus. Readers must make abrupt jumps between collective portraits (abdicataires, the Alsatian clergy, priestcombatants) and individual ones (Chateaubriand, Tracy, Maˆle). In the process, the notion of “identity” (a thoroughly amorphous term to begin with) is stretched well beyond its heuristic limits. Second, although Byrnes goes out of his way to depict subtleties of the relationship between Catholicism and modern French republicanism, his characterization of this bond as one of “divorce, defense, and de´tente” defies the topic’s complexity. It overlooks, for example, that in the midst of a revolutionary divorce many clerics (most notably the abbe´ Gre´goire) remained wedded to both Catholic belief and republicanism, just as many secularists in the Third Republic appropriated Catholic figures (Joan of Arc) and themes (martyrdom) in their nationalism while still mounting attacks on a clerical establishment. Furthermore, as much as the union sacre´e appeared to be a dramatic ideological shift, Catholic reprisals against leftists under Vichy suggest that what little de´tente existed from 1914 to 1939 was really an expedient reprieve in a perennial culture war. Arguably that struggle died only after Gaullism, the Second Vatican Council, and a mass exodus of French Catholics from parish churches combined to kill it. Once readers place these conceptual and interpretive problems aside, however, they will discover a study whose value lies as much in provoking meaningful debate as in advancing solid scholarship. Edward J. Woell Western Illinois University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000730

New Territories, New Perspectives: The Religious Impact of the Louisiana Purchase. Edited by Richard J. Callahan, Jr. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008. x þ 243 pp. $44.95 cloth. In 2004 more than twenty scholars of religion in the Americas gathered at the University of Missouri-Columbia for a conference titled “Moving Boundaries: American Religion(s) through the Louisiana Purchase.” Richard Callahan, chief organizer of the meeting and assistant professor of religious studies at UM, edited nine of the presentations and wrote an introduction for the volume New Territories, New Perspectives, producing an impressive collection of essays on the religious dimensions of life in an enormous territory that practically doubled the size of the United States in 1803.

423

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

various subjects considered, not to mention the chapters in which they are discussed, impairs the study’s overall focus. Readers must make abrupt jumps between collective portraits (abdicataires, the Alsatian clergy, priestcombatants) and individual ones (Chateaubriand, Tracy, Maˆle). In the process, the notion of “identity” (a thoroughly amorphous term to begin with) is stretched well beyond its heuristic limits. Second, although Byrnes goes out of his way to depict subtleties of the relationship between Catholicism and modern French republicanism, his characterization of this bond as one of “divorce, defense, and de´tente” defies the topic’s complexity. It overlooks, for example, that in the midst of a revolutionary divorce many clerics (most notably the abbe´ Gre´goire) remained wedded to both Catholic belief and republicanism, just as many secularists in the Third Republic appropriated Catholic figures (Joan of Arc) and themes (martyrdom) in their nationalism while still mounting attacks on a clerical establishment. Furthermore, as much as the union sacre´e appeared to be a dramatic ideological shift, Catholic reprisals against leftists under Vichy suggest that what little de´tente existed from 1914 to 1939 was really an expedient reprieve in a perennial culture war. Arguably that struggle died only after Gaullism, the Second Vatican Council, and a mass exodus of French Catholics from parish churches combined to kill it. Once readers place these conceptual and interpretive problems aside, however, they will discover a study whose value lies as much in provoking meaningful debate as in advancing solid scholarship. Edward J. Woell Western Illinois University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000730

New Territories, New Perspectives: The Religious Impact of the Louisiana Purchase. Edited by Richard J. Callahan, Jr. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008. x þ 243 pp. $44.95 cloth. In 2004 more than twenty scholars of religion in the Americas gathered at the University of Missouri-Columbia for a conference titled “Moving Boundaries: American Religion(s) through the Louisiana Purchase.” Richard Callahan, chief organizer of the meeting and assistant professor of religious studies at UM, edited nine of the presentations and wrote an introduction for the volume New Territories, New Perspectives, producing an impressive collection of essays on the religious dimensions of life in an enormous territory that practically doubled the size of the United States in 1803.

424

CHURCH HISTORY

Like Thomas Tweed’s edited volume Retelling U.S. Religious History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), Callahan’s collection of essays is a reformulation of the relationship between religion and place in American history as manifested in the aftermath of a deal famously struck by Thomas Jefferson and Napoleon Bonaparte. To the credit of Callahan and the rest of the contributors, New Territories, New Perspectives does not get bogged down in a nationalist narrative of the Louisiana Purchase based on the motifs of manifest destiny, the collision of empires, westward expansion, and the inevitability of Protestant advancement onto a fabled American frontier. Rather, Callahan and his cohort successfully make “the story of American ‘internal’ expansion an international story, one of religious, national, and ethnic diversity” (6). Though “only a start, a hint at some of the rich religious history of the Louisiana Purchase territory,” New Territories, New Perspectives achieves its stated goal, “to explore the unexpected—stories, practices, and issues that might not be part of a ‘traditional’ history of religion in the Midwest” (15). Callahan frames the overall objectives of New Territories, New Perspectives in his introduction, “A Reorienting View from the Center of the Country.” Peter Williams follows with an examination of the built religious landscape of the Louisiana Purchase and finds the space to be filled with a multiplicity of architectural influences and adaptive measures. Amanda Porterfield introduces the role of sex, violence, and gender to American ideas of manifest destiny and the providentially guided incorporation of Louisiana into the early American republic. Michael Zogry attempts to fill a perceived gap in American national memory by comparing the Trail of Tears with the Lewis and Clark Expedition. And Carole Lynn Stewart’s essay on Herman Melville’s The Confidence-Man (1857) concentrates on the role of the Mississippi River in ideas of American destiny and the limits of liberal Protestant reforms in the Louisiana Territory. Shifting attention to the Caribbean and Africa, Douglas Henry Daniels links the musical crossroads of Oklahoma City and Kansas City with what he sees as African religious retentions in New Orleans and West Africa. Elaine Lawless proposes an alternative origin story of pentecostalism by privileging the interracial religious gatherings of the Deep South and the movement of African and Caribbean forms of religious practice up the Mississippi River and into places like Topeka, Kansas, and Los Angeles, California. Paul Christopher Johnson insists on the integral role of the Haitian Revolution (1791 – 1803) and Vodou in the Louisiana Purchase, as well as the need to guard against the tendency to erase the Caribbean from narratives of American religious history. John Stewart focuses on the participation of African Creoles in Mardi Gras Indian performances in order to make broader claims for the existence of a common cultural heritage linking New Orleans with the Antilles. And Charles Long concludes the volume with a strong argument for scholars to conceive of Louisiana (and particularly New

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Orleans) as being as important to understanding American civil religion as are New England and Virginia. Collectively, all of the contributors to New Territories, New Perspectives insist on a comprehensive reorientation of grand narratives about American religious history. They take issue with the way historians have conceived of the relationship between religion and nationalism in the United States, and their solution is simple enough: recenter the history of religion in America at the actual center of the continent of North America. In doing so, Callahan and the other essayists argue that there will be new and insightful avenues for exploring Caribbean, African, and Latin American connections with the continental United States. Perhaps unintentionally, however, New Territories, New Perspectives demonstrates just how little conversation there is between American religious historiography and other fields of historical inquiry that have been in the business of decentering and recentering American history for decades. It’s a great big world out there—both historically and historiographically—and New Territories, New Perspectives shows how essential crossdisciplinary studies are to larger discussions about religion in North America. Michael Pasquier Louisiana State University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000742

Mandarins and Martyrs: The Church and the Nguyen Dynasty in Early Nineteenth-Century Vietnam. By Jacob Ramsay. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2008. xii þ 213 pp. $50.00 cloth. The early colonial history of French Indochina arguably started with the slow push by French Catholic missionaries sent to the Far East from the mid-seventeenth century onward. After Jesuit Alexandre de Rhodes famously broke the path in the 1620s, one missionary society, the Socie´te´ des Missions E´trange`res de Paris (MEP), occupied the front line in this long-term penetration. This book tells the story of this penetration and the reactions by the Vietnamese rulers as it unfolded in the first half of the nineteenth century. Jacob Ramsay presents us here with a well-researched volume making convincing use of Vietnamese and French missionary archives alike to discuss a period that has not yet been thoroughly investigated in relation to the impact of the French missionary push in Vietnam before the military conquest formally started in 1858. Ramsay centers his considerations around the thoughts and actions of the Vietnamese emperors of the Nguyen Dynasty

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Orleans) as being as important to understanding American civil religion as are New England and Virginia. Collectively, all of the contributors to New Territories, New Perspectives insist on a comprehensive reorientation of grand narratives about American religious history. They take issue with the way historians have conceived of the relationship between religion and nationalism in the United States, and their solution is simple enough: recenter the history of religion in America at the actual center of the continent of North America. In doing so, Callahan and the other essayists argue that there will be new and insightful avenues for exploring Caribbean, African, and Latin American connections with the continental United States. Perhaps unintentionally, however, New Territories, New Perspectives demonstrates just how little conversation there is between American religious historiography and other fields of historical inquiry that have been in the business of decentering and recentering American history for decades. It’s a great big world out there—both historically and historiographically—and New Territories, New Perspectives shows how essential crossdisciplinary studies are to larger discussions about religion in North America. Michael Pasquier Louisiana State University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000742

Mandarins and Martyrs: The Church and the Nguyen Dynasty in Early Nineteenth-Century Vietnam. By Jacob Ramsay. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2008. xii þ 213 pp. $50.00 cloth. The early colonial history of French Indochina arguably started with the slow push by French Catholic missionaries sent to the Far East from the mid-seventeenth century onward. After Jesuit Alexandre de Rhodes famously broke the path in the 1620s, one missionary society, the Socie´te´ des Missions E´trange`res de Paris (MEP), occupied the front line in this long-term penetration. This book tells the story of this penetration and the reactions by the Vietnamese rulers as it unfolded in the first half of the nineteenth century. Jacob Ramsay presents us here with a well-researched volume making convincing use of Vietnamese and French missionary archives alike to discuss a period that has not yet been thoroughly investigated in relation to the impact of the French missionary push in Vietnam before the military conquest formally started in 1858. Ramsay centers his considerations around the thoughts and actions of the Vietnamese emperors of the Nguyen Dynasty

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in reaction to the political impact of that growing Catholic presence within their empire. The result is a focused analysis of the three decades preceding the beginning of the French colonization of Indochina and a compelling chronicle and analysis of this uncomfortable encounter. In the introduction, the author explains why he chose to focus on the central and southern Vietnam vicariates, in other words on Cochinchina, and gives useful details on his sources. Chapter 1 provides the background on the relationship between the Nguyen rulers and the MEP, in particular Emperors Gia Long and Minh Mang. Chapter 2 exposes the wariness felt by the imperial court faced with the growing influence of the MEP mission among the Vietnamese population, seeing a direct challenge to Hue’s imperial administration. Chapter 3 examines in detail the subsequent anti-Catholic repression of the late 1830s when the court intensified its efforts to wipe out the local Catholic Church. Chapters 4, 5, and 6, the more analytical part of the book, bring into the picture the greater interconnectivity of European and Vietnamese societies via the increased presence of European colonial powers in Southeast Asia. As I have recently emphasized myself (Jean Michaud, “French Missionary Expansion in Colonial Upper-Tonkin,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 35:2: 287– 310, 2004; Jean Michaud, “Incidental” Ethnographers: French Catholic Missions on the Tonkin-Yunnan Frontier, 1880 – 1930 [Leiden: Brill, 2007]), Ramsay also shows that the MEP pursued a political agenda in harmony with the colonial project and made great strategic use of in-house Catholic publications available in France to gain the metropolitan public opinion for its expansionist cause in Indochina, notably through the spreading of stories detailing the fate of martyrs. A five-page epilogue wraps up the manuscript, followed by endnotes and the reference list. The undersized index is disappointing for a volume abounding with such a wealth of locations, characters, and events. The book is a version of the author’s recently completed Ph.D. dissertation in history at the Australian National University, titled “Missionaries, Priests and Mandarins: Catholicism and the Nguyen in Vietnam’s South, 1820 – 1868.” At 172 pages without the endnotes, the author’s demonstration is concise. It draws on the archives of the MEP (chiefly on Cochinchina) and the Nguyen Dynastic chronicles. Reference to relevant Western publications also abound, showing a good command of French colonial literature, though I believe contemporary documents such as Pierre-Jacques Lemonnier de La Bissache`re (Etat actuel du Tun-Kin, de la Cochinchine et des royaumes de Cambodge, Laos, Lac Tho [Paris: Galignani, 2 vols., 1818]) and analytical ones such as Henri Chappoulie (Rome et les missions d’Indochine au XVIIe sie`cle [Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1943]) could have been included profitably. Jacob Ramsay’s carefully crafted book constitutes a most welcome addition to a growing body of scholarly studies of the influence the Socie´te´ des Missions

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E´trange`res de Paris has had on the history of Vietnam. But above all, it also is an excellent portrait of the relationships among the Vietnamese rulers and state, the Vietnamese Catholics, and the Vietnamese population at large at the start of the colonial era. Jean Michaud Universite´ Laval

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000754

Laboratories of Faith: Mesmerism, Spiritism, and Occultism in Modern France. By John Warne Monroe. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008. xii þ 297 pp. $35.00 cloth. Max Weber identified the “disenchantment of the world” as a defining characteristic of modernity, but a profusion of books over the past five years has unveiled another side of the modern. Following Alex Owen’s case for The Place of Enchantment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004) in modernizing Britain, Corinna Treitel’s location of occultism in an emergent “German modern” in A Science for the Soul (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), and Lynn Sharp’s interpretation of nineteenth-century French spiritism as Secular Spirituality (Lanham, Md.: Lexington, 2006), John Warne Monroe sees a modern French religious landscape dotted by Laboratories of Faith. A “crisis of factuality” (3), he argues, elicited, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a flurry of innovative religious movements that sought—ultimately unsuccessfully—to ground spirituality in empirical science, and which left a lasting mark on French life. The book’s particular strength is not in its basic interpretation of modernity—which is not new—but in its cogent narrative and solid grounding of spiritism in its political and social context. Through five lengthy chapters, it traces the development and transformation of religious heterodoxy amid the rising authority of scientific empiricism, the emergence of a secular French republic, ideological conflict between secular leftists and the Catholic right, and the advent of experimental psychology. Monroe begins in the 1850s as American spiritualism’s tables tournantes, newly arrived in France, became “ciphers” (16) through which several groups addressed their anxieties in the wake of the Revolution of 1848 and the decline of the Second Republic. Conservative Catholics sought to transform them from agents of moral decline and political subversion into empirical proof of Catholic dogma; scientists used the bugbear of an unrestrained amour du merveilleux to bolster their claims to technocratic authority and

427

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

E´trange`res de Paris has had on the history of Vietnam. But above all, it also is an excellent portrait of the relationships among the Vietnamese rulers and state, the Vietnamese Catholics, and the Vietnamese population at large at the start of the colonial era. Jean Michaud Universite´ Laval

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000754

Laboratories of Faith: Mesmerism, Spiritism, and Occultism in Modern France. By John Warne Monroe. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008. xii þ 297 pp. $35.00 cloth. Max Weber identified the “disenchantment of the world” as a defining characteristic of modernity, but a profusion of books over the past five years has unveiled another side of the modern. Following Alex Owen’s case for The Place of Enchantment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004) in modernizing Britain, Corinna Treitel’s location of occultism in an emergent “German modern” in A Science for the Soul (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), and Lynn Sharp’s interpretation of nineteenth-century French spiritism as Secular Spirituality (Lanham, Md.: Lexington, 2006), John Warne Monroe sees a modern French religious landscape dotted by Laboratories of Faith. A “crisis of factuality” (3), he argues, elicited, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a flurry of innovative religious movements that sought—ultimately unsuccessfully—to ground spirituality in empirical science, and which left a lasting mark on French life. The book’s particular strength is not in its basic interpretation of modernity—which is not new—but in its cogent narrative and solid grounding of spiritism in its political and social context. Through five lengthy chapters, it traces the development and transformation of religious heterodoxy amid the rising authority of scientific empiricism, the emergence of a secular French republic, ideological conflict between secular leftists and the Catholic right, and the advent of experimental psychology. Monroe begins in the 1850s as American spiritualism’s tables tournantes, newly arrived in France, became “ciphers” (16) through which several groups addressed their anxieties in the wake of the Revolution of 1848 and the decline of the Second Republic. Conservative Catholics sought to transform them from agents of moral decline and political subversion into empirical proof of Catholic dogma; scientists used the bugbear of an unrestrained amour du merveilleux to bolster their claims to technocratic authority and

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virtuous objectivity; and demoralized leftists looked to them for a rational alternative to Catholic orthodoxy and a consoling affirmation of their revolutionary hopes. The second chapter (1853 – 1859) identifies a widening split during the 1850s between therapeutic mesmerists and spiritualist mesmerists, the former defending what they considered pure objectivity and mesmerism’s medical mission against spiritualism’s dangerously emotional subjectivism, and the latter countering that scientific objectivity required openness to such metaphysical possibilities as spirit intervention. The spiritualists won the day, watching organized spiritism develop during the 1860s while mesmeric medicine faded. Chapter 3 (1857– 1869) traces the “invention” of spiritism, against the backdrop of the authoritarian Second Empire, by Hippolyte Le´on De´nizard Rivail. Rivail, who took the name Allen Kardec, intended spiritism to be a thoroughly modern and respectable religion: rational, codified, centralized, progressive, democratic, empirically grounded, consoling, shorn of revolutionary content, appealing to an emerging professional bourgeoisie, and consonant with the Catholicism it proposed to supplement. It would be “fundamentally masculine” (120) in practice as well as in doctrine, with objective and sober male se´ance interrogators attempting (not always successfully) to uphold gender conventions by controlling the ecstatic behavior, unruly subjectivity, and potentially disruptive power of female and working-class male mediums. Chapter 4 (1870–1880) examines spiritism’s troubles amid the anxieties generated by popular urban uprisings in a new but conservative French republic. Now led by the pugnacious, radically republican, anti-Catholic PierreGae¨tan Leymarie, spiritism began to appear subversive to French authorities. Spiritists touted their religion as ideal for a modern and rational French republic, but the Catholic right saw in it evidence of the revolutionary disruption and religious chaos spawned by a secular France, and thus of society’s need for clerical authority, while leftists feared that it, like Catholicism, constituted an attack on reason, republican liberty, and modernity by “feminine” mental weakness and irrational superstition. The resulting tensions peaked in 1875. Seeking further empirical support, spiritists had turned both to psychical research, which affirmed the reality of se´ance phenomena, and to spirit photography, which promised to counteract psychical researchers’ psychological explanations. But republican and Catholic critics tried and condemned spiritism in the press after Edouard Buguet was caught producing fraudulent photographs. Chapter 5 (1880–1914) finds spiritism enjoying a fin de sie`cle resurgence but struggling with the new challenges posed by the rise of experimental psychology and emerging theories of a subjective subconscious— a “multivalent self.” While psychologists agreed that trance phenomena made the subconscious self empirically accessible, some saw there only pathological impulses and sought to purge their field of metaphysical implications, while

