Evangelicals at a Crossroads

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 re v isiti ng new engla nd : th e new r eg i o nali sm
Series Editors
Siobhan Senier, University of New Hampshire
Darren Ranco, Dartmouth College
Adam Sweeting, Boston University
David H. Watters, University of New Hampshire

This series presents fresh discussions of the distinctiveness of New England culture.
The editors seek manuscripts examining the history of New England regionalism; the
way its culture came to represent American national culture; the interaction between
that “official” New England culture and the people who lived in the region; and local,
subregional, or even biographical subjects as microcosms that explicitly open up and
consider larger issues. The series welcomes new theoretical and historical perspectives
and is designed to cross disciplinary boundaries and appeal to a wide audience.

For a complete list of books available in this series, please visit www.upne.com

Benjamin L. Hartley, Evangelicals at a Crossroads: Revivalism and Social Reform in

Boston, 1860–1910
Ronald J. Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray, Voices without Votes: Women and Politics in
Antebellum New England
James W. Baker, Thanksgiving: The Biography of an American Holiday
Monica Chiu, editor, Asian Americans in New England: Culture and Community
Aífe Murray, Maid as Muse: How Servants Changed Emily Dickinson’s Life and Language
Scott Molloy, Irish Titan, Irish Toilers: Joseph Banigan and Nineteenth-Century New
England Labor
Joseph A. Conforti, editor, Creating Portland: History and Place in Northern New
England
Deborah Pickman Clifford and Nicholas R. Clifford, “The Troubled Roar of the Waters”:
Vermont in Flood and Recovery, 1927–1931
JerriAnne Boggis, Eve Allegra Raimon, and Barbara A. White, editors, Harriet Wilson’s
New England: Race, Writing, and Region
Kimberly A. Jarvis, Franconia Notch and the Women Who Saved It
Christopher Johnson, This Grand and Magnificent Place: The Wilderness Heritage of the
White Mountains
William Brown and Joanne Pope Melish, editors, The Life of William J. Brown of
Providence, R.I.
Denis R. Caron, A Century in Captivity: The Life and Trials of Prince Mortimer, a
Connecticut Slave
David L. Richards, Poland Spring: A Tale of the Gilded Age, 1860–1900
Paul M. Searls, Two Vermonts: Geography and Identity, 1865–1910

Hartley_Book.indb 2 10/12/10 12:01:21 PM

 benjamin l. hartley

Evangelicals
at a
Crossroads
revivalism &
social reform
in boston,
1860–1910

university of new hampshire press

Durham, New Hampshire

Published by

university press of new england

Hanover and London

Hartley_Book.indb 3 10/12/10 12:01:21 PM

 un i ve rsi ty of n e w h a m ps h i r e pr e ss
published by University Press of New England
www.upne.com
© 2011 University of New Hampshire
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Typeset in Miller Text and Display by Michelle Grald

University Press of New England is a member of the Green Press

Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum
requirement for recycled paper.

For permission to reproduce any of the material in this book, contact

Permissions, University Press of New England, One Court Street,
Suite 250, Lebanon NH 03766; or visit www.upne.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hartley, Benjamin L. (Benjamin Loren)
Evangelicals at a crossroads : revivalism and social reform in Boston,
1860–1910 / Benjamin L. Hartley. – 1st ed.
p. cm. ­— (Revisiting New England : the new regionalism)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-1-58465-928-0 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn 978-1-58465-929-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Evangelicalism—Massachusetts—Boston—History—19th
century. 2. Evangelicalism—Social aspects—Massachusetts—
Boston—History—19th century. 3. Church and social problems—
Massachusetts—Boston—History—19th century. 4. Revivals—
Massachusetts—Boston—History—19th century. 5. Boston
(Mass.)—Church history—19th century. 6. Boston (Mass.)—Social
conditions—19th century. I. Title.
bv3775.b7h37 2010
277.44’61081—dc22 2010031299
5 4 3 2 1

Recipient of the Jesse Lee Prize awarded by the General Commission

on Archives and History of the United Methodist Church.

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 For Dale Suderman

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Hartley_Book.indb 6 10/12/10 12:01:21 PM
 contents

Acknowledgments · ix

Introduction · 1

chapter one
D. L. Moody Arrives in a Changing Boston · 15
“There Is a Magnetism in His Voice”

chapter two
The Early Years of Evangelical Institution Building, 1858–1883 · 33
“Good! You’ve Got the Fire in You”
chapter three
Evangelicals and Boston Politics · 65
“The Next Protestant Move Will Be No Boys’ Play”

chapter four
The Salvation Army and Other Evangelical Organizations Led
by Women, 1884–1892 · 93
“Aggressive Christianity”

chapter five
Evangelical Consensus and Division · 117
“All of This Confusion and Hurt”

chapter six
The North End and the South End in the 1890s · 137
“Let Us Re-take the North End for Methodism”
Conclusion · 165
“The Most Marvelous Revival of All of Her History”

Notes · 181

Bibliography · 255

Index · 277

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Hartley_Book.indb 8 10/12/10 12:01:21 PM
 acknowledgments

Crossroads—both literal and figurative—can be creative places where one

feels gratitude for one’s companions along the way, or they can be places of
considerable loneliness and confusion. The writing of this book has thank-
fully been characterized far more by the former than the latter. The people I
mention here must know that my gratitude is far deeper than their placement
on mere lists can convey.
This project began when archivist Stephen Pentek at the Boston University
School of Theology Library suggested I track down some material he thought
might be stored at the New England Deaconess Association in Concord, Mas-
sachusetts. His hunch proved correct, and I realized afresh the invaluable
contributions archivists and librarians make to the historian’s craft. The staff
at archives, libraries, local churches, and social service agencies I have visited
in the course of my research have been very patient in providing me with op-
portunities to explore their archival treasures. First to be thanked are those
organizations, like the New England Deaconess Association, which are not
set up for the purposes of entertaining researchers but are nevertheless very
hospitable in doing so. The Reverend Sara Irwin at the Emmanuel Episco-
pal Church, Lt. Colonel Fred Van Brunt and Bill Ticehurst at the Salvation
Army’s Massachusetts Divisional Headquarters, the Home for Little Wander-
ers, and the Boston Rescue Mission were all generous in allowing me to look
through the historical materials they possessed.
Scott Bedio and Susan Mitchem at the Salvation Army Archives and Re-
search Center in Alexandria, Virginia, made my visit to the Washington, dc,
area a productive one and were kind enough to forward additional materials
to me by mail upon my request. Jason Wood at the Simmons College archives
was also helpful in retrieving materials from that institution’s rich holdings
on nineteenth-century social welfare institutions. Librarians and archivists at
Boston University School of Theology and then at Palmer Theological Semi-
nary were invaluable in helping me to track down some particularly obscure
items.
The staff at the following institutions must also be thanked, even if I did
not always get to know them by name since my time in their library was rel-
atively brief and the helpful persons I encountered were too numerous to
mention: The American Antiquarian Society (Worcester, Mass.), Andover-
Harvard Library at Harvard Divinity School, the Archives at the New England
Conservatory of Music, the Archives at the Billy Graham Center (Wheaton,
Ill.), Boston Public Library, Congregational Library and Archives, Crowell

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 Library at Moody Bible Institute (Chicago), Mary Baker Eddy Library, Mas-
sachusetts Historical Society, Emerson College Library, Goddard Library
at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Healey Library at University of
Massachusetts at Boston, Humanities Library at Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, O’Neill Library at Boston College, Snell Library at Northeastern
University, Trask Library at Andover-Newton Theological Seminary, and the
United Methodist Archives Center at Drew University (Madison, nj).
Teachers, colleagues, and friends at Boston University helped to guide
this project along in its earliest stages. My doctoral adviser, Professor Dana
Robert, remembered my enthusiasm in discovering the Deaconess archives
and wisely suggested that I continue to explore the world of Boston’s late-
nineteenth-century Methodists and other evangelicals. I continue to grow in
my appreciation for her vocation as scholar, teacher, and colleague. Professor
David Hempton, now at Harvard University, introduced me to the rich histo-
riography of nineteenth-century European urban religion and helped me to
see the potential for similar studies of North American cities. My friend Glen
Messer was a great support in Boston as we encouraged one another in our
dissertation research. His encouragement in the latter stages of writing and
his passion for excellence in teaching are things I have gained from him as
well. Other friends during my time in Boston like Eric Baldwin, Billy Francis,
Julian Gotobed, Mi-Soon Im, Yeonseung Lee, Bilal Ozaslan, Gary VanderPol,
and Roman Williams were helpful in providing encouragement in the early
stages of this project.
Shortly after my move from Boston to Philadelphia I was fortunate to have
received not one but two awards for the manuscript in its dissertation phase
of existence. In 2007 the manuscript received the Outstanding Dissertation
Award from the Wesleyan Theological Society and the Jesse Lee Prize, given
once every four years by the General Commission on Archives and History
of the United Methodist Church. The financial subsidy provided through the
prize has helped many books on Methodist history to be published over the
years. I have benefited a great deal from works by senior scholars who were
previous recipients of the Jesse Lee Prize and am humbled to have my book
follow in their footsteps—at least in this one way.
I am thankful as well to the faculty, administration, and staff at Palmer
Theological Seminary and the wider Eastern University community for the
support they have so generously offered to me as a faculty member. I am es-
pecially grateful for the friendship and encouragement I have received from
Donald Brash, Elizabeth Congdon-Martin, Colleen DiRaddo, Melody Mazuk,
Francesca Nuzzolese, Peter Schreck, and Al Tizon during these past few years
at Palmer. I currently co-teach Methodist history with Rev. Joseph DiPaolo,
whose knowledge of Philadelphia Methodism has helped me appreciate Bos-
ton’s history in new ways. I am thankful as well for the many students in
my classes on Methodism, mission, and world Christianity who inspire me

x · Acknowledgments

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 by their enthusiasm for the holiness and Pentecostal movements—past and
present.
When this project began, my children, Luke and Tess, loved to hear me
tell them stories. Their tastes in literature have now developed beyond the
quickly created tales I once told them while driving in the car, but they still
inspire me to become a better storyteller as I watch them listen to novels read
to them by the fireplace. Stories from our past deserve to be listened to with
equally rapt attention. My wife Laura’s love and encouragement throughout
this project has been a most graceful gift—in the fullest meaning of those
terms. The excellent maps and graphs she created for this book have im-
proved it considerably.
I dedicate this book to Dale Suderman, who first taught me the value of
an “anthropologist’s eye” for understanding the urban crossroads. His enthu-
siasm and genuine fascination with the topic of this book and his straight-
talking criticisms of my ideas have made this project fun as well as meaning-
ful. He is a therapist by vocation, and his deep respect for his clients’ stories
has been an important model for me as I have sought to honor stories of the
past and present in all their complexities. Dale suffered a tragic stroke two
years ago, and even though his ability to communicate has lessened, he will
always be teaching me about the depths of friendship.

Acknowledgments · xi

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Hartley_Book.indb 12 10/12/10 12:01:21 PM
 Evangelicals at a Crossroads

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Hartley_Book.indb 14 10/12/10 12:01:21 PM
 introduction

In recent years, prominent American evangelicals such as Jim Wallis and

Rick Warren have described themselves as “nineteenth-century evangelicals”
and have expressed their desire to take contemporary evangelicals “back to
the nineteenth century,” when revivalist fervor and valiant efforts at social re-
form were both emphasized.1 Indeed, many nineteenth-century evangelicals
did have this dual focus. Outreach efforts among sailors, immigrants, and the
desperately poor were begun at the same time that evangelicals also devoted
enormous amounts of energy to citywide revivals. Evangelical revivalism and
social reform were the movement’s most public expressions of their corporate
identity. But this double commitment was no more easily attained than it is
now. A complex array of historical events, people, religious ideas, and shrewd
political decisions shaped evangelicals’ involvement in revival and social re-
form in growing nineteenth-century cities. Simply put, evangelical involve-
ment in revivalism and social reform was a messy affair that involved poli-
tics and piety and showcased evangelicals’ contradictions as much as their
consistency.
The Methodist, Baptist, and (especially) Salvation Army evangelicals dis-
cussed in this book—whom I sometimes call “upstart evangelicals”—were
newcomers to nineteenth-century Boston, and they, in turn, sought to come
to grips with even more recently arrived immigrants from Europe. The up-
start evangelicals, though a diverse lot, could be generally categorized as
persons of lower socioeconomic status with relatively little formal education
compared with more established Protestants in Boston. Evangelical rural mi-
grants, in particular, seemed especially adept at finding a creative marginal
space for themselves in Boston. The concept of “marginality” has been utilized
by other scholars to describe residents of lodging houses in late-nineteenth-
century Boston who created a new subculture that “differed in important
ways from those formed by earlier groups of Americans or immigrants, or by
native- and foreign-born tenants at the higher and lower reaches of the social
scale.” This concept of a marginal middle class describes both how upstart
evangelicals were often perceived by other Protestants as well as how they
understood themselves in the era immediately preceding and following the
Civil War.2
Upstart evangelical initiatives in the city were sometimes remarkably
brash and frequently caught more established Protestants off guard. These
revivalistic upstarts often led in efforts for labor reform, public school re-
form, temperance, and tenement housing reform as these movements swept
through the city and prompted dramatic political rearrangements and new

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 alliances during the fifty years under consideration. Although never control-
ling city politics in Boston in ways that the Irish and Boston Brahmins did in
the late nineteenth century, evangelicals nonetheless influenced the outcome
of many mayoral elections—at times in precisely the opposite way than the
way they had intended.
As insightfully noted by Margaret Bendroth, upstart evangelicals could
also be identified by the relatively marginal position of their church buildings.
Much of the prime real estate had already been taken before Baptists and
Methodists arrived in any significant numbers.3 A similar phenomenon of a
new sort of “upstart evangelical” is occurring among American evangelicals
today as an older generation of leaders gives way to younger evangelicals—
many of whom are recent immigrants or the children of immigrant parents.
The storefronts that house these churches are often in neighborhoods with
the lowest rents, and their churches frequently lease space from declining
congregations, which may themselves have been characterized as “upstarts”
a century earlier.4
Experts predict that by the year 2050 the population of the United States
will grow by an additional 100 million persons, almost entirely the result of
immigration streams from Latin America, Asia, and Africa. The vast ma-
jority of these immigrants will have some kind of affiliation with the Chris-
tian faith.5 Dramatic changes in urban neighborhoods in late-nineteenth-
century-Boston because of immigration from southern and southeastern Eu-
rope were as apparent to residents then as the effects of growing numbers of
immigrants from Latin America and elsewhere are in today’s city—perhaps
even more so.6
This book will not try to point out all the similarities and differences be-
tween today’s Boston and that of the nineteenth century; readers are left to
draw their own conclusions in this regard. Nevertheless, I insist that this
story of Boston evangelicals, in all its particularity, does indeed shed light on
contemporary debates in American religious life. Generalizations are difficult
to make about contemporary American evangelicals just as they were in the
late nineteenth century. The study of any broad-based religious movement
requires careful attention to local circumstances as well as global influences—
not least of which being migration trends. A famous Boston congressman has
remarked that “all politics is local.”7 Contemporary studies of the varieties of
pentecostalism around the world, and this study of evangelicals in the late
nineteenth century, demonstrate that the same must be said for religion.
Evangelicals at a Crossroads illustrates the complex web of relationships
and ideas connecting nineteenth-century evangelicals as they went about
their business of revivalism and social reform in the streets, tenements, and
tabernacles of the city from approximately 1860 to 1910. I strive to keep in
focus the influences of the changing city itself in all its socioeconomic and

2 · Evangelicals at a Crossroads

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 political complexity as well as to take seriously both the religious revivalism
of evangelicals and their attempts at social reform in a city increasingly filled
with poor immigrants and rural migrants from the American countryside.
I utilize the metaphor of “crossroads” in this book to draw attention to the
interconnecting “roads” that evangelicals traveled in their public activities of
revivalism and social reform in this period.8 (The terms social reform and
social welfare are used interchangeably in this book.) Visitors to Boston in the
nineteenth century, no less than those today, were likely easily dismayed by
the confusing nature of Boston’s streets. Boston crossroads are anything but
neat and tidy, but they do get the city’s people where they want to go and are
even loved by current and former residents (such as myself ) who note that
they “add character” to the city. I argue that, like Boston’s streets, evangelicals
were far from a logical, uniform bunch as they journeyed through their lives
on a variety of “roads” converging and diverging from one another along the
way. Their endless particularities as women and men, rural migrants, recent
immigrants, scholars, preachers, students, and workers comprise the “thick
description” of their lives conveyed in this book.9 The argument is made that,
despite these particularities and the ways that their paths converged and di-
verged at different points, there was a general direction—a common destina-
tion if you will—toward which these upstart evangelicals were moving. Their
destination can be understood as their desire for sanctification in themselves
as well as their city to more perfectly reflect God’s will as they understood it.
The way this religious vision played out in the Boston context, as well as the
ways it was altered and, in some cases, secularized is an important part of the
story.
The metaphor of “crossroads” is also used in a somewhat narrower sense to
explain how and why the fragile evangelical consensus concerning revivalism
and social reform that was held together for much of the period under con-
sideration began to fragment in the 1890s. People who had previously walked
side by side began to go in markedly different directions owing to a whole
assortment of ideas and strategies surrounding their revivalism and social
reform efforts. The book draws attention to these “crossroads of decision” and
explains how the very persons who had a considerable measure of consensus
as evangelicals in the 1870s could, by the early decades of the twentieth cen-
tury, be sometimes best described by their antagonism toward one another
and be labeled liberal Protestants, fundamentalists, or pentecostals.
Before moving on to our analysis of Boston evangelicals and their cross-
roads, there are two important questions to be considered. First, why look at
Boston when trying to understand American evangelicals during this time in
history? Second, who were the evangelicals discussed in this book and why
do they matter? The answers to these two questions situate the book in its
historiographical context and further clarify its key contributions.

