Evangelicals at a Crossroads: Revivalism and Social Reform in Boston, 1860–1910

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)This monograph on Boston's urban evangelicals is an important addition to existing scholarship on the city's religious life in the last half of the nineteenth century. Much is known of Catholic and mainstream Protestant (Congregational and Episcopal) Boston during these years, but until Hartley's study, the contributions of holiness Methodists, Salvationists, and Baptists--what Hartley labels "upstart evangelicals" (for many were recent immigrants and rural migrants of lower socio-economic standing than more established Protestants)--have been largely neglected. As typified the shifting urban landscape across America in this period, Boston experienced its own economic, political, ethnic, and religious reconfiguration. Hartley uses the apt metaphor of "crossroads" to characterize evangelical religion, for in the half century (1860-1910) of revivals and social reform evangelical interests and institutional formation intersected, diverged, and fragmented.Holiness Methodists were at the gravitational center of Boston's evangelical movement, with Baptists and Salvationists close at hand. Convinced that entire sanctification was not merely personal but had social ramifications, Methodists preached salvation while engaging in numerous social reform efforts, beginning in the city's blighted North End and subsequently moving to areas of the city in greatest need. Hartley highlights the contributions of several individuals who advanced the evangelical cause through activism, preaching, writing and institution building: the colorful Independent Methodist Henry Morgan, known as the "Poor Man's Preacher," author of Boston-based novels and exposes, founder of the Boston Union Mission Society, advocate for labor and women's rights, virulent critic of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and endower of what became Goodwill Industries; Daniel Steele, one of the intellectual leaders of the holiness movement, professor of theology at newly founded Boston University (1869), author of the best-selling Love Enthroned: Essays on Evangelical Perfection (1875), and theological activist who inspired the creation of religious social welfare organizations such as the Home for Little Wanderers; and Eben Tourjee, whose service to the poor and prostitutes and advocacy of labor reform is overlooked by his legacy as founder of the New England Conservatory of Music. As for Baptists, a presence in Boston since the colonial era, A. J. Gordon was their luminous figure. He collaborated with Methodists, defended Charles Cullis's faith-healing movement, championed inner-city and foreign missions, and, as the emphases between between social reformers and revivalists diverged toward the end of the nineteenth century, sided with evangelistic efforts over against the socially-driven institutional church movement.Hartley attends not only to the evangelistic and reform contributions of talented and pragmatically-driven individuals, but examines also the involvement of upstart evangelicals in Boston politics. As the city's population swelled to become America's most Catholic city (41.3% by 1890), evangelicals revived the anti-Catholic nativism of the antebellum era. Evangelicals fought the growing Irish Catholic political presence (the first Irish mayor was elected in 1884), and in the late 1890s, a coalition of evangelical women and clergy sought to retain Protestant control of the public school system. Despite their anti-Catholicism, evangelical reformers such as Morgan and Edward Rogers found common cause with Catholics in their support for the labor movement--at least until the Chicago Haymarket tragedy of 1886 turned evangelicals away from the movement's radicalism. …