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others, joined by spiritists and occultists, saw there the key to the soul and the basis for a tangible, fact-based, modern form of spirituality. By the 1930s, the ascension of Freudian psychoanalysis undermined both psychical research and the spiritist quest for scientific recognition. In a brief epilogue, Monroe sketches the twentieth-century incorporation of subjective heterodox spiritualities into a highly personalized “cultic milieu” and “ideology of seekership” (262) that remain prominent on the French religious scene. He leaves it to later scholars to complete this story. There is, indeed, more to tell. Monroe notes that spiritism became “exuberantly diverse” (220) after 1880 but reduces this vitality to a waning of Kardec’s authority and the emergence of distinct “moral” and “scientific” spiritisms. More fundamentally, Monroe’s study, based largely on published sources, is more an intellectual history than a social or cultural history. It locates spiritism squarely in its social and political context and is duly attentive to the movement’s opponents, but it spotlights bourgeois male leaders, their ideas, and their institutions. While he makes it clear enough that these leaders never closed the deal on their claims to authority, we learn little of the experiences or agendas of female mediums, working-class male mediums, or the mass of se´ance-goers, and we learn more about how spiritist doctrines and rituals were intended than how they were received. But Monroe’s mission was not to write that kind of history; it was to correct interpretations of late-century France as militantly secular, and in that he succeeds. This is an excellent and compelling study of how religious heterodoxy developed in and engaged the pressing intellectual issues of modernizing France. If Monroe moves subsequent scholars to explore the variety of spiritist belief and experience, to apply the methods of cultural history to the ground he has covered, and to continue his story through the twentieth century, so much the better for our understanding of “modern” religion. Bret E. Carroll California State University, Stanislaus

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000766

On Zion’s Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape. By Jared Farmer. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008. xvi þ 466 pp. $29.95 cloth. In part, On Zion’s Mount is the story of how Mormons made a mountain out of a ridgeline. Mount Timpanogos, a granite massif overlooking the town of Provo, Utah, never used to be a mountain. In fact, as Farmer shows, the conspicuousness of the landform is a relatively recent phenomenon. To the

429

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

others, joined by spiritists and occultists, saw there the key to the soul and the basis for a tangible, fact-based, modern form of spirituality. By the 1930s, the ascension of Freudian psychoanalysis undermined both psychical research and the spiritist quest for scientific recognition. In a brief epilogue, Monroe sketches the twentieth-century incorporation of subjective heterodox spiritualities into a highly personalized “cultic milieu” and “ideology of seekership” (262) that remain prominent on the French religious scene. He leaves it to later scholars to complete this story. There is, indeed, more to tell. Monroe notes that spiritism became “exuberantly diverse” (220) after 1880 but reduces this vitality to a waning of Kardec’s authority and the emergence of distinct “moral” and “scientific” spiritisms. More fundamentally, Monroe’s study, based largely on published sources, is more an intellectual history than a social or cultural history. It locates spiritism squarely in its social and political context and is duly attentive to the movement’s opponents, but it spotlights bourgeois male leaders, their ideas, and their institutions. While he makes it clear enough that these leaders never closed the deal on their claims to authority, we learn little of the experiences or agendas of female mediums, working-class male mediums, or the mass of se´ance-goers, and we learn more about how spiritist doctrines and rituals were intended than how they were received. But Monroe’s mission was not to write that kind of history; it was to correct interpretations of late-century France as militantly secular, and in that he succeeds. This is an excellent and compelling study of how religious heterodoxy developed in and engaged the pressing intellectual issues of modernizing France. If Monroe moves subsequent scholars to explore the variety of spiritist belief and experience, to apply the methods of cultural history to the ground he has covered, and to continue his story through the twentieth century, so much the better for our understanding of “modern” religion. Bret E. Carroll California State University, Stanislaus

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000766

On Zion’s Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape. By Jared Farmer. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008. xvi þ 466 pp. $29.95 cloth. In part, On Zion’s Mount is the story of how Mormons made a mountain out of a ridgeline. Mount Timpanogos, a granite massif overlooking the town of Provo, Utah, never used to be a mountain. In fact, as Farmer shows, the conspicuousness of the landform is a relatively recent phenomenon. To the

430

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peoples who first inhabited the area below the massif, the lake—now known as Utah Lake—and its associated rivers were far more important. The lake supplied the people’s sustenance and their names—including Timpanogos, a name that referred to the “rocky river” now known as the Provo River, in which some groups of people fished (26). This aquatic orientation is striking partly because it is so different from the montane orientation now common in the region, and it leads Jared Farmer to ask, “What caused a mountainous space to become the mountain-place called ‘Timp’?” (3). Farmer begins with the geologic history of the Great Basin, beginning in the Pleistocene epoch when Lake Bonneville covered much of the region. As Lake Bonneville receded, it left a number of smaller lakes—including the Great Salt Lake and the freshwater Utah Lake. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, inhabitants of the Great Basin were gradually drawn into trade relationships with the Spanish, exchanging pelts and slaves for horses. These trade relationships encouraged modifications in the Indians’ social systems, creating the ethnic groups we now know as Utes, Paiutes, Shoshones, and Goshutes. However, Farmer writes, most groups “modified but did not abandon their place-based economy” (35). When Anglo-Americans came to what is now known as Utah Valley, they (like the Indians) saw the lake as the most prominent geographical feature. The water source supplied Mormon settlers with food in the form of fish and irrigated their crops—and it became a point of contention with the local Indians. Farmer includes a detailed and unflinching account of the bloody conflicts that ensued in the Utah Valley, laying out the tangled web of Mormon, federal, and tribal entities that negotiated for control of the land and its resources. The end result was removal of the Indian people from the valley. The final step was what Farmer calls the “desertification of Zion,” in which “post-pioneer Mormons reimagined Utah’s land of lakes as a desert, a place where life-giving aquatic resources—and the natives who once used them—did not belong” (105). Various cultural shifts over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries combined to effect this erasure of the once-massive lake from the cultural map and its replacement with a once-indistinct mountain. One man figures most prominently in the emergence of Mount Timpanogos: The circus had P. T. Barnum, baseball had Bill Veeck, and Mount Timpanogos had Eugene Roberts. Roberts, who eventually became the athletics director at Brigham Young University, was a tireless promoter of “Timp.” As Farmer points out, Roberts could not have accomplished the feat of making Mount Timpanogos a landmark without help from various American cultural trends: after the Civil War, a “European vogue of alpine aesthetics” took hold in America (141), and in 1878 Timpanogos was (erroneously) determined to be the highest mountain in the Wasatch Range (169 – 170). Roberts capitalized on these and other cultural currents, promoting the “Big Hike,” in which

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431

BYU students and community members ascended the peak en masse; composing a fake legend of an Indian hunter and his thwarted rescue of the maiden Utahna, who willingly sacrificed herself to the (invented) mountain god Timpanogos; and encouraging residents of the Utah Valley to “see” Timpanogos and make it the defining feature of their landscape. As he interprets the history of Timpanogos, Farmer tells the stories of the Americanization of the LDS Church; the rise of hiking in the United States; the economic transition of the Wasatch Front from rural to urban and production to consumption; and the increasing popularity of “Indianist” (as opposed to authentically Indian) place names, narratives, and performances. While Farmer’s story is mostly about Mormons, that religious fact is largely incidental to the narrative. Farmer argues that the Latter-day Saints’ “symbolic tradition of mountain veneration” (141) contributed to their idiosyncratic perception of the landscape and that “through [the Mount Timpanogos Temple], local Mormon residents began to invest the landform with sacredness” (210). While it may be true that the Latter-day Saints have been more likely than other Americans to sacralize the physical landscape, EuroAmericans have a long tradition of reading the land through a spiritual lens and finding in it messages of both good and evil. Had the accidents of history been different, Farmer might have found himself writing about Methodists, or Baptists, or Mennonites. In a subtler way, however, On Zion’s Mount is shot through with religion. As Keith Basso wrote in Wisdom Sits in Places (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), “sense of place—or, as I would prefer to say, sensing of place—is a form of cultural activity[,] a kind of imaginative experience, a species of involvement with the natural and social environment, a way of appropriating portions of the earth. . . . Experienced . . . as . . . a ‘mode of communion with a total way of living[,]’ sense of place may gather unto itself a potent religious force” (143, 145). It is this sense of place—its creation and change over time—that Farmer traces in On Zion’s Mount. As Farmer puts it, “In the end, this book is about understanding home. It shows how settlers gave meaning to the lands they settled, and how their progeny developed an attachment to place—in other words, how nonnatives became neonatives” (16). Farmer’s incisive cultural analysis will make this book an interesting read for many scholars, and a useful model for those interested in cultural understandings of place. While it offers little that is new about Mormonism per se, the book provides a novel angle of vision on the ways in which Mormons came to experience the Utah Valley as “home.” Quincy D. Newell University of Wyoming

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CHURCH HISTORY doi:10.1017/S0009640709000778

Proclamation to the People: Nineteenth-Century Mormonism and the Pacific Basin Frontier. Edited by Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp and Reid L. Neilson. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2008. xii þ 330 pp. $29.95 cloth. Although this is a book about nineteenth-century Mormonism and its expansion into the Pacific Basin frontier, it also makes important contributions to the study of American religion and the history of Christianity in its many forms in this period. The editors have chosen twelve previously published essays that illustrate the thesis put forward in Laurie Maffly-Kipp’s essay “Eastward Ho! American Religion from the Perspective of the Pacific Rim,” also reprinted in this volume. That thesis is that in order to understand the religions, cultures, and history of the North American West in the modern period, one needs to pay attention to the many movements back and forth across the Pacific, not simply the westward movements across the continent from the Atlantic. Influences and people, she argues, move both ways. The book begins with two introductory essays. The first, written by both Nelson and Maffly-Kipp, situates Mormonism in the Pacific Basin, noting that “seven years before Mormon leaders set foot in the Utah Territory [1847], they had already traveled even further west” (3), to Australia (1840), Tahiti (1844), and Hawaii (by the 1850s). The second essay, the reprinted “Eastward Ho!” by Maffly-Kipp, introduces the theoretical issues the editors used in compiling the collection. The editors then take us on a grand tour of the Pacific Basin frontier. They begin in California, move down the Pacific coast of the Americas to Chile, and venture out into the ocean to Polynesia. They move from there to Australia and New Zealand, consider Mormon encounters in East Asia, and end the journey back in Salt Lake City. Rather than giving us a general narrative, these collected essays consider specific developments in specific places. Edward Lyman presents a history of the rise and decline of the Mormon settlement in San Bernardino, California. Carol Madsen discusses the cultural encounters of Mormon missionary wives in Polynesia. Sandra Taylor tells us about the role Mormonism played in the proposals made by the American adviser to the Meiji leaders in Japan, Charles LeGendre. Michael Lansing’s essay closes the collection by using the setting of Salt Lake City to illustrate the development of Chinese communities in the American West. The strengths of this collection lie in the rich comparative work most of them undertake. For those who are interested in understanding the history of the expansion of Christianity in all its forms and related movements, the

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collection here provides essential insight into the ways the introduction of Christianity shaped Pacific cultures, but also the ways in which Pacific cultures adapted and shaped Christian movements and practices in their territories. Mormonism provides a useful lens for understanding these developments because it is on the one hand a branch of Christianity, and on the other a completely different approach to the older traditions. Many of the authors compare Mormon missionary efforts to similar missionary movements undertaken by American and European Protestants, giving us new insights into both efforts, and, particularly in Madsen’s essay, insights into the role of women in these enterprises. Some of the works, such as Taylor’s essay about LeGendre, connect religious movements with political and economic developments, giving us new insights into the interplay of cultures transforming the Pacific region in the nineteenth century. The Meiji rejected Christianity and Mormonism on their road to participation in the modern era as a world power, but Taylor points out the influences of LeGendre’s Mormon thinking on his advice to the Meiji, which they in turn adopted. As with any collection of essays, there is unevenness. Some of the journals from which these essays come are more specialized than others, and the authors sometimes assume the reader will be familiar with Mormon terms and concepts. Some of the essays are more critical or analytical than others. Despite this, all of them enlighten us about eastward as well as westward influences. All of them give us a deeper and more complex picture of Mormonism as a tradition developing in relationship to the cultures it encountered and attempted to convert with varying degrees of success. In these essays, Mormonism becomes part of a larger history of Christianity as a diverse and global body of religious traditions. Finally, all of them remind us that the Pacific Basin frontier is as much a part of American and world history as the Atlantic Ocean or the Mediterranean Sea. Randi Jones Walker Pacific School of Religion

doi:10.1017/S000964070900078X

The Methodist Unification: Christianity and the Politics of Race in the Jim Crow Era. By Morris L. Davis. Religion, Race, and Ethnicity. New York: New York University Press, 2008. viii þ 199 pp. $45.00 cloth. Methodism occupies a central place in American religious history, and continued reexaminations suggest that there is still much to learn from

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CHURCH HISTORY doi:10.1017/S0009640709000791

Conceiving Parenthood: American Protestantism and the Spirit of Reproduction. By Amy Laura Hall. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2008. vii þ 452 pp. $32.00 cloth. The Norman Rockwell painting on the cover of Amy Laura Hall’s fine study of modern Protestant domesticity says it all. A handsome young white couple, dressed in 1920s-era business-class attire, survey a set of architectural blueprints with rapt attention; their chubby toddler sits on the floor below, looking up from a tower of building blocks in adorable mimicry of the adult conversation going on above her head. Clearly, this is a picture of middle-class aspiration, an upwardly mobile couple planning their new dream house and their child’s golden future. But in a much larger sense, Hall argues, the quaint little scene points to a troubling transformation in the nature of twentiethcentury domesticity. Rockwell’s flawless family of three symbolizes a shift toward a scientific standard of cleanliness and racialized perfection that stands in stark contrast to the random messiness of human family life. Conceiving Parenthood is essentially a book of moral theology, a forceful critique of modern mainline Protestantism cast against a broad background of twentieth-century social change. Hall begins with an analysis of the “germfree” home in the post-World War I era, urged on mothers by doctors, social scientists, and, of course, purveyors of Lysol. Not surprisingly, perhaps, she finds a clear racial subtext in this message that idealizes whiteness as the standard of moral as well as physical cleanliness. The analysis thickens with a discussion of “scientific motherhood” in a following chapter, as Hall mines a treasure trove of advertising fodder—everything from baby formula and potty seats to the human specimens put on display at the 1934 Chicago World’s Fair—to document the growing complicity between a culture-bound white mainline Protestantism and a decidedly unsentimental corporate scientific agenda for human “betterment.” Lengthy chapters centering on the eugenics movement and the embrace of atomic technology after World War II cement her case further, especially as they show mainline Protestant leaders cheering on each new technological advance, rarely pausing for ethical contemplation. Hall defines her target audience as white, mainline Protestant churchgoers, or, even more explicitly, her fellow Methodists. She writes as an ethicist deeply concerned about the moral erosion of modern family life, as upwardly mobile parents urge and push their children toward ever-receding standards of middle-class achievement. Hall is sensitive to the array of difficult parental choices posed by drug companies offering pharmacological solutions to attention-deficit behavior or DNA research opening the possibility of genetic testing for chromosomal abnormalities, but she argues unequivocally for an ethic of compassion and risk. Of all people, she insists,

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the Methodist heirs of John Wesley, the preacher of “abounding grace,” should embrace all children and all families, regardless of their perceived potential for intellectual or social perfection. In that sense, then, this book was not written for historians. Hall does an admirably thorough job of distilling a vast quantity of both primary and secondary literature, and her analysis of what look to be reams of parenting magazines and slick advertising brochures is a model of scholarly rigor. She has plumbed archival sources as well as contemporary websites for an astonishing array of visual material, which she discusses with humor and skill. But her primary burden is to mount an ethical argument, one in which history provides extra depth and power. This is not an unusual move—many a moral argument has appealed to the record of the past for justification. Still, Hall’s obvious delight in discovering the past as it lies, and her consistent attention to the wider context behind her particular narratives, set her book apart. Hall’s argument does, however, raise some interesting questions for religious historians. To be sure, her narrative of mainline Protestant fecklessness is a familiar one, and on one level irrefutable; by all kinds of measurements, twentieth-century liberals failed to understand the scope of their institutional peril. But in a more nuanced way, the failure that Hall documents falls in a muddy area of intersection between class and religion where it is difficult to assign blame on the basis of any single factor, including weak theology. In what sense, for example, did Hall’s early twentieth-century Protestant social scientists and doctors consider themselves to be Protestants, let alone Methodists, Congregationalists, or Baptists? In what sense did they ever see themselves acting in a consciously Protestant way? Or were they simply trained professionals with a smattering of an older denominational culture whose tenets they could no longer articulate? These are complicated questions, but certainly worth asking. The deeper question that Amy Laura Hall’s book addresses to historians is about the erosion of specifically Protestant identity and the process by which an old and powerful force gradually ceased to be a dominant source of meaning in the professional marketplace. Nevertheless, all readers—whether they are historians, Protestants, or anything else—will find Amy Laura Hall’s book an immensely compassionate approach to the woes of modern family life. As we all worry and sigh over wayward children and dwindling retirement accounts, Conceiving Parenthood is a reminder that happiness comes from many sources, and that most of them come to us small and unexpected. Margaret Bendroth Congregational Library

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CHURCH HISTORY doi:10.1017/S0009640709000808

The South Indian Pentecostal Movement in the Twentieth Century. By Michael Bergunder. Studies in the History of Christian Mission. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2008. xii þ 380 pp. $40.00 paper. The South Indian Pentecostal Movement in the Twentieth Century is a welcome addition in English to the growing body of research on the global pentecostal movement. The work was originally published in German almost a decade earlier as Die su¨dindische Pfingstbewegung im 20. Jahrhundert. Eine historische und systematische Untersuchung (Studien zur interkulturellen Geschichte des Christentums: 113 [Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1999]) but has remained relatively unknown in the North American context. Bergunder provides a detailed study of the emergence and development of pentecostalism in South India from the beginning of the twentieth century through the 1980s. His goal is to tell the story of the pentecostal movement in South India on its own terms, capturing the dynamics of the movement in its context and examining its beliefs and practices against this background. His thesis is that pentecostalism in South India made sense to people and grew in this context because it was able to address issues of local social, cultural, and religious concern. Local agency rises to the foreground in his historiography as a result. Bergunder is intent on recovering the names of indigenous leaders and the memory of their efforts that were, in his view, critical for the development of the movement. But he does not for a moment deny or ignore the presence of global missionary forces that are at work as well in and among South Indian pentecostal churches. The result is a fairly detailed recounting of the institutional history and a coherent presentation of the beliefs and practices of South Indian pentecostalism. One of Bergunder’s first tasks in the work is to define pentecostalism. Noting the importance of the North American contributions to the origins of the global pentecostal movement, he outlines briefly several historiographical options that have been advanced and points out the uneasiness among some non-western pentecostals with a North American – centered story. He lifts up the late nineteenth-century Anglo-American “faith missions” that crossed confessional boundaries and nurtured expectations for a worldwide revival and the teachings of Charles Fox Parham regarding the missionary purpose of the gift of tongues as two important streams. These came together at the Azusa Street Revival that began in Los Angeles in 1906 and shaped its efforts to mount a global revival. Within two years of the start of that revival, by 1908, a global pentecostal network had emerged. Bergunder argues here that only with the emergence of this global network could Azusa Street be said to be the start of the worldwide revival: “Azusa Street was the prelude, but the beginning of pentecostalism was reached when a global