Introduction · 3

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 why boston?
Boston residents today smile about their city’s title as the “hub of the
universe”—a modification of a phrase coined by Oliver Wendell Holmes in
1858, incidentally also the year of a dramatic revival taking place through-
out the city.10 When Holmes referred to Boston’s primacy as an intellectual
center in mid-nineteenth-century America, few would have questioned his
assertion. This intellectual vigor included a large religious component. The
thick network of Protestant theological seminaries such as Harvard (Unitar-
ian), Andover (Congregationalist), Newton (Baptist), Episcopal Theological
School, and Boston University School of Theology (Methodist Episcopal) all
within a convenient commute from downtown Boston underscored the posi-
tion of Boston as the intellectual center of American Protestantism. Boston
remained an abiding influence in later decades; two standard-bearers of mid-
twentieth-century Protestantism, Carl F. H. Henry (a prominent evangelical
theologian) and Martin Luther King, Jr., both received their doctoral degrees
from Boston University, in 1949 and 1955 respectively.
Of course, the historical importance of the New England region for Ameri-
can religion can be pushed back to the earliest years of European settlement
on the continent. Many parents are reminded of this fact each November
as elementary schoolchildren across the nation are introduced to the impor-
tance of New England religion in American history as they don paper Pilgrim
hats in memory of early Puritans. Boston and the wider New England region
have been the subject of extensive scholarship on seventeenth-century Puri-
tanism and the revivals of the First and Second Great Awakenings. Research
by historians of subsequent periods presents a richly textured portrait of the
region. Scholars such as Thomas H. O’Connor have told the story of Boston
Catholics, and Margaret Bendroth has, more recently, provided a similarly
richly textured portrayal of the rise of American fundamentalism in the city.11
Although less concerned with religious themes, urban historians Sam Bass
Warner, Oscar Handlin, and Stephen Thernstrom also focused on Boston,
thus providing an excellent foundation for historians of urban religion.12
Histories of American urban religion, however, have barely scratched the
surface when compared with the historiography of urban religion in the Brit-
ish Isles and the European continent.13 For example, the American Journal of
Urban History has published only a handful of articles on urban religion in
its thirty-year history, and most of these have been book review essays.14 As a
local history of Boston’s upstart evangelicals, this book addresses the lack of
attention to religious themes in American urban history scholarship.
Boston’s upper-class residents—or Boston Brahmins—were national lead-
ers in the establishment of urban social welfare institutions, but evangelical
contributions in this regard were also significant.15 Without an impressive
lineage of churches or social welfare institutions to give them social status,

4 · Evangelicals at a Crossroads

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 Boston’s upstart evangelicals established new institutions for poor relief that
were simultaneously true to their revivalistic motivations as well as to their
Boston context.16 These new evangelical social welfare institutions differed
substantially from those belonging to an older tradition of social welfare and
reform dominated by Boston Congregationalists, Episcopalians, and Unitar-
ians. The process of building the new institutions drew evangelicals together
across denominations, but over time the consensus broke apart. The evan-
gelical contribution to social welfare in the late nineteenth century has often
been overlooked in histories of American social work. This book seeks to ad-
dress that deficiency.17
Nineteenth-century Boston was simultaneously one of the oldest cities in
America and one of the newest when one considers the tremendous numbers
of rural migrants from farming communities and new immigrants from Eu-
rope who increasingly called the city home. The rural migration to the cities
was impressive. In 1860, 80.2 percent of Americans were rural residents; by
1910 only 54.4 percent of Americans could be so categorized.18 In Boston,
most rural migrants came from surrounding New England states, but mi-
grants from the Midwest also made their mark. The contributions of these
rural migrants to the city have rarely been given due attention by historians.
From a purely numerical standpoint, Boston received fewer immigrants from
Europe than New York did at this time. In terms of religious differences, how-
ever, Boston felt the strains of immigrant movements more acutely than any
other city. In 1890, the census revealed Boston to be the nation’s most Catholic
city at 41.3 percent of the total population—over 15 percentage points ahead
of New York, its closest competitor. It is little wonder that anti-Catholic feel-
ings among evangelicals were such a motivating force for Protestants as they
grappled with the “peril of Romanism.”19 The presence in Boston of so many
recent immigrants from Britain and the Maritime Provinces of Canada fur-
ther intensified anti-Catholic feelings as conflict between Irish Catholics and
British Protestants in the old country was transported to Boston without the
slightest diminishing of fervor on either side.20 In addition to analyzing the
important role anti-Catholic organizing played for evangelicals, this study
demonstrates that a few Protestant immigrants from Italy, Sweden, and else-
where were important leaders in revivalism and social reform, not merely
recipients of native-born efforts.

who were the evangelicals?

The group referred to in this book as “evangelicals” was a broad, variegated
movement—just as it is in American society today. Efforts to precisely define
who was and who was not an evangelical inevitably fail if pushed too far, but
some generalizations are possible. Evangelicals were devoted to revivalism
and thus possessed a heightened concern for persons to have a personal ex-
Introduction · 5

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 perience of salvation through Jesus. A large contingent of evangelicals espe-
cially stressed the Bible’s teachings on holiness and encouraged one another
to seek the experience of “entire sanctification”—to be discussed below. The
evangelicals described in this book were a group composed mostly of Meth-
odists, Baptists, and Salvation Army adherents along with some members of
the more firmly established Protestant denominations such as Congregation-
alists and Episcopalians. A portion of Episcopalians, for example, were recent
arrivals to the city from the Maritime Provinces and were generally of a lower
social class than many wealthy Boston Episcopalians.21 These mostly white,
generally lower-middle-class evangelicals often settled into a Methodist orbit
of camp meetings and prayer gatherings that were part of the transdenomi-
national American holiness movement.
Because of this book’s focus on the Methodists and the holiness move-
ment, the term “holiness evangelical” may be a more precise description of
the group of evangelicals under consideration. I have chosen, however, to
use the less cumbersome term “evangelical” for three reasons that go beyond
its being an easy shorthand description. First, the late-nineteenth-century
history of the evangelical movement in America needs to be seen in light
of the Methodist movement more than it has been in past scholarship. The
Methodist Episcopal Church, after all, was by far the largest denomination
in North America and evangelical in its emphasis on revivalism and personal
experience of God. Yet too many historians of the nineteenth century seem to
either ignore it or give it short shrift relative to its large size and influence.22
Second, and in the opposite way, historians of American Methodism would
benefit from examining it in light of the wider evangelical movement in the
nineteenth century. The holiness movement is too often seen as a dimension
of Methodism’s own denominational history. It was much more than this. Its
impact was felt far beyond denominational boundaries.
A third reason to focus attention on the Methodists and the wider ho-
liness movement is related to the contemporary expansion of pentecostal
movements around the world and in America’s cities, including Boston. Most
pentecostal groups began as departures from Methodist or other Wesleyan
denominations. Careful attention to evangelicals’ involvement in revivalism
and social reform in a nineteenth-century city offers a much-needed histori-
cal perspective for the contemporary pentecostals and their growing interest
in social welfare activity.23
By focusing on the Wesleyan holiness movement as a kind of “gravitational
center” for the evangelical movement, I also counter a tendency in historical
scholarship to interpret the late-nineteenth-century evangelical movement
through the lens of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the early
twentieth century. Northeastern Methodists played a minor role in this con-
troversy as they carved out a moderate position that was difficult for them to

6 · Evangelicals at a Crossroads

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 hold for very long. This will be demonstrated in subsequent chapters. Readers
who are interested in better understanding the rise of Boston’s fundamental-
ist community especially in flagship congregations such as Tremont Temple
Baptist Church and Park Street Church are urged to consult Margaret Ben-
droth’s fine study, Fundamentalists in the City.24 In contrast to Bendroth,
my attention to social welfare and reform movements and citywide revivals
has caused me to focus more attention on institutions (orphanages, settle-
ment houses, and the like) established by evangelicals that were independent
from local congregations. I also pay more attention to the ecumenical dynam-
ics of citywide revivals than on what was happening within particular local
churches.
Evangelical motives for establishing social reform institutions and engag-
ing in revivalism were in a constant state of flux and are thus best understood
through dynamic metaphors. If one pictures a magnet with a positive and
negative pole, evangelicals’ anti-Catholic feelings serve as the best negative
marker of evangelical motives in Boston at this time. Evangelical piety nur-
tured in the American holiness movement with its attendant camp meeting
revivals and Tuesday afternoon meetings in a small Beacon Hill church was
the most powerful positive motive (enthusiastically positive) that inspired ef-
forts among Boston’s poor as well as personal holiness. These two motives of
anti-Catholic loathing and holiness movement piety worked like a magnet
(or rotor) in an electric motor that spins because of the constantly changing
polarities of the magnet. The evangelical machine kept humming as long as
the motivational forces at both poles of the magnet remained strong. When
they weakened, the cohesiveness of the evangelical community in Boston
began to break apart.25
There were many theological disputes among evangelicals in late-nineteenth-
century Boston; one of the most important disputes concerned ideas about
the end times and the return of Jesus to earth. Prior to the Civil War the dom-
inant belief among American evangelicals was that Jesus would return after
a millennium of increasing improvements in the church and the world and
that it was the responsibility of Christians to contribute to this work. A strong
belief in this postmillennial return of Jesus fueled the abolitionist fervor of
many evangelicals prior to the Civil War. Commitment to postmillennialism
continued after the Civil War, but beginning in the 1870s it began to be chal-
lenged by evangelicals who espoused a premillennial interpretation of Jesus’
return whereby the world was not going to get better at all but rather would
be getting worse until Jesus returned. Such beliefs about the millennium
were accompanied by a more pessimistic belief in human beings’ potential.
Premillennialist belief was influential in prompting many evangelicals to pull
back from involvement in social reform at the very end of the nineteenth
century to focus more exclusively on “saving souls.”26 A Salvation Army and

Introduction · 7

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 Methodist leader criticized this outlook in one 1883 publication and referred
to premillennialists as “gloomy pessimists” and followers of an “O wretched
man that I am religion.”27
For many evangelicals, however, these ideas of premillennialism and
postmillennialism remained in tension with one another, and many people
simply never felt any compulsion to make up their minds. Many important
evangelical leaders sought to steer a middle way through such controversies
with varying degrees of success.28 In time, however, postmillennial optimism
about human potential would transform into a vague and secularized be-
lief in progress, but at least until the 1890s such postmillennial perspectives
mostly maintained their religious moorings in the groups considered in this
book. The holiness movement’s influence—especially at the popular level—
was important for the way that it continued to supply many evangelicals with
the language of postmillennial expectation and stressed the importance of a
wholehearted devotion to God as a prerequisite for their work to sanctify the
city.
The strategies evangelicals used to promote revivalism and social reform
in the city are equally worthy of attention as theological ideas. It is clear that
the methods utilized in D. L. Moody’s Boston revival in 1877, for example, felt
familiar to upstart evangelical groups (the Methodists and Baptists) but were
more alien for the Episcopalians and Congregationalists. A few months after
the 1877 Boston campaign, Methodist Episcopal Bishop Jesse Peck drew at-
tention to the methodological distinctiveness of his denomination while also
warning his colleagues against the temptations of allowing Methodism to be-
come a more refined religion:

The great danger is that we shall not be ourselves—that original, historic

Methodism will not preserve its identity. . . . There is a distinction be-
tween Methodism and all other forms of Christianity. It believes in the
Bible, in Christ, in the Holy Ghost, and a holy life, like all other evangelical
Churches; but it is distinct in its methods. It is the method of inspira-
tion in distinction from logic. Logic reasons and then believes. Methodism
believes and reasons. Logic reasons and feels. Methodism feels and then
reasons. Logic reasons and enjoys. Methodism gets happy and then rea-
sons. Logic educates and waits for a call, and then preaches. Methodism
preaches, being “moved by the Holy Ghost,” and studies, guided by logic.
Logic “sings and prays with the understanding;” Methodism “with the
spirit and understanding also.” Logic proves things and then uses them.
Methodism strikes heavy blows, wins souls to Christ, and vindicates itself
by what it has done. Logic is prophecy; Methodism is history.29

Peck’s sermon would have resonated with other upstart evangelicals.

Many Baptist and (in subsequent years) Salvation Army leaders would have
affirmed a similar difference between the “logic” of the generally more af-
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 fluent Unitarians, Congregationalists, and Episcopalians and their own less
refined “method of inspiration.”
The methods evangelicals utilized in social welfare efforts also differed
from the ways employed by Boston Brahmins even while evangelicals stra-
tegically sought the counsel—and money—of the more firmly established
“proper” Bostonians. Simply stated, evangelical social welfare tended to more
freely intermingle revivalism with social reform, while more affluent Prot-
estants found revivalism rather unsophisticated. The Salvation Army, more
than any other denomination in Boston, displayed the greatest innovation in
its methods of revivalism and social reform, and those methods were conse-
quently mimicked by other evangelical groups as they observed the Salvation-
ists’ uncouth success. Proper Bostonians mostly just looked on with dismay.

the holiness movement

Before commencing an examination of upstart evangelicals in late-nineteenth-
century Boston, it is important to understand the origins and establishment
of the religious movement that most inspired them. Among religious move-
ments blowing through Boston before and after the Civil War, the holiness
movement is by far the most important for our understanding of evangelicals
in the city and nation.30 In the early years of the twentieth century the holi-
ness movement began to decline in its influence and was replaced by other
movements that did not have the same cohesive power for as wide an array
of evangelical adherents. Today, camp meeting sites in Hamilton, Massachu-
setts, and on Martha’s Vineyard stand as sedate architectural reminders of
a movement that once ran wild in New England. The impact of the holiness
movement on New England religion has been generally overlooked compared
with the influence of the much-pondered Transcendentalists and their fore-
bears, who did so much to shape Protestant liberalism in America.31
Historians usually trace the origin of the holiness movement in the late
nineteenth century to the evangelical revival of the prior century in England
led by John Wesley and countless lay itinerant preachers—male and female—
who sought to “spread Scriptural holiness over the land.” Wesley’s doctrine of
“entire sanctification” stressed that the goal of the Christian life was to attain
an experience of “perfect love” whereby avoiding sin was no longer a struggle.
Unlike Calvinists, Wesley believed such “Christian perfection” was possible
and even to be expected in this life—although he personally never claimed to
have attained it. Numerous hymns by Charles Wesley on this theme inspired
Methodists and other evangelicals around the world. “Finish then Thy new
creation; Pure and spotless let us be; Let us see Thy great salvation; Perfectly
restored in Thee.”32
New England was the literary birthplace of a revived emphasis in Amer-
ica on the idea of entire sanctification. Timothy Merritt’s The Christian’s
Introduction · 9

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 Manual, a Treatise on Christian Perfection, published in 1825, and his jour-
nal, the Guide to Christian Perfection, were instrumental in sparking renewed
interest in this motivational engine of evangelical expansion. In 1839 Merritt
proclaimed his journal the “first publication of its kind ever commenced.”33
The founding of a new journal focused on encouraging the promulgation of
holiness revival was a foreshadowing of the holiness movement’s later ten-
dency to found new organizations and publications rather than work solely
through denominational structures.34
Drawing on Merritt’s work, Phoebe and Walter Palmer of New York City
promoted entire sanctification ideas among Methodist leaders in the North-
east through their popular Tuesday Meeting for the Promotion of Holiness
begun in 1835 by Phoebe’s sister, Sarah Lankford. The Palmers purchased
Merritt’s Guide to Holiness in 1865, and Phoebe Palmer quickly became the
name most associated with the holiness movement. After the Palmers’ pur-
chase of the Guide, its circulation skyrocketed from thirteen thousand to
thirty thousand monthly subscribers.35
The Palmers’ leadership in ministry with the poor through the Five Points
Mission and New England Methodist preachers’ leadership in abolitionism
demonstrate the intimate link between revivalism and social reform in the
years leading up to the Civil War. During the period of Reconstruction and
beyond, these leaders sought to further the task of “spreading Scriptural holi-
ness” by coordinating their revivalistic efforts in the National Camp Meeting
Association established immediately following the Civil War. African Meth-
odist Episcopal Zion Church preacher Frederick Douglass even used holiness
terminology when he defined the problem of Reconstruction as the “great
work of national regeneration and entire purification.”36 Leaders in other
parts of the holiness movement thought similarly, viewing their involvement
in social welfare activities as a natural extension of their earlier efforts in re-
vivalism. A revival in individuals’ hearts and souls that remained important
to evangelicals also became a revivalism to change the social and political
realities around them.37
This doctrine of holiness or entire sanctification was a powerful force in
the expansion of Methodism from just 2.5 percent of religious adherents in
America in 1776 to 34.2 percent in 1850—nearly double the combined per-
centage of Americans who claimed Congregationalist, Presbyterian, or Uni-
tarian identity. In the decades following the Civil War, the Methodist Episco-
pal Church remained the largest Protestant denomination in the country. But
Methodism never posted such large numbers in the city of Boston—usually
ranking third behind Baptists and Congregationalists. The dominance of
Methodism elsewhere in the country, however, made the Boston Methodists
act with greater boldness than their numbers alone would have justified, and
they established revivalist and social reform efforts that often surpassed those
of other denominations with more adherents in Boston. One of the reasons
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 they could do this was because, unlike Baptists, the Methodists organized
themselves in a regionally centralized manner and could usually manage to
organize and coordinate the financing of new ministry initiatives, especially
those efforts located outside the supervision of a single local congregation,
in a somewhat easier way than less centralized ecclesial groups such as the
Boston Baptists.
Methodists in Boston were also emboldened by the presence of several of
the holiness movement’s most important intellectual and organizational lead-
ers who claimed New England as their home. The Reverends Daniel Steele
and William McDonald stand out as the two most important holiness move-
ment leaders in New England at the time. Only four years apart in age, Daniel
Steele and William McDonald were both sons of farmers, born in rural New
York and rural Maine, respectively. Both Steele and McDonald shared an in-
terest in writing, although Steele was the more prolific and scholarly while
McDonald was more of an administrator and editor of holiness movement
journals.38
William McDonald’s magazine, the Advocate of Christian Holiness, was
a fixture in the homes of New England Methodist pastors and evangelical
laypersons. It was the main publication of the American holiness movement.
McDonald took up the editorial pen in 1871, and by June of 1874 the Advo-
cate of Christian Holiness, a Boston publication, claimed that every Method-
ist preacher in eight annual conferences (a ministry area that would have
covered much of the Northeast) read it.39 William McDonald was a famous
evangelist and promoter of revivals across the country and internationally in
England, India, and Rome, and he also served as pastor of Methodist Epis-
copal churches in the immediate Boston area from 1865 to 1869 and again
from 1876 to 1884.40
The name Daniel Steele appears more frequently in this book than that of
any other single person. Born in 1824, Daniel Steele was an influential pastor
and teacher in the holiness movement throughout the nineteenth century. In
1871, before coming to Boston to serve as pastor of Tremont Street Methodist
Episcopal Church in the South End, Steele served as president of Methodist-
affiliated Syracuse University. From 1884 to 1893 he was a professor at Boston
University School of Theology, often pastoring local churches along with his
teaching responsibilities. He was a gifted teacher, but Steele was best known
as a writer and an advocate for Methodist revivalism and social reform efforts
in Boston. Steele’s influence in these efforts was symbolic of the importance
of holiness movement ideas in the Boston urban mission as a whole. Dur-
ing his lifetime he was sometimes compared to Timothy Merritt and John
Fletcher (a close colleague of John Wesley) because of his heartfelt advocacy
for the experience of entire sanctification. His best-selling book on holiness,
Love Enthroned: Essays on Evangelical Perfection (published in 1875), was
said to have some of the most beautiful prose about entire sanctification of
Introduction · 11

