Practicing Protestants: Histories of Christian Life in America, 1630--1965 (Lived Religions)

376 Pages·2006·4.53 MB·English

by  Professor Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp PhD

Practicing Protestants
l i v e d r e l i g i o n s
Series Editors David D. Hall and Robert A. Orsi
Practicing Protestants
Histories of Christian Life in America, 1630–1965
Edited by
l a u r i e f . m a f f l y - k i p p
l e i g h e . s c h m i d t
m a r k va l e r i
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Baltimore
This book has been brought to publication with the generous
assistance of the Lilly Endowment.
© 2006 The Johns Hopkins University Press
All rights reserved. Published 2006
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
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The Johns Hopkins University Press
2715 North Charles Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Practicing Protestants : histories of Christian life in America, 1630–1965 /
edited by Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp, Leigh E. Schmidt, and Mark Valeri.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 0-8018-8361-X (hardcover : alk. paper) —
isbn 0-8018-8362-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. United States—Church history. 2. Christianity and culture—United
States—History. I. Maffly-Kipp, Laurie F., 1960– II. Schmidt, Leigh Eric.
III. Valeri, Mark R.
br515.p76 2006
280⬘.40973—dc22 2005032063
A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
c o n t e n t s
Preface vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
part i puritan and evangelical practice
in new england, 1630–1800
1 Writing as a Protestant Practice: Devotional Diaries
in Early New England 19
catherine a. brekus
2 Forgiveness: From the Puritans to Jonathan Edwards 35
mark valeri
part i i mission, nation, and christian practice, 1820–1940
3 Assembling Bodies and Souls: Missionary Practices
on the Pacific Frontier 51
laurie f. maffly-kipp
4 Honoring Elders: Practices of Sagacity and Deference
in Ojibwe Christianity 77
michael d. mcnally
5 Nurturing Religious Nationalism: Korean Americans in Hawaii 100
david k. yoo
6 Re-Forming the Church: Preservation, Renewal, and Restoration
in American Christian Architecture in California 118
roberto lint sagarena
vi Contents
part i i i devotional practices and modern
predicaments, 1880–1920
7 “Acting Faith”: Practices of Religious Healing in
Late-Nineteenth-Century Protestantism 137
heather d. curtis
8 Observing the Lives of the Saints: Sanctification as Practice
in the Church of God in Christ 159
anthea d. butler
9 The Practice of Prayer in a Modern Age: Liberals, Fundamentalists,
and Prayer in the Early Twentieth Century 177
rick ostrander
part iv liberal protestants and
universalizing practices, 1850–1965
10 Cosmopolitan Piety: Sympathy, Comparative Religions,
and Nineteenth-Century Liberalism 199
leigh e. schmidt
11 The Practice of Dance for the Future of Christianity: “Eurythmic
Worship” in New York’s Roaring Twenties 222
tisa j. wenger
12 Taste Cultures: The Visual Practice of Liberal Protestantism, 1940–1965 250
sally m. promey
Notes 295
List of Contributors 351
Index 353
p r e f a c e
The History of American Christian Practice Project, a three-year collaborative en-
terprise under the sponsorship of the Lilly Endowment, set out to confront Christian
practice as an aspect of American religious history. The twelve principal researchers
for the project faced far more knots than we could ever hope to untangle in a single
volume of essays, and there seemed to be no end of loops and twists in the threads we
were following. Take one example: Jonathan Edwards’s congregants in the early 1730s
thought they knew, quite concretely, what Christian forgiveness meant. Forgiveness,
in the Puritan mode, entailed a specific set of social obligations enacted within the
context of a local church community. One was to forgive debts, to acknowledge faults,
and to speak cordially. Adopting those practices, it was believed, eventually would in-
still the appropriate feelings of love within the heart of the individual. By the mid-
eighteenth century, as colonial congregations increasingly came into contact with a
world of transatlantic mercantile, cultural, and intellectual exchange that expanded
their social and economic relations, understanding forgiveness as a discrete set of ob-
ligations to the local community became less viable. How could one forgive those be-
yond the bounds of the congregation—say, the native captors of women taken in war-
fare? Did God’s imperative to forgive extend to those who were outside the immediate
church, and, if so, how could such actions be demonstrated to others?
If forgiveness appears likely to be a particularly wooly element of Christian prac-
tice, consider the dilemmas involved in the seemingly more precise practice of prayer.
In the early twentieth century, Protestant liberals and conservatives alike grappled
with the “problem” of prayer: when, where, and how to do it. People did not seem to
be praying as much as they once had, lamented Reuben Torrey and other leaders; and
when they did pray, they altered the familiar evangelical forms in favor of ones more