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pentecostal network was established. Pentecostalism is neither a creed, an institution, nor a place, but a vast and vague international network; and in that specific sense Pentecostalism was a global movement right from its beginnings” (11). Given such a non-essentialist definition of pentecostalism, Bergunder must then confront the task of delimiting the subject of his investigation. To do so he proposes two criteria for mapping pentecostalism as a global discursive formation: “historical connections and synchronous interrelations” (12). The former is diachronous in nature and demands careful analysis to determine direct historical influences. The latter requires attending to the communicative networks that constitute pentecostalism at any given point in its history. His particular project is to trace these historical connections and uncover the specific discursive networks that constitute the South Indian pentecostal movement as a historical reality. One more methodological obstacle confronts Bergunder in this endeavor, an obstacle that confronts many who are working in global pentecostal studies today. There is an enormous historical imbalance in the compilation and preservation of documents and source materials pertaining to the pentecostal movement in South India, as in other places throughout the world. Researchers seeking to understand this history have a considerable amount of source material concerning the missionaries who went there but far fewer sources regarding the indigenous Indian church leaders, to say nothing of the wider membership who made up these churches and helped shape the distinctive experience that emerged. To make up for this imbalance Bergunder draws heavily on oral interviews that he conducted with numerous pastors and laypeople in the South Indian pentecostal churches during the early 1990s, as well as on primary source materials that he gathered from the churches on his own, presumably apart from any existing established archive. Drawing on these primary sources and supplementing them with materials from Western missionary sources, he is able to construct a fairly coherent historical narrative. The collection of brief selected biographies of seventy-one indigenous church leaders that is included as an appendix at the end of the book is by itself a valuable contribution to the historiography of global pentecostalism. The particular participant-observer methodology that Bergunder employs is not without its limitations, of course. At points his relationship to his interlocutors, perhaps coupled with his own historical identity of not being South Indian, seems to prevent him from offering a more critical assessment. The most notable instance of this is the manner in which he approaches the conflict between the upper-caste Thomas Christians and those from lower castes, especially the Nadars and the Dalits, in the history of South Indian pentecostalism. Only in the last two pages of his study, in discussing the

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prospects for the future of pentecostalism in South India, does he clearly acknowledge the oppression and exclusion of the subaltern groups from leadership in the pentecostal churches in South India that has taken place. Other observers of this history, such as Geomon K. George or Yesunatha Das, have not been as reluctant to identify the conflict and criticize the continuing impact of caste within the life of the pentecostal churches as well as in the historiography of pentecostalism in South India (see Geoman K. George, Religious Pluralism: Challenges for Pentecostalism in India [Bangalore: Centre for Contemporary Christianity, 2006], and Yesunatha Das, “An Evaluation of the History of Pentecostal Dalits in Kerala,” unpublished Th.M. thesis, South Asian Institute of Advanced Christian Studies, Bangalore, 2001). The book’s second section identifies several areas of beliefs and practices that Bergunder distills from the history of these churches. This section contains a number of insights into the life and work of these churches. One of the most important concerns the manner in which pentecostalism in South India has effectively engaged popular Hindu religiosity around belief in and, more important, exorcism of evil spirits. Another issue is the continuing problems of South Indian pentecostal churches’ dependence on foreign sources of funding, especially from the United States. A third is the ambiguity regarding pentecostal participation in traditional Indian cultural practices such as arranged marriages. These are but some of the insights that emerge from this important study of South Indian pentecostalism, a book that belongs on the syllabus of any course on global pentecostalism today. Dale T. Irvin New York Theological Seminary

doi:10.1017/S000964070900081X

The Church of England in the Twentieth Century: The Church Commissioners and the Politics of Reform, 1948– 1998. By Andrew Chandler. Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell, 2006. xii þ 546. $65.00 cloth. The author succeeds in making this long and unusual history an interesting read. As a piece of ecclesiastical history it is, of course, important for laying out the financial foundations and functions of the Church of England over a contemporary half-century. Fiscal history is not often, however, riveting. While that term may be too strong a claim for this work, it is, nevertheless, a fascinating study rooted in extensive archival research.

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efficiency is often noted in passing, Fisher is usually characterized as less than engaging. Contrast this with Ramsey, whom we are (for reasons of his theological restatement, manifest spirituality, and ardent ecumenism) usually inclined to regard highly. Here he appears, however, as one embarrassed by the financial side of things, leaving the work largely to others, and faulted for not seeing its importance in the mission of the Church. Chandler’s concluding chapters deal with the financial crisis of the 1970s, the inflationary spiral of the 1980s, and the recession and slow recovery of the 1990s. Also evident in the telling of the story is the gradual alleviation of frustration and suspicion between the commissioners, on one side, and the General Synod, on the other. This work is, as it were, still in progress. The problem remains one in which the commissioners attempt to “steer a steady course” in a situation where “so much in British Christianity [is] losing its vital force” (481). In addition to an extensive bibliography, the book ends with four important appendices that serve to relieve the text of overburdening detail in regard to relevant personnel and legal measures. William H. Petersen Bexley Hall Seminary

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000821

Vatican II: Renewal Within Tradition. Edited by Matthew L. Lamb and Matthew Levering. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. xxvi þ 462 pp. $29.95 paper. Two thousand and eight marked the fortieth anniversary of a number of significant events—the Tet Offensive in Vietnam; the American massacre at My Lai; the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy; the student occupation of the University of Nanterre; and, of course, the opening of Hair on Broadway. It was also the fortieth anniversary of Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI’s encyclical “On the Regulation of Birth.” This document was hailed by conservative Catholics as reaffirming the Church’s traditional teachings on marriage, the family, and contraception. It was also condemned by liberal Catholics like Karl Rahner, Leo Joseph Suenens, and Charles Curran, who believed the encyclical was a betrayal of the progressive promise of the Second Vatican Council, which had just concluded three years earlier. It is fitting, therefore, that 2008 should have brought us an examination of Vatican II—and, specifically, the question of whether the sixteen documents released by that council represented a radically new path for the Catholic

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Church or a vision for the future that was grounded in nearly two millennia of tradition. Anyone looking for a discussion of the merits of both arguments will have to look beyond Vatican II: Renewal Within Tradition, though. It is the assertion of all of the historians and theologians contributing to this volume that an emphasis on the “newness” of Vatican II amounts to a “distortion” of the council’s contribution to the history of the Church—one that can only be sustained so long as Catholics focus on the “style” of the council and ignore the substance of the documents released. Levering and Lamb present their volume as a response to Pope Benedict XVI’s call in 2005 for a “proper hermeneutic” on the Second Vatican Council. According to the pontiff, “the implementation of the council has been somewhat difficult” because a “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture” has dominated the popular understanding of what Vatican II did for the Catholic Church. This interpretation of the council’s work “availed itself to the sympathies of the mass media” in the mid-1960s, creating and sustaining a mistaken idea that there is a “split between the preconciliar and postconciliar Church” (ix– x). Pope Benedict calls for a more deeply developed “hermeneutic of reform” that will understand the Church’s rapprochement with modernity, as represented by Vatican II, as a “renewal” that “reviewed or even corrected certain historical decisions, but in this apparent discontinuity . . . actually preserved and deepened [the Church’s] inmost nature and true identity” (xiv). To that end, the contributors to this volume all concern themselves with showing how the ideas expressed within documents released by the council between 1962 and 1965 have their roots in documents issued earlier by the Church. It is noted, for instance, that Lumen Gentium’s discussions of “perfect and imperfect realizations of the sacrament” resemble Pope Pius XII’s discussions of the visible and invisible churches, as articulated in Mystici Corporis Christi (27). That encyclical was issued in 1943 and selfconsciously drew on Paul’s understanding of the Mystical Body of Christ when including laypeople as an important component of the Church’s identity. By that same token, discussions of human dignity and the “close connection between disorder in the soul and that in society” in Gaudium et Spes are found to resemble ideas expressed in 1891 by Pope Leo XIII in his Rerum Novarum, in 1524 by St. Ignatius of Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises, and in the thirteenth century by St. Thomas Aquinas (149 – 151). When discussing the “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture” that has dominated the prevailing understanding of Vatican II, though, all of the contributors to this volume seem to ascribe an undue level of influence to the mass media. They are right to note the extensive nature of the media’s coverage of Vatican II, which is rivaled today only by the coverage the Church received in the wake of the pedophilia crisis in 2002, and

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undoubtedly the media’s endemic need to portray issues in a simplistic and dialectical manner—old vs. new, conservative vs. liberal—did much to cultivate misconceptions about Vatican II among non-Catholics worldwide. But if, as Pope Benedict and the contributors to this volume insist, it is wrong to see Vatican II as forging a radically new path for the Catholic Church in the world, why have so many Catholics—more than a few of them prominent members of the clergy—been eager to interpret the council in this way? After all, by the editors’ own admission, “few [journalists] had any expertise in Catholic theology,” and much of the dialectical coverage came from “popularized accounts of the council’s deliberations and debates offered by periti and theologians with journalistic skills” (3). The closest we get to an answer to this question comes from Matthew Lamb when, near the end of the volume, he laments that “departments of theology at Catholic universities in North America have many or even a majority of faculty members who did not get their doctoral degrees in Catholic programs.” Lamb also insists that, “in Europe, some Catholic scholars internalized the liberal versus conservative framework of the media coverage of the council, which had a similar effect of promoting a hermeneutics of rupture rather than renewal and reform within tradition” (440). This explanation paints an extremely passive picture of Catholic scholarship in Europe, though—and it grants an extraordinary amount of power and influence over religious debate to a profession whose members seem to understand less and less about the nature of faith with each passing year. Furthermore, it does not explain why people like Francis Xavier Murphy, the Redemptorist priest who covered Vatican II for the New Yorker, were so willing to embrace and perpetuate the hermeneutic of discontinuity in the 1960s, or why, until his death in 2007 at the age of 82, the famous Catholic historian Guiseppe Alberigo was still emphasizing the struggle against the Roman Curia in his accounts of Vatican II. Maura Jane Farrelly Brandeis University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000833

Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent: Faith and Power in the New Russia. By John Garrard and Carol Garrard. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008. xxii þ 329 pp. $29.95 cloth. John Garrard and Carol Garrard open their story by joining the lengthy list of authors who have been trying to explain the reasons behind the collapse

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undoubtedly the media’s endemic need to portray issues in a simplistic and dialectical manner—old vs. new, conservative vs. liberal—did much to cultivate misconceptions about Vatican II among non-Catholics worldwide. But if, as Pope Benedict and the contributors to this volume insist, it is wrong to see Vatican II as forging a radically new path for the Catholic Church in the world, why have so many Catholics—more than a few of them prominent members of the clergy—been eager to interpret the council in this way? After all, by the editors’ own admission, “few [journalists] had any expertise in Catholic theology,” and much of the dialectical coverage came from “popularized accounts of the council’s deliberations and debates offered by periti and theologians with journalistic skills” (3). The closest we get to an answer to this question comes from Matthew Lamb when, near the end of the volume, he laments that “departments of theology at Catholic universities in North America have many or even a majority of faculty members who did not get their doctoral degrees in Catholic programs.” Lamb also insists that, “in Europe, some Catholic scholars internalized the liberal versus conservative framework of the media coverage of the council, which had a similar effect of promoting a hermeneutics of rupture rather than renewal and reform within tradition” (440). This explanation paints an extremely passive picture of Catholic scholarship in Europe, though—and it grants an extraordinary amount of power and influence over religious debate to a profession whose members seem to understand less and less about the nature of faith with each passing year. Furthermore, it does not explain why people like Francis Xavier Murphy, the Redemptorist priest who covered Vatican II for the New Yorker, were so willing to embrace and perpetuate the hermeneutic of discontinuity in the 1960s, or why, until his death in 2007 at the age of 82, the famous Catholic historian Guiseppe Alberigo was still emphasizing the struggle against the Roman Curia in his accounts of Vatican II. Maura Jane Farrelly Brandeis University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000833

Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent: Faith and Power in the New Russia. By John Garrard and Carol Garrard. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008. xxii þ 329 pp. $29.95 cloth. John Garrard and Carol Garrard open their story by joining the lengthy list of authors who have been trying to explain the reasons behind the collapse

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of Soviet power in 1991. In their case the focus is on religion: the inability of Communist leaders to destroy the subversive power of the Orthodox faith (despite consistent and often brutal anti-religious campaigns) and the rickety regime’s failure to detect signs of resistance growing gradually within the Russian Orthodox hierarchy. Ironically, it was a similar resistance coming from Orthodox bishops that helped to shake up the complacency of czarist power during the Revolution of 1905. The Garrards are quite correct to note that the Western academic establishment has, by and large, ignored religious themes associated with the downfall of the USSR in favor of studies that point to an ailing economy or to pressures exerted on the Kremlin by cold warriors. The place of Orthodoxy as a factor in the story of Soviet demise has been undeservedly confined to the footnotes, partly due to the slowness of Western scholars in realizing fully the extent to which God-centered motives continue to influence most of the world’s peoples. An exception to this oversight has been the work of Great Britain’s Keston Institute, where the Garrards have spent considerable time searching through newspaper collections and interviewing staff members who closely watched and sharply criticized the last years of the oppressive Soviet bureaucracy directed by its notorious Council for Religious Affairs. In an oversight of their own, however, the Garrards neglect to mention the outstanding work of the late Jane Ellis and the research efforts conducted at the Aleksanteri Institute at the University of Helsinki. The authors describe what they call resurgent Orthodoxy in the years 1989 – 2007, concentrating particularly on the Holy Synod’s clever harnessing of a popular movement to restore the attractiveness of run-down church buildings and to revive a number of traditional religious celebrations. The Russian federal government has had neither the means nor the will to resist this activity, which did so much to gather a previously scattered faithful into a collective force supporting the aims of the bishops of the Moscow Patriarchate. In this core section of their narrative, the Garrards also discuss some of the perennial problems the Holy Synod faces and has faced at least since the time of Peter the Great, including anti-Semitism, the unwelcome enthusiasm of Western missionaries, domestic movements promoting monarchism or nationalism in the name of Christianity, and, of course, the latest episode in the age-old feud with Rome. One up-to-date chapter explains the success the church has enjoyed in its relations with the Russian Army, but the authors could have strengthened their story considerably by including information on efforts to introduce a course on Orthodox culture into the public school system. One of the most interesting discussions in the Garrards’ work reviews causes of the tension within the Russian Orthodox Church itself. At the root of most of this stress sits the

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phenomenon of Sergiyanstvo, the decision made in 1927 by the imprisoned Metropolitan Sergy (Stragorodsky) to accept Stalin’s terms for reopening the church. As Sergy was well aware, of course, the so-called reopening meant very little beyond allowing the Soviet government full use of the church to advance its foreign policy aims, and fierce persecution of religion by the regime continued, especially under Nikita Khrushchev. It also meant that no clergyman could be ordained without being vetted by the government and that all bishops were both appointed by the state and expected to obey instructions handed down by the KGB. Sergy’s decision to accept such severe restrictions in exchange for the survival of the church was and continues to be widely criticized in some Orthodox circles at home and abroad, but the authors treat the entire issue with admirable objectivity and give each point of view in the argument the sensitivity it deserves. Throughout their analyses, the Garrards point emphatically to the political and theological savvy of Aleksy II as the indispensable element in the revival of the church since 1991, and, indeed, the late patriarch was a fearless and foxy leader advancing church interests. His death in December 2008 was a great loss. On the other hand, many clergy deserve more attention than they receive in the book, if the story of Orthodoxy’s present success in Russia is to be understood. In this regard, Metropolitan Kirill, Father Vsevolod Chaplin, and the late Father Alexander Men are only three important names. Moreover, the most prominent intellectuals in Russia today are either lay Orthodox Christians who support the church or religiously minded public figures who have promoted the cause of religious toleration, in some cases when their lives have been in danger. Their ideas and actions have played a crucial part in Orthodoxy’s resurgence, and including them would have rendered the Garrards’ narrative more substantial. Even though the book’s style appeals to a popular readership, scholars will want to study the Garrards’ work. Their personal contacts with many Russians active in church life have awarded them priceless insights, within the reach of very few Westerners, and many of the important events they witnessed have not been well covered by news outlets. Their frequent, and at times lengthy, flashbacks to events initially described in the well-known volumes of imperial and Muscovite religious histories, however, describe events that will already be well known to serious students of Russia. Furthermore, citing many more Russian language sources in support of the book’s contentions would have established the reference points professional historians like to see. John D. Basil University of South Carolina

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447

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000845

The Amish and the Media. Edited by Diane Zimmerman Umble and David L. Weaver-Zercher. Young Center Books in Anabaptist and Pietist Studies. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. x þ 279 pp. $35.00 cloth. The Amish and the Media is a provocative, well-written and well-analyzed volume that explores the dialectical relationship between the American media and the Amish. The editors have done an excellent job assembling a fine group of scholars, each of whom draws on current media theory to explore how the media, the Amish, and American consumers all participate in the process of mediation and commodification, “the process of creating and recreating meaning to be shared” (12). The authors are concerned not so much with detailing a history of Amish in America as they are exploring what the anthropologists James Clifford and George Marcus have famously coined “the politics of representation” (Writing Culture [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986]). That is, how have the American media portrayed the Amish and what do these representations tell us about ourselves and what we want to see and consume? And, turning to the Amish, how do the Amish wish to be portrayed and how do they represent themselves to us? As the authors all point out, the Amish themselves exhibit agency—they are participants in mediation and are not merely acted upon. The authors’ key concerns and questions have to do with issues of identity: just exactly what identities are being created and sustained in the mediation process (14)? What is the intention of the producers of films and documentaries on the Amish? What do poets writing about the Amish hope to express? What do tourists who visit Amish country and Amishthemed parks hope to get out of the experience? And where do the Amish fit into all of this mediation? Where is their voice? The authors address these questions with care and with a thoughtfulness that drew this reviewer in and made me care about the issues raised in the volume. The Amish and the Media is a highly readable, engaging book that crosses disciplinary boundaries and should appeal to scholars in the fields of communication studies and sociology as much as it will to scholars who study religion in North America. The book consists of an introduction and conclusion written by Zimmerman Umble and Weaver-Zercher and ten chapters written by a wide range of scholars in film studies, media studies, English, women’s studies, religious studies, and history. The authors in part 1 (Crystal Downing, Dirk Eitzen, Julia Spicher Kasdorf, Weaver-Zercher, and Susan Bieseker) explore the moods and motivations of those “English”—non-Amish men and women— who produce films, write poetry, and publish nonfiction accounts of their experiences with the Amish. They also examine the motivations behind tourism to Amish places and offer some important insights. What is more

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interesting than looking at the historical accuracy of these accounts, these authors collectively argue, is how the Amish are represented and what these representations tell us about ourselves and how we domesticate the Amish. In many ways, the authors in part 1 implicitly draw on Weaver-Zercher’s excellent scholarship demonstrated in The Amish in the American Imagination, in which he examines how the English represent the Amish and what those representations, desires, and mediations tell us about ourselves and what we want to be (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001). Downing’s essay is especially intriguing as it offers a critical commentary on two feature films, Witness (1985) and For Richer or Poorer (1997), which are ostensibly about the Amish. Downing shows how these two films, especially Witness, hearken back to the Greek pastoral utopia of Arcadia and create idealized, pastoral fictions that we want to embody and emulate. The Amish perpetuate an American dream of idyllic agrarian harmony and “simple rural peace” that really is age-old fiction, as Downing deftly shows. Eitzen’s, Weaver-Zercher’s, and Biesecker’s essays all play on the idealized other of the Amish and how non-Amish “English” mediate their idealized versions with how they see themselves—watered-down moral versions of the imagined morally and culturally superior Amish. The first of Eitzen’s two essays explores how documentarians mediate their desire to promote a deeper understanding of Amish youth in the popular Devil’s Playground (2002) with the ethical issues that surround representing a group that avoids worldly media. His second essay examines the not-always-competing interests of the ratings-focused UPN network and the Amish youth who signed up to have their rite of passage examined on the popular reality show Amish in the City (2004). The Amish youth, in other words, are active participants in the process of mediating identity, and they play a role in how they are othered by their non-Amish audience. Kasdorf’s focus is how non-Amish poets have othered the Amish, and not always in positive ways, pointing to the fear some have of these white ethnics. Her analysis is intriguing, and she argues that poems of the Amish demonstrate Americans’ “twin fears” of, first, history and tradition and, second, entrapment or enclosure within family and community (79). The essays that comprise part 1 are in conversation with one another as they are all interested in exploring non-Amish Americans’ attraction to the Amish and what this attraction and process of othering the Amish can tell us about ourselves and our values, dreams, and desires. The authors whose essays appear in part 2 examine Old Order Amish as media producers and consumers. Donald Kraybill, Steven N. Nolt, Karen JohnsonWeiner, Zimmerman Umble, and Weaver-Zercher all explore the delicate balance that members of Amish culture undertake when they represent themselves to the larger, “English” public. As Kraybill highlights, “Two fundamental values of Amish life wrap the cultural tarp tightly around their society: separatism and humility” (165). And those Amish who do speak to

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reporters and members of the media tend to be more progressive and not necessarily representative of the majority of community members (171). Those who do speak to media outlets face a great risk of censure and even excommunication if they do not show the proper humility and deference to community mores. As these authors demonstrate, the Amish who do work with the media control, to a large degree, the mechanisms of representation and the process of negotiation. Those Amish who are not careful and who fail to exercise caution must take the proper measures of displaying humility by confessing and denouncing their self-centered behavior (173–175). As the authors of part 2 all emphasize, the Amish are deliberate and careful agents who aim to have a say in the process and politics of representation. Whether it relates to how they talk to reporters or how they represent their values and deep-seated theology in Amish-affiliated weeklies (Nolt) or in schoolbooks (Johnson-Weiner), or how they publicly respond to drug busts that involved Amish youth (Zimmerman Umble), Amish men and women are always alert participants in the process of mediation. They are, to invoke an oftused phrase, “in the world but not of the world,” and they seek to maintain a balance between separatism and humility on one hand and the undeniable fact that they are ethnic minorities in a vast land on the other. The concluding essay, co-written by the editors, wraps up the volume by examining the 2006 Nickel Mines school shooting and how the Amish, by their radical act of forgiveness (to outsiders at least) changed the tone of the mediation and exhibited a profound agency that deeply influenced the up-to-then media-led discourse. This is a finely crafted edited volume that should be easily adapted in undergraduate as well as graduate-level courses. The authors write with a knowledge and sensitivity to the topic that is refreshing and that scholars and students alike should appreciate. Kristy Nabhan-Warren Augustana College, Rock Island, Ill.