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 figure I.1.
The Reverend Daniel
Steele around 1900.
Image from Zion’s
Herald, 15 August 1900,
1025.

any book in the late nineteenth century. Steele also possessed a lifelong in-
terest in foreign and home missions, which he gained from his mother, who
was the great-niece of the famous missionary to the American Indians David
Brainerd.41
The apex of Steele’s personal influence as a theologian, teacher, and author
in the mid-1880s paralleled the height of the holiness movement’s influence
in late-nineteenth-century Methodism. His influence quickly diminished
among the intellectual elite of his denomination after 1900 as the holiness
movement itself declined in New England Methodism. A 1906 article on
“changes in American Methodist theology” barely mentioned Steele’s name,
but his popular appeal remained strong for a number of years longer.42 That
Love Enthroned was reprinted in 1908 and again in 1923 is a testimony to its
influence among holiness movement adherents.
This book begins with the story of the Dwight L. Moody evangelistic
campaign, which serves as the first of two “bookend events” for the period
under consideration. The first chapter provides an orientation to the people,
politics, religion, land, and buildings of Boston in 1877—the year Dwight L.
Moody came to town for a citywide revival. It was a city Moody knew well,

12 · Evangelicals at a Crossroads

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 figure I.2.
Map of Boston
neighborhoods.
Image from Albert
Benedict Wolfe, The
Lodging House Problem
in Boston (Cambridge:
Harvard University
Press, 1913).

but it had changed a great deal from the time he first came to the city in 1855.
Demographic, geographical, and architectural portraits of the city illustrate
these changes in different ways. The drama of the revival offers a glimpse of
life in Boston at a particularly intense time in its history. The reader is also
introduced to evangelical leaders A. J. Gordon, Frances Willard, and Eben
Tourjée—persons who will be discussed in greater depth in subsequent chap-
ters of the book.
Whereas chapter 1 emphasizes the revivalistic manifestation of evangeli-
cal piety, chapter 2 focuses on the roots of their social reform efforts. It does
this by backing up to a time approximately fifteen years prior to the Moody
revival when several charismatic upstart evangelical leaders began new insti-

Introduction · 13

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 tutions for social reform in the neighborhoods of Beacon Hill, the North End,
the South End, and Roxbury. The transdenominational reach of the holiness
movement becomes obvious in this early period as well.
The next three chapters are less chronologically oriented and instead
illustrate the complex interplay of people, ideas, strategies, and politics at
work in Boston. Chapter 3 focuses on the anti-Catholic and labor organizing
of Boston evangelicals in 1888 and examines the Boston political context of
the late nineteenth century as Irish and Boston Brahmins vied for control
of city hall and the statehouse. Chapter 4 brings to center stage the story of
women’s leadership in evangelical organizations that spanned the globe as
well as the Boston neighborhoods where they worked. The interrelationship
of the temperance movement and the women’s foreign missionary movement
is especially noteworthy. The Salvation Army’s invasion of Boston is given
special attention as a church in Boston that was primarily—but not exclu-
sively—led by women. Chapter 5 analyzes the conflict among evangelicals in
the 1880s and 1890s as the holiness movement experienced its time of great-
est division. New intellectual developments in biblical scholarship, differing
attitudes toward world religions, and differences in the priority placed on
evangelistic efforts and social reform caused sharp—and sometimes highly
nuanced—disagreements among evangelical leaders.
The sixth chapter is primarily a case study of evangelical revivalism and
social reform with a focus mostly on the North End during the 1890s. (The
South End is also briefly discussed.) An examination of the North End at this
time provides a vantage point from which to assess the changes in evangeli-
cal ministries previously discussed in chapter 2, which had been there in the
1870s. One of the most obvious changes in the North End was the neighbor-
hood’s transition from one of primarily Irish immigrants to one where Italian
and Jewish immigrants predominated. The influence of rural migrant church
leaders (from Iowa of all places) and the amazing leadership abilities of an
Italian Methodist couple are part of the fascinating stories from the North
End in the 1890s.
The concluding chapter once again returns to the drama of citywide re-
vivals, in this case two of them held in Boston in 1906 and 1909. Evangeli-
cal leaders welcomed Gipsy Smith and J. Wilbur Chapman in these years
as church leaders sought to resurrect the spirit of Moody’s 1877 revival. The
early-twentieth-century revivals were successful to some extent, but Bos-
ton evangelicals now stood at a different place on the crossroads. They had
changed along with their city—perhaps more than they realized.

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 c h a p te r o n e

D. L. Moody Arrives in a Changing Boston

“There Is a Magnetism in His Voice”

No single event better represents the evangelical crossroads in Boston in the

late nineteenth century than the 1877 Moody revival. Like a magnifying glass
focusing the sun’s energy into one spot, the Moody campaign illustrates how
a wide variety of evangelicals came together for a single event. In the pages
that follow, more attention is given to the preparations for the Moody cam-
paign than the dramatic campaign itself in order to portray the nuances of
the evangelical crossroads. The Moody revival sought to save the city, but in
order to do so a diverse array of people, ideas, and power arrangements had
to be negotiated.
When Dwight L. Moody arrived in Boston on the afternoon of Friday, Janu-
ary 26, 1877, he must have been beside himself with anticipation for the evan-
gelistic campaign to come. The train he took from his hometown of North-
field, Massachusetts, had just retraced the journey he had taken twenty-two
years earlier as a western Massachusetts farm boy looking for employment
and adventure. It was in Boston, in a downtown shoe store, where Moody was
converted from a rather indifferent Unitarianism to a heartfelt Christianity
on May 16, 1855.1 A small plaque commemorating the site of Moody’s con-
version remains across the street from a municipal office building on Court
Street—the only monument in Boston today outside a churchyard that spe-
cifically recognizes a late-nineteenth-century evangelical leader.
After dropping off his bags and getting his family settled at the Back Bay
residence of his prominent host at 30 Marlboro Street, Moody immediately
walked the snowy streets of Boston alone to investigate the newly constructed
tabernacle where he would preach for the next three months.2 Finding it
locked, Moody started hurling snowballs with youthful exuberance at the
building in order to attract the attention of someone inside. That would be
the last time during the winter of 1877 that Moody would have to go the extra
mile to attract attention in Boston.3
Boston was the final city of a two-year evangelistic tour for Moody. Re-
ligious leaders across the nation had proclaimed his previous revivals in
Brooklyn, Philadelphia, New York City, and Chicago astounding successes.
The city’s newspapers headlined Moody’s first address with anticipation of
many great things to come—and many newspapers to be sold.

Hartley_Book.indb 15 10/12/10 12:01:25 PM

 The singing was not done when Mr. Moody rose to deliver his sermon. The
congregation was ready for it. He began in short, crisp sentences with a
somewhat rapid utterance. At first his manner is quiet, but as he goes on
he indulges in expressive gestures. There is a magnetism in his voice that
holds and his face and eyes foretell somewhat the nature of the thought
that is shaping itself. He talks over Scripture history as though he is liv-
ing right among it. Joshua and Caleb are made to live today, the walls of
Jericho stare us in the face, the sons of Anak look down upon us. Then we
are brought back to the present day, back to ourselves and to our needs as
spiritual beings. At one moment the preacher’s voice is terrible with ear-
nestness; then it grows playful with the quaintness of a comparison; and
again it is full of rebuke or of entreaty. The sermon was a wonderful effort;
not ornate, not always choice in its language, not showing any depth of
thought, but taking hold of the mind and declaring “There is a God who
was, who is, and who always must be feared, loved and obeyed.”4

Moody required that a new tabernacle be constructed specifically for the

evangelistic services in each city that he visited. The tabernacle in Boston
covered a full acre of ground and was only slightly smaller than those in other
cities. The brick structure, with pine timbers and buttresses to support the
massive roof, was built with an eye toward crowd control. The interior audi-
torium measured 140 by 204 feet with aisles gradually widening the closer
they got to the doorways to facilitate exiting the building. It was said that
the whole building could “be cleared of 6,000 people in five minutes”—an
important consideration in 1870s urban America, which had seen fires dev-
astate both Chicago and Boston.5 The hall was often reported to contain a
standing-room-only crowd of 7,000. The Metropolitan Railroad Company
that serviced Boston even put in a new switch for the tracks in front of the
tabernacle and added many extra cars to aid in the efficient transportation of
the throngs of people expected for the campaign.6
The tabernacle symbolized the “big tent” of ecumenical cooperation that
was necessary to make Moody’s revival a success in a city renowned for being
a center of intellectual sophistication and a stronghold of Unitarian religious
belief. Doubtless such a cooperative building campaign also served as a kind
of “test run” for the city’s religious leaders, so that any personality conflicts
or competitive impulses among them could be worked out—or at least sub-
dued—prior to Moody’s revival. During the dedication services, speaker after
speaker stressed the unity of the endeavor. For some, this unity was perhaps
most acutely expressed as unity against a rapidly growing Roman Catholic
presence in the city. “We are going to show what true Catholicity is. People
may tell you there is one Catholic Church and all the rest of us are sects.
Now we are not going to come here as sectarians at all. We are all coming
here owning the name of Jesus.”7 Although the rhetoric of Christian unity
16 · Evangelicals at a Crossroads

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 figure 1.1. Exterior view of Moody tabernacle ( from Tremont Street). Image from
Dwight Lyman Moody, “To All People,” in Comprising Sermons, Bible Readings,
Temperance Addresses, and Prayer-Meeting Talks. Delivered in the Boston Tabernacle,
by D. L. Moody. From the Boston Daily Globe Verbatim Reports, Carefully Revised and
Corrected. With an Introduction by Rev. Joseph Cook (New York: E. B. Treat; Chicago:
L. T. Palmer & Co., 1877.

was heartfelt, church leaders in Boston also knew well how each church and
denomination stood in relation to one another. In terms of raw numbers, the
Baptists had the most adherents in Boston with the Trinitarian Congrega-
tionalists, Methodists, and Episcopalians following in that order.8
The person placed in charge of the fund-raising effort for the $32,000
tabernacle was ymca president and affluent Congregationalist businessman
Russell Sturgis, Jr. A ymca president in Chicago himself, Moody requested
that the Boston ymca put all its energies into preparing for the work of the
revival and be the organization primarily responsible for raising the funds
for the tabernacle’s construction.9 The board meeting minutes for the Boston
ymca in the months prior to the revival plainly illustrate that the managers
discussed very little besides the preparations for Moody and the fund-raising
required for the tabernacle.10
Sturgis and his innovative fund-raising schemes leading up to the cam-
paign were not always well received. Offering envelopes serving as “tickets”
to the dedication service netted far less than anticipated. Some in attendance
thought it wrong to charge money for admission to a worship service. Over
five hundred of the nearly three thousand envelopes received were empty,
and one even contained a counterfeit two-dollar bill.11 Thirteen months prior
D. L. Moody Arrives in Boston · 17

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 figure 1.2. Interior view of Moody tabernacle. Image from L. L. Doggett, History of
the Boston Young Men’s Christian Association (Boston: ymca, 1901), 54.

to the Moody campaign, Sturgis was directly attacked by Jesse Jones, the edi-
tor of the Christian labor magazine Equity. “The president of the ymca of
this State is a man whose income last year was reported to be $60,000, all
gotten by serving Mammon; and which, being so gotten, he gave liberally
to benevolent objects. And then, who are our publicly honored laymen? Are
they not our Farnsworths and Farwells, men who are very high priests in the
worship of the money-god? The cases we have cited are characteristic. What
such men are, the whole Church approves. They are honored because they are
rich.”12 Needless to say, Jesse Jones was not invited to be a part of the organiz-
ing committee for Moody’s campaign.13
After all the preparations were made and in spite of the minor contro-
versies over fund-raising, a large crowd of more than six thousand persons
thronged to the tabernacle in the South End to hear the great evangelist on
Sunday afternoon, January 28, 1877. One reporter noted that there were “as
many outside as within the building.”14 The gathered crowd in Moody’s taber-
nacle, “for the most part from the middle walks of life,” consisted of persons
who were living in a much different city than Moody had lived when he came
to Boston in 1855.15 Even the land the tabernacle was built upon would have
been brand new land in 1855, reclaimed from the mudflats that surrounded
the city only a few years earlier. Moody would now seek to reclaim many resi-
dents of Boston for evangelical religion—a faith under siege by the growing
numbers of Roman Catholic immigrants in a city that had doubled in size
since 1855 (from 150,000 to more than 300,000).16
Not all of Boston’s growth between 1855 and 1877 was the result of Catho-
lic immigration, but a visitor to the central districts of the city might well
have thought that this was the case. The percentage of foreign-born residents
of Boston remained relatively stable in the twenty years preceding Moody’s
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 figure 1.3. Churches in close proximity to the Moody tabernacle, 1877.

revival—hovering at about 50 percent of the total population. The statisti-

cal stability of the population with regard to the percentage of foreign-born
residents in the city as a whole, however, did not feel very stable to many Bos-
ton citizens. There were two reasons for this. First, the expansion of Boston’s
“streetcar suburbs” made it relatively easy for many American-born residents
to live in the serene neighborhoods of Roxbury or Dorchester while also caus-
ing poorer—and often foreign-born—residents to be located in more con-
gested downtown areas of the North End, South End, or West End districts
(see figure i.2).17 Second, between 1855 and 1877 several onetime suburbs
were annexed by the city of Boston, thus causing an instant growth in the
numbers of primarily American-born residents.18 Most people, however, did
not really think of these newly annexed areas as being part of the city even
though the city’s population statistics described them as such.
More important in some ways than population statistics, a church-
D. L. Moody Arrives in Boston · 19

Hartley_Book.indb 19 10/12/10 12:01:28 PM

 700,000

600,000

500,000

400,000

300,000

200,000

100,000

-
1845 1850 1865 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910
American-born 77,077 75,322 126,497 162,540 248,043 290,305 363,763 427,220
Foreign-born 37,289 63,466 65,821 87,986 114,796 158,172 197,129 243,365
Total Boston pop 114,366 138,788 192,318 250,526 362,839 448,477 560,892 670,585

figure 1.4. American-born and foreign-born residents of Boston from 1845 to 1910.
Statistical information for the graph was obtained from the following sources: Henry
K. Carroll, Report on Statistics of Churches in the United States at Eleventh Census:
1890 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1894); Report on Population
of the United States at the Eleventh Census: 1890, Part 1, vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing Office, 1895); Thirteenth Census of the United States Taken
in the Year 1910: Volume 1, Population, General Report and Analysis (Washington,
D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1913); U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistics of the
Population of the United States at the Tenth Census (June 1, 1880), vol. 1 (Washington,
D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1883); George E. Waring, Report on the Social
Statistics of Cities: Part 1, the New England and the Middle States (Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing Office, 1886).