congruent with “modern” life. Prayer meetings were being shuffled off to more con-
venient hours, and families did not have the time they once had to engage in collec-
tive morning and evening prayers. Could people instead pray on their own during the
viii Preface
commute to work or find a spare moment amid the bustle of a hectic office? In turn,
did those sorts of prayers, timed for modern efficiency, necessarily demonstrate an at-
tenuation of religious feeling or a decline of family piety?
Christian practice in America has always presented a series of quandaries rather
than a stable set of ingredients. As these opening examples suggest, even those actions
often considered quintessentially a part of the Christian life—sacrament, prayer, rec-
onciliation—open up a host of questions, concerns, conflicts, and anxieties. These
cases also suggest the importance of exploring practice and practices as historical is-
sues. Were people really praying less in the 1920s, or was the practice of prayer taking
different forms? Did self-help maxims, daily affirmations, and meditative techniques
replace more familiar habits of petitionary prayer? Except for the obviously impor-
tant historical work of exploring the continuities and discontinuities of religious
practice, American historians have only occasionally made this province their own.
With the notable exceptions of collections edited by David Hall, Colleen McDannell,
and James M. O’Toole, there has thus far been only scattered attention to the con-
1
ception of practice in the historiography of American religion. The History of Amer-
ican Christian Practice Project brings questions about practice into more sustained
historical and theoretical focus.
This collection of essays represents the central publishing venture of a larger col-
laborative enterprise that has involved more than twenty historians of American re-
ligion, practical theologians, and pastors in an exploration of the significance and use-
fulness of “practice talk”as a tool for understanding American Protestant life. The core
working group of twelve historians, whose essays compose this volume, met five times
between June 2002 and October 2004. In two of those meetings, we added to our
group three practical theologians and pastors, Kathleen Cahalan, Robert Langworthy,
and Craig Townsend. At various points along the way, we enjoyed the careful advice
and formal commentary of Dorothy Bass, Richard Wightman Fox, Charles Ham-
brick-Stowe, and Albert Raboteau. At our first group meeting, in June 2002, we ben-
efited from the presence of Edwin Gaustad; and at our third, in June 2003, from the
participation of David Hall.At every meeting we had the assistance of Kathryn Lofton,
at the time a doctoral student in American religious history, who added another crit-
ical voice to our discussions. Almost all of these scholars participated in our culmi-
nating conference, held at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in October
2004, where Grant Wacker served as the keynote speaker. Thus, the volume is the fruit
of an extended series of conversations, reflections, and debates—an exchange that we
hope proves to be ongoing and of widening reach.
a c k n o w l e d g m e n t s
This book would not have been possible without the generous support of the Lilly
Endowment, Inc., as well as the sage counsel of those associated with it, particularly
Christopher Coble, who shepherded the project from start to finish. Also, our home
institutions—Princeton University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
and Union Theological Seminary of Virginia—supported our cross-institutional col-
laboration, as did numerous people at each school, including Louis Weeks and Daryl
Sasser at Union, Anita Kline and Barbara Bermel at Princeton, and Hope Toscher at
Chapel Hill. The acumen and energy of Kathryn Lofton, the chief coordinator of our
meetings and exchanges, kept us moving and lifted our spirits at every turn.
Crucial to the shaping of our group endeavor were several senior historians who
advised us at various points and in different capacities along the way: Dorothy Bass,
Richard Wightman Fox, David D. Hall, Charles Hambrick-Stowe, Albert Raboteau,
Ann Taves, and Grant Wacker. In our effort to forge a larger exchange between histo-
rians of American religion and theologians of Christian practice, we found wonder-
ful interlocutors in Kathleen Cahalan, Robert Langworthy, and Craig Townsend.
We have been very fortunate to work with Henry Tom, Juliana McCarthy, and
Anne Whitmore, our editors at Johns Hopkins University Press. We are also grateful
to have David Hall and Robert Orsi as editors of the larger series in which this vol-
ume appears.
Above all, we are appreciative of the rich collegiality that this project has fostered.
It has been a source of great satisfaction for us to work over the last four years with
such a fine group of scholars, all of whom we now count as good friends. We trust that
at least one practice has been fully vindicated by our research: namely, the practice of
convening scholars to think collaboratively about their shared areas of inquiry.