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000857

Powwowing among the Pennsylvania Dutch: A Traditional Medical Practice in the Modern World. By David W. Kriebel. Pennsylvania German History and Culture Series 8; Publications of the Pennsylvania German Society 41. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007. xii þ 301 pp. $30.00 cloth. There has long been a scholarly antiquarian regional interest in the Pennsylvania Dutch, as witnessed to by the many publications of the Pennsylvania German

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reporters and members of the media tend to be more progressive and not necessarily representative of the majority of community members (171). Those who do speak to media outlets face a great risk of censure and even excommunication if they do not show the proper humility and deference to community mores. As these authors demonstrate, the Amish who do work with the media control, to a large degree, the mechanisms of representation and the process of negotiation. Those Amish who are not careful and who fail to exercise caution must take the proper measures of displaying humility by confessing and denouncing their self-centered behavior (173–175). As the authors of part 2 all emphasize, the Amish are deliberate and careful agents who aim to have a say in the process and politics of representation. Whether it relates to how they talk to reporters or how they represent their values and deep-seated theology in Amish-affiliated weeklies (Nolt) or in schoolbooks (Johnson-Weiner), or how they publicly respond to drug busts that involved Amish youth (Zimmerman Umble), Amish men and women are always alert participants in the process of mediation. They are, to invoke an oftused phrase, “in the world but not of the world,” and they seek to maintain a balance between separatism and humility on one hand and the undeniable fact that they are ethnic minorities in a vast land on the other. The concluding essay, co-written by the editors, wraps up the volume by examining the 2006 Nickel Mines school shooting and how the Amish, by their radical act of forgiveness (to outsiders at least) changed the tone of the mediation and exhibited a profound agency that deeply influenced the up-to-then media-led discourse. This is a finely crafted edited volume that should be easily adapted in undergraduate as well as graduate-level courses. The authors write with a knowledge and sensitivity to the topic that is refreshing and that scholars and students alike should appreciate. Kristy Nabhan-Warren Augustana College, Rock Island, Ill.

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000857

Powwowing among the Pennsylvania Dutch: A Traditional Medical Practice in the Modern World. By David W. Kriebel. Pennsylvania German History and Culture Series 8; Publications of the Pennsylvania German Society 41. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007. xii þ 301 pp. $30.00 cloth. There has long been a scholarly antiquarian regional interest in the Pennsylvania Dutch, as witnessed to by the many publications of the Pennsylvania German

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Society. And, certainly, popular interest in the “plain people” is nothing new. Indeed, a thriving tourist industry has been built upon the complex nostalgia of many Americans concerning the presumed simple and innocent lives of these “quaint” groups, especially the Amish. For many, the Amish seemingly have successfully resisted numerous aspects of modernization and, thus, hearken back to a simpler and purer time. The early work of John A. Hostetler provided important insider views of Amish society in an ethnographic vein. Since then, mainstream academic publications on the Pennsylvania Dutch have grown significantly in number. Much of the subsequent scholarship on the Amish, Mennonite, and “Dunkard” Brethren communities, however, has been heavily descriptive in nature, with a paucity of theoretical reflection. Powwowing Among the Pennsylvania Dutch falls into this corpus. This study of “magico-religious” healing practices in southwestern and central Pennsylvania in the twentieth century fails to move far beyond description. When it does, it is less than satisfying. Kriebel asserts that “the chief value of this work is qualitative: to provide an appreciation for the powwower’s art and practice and for the nuances of Pennsylvania culture and identity today” (viii). Unfortunately, his study falls flat for two main reasons: 1) it is theoretically weak and methodologically unsophisticated; and 2) it fails to locate Brauche (Pennsylvania Dutch ritual healing practices) in the broader cultural context of religious healing in the United States in the twentieth century. These two weaknesses are interrelated. Although Kriebel’s bibliography includes a handful of anthropological studies of ritual healing, including works by Sandra Lee Barney, Thomas J. Csordas, and Robert Hahn, he fails to engage even this limited number of studies in any serious way. A three-page appendix, “Theoretical Background” (223–225), is superficial. There one finds claims about “schemas” and “cultural models” and “inputs and outputs” that the author assumes to have explanatory power such as: “There are schemas for powwowing that are mediated through a larger cultural model of powwowing, which in turn is subordinated to a cultural model of healing existing within the Pennsylvania Dutch worldview. The difference between (simple) schemas and cultural models is that schemas may be held in short-term memory but cultural models cannot, because of their relative degree of elaboration” (225). Readers of this study will find numerous instances of fuzzy argumentation and questionable procedure. Kriebel clearly wants readers to respect the Pennsylvania Dutch and to accept the reality and efficacy of Brauche, yet his defense consists largely of unsupported assertions. Throughout, he seeks not merely to deflect but to correct the criticism of powwowing offered by “scientific skeptics.” In his narrative, these folk function as straw men. Surprisingly, he also denounces the criticism of powwowing offered on religious grounds by some Pennsylvania Dutch groups (207– 210). And he dismisses the theological basis of this criticism—something I would take to

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be an ethnographic datum—based on “the evidence” he claims to have gathered in his fieldwork. Terms and categories are employed without precision. For instance, throughout the study Kriebel uses the terms “magic” and “religion” without offering his own operative definitions of these. Kriebel seems to think that his discovery that “powwowing” is still practiced in present-day Pennsylvania Dutch country is remarkable. I would suggest the opposite: it would have been remarkable if he had proven that these practices had completely disappeared. The survival of the practices Kriebel describes is no more remarkable than the fact that faith healing, the laying on of hands, and alternative forms of medicine and healing survive within twenty-first-century American Christianity. The practices studied here—ritual healing, curing, the creation of amulets, the recovery of lost items, binding animals and people, the casting of spells, and so on—utilize techniques transmitted in eighteenthand nineteenth-century German magical texts (more recently available in English translations). These texts were themselves usually based on late medieval and early modern works from Europe. Significantly, Pennsylvania Dutch practitioners today seek to distinguish themselves from New Age healers and herbalists, seeing their own practice as Bible-based. Yet, many Mennonites believe these practices to be inspired by the devil and, thus, look down on them. Other Dutchmen and -women (Amish, Mennonite, and Brethren) put little stock in these practices either way. In this, the Pennsylvania Dutch are no more homogeneous than most ethnic and religious groups. Yet, Kriebel would have his readers believe that somehow—precisely how is never clarified—Pennsylvania Dutch culture makes all the difference in making this an authentic tradition. Historians of religions will be disappointed by this study. Gary L. Ebersole University of Missouri – Kansas City

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000869

“Mek Some Noise”: Gospel Music and the Ethics of Style in Trinidad. By Timothy Rommen. Music of the African Diaspora 11. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. xii þ 219 pp. $21.95 paper. In “Mek Some Noise,” Timothy Rommen investigates attitudes toward the incorporation of popular music forms in the church services of the Full Gospel community. The Full Gospel community is a loose association of Protestant churches in Trinidad, consisting mostly of churches that are of

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be an ethnographic datum—based on “the evidence” he claims to have gathered in his fieldwork. Terms and categories are employed without precision. For instance, throughout the study Kriebel uses the terms “magic” and “religion” without offering his own operative definitions of these. Kriebel seems to think that his discovery that “powwowing” is still practiced in present-day Pennsylvania Dutch country is remarkable. I would suggest the opposite: it would have been remarkable if he had proven that these practices had completely disappeared. The survival of the practices Kriebel describes is no more remarkable than the fact that faith healing, the laying on of hands, and alternative forms of medicine and healing survive within twenty-first-century American Christianity. The practices studied here—ritual healing, curing, the creation of amulets, the recovery of lost items, binding animals and people, the casting of spells, and so on—utilize techniques transmitted in eighteenthand nineteenth-century German magical texts (more recently available in English translations). These texts were themselves usually based on late medieval and early modern works from Europe. Significantly, Pennsylvania Dutch practitioners today seek to distinguish themselves from New Age healers and herbalists, seeing their own practice as Bible-based. Yet, many Mennonites believe these practices to be inspired by the devil and, thus, look down on them. Other Dutchmen and -women (Amish, Mennonite, and Brethren) put little stock in these practices either way. In this, the Pennsylvania Dutch are no more homogeneous than most ethnic and religious groups. Yet, Kriebel would have his readers believe that somehow—precisely how is never clarified—Pennsylvania Dutch culture makes all the difference in making this an authentic tradition. Historians of religions will be disappointed by this study. Gary L. Ebersole University of Missouri – Kansas City

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000869

“Mek Some Noise”: Gospel Music and the Ethics of Style in Trinidad. By Timothy Rommen. Music of the African Diaspora 11. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. xii þ 219 pp. $21.95 paper. In “Mek Some Noise,” Timothy Rommen investigates attitudes toward the incorporation of popular music forms in the church services of the Full Gospel community. The Full Gospel community is a loose association of Protestant churches in Trinidad, consisting mostly of churches that are of

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pentecostal and charismatic persuasions (4, 17–18). Rommen considers two traditions that are “foreign” to Trinidad: North American gospel music and gospel music done in the Jamaican dancehall style. He also considers two musical genres that are indigenous to Trinidad: gospelypso and Jamoo (Jehovah’s or Jah music). North American gospel music includes traditional hymns, African American gospel music, and contemporary praise and worship styles made popular by the charismatic movement. Gospel dancehall has its origin in Jamaica where gospel artists employ the catchy rhythms and poetic style of dancehall (an offshoot of reggae) to proclaim their Christian message. Gospelypso emerged in Trinidad in the 1970s in the context of a national quest to fashion an indigenous Trinidadian cultural identity. Putting Christian lyrics to the local calypso music was the response of young Trinidadian artists who embraced the cultural nationalism of the period. Jamoo is a style created by and associated with a Trinidadian musician known as Ras Shorty I (formerly Lord Shorty). Leaving behind the raunchiness of his calypso career, Ras Shorty I in the latter part of his life created Jamoo, which utilizes a blend of AfroCaribbean and Indo-Trinidadian styles to promote Trinidadian nationalism and traditional moral and cultural values. The central analytic tool that Rommen uses is what he calls the “ethic of style.” By this he suggests that the Full Gospel discourse about and practice of including or excluding certain musical styles in worship services is based on an ethic that judges what style is an appropriate medium for the Christian message. The data for the study was collected in fieldwork done in Trinidad between 1998 and 2002. Observations of worship services and concerts alongside interviews with Full Gospel pastors, parishioners, and gospel music artists generated most of the data. The main finding of “Mek Some Noise” is that church leaders and older church members reject gospelypso, Jamoo, and gospel dancehall as inappropriate for Christian worship while younger members and contemporary gospel artists tend to embrace them. North American gospel music is less controversial and receives almost universal acceptance, except among some young people who find traditional hymns uninspiring. According to Rommen, the rejection of local and regional genres and the embrace of North American genres reflect the Full Gospel identity that was fashioned by its missionary past and is sustained by its current desire to be part of global evangelical Christianity. The discourse on cultural relevance and authenticity advanced by younger generations and gospel artists privileges the local over the foreign because the local genres appeal to their sense of Caribbean identity as well as their musical sensibilities. For church leaders, the ethic of style operates as a means of maintaining control of what is acceptable through a discourse on pollution or contamination. Gospel dancehall and gospelypso, in particular, are rejected because of their local

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associations with moral and sexual permissiveness (dancehall with “slackness” and carnival with bacchanal). Jamoo’s purity is in question because its Christian message is ambiguous. Rommen goes on to argue that proximity is a decisive factor influencing acceptance or rejection of musical genres by the elders of Full Gospel churches—acceptance of the foreign and rejection of the local and regional. While there is an obvious issue of geographical proximity related to the rejected and accepted genres, it is somewhat misguided to privilege proximity as determinative. As Rommen’s own research shows, there is a store of local choruses that are widely sung in Full Gospel churches, sometimes to rhythms borrowed from local popular music; and there is widespread acceptance of local and regional forms by the younger generation. Furthermore, if Rommen is going to take his older informants seriously, he should privilege their association of calypso and dancehall with the secular, irreverent, and salacious. With respect to gospel dancehall, Rommen needs to highlight the historical and cultural competition between Jamaica and Trinidad as a factor in its rejection. Resistance to Jamaican music culture is not confined to the Full Gospel community but extends also to the cultural guardians who see the adoption of Jamaican styles (secular or religious) by a younger generation as a threat to local Trinidadian culture. While Rommen offers a richly textured exploration of the Full Gospel struggle over musical styles, the study is marked by some enigmatic curiosities. Foremost among these is the inclusion of Jamoo in his analysis. Why include Jamoo, which is religiously ambiguous? It is more a medium of promoting cultural values (some of which may be taken from Christianity) than an explicitly Christian genre. Furthermore, the primary exponent is somewhat inscrutable, having no formal link to a particular Christian community and making no unambiguous claim that the genre he invented is Christian. A second curiosity is that the most ethnographically rich section of the book focuses on a Baptist church instead of a pentecostal church. Apparently, Baptist churches can fall within the ambit of Full Gospel. However, throughout the book, prior the seventh chapter, the author tends to focus on pentecostals, so much so that he feels the need to justify his choice of Mt. Beulah Evangelical Baptist Church as the focus of this chapter. His justification is that focusing on this church enables him to illustrate the issues that congregations encounter in applying “the ethic of style” to their choice of music (152). The question of why a Baptist church would be more amenable to this kind of illustration than a pentecostal church remains unanswered. Finally, the book is too heavily overlaid with interpretive glosses invoking prominent theorists from ethnomusicology and other disciplines. The glosses are so frequent and extensive that they stifle the local data, not allowing it to stand on its own merits. I understand that the initial write-up of the research

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may have been addressed to a certain academic audience to whom the author needed to prove his facility with these theorists. However, the removal of these glosses or their restriction to a concluding chapter would have released the data from the drag of overly technical jargons and theories and freed it to work its particular Caribbean magic. Notwithstanding my criticisms, “Mek Some Noise” is an engaging study in ethnomusicology highlighting the issue of how the Full Gospel churches of Trinidad make ethical and musical choices in a music-rich environment. The ethic of style that rejects local and regional music genres is particularly noteworthy, since scholars of pentecostalism have frequently attributed its global spread to its ability to adapt to and adopt local cultural forms, especially music. Scholars and students of Caribbean studies in general and Caribbean religious studies in particular will find here a thoughtful analysis of a contemporary phenomenon that calls out for more academic research. Ethnomusicologists will find much to contemplate both in terms of the richness of the data and Rommen’s theoretical tool, “the ethic of style.” Ennis B. Edmonds Kenyon College

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000870

The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to its History, Doctrine, and Spiritual Culture. By John Anthony McGuckin. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2008. xvi þ 461. $149.95 cloth. The author presents an introduction to the Chalcedonian Orthodox churches. Beginning with a summary of their history and modern organization (chapter 1), the author then discusses the reception of early Christian writings and practices (tradition, chapter 2), Trinitarian theology and Christology (chapter 3), the theology of suffering, soteriology, anthropology, Mariology, angels and saints, the problem of evil, and ecclesiology (chapter 4), sacramentology (chapter 5), church and state (chapter 6), and moral theology in the modern context (chapter 7). Accompanying this work is a select bibliography, a glossary of terms, and a brief index. The intended audience seems to be in-house, evidenced for example by the use of technical Greek terminology such as “Megalomartyr” where “Great Martyr” would suffice, and then the exclusion of this term and others from the glossary. There are many elements of the author’s presentation of readings of biblical and patristic texts that simply ignore the problems inherent in interpretation. For instance, the author’s note (p. 267, n. 139) that “Sons of God” in the Bible (bneˆ e lo¯hıˆm) refers to angels is stated as a fact. Better to see it as the reception of this

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may have been addressed to a certain academic audience to whom the author needed to prove his facility with these theorists. However, the removal of these glosses or their restriction to a concluding chapter would have released the data from the drag of overly technical jargons and theories and freed it to work its particular Caribbean magic. Notwithstanding my criticisms, “Mek Some Noise” is an engaging study in ethnomusicology highlighting the issue of how the Full Gospel churches of Trinidad make ethical and musical choices in a music-rich environment. The ethic of style that rejects local and regional music genres is particularly noteworthy, since scholars of pentecostalism have frequently attributed its global spread to its ability to adapt to and adopt local cultural forms, especially music. Scholars and students of Caribbean studies in general and Caribbean religious studies in particular will find here a thoughtful analysis of a contemporary phenomenon that calls out for more academic research. Ethnomusicologists will find much to contemplate both in terms of the richness of the data and Rommen’s theoretical tool, “the ethic of style.” Ennis B. Edmonds Kenyon College

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000870

The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to its History, Doctrine, and Spiritual Culture. By John Anthony McGuckin. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2008. xvi þ 461. $149.95 cloth. The author presents an introduction to the Chalcedonian Orthodox churches. Beginning with a summary of their history and modern organization (chapter 1), the author then discusses the reception of early Christian writings and practices (tradition, chapter 2), Trinitarian theology and Christology (chapter 3), the theology of suffering, soteriology, anthropology, Mariology, angels and saints, the problem of evil, and ecclesiology (chapter 4), sacramentology (chapter 5), church and state (chapter 6), and moral theology in the modern context (chapter 7). Accompanying this work is a select bibliography, a glossary of terms, and a brief index. The intended audience seems to be in-house, evidenced for example by the use of technical Greek terminology such as “Megalomartyr” where “Great Martyr” would suffice, and then the exclusion of this term and others from the glossary. There are many elements of the author’s presentation of readings of biblical and patristic texts that simply ignore the problems inherent in interpretation. For instance, the author’s note (p. 267, n. 139) that “Sons of God” in the Bible (bneˆ e lo¯hıˆm) refers to angels is stated as a fact. Better to see it as the reception of this