building boom all across the city symbolized the growing Catholic pres-
ence in Boston. Two years prior to Moody’s arrival, the Vatican designated
Boston an archdiocese, thus elevating it in the eyes of Roman Catholics as
a powerful Catholic city in America.19 Boston’s citizens, Catholic and non-
Catholic alike, would now look up to Catholic church spires reaching to the
sky all over the city. Thirteen months prior to Moody’s arrival, the Archdi-
ocese of Boston dedicated the new Cathedral of the Holy Cross on Wash-
ington Street, just two blocks to the south of the tabernacle. In the colonial
period, Washington Street was the thin neck of land that connected the
almost-island town of Boston with the mainland (figure i.2). The new ca-
thedral nearly rivaled Moody’s tabernacle with a seating capacity of four
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 thousand and an overall size almost as large as the Notre Dame Cathedral
in Paris.
The Cathedral of the Holy Cross was the most important architectural
manifestation of Boston’s Catholic presence, but it was not the only one.20
Later in the year 1877, construction of the German Catholic Holy Trinity
Church was also completed and the structure dedicated. This center of Bos-
ton German Catholicism was located on Shawmut Avenue, just four blocks
to the southeast of the tabernacle, and could hold twelve hundred people in
its sanctuary.21 The architecture of the Germans’ Holy Trinity was a far cry
from the magnificence of the Holy Cross Cathedral, but its more functional
appearance was an appropriate reflection of the community for which it was
built. The close proximity of Holy Trinity to Morgan Chapel is important in
light of the vehemently anti-Catholic attitude of the chapel’s pastor, Henry
Morgan, to be discussed below. A South End resident would also have been
able to see, on the western horizon, the new Mission Church on Tremont
Street in Roxbury built in 1876 on a hill just beyond the mudflats.22 The
church was staffed by priests from the Redemptorist Order and served the
Irish and Germans who worked in the nearby breweries. The large St. Peter’s
Church in Dorchester (a neighborhood located just to the east of Roxbury)
was also in the midst of construction between 1873 and 1891. Located just
a block away from the colonial-era, wood-frame First Church of Dorchester
on Meeting House Hill, the more imposing stone exterior of St. Peter’s in the
newly annexed neighborhood of Dorchester was yet another piece of archi-
tectural evidence that the Puritan ethos of Boston was being dramatically
overtaken.23 By the time St. Peter’s was completed in 1891, Boston had be-
come the most Catholic city in the nation when measured as a percentage of
total population.24
Among Protestant church buildings under construction at the time of
Moody’s campaign, all paled in comparison to the Episcopalians’ Trinity
Church in Copley Square, which was located slightly less than a mile from
the Cathedral of the Holy Cross.25 The new edifice, completed and conse-
crated on February 9, 1877, shortly after Moody’s campaign began, was as
much a theological statement for Trinity’s pastor, Phillips Brooks, as it was an
architectural triumph for Henry Hobson Richardson. In its design, Brooks
rejected the iconoclasm of evangelical church architecture and distanced
himself from the evangelical Reformed Episcopal Church, which had bro-
ken from the Protestant Episcopalians just four years earlier. Brooks also dis-
tanced himself from the more “high church” Anglo-Catholic movement in the
Episcopal Church at the time with its love of Gothic architecture.26
At the dedication ceremony for Trinity Church in February of 1877, Brooks’s
attempts at theological synthesis got him into trouble. Brooks had the Rev-
erend Stephen H. Tyng, the evangelical Episcopalian rector of St. George’s
Church in New York City, participate in the dedication of Trinity Church. He
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 also invited one of Boston’s leading Unitarian clergymen, James Freeman
Clarke, to the communion rail at the dedication service.27 When conservative
critics objected in the city’s newspapers to this breach of communion disci-
pline, Brooks simply ignored them.28 Brooks’s decision not to respond to his
critics over the communion controversy was a decision implicitly affirmed by
Moody, who likewise strenuously sought to avoid theological controversy. A
month after the communion controversy, Brooks accepted an invitation from
Moody to preach in Moody’s place in the tabernacle and was well received by
a standing-room-only crowd of more than seven thousand individuals.29
The synthesis Brooks sought architecturally in the construction of Trin-
ity Church and theologically in the building’s dedication ceremony did not
extend to budgetary concerns. The $750,000 price tag of Trinity Church in
Copley Square made it one of the most expensive church buildings of its time,
in striking contrast to the $32,000 price tag of Moody’s tabernacle.30 Trinity’s
affluent parishioners worked hard at raising money for their church build-
ing. One building committee member remarked to Brooks: “And surely we
must feel more worthy to have it [the new building] and enjoy it, when we
have added so largely to make it broad and beautiful and rich.”31 The fund-
raising for the church would have been impossible for a congregation with
more meager financial resources, particularly given the fact that the financial
“panic” begun in 1873 was in full swing with no signs of relenting in 1877.
Moody would likely have walked past Trinity Church each day of the re-
vival, since the home in which he stayed during his time in Boston was in
the fashionable Back Bay district. Moody’s variety of ecumenical synthesis,
however, shunned the more ornate styles of the day. His request, when first
inspecting the tabernacle upon arrival, to remove an elaborate balustrade
in front of the preaching platform reflected an unadorned evangelical faith,
which stood in striking contrast to one of the finest examples of church archi-
tecture in the country located a few blocks away (see figure 1.3).
Even though Moody sought simplicity in the architectural design of his
tabernacles, the drama that unfolded inside his Boston tabernacle (and the
neighboring Clarendon Street Baptist and Berkeley Congregational churches
that housed other meetings for the revival) was anything but plain. Like stage
managers readying for a Broadway musical, organizers scrutinized minute
details. In one meeting a week before Moody’s arrival, the tabernacle usher
crews of two hundred men were arguing over whether to have “wands” six
feet or two and a half feet in length for the purpose of crowd control. The
shorter poles were finally chosen.32 The placement of newspapermen’s desks
was scrutinized by Moody himself, who ultimately directed that the desks be
moved more to the side of the hall to enable messenger boys to scurry out of
the tabernacle with less disruption.33
Many preachers and prominent laypersons participated in offering prayers
and leading other aspects of the Moody campaign. The most visible of these
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 included A. J. Gordon, Frances Willard, and Eben Tourjée. These three were
very representative of the “crossroads” status of Boston evangelicalism in
1877. In future years, they and the institutions they started would follow sig-
nificantly different paths as they sought to make sense of their faith in the
city.
A. J. Gordon was perhaps the most notable presence among Boston’s
clergymen in the Moody tabernacle owing to his church’s close proximity to
the tabernacle and his church’s frequent use as the inquiry room for persons
seeking to convert to evangelical Christianity. As pastor of one of the Baptists’
most reputable congregations, A. J. Gordon was chosen to give the prayer
of dedication for the tabernacle. Gordon’s status-conscious Clarendon Street
Baptist Church was perhaps more transformed by Moody’s campaign than
any other congregation in the city. Gordon’s biography (written by his son)
described the effect of the revival on the church as a “cemetery temporarily
occupied by troops in battle. What a shattering and overturning of weather-
stained, moss-grown traditions followed!” “Nearly thirty reclaimed drunk-
ards” became members of Clarendon Street Baptist Church after the revival
meetings and remained as active members for some time.34 Gordon’s Boston
Industrial Home, begun in 1875, also experienced a significant expansion in
its work among Boston’s poor. The 1877 revival started Gordon on a path of
national leadership in revivalism and nascent fundamentalism.
Gordon and Moody solidified their friendship during the 1877 campaign,
and Gordon remained a close friend of Moody’s for the rest of his life. He fre-
quently attended and sometimes led (in Moody’s place) the Northfield Bible
Conferences, which began in 1882. Gordon’s increased advocacy of premil-
lennial interpretations of scripture and decreased emphasis on social reform
efforts late in his life caused him to be remembered as a fundamentalist, de-
spite the fact that his death in 1895 occurred before the term “fundamental-
ist” had been coined by religious conservatives.35
If Gordon represented evangelicals in the very early stages of moving to-
ward fundamentalism, another of Moody’s Boston revival coworkers, Frances
Willard, represented evangelicals on the path toward Protestant liberalism.
A Methodist from Illinois, Willard was the only person from out of town in-
vited by Moody to come to Boston, except for his steadfast musician Ira San-
key. Willard was already a much sought-after speaker in 1877 as the Woman’s
Christian Temperance Union’s corresponding secretary. In Boston she struck
up a friendship with Maria Hale Gordon, A. J.’s wife, who served as president
of the Boston chapter of the wctu. Willard later served as president of the
wctu from 1879 to 1898 and became a tireless advocate of Christian social-
ism beginning in the 1880s.
The friendship Willard shared with Moody was on full display during the
Boston revival. She spoke frequently at temperance meetings before immense
crowds of women and men alike. On one Sunday afternoon Moody even asked
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 her to preach at the tabernacle. A politically shrewd person, Frances Willard
told Moody her concerns about preaching there: “Brother Moody, you need
not think because I am a Western woman and not afraid to go [preach], you
must put me in the forefront of the battle after this fashion. Perhaps you will
hinder the work among these conservatives. But at this he laughed in his
cheery way, and declared that it was just what they needed and I needn’t be
scared for he wasn’t.”36 Willard’s confidence indeed seems to have been bol-
stered by Moody, since even after Moody departed Boston, she remained to
preach again at the tabernacle and in other venues around the city.37
Despite this friendship, storm clouds of division between Moody and Wil-
lard, which foreshadowed the divisions in American evangelical religion that
would appear thirty years later, began to surface during the Boston campaign.
During the campaign, Willard accepted an invitation to speak at an event
with Mrs. Mary Livermore, one of the most famous speakers of the day and a
Universalist.38 Moody persuaded Willard to turn down the invitation because
of Livermore’s beliefs concerning universal salvation for all persons. Willard
complied with his request at the time but later regretted this course of action.
“Brother Moody’s Scripture interpretations concerning religious toleration
were too literal for me; the jacket was too straight—I could not wear it.”39
Moody’s advice to Willard was a political as well as a theological judgment, as
he strenuously sought to avoid controversy during the campaign. Moody had
appreciated the way Phillips Brooks avoided controversy with a Unitarian re-
ceiving communion, but he decided to avoid even the appearance of scandal
with regard to Willard sharing a platform with a Universalist.
The veiled disagreement between Moody and Willard was not, however,
present in regard to other social issues in 1877. On the matter of the labor
disputes that were beginning to rumble across the country’s railroads in 1877,
Moody and Willard thought similarly. When a dramatic railroad strike hit
Boston in February 1877, there was not even the slightest hint of acknowledg-
ment that this strike was taking place in either Moody’s or Willard’s published
addresses. Neither support nor disdain toward the striking workers was ex-
plicitly evident in the tabernacle events.40 When one reads the re­porting of
the events of the tabernacle alongside the Boston newspapers’ reporting on
the railroad strike, it almost appears as though the two events were happen-
ing in different cities.41
Although it was not an explicit mention of the railroad strike, four days
prior to the start of the strike in Boston Moody did offer a rare instance of so-
cial commentary on the problem of poverty. “I never have found yet any con-
sistent Christian, a member of any church, who was really starving or whose
children were coming to want. . . . But where man or woman is faithful and
clings right close to the Son of God He will supply their wants.”42 Moody’s
reliance on prominent urban businessmen for funding his evangelistic work
likely encouraged his cool attitude toward striking workers.43 Boston revival-
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 ist Henry Morgan, by contrast, let loose a tirade against those opposed to the
plight of the railroad workers a few months later. Morgan noted how one of
the locations of the strike took place “near that historical spot where, seven-
teen years ago, John Brown’s rifle startled the echoes of its hills, and brought
down the avalanche which crushed out slavery. So the shock of this railroad
strike has started the avalanche of public opinion that shall sweep away a
monopoly dangerous to the interests of society and incompatible with the
divine rights of man.”44
Another of the most frequently observed persons on the tabernacle plat-
form other than Mr. Moody and Mr. Sankey would have been the director of
the thousand-voice choir at the revival, Dr. Eben Tourjée. A Methodist Epis-
copal layman, Tourjée had rapidly built up a reputation as one who could
accomplish great things in Boston. Ten years earlier he had founded the New
England Conservatory of Music, which, by 1883, was declared the “largest and
most splendidly equipped conservatory and college of music in the world.”45
He also served as president of the ymca in 1871, became the first dean of Bos-
ton University’s School of Music in collaboration with his own conservatory,
and directed a ten-thousand-voice choir at the World’s Peace Jubilee held in
Boston in 1869.46
These initiatives earned him many accolades, but they do not fully por-
tray Tourjée’s complex history, diverse gifts, and spiritual devotion. Tourjée
had grown up as a child worker in the Rhode Island cotton mills, where his
father—of French Huguenot ancestry—also worked. Tourjée never forgot his
humble origins. A few months after founding the New England Conservatory
of Music in 1867, Tourjée, along with other Methodists, established the North
End Mission in the heart of Boston’s most notorious slum tenement district.
He well understood the power of music to attract people to the Christian
faith at the North End Mission and thus was well prepared to direct the 1877
revival’s choir. Tourjée was a kind of musician missionary in the North End
who employed methods that were made famous in subsequent years by the
Salvation Army. Tourjée wrote the following description of the North End
Mission in 1874:

We have often been asked how we manage to get the people of the North
End to attend our meetings. We are surrounded by dance halls and grog
shops of all descriptions, the glaring light and ribald songs of which at-
tract the shuffling crowd. Recognizing this fact, and seeing no reason why
the dance halls should be the only place in North Street where light and
music were to be had, we began to use the same instrumentalities. The
Mission hall opens its doors freely, and its lights have a habit of burning
with steady brilliancy. . . . But our chief reliance is on music. . . . We have
organized a small orchestra of volunteers, and its influence for good is very
marked. It consists of a violin, violincello, flute, piano, and organ, and we
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 think we beat any orchestra in the neighborhood. Sometimes our music
has been mistaken by a newly arrived sailor for that of a dance hall, and
he has drifted in.47

Tourjée had experienced from a very early age the irresistible draw of
music and its potential in transforming a person’s life. His biographer recalls
that when Tourjée was around eight years old, he became enchanted by the
sound of a brass band at one Independence Day celebration. His father rashly
took him away from the “devil’s music” and forbade him from listening to
such things. His mother more gently coaxed him away and seems to have
nourished his early interests in music. His mother, Angeline, would play a
very influential role in providing support and advice at important times in
Tourjée’s life.
With the exception of his mother, Tourjée’s most important benefactor in
the early years of his career was Governor Elisha Harris of Rhode Island.
Tourjée’s family worked at a cotton mill owned by the governor and for a time
attended the same church as the governor. The governor’s wife and church
organist at this church recognized Tourjée’s love of music and brought it
to the attention of the governor, who then enrolled Tourjée in a Methodist
academy with hopes that he might someday become a Methodist preacher.
This never occurred, but Tourjée did serve as the musical editor of a new
Methodist hymnal in 1878—a vital tool in the hands of a Methodist preacher.
One could speculate that Tourjée may have also been a valuable resource for
the finance committee in its fund-raising efforts for the Moody campaign.
Five years earlier he had easily raised over $35,000—the cost of Moody’s
tabernacle—for the North End Mission.48 In 1876, Tourjée had handed over
the presidency of the North End Mission to one of the city’s most wealthy
residents, prominent member of Park Street Church Ezra Farnsworth, whom
Jesse Jones had condemned.

the consequences of the moody campaign

Moody maintained a broadly ecumenical tone in his evangelistic rallies for
most of his three-month stay in Boston, but on the final day of the revival he
began to reveal some of his personal perspective on religious issues of the day.
For example, in his final sermon Moody spent considerable time highlight-
ing his belief in premillennialist interpretations of the Bible, which differed
from the prevailing postmillennial belief that the world was getting better in
preparation for Jesus’ return. The premillennial interpretation of the Bible
became an increasingly common perspective among many evangelicals in
subsequent years. That he did not discuss this matter in any length at all until
the final day of the Boston campaign illustrates both that it was a controver-

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 sial topic at the time and that Moody did not wish such controversies to get
in the way of his overall message.49
The echoes of Eben Tourjée’s thousand-voice tabernacle choir and Moody’s
powerful preaching were felt throughout New England in the weeks and
months following the Boston campaign’s conclusion on April 30, 1877. Over
the thirteen weeks of the campaign, Moody had preached more than a hun-
dred sermons and Sankey had sung more than three hundred solos. More
than a million people were said to have walked through the tabernacle doors
to hear the great evangelist and his coworker. In the waning weeks of the
revival, as spring weather came to Boston after the dreary winter months,
a thousand volunteers injected new interest in the revival by visiting all of
Boston’s ninety thousand households and urging its inhabitants to attend the
meetings. Organizers estimated that as many as six thousand persons were
converted at Moody’s meetings, and church leaders in the city hoped for these
people to take their place in church pews in subsequent months.50 Area news-
papers in some cases may have benefited the most as their coverage of the
revival boosted their sales enormously.51 The Boston Herald claimed that, as a
result of the Moody campaign and their expertise in increasing their circula-
tion, they became “the nation’s widest-selling Sunday paper at 64,800.”52
The two churches located just east and west of the Moody tabernacle—
one Baptist, the other Congregationalist—illustrate the different effects of the
Moody campaign on local churches. A. J. Gordon’s Clarendon Street Baptist
Church enjoyed a membership increase of 125 persons in 1877, the most it
had ever recorded. Many of these individuals were tabernacle converts of a
lower social class than Clarendon’s more affluent regular members.53
The consequences of Moody’s visit for other Baptist churches in the city
were far less striking. Looking back thirty years after the Moody revival, one
Baptist leader gave a rather equivocal assessment of the campaign’s effects
due to the wider changes taking place in the region’s churches. “The revival
of 1877 favored our churches at a time when new tendencies were affecting
the strength of the Boston churches. This period shows a decline in Baptist
membership. But the fact that the baptisms from this Moody visitation num-
bered in the hundreds for all the churches indicates what the revival meant to
churches which had just gone to new locations and others were still to adjust
their future.”54
The church immediately to the west of the tabernacle, Berkeley Street Con-
gregational Church, experienced very little, if any, benefit from the campaign
enjoyed by its Baptist counterparts a block away. Berkeley’s pastor, William
Burnett Wright, had arrived from Chicago ten years earlier and sought to
no avail to turn the church around. Like Clarendon Baptist, Berkeley Street
Congregational was a frequently utilized site for the tabernacle, but its con-
gregation was not energized by the revival in nearly the same way as that

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 of its Baptist neighbors. Official membership statistics increased moderately
throughout the 1870s and early 1880s, but the active membership (mea-
sured by attendance at communion) declined steadily from 270 in 1877 to
180 in 1886. This congregation’s rise to notoriety would not occur until after
1888, when it became known as the nation’s first “institutional church” with a
plethora of social programs.55
Congregational churches throughout the city mirrored the experience of
Berkeley Street after the Moody revival. The annual report for the Boston
Congregationalist City Missionary Society for the year 1877 noted that the
revival’s “effects were felt in the general quickening of religious feeling in the
community at large, making individuals and families more accessible, and
increasing the attendance upon our chapel meetings. The record of hopeful
conversions during the year, stands 162—as against 90, in 1876; these were
not in many instances from the inquiry-room of the Tabernacle, but the re-
sults of our own missionary labor, under the generally awakened interest of
the community.”56
Statistical analysis of membership gains for Congregationalists in the state
of Massachusetts reveals that gains for churches outside the city of Boston
were far more significant than gains within the city itself.57 Organizations,
such as the Evangelistic Association of New England, that focused their min-
istry primarily in more rural New England regions were enthusiastic about
the evangelist’s effect in smaller towns. Reflecting in 1889 on the campaign,
one report noted that some “thought the number of additions to the churches
in Boston were not as large as they should have been. Be that as it may, we
do know that the press carried Mr. Moody’s sermons into every city and into
almost every village and town in New England, and that New England was
stirred more deeply on the subject of religion than she has been at any time
since then.”58 The efficient use of railroads to transport people to the taber-
nacle had apparently worked to the benefit of rural New England churches
even if it did not, on the whole, help the city churches.59
Boston Methodist leaders of the time evaluated the impact of the Moody
revival in the most positive way compared with the lukewarm assessment
given by other denominational leaders. The Reverend David Sherman, pre-
siding elder of the Boston District, reported to the New England Annual
Conference gathering of Methodist leaders the following about the Moody
campaign before it was even completed: “The Tabernacle meetings, it ought
to be said, have acted as an inspiration to our whole work. The preachers and
people have been stirred to new zeal: those awakened under Mr. Moody have
in many cases been converted at home; while in other cases those awakened
in our churches have received a fresh impulse under the earnest utterances of
the evangelist.”60 The following year, Sherman continued to praise the Moody
campaign for its positive impact: “In the city, the revival in connection with
the Moody movement continued through the winter, and in the spring the
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 6000

5000

4000

3000

2000

1000

0
1875 1876 1877 1878 1879 1880 1881 1882 1883

Congregational (statewide)
Episcopal (statewide)
Methodist (Boston, Cambridge, and Lynn Districts only)
Baptist (statewide)

figure 1.5. New members in Protestant denominations, 1875–1883. Statistics used

to construct this graph were taken from Samuel W. Dike, “A Study of New England
Revivals,” American Journal of Sociology 15, no. 3 (1909): 375.

