History/ Religion 345 – RELIGION IN AMERICA – October 31, 2005  

RELIGION IN INDUSTRIAL AMERICA  

Note: America after the Civil War was drastically different from America before the Civil War.  How would America’s various religions adapt to this new urban, technological, industrial, fast-changing environment?  Arthur Schlesinger, Sr., the great historian, remarked (p. 277) that American religion after the Civil War faced “two great challenges: (1) to their system of thought and (2) to their social program.”  Last week we considered challenges – especially those posed by Science – to systems of thought.  Today we consider new challenges posed by the sweeping technological, economic, and political changes in late 19^th century America.  

TERMS TO KNOW:  

1. “True Womanhood” & the “Myth of Domesticity”
2. Phoebe Palmer
3. Antoinette Brown
4. Catherine Booth
5. Woman’s Christian Temperance Union
6. Frances Willard
7. Elizabeth Cady Stanton
8. “Christian manliness” & “muscular Christianity”
9. Rescue missions
10. Salvation Army
11. “Institutional churches”
12. Thomas K. Beecher
13. Gospel of Wealth
14. Andrew Carnegie
15. Russell Conwell, Acres of Diamonds
16. Washington Gladden
17. Charles Sheldon, In His Steps – or – What would Jesus Do? (1897)
18. Toynbee Hall
19. Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianity & the Social Crisis (1910)
20. “Progressive” politics
21. Josiah Strong, Our Country (1885).

QUESTIONS:   

1. In the later 1800s, there was, among some Christians, a huge debate about gender – it involved issues like “true womanhood” and “muscular Christianity.”  Why would such issues become especially important in that era?
2. Another huge issue involved social justice.  What was the difference between “The Gospel of Wealth” and the “Social Gospel”?  Why would this issue arise at this time? 

Queens University of Charlotte  1900 Selwyn Avenue  Charlotte, NC  28274
Modified by:  H.  Kamerling