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phrase in Christian (and Jewish) theology; many biblical scholars argue (on very good evidence) that the “Sons of God” is the divine counsel of deities with whom Yahweh confers. However, from a confessional standpoint, the author does not betray the received understanding. The role of the Bible in the Orthodox Church could also have been given more space. This is one area where critical scholarship has been received with greater alacrity among Orthodox theologians in recent years. The understanding of the origins of the Greek Bible (or Septuagint, the basis for all Chalcedonian Orthodox Old Testament Bible versions) and the various reception aspects of the New Testament in the early Church canon deserve at least a few paragraphs in this expansive work. To be sure, the author provides a discussion of how the Orthodox Church traditionally interpreted the Bible (102–109). The main difference between this and earlier works such as Kallistos Ware’s The Orthodox Church (New York: Penguin, 2004) is an expanded discussion of key elements of the major points of Orthodox theology (chapters 3 – 5), of the relationship between church and state historically and in the modern context (chapter 6), and of modern moral theology, covering issues such as bioethics, gender discrimination, and freedom (chapter 7). The large format of this work permits areas of central theology to be explored in greater detail than in any single previous introduction to the subject, supported by examples and citations drawn from patristic sources, later theologians, spiritual and ascetical treatises, and liturgical texts. In this sense, the reader is presented with a general introduction to the sources of theology in the Orthodox Church. Look elsewhere for a critical view of Chalcedonian Orthodox theology and its self-concept of the origins of Christianity, reception and tradition histories, and relations with the West. The present volume is a confessional work that is addressed to an audience already versed with or sympathetic to the author’s Christianity. As a normative work, it does not engage the debates among Orthodox theologians on key matters such as biblical interpretation, historical theology, and ecclesiology. The treatment of the origins of Christianity and the weak attempt to engage the vast quantity of scholarship on the Traditionsgeschichte within the New Testament itself and with early Apocryphal texts is perhaps to be expected, but McGuckin’s response is not exclusively “Orthodox.” One can imagine a Roman Catholic or conservative Protestant theologian arguing along similar lines (9 – 10). The author’s historical treatment of the ecumenical councils is presented entirely from a reception-history standpoint, with no hint that one day some of the mountain of critical scholarship might have to be taken into account in an “official” church history. The origins of important features of this church such as bishops and monasticism are entirely lacking. The statement that monks were troublesome because at

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times they belonged to “dissident” groups, such as the Anti-Chalcedonians, is rather amusing, given that Chalcedonian Christianity was hardly accepted (or suppressed) in huge swaths of the Near East, such as Egypt, Armenia, and Mesopotamia. Could this have been a reaction in part to the hegemony of the very political and ecclesiastical system the author seems to defend? The comparisons with “The West” are more or less stock-in-trade for this genre of writing. What is most disappointing about this skillfully crafted introduction is that it does not attempt to educate its audience on the cultural conditioning of its doctrinal development. Not a small quantity of work has been done by now on the study of Christianity in late antiquity. The veneration of icons, Christian anthropology, biblical exegesis, and the role of women in the church are all elements of the cultural and religious worlds of the Mediterranean and the Near East where Christianity first emerged. An engagement with these materials and perspectives could be a refreshing mark of distinction for this genre. Yet it would require a work of a different organization than the well-trodden one that McGuckin has adopted. In a work of such broad scope, nevertheless much had to be left out. The discussion of ecumenism (chapter 7) is theologically accurate but does not reflect the actual on-the-ground engagement of the Orthodox Church. Little mention is given to dialogue with Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Especially the latter has been a major element of the effort of bishops in Lebanon, to name only one example, and remains important for many clerics in the Antiochian church (the jurisdiction of the Near East) to this day. A summary of the theory behind canon law, which is another area of active discussion among the Chalcedonian Orthodox, especially in the West, would have been helpful. One might quibble that the author has not done enough to present some of the later theological material, particularly from Symeon the New Theologian and especially Gregory Palamas, whose corpus is barely cited in the book but who is venerated as an important Orthodox theologian on the first Sunday of Great Lent. In sum, the author provides an expanded presentation of Orthodox theology that deviates little in scope or plan from other introductions. As a handbook for what would be considered the traditional Orthodox position on matters of Christian belief, thought, and praxis, it is reliable, with relatively few omissions, and well written. The absurd price, $149.95 cloth, will guarantee that this work remains in obscurity, which is a shame. One awaits the paperback edition and an end to this outdated business model of academic publishing. Robert R. Phenix, Jr. Saint Louis University

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457

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000882

Christianity in Latin America: A History. By Ondina E. Gonza´lez and Justo L. Gonza´lez. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. xii þ 332 pp. $23.99 paper. The authors, a niece and uncle team, separated by over a generation of historical training and experience, combined their skills to produce this remarkably comprehensive history of Christianity in Latin America. Most traditional church histories are precisely that—ecclesiastical history. Modern and indeed postmodern approaches have questioned the assumed distinction between “church” and “society,” and the result has been a far richer picture of the church in its actual local, national, or international presence. The authors take this approach a further step by pointing out at the outset that while the Spanish and Portuguese conquests changed Latin America, they also changed Europe and the church itself. Thus, though the focus in this work is on Latin America, the interactions between two worlds is also noted, no doubt to be explored by enterprising students and scholars. The approach is basically chronological, beginning with concise descriptions of Latin American societies, Iberian society, and then African societies from which slaves were brought. Each of these discrete and diverse societies had customs, rituals, and beliefs, all of which, in varying degrees in differing contexts, were to contribute to one another and to the formation of the Church in Latin America. The second chapter proceeds to describe the arrival of the Europeans and the practices, institutions, and methods employed in the Christianization of the inhabitants. The third chapter outlines how Christianity developed as the Spanish and Portuguese empires consolidated and expanded. The fourth chapter deals with reform movements in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that led to national independence for most of the former Spanish colonies and Portuguese Brazil. The fifth chapter focuses on the disruptions and changes that occurred in the now national Roman Catholic churches—churches that now had to deal with a centralizing papacy and the demands of often hostile states. The sixth chapter continues this narrative right through the nineteenth century to the second Vatican Council. The sixth, like the third, chapter describes in broad strokes how the Church and people adapted to a new situation, first one of conquest, then one of national independence. The seventh and eighth chapters focus attention away from the Roman Catholic Church to the coming and growth of Protestantism, particularly in its pentecostal and independent forms during the last forty years. This is not to obscure the deliberate governmental policy (for example in Brazil) of encouraging Protestants as immigrants in order to limit the power of the

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Roman Catholic Church. The ninth chapter continues the history of the Roman Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council, a period from 1965 onward marked by the CELAM regional Episcopal meetings in Medellin and Puebla. This period was marked not only by conciliar ecclesiastical reforms, but also by new forms of theology such as liberation theology, new forms of being the church in base ecclesial communities, and by papal and national reactions to both the emerging theologies and the increasing repressive power of military regimes across Latin America. Chapter 10 focuses on the remarkable growth and prominence of pentecostal and independent churches, noting the specifically Latin American contributions and transformations in these originally North American movements. In an introductory survey, of which this must rank as one of the most current and comprehensive, it is difficult, if not churlish, to comment on any omission, since a survey by definition is selective. However, given the importance in recent Latin American history of civil wars, race issues (as in Brazil, for example), and the role of churches in numerous truth and reconciliation commissions, these could be developed into a significant thematic chapter. The eleventh and final chapter draws together the recurring themes of the earlier chapters, highlighting how Latin America has modified inherited Christianity and, in turn, influenced those originating traditions. These themes, particularly ecumenism, relations between Roman Catholics, Protestants, pentecostals, and indigenous religions, the limits of inculturation, and the challenges of globalization and postmodernism, are all in fact challenges facing not only the continent, but the North and West as well. Christianity in Latin America is an excellent introduction for those wishing to study the impact of Christianity on a continent and its impact beyond. Iain S. Maclean James Madison University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000894

The Cambridge Companion to the Jesuits. Edited by Thomas Worcester. Companions to Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. xii þ 361 pp. $29.99 paper. Although several Cambridge Companions have dealt with Christian topics, this is the first volume in the series devoted to a Roman Catholic religious order. That alone indicates the prominence of the Society of Jesus. But the volume is also the product of the burgeoning popularity of the history of the Society as a field of research. The focus of the essays is intentionally on the early

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Roman Catholic Church. The ninth chapter continues the history of the Roman Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council, a period from 1965 onward marked by the CELAM regional Episcopal meetings in Medellin and Puebla. This period was marked not only by conciliar ecclesiastical reforms, but also by new forms of theology such as liberation theology, new forms of being the church in base ecclesial communities, and by papal and national reactions to both the emerging theologies and the increasing repressive power of military regimes across Latin America. Chapter 10 focuses on the remarkable growth and prominence of pentecostal and independent churches, noting the specifically Latin American contributions and transformations in these originally North American movements. In an introductory survey, of which this must rank as one of the most current and comprehensive, it is difficult, if not churlish, to comment on any omission, since a survey by definition is selective. However, given the importance in recent Latin American history of civil wars, race issues (as in Brazil, for example), and the role of churches in numerous truth and reconciliation commissions, these could be developed into a significant thematic chapter. The eleventh and final chapter draws together the recurring themes of the earlier chapters, highlighting how Latin America has modified inherited Christianity and, in turn, influenced those originating traditions. These themes, particularly ecumenism, relations between Roman Catholics, Protestants, pentecostals, and indigenous religions, the limits of inculturation, and the challenges of globalization and postmodernism, are all in fact challenges facing not only the continent, but the North and West as well. Christianity in Latin America is an excellent introduction for those wishing to study the impact of Christianity on a continent and its impact beyond. Iain S. Maclean James Madison University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000894

The Cambridge Companion to the Jesuits. Edited by Thomas Worcester. Companions to Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. xii þ 361 pp. $29.99 paper. Although several Cambridge Companions have dealt with Christian topics, this is the first volume in the series devoted to a Roman Catholic religious order. That alone indicates the prominence of the Society of Jesus. But the volume is also the product of the burgeoning popularity of the history of the Society as a field of research. The focus of the essays is intentionally on the early

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modern period, from the Society’s foundation in 1540 to its suppression in 1773. This makes eminent sense, given the scholarly attention that this period has attracted. At the end of the volume, Gerald McKevitt describes the origins of Jesuit schools in the nineteenth-century United States and their adaptation to currents in twentieth-century American society, while Mary Ann Hinsdale highlights ways in which modern Jesuits have embraced liberation theology and explored religious pluralism. Readers should not expect, Thomas Worcester warns in his introduction, “a comprehensive survey of every country in Europe where Jesuits went.” What is on offer, however, is “a sampling of several important contexts and issues that shed light on Jesuit priorities, and the opportunities and difficulties their implementation faced” (5). Even with this reasonable caveat, the volume suffers from some remarkable omissions. Opening the volume with a discussion of the Spanish religious environment from which Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, emerged addresses one important context. Yet Lu Ann Homza’s essay would have been more instructive if it had indicated to what extent Ignatius specifically shared desires for clerical reform, welcomed the publication of confessors’ manuals, or participated in the various types of devotion promoted in Spain during his youth. Nicolas Standaert’s nuanced essay on the Jesuit mission in China holds that the strategy of cultural accommodation was as much the result of encouragement from Chinese elites as of Jesuit initiative. Standaert unfortunately mentions the Chinese Rites Controversy only briefly and as if readers were familiar with it. But we should assume that a general audience, to which the volume presumably addresses itself, requires more specific and thorough information about this controversy. Most startlingly, despite occasional references to the Jesuit Constitutions, no essay devotes itself to presenting the Society as an organization with a precise structure and complex regulations, surely conspicuous characteristics to friend and foe alike as well as sources of strength and growth. These criticisms aside, this Cambridge Companion can serve as a useful resource for university courses on the early modern Jesuits alongside the still authoritative masterpiece by John O’Malley, The First Jesuits (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993). The five-part structure of the volume aptly relays “important contexts” for understanding the Jesuits: Ignatius of Loyola, European foundations, geographic and ethnic frontiers, arts and sciences, and Jesuits in the modern world. Jonathan Wright’s argument against a monocausal explanation for the suppression of the Society in the first essay of the fifth part remains relevant for early modernists. Students of early modern history will discover several gems among the comprehensive essays, which not only inform but also reveal deeper points of significance. In what must be one of the clearest and most concise

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introductions to Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises, Philip Endean deftly navigates the structure and terminology of this famous text. He alerts readers to two underlying tensions. The first is theological, namely the possibility that what the exercitant discovers in a direct relationship with God “may go beyond what is ecclesiastically sanctioned” (62). The second is historical. The rapid expansion of the Society not only “outpaced the ability of the new membership to absorb and pass on the spirituality of the Exercises” but hindered the development of that spirituality into a force that “could nourish the corporate identity of a relatively large international organization” (64). Jacques Monet’s reference to the “supernatural wisdom” (188) of Jean de Bre´beuf, the martyred missionary in New France, is a rare hagiographical moment, for usually manifestations of and tensions within a corporate Jesuit identity constitute a recurring theme in the essays. Paul Murphy shows how, through urban colleges and confraternities and rural missions, Jesuits made their pervasive presence felt in Italy. In France, however, according to Worcester, they were regularly on the defensive, protesting their loyalty to the monarchy. Jesuits not only set out to refashion society. They were refashioned by society. In the case of Poland, as Stanisław Obirek argues, “the Jesuits became so deeply integrated in Polish society that we could speak of a syncretic process” (146). Their tendency to absorb the manners of the Polish gentry won the displeasure in the early seventeenth century of the superior general, Claudio Acquaviva. The Society’s adamant refusal to permit a female branch, Gemma Simmonds rightly reports, did not prevent early modern Catholic women, such as Mary Ward, from trying to create religious institutes with an apostolate for women outside of convent walls based on the Jesuit Constitutions. Nor did it pose an obstacle for one loose cannon, Jean-Pierre Me´daille, founder of the Congregation of St. Joseph, to “his conscious attempt to transpose the Jesuit Constitutions for the female condition” (131). Corporate tensions run deeper when we move from gender to ethnicity. A Jesuit certainly was not a woman, with the exception of the persistent Juana of Austria, the sister of Spain’s King Philip II, who was admitted to the Society under the male pseudonym of Mateo Sa´nchez. But could a Jesuit have Jewish ancestry, or could he be a non-European? In a revealing essay charged with pathos, Thomas Cohen portrays Antonio Possevino’s ultimately unsuccessful struggle to keep membership in the Society as inclusive as possible. Louis Caruana insists that, in the long wake of the Church’s controversy with Galileo, Jesuits “engaged in genuine science” (255). While formally accepting the condemnation of Copernicanism, their discussion of it as a hypothesis enhanced its credibility. The volume’s sampling of Jesuit priorities and activities is impressive, even if not sufficiently complete. It sends readers beyond textbook generalizations about the Society to acquire a sense of its rich complexity. The essays

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BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

not only inform but also have the potential of engendering new research into Jesuit history. Hilmar M. Pabel Simon Fraser University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000900

Discourse on Civility and Barbarity: A Critical History of Religion and Related Categories. By Timothy Fitzgerald. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. xii þ 355 pp. $49.95 cloth. How did “religion” and the “state” come to be imagined as separate domains possessing problematic relations? This is the question that motivates Timothy Fitzgerald’s second book, continuing the quest he began with The Ideology of Religious Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000) to deconstruct religion and its monitoring disciplinary enclave, religious studies. In order to enjoy his spin, one must agree that scholars of religion have assumed that the religious is such a distinct endeavor, that we have made religion an embedded isolate, presumed “into common sense” as something simultaneously uncritical, rational, nonreligious, natural, neutral, and secular (9, 26). If you subscribe to this premise, with the invention of a discourse of “encompassing Religion,” then you may join Fitzgerald on his pursuit of different terminology, for words with “relatively stable meanings” that could “provide at least a temporary ground from which to view our own more ideologically weighted discourses” (18, 25). One nomination is referred to in his title. “Unlike the religion-secular ideology of modern nation-states,” Fitzgerald offers, “the general distinction between ‘our civility’ and ‘their barbarity’ may be a near-universal” (110). Instead of “religion,” we may want to transfer our attention to the range of negotiations between civility and barbarity to describe affects and effects made by divinely infused habits, rituals, creeds, and nations. Fitzgerald thus aspires to write a critical history of “religion” in order to supply this new glossary. At its most successful, this book offers a history of religion in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, albeit through materials drawn from assemblages made by C. H. Williams’s English Historical Documents, vol. 5, 1485–1558 (1967); Andrew Browning, English Historical Documents, vol. 8, 1660–1714 (1953); and Charles Lloyd’s nineteenth-century compendium of sixteenth-century materials, Formularies of Faith Put Forth by Authority during the Reign of Henry VIII (1825). To emphasize that Fitzgerald’s source material is redacted is not to dismiss the merit of the labor; in this, Fitzgerald

461

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

not only inform but also have the potential of engendering new research into Jesuit history. Hilmar M. Pabel Simon Fraser University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000900

Discourse on Civility and Barbarity: A Critical History of Religion and Related Categories. By Timothy Fitzgerald. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. xii þ 355 pp. $49.95 cloth. How did “religion” and the “state” come to be imagined as separate domains possessing problematic relations? This is the question that motivates Timothy Fitzgerald’s second book, continuing the quest he began with The Ideology of Religious Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000) to deconstruct religion and its monitoring disciplinary enclave, religious studies. In order to enjoy his spin, one must agree that scholars of religion have assumed that the religious is such a distinct endeavor, that we have made religion an embedded isolate, presumed “into common sense” as something simultaneously uncritical, rational, nonreligious, natural, neutral, and secular (9, 26). If you subscribe to this premise, with the invention of a discourse of “encompassing Religion,” then you may join Fitzgerald on his pursuit of different terminology, for words with “relatively stable meanings” that could “provide at least a temporary ground from which to view our own more ideologically weighted discourses” (18, 25). One nomination is referred to in his title. “Unlike the religion-secular ideology of modern nation-states,” Fitzgerald offers, “the general distinction between ‘our civility’ and ‘their barbarity’ may be a near-universal” (110). Instead of “religion,” we may want to transfer our attention to the range of negotiations between civility and barbarity to describe affects and effects made by divinely infused habits, rituals, creeds, and nations. Fitzgerald thus aspires to write a critical history of “religion” in order to supply this new glossary. At its most successful, this book offers a history of religion in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, albeit through materials drawn from assemblages made by C. H. Williams’s English Historical Documents, vol. 5, 1485–1558 (1967); Andrew Browning, English Historical Documents, vol. 8, 1660–1714 (1953); and Charles Lloyd’s nineteenth-century compendium of sixteenth-century materials, Formularies of Faith Put Forth by Authority during the Reign of Henry VIII (1825). To emphasize that Fitzgerald’s source material is redacted is not to dismiss the merit of the labor; in this, Fitzgerald