flame spread to the western part of the district. Most of the churches were
quickened; many persons were converted.”61
Part of the problem in assessing various denominations’ growth during this
time stems from the different means of calculating membership increases. In
one statistical survey published in 1909, statewide data were given for Con-
gregationalists and Baptists while only the eastern Massachusetts districts
of the Methodist Episcopal churches were counted. Methodist Episcopal
churches in Lynn, Boston, and Cambridge districts had membership gains
between 1877 and 1882 of only a thousand fewer than the entire state of Mas-
sachusetts for the Congregationalists during this same period. The statewide
Baptist gains between 1877 and 1882 were actually three thousand fewer than
the gains of Methodists in just the Lynn, Boston, and Cambridge districts.62
Were statewide statistics also given for the Methodist Episcopal denomina-
tion, the graph in figure 1.5 would place Methodists in a more favorable light
than is shown.
More recent statistical analysis of Moody campaigns across the country
summarize the religious results of the revivals in the following way: “[I]n
terms of church membership the revivals had a negative cumulative effect
on the Congregationalist and Presbyterian denominations, and a mixed, or
perhaps slightly positive, effect on the Methodists. As a result of the influx
of new members, Moody undoubtedly promoted new life and vigor in some
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 churches in the cities he visited. But the claim can also be made that probably
a larger number of churches were hurt by a decline in membership that oc-
curred after the excitement of the revival wore off.”63
The Methodist Episcopal Church’s success in gaining converts through the
Moody campaign was symbolized in later years by the construction of that
denomination’s largest church building in the nation just three blocks north
of where Moody’s tabernacle stood. People’s Church had its cornerstone laid
in 1877 but was not completed for seven years owing to fund-raising difficul-
ties largely stemming from the 1873 financial panic.64 D. L. Moody even came
back to Boston to preach at the cornerstone-laying ceremony at the Method-
ist People’s Church. In his speech Moody praised the Methodists and dis-
missed the charge that Methodists “cannot reach intellectual people.” Moody
proclaimed, “I don’t think that any intellect can get beyond the reach of this
truth, that man must be regenerated.”65 A similar remark about Methodists’
relative lack of sophistication was made by the Reverend James Dunn, pas-
tor of Columbus Avenue Presbyterian Church just a few blocks from People’s
Church. Dunn recalled that in the Civil War some soldiers aimed too high and
thus missed their foes. In drawing a comparison to preaching that was too
often excessively refined and intellectually “high,” Dunn (perhaps wistfully)
congratulated the Methodists for “aiming low” in their preaching, attributing
their success to this.66
While the Moody campaign helped to strengthen Boston Methodists and
Baptists in the years that followed, it appears that it did not do so by convert-
ing members of the city’s Catholic churches. The campaign seemed relatively
unconcerned with reaching Roman Catholics. Special meetings were held
for “fallen women,” young boys, young men, businessmen, drunkards, and
women in the course of the three-month campaign, but there were no special
appeals to the Catholic community. One finds only a handful of testimonials
in Boston newspapers of Catholics converted at the Moody campaign. The
Catholic weekly The Pilot did not contain a single article that mentioned the
Moody revival during the three months of Moody’s stay. The Pilot, however,
did note that “[o]ne of the largest missions [the term given to Catholic parish
revivals] ever held in Boston” took place at the same time as the Moody cam-
paign. The mission occurred at St. Francis de Sales Church in Lower Roxbury
and lasted for two weeks with an average attendance of five thousand at each
of the special services. This piece of evidence suggests that the increased en-
thusiasm in the city at large for the Moody campaign had a “spillover effect”
for Catholic evangelistic efforts as well.67
The Reverend Henry Morgan (an Independent Methodist preacher) in his
1880 anti-Catholic novel Boston Inside Out: A Story of Real Life reminded his
Protestant readers of how little Moody’s campaign affected Boston Catholics
in the following fictional conversation between a Protestant liberal and a cor-
rupt Catholic priest:
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 [Moody’s] labors extended over the same ground as that of your [Catholic]
church. He drew criminals, drunkards, paupers into the fold! Drew them
in by thousands. He must have proved a thorn in the flesh to you Catho-
lic priests.” “Ha! ha!” laughed Father Titus. “That is rich indeed. Moody
never gained a single convert from us, if that is what you mean. Why, as
an inducement to the poor, he enticed them by feeding large numbers at
the Tabernacle. Well, they ate his earthly bread, but couldn’t stomach his
spiritual sustenance. On Fridays he gave them pork and beans. The Catho-
lic instinct was too strong. They ate the beans, but left the pork on their
plates! No! Not even paupers can be tempted to go back on the church.
They may starve, hunger may gnaw at their vitals, but they will die rather
than forsake the Mother Church which has nurtured them” (emphasis in
the original).68

The anti-Catholic attitude of Henry Morgan and other evangelical leaders

would, in subsequent years, be a major motivation for evangelical efforts to
“save” their city from papal influence.
This chapter highlights the “big tent” of ecumenical cooperation that was
necessary for the Moody revival to take place in Boston, but within this big
tent it is also evident that there was a fair amount of contested ground in
the evangelical crossroads. Attitudes toward labor, Catholics, wealth, and the
value of ministry with the poor were, for the most part, held in common,
but the canopy covering the Boston evangelical community was beginning
to fray. Upstart preachers like Moody did not cause the fraying as much as
they helped to concentrate activity in such a way that the differences among
Boston evangelicals became more evident. We see the first signs of division in
the differing outlooks of Frances Willard, Phillips Brooks, and D. L. Moody as
they stood poised at a crossroads. Phillips Brooks and Frances Willard faced
a somewhat different direction than Moody did even if this was difficult to
discern at the time.

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Hartley_Book.indb 32 10/12/10 12:01:30 PM
 c h a p te r tw o

The Early Years of Evangelical

Institution Building, 1858–1883
“Good! You’ve Got the Fire in You”

In order to set the context of evangelical beginnings in social reform it is

necessary to go back twenty years prior to the 1877 Moody revival, to a time
immediately preceding the Civil War when postmillennial optimism coursed
through the veins of New England evangelicals still fired with the enthusiasm
of abolition. When the slaves were emancipated and the Civil War was won,
evangelicals turned to other social evils to destroy as the holiness movement
itself was revived. The arrival of large numbers of Irish immigrants on the
Boston streets in the 1840s and their accompanying poverty were a serious
challenge to everyone in the city. Evangelicals’ uncouth social reform and re-
vivalism efforts were ways they addressed the challenge of urban poverty.
The vigor of evangelical institution building was impressive immediately
prior to the Civil War. The contributions of Henry Morgan, Eben Tourjée,
and Charles Cullis in addition to the Methodist founders of Boston Univer-
sity and the mostly Baptist origins of the orphanage Home for Little Wander-
ers powerfully illustrate the “age of energy” for organizing new institutions.1
Morgan, Tourjée, and Cullis approached revivalism and social reform dif-
ferently from one another, but they were all enthusiastic followers and pro-
moters of the holiness movement in the three different denominations they
represented—the Independent Methodists, the Methodist Episcopal Church,
and the Episcopal Church.

henry morgan
Colorful, charismatic, and complex characters dominated the Boston religious
scene in the years prior to the Moody revival. Many of them, of course, were
not evangelicals. William Ellery Channing (d. 1842), Ralph Waldo Emerson
(d. 1865), Edward Everett (d. 1865), and many other famous Bostonians set
a high standard for oratory and poetry. But Unitarian and Transcendental-
ist leaders were not the only speakers to whom Bostonians flocked in the
middle of the nineteenth century. There were many evangelical preachers,
relatively unknown today, who carved out a new space for themselves in Bos-
ton and departed from Unitarian patterns of speech and thought. Bostonians

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 became eager listeners of these new revivalist preachers, who also introduced
brazen efforts in social reform that failed to satisfy the tastes of more elite
Bostonians.
Henry Morgan was the most colorful evangelical preacher of mid – to late-
nineteenth-century Boston. Born in 1825 and thus twelve years older than
Moody, Henry Morgan had first visited Boston in the early 1850s—a few
years before the still-Unitarian Moody. He did not stay, but he was inspired
enough to soon return. During his first visit, Morgan stayed at a North End
sailors’ boardinghouse and met the old Methodist sea captain turned evan-
gelist “Father” Edward Taylor. Scholars believe that Taylor was the real-life
counterpart of Father Mapple in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.2 Taylor had
a rapid-fire preaching style and passion for saving the lost souls of sailors
who came to his Seamen’s Bethel in Boston’s North End. Taylor had also par-
ticipated in the camp meeting revivals Methodists sponsored on Cape Cod in
the 1850s.3 Morgan preached at Father Taylor’s Seamen’s Bethel and fondly
recalled receiving a pat on the shoulder from the seaman preacher, who told
him “Good! You’ve got the fire in you!” Father Taylor and Morgan had simi-
lar personalities: both were gruff yet passionate. Since Morgan had lost his
father at a young age, he may have found Taylor’s fatherly encouragement
especially significant.
Morgan did not remain in Boston at this time but rather continued on his
independent preaching/lecturing travels “among the poor and prisoners in
various states” from Vermont to Virginia in the years immediately preceding
the onset of the Civil War.4 Throughout his journeys, Morgan proudly carried
the unique title “P.M.P” after his name. “Poor Man’s Preacher” was his badge
of honor as a Methodist preacher, yet he was finding himself strangely unwel-
come as that denomination increased in its respectability and distance from
the poor. But Morgan loved Methodism; his failed attempts to be ordained
in the Methodist Episcopal Church would be one of the biggest disappoint-
ments of his life. During one visit back home in Connecticut, while recuperat-
ing from one of his frequent illnesses, Morgan sought official denominational
confirmation of his well-tested vocation as a preacher.
A Methodist Quarterly Conference consisting of nine persons voted by
a slim majority not to allow Morgan to move forward to ordination in the
Methodist Episcopal Church. He already had a Methodist preacher’s license
and thus a measure of official recognition. His critics called his preaching
“more topical than textual” and “neither alphabetical nor exegetical. He was
not alphabetical in his arrangements, had no firstly nor secondly.”5 Morgan
was shocked. His mother was outraged. The following day, his mother’s in-
dignation toward the Methodist Church was at a fever pitch:

There is more genuine talent crushed out by incompetent Church officials

than has been husbanded in the Church, three to one. The Church is dying

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 for lack of live men. Niminy-piminy wooden heads fill the pulpit. Men of
power have been muzzled, disheartened, condemned, driven back to the
world, and lost, because of the whims of a few dogs-in-the-manger. If my
son will consent to make the sacrifices he has, live devotedly to God and
for suffering humanity, Church or no Church, license or no license, I will
sustain him with a mother’s love, so help me God!6

Morgan’s deep appreciation for his mother’s love and support was evident
when, in the preface to one of his books, he revealed that the title of his au-
tobiography, Shadowy Hand, “was but a mother’s hand that led me through
‘Life’s Struggles.’”7
Morgan would try six additional times to obtain ordination in the Method-
ist Episcopal Church. In spite of his continued success as a popular preacher
and lecturer around New England he was always denied ordination. Fees he
received from lecturing were enough for him to contribute a thousand dol-
lars to the construction costs of a Methodist church Morgan had started in
Bridgeport, Connecticut. This church also gave him a license to preach.8 Un-
fortunately, an elderly Methodist preacher in that Connecticut circuit viewed
the new church as an infringement on his territory and demanded that
Morgan stop preaching there.9 No doubt disgusted over such “turf battles,”
Morgan decided to return to Boston.
In the winter of 1859, when Henry Morgan was thirty-four years old, he
arrived in Boston to stay. The 1858 revival had begun to decline in its in-
tensity just six months earlier.10 Immediately, Morgan sought out Methodist
Episcopal pulpits in the city and preached in many of them. However, since
he was not an ordained member of the Methodist Episcopal denomination he
was unable to secure a position at a church for himself. Morgan described his
meeting with the Methodist preachers of Boston as follows:
I went to the Preachers’ Meeting, and found that they did not wish to
further my efforts, unless I submitted to the direction of Conference, and
would remove when Conference should direct. I stated that Father Taylor
had been here fourteen years,—perhaps I might stay as long. I had a license
with me to preach, and as my license named no particular field, I consid-
ered it my right to preach wherever there was an opening. I had built one
church for Conference, and had not been allowed to preach in it. I should
hesitate before I built another. They said, “You’re not ordained.” I replied,
“I’ll hand in my letter, and wait for ordination.” “We shall not ordain you,
unless you join Conference; neither will any other denomination.” “If I am
refused, then,” I said, “I will create a denomination that will ordain me!”
They said, “You have no building to preach in; how can you hope to suc-
ceed in this great city, having no friends?” I said, “I will hire a building; I
will hire Boston Music Hall!” “But that will take money.” “Well, I have a
thousand dollars ready in my pocket. When that is gone, if the Lord does
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 not sustain me I shall think I am not called.” The preachers thought this a
bold undertaking,—no man in his senses would attempt it.11

Morgan grabbed hold of his “bold undertaking” and succeeded beyond

even his own wildest dreams as an unlettered preacher in the land of the
Boston Brahmins. He gained support in the city first from the Reverend E. N.
Kirk, a popular Congregationalist preacher, who a few years earlier had been
instrumental in the conversion and early Christian nurturing of the young
Dwight L. Moody. Kirk was passionate about getting churches to work with
the poor, thus combining revivalism and social reform—something that Mor-
gan would exemplify in his own ministry.12
The “Poor Man’s Preacher” began his ministry by repeatedly packing Bos-
ton’s Music Hall with people eager to keep the enthusiasm for revival going.
Morgan’s purpose in these sermons and lectures was “to present the gospel
to the working-classes, and to open a mission for the poor in some part of
the city.”13 The Music Hall discourses drew large crowds and received signifi-
cant press coverage. The Reverend F. D. Huntington, then still a Unitarian
Harvard professor feeling drawn to the holiness movement, attended these
lectures and “hoped the movement would succeed.”14 Recalling images of
frontier Methodist preachers of the early American republic, the Boston Atlas
and Daily Bee compared Morgan to other top preachers in the country and
called him:

Essentially a live preacher, having all the spirit and energy of Henry Ward
Beecher, but resembling him, however, in no considerable degree. He uses
no notes, and speaks not only with freedom, but with impetuosity. His
gestures are violent, irregular, and often awkward. His general manner is
something like Gough’s: theatrical, startling, and frequently spasmodic.
As a preacher, however, he has much power, and we will venture a guess
that he will be a great success. In person, he is a genuine specimen of a live
Yankee. The man, his manner, style, spirit, will not fail to draw a crowd.15

In one of his first sermons, titled “Preaching for the Times,” Morgan’s
theatrical style was on full display as he echoed his mother’s indignation to-
ward the Methodist Church from years earlier. “And ye fathers of American
Methodism! Ye once despised Methodists! Ye whose names were cast out
as evil! Ye graduates from Nature’s own university—from kitchens, school-
houses, camp-meetings, and barns. . . . Where the example ye have taught
us? Where the followers ye may call your children? Where that untiring zeal
which drove you through all weather, all reproach, all sacrifice of body and
soul, for Christ?”16
Leaders in the Methodist Episcopal Church doubtless reacted with mixed
feelings to Morgan’s lament about their church’s lack of zeal. Some leaders
might have privately been in agreement with Morgan.17 There was, after all,
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 a long tradition—even by this period—of romanticizing the fervor of the
“fathers of Methodism.” Other Methodists who were more sensitive to their
relatively low status relative to Boston Brahmin culture were probably a bit
frustrated. Methodists, after all, were far from being members of Boston’s
“upper crust” society, and many Methodists resented this fact. Since the pre-
vious decade, Methodism was also the most zealous denomination in New
England when measured against one criterion: they were growing the fast-
est.18 Nationally, from the mid-1850s to the mid-1860s, the Methodists were
six hundred thousand to seven hundred thousand members larger than their
next-closest competitor, the Baptists.19
By May of 1859, a few months after his Music Hall discourses, Morgan ac-
complished one of his goals by establishing the Boston Union Mission Society
in the South End. The society soon became famous for its evening school for
poor newspaper boys and girls who could not attend school during the day
but nevertheless desired an education. By 1860 this organization was given
free use of the Franklin School building on Washington Street in the South
End. By 1864, 270 boys, 30 girls, and 64 adults regularly attended the night
school.20
More than a year before the end of the Civil War, Morgan’s school cel-
ebrated its fourth anniversary with a gala event. Governor Andrews was just
one of the prominent speakers Morgan could recruit to praise his school and
the other ministries of the Boston Union Mission Society. The dynamic pres-
ence of labor advocate and abolitionist celebrity Wendell Phillips at this cel-
ebration illustrated the degree of recognition Morgan had attained after just
five years in the city.21 Prior to Morgan’s arrival, the abolitionist newspaper
the Liberator, edited by Phillips’s close friend William Lloyd Garrison, had
condemned revivalism as a distraction from reform efforts.22 Morgan’s efforts
had apparently convinced Unitarian Phillips otherwise; revivalism and social
reform were not necessarily enemies.
Phillips’s address to the newspaper boys at the anniversary celebration
demonstrated both the power of Phillips’s oratory and the relative success
Morgan’s evening school ministry had been having with Irish youth in Bos-
ton. Phillips received jeers from the crowd of newspaper boys when he called
them “Boston boys.” “We are from Ireland,” they protested. Phillips continued
his address praising Irish patriot Daniel O’Connell and comparing him to
President George Washington. In doing so, he won the newspaper boys over
and learned something of the boys’ transatlantic consciousness as well.23
By 1861 Morgan accomplished what he had been denied by the Method-
ist establishment. He was ordained by the Independent Methodist Church,
a recently formed denomination located mostly in New York that advocated
for a primitive Methodism and a more radical doctrine of entire sanctifica-
tion.24 Morgan’s First Independent Methodist Church of Boston was natu-
rally closely associated with the work of the Boston Union Mission. By 1864
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 Morgan reported that the church had a membership of 100, with 27 adults
admitted during the previous year to membership. He also reported witness-
ing 65 conversions and presiding at 23 marriages.25 These statistics illustrate
that, with only 100 members, Morgan’s church, like the Salvation Army of
later years, was a place where a great deal of evangelistic efforts occurred but
where relatively few people chose to remain as members.
Morgan’s fame spread both in the city of Boston and beyond when he au-
thored his first novel, Ned Nevins, the News Boy; or, Street Life in Boston, in
1867. The novel went through four editions in a matter of months and at-
tracted book orders from across the country. Several periodicals advertised
Morgan’s book including the most important Boston labor newspaper, the
Daily Evening Voice, which ran a large front-page advertisement for a new
edition of his book in April of 1867. Morgan described its impact as “making
quite a stir in the literary world, and eliciting some sharp criticisms, as well it
might. No great evil is to be eradicated without somebody being hurt.”26
Ned Nevins, like “nearly all” the other characters in the book, was based on
a real person Morgan had encountered in the previous eight years of his work
among the Boston poor.27 In the novel, Ned is a heroic figure who works dili-
gently during the day selling papers and attends Morgan’s night school. He
supports his mother who is dying of consumption and living in dire poverty.
This story would have been a familiar one for the day, as the disease of con-
sumption (tuberculosis) was one of the greatest killers, particularly among
the poor.28 Morgan himself suffered from a chronic lung ailment of some sort
as early as 1864, and that may have contributed to his early death from pneu-
monia at the age of fifty-nine.29
Ned Nevins’s mother works as a needlewoman sewing for the main vil-
lain of the book, Solomon Levi. Morgan makes a special point of noting that
Levi is Jewish—in stark contrast to his later books, where the source of Bos-
ton’s sins is unreservedly placed at the feet of the Roman Catholic priesthood.
After his mother dies, Ned tells the compassionate driver of the horse-drawn
hearse that his mother “sewed herself to death” working for Solomon Levi.
Levi appeared earlier in the story, refusing to donate money to Mr. Benedict,
whose ministry bears a striking resemblance to Morgan’s own work. Ned’s
mother is laid to rest beside other bodies without any marker for her grave.
As a kind of funeral sermon for Ned’s mother, Morgan’s own voice breaks
into the novel’s narrative with a hard-hitting sermon of his own about the
plight of women and other poor workers at the dawn of the Gilded Age:

Hear, ye inhuman landlords! Ye who have grown rich on the life-blood of

the poor and neglected; ye who have streets called after your names, and
those names a terror to the unfortunate tenants! If there be future retribu-
tion for oppressing the Lord’s poor, verily you shall drink the dregs of the
cup. . . . Let there be one general universal strike for woman’s rights. . . .