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CHURCH HISTORY

has admirable company, as the tradition of criticism to which he seeks to be a member has made thorough interventions with anthologies in hand. Fitzgerald forgets, however, that this tradition requires textual dexterity of the highest order to compensate for the absence of any rigorous comparative or archival interventions into the canon of thought. “My working hypothesis,” Fitzgerald claims at the outset, “is that it is only by looking at categories in relation, rather than assuming their discrete functionality, that the field of religion can be adequately analyzed” (7). This hypothesis begs specificity: categories in relation to what? To one another in a particular moment in time? Within a particularly telling text? Or within a particular set of intellectual problems? Any one of these relations, considered consistently and thoroughly, would have made Fitzgerald’s selections more “adequately analyzed.” The most refined argument is, not surprisingly, his most distilled (chapter 7), on travel writer Samuel Purchas and his magisterial Purchas, his Pilgrimage; or, Relations of the World and the Religions Observed in all Ages (1613). Here, Fitzgerald focuses his scattershot long enough to practice close reading, text criticism, and cultural reflection to serious accomplishment, proving that Purchas may indeed have conjured a “secular” from his obsessive (near ritual) consumption of the religious. The idiosyncrasy of documentation nonetheless pervades the remaining chapters, as Fitzgerald nominates texts for which he refuses to offer any historiography. J. H. Parry’s The Spanish Theory of Empire in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Octagon, 1940) and W. R. Jones’s “The Image of the Barbarian in Medieval Europe” (Comparative Studies in Society and History 13:4 [October 1971]: 376 –407), two works heavily traversed by Fitzgerald, are secondary sources worth making primary, yet Fitzgerald offers no transparency about that maneuver from history to historiography, from theory to mandated method. He presumes that the texts he nominates are collectively concurred components of a currently concurred naturalization of religion, when this is a point he must argue. Unlike Talal Asad, David Chidester, or Jonathan Z. Smith, Fitzgerald does not see it as the task of a critical historian to historicize. “I am not a historian and do not have any original historiography to add,” Fitzgerald explains. “My concern is methodological” (167). If his claim is that this is a methodological intervention and not a historiographic one (a differentiation that seems somewhat contrived), then he must make apparent this methodology. Despite two chapters (2 and 3) devoted to a description of methodology, this reviewer cannot name any process or tactics that Fitzgerald recommends which could be replicated to verify the substance of the argument. To disagree so vociferously with Fitzgerald’s mode is not to dispute his possible insight. Maybe Fitzgerald is right that “religious studies is an

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BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

agency for uncritically formulating and legitimating” the myth of religion, for “embedding it into the warp and woof of our collective consciousness” (9). As a student and a member of multiple departments of religious studies, this reviewer has to squint to see what Fitzgerald sees, to perceive some sort of collective rigidity that is replicated in every maneuver. At the level of the department—the most disciplinary aspect of religious studies—it seems more accurate to describe thoughtful dispute and inter-field inconsistency as the signal tropes. That these rascally squads have also, as Fitzgerald accuses, been blindly suckered into accepting a large set of etymological fallacies (relying organizationally upon words “empty of any specific content”) might be so, too, but only if you believe the category itself overrides every meeting, dissertation defense, or journal article adjudication (40). No one would dissent from acceding that, to borrow from Ludwig Wittgenstein, our words make our worlds. Yet Fitzgerald imagines we have had only one way to imagine our shared words. Such a supposition suggests to me that his dictionary and his conversations are far more pallid than the departments, monographs, and conferences to which he directs his tirade. The task of scholarship should be to cajole our better attentions: to words, to fallacies, to any unthinking acquiescence. Telling us that we are using something uselessly is potentially productive. Doing so with such resistance to its realities of practice—even as it is these realities by which the original ire was inflamed—is not very disciplined, nor, as the hope may be, terribly revolutionary. Kathryn Lofton Yale University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000912

Southern Crossroads: Perspectives on Religion and Culture. Edited by Walter H. Conser, Jr., and Rodger M. Payne. Religion in the South. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2008. 383 pp. $60.00 cloth. Students of religious history have long been methodologically inventive, bringing analytical tools from sociology, ethnography, anthropology, geography, and elsewhere to bear in their research. Walter H. Conser, Jr., and Rodger M. Payne fully embrace this trend toward interdisciplinary scholarship in Southern Crossroads, an anthology of new and previously published work on religion in the American South. Indeed, the editors deliberately drew from different approaches within their subfield, and the

463

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

agency for uncritically formulating and legitimating” the myth of religion, for “embedding it into the warp and woof of our collective consciousness” (9). As a student and a member of multiple departments of religious studies, this reviewer has to squint to see what Fitzgerald sees, to perceive some sort of collective rigidity that is replicated in every maneuver. At the level of the department—the most disciplinary aspect of religious studies—it seems more accurate to describe thoughtful dispute and inter-field inconsistency as the signal tropes. That these rascally squads have also, as Fitzgerald accuses, been blindly suckered into accepting a large set of etymological fallacies (relying organizationally upon words “empty of any specific content”) might be so, too, but only if you believe the category itself overrides every meeting, dissertation defense, or journal article adjudication (40). No one would dissent from acceding that, to borrow from Ludwig Wittgenstein, our words make our worlds. Yet Fitzgerald imagines we have had only one way to imagine our shared words. Such a supposition suggests to me that his dictionary and his conversations are far more pallid than the departments, monographs, and conferences to which he directs his tirade. The task of scholarship should be to cajole our better attentions: to words, to fallacies, to any unthinking acquiescence. Telling us that we are using something uselessly is potentially productive. Doing so with such resistance to its realities of practice—even as it is these realities by which the original ire was inflamed—is not very disciplined, nor, as the hope may be, terribly revolutionary. Kathryn Lofton Yale University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000912

Southern Crossroads: Perspectives on Religion and Culture. Edited by Walter H. Conser, Jr., and Rodger M. Payne. Religion in the South. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2008. 383 pp. $60.00 cloth. Students of religious history have long been methodologically inventive, bringing analytical tools from sociology, ethnography, anthropology, geography, and elsewhere to bear in their research. Walter H. Conser, Jr., and Rodger M. Payne fully embrace this trend toward interdisciplinary scholarship in Southern Crossroads, an anthology of new and previously published work on religion in the American South. Indeed, the editors deliberately drew from different approaches within their subfield, and the

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fifteen essays selected include “explorations into such domains as food, music, art, vernacular folkways, and literature” (4). The volume’s center of gravity, however, is still in the contributions of historians, and works by Charles Reagan Wilson, Paul Harvey, and others mentioned below reflect long and thoughtful engagement with the documentary record. The works by nonhistorians are uniformly provocative, but only Marcie Cohen Ferris in her study of Jewish foodways and Charles E. Orser, Jr., in his survey of the historical archaeology of slave religion offer pieces substantial enough to serve as counterweights to the more traditional histories. In the spare introduction to the volume, Conser and Payne frame the contributions around the trope of “crossroads” and stress the interaction of religion with other forces both within the American South and outside of it. The essays appear in three overlapping sections, each of which lends itself well to the overall themes of intersection and exchange suggested by the crossroads motif. In “Religious Aspects of Southern Culture,” contributors discuss how southerners’ religious commitments shaped the meaning of some of the region’s most distinctive cultural markers. In “Encounters in Southern Religion and Culture,” attention shifts to “interactions of local, immigrant, and folk religions with other groups.” The final section, “Religion and Markers of Identity,” is the least focused and deals with “religion and markers of identity such as gender, violence, ritual, and politics” (5). The most important works in the collection fit the crossroads theme most snugly and show the instability of both regional and religious identities—the constant traffic that has long constituted southern religion. In a lavishly illustrated essay on McKendree Robbins Long, William D. Moore and Walter H. Conser, Jr., present the North Carolina-born pastor and painter as “a touchstone for comprehending how cultural critics have treated southern evangelical Protestantism” (90). North Carolinians celebrated both Long’s early work as a portraitist in the 1910s and early 1920s and his later, overtly religious work in the 1950s and 1960s. Art critics from outside the region, however, were slower to appreciate Long’s work; and when they did, in the 1980s and 1990s, it was for very different reasons. Willfully ignoring the fact that Long had trained at New York’s Art Students’ League and in Europe, critics praised Long’s work as “outsider art” and calculated his value based on his authenticity as an untutored “folk” artist. In Moore and Conser’s analysis, Long’s southern and religious identity mattered more to art critics than the actual content of his work; as a religious Southerner, he stood in for the “supposed omnipresence of charismatic Christianity in the South” that served in the eyes of northern culture brokers “to define the region as a land apart from mainstream, secular, pluralistic, modern America” (96). The example of Long’s rise to artistic fame shows how labels of “southern” and “religious” can be mutually reinforcing in ways that distort reality.

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

465

Several contributors to Southern Crossroads concentrate on southerners, unlike McKendree Long, who actually stood outside of the evangelical Protestant mainstream, and probe how non-evangelical southerners worked to develop or retain their own religious identities. Marcie Cohen Ferris, for example, emphasizes the centrality of foodways in her densely textured examination of Jewish life in the Mississippi River delta. “We ate between these two worlds” of Protestant and Jewish cultures, she writes, “in a complicated culinary negotiation of regional, ethnic, and religious identity” (165). Catholics in nineteenth-century South Carolina faced many of the same obstacles as did Jews in the twentieth-century delta—the difficulty of attracting clergy, geographic dispersal, and hostility from the surrounding culture—but met the challenge, according to Diana Pasulka, through the performance of exterior rituals that “promoted a radical sense of community and exteriority that transcended physical and temporal boundaries” (300). Beyond latkes and ritual connections to the communion of the saints, the book is replete with other examples of religious outsiders trying to hold on to their identities within an evangelical South: Randall Stephens’s pentecostals used print culture to build their movement; Barbara Lau’s Buddhist monks earned community favor by distributing firewood and produce; Orser’s enslaved men and women may have used Colono Ware to replicate African-based rituals; and James Curtis’s Catholic and Santerian immigrants from Cuba crafted yard shrines in downtown Miami. That different groups confronted evangelical ascendency in so many different ways is both an indicator of the sophistication of the works in this volume and a theme that merits further research. Southern Crossroads is dedicated to Donald Mathews and Samuel S. Hill, two elder statesmen of southern religious history who are also contributors to the volume. Hill’s hypothesis in the concluding essay, that the fundamentalist entry into politics in the 1970s transformed the South more radically than did the civil rights movement, is ambitious and deliberately provocative. Like some of the best work in the volume, unfortunately, it is already published elsewhere (though unlike some of the entries, it has not been expanded into a monograph). Mathews’s contribution is a heavily revised version of earlier work, in which he attempts to explain “Why the Old Man Shouted ‘Glory!’” at a spectacle lynching in 1899. In this disturbing piece, Mathews presents lynching as a religious act, both intrinsically in its “power to transform the moral universe” (322) and indirectly as a function of an individualistic evangelical faith impotent to achieve social justice. He pulls back from the argument “that evangelical religion and segregation, linked as they were in the emotional life of white southerners, caused lynching” but does suggest that “they together did create ways of thinking that could justify it” (345). Like the other contributors, Mathews searches the

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connections between southern religion and southern culture, though his exploration leads to darker places. Charles F. Irons Elon University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000924

Converting Colonialism: Visions and Realities in Mission History, 1706– 1914. Edited by Dana L. Robert. Studies in the History of Christian Missions. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2008. x þ 307 pp. $40.00 paper. The North Atlantic Missionary Project (NAMP, 1996 –1998) and its successor, Currents in World Christianity (1999– 2001), provided a network and an impetus for international research into mission history and Christian movements across the globe that enabled scholars to reassess the standard arguments about missions and colonialism. This volume, like many of the other books in the same series, is a product of the projects. Robert has edited ten papers originally presented at conferences organized through NAMP. Robert’s introductory chapter positions the contributions as critiques of previous arguments about the relationship between the Protestant missionary movement and western colonial power. The authors treat the modern missionary movement “neither as idealism nor ideology, but as a pragmatic product of the historical encounter between Western Christianity and local settings” (5) by providing close analysis of the complex interrelations and collisions between mission theory, mission practice, local issues, and colonial administration. The contributors recognize that the particular mix of these factors in any one location could engender very varied results, results that might lead to empowerment of individuals in one circumstance and subservience in another. Robert emphasizes this in her own chapter in which she demonstrates that the missionary concepts of the Christian home formed the basis of a missionary method that developed the role of women in missions. She acknowledges that the domestic training offered by missionaries could both be carried out and received as a form of selfreliance, inducing self-respect and modernization for indigenous women, or it could be seen as a form of disempowerment and control, depending on the expectations of domestic labor by both missionary and convert. The deliberate ambiguity of the title is reflected in the nuanced treatment of colonial relationships. For example, the theory that imperial power inevitably led to a “colonization of the mind,” most cogently argued in John L.

466

CHURCH HISTORY

connections between southern religion and southern culture, though his exploration leads to darker places. Charles F. Irons Elon University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000924

Converting Colonialism: Visions and Realities in Mission History, 1706– 1914. Edited by Dana L. Robert. Studies in the History of Christian Missions. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2008. x þ 307 pp. $40.00 paper. The North Atlantic Missionary Project (NAMP, 1996 –1998) and its successor, Currents in World Christianity (1999– 2001), provided a network and an impetus for international research into mission history and Christian movements across the globe that enabled scholars to reassess the standard arguments about missions and colonialism. This volume, like many of the other books in the same series, is a product of the projects. Robert has edited ten papers originally presented at conferences organized through NAMP. Robert’s introductory chapter positions the contributions as critiques of previous arguments about the relationship between the Protestant missionary movement and western colonial power. The authors treat the modern missionary movement “neither as idealism nor ideology, but as a pragmatic product of the historical encounter between Western Christianity and local settings” (5) by providing close analysis of the complex interrelations and collisions between mission theory, mission practice, local issues, and colonial administration. The contributors recognize that the particular mix of these factors in any one location could engender very varied results, results that might lead to empowerment of individuals in one circumstance and subservience in another. Robert emphasizes this in her own chapter in which she demonstrates that the missionary concepts of the Christian home formed the basis of a missionary method that developed the role of women in missions. She acknowledges that the domestic training offered by missionaries could both be carried out and received as a form of selfreliance, inducing self-respect and modernization for indigenous women, or it could be seen as a form of disempowerment and control, depending on the expectations of domestic labor by both missionary and convert. The deliberate ambiguity of the title is reflected in the nuanced treatment of colonial relationships. For example, the theory that imperial power inevitably led to a “colonization of the mind,” most cogently argued in John L.

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467

Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism and Consciousness in South Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), is questioned throughout the book. Its critique is particularly strong in three chapters, by Eleanor Jackson, R. G. Tiedemann, and J. F. A. Ajayi on the perspectives of converts in India, China, and West Africa, respectively, who made Christianity their own and entered into dialogue with the missionary values offered to them. Jackson and Tiedemann demonstrate the influence of active indigenous agents in the spread of Christianity while Ajayi focuses on the political activities of missioneducated elites and their modification of the missionary ethos for the purposes of their nationalist aspirations. The “colonization of the mind” theory is also tackled by inverting the flow of influence under study in the first chapter by Daniel Jeyaraj, “Mission Reports from South India and Their Impact on the Western Mind: The Tranquebar Mission of the Eighteenth Century.” Jeyaraj helpfully examines missionary activity and reflection before the high colonial period, thus disentangling Christian missions from the colonial enterprise and demonstrating the positive influence the missionary movement could have on western thought. All the chapters demonstrate nuanced argumentation as the result of careful examination of archives from churches, mission institutions, and colonial sources, among others. Peter Williams, for example, charts the minor shifts in CMS thought influenced by British concerns and by the changing fortunes of colonial administrations, which caused larger changes in perspective. He demonstrates how, as a result of reacting to the realities of the colonial situation rather than critiquing them, Henry Venn’s famous championing of autonomous indigenous churches was also used to encourage the introduction of a racially split system of governance with British bishops for colonial settlers and indigenous bishops for the indigenous populations. Thus he shows the importance of closely charting attitudinal shifts within the nineteenth century and of appreciating both the fluidity of missionary situations and the pragmatism of policies. His dense writing and incremental development of argument repay the effort. A similar demand for careful attention to the historical development of arguments about the response of mission societies to Islam is made by Andrew Porter in his chapter, “Evangelicalism, Islam, and Millennial Expectation in the Nineteenth Century.” Richard Elphick, writing on the South African context, has an engaging style with clearly presented arguments and well-articulated questions for further research. He examines the fissures between and within churches and missions revealed by the Anglo-Boer War (1899 –1902) and shows that idealist visions of racial equality were compromised by the colonial situation. Elphick displays one of the ironies that appear frequently in this book: although missionaries usually supported black civil rights, they

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were often unwilling to share leadership with Africans. Their paternalism and racism influenced the formation of African-initiated churches. A volume such as this is rightly detailed rather than comprehensive. There is, for example, less attention given to Roman Catholic or continental European missions and a noticeable emphasis on English-speaking Protestantism. It is regrettable that ten years have elapsed between the first presentation of these papers and their publication, apparent from the fact that the bibliography has only a few references after the mid-1990s. During this time the position of the book has become more mainstream. Nevertheless, its contribution to mission scholarship, both in terms of the overarching thesis and the specific circumstances on which they reflect, remains as solid, if less novel, than it was a decade ago. Emma Wild-Wood Henry Martyn Centre, Cambridge

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000936

The Faithful: A History of Catholics in America. By James M. O’Toole. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008. 377 pp. $27.95 cloth. Historians have several good surveys of American Catholic history, but none of these attempts to render a history of the Catholic laity in the way that James O’Toole’s very good narrative does. Rather than focusing on leadership and institutions, O’Toole focuses on the people who have made up the major force in American Catholic life—the average believers. While his organizational structure will be familiar to those who have read other surveys, the ground he covers reveals a great deal about the lived religion of Catholics in America. O’Toole’s narrative spans the American Revolution to the beginning of the twenty-first century, dividing this time period into six eras. In each of these, he reviews the character of the population, their experiences in practicing their faith, their relationship to the larger institutional structure of the Church and its leadership, and, finally, their relationship with the non-Catholic American population. This work is constructed from a truly wide range of archival sources and existing secondary work. Each chapter begins with the story of one representative Catholic from that era, lending a sense of personalism to each analysis. O’Toole depicts the colonial and revolutionary Catholic community as one that survived without regular access to priests or the sacraments. These believers

468

CHURCH HISTORY

were often unwilling to share leadership with Africans. Their paternalism and racism influenced the formation of African-initiated churches. A volume such as this is rightly detailed rather than comprehensive. There is, for example, less attention given to Roman Catholic or continental European missions and a noticeable emphasis on English-speaking Protestantism. It is regrettable that ten years have elapsed between the first presentation of these papers and their publication, apparent from the fact that the bibliography has only a few references after the mid-1990s. During this time the position of the book has become more mainstream. Nevertheless, its contribution to mission scholarship, both in terms of the overarching thesis and the specific circumstances on which they reflect, remains as solid, if less novel, than it was a decade ago. Emma Wild-Wood Henry Martyn Centre, Cambridge

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000936

The Faithful: A History of Catholics in America. By James M. O’Toole. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008. 377 pp. $27.95 cloth. Historians have several good surveys of American Catholic history, but none of these attempts to render a history of the Catholic laity in the way that James O’Toole’s very good narrative does. Rather than focusing on leadership and institutions, O’Toole focuses on the people who have made up the major force in American Catholic life—the average believers. While his organizational structure will be familiar to those who have read other surveys, the ground he covers reveals a great deal about the lived religion of Catholics in America. O’Toole’s narrative spans the American Revolution to the beginning of the twenty-first century, dividing this time period into six eras. In each of these, he reviews the character of the population, their experiences in practicing their faith, their relationship to the larger institutional structure of the Church and its leadership, and, finally, their relationship with the non-Catholic American population. This work is constructed from a truly wide range of archival sources and existing secondary work. Each chapter begins with the story of one representative Catholic from that era, lending a sense of personalism to each analysis. O’Toole depicts the colonial and revolutionary Catholic community as one that survived without regular access to priests or the sacraments. These believers

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469

gathered for prayer and catechetical instruction, aided by prayer books and devotional handbooks. O’Toole argues that these persons exercised an “Enlightenment spirituality” that emphasized a rational engagement with the faith that would differ significantly from the perspective and practice of later generations of Catholics. A distinct minority within the newly forming republic, these Catholics slowly gained some acceptance from their Protestant neighbors by supporting the Revolution and expressing some distrust of the Vatican’s desire to oversee the affairs of the American Church. The early Republic was marked by the struggle for control between parishioners and the increasingly centralized control of the hierarchy. Established by local laypeople, early congregations had to work out a balance of power between trustee boards and their priests. Disputes were common and not unexpected, particularly in the context of the larger American Protestant community in which believers often had the power to control the appointment of their clergy. By the 1820s, the hierarchy found these democratic impulses threatening and worked to tighten their own control over Church property and governance. Bishop John England proved the exception. O’Toole provides the surprising story of the bishop of Charleston’s efforts to draft a constitution for that diocese that was approved by the people and which resulted in almost thirty annual conventions in Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. England’s efforts were not reproduced by other Catholic bishops, but they hinted at the possibilities for active engagement of laypeople in the work of managing dioceses. An effort to contain the history of the “immigrant church” is bound to come up short in some respects. Nonetheless, O’Toole’s synthesis of this period goes a long way toward surfacing the commonalities of community building and devotional practice during these years. A picture arises of neighborhoods dotted with ethnic parishes, bustling with committed parishioners who actively contributed to the creation of those parishes. Increasing numbers of priests and nuns filled out the structure of these parishes and their schools. O’Toole goes into detail describing church architecture, priestly vestments, and the formality of the Mass, all in relationship to the experience of the people in the pews, who were often privately saying prayers and engaging in meditations that had little direct connection to the priests’ celebration. Despite waves of nativism and xenophobia from their non-Catholic neighbors, immigrant Catholics existed in a world anchored by the Church, its practices, and its people. O’Toole’s rendering of lay Catholics during the bulk of the twentieth century emphasizes their growing activity as Catholics, both inside and outside the Church. A chapter on Catholic Action relates the varied causes of social action undertaken by laypeople, including those involved in the Catholic worker movement, the Holy Name Society, the National Council of Catholic Women, and other social justice groups. In addition to depicting this very public work, O’Toole traces the push for increase and regularity of Mass

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attendance, reception of Communion, and participation in confession. As O’Toole moves into the era of Vatican II, he continues to emphasize the importance of the involvement of the laity in the Church, suggesting that the traditions of Catholic Action in some way prepared them for their new incorporation into the Mass and the central functions of church life. He also covers the familiar ground of conflict and controversy dealing with birth control, abortion, and women’s ordination. But, for the most part, O’Toole relates the story of American Catholics’ changing practice of their faith through increased reception of Communion, tremendous declines in confession, and the varieties of new engagement with faith including Bible study, retreats, and charismatic movements. O’Toole begins his final chapter, “The Church of the Twenty-First Century,” with the story of a hypothetical Los Angeleno born in 2012. This setup allows him to explore the changes that appear to be under way in the American Catholic community at the turn of the century, including the sexual abuse scandal among priests, the ever-diminishing ranks of the clergy, the increasing diversity of the community, and the place of Catholics in American public life. This forward-looking final chapter actually highlights some of the weaknesses of the book. O’Toole’s focus here on the post-1965 diversity of the Catholic community makes the reader question the ways in which that long-standing diversity inflected the lived practice of Catholicism that he describes in a relatively monolithic way in previous chapters. Similarly, the narrative provides little sense of the ways geography matters to the laity’s experience of their faith and the institutional church during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Nonetheless, O’Toole provides a powerful introduction to the experiences and lived religion of American Catholic laypeople that will prove tremendously useful to those who teach American Catholic history and American religious history more generally. Sharon M. Leon George Mason University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000948

Religion and the Culture of Print in Modern America. Edited by Charles L. Cohen and Paul S. Boyer. Print Culture History in Modern America. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008. xx þ 371 pp. $29.95 paper. Many American historians in recent years have made reading and writing central to our understanding of pre-Civil War American religion by focusing

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attendance, reception of Communion, and participation in confession. As O’Toole moves into the era of Vatican II, he continues to emphasize the importance of the involvement of the laity in the Church, suggesting that the traditions of Catholic Action in some way prepared them for their new incorporation into the Mass and the central functions of church life. He also covers the familiar ground of conflict and controversy dealing with birth control, abortion, and women’s ordination. But, for the most part, O’Toole relates the story of American Catholics’ changing practice of their faith through increased reception of Communion, tremendous declines in confession, and the varieties of new engagement with faith including Bible study, retreats, and charismatic movements. O’Toole begins his final chapter, “The Church of the Twenty-First Century,” with the story of a hypothetical Los Angeleno born in 2012. This setup allows him to explore the changes that appear to be under way in the American Catholic community at the turn of the century, including the sexual abuse scandal among priests, the ever-diminishing ranks of the clergy, the increasing diversity of the community, and the place of Catholics in American public life. This forward-looking final chapter actually highlights some of the weaknesses of the book. O’Toole’s focus here on the post-1965 diversity of the Catholic community makes the reader question the ways in which that long-standing diversity inflected the lived practice of Catholicism that he describes in a relatively monolithic way in previous chapters. Similarly, the narrative provides little sense of the ways geography matters to the laity’s experience of their faith and the institutional church during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Nonetheless, O’Toole provides a powerful introduction to the experiences and lived religion of American Catholic laypeople that will prove tremendously useful to those who teach American Catholic history and American religious history more generally. Sharon M. Leon George Mason University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000948

Religion and the Culture of Print in Modern America. Edited by Charles L. Cohen and Paul S. Boyer. Print Culture History in Modern America. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008. xx þ 371 pp. $29.95 paper. Many American historians in recent years have made reading and writing central to our understanding of pre-Civil War American religion by focusing

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on the proliferation of print among various Protestant traditions. Fewer scholars, however, have carried their analyses into the late nineteenth and twentieth century, when both the literary and religious marketplaces grew considerably more diffuse and difficult to characterize. This collection of fourteen essays, which emerged from a conference that was sponsored by the Center for the History of Print Culture at the University of Wisconsin in 2004, seeks to move the existing scholarship forward in time by exploring the intersection of print, religion, and spirituality in the modern era. An interestingly diverse series of vignettes emerges, documenting literature that ranges from medical missionary narratives in the 1880s to Bible-zines directed at teenage girls in the twentyfirst century. Most individual treatments succeed admirably on their own terms, but it remains difficult to find common themes and overarching frameworks that tie the narratives together. Scope constitutes part of the problem. Gari-Anne Patzwold, for example, presents an interesting case study of The Megiddo Church. This tiny sect was founded in Oregon in 1880 and currently consists of a remnant of thirty-five believers who live in various church-owned properties in Rochester, New York. Patzwold documents the way in which pamphlets, tracts, and the Meggido Message magazine served to unite the small and scattered group throughout the twentieth century. Print knit the faithful together into an imagined community, provided a sense of intimacy and friendliness among believers, offered readers the opportunity to witness and tell stories of their good works, and reinforced such unique beliefs and rituals as the celebration of True Christmas on the new moon after the vernal equinox rather than in December. This article certainly offers an interesting story that reflects the diversity, quirkiness, and idiosyncratic nature of modern American religion. Yet, as Charles Cohen forthrightly admits and acknowledges in his introduction, the entire book contains virtually no mention of such a major American tradition as Catholicism, excepting a brief discussion of Thomas Merton’s autobiography. Similarly, the only discussion of print culture and Judaism consists of Jonathan Pollack’s article that analyzes news and editorial content in the Hillel Review at the University of Wisconsin from 1925– 1931. Some attempt at providing a better balance and soliciting contributions concerning major and more mainstream American religious movements would have enhanced the book. Another difficulty involves determining the extent to which print culture actually altered religious practice and constituted a dynamic force in its own right. David Whittaker’s article on Mormonism best illustrates this issue. Whittaker examines the writings of a now obscure and largely forgotten Mormon pamphleteer and theorist, Joseph B. Keeler, who

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published several influential works concerning church governance between the 1880s and 1920s. Whittaker argues that Keeler’s works played an important role in legitimizing legal structures, encouraging bureaucratic standardization, and systematizing theological teachings within the communion. He views Mormon writing as moving “away from its more polemical and freelance discourse” of the early nineteenth century and toward “a more standardized discourse that was carefully crafted and focused on institutional consumption” (119). As a case study of institutionalization and bureaucratization, Whittaker’s article certainly points toward important changes within early twentieth-century Mormonism. Yet, I remained unclear about what this ideological and organizational shift revealed about Mormon print culture. The Latter-day Saints continued to produce a diverse literature in the early twentieth century, and considerable controversy developed over practices that challenged official teachings. Keeler offered one effective and ultimately successful response to change, but it remains difficult to gauge whether his contribution proved transformative or merely reflective of broader trends. Finally, questions arise about the definition of print culture itself, given the sweeping technological changes that have altered America’s communications ecology over the course of the twentieth century. Candy Gunther Brown, for example, masterfully analyzes Kathryn Kuhlman’s three major books on spiritual healing to examine changing narrative strategies and apologetics about illness, health, and miracles over the course of the 1960s and 1970s. Yet, as Brown observes, Kuhlman reached her audience through radio broadcasts, nationally syndicated television productions, guest appearances on the Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin talk shows, and a variety of other venues. She operated in a complex multimedia environment that created both new opportunities and formidable challenges for anyone hoping to appeal to increasingly sophisticated and media-savvy consumers. Does Kuhlman’s ministry really speak to a “culture of print” or something fundamentally new? Paul Gutjahr best illustrates this issue in his discussion of the Biblezine Revolve. Thomas Nelson Publishers attempted to create a culturally relevant Bible in 2003 by borrowing techniques from secular teen magazines. Christian dating tips, self-awareness quizzes, beauty secrets, and contemporary photos appeared to overwhelm the scriptural message and create a fundamentally new type of religious publication in the process. Formatting clearly mattered in this case. Gutjahr points toward some historical antecedents of Revolve, such as the American Bible Society’s common-language translation Good News for Modern Man (1966). Thomas Nelson, however, seeks to reach an emerging new generation of digital natives who point and click over America’s virtual religious landscape. They no doubt will alter the messages, forms, and identities of religious folk in unanticipated ways, quite possibly rendering the notion of “print culture”

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itself quaint and anachronistic in the process. New media and technological transformations make it even more critical now to bring greater historical clarity and specificity to the relationship between religion and print. This book makes a good start in that direction. The field awaits a broader, clearer, and more comprehensive synthesis. Peter J. Wosh New York University

doi:10.1017/S000964070900095X

American Evangelicals: A Contemporary History of a Mainstream Religious Movement. By Barry Hankins. Critical Issues in History. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008. xiv þ 209 pp. $34.95 cloth. American evangelicalism has been the subject of scores of books and articles since the 1970s. Most of these studies focus on doctrinal or theological standards, and denominational and ecclesiastical variations, with some attention to the public resurgence of evangelicalism, developing trends in growth and expansion, and the evolving definitional and identity crisis. Barry Hankins’s American Evangelicals breaks in some ways with this pattern, offering instead a more historical approach to evangelical Christianity in the United States. Hankins, a professor of history and churchstate studies at Baylor University, reminds us that evangelicalism in contemporary America is incomprehensible apart from a serious study of the historical, cultural, and political forces and realities that gave rise to and shaped it over the last three centuries. Hankins takes a structural approach in explaining how evangelical positions on a range of hotly contested issues, such as science, race, gender, and politics, began and evolved up to the present time. He actually advances a threefold thesis. First, “there is much more complexity and diversity among evangelicals” (ix) than we have been led to believe. Second, evangelicals have always been “quite at home in the culture” (ix), despite being in tension at times with the culture. Finally, “evangelicals are not fundamentally different from other Americans, at least when it comes to a highly individualistic view of life” (x), a contention that is clearly open to debate. In any case, Hankins supports his claims quite well by drawing on evangelical biographies, regional studies, and numerous secondary works in the field of American evangelicalism. However, the book could have benefited from a greater reliance on primary source materials.

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The seventh and final chapter was obviously inspired by a reading of Mark A. Noll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1994). Hankins affords rich insights into the diversity and complexity within the evangelical subculture as a whole, giving some attention to the ways in which fundamentalists and evangelicals critique each other. In Hankins’s estimation, the levels of diversity and complexity, which are too often ignored or trivialized, reveal a lack of consensus in the larger American culture. Hankins writes well and apparently has a strong grasp of the many issues and problems as they have unfolded in the history of American evangelicalism, but the topics he explores deserve more than the kind of superficial treatment he provides. Even so, the book has something to offer those who have little knowledge of evangelical Christianity, and it is most suitable for undergraduate courses on the subject and for ordinary persons in churches. It serves quite well as an introduction to the history of American evangelicalism. Lewis V. Baldwin Vanderbilt University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709000961

African Pentecostalism: An Introduction. By Ogbu Kalu. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. xvi þ 360 pp. $24.95 paper. A leading historian of African Christianity, Ogbu Kalu’s scholarly contributions range from early works on historiography and on Nigerian Presbyterianism to a recent overview text and collections of wide-ranging essays on history, religion, and politics. This timely book published by a major press will bring his scholarship to the attention of a wider audience. More than an overview of African pentecostalism, the book places the subject into the contexts of African history, religions, globalization, and contemporary historiographic trends. Kalu deftly and seamlessly moves among history, theology, and social theory, and thus examines the subject from multiple angles within an integrated framework. Throughout the book, Kalu’s central argument is that pentecostalism should be considered an African religion that flows from African roots and addresses African issues and realities. He thus enters current debates over pentecostal identity by insisting that local continuity take precedence over foreign origins and global flows. The book is divided into four sections. The first section discusses the historical origins of African pentecostalism. His periodization demonstrates its origins in religious Ethiopianism, local revival

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movements, and transformations of indigenous spiritualities. Classical pentecostal missionaries were small in number and often arrived late in the game, in response to preexisting developments. In chapter 4 Kalu provides a useful typology of the scholarship on the vexing relationship between pentecostalism and the older African Instituted Churches (AICs). The second section examines historical trends in the movement from the 1970s to the end of the century. Kalu charts a progression from the emergence of grassroots charismatic revival in the 1970s to the increasing role of media and creation of the “pentecostal big man” in the 1980s to use of pentecostalism for the reevangelization of Africa in the 1990s. In my opinion this section is the most useful to church historians, as Kalu tracks the details of the internal development of pentecostalism from a spirituality of self-sacrifice to that of success and power. His thesis that the “charismatization” of African Christianity represents the deeper evangelization of the continent, a second stage after the institutional accomplishments of the mission churches, is helpful and convincing. In the third section, Kalu analyzes the interaction between pentecostalism and “African public space.” Chapter 9 is a wellargued analysis of the relationship of pentecostalism to African worldviews. Essays on “pentecostal public ethics,” pentecostalism and politics, and the relationship with Islamic law in Nigeria round out this section. The fourth section is the briefest, and contains Kalu’s plea to understand African pentecostalism from the insider perspective as essentially a religious movement. The final chapter is a poignant reflection on the African diaspora and the role of pentecostalism as a transnational force among African emigrants. Ultimately Kalu sees African pentecostalism as a path to the recovery of Africa’s important role in world Christianity: “To put contemporary African Pentecostalism in historical perspective, it is reshaping the face of global Christianity” (290). It is a misnomer to call this book a mere introduction. Although it takes a chronological approach to pentecostal development during the twentieth century, Kalu synthesizes multiple local and regional studies according to his own intellectual map. He also assumes prior knowledge of many historical agents, theories, church histories, and controversies. The book will be the most useful to specialists, both because of Kalu’s complex integrative and self-reflective style of scholarship, and because of the copious notes and bibliography. While West Africa is Kalu’s area of original research, he does a fine job in synthesizing recent studies from other regions of the continent. This is a transitional volume in the history of African pentecostalism, as one of its chief accomplishments is to raise a multitude of interpretive questions to which answers are not yet apparent. The maturity of Kalu’s scholarship is evident in his grasp of an amazingly wide range of material and issues. I believe that Kalu’s multidisciplinary approach enriches the study, but his

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support for a critical yet “confessional” approach to the history of Christianity (82) will not be appreciated by all historians. The editors of Oxford University Press should be ashamed of how they handled this manuscript. This is the worst copyediting job I have ever seen in an Oxford University Press publication. The text is full of typographical errors. Misspelled proper names are numerous, including L’Epinay for Lalive d’Epinay (10), Matthew for Matthews Ojo (21), Ardell for Ardella Mead (48), Braham for William Branham (58), Sonyika for Wole Soyinka (66), Torpiya for Topia (72), and Elphinck for Richard Elphick (297). Unfortunately these errors detract from a major piece of scholarship. Dana L. Robert Boston University

BOOKS RECEIVED Alexander, Paul, Peace to War: Shifting Allegiances in the Assemblies of God. C. Henry Smith Series 9. Telford, Pa.: Cascadia, 2009. Anyabwile, Thabati M., The Decline of African American Theology: From Biblical Faith to Cultural Captivity. Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2007. Aritonang, Jan Sihar, and Karel Steenbrink, eds., A History of Christianity in Indonesia. Studies in Christian Mission 35. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Ateek, Naim Stifan, A Palestinian Cry for Reconciliation. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2008. Aune, David E., Apocalypticism, Prophecy, and Magic in Early Christianity. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2008. Bednarowski, Mary Farrell, ed., Twentieth-Century Global Christianity. A People’s History of Christianity 7. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2008. Benson, Bruce Ellis, and Peter Goodwin Heltzel, eds., Evangelicals and Empire: Christian Alternatives to the Political Status Quo. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos, 2008. Bernardi, Peter J., Maurice Blondel, Social Catholicism, & Action Franc¸aise: The Clash over the Church’s Role in Society during the Modernist Era. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2009. Bevans, Stephen B., and Jeffrey Gros, Evangelization and Religious Freedom: Ad Gentes, Dignitatis Humanae. Rediscovering Vatican II. Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 2009. Bornstein, Daniel E., ed., Medieval Christianity. A People’s History of Christianity 4. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2009. Brown, Susan Tara, Singing and the Imagination of Devotion: Vocal Aesthetics in Early English Protestant Culture. Studies in Christian History and Thought. Colorado Springs, Colo.: Paternoster, 2008. Brown, Tricia Gates, 118 Days: Christian Peacemaker Teams Held Hostage in Iraq. Telford, Pa.: DreamSeeker, 2008. Calvert, Jane E., Quaker Constitutionalism and the Political Thought of John Dickinson. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Campbell, Emma, Medieval Saints’ Lives: The Gift, Kinship and Community in Old French Hagiography. Gallica 12. Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell & Brewer, 2008.