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 Radical changes demand radical efforts. Arise, then, and let superhuman
efforts be put forth! Humanity demands it; civilization demands it; Chris-
tianity demands it. God Almighty demands that every yoke be broken, and
the oppressed go free. . . . Let the pale consumptive hold up to her destroy-
ers the glittering weapon of her death, that conscience-stinging needle,
as one through whose eye the scriptural camel might as easily pass, as for
them to think of entering the kingdom of heaven.30

Morgan’s concerns in Ned Nevins, the News Boy for women’s and work-
ers’ rights were consistent with previous and subsequent stances he took. For
example, in explaining why he became part of the Independent Methodist
denomination, Morgan specifically named Congregationalists’ unwillingness
to allow women to preach as a reason he could not be a preacher in that de-
nomination. Morgan ambitiously recruited women to speak from the pulpit
of his church.31 Mary Livermore (whom Willard would regretfully shun a few
years later) had preached from Morgan’s pulpit three times in spite of the
fact that her husband was a Universalist preacher. Morgan may have dis-
agreed with her theology, but he loved her politics. She actively campaigned
for Abraham Lincoln and was a staunch promoter of temperance and wom-
en’s rights.32 Henry Morgan’s unyielding advocacy for the cause of labor and
women’s rights was not unusual for a Boston Methodist pastor in the years
immediately following the Civil War. These years were the heyday of labor’s
power within what became known as the Radical Republican Party.33
In spite of both Morgan’s exuberant willingness both to “make waves” in
Boston and to offend members of the elite classes, he nevertheless enjoyed
the support of the highest elected official in Massachusetts, Governor Wil-
liam Claflin.34 A member of a prominent Methodist family instrumental in
the founding of Boston University, Claflin was a Radical Republican and a
friend of Morgan and the labor movement. In his annual address to the state
legislature in 1871, Governor Claflin proclaimed his allegiance to the move-
ment and explicitly asked the state legislature to “inquire whether the hours
of labor in manufactories, established by law, may not be limited with great
advantage to both employers and the employed.”35 This strong endorsement
of eight-hour-day legislation in 1871 by a prominent Methodist layman and
governor was significant.
William Claflin was quick to offer personal support for Morgan as well.
After fewer than ten years residence in Massachusetts, Morgan became
chaplain of the state Senate in 1868 owing to the influence of then
Lieu­tenant Governor Claflin. Claflin served as lieutenant governor from 1866
to 1868 and governor from 1869 to 1871.36 He also provided Morgan with
the necessary financial backing to purchase a church building previously
pastored by the Reverend James Freeman Clarke that was on auction at this
time.37

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 When Morgan died on March 22, 1884, the city’s newspapers hailed him
as an important reformer and “vigorous and successful speaker.” Revealing its
sympathies with the labor cause, the Boston Daily Globe even said that “[n]
o man has been better known in Boston for the last quarter of a century than
this indefatigable minister.”38 This was high praise indeed for a city with such
preachers and lecturers as Phillips Brooks, Joseph Cook, Wendell Phillips, and
Edward Everett Hale. But Morgan never heard such praise in his lifetime. In
his later years, he became increasingly virulent in his criticisms of the Roman
Catholic hierarchy, which caused much of Boston’s polite society and newspa-
per publishers to abandon him. He nonetheless remained a steadfast supporter
of workers and Boston’s poor. A year before his death, Morgan wrote in the
preface to the 1883 seventh edition of Shadowy Hand that “the newspapers
that were once friendly have united in a combined attack”39 Methodist and
Baptist publications in Boston and Philadelphia were the only religious peri-
odicals Morgan cited as praising his 1883 diatribe The Fallen Priest.40
The terms of Henry Morgan’s will stipulated that the Unitarian Benevo-
lent Fraternity of Churches be given control of the Morgan Chapel property
but that the New England Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church be
in charge of the ministry that took place at Morgan Chapel. Such an arrange-
ment was highly unusual but was perhaps Morgan’s way of not giving the
Methodists outright possession of what they had denied him during his life:
a church of his own. In the 1890s, Morgan Chapel in the South End would
become one of the Methodist Episcopal Church’s leading urban ministries
in the nation and the place where the international nonprofit organization
Goodwill Industries began. In 1902, Morgan Chapel had its name changed to
Morgan Memorial.
Morgan had complicated relationships with an increasingly respectable
Boston Methodism. At times he established himself in opposition to main-
stream evangelical Christianity by his uncouth rhetoric and criticism. At
other times he was very much indebted to established religious leaders for
giving him platforms from which to speak. The relationships he developed
with important figures such as the Reverend F. D. Huntington, Wendell Phil-
lips, and William Claflin gave him notoriety to more effectively campaign for
his work in revivalism and social reform.

the founding of boston university

At the same time that Claflin was giving support to preachers and activists
like Morgan he was also greatly increasing the status of Methodism in Boston
society. Nothing symbolized Methodists’ increased standing in the land of the
Puritans more than the 1869 election of William Claflin as governor and the
1869 founding of Boston University. William Claflin’s father, Lee Claflin, was
instrumental in founding the Methodist Boston Theological School in 1867.

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 The integration of the theological school with the wider university took place
in 1871. By 1873 the university had grown to include four colleges scattered
throughout the city but centered at the Wesleyan Building at 36 Bromfield
Street near the Boston Common.41
The founding of Boston University took place with little fanfare in the
city’s newspapers. Only the Methodists’ own periodical, the Zion’s Herald,
noted the event. The establishment of American Methodism’s first seminary
in Boston meant that the city would remain prominent for American Meth-
odists for decades to come. Even in the twentieth century Methodist pastors
would sometimes mention that they had studied “at Boston”; the university’s
seminary and the city were merged into one in their minds.
The founders of Boston University, Lee Claflin, Isaac Rich, and Jacob
Sleeper, were active laymen and major financial benefactors in the Methodist
Episcopal Church.42 They represent the beginning of a philanthropic tradi-
tion that was virtually unknown for Methodists until this time. Methodists
had rarely amassed large enough fortunes to be called philanthropists.43
Lee Claflin, orphaned at the age of five, became the most politically con-
nected of the three founders. He served as a Massachusetts senator for sev-
eral years in addition to being the father of a rising political star in Massachu-
setts and the nation. Lee Claflin served as president of the Boston Theological
School’s board of trustees and was charged with the responsibility of finding a
location for the seminary. He at first negotiated with New York businessman
and famous abolitionist Lewis Tappan for land in Brookline, Massachusetts,
on which to locate the seminary.44 This negotiation apparently fell through,
as the seminary instead was founded on Beacon Hill in Boston.
The other major financial benefactors and members of the seminary’s
board of trustees, Jacob Sleeper and Isaac Rich, were wealthy but not as much
a part of the upper class of Boston society as the Claflins were.45 Neverthe-
less, the rural migrants and nouveaux riches Sleeper and Rich became well-
known benefactors of evangelical mission work in the city in the 1860s and
1870s.46 Sleeper was a lifelong Methodist known for his spiritual maturity
and was a Methodist class leader for most of his adult life. A rural migrant to
Boston from Maine, Sleeper made his fortune with a lucrative contract sup-
plying uniforms for the us Navy a decade prior to the Civil War. Ironically,
Jacob Sleeper’s business partner, Andrew Carney, a Roman Catholic from
northern Ireland, made even more money than Sleeper and helped found
Catholic Boston College and was an important donor to many Catholic chari-
ties including the still-extant Carney Hospital in the Dorchester neighbor-
hood of Boston.47
Isaac Rich, originally from Cape Cod, lost his father as a young boy. To sup-
port his family, Rich started a business as a fish vendor with a single pushcart.
When he came to Boston, he began investing in Boston real estate; he died
one of the wealthiest men in New England and the most generous financial
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 donor to the nascent Boston University. Shortly after Rich’s death, the Boston
fire of 1872 greatly diminished the value of Rich’s real estate and the endow-
ment of the new university.48
For all the trappings of respectability provided by a denomination’s semi-
nary and university, it was clear that, among the elite of Boston and Cam-
bridge, Boston University was somewhat of an interloper—albeit perhaps an
admired one—on the academic scene. The Harvard Advocate described Bos-
ton University in the following way in 1873:

[Boston University] does not propose that its students should live in un-
natural seclusion. It thus saves great expense for the institution and for its
pupils. They may live where they will as cheaply as they please, and engag-
ing, at leisure hours, in any occupation they choose. The institution simply
furnishes, at slight cost, the best possible instruction. Young men will not
come to it for fashion’s sake—for it will not be fashionable—not for the
sake of acquiring a superficial polish; but it will attract earnest young men
who really desire to get knowledge. In this respect its example may benefit
other colleges. We sometimes see in barbers’ shops a printed warning, “no
loafing allowed here.” It is the dream of a few enthusiasts that Yale
and Harvard may, at some time, rise to this standard. In reaching it, they
will be stimulated by the example of a college whose students all “mean
business” and love work.49

The class distinctions evident in the Harvard Advocate’s 1873 description

of the Methodists’ university endured throughout the late nineteenth cen-
tury and were a key component of the upstart evangelicals’ identity, which
set them apart from their Congregationalist and Episcopalian neighbors who
had settled in New England hundreds of years earlier.50 Even in 1888, after
William Claflin had risen to national prominence as a leader in the Repub-
lican Party, he proudly recalled how Methodists “were not always welcome”
among the members of the older denominations.51 William Claflin had gained
national recognition in politics, but his memory of being shunned endured as
a kind of “badge of courage” even after the wide gap in social and economic
status had narrowed considerably later in the nineteenth century.
In 1877, in another flourish of denominational pride, one observer praised
the founding president of Boston University, William F. Warren, and took ob-
vious delight in Methodism’s triumph over other denominations in Boston:
“[B]oasting, bragging, strutting, opulent, scientific, self-righteous Boston,
waited two hundred and forty years for a man to appear, with both the abil-
ity and the munificence to found a first-class institution of learning. And lo!
When he appears, he is neither a Congregationalist, nor an Episcopalian, nor
even a Unitarian from under the sublime shadows of Harvard, but a Meth-
odist from Cape Cod! And yet Methodism has been mobbed, in Boston, in
my time. This showing, upon the whole, is satisfactory.”52 William F. Warren,
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 however, was far from parochial in his mind-set. He was already showing
signs of being a gifted young theologian during his six years of service at a
Methodist seminary in northern Germany.
Boston University School of Theology attracted gifted students from
across the nation throughout the late nineteenth century. It even became the
first university to grant a theological degree to a woman when Anna Oliver
earned her stb degree in 1876, and in 1887 John Wesley Bowen became the
second African-American in us history to receive a Ph.D. degree.53 As the
first Methodist seminary in the country, it was inevitable that when the holi-
ness movement spread with new fervor throughout the country in the years
following the Civil War, many of the university’s younger theology school re-
cruits would come to the city to receive theological education from some of
the most notable leaders of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
Daniel Steele, who was one of the intellectual leaders of the holiness move-
ment, served as professor of theology at Boston University from 1884 to 1893.
His famous book about entire sanctification, Love Enthroned, was published
in 1875 and reprinted several times. Steele’s revision of his father-in-law’s text,
Binney’s Theological Compendium, was one of the theological textbooks most
used by Methodists for decades.54 Steele’s theology was an activist’s theol-
ogy, and the students he and other professors at Boston University attracted
had a similar disposition. The following excerpt from Steele’s Love Enthroned
showcases this heartfelt activism:

It is remarkable fact, that as soon as love is fully shed abroad in the be-
liever’s heart he immediately overleaps the limitations of his theology, if
he has been so unfortunate as to have been educated in the belief of a
limited atonement, and feels irresistibly drawn toward every lost sinner as
the object of Jesus’ mighty love. Hence it is that the missionary spirit is so
intense in fully consecrated souls. They have been brought into the most
intimate sympathy with the breadth of Christ’s love. Hence they plunge
into the moral cesspools in our great cities, to pluck lost men and fallen
women from the fires of perdition. The secret motive power which impels
them to go down into these pits, and cheerfully breathe the fetid miasmas
which settle there, is that they know by experience the amazing breadth
of Jesus’ love. “He left his Father’s throne above; (so free, so infinite, his
grace!) Emptied himself of all but love, And bled for Adam’s helpless race;
‘Tis mercy all, immense and free, For, O my God, it found out me!”55

the union mission and home for little wanderers

The Union Mission and Home for Little Wanderers, an orphanage, was one of
several organizations that emerged in the post–Civil War period that sought
to reflect Steele’s activist theology among Boston’s poor. There was plenty of
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 work to go around. The number of juveniles arrested in the city of Boston
was rising sharply between 1850 and 1865. Efforts to stem the tide of juvenile
delinquency increased as well.56 The high death rate of children in the 1850s
would have also been a jolting realization for many of Boston’s more comfort-
able citizens. An April 1865 publication stated, with alarm, that from 1852 to
1859 27 percent of all children born in Massachusetts had died prior to their
fifteenth birthday. “Preventable sickness” was seen to be the cause of most of
these deaths.57
Several child welfare organizations had been established in Boston prior
to the Civil War. Indeed, Boston led the nation in the development of child
welfare institutions and served as a model that many other cities sought to
emulate.58 Organizations such as the Boston Female Asylum, Boston Asylum
for Indigent Boys, Boston Farm School, and the Children’s Mission were all
functioning prior to 1850. The Boston Children’s Aid Society, which began
in 1864, almost a year before the Home for Little Wanderers, was the initia-
tive of a group of prominent society women who had visited one of Boston’s
jails and found numerous children imprisoned there. Led by prominent and
wealthy Unitarians and Episcopalians, the Boston Children’s Aid Society be-
came Massachusetts’ leading child welfare agency and the organization most
similar to the Home for Little Wanderers.
Believing that their evangelical fervor could also make a valuable contri-
bution to child welfare work, a group of evangelical businessmen from Bos-
ton organized themselves in 1865 and visited the Howard Mission and Home
for Little Wanderers in New York City to see a potential model for the agency
they sought to create.59 Upon their return, they immediately set out to estab-
lish a similar home for orphans in Boston. The chairperson of this organizing
effort was the Reverend E. N. Kirk of Boston. The Reverend F. D. Hunting-
ton was also an enthusiastic supporter of the organization. Methodist philan-
thropists Isaac Rich, Jacob Sleeper, and Lee Claflin a few years later set the
organization on a very firm financial footing by donating the enormous sum
of $500,000 for the institution’s endowment.60
There were four important differences between the established groups—
Boston Children’s Aid Society, Boston Female Asylum—and the Home for
Little Wanderers. First, the Home for Little Wanderers lacked the broad base
of Boston Brahmin financial support and social status that other child wel-
fare agencies enjoyed. The Home for Little Wanderers, in contrast, benefited
from a narrow but lucrative stream of “new money,” as the half-million-dollar
gift from Rich, Sleeper, and Claflin made clear.61 Second, the Home for Little
Wanderers was a more fervently evangelistic religious organization than the
older Brahmin child welfare agencies. Twenty years after its founding, the
children from the Home for Little Wanderers still participated in evange-
listic services held at Crescent Beach by the Evangelistic Association of New
England.62
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 Related to its more aggressive religious practices, a third distinctive char-
acteristic that set the Home for Little Wanderers apart from other agencies
was that its operatives did not approach their Catholic neighbors with as
much of a cooperative spirit as was common with Unitarian, Episcopalian,
or Congregationalist child welfare advocates.63 In fact, the Home for Little
Wanderers aggressively competed against Catholic agencies. Historian Susan
Walton documents several instances of missionary agents from the Home
for Little Wanderers competing with the Catholic Home for Destitute Chil-
dren in getting Catholic children into their orphanage.64 In one instance, a
Catholic worker at the Home for Destitute Children discovered that a boy
(not an orphan) was about to be sent away on an orphan train to Ohio. The
worker contacted the boy’s mother, who then moved the boy to the Catholic
Home.65
The Home for Little Wanderers seems to have matched its passionate ri-
valry with Catholics with an ambitious stance for the equal treatment of black
and white children. Peter Holloran describes the Home for Little Wanderers
as the “first private charity to admit black children on a more or less equal
basis with whites.”66 Boston University held a similar distinction among Bos-
ton educational institutions. Significantly, both institutions received substan-
tial support from the same three Methodist laymen.
As is often the case with new religious social welfare organizations, the
Home for Little Wanderers struggled with how broadly or narrowly to define
its Christian identity. Shortly after the founding of the home in 1865 some
leaders of the organization attempted to turn it into an exclusively Baptist
orphanage to care for the orphaned sons and daughters of Baptist men who
had fought in the Civil War. This idea was technically abandoned and instead
the home was established as an explicitly nonsectarian (Protestant) organi-
zation. Subsequent annual reports boasted that the board of managers had
representatives from six different denominations. The home was nonetheless
located in the former building of the Second Baptist Church of Baldwin Place
in Boston’s North End, which in 1743 had been the first Baptist church estab-
lished in “old Boston.”67 (For the location of the home see figure 2.1.)
The Home for Little Wanderers by the mid-1880s was identifiably ecu-
menical in its orientation but with Methodist and Baptist support predomi-
nating. The Reverend Varnum A. Cooper, a Boston Methodist Episcopal
pastor and childhood orphan himself, assumed the superintendency of the
home in 1886. The Minutes of the Methodist Episcopal New England Annual
Conference in 1874 also identify the New England Home for Little Wander-
ers as one of the more significant recipients of church monies given for that
year.68 Baptist devotion to the orphanage continued to be strong as well, with
the largest church donor in 1884 being a Baptist church in Waltham. Baptist
preacher A. J. Gordon also delivered the main address at the home’s annual
meeting in 1884.69
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 In 1889, with a clear sense of relief, the Baldwin Place Home for Little
Wanderers “at last” moved out of the North End into much more spacious
accommodations in Boston’s South End.70 With this move, the organization
changed its name to the New England Home for Little Wanderers. In the
1890s the South End began to surpass the West End as the home of the ma-
jority of Boston’s African-American population.71

the north end mission

Throughout the 1870s, the North End neighborhood of Boston was the pri-
mary locus of Protestant anxiety about the plight of the urban poor. As early
as the 1840s, with its Irish population rapidly growing, Boston’s North End
had become the city’s first tenement slum. The Reverend David Sherman,
presiding elder of the Boston District of the Methodist Episcopal New Eng-
land Annual Conference in 1875, made his concern over the North End very
clear. With its dense concentration of bars, brothels, and dire poverty, Sher-
man described the neighborhood as the place where “Satan hath his seat and
synagogue.” Sherman further noted his growing concern that the church in
the city was declining because many Methodists were moving to the suburbs
once their income levels increased.72
Evangelical mission work in the North End was widespread in the late
1860s and 1870s. In addition to the Baldwin Place Home for Little Wander-
ers and the North End Mission, the Methodists had a Seamen’s Bethel led
by Father Taylor, the Hanover Street Methodist Episcopal Church, and the
North End Mission. The Baptist Bethel was also located in the North End
as was Charles Cullis’s Lewis Street Mission and Fulton Street Mission—to
be discussed later in the chapter. All these organizations were within a five-
minute walk from one another and are identified in figure 2.1.73
The North End Mission was established in 1868, the same year that Meth-
odist “Father Taylor” stepped down from his leadership of the Port Society, an
organization he had led since 1829. The North End Mission was established
only a short block away from Father Taylor’s bethel. One observer noted the
North End’s worsening characteristics in the late 1860s and made the con-
nection explicit between Taylor’s work and that of the new North End Mis-
sion. The new mission received praise as a concerted group effort in contrast
to Father Taylor, who worked “comparatively alone” in the narrow streets and
alleys of the North End.74
The North End Mission began during the Civil War as a small outreach
effort of the Hanover Street Methodist Episcopal Church in the North End.
Like many organizations founded at this time, it suffered from lack of direc-
tion and financing as the nation focused its attention on the war. In February
of 1868 the organization became energized by the involvement of Dr. Eben
Tourjée, the charismatic thirty-four-year-old Methodist founder of the New
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 figure 2.1. Map of selected North End Protestant institutions, 1870–1884.