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Carlson, David R., ed., John Skelton and Early Modern Culture: Papers Honoring Robert S. Kinsman. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2008. ´ ., and Carol Neuman de Vegvar, eds., Roma Felix—Formation and Carragain, E´amonn O Reflections of Medieval Rome. Church, Faith and Culture in the Medieval West. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2007. Carroll R., M. Daniel, Christians at the Border: Immigration, Church, and the Bible. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2008. Cooper, Adam G., Life in the Flesh: An Anti-Gnostic Spiritual Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Davis, Stephen J., The Cult of St. Thecla: A Tradition of Women’s Piety in Late Antiquity. Oxford Early Christian Studies. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Decker, Rainer, Witchcraft & the Papacy: An Account Drawing on the Formerly Secret Records of the Roman Inquisition. Studies in Early Modern German History. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008. DiTommaso, Lorenzo, and Lucian Turescu, eds., The Reception and Interpretation of the Bible in Late Antiquity: Proceedings of the Montre´al Colloquium in Honour of Charles Kannengiesser, 11– 13 October 2006. Bible in Ancient Christianity 6. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Evans, William B., Imputation and Impartation: Union With Christ in American Reformed Theology. Studies in Christian History and Thought. Colorado Springs, Colo.: Paternoster, 2008. Ferrell, Lori Anne, The Bible and the People. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008. Fortson III, S. Donaldson, The Presbyterian Creed: A Confessional Tradition in America, 1729 –1870. Studies in Christian History and Thought. Colorado Springs, Colo.: Paternoster, 2008. Foster, Richard J., and Beebe, Gayle D., Longing for God: Seven Paths of Christian Devotion. Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP, 2009. Frykenberg, Robert Eric, Christianity in India: From Beginnings to the Present. Oxford History of the Christian Church. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Gertsman, Elina, Visualizing Medieval Performance: Perspectives, Histories, Contexts. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2008.

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Grafton, Anthony, and Megan Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius, and the Library of Caesarea. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006. Gregory, Alan, Quenching Hell: The Mystical Theology of William Law. New York: Seabury, 2008. Grow, Matthew J., “Liberty to the Downtrodden”: Thomas L. Kane, Romantic Reformer. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009. Guadeloupe, Francio, Chanting Down the New Jerusalem: Calypso, Christianity, and Capitalism in the Caribbean. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. Hammerling, Roy, ed., A History of Prayer: The First to the Fifteenth Century. Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 13. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Hamrin, Carol Lee, and Stacy Beiler, eds., Salt and Light: Lives of Faith that Shaped Modern China. Studies in Chinese Christianity. Eugene, Ore.: Pickwick, 2009. Hanciles, Jehu J., Beyond Christendom: Globalization, African Migration, and the Transformation of the West. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2008. Hankins, Barry, ed., Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism: A Documentary Reader. New York: New York University Press, 2008. Hankins, Barry, Francis Schaeffer and the Shaping of Evangelical America. Library of Religious Biography. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2008. Heal, Bridget, and Ole Peter Grell, eds., The Impact of the European Reformation: Princes, Clergy and People. St. Andrews Studies in Reformation Theology. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2008. Holder, R. Ward, Crisis and Renewal: The Era of the Reformations. The Westminster History of Christian Thought. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2009. Howard, Evan B., The Brazos Introduction to Christian Spirituality. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos, 2008. Kennedy, David J., Eucharistic Sacramentality in an Ecumenical Context: The Anglican Epistles. Ashgate New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2008. Kenworthy-Browne, Christina, Mary Ward, 1585–1645: A Brief Relation. Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell, 2008. Kessler, Edward, and Neil Wenborn, eds., A Dictionary of Jewish-Christian Relations. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

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481

Kleinberg, Aviad, 7 Deadly Sins: A Very Partial List. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008. Knox, Leslie S., Creating Claire of Assisi: Female Franciscan Identities in Later Medieval Italy. The Medieval Franciscans 5. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Kosek, Joseph Kip, Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy. Columbia Studies in Contemporary American History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. Lindman, Janet Moore, Bodies of Belief: Baptist Community in Early America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. Mack, Phyllis, Heart Religion in the British Enlightenment: Gender and Emotion in Early Methodism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Maryks, Robert Alexander, Saint Cicero and the Jesuits: The Influence of the Liberal Arts on the Adoption of Moral Probabilism. Catholic Christendom, 1300–1700. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2008. Matheson, Peter, ed., Reformation Christianity. A People’s History of Christianity 5. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2007. McDermott, Gerald R., ed., Understanding Jonathan Edwards: An Introduction to America’s Theologian. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Melloni, Alberto, Papa Giovanni: Un Cristianio e il Suo Concilio. Turin, Italy: Einaudi, 2009. Menze, Volker L., Justinian and the Making of the Syrian Orthodox Church. Oxford Early Christian Studies. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Miller, Stephen, The Peculiar Life of Sundays. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008. Mochizuki, Mia M., The Netherlandish Image after Iconoclasm, 1566– 1642: Material Religion in the Dutch Golden Age. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2008. Nairn, Thomas A., ed., The Consistent Ethic of Life: Assessing Its Reception and Relevance. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2008. Newman, Barbara, ed., Thomas of Cantimpre´: The Collected Saints’ Lives; Abbot John of Cantimpre´, Christina the Astonishing, Margaret of Ypres, and Lutgard of Aywie´res. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2008.

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Noble, Thomas F. X., and Julia M. H. Smith, eds., The Early Medieval Christianities c. 600 –c. 1100. Cambridge History of Christianity 3. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Noll, Mark A., and James Turner, The Future of Christian Learning: An Evangelical and Catholic Dialogue. Thomas Albert Howard, ed. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos, 2008. Norrell, Robert J., Up from History: The Life of Booker T. Washington. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009. Pabel, Hilmar, Herculean Labours: Erasmus and the Editing of St. Jerome’s Letters in the Renaissance. Library of the Written Word 5. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Padilla, Osvaldo, The Speeches of Outsiders in Acts: Poetics, Theology and Historiography. Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 144. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Porterfield, Amanda, ed., Modern Christianity to 1900. A People’s History of Christianity 6. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2007. Quitslund, Beth, The Reformation in Rhyme: Sternhold, Hopkins, and the English Metrical Psalter, 1547–1603. St. Andrews Studies in Reformation Theology. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2008. Rein, Nathan, The Chancery of God: Protestant Print, Polemic and Propaganda against the Empire, Magdeburg 1546–1551. St. Andrews Studies in Reformation Theology. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2008. Remes, Pauliina, Neoplatonism. Ancient Philosophies 4. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. Richard, Guy M., The Supremacy of God in the Theology of Samuel Rutherford. Studies in Christian History and Thought. Colorado Springs, Colo.: Paternoster, 2008. Rivard, Derek A., Blessing the Word: Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2009. Robbins, Keith, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales: The Christian Church, 1900– 2000. Oxford History of the Christian Church. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Safi, Louay M., The Qur’anic Narrative: The Journey of Life as Told in the Qur’an. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2008. Saint Augustine, Confessions. Trans. Garry Willis. New York: Penguin, 2006. Sanneh, Lamin O., Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture. American Society of Missiology Series 42. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2009.

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Scheepsma, Wybren, The Limburg Sermons: Preaching in the Medieval Low Countries at the Turn of the Fourteenth Century. Trans. David F. Johnson. Brill’s Series in Church History. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Scully, Randolph Ferguson, Religion and the Making of Nat Turner’s Virginia: Baptist Community and Conflict, 1740–1840. The American South. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008. Selderhuis, Herman J., John Calvin: A Pilgrim’s Life. Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2009. Sell, Alan P. F., Hinterland Theology: A Stimulus to Theological Construction. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2008. Shantz, Douglas H., Between Sardis and Philadelphia: The Life and World of Pietist Court Preacher Conrad Bro¨ske. Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Sharkey, Heather J., American Evangelicals in Egypt: Missionary Encounters in an Age of Empire. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008. Shelton, W. Brian, Martyrdom from Exegesis in Hippolytus: An Early Church Presbyter’s Commentary on Daniel. Studies in Christian History and Thought. Colorado Springs, Colo.: Paternoster, 2008. Slatten, James H., W. H. Whitsitt: The Man and the Controversy. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2009. Smith, Christian, and Michael O. Emerson, Passing the Plate: Why American Christians Don’t Give Away More Money. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Spierling, Karen E., Infant Baptism in Reformation Geneva: The Shaping of a Community, 1536 –1564. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2009. Stephan, Scott, Redeeming the Southern Family: Evangelical Women & Domestic Devotion in the Antebellum South. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008. Thompson, Mary V., “In the Hands of a Good Providence”: Religion in the Life of George Washington. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008. Visser, Sandra, and Thomas Williams, Anselm. Great Medieval Thinkers. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Wagner, Walter H., Opening the Qur’an: Introducing Islam’s Holy Book. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008.

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Walker, Ronald W., Richard E. Turnley, Jr., and Glen M. Leonard, Massacre at Mountain Meadows. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Walton, Jonathan L., Watch This!: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Black Televangelism. New York: New York University Press, 2009. Webster, Charles, Paracelsus: Medicine, Magic and Mission at the End of Time. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. Wessel, Susan, Leo the Great and the Spiritual Rebuilding of a Universal Rome. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae. Leiden: Brill, 2008. White, Christopher G., Unsettled Minds: Psychology and the American Search for Spiritual Assurance, 1830–1940. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. Whitehead, James D., and Evelyn Eaton Whitehead, Holy Eros: Pathways to a Passionate God. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2009. Wild-Wood, Emma, Migration and Christian Identity in Congo (DRC). Studies of Religion in Africa 35. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Williams, Michael Stuart, Authorized Lives in Early Christian Biography Between Eusebius and Augustine. Cambridge Classical Studies. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Yates, Nigel, Liturgical Space: Christian Worship and Church Buildings in Western Europe, 1500–2000. Liturgy, Worship and Society. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2008. Yeager, Suzanne M., Jerusalem in Medieval Narrative. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Yovel, Yirmiyahu, The Other Within: The Marranos; Split Identity and Emerging Modernity. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2009. Zahniser, A. H. Mathias, The Mission and Death of Jesus in Islam and Christianity. Faith Meets Faith. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2008.

Church History 78:2 (June 2009), 485– 486. # 2009, American Society of Church History doi:10.1017/S0009640709000985 Printed in the USA

SOCIETY NOTICES MINUTES OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CHURCH HISTORY ANNUAL BUSINESS MEETING January 4, 2009, 5:00 – 5:55 p.m. The Sheraton New York

The meeting convened at 5:00 p.m. with fifty-five persons in attendance. 1. President’s remarks. The minutes of previous year’s meeting were approved. President Grant Wacker thanked president-elect Charles Lippy for preparing the program, thanked committee chairs, and thanked Steve Olsen for chairing for Executive Secretary Search Committee. 2. Executive secretary’s report. The website has received regular updates, but the entire site is really in need of redesign and new features. Plans for the spring 2009 conference in Montreal and the July 2009 conference in Geneva are in process. The transition to the new executive secretary will take place over the early months of 2009, including the transferring of files and documents. 3. Church History editors’ report. Editors Amanda Porterfield and John Corrigan introduced staff members Brooke Sherrard and Monica Reed. The number of manuscript submissions is holding, with more diversity in subject matter (especially Asia and Africa). Relations with Cambridge University Press are good; subscriptions are increasing significantly. One concern: some small schools that are not in consortia had to drop out because of cost. The editors are working with CUP to assist them. 4. Committee Reports. A. Membership. Chairman Keith Francis reported a continuing rise in membership, especially among graduate students, who now number more than one third of total members. The number of foreign members is rising as well. Regular reminders for renewing membership need to be issued by email. He also asked for volunteers to serve on the committee. B. Nominating. The slate as presented by the committee chaired by John Van Engen was approved. C. Research/Prizes. Chairwoman Barbara Brown-Zikmund read out names of prize winners and encouraged members to nominate books and articles. President Wacker then presented award certificates to the winners. D. Finance. Chairman Hans Hillerbrand reported that the committee had two consultations in February and November and decided not to change investment strategy at this point, to keep long-term perspective, and to maintain caution but

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be optimistic about recovery. Usually, the annual budget is approved at the annual winter meeting, but CUP revenue total is not available until spring. Motion: present budget for 2009 – 2010 for approval by the Council at the spring meeting. Motion approved. E. Winter Program. Chairman Lippy thanked the organizing committee, noting more international flavor in the sessions and presenters. Of 134 presenters in the program, 53 percent were male and 45 percent female (2 percent “unknown”). 5. Other Business. A. Graduate Student Representative. Council member Brandon Bayne called for better ways of networking and maintaining an online presence by fostering conversations between graduate students and senior scholars, and by other means. 6. In memoriam. Joseph Lynch, Gary McGee, and Rosemary Keller were mentioned as having died in the past year. The meeting adjourned at 5:55 p.m.

Church History 78:2 (June 2009), 487– 488. # 2009, American Society of Church History doi:10.1017/S0009640709000997 Printed in the USA

SOCIETY NOTICES ASCH BUDGET REVENUE Member dues Conference Receipts Subscriptions Advertising Sale of copies Member list Reprints Misc. receipts Interest Royalties Draw on investment Subtotal

02 –03 Actual

59,790

03–04 Actual

83,123 3,900 1,077 250 200 1,175 7,289 9,362 2,407

52,640 4,595 85,437 5,350 490 1,075 250 3,126 300 5,471 2,900

168,573

161,635

04–05 Actual

05 –06 Actual

19,273 8,394 76,891 9,825 0 250 50 4,658 0 8,111 47,287

51,140 3,510 76,359 4,600 220 250 150 6,064 0 18,030.19 2,050

174,739 162,373

06– 07 Actual

50,513 4,129 81,371 7,525 90 0 0 1,174 0 22,484 15,662 182,948

CUP Revenue Journal stipend (direct from CUP) Profit-sharing (CUP) JSTOR Dissemination Total

EXPENSES CHURCH HISTORY—FSU Editorial Staff Coordinating Editors Sen. Grad Ass’t Grad. Ass’t Book Review Ed. Copy Editor Office Assistant Printing & Distribution Cadmus Press Mailing Travel & Training Training at Cadmus Press Grad. Ass’t Training Editors’ Travel to ASCH Mtg Sen. Grad. Ass’t-Ann. Mtg. Copy Ed. Mtgs. With CUP Office Supplies Postage Photocopying Technology Computer Depreciation Scanner Depreciation Printer Depreciation Repairs FSU maintenance fee Consultants/Hospitality Moving Costs Subtotal

02 –03 Actual

03–04 Actual

04–05 Actual

05 –06 Actual

06– 07 Actual

07–08 Actual

08– 09 YTD

08– 09 Projected

47,733 4,973 3,232 3,275 0 850 50 350 0 25,218.59 20,455

6,163 1,810 1,275 0 0 500 150 1,686 0 697.4

48,300 6,300 0 3,500 100 1,000 100 376 0 28,000 0

12,281.27

87,676

[106,227] 20,000

0

20,000

0 6,000

0 0

31,334 6,000

132,227

0

145,010

07–08 Actual

08– 09 YTD

08– 09 Projected

35,569 3,294 13,653 3,649 14,286 193

7,500 10,522

8,000 9,938

8,280 10,237

8,400 9,939

0 4,141

8,650 15,200

4,124 15,788 0

4,310 14,981 0

4,310 13,666 0

4,309.68 16,149.90 200

718 6,212 0

0 16,300 0

50,295 8,200

49,328 6,743

55,785 2,740

59,467 3,500

16,405.33 12,500 1,461 0

1,500

797 1,758

0 0 3,031

234 2,380

0 4,826 4,686

815

835

334

428

58,340

0 0 2,549.41

0 0 0

0 0 6,000

850

0

2,500 2,300

93,909

1,442 465 64

1,116 2,487 0

1,089 3,366 0

96 2,924 0

3,446.70 1,446.74 0.00

1,114

500 100 333 1,000 500 1,000 2,500

500 100 333 1,000 500 1,000 0

500 100 333 1,000 500 1,000 0

107,407 106,589

115,853

100,024

487

0 0 0

3,500 1,500 0

500 0 300 500 1,500 800 0

250 0 150 0 0 0

500 0 300 500 1,500 800 0

68,858

23,972

61,060

488

YDS/Baylor

CHURCH HISTORY

02– 03 Actual

03 –04 Actual

04 –05 Actual

05– 06 Actual

06–07 Actual

12,106 2,074 176

13,050 2,445 0

11,981.28 1,739.99 0

11,981.28 3,940 0

3,722 441 3,163 2,520

5,382 2,147 260 975

5,421.51 965.35 38 4,050

1,656

6,173 1,008 173 0

8,194 164 855 0

1,008 475

1,205 697 8

4,179 0 0

0 0 0

0 0 0

0 0

Executive Secretary Salary Travel-ASCH Travel-ASCH-related Ass’t to Exec. Secretary Salary Travel Postage & Supplies Accountant Fees Payroll Taxes Federal NJ State CT State Computer Hardware/ Software Website Telephone Workmen’s Comp. Insurance Penalty & Interest Depreciation Bank Charges People’s Commercial Acc’t Bank1 Online Merchant Acc’t Advanta License & Fees Copyright Refunds & Cancellations

19,500

10 150 0

Subtotal

54,472

CONFERENCES/ OUTREACH Spring Conf. Fees Winter Conf. Fees Advertising AHA ACLS Prizes & Awards Student Travel Grants Travel (Council) Lodging (Council) Conference Programs Subtotal Total Expenses

07 –08 Actual

08– 09 YTD

08–09 Projected

11,981.28 950.42 0

4,992.20

18,000 2,500 500

5,851 3,977 83 2,788

5,071.17 429.03 99 2,000

1918.25

7,500 2,500 100 2,000

8,087.72 10.17 1273.53 182

7,278 0 897 0

7,094 0 868 0

2,903

2,792.55 0 0

1,492 0 0

1,274.40 0 0

7,500

15,067 2,300 6,806

02– 03 Actual 7,387 0 5,263

156 0

0 0

505

149.7 20

0 0

7,100 0 900 0 1,500 0 0 0 0

342

575

745

639

250

700

636

1,281

817

1,300.55

367

1,300

0 135 180

0 0 90

0 270 90

1,156.25 0 0 0

251.4

0 30 291

1,200 0 0 0

39,961

38,944

38,645

40,209

03 –04 Actual

04 –05 Actual

32,864

11,458.78

45,800

08– 09 YTD

08–09 Projected

05– 06 Actual

06–07 Actual

07 –08 Actual

4,916 9,153

0 7,607

2,927 9,258

498 18,888.94

785 0 1,550 1,680 426 0 5,092

3,900 1,088 3,500 1,450 0 75 4,688

43 1,238 3,000 1,500 542 80 4,714.97

3,000

5,250 8,116 0 3,000 990 1,523

599 958 0

0 208 2,584

4,200 990 2,250 401 295 270 5,913

17,207

21,670

28,388

17,139

26,886

$161,635 174,739

162,373

182,948

$165,588

102

5,000 15,000 4,357

985 4,943

30,504.96 10,285 132,226.96 45,715.78

4,000 1,300 3,600 2,500 500 250 6,000 38,150 145,010

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CONTENTS ARTICLES 261 Preacher Politics and People Power: Congregational Conflicts in New York City, 1810–1830 Kyle T. Bulthuis

283 “Unashamed of the Gospel”: Johann Hinrich Wichern and the Battle for the Soul of Prussian Prisons Albert Wu

309 An Egyptian in China: Ahmed Fahmy and the Making of “World Christianities” Heather J. Sharkey

327 Caring Beyond National Borders: The YMCA and Chinese Laborers in World War I Europe Peter Chen-main Wang

350 Christianizing the Klan: Alma White, Branford Clarke, and the Art of Religious Intolerance Lynn S. Neal

379 BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES 478 BOOKS RECEIVED 485 SOCIETY NOTICES

“The Men Who are Refusing to Bow to the Great Image,” from Alma White, The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy (Zarephath, N.J.: The Good Citizen, 1925), 74. Cambridge Journals Online For further information about this journal please go to the journal website at: journals.cambridge.org/chh