England Conservatory of Music and future director of the thousand-voice

choir at the 1877 Moody revival.75
By 1867 Eben Tourjée had begun the New England Conservatory of Music
in partial fulfillment of his dream to teach music to students of modest means.
When only sixteen years old Tourjée had a dream, which is described in his
nephew’s unpublished biography, of being “surrounded by silent, unblessed
children, and in their hands they held song books and musical instruments,
but they knew not how to sing or make music. Eben could read in the wistful
look in the children’s eyes what they were saying, ‘We can’t afford music, we’re
too poor!’ Then, they faded, like dreams in the night. And out of the dark
stillness, the Voice whispered again, ‘Share with them your music—my music.
Teach them all; Teach them in classes!’”76 He had received his calling in life.
Seventeen years later he founded the New England Conservatory of Music.
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 This great victory, however, was matched by an even greater tragedy.
Shortly after the conservatory opened to its 350 pupils in September of 1867,
Eben’s childhood sweetheart and beloved wife Abbie died. After her death,
Tourjée’s mother moved in with him to help care for his and Abbie’s three
children. The family attended Tremont Street Methodist Episcopal Church,
where Eben soon became friends with the pastor of that church, the Rever-
end W. R. Clark.
In the summer of 1867, Rev. Clark preached a sermon titled “The Devil in
our Midst,” whereby he told of the horrific living conditions that existed in
the North End neighborhood of Boston. Beginning in April 1867, Clark and
holiness movement leader William McDonald were appointed to lead fund-
raising efforts for the Sunday School and Missionary Society of the Method-
ist Episcopal Church, which was later renamed the Boston Missionary and
Church Extension Society (bmces). One of Clark’s goals in preaching about
the North End was undoubtedly to make his relatively affluent congregation
aware of the needs.77
Clark’s sermon affected Tourjée greatly; he was surprised to learn of the
desperate poverty that existed in his newly adopted city. Tourjée then went
on a walking tour of the North End with Rev. Clark and J. H. Crowell, the
missionary of the Hanover Street Mission. “That night, in the privacy of his
room, Eben knelt and prayed, pleading with all his heart for divine guidance.
In relating his experience and determination to his mother, Angeline[, she]
assured him that if God willed him to participate in this important work,
there would be others at his side, for such a great undertaking was not a one-
man job.”78
Very quickly, Eben Tourjée rose as a prominent leader, visionary, and fi-
nancial backbone for the Hanover Street Mission. Tourjée arranged for the
mission to change locations and rented a formerly famous brothel at 201
North Street in the heart of what was called the “black sea”—so named for all
the people who had “drowned” in its grip. In 1870 the building at 201 North
Street was purchased.79 The mission on North Street was surrounded by “up-
wards of one hundred houses of ill-fame, and four hundred grog-shops, of the
vilest character.”80
At an April 1868 meeting of the Hanover Street Mission, Tourjée read
aloud a report from Phoebe Palmer’s Five Points Mission in New York City
and proclaimed that this Boston mission could be just as effective. At this
same meeting, Tourjée also moved to rename the Hanover Street Mission the
North End Mission, perhaps to disassociate it somewhat from the local Meth-
odist Episcopal Church for the purposes of attracting non-Methodist donors.
Lieutenant Governor William Claflin and Boston Mayor Shurtleff were also
present at this April meeting. Nine months later, at the January 1869 annual
meeting, William Claflin and Mayor Shurtleff both became members of the
board of managers along with the Reverend Gilbert Haven, the future Meth-
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 odist Episcopal bishop.81 A few months later, the Reverend Russell Toles, su-
perintendent of the neighboring Baldwin Place Home for Little Wanderers,
was also named to the executive committee of the organization.82
By January of 1869 an industrial school was organized—again at the ini-
tiative of Tourjée—for the purposes of teaching women and children to sew.
The 1871 annual report for the North End Mission estimated that there were
thirty thousand needlewomen working in Massachusetts at a wage of $1.50
per week at a time when lodging rent was approximately $0.70 per week.83
The plight of Henry Morgan’s Ned Nevins would have been all too famil-
iar to Tourjée and participants in the industrial school. Mrs. William Claflin
was the president of the all-female board for the industrial school, and the
Claflins remained very active supporters of the North End Mission. On one
occasion, in 1870, they hosted 150 children from the mission at their Newton
home and treated them to ice cream and strawberries.84
Tourjée continued to increase his leadership role at the North End Mis-
sion, and in 1870 he became its president, giving up the superintendency of
the Sunday School at the mission that he especially enjoyed. Shortly after
Tourjée assumed the presidency, the mission expanded to comprise a whole
complex of ministries including a four-hundred-seat chapel, a reading room,
an industrial school for sewing, a home for reforming prostitutes, and a res-
taurant that provided meals for free or at cost to its patrons. An undated
newspaper article from the early 1870s boasted that the Boston chief of police
appreciated the North End Mission because “since its establishment, a much
smaller force is required to keep that quarter of the city in order.”85
In February 1872 Tourjée led the North End Mission in holding a large
fund-raising fair at Boston’s Music Hall—the most prominent venue in the
city, located across the street from the Boston Common. This fair brought in a
$35,382 profit and involved the participation of many Boston-area churches
in a kind of friendly competition with one another to raise the most money for
the mission.86 Methodist Episcopal churches appear to have been the largest
contributors at this event, although A. J. Gordon’s Clarendon Street Baptist
Church also participated and raised the second-highest amount of money of
any of the churches at the ten-day fair.87 The profits from the fair enabled the
North End Mission to purchase a five-acre estate in West Roxbury for reform-
ing prostitutes.88 The danger of prostitution seems to have been particularly
emphasized in the North End Mission’s magazine for rural female migrants
to the city. The magazine published a story in 1872 that warned would-be
rural migrants to the city of its dangers. It is a story of a New Hampshire farm
girl whose parents naively consent to her move to the city where “the silly fly
seeks the web.”89
In June of 1875 Tourjée became involved in the labor reform movement
when he advocated on behalf of the sewing women who had been trained at
the North End Mission’s industrial school. Many of these women were Portu-
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 guese immigrants. A missionary at the North End Mission, Mrs. L. E. Caswell,
utilized eight Portuguese interpreters to help her teach sewing classes at the
mission. By 1874 the organization claimed that eighteen hundred Portuguese
women had been helped.90 Earlier that year the city placed sewing machines
in the jail, and inmates began producing items. This, Tourjée claimed, was
unfair competition that undercut the prices that sewing women in the city
could charge for their own work. Tourjée petitioned the state legislature to
stop this practice. Tourjée and the North End Mission received praise in the
Christian Labor Union’s magazine, Equity, for his actions even though the
legislature did not ultimately support Tourjée’s position.91
Tourjée’s political involvement on behalf of workers may have rubbed some
of his more wealthy supporters the wrong way. His nephew remarked that
“[h]ad he gone to Bombay or Hong Kong, he would have been proclaimed a
martyr for his noble gesture. Yet, it seemed to many both strange and remark-
able for a man of his position to devote himself to the rescue of lost souls in
his own city. Prior to this, most of Boston’s so-called respectable class knew
little about the notorious North End conditions. But in the Mission Maga-
zine, Dr. Tourjée shocked many out of their Puritanical smugness with his
true, hard-hitting account of things.”92
The early 1870s were years of tremendous expansion at the North End
Mission and the conservatory, but Tourjée did not limit himself to helping
only the organizations he had founded. He was president of the Boston ymca
in 1871, and between 1872 and 1876 Tourjée also served as president of the
Boston Missionary and Church Extension Society (bmces), an official orga-
nization of the Methodist Episcopal Church in New England.93 His predeces-
sor in this organization was his friend and pastor W. R. Clark, who had first
revealed to him the horrors of Boston’s slums. Years earlier, holiness leader
William McDonald had considered merging the bmces with the North End
Mission, but this merger never occurred.94
Tourjée’s magnificent fund-raising abilities for the bmces in the early
1870s helped it to expand. He recruited big names to add gravitas to the or-
ganization; many of these individuals were already strong supporters of the
North End Mission. William Claflin, Jacob Sleeper, Daniel Steele, and others
all came on board. In a single year Tourjée tripled the amount raised for the
bmces, but this fund-raising success was short-lived as a deep financial de-
pression hit the nation in the years after 1873. Tourjée resigned as president
of the bmces in 1876, the same year he also resigned from the North End
Mission. Between 1869 and 1878 New England Methodists and the bmces
had nevertheless succeeded in starting nine new churches in Boston and its
first-ring suburbs. They had Tourjée to thank for it.95
Although Tourjée resigned from the presidency of the North End Mission
in 1876, he remained involved with its board of managers for several years.96
With Ezra Farnsworth of the Congregationalist Park Street Church replac-
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 ing him at the helm of the mission, its spirit began to change.97 Methodist
involvement with the North End Mission gradually declined over the years
even as its social welfare and evangelistic activities remained substantial.
At the start of 1883 the only identifiable Methodist representatives on the
mission’s board of directors were Tourjée and the Reverend Lewis Benton
Bates.98 In 1891 the North End Mission was still providing North End resi-
dents with 103,000 meals, 33,000 lodgings, 9,000 articles of clothing, and
1,000 religious services each year. Two-hundred and twenty-seven women
had been cared for that year at the home for prostitutes, and sixty children
had been cared for at the orphanage at the Mount Hope estate.99 In 1902 the
North End Mission left the North End for “more healthful surroundings.” By
this time the mission was a predominantly Unitarian endeavor.100
Despite all his involvement in the North End Mission, the bmces, and the
ymca, Tourjée remained equally active in his leadership of the New England
Conservatory of Music and other musical endeavors including the directing
of the choir for the 1877 Moody revival.101 In 1872 Boston University estab-
lished a School of Music in partnership with Tourjée’s conservatory. Tour-
jée was then the dean of both schools.102 During these years, the North End
Mission also became a common destination for Boston University School of
Theology students—and perhaps some School of Music students as well—
in their evangelistic outreach efforts. Figure 2.2, which dates from 1887, in-
cludes the address of the North End Mission above the group photograph
of the students.103 In 1882 Tourjée purchased—with his own funds—the St.
James Hotel in the South End’s Franklin Square to house the New England
Conservatory of Music and Boston University’s School of Music. By 1883 the
conservatory was declared to be the “largest and most splendidly equipped
conservatory and college of music in the world.”104
Eben Tourjée’s leadership in both music education and ministry among the
urban poor is significant in light of the importance of hymn singing at New
England camp meetings. Music at camp meetings at this time encouraged
meeting participants to involve themselves in Christian service to the poor as
one expression of believers’ entire sanctification. Tourjée also worked to en-
courage more congregational hymn singing at a time when affluent Methodist
congregations were beginning to substitute professional soloists for congrega-
tional singing in the worship services. At the same time, Tourjée’s leadership of
the respected New England Conservatory of Music probably contributed to the
separation of music from lay ministry as the conservatory also produced pro-
fessional performers, to the delight of some of Tourjée’s Brahmin benefactors.
The tension Tourjée probably felt between wanting to encourage popular
congregational singing (in keeping with the camp meeting tradition) and his
desire to satisfy his more upper-class friends at the conservatory would have
been a familiar tension experienced by many other Methodist leaders. Noth-
ing symbolized this tension more than Tourjée’s leadership of educational
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 figure 2.2. Boston University School of Theology Students, 1887. Image from Sally
Ann Kydd, Boston University, The Campus History Series (Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia
Publishing, 2002), 30.

excursions to Europe from 1878 until 1884. Tourjée took a number of promi-
nent Boston Methodist friends with him on these trips. Holiness theologian
Daniel Steele, William Claflin, and William Fairfield Warren were among
Tourjée’s traveling companions on at least one occasion. In an advertisement
for Tourjée’s excursions, Daniel Steele offers a testimonial about the tour,
praising it for “the daily religious exercises, hymns, responsive Psalm-reading
and prayer on the steamer and the restful Sabbaths on land with services
everywhere in our mother tongue.” These were far from selfless missionary
trips to Europe, but they nonetheless encouraged Christian devotion that was
somewhat reminiscent of—but dramatically different from—the piety pres-
ent at New England camp meetings. 105
Following a mild stroke in 1887, Tourjée began spending winters in Florida
until his death in 1891. Holiness movement leader William Nast Brodbeck,
the pastor of Tremont Street Methodist Episcopal Church, where Tourjée had
been a member for the nearly twenty years, preached Tourjée’s funeral ser-
mon.106 Today, Tourjée is remembered as the founder of the New England
Conservatory of Music and as the first president of the Music Teachers’ Na-
tional Association when it was founded in 1876, but not for his religious work
and service to the poor. His two daughters, Lizzie and Clara, studied music
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 and gained reputations as a composer and soloist, respectively. Lizzie Tour-
jée Estabrook composed a well-known hymn, “There’s a Wideness in God’s
Mercy,” still used in Protestant hymnbooks. It reflects many of the beliefs
Eben Tourjée held dear.

There’s a wideness in God’s mercy

Like the wideness of the sea
There’s a kindness in His justice
Which is more than liberty
There is welcome for the sinner
And more graces for the good
There is mercy with the Savior
There is healing in His blood;
For the love of God is broader
Than the measure of man’s mind
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind;
If our love were but more simple
We should take Him at His word
And our lives would be all sunshine
In the sweetness of our Lord.107

charles cullis’s institutions

Tourjée’s masterful and diverse abilities as a musician, entrepreneur, fund-
raiser, and administrator were surpassed by only one other Boston evangeli-
cal of his day. Of all the evangelical leaders in Boston during this era, no one
brought together more disparate ideas, movements, or people in Protestant
Christianity than Dr. Charles Cullis. He was a national leader of the faith-
healing movement, an eclectic churchman, and an organizational genius. The
following excerpt from an annual report of 1880 not only reveals his devout
faith but also illustrates the wide-ranging scope of his work:

Still further, that I may not be misunderstood, and that God may not be
dishonored by a statement sometimes seen in public print in regard to the
Word, that “it is foolish to pray and do nothing,” I give the following facts: I
have under my personal charge and management, first, the Consumptives’
Home, with its seventy sick ones, matrons, nurses and domestics; two or-
phan homes with twenty-seven orphans and matrons; the Spinal Home
with patients and nurses; the Deaconess House with its workers; five
churches and missions in Boston; the Faith Training College, with its pro-
fessors and students; the Cancer Home at Walpole, still in preparation for
opening; Boydton Institute, a large work among the freedmen in Virginia;
a work among the Chinese in California; foreign mission in Basim, India;
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 three Tract Repositories in Boston, New York and Philadelphia; the edit-
ing of two religious papers; preaching every Sabbath; conducting a large
consecration meeting every Tuesday afternoon throughout the year, also
other evening meetings; attending to a very large correspondence; praying
with between one and two hundred persons individually every week, and
earning my own living as a physician for the support of my family. I beg to
assure my readers that I recount all the above in no boasting spirit, . . . but
to answer, if possible, the statement with which we commenced, to prove,
beyond a question, that the one who prays most labors most, yea, “more
abundantly through Christ which strengtheneth me.”108

This is an impressive list of activities, but in order to understand Cullis

better one must analyze further the religious and social factors that moti-
vated his breakneck pace in institution building. Born in Boston in 1833 and
thus one year older than Tourjée, Charles Cullis was raised an Episcopalian.
He decided to become a physician upon the encouragement of other phy-
sicians during his own long recovery from illness in his late teenage years.
Cullis became a homeopathic physician and married the sister-in-law of one
of his teachers.109 His choice to practice homeopathic medicine both predis-
posed him to seek out alternative healing methods and later placed him in
the midst of a controversy in Boston between traditional medical doctors and
those who advocated homeopathy.110 This controversy served to give his work
increased public exposure as well. A subsequent controversy in the 1870s
known as the prayer-gauge debate also increased the public’s awareness of
Cullis’s work.111
The death of Cullis’s first wife in 1861 coincided with his growing passion for
both holiness and helping the impoverished of Boston. In 1861 Cullis joined
the newly organized Emmanuel Episcopal Church, which was still meeting
at the Mechanics Association Hall but a year later relocated as planned to the
new Back Bay neighborhood—recently reclaimed from the Charles River es-
tuary. On March 24, 1861 (three weeks before shots were fired on Fort Sumter
to begin the Civil War), F. D. Huntington was ordained to the priesthood and
began serving as Emmanuel’s first rector.112 The Reverend Huntington was
a convert from Unitarianism to the holiness cause and vital for encouraging
Emmanuel’s urban mission work among the poor.113 The friendship between
Huntington and Charles Cullis remained intense throughout the 1860s and
was strengthened by the tragic loss of Cullis’s eleven-month-old firstborn son
born to his second wife, Lucretia, in August of 1868. The Reverend Fred-
eric Dan Huntington presided at the funeral for his own namesake, Frederic
Huntington Cullis.114
Charles Cullis professed an experience of entire sanctification on August
19, 1862, just a year after joining Huntington’s church.115 As was the case with
his pastor, Cullis’s involvement with the holiness movement placed him more
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 closely in affinity with Methodists than with members of his own denomina-
tion. Cullis’s relationships to Phoebe Palmer, John Inskip, William McDon-
ald, and Daniel Steele and his sponsorship of camp meetings at the Method-
ist-owned Old Orchard Beach would not have been looked on favorably by
some prominent Boston Episcopalians. The Tuesday afternoon “consecration
meetings” led by Cullis grew from a handful of persons in 1869 to a group of
four hundred by 1874.116 After renting an expensive hall at the nearby Congre-
gational House for which a friend largely paid, a new hall for the meeting was
finally dedicated in May of 1875. At the service of dedication of the new hall,
which was also to serve as the location for Cullis’s tuition-free Faith Training
College, one observer remarked how usually a college overshadows a prayer
meeting in importance but that here the reverse seemed to be the case.117
Cullis’s leadership in the holiness movement placed him in the midst of
schismatic movements in the Episcopal Church—between the evangelicals,
who stressed a kind of Methodist revivalism, and the sacramentarians, who
were increasingly drawn to medieval ritual and architecture. Cullis’s friend-
ship with Episcopal priests F. D. Huntington, A. H. Vinton, Samuel Cutler,
and W. R. Nicholson placed him firmly on the side of the evangelicals in the
schism of 1873 that produced the Reformed Episcopal Church. By the 1880s
many evangelical Episcopalians had left the denomination to join either the
Reformed Episcopal Church or other groups.118
While Huntington and Vinton remained with the Episcopal Church, other
friends of Cullis’s including Samuel Cutler and W. R. Nicholson did not.119
Cutler had left his parish in Hanover, Massachusetts, because of the local
manifestation of divisive forces splitting apart the wider denomination.120
Cullis offered Cutler a pastorate at one of Cullis’s new churches in the Grove
Hall section of Roxbury, but this did not last, as the parishioners preferred
to have Cullis, an Episcopal layman, serve as pastor instead.121 The Reverend
William Rufus Nicholson was the rector at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in
Boston beginning in 1859 and was an avid supporter of Cullis’s work from the
start. Nicholson may have been instrumental in encouraging Cullis’s involve-
ment in foreign missionary efforts (which began in 1875) since he served as
general secretary for the Episcopal Church’s missionary society immediately
prior to his departure to join the Reformed Episcopal Church in 1874.122
Cullis’s own ties to the Protestant Episcopal Church were no doubt strained
in 1873 when he became pastor of Grove Hall Church despite his lay status
with the Protestant Episcopal Church. But his relationship to the Episcopal
Church appears never to have been completely severed. Unlike his clergy
friends, Cullis was an Episcopal layman, a status that made formal separa-
tion with the denomination unnecessary.123 During the summer of 1877 Cullis
was asked by his pastor, most likely the Reverend A. H. Vinton at Emmanuel
Church, to make his new Brighton Street Mission an Episcopal mission.124
Cullis refused. “All our Deaconesses, and workers, and patients were repre-
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 sentatives of different denominations; and as my sole aim in the mission was
to bring the impenitent to a knowledge of Christ, the Saviour, I could not
begin a sectarian work. I had been brought up in the Episcopal Church; I
loved it; but in bringing souls to Christ, I could not prescribe the form of
church or worship.”125
A few months later, in the fall of 1877, the Protestant Episcopal Church
held its triennial convention in the city of Boston, which resulted in the final
split between the Reformed Episcopal Church and the Protestant Episcopal
Church. The conflict at this gathering between evangelicals and sacramen-
tarians in the Protestant Episcopal Church resulted in a decisive loss for
the evangelical faction within the church. One “high Church” representative
claimed “[a] victory so complete . . . that the renewal of hostilities hereafter is
hopeless.”126 After this convention, the evangelicals’ influence in the Episcopal
Church greatly diminished. There is no evidence of Cullis’s involvement with
the Protestant Episcopal Church after this date even though he continued to
self-identify as an Episcopalian for the rest of his life.127
Cullis’s prolific institution building began in September of 1864 with the
establishment of the Consumptives’ Home. In 1870 it moved to the Grove
Hall section of Roxbury.128 The Consumptives’ Home was always his largest in
terms of the financial resources he had to commit to it. In the late 1870s and
early 1880s the annual expenditures for the home stood roughly at $30,000.
In contrast, the budget for the Faith Training College, foreign missions, and
other homes was usually less than $10,000 combined.129 The $21,000 needed
to purchase the home in Roxbury was raised at a February 1871 fair held at
Music Hall. Tourjée’s North End Mission would have even greater financial
success at its fair held at the same venue the following year. In 1871 Cullis’s
ministries were incorporated in the state of Massachusetts. William Claflin,
Jacob Sleeper, the Reverend A. H. Vinton, and three other individuals served
with Charles Cullis as trustees. When the orphanage was established in 1868
to care for the children of Consumptives’ Home patients, the Reverend W.
R. Nicholson and the Reverend F. D. Huntington were both present for the
dedication ceremony.
Cullis’s management of his institutions’ finances was as creative as his
managing of ecclesial divisions in the Episcopal Church. Cullis followed the
example of George Müller as understood in Müller’s famous book, Life of
Trust, published in 1861.130 Müller’s book inspired Dr. Cullis to follow in his
footsteps and never make any explicit solicitation for money to finance his
projects.131 He rather let people know that he had financial needs through his
annual reports and trusted that God would provide. As one would expect, the
financial resources were not always as plentiful as Cullis would have liked.
One of his strongest supporters, holiness theologian Daniel Steele, encour-
aged Cullis during a financial crisis and revealed his own perspective on labor
relations. In 1875, while the United States was still in the midst of an economic
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 depression, Steele wrote to Cullis: “Faith builds temples of Christian charity
in times of financial depression. . . . Faith never is idle, because God’s mills are
never shut up for repairs, or because of an overstocked market. Faith-workers
never strike for higher wages, because they have the promise of the life that
now is and of that which is to come—‘they shall inherit all things.’”132
Steele’s reference to the problems of labor may illustrate one area of dis-
agreement between Cullis and himself that emerged in 1875. On May 23,
1875, Cullis’s newly constructed chapel for his Tuesday afternoon consecra-
tion meeting was also host to the second public meeting of E. H. Rogers’s
Christian Labor Union. Cullis’s institutions were praised in the pages of the
clu’s journal, Equity. His institutions were said to be a foretaste of that “most
blessed” time when Cullis’s “high and noble form of Christian charity [shall
be] . . . supplanted by that divine charity, whereby the whole organization of
society shall be so ordered and managed, that in its ordinary workings it shall
meet all human needs.”133 The clu would have been an advocate of workers’
right to strike, something that Steele seems to have frowned on at this time.
Cullis’s attention to George Müller’s teachings and institutional develop-
ments in Europe was part of a growing trend. Transatlantic travel became
increasingly common, which led philanthropists and religious leaders in
Europe and America to borrow heavily from one another. Cullis’s attention
to European developments was particularly important for two areas of his
ministry. First, Cullis’s decision to be a more public advocate of faith heal-
ing was largely due to his visit to the faith-healing center begun by Dorothea
Trüdel and carried on by Samuel Zeller in Männedorf, Switzerland. Likewise,
Cullis’s adoption of a deaconess home and training school was an explicit
attempt at replicating the deaconess home and related institutions founded
by Theodore Fliedner in Kaiserswerth, Germany.134 The expansion of Cullis’s
ministries to include many other institutions is also a reflection of Fliedner’s
method; Fliedner established a deaconess home, hospital, knitting school,
teacher-training school, and orphanages.135 Charles and Lucretia Cullis
toured Kaiserswerth and other ministries similar to Cullis’s own work during
a four-month visit to Europe in the summer of 1873. Accompanying the Cul-
lises were Dr. and Mrs. Boardman, supporters of Cullis’s work and important
leaders of the holiness movement in America and Britain.136
Charles Cullis’s deaconess house, established in May of 1869, was the pio-
neer deaconess institution in New England, and Cullis believed it was the
first such institution in North America.137 Not affiliated with any particular
denomination, it would be an important model for Boston Methodists when
they established their own deaconess institution two decades later.138 Two
years after its founding, five deaconesses had graduated from Cullis’s dea-
coness house. Three were associated with the Consumptives’ Home and chil-
dren’s home. The other two were involved in visitation work in Boston and
work with prostitutes in New York City.139 When the Faith Training College
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 was founded, deaconesses’ education began to incorporate coursework at the
college in addition to their practical work in nursing or visitation through
ministries in the area. An 1881 annual report notes that “many” deaconesses
attended the Faith Training College in the evenings.140
Cullis’s involvement in printing and distributing evangelistic tracts pre-
ceded the founding of the Consumptives’ Home, although a formal organiza-
tion for the purposes of tract publication was not established until 1869 with
the Willard Street Tract Repository.141 The magazine Times of Refreshing was
published the same year and served as an important vehicle for promoting
holiness movement news and spreading awareness of Cullis’s ministries. The
first page of the periodical asserted its holiness movement emphasis. “Its ob-
ject is to present Jesus as a full and perfect Saviour, and that His precious
blood ‘cleanseth from all sin;’ to give facts and incidents relative to the work
of God in various places, and to urge believers to be ‘followers of God as dear
Children.’”142 Books about faith healing and dozens of tract titles by such holi-
ness movement leaders as Hannah and Robert Pearsall Smith, William Mc-
Donald, W. E. Boardman, and others were offered for sale.143 Cullis’s publish-
ing house—with branches in New York and Philadelphia—would eventually
become the most important publisher of faith-healing materials in North
America.144 The Reverend A. J. Gordon of Clarendon Street Baptist Church
would serve as one of the most important apologists for Cullis’s faith-healing
movement with the 1882 publication of his Ministry of Healing: Miracles of
Cure in All Ages. Gordon had become convinced of the truth of faith healing
at the Moody 1877 campaign, where he saw an opium addict cured and a mis-
sionary’s jaw healed instantaneously.145
Several recent scholars have already noted Cullis’s important leadership of
the American faith-healing movement of the late nineteenth century.146 That
John Inskip, William McDonald, A. J. Gordon, Daniel Steele, and William
Boardman were supporters of Cullis’s faith-healing ministry illustrates the
importance of faith healing to the holiness movement—especially in its early
years. Inskip himself claimed to have been healed by Dr. Cullis in December
of 1871.147 As important as Cullis’s national leadership in the faith-healing
movement was, it sometimes overshadowed his other contributions to Amer-
ican religious life and, in particular, his contributions to Boston urban mis-
sion.148 His deaconess house and publishing house, already discussed, are just
two of those important contributions.
By 1882, just seven years after the deaconess house’s movement to Grove
Hall, the deaconess house had forty-two women associated with it as either
current residents or graduates. Three-fourths of these women were associ-
ated with various Cullis institutions in North America, with the remainder
working in foreign missions either with Cullis’s institutions or elsewhere.149
Daniel Steele was chairperson of the board of trustees for the branch of
Cullis’s ministries that included everything except the Consumptives’ Home
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 and related hospitals or homes for the sick. Steele also spoke at the dedication
of a new deaconess house in September 1875. In later years he would be one
of the chief supporters of, and a teacher at, the Methodist Episcopal deacon-
ess institution in Boston founded in 1889.
Theological students at Boston University School of Theology also became
more acquainted with Cullis’s work after 1882 when the university trustees
purchased a former Baptist church at 12 Somerset Street, practically next
door to Charles Cullis’s home at 16 Somerset Street. The Faith Training Col-
lege was located on the same block as well. The former church at 12 Somerset
Street was named Jacob Sleeper Hall and served as the home of the univer-
sity’s College of Liberal Arts, administrative offices, women’s study room, and
classrooms.150 Cullis’s friendship with Daniel Steele and other Methodists and
the Wesleyan ethos of Cullis’s institutions likely would have strengthened the
connections between his institutions and the university as well.
The Faith Training College was established for the purpose of training men
and women who were not able to undertake theological study in denomina-
tional seminaries but who still wanted to equip themselves for various fields
of Christian work. Faith Training College promotional materials described
the college as preparing people for “the widening fields of lay activity which
the Head of the Church is wonderfully opening in our age, such as Sunday-
school instruction, Christian Association work, Bible exposition, exhortation,
lay preaching, lay evangelism, home and foreign missionary labor.” Courses
were held in the evening, tuition was free, and it was open to Christians from
all denominations. However, in keeping with Cullis’s holiness advocacy, the
school also stressed the Wesleyan idea that Jesus is able “to save to the utter-
most all that come unto God by him, and that it is the office of the Sanctifier
to purify all believers.”151
Among the more prominent faculty involved with the Faith Training Col-
lege were Charles Cullis, Daniel Steele, William McDonald, William Board-
man, A. B. Earle, and Charles Wesley Emerson.152 The Faith Training Col-
lege, an innovation in itself, was also noteworthy for its having a woman on
the faculty in 1875. Lucretia Cullis served as professor of Christian Work for
Women.153 Other members of the faculty were often pastors from the churches
Cullis had started in Boston. Steele, McDonald, Earle, and Boardman were
well-known leaders in the holiness movement; Charles Wesley Emerson is
less well known, but he was among the most interesting and enigmatic of the
faculty at the college. Emerson’s uniqueness is illustrated even in his name.
A distant cousin of Transcendentalism’s founder and descendant of Wesleyan
clergymen, Charles Wesley Emerson tended to draw on multiple religious
traditions throughout his life. Beginning in 1876, Emerson served as profes-
sor of oratory at Cullis’s Faith Training College and in 1877 was installed as
pastor at the Unitarian church of Chelsea. His involvement in a Wesleyan
holiness training college and a Unitarian church never seemed to be a prob-
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 lem for either himself, Charles Cullis, or any of the other faculty at the Faith
Training College. Beginning in 1878, Emerson was also a faculty member at
Boston University’s Monroe School of Oratory, which closed the following
year but was immediately reorganized by Emerson to become the Boston
Conservatory of Elocution and Dramatic Art. It was renamed Emerson Col-
lege in 1890.154
Many things would have attracted Emerson to Cullis’s Faith Training Col-
lege in 1876. Emerson worked there as professor of oratory for no salary for
eleven years.155 Cullis’s Consumptives’ Home would have been of personal
interest to Emerson since as early as 1878 Emerson knew that he had “con-
sumption in an incipient stage.”156 Emerson’s interest in alternative healing
methods and his training as a physician also would have drawn him to Cullis’s
work.157 Finally, his lifelong admiration of John Wesley and the Methodists
was such that he would have felt very much at home in the environment at
the Faith Training College. After Emerson died of consumption in 1908, the
funeral sermon by Dr. Benjamin Kidder suggested that perhaps it was with
the Methodists where Emerson had felt most at home. “In his Christian life—
for Dr. Emerson was pre-eminently a Christian, not of the sectarian type but
of the spiritual type—he manifested his strength. Like Phillips Brooks his
soul was too great and his sympathies too broad for any denomination to
claim him exclusively. As a Congregational minister he once preached to a
Unitarian congregation, and I personally know that he was in deepest and
truest sympathy with the highest and holiest ideals of truth and life as held
by the Methodists.”158
The Faith Training College where Emerson, Steele, McDonald, and others
taught was copied many times over in the Bible institute movement of the
1880s and 1890s. This later movement served as an important engine for the
growth of the foreign and domestic missionary movements, but historians
have not given due credit to Cullis’s Faith Training College as its precursor in
America.159 One of the first of these training schools in the 1880s was founded
by Cullis supporter A. B. Simpson, the founder of the Christian and Mis-
sionary Alliance.160 Simpson’s Missionary Training College in New York City,
founded in 1883, was begun for the purpose of providing basic theological
training to missionaries to aid in the task of world evangelization and was
based firmly on premillennial convictions.
A. J. Gordon’s Boston Missionary Training School, founded in 1889, was
based on premillennial ideas as well. However, in Boston, Gordon’s school
in many ways was simply a replica of Cullis’s Faith Training College founded
in 1875. Although not based on premillennial convictions and more firmly
situated within the Wesleyan holiness movement, Cullis’s school had similar
purposes to Gordon’s insofar as it was a lay training institute for both men
and women interested in serving as missionaries at home or abroad.161 When
Gordon’s institute was founded in 1889, most Boston observers would prob-
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 ably have compared it to Cullis’s Faith Training College as the most similar
school with which they were already familiar.
Cullis’s involvement in city missions began late in 1867—around the same
time that Tourjée also began to organize the North End Mission. Cullis
started his work among the poor by sponsoring a woman “Bible reader” who
visited the poor in the North End. By the end of 1867 the Willard Street Cha-
pel was founded in the West End. It sponsored temperance meetings, an
evening school for children, and other mission efforts until 1871, when the
work at Willard Street was disbanded and the associated church was moved
to Grove Hall in Roxbury. It would not be until 1877 that another mission
outpost would be established on Brighton Street, also in Boston’s West End.
This effort was led by B. B. Scott, a Methodist from Iowa who had originally
come to Boston to attend the Faith Training College after seeing an advertise-
ment for it in a newspaper. Along with retired sea captain H. L. Babbitt and
two deaconesses, Scott served as pastor of a Brighton Street mission Cullis
founded in 1877. By 1885 Scott and his wife left Boston to become missionar-
ies in India along with other graduates of the Faith Training College.162
A year after the founding of the Brighton Street mission, in 1878, two other
missions were begun—the first on Cottage Street in Dorchester and the sec-
ond, a North End mission to seamen, on Fulton Street.163 Cullis’s Lewis Street
Mission opened in 1879 also in the North End. In its first year of operation
the Lewis Street Mission claimed that 384 individuals had confessed con-
version to Christianity through its ministry; this was a number nine times
greater than the Congregationalist City Missionary Society reported for its
work in Boston the same year.164 By 1884 Cullis had also established six mis-
sion outposts in North America in addition to his work in the Boston area.
These missions included an orphanage in Virginia, a training school in Vir-
ginia, work among Chinese in Monterrey, California, the Renick’s Valley Mis-
sion in West Virginia, the Oxford Mission in North Carolina, and the Santa
Barbara Mission in California.165
Cullis’s involvement in foreign missions was also unique insofar as it was
one of the first “faith missions” in America. The term “faith missions” refers to
those organizations which were established independent of denominational
oversight and required persons preparing to serve as foreign missionaries to
raise their own financial support “on faith” that God would lead people to
give to the cause. The founder of “faith missions,” James Hudson Taylor, had
started his mission in China in 1865. Cullis was only a decade behind Taylor
in sending a missionary to India. Lucretia Cullis most likely influenced her
husband in choosing India since she had lived there for several years with her
first husband, who worked as a businessman in India until his death.
The first missionary sent to India under Cullis’s auspices was Miss Lucy
Drake. In 1870 Drake had been a patient of Dr. Cullis and was asked one day
whether she believed God could heal the tumor in her body that left her bed-
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 ridden. She and Cullis began praying for her divine healing, and her tumor
gradually disappeared. Drake was Cullis’s first experience of divine healing
and his first venture into sending foreign missionaries. Lucy Drake was later
influential in persuading Amanda Smith, an African-American washer-
woman from John Inskip’s church in New York, to go to India with her as
a missionary. Lucy Drake later married one of the founders of the National
Camp Meeting Association, William B. Osborn, in 1875.166 By 1881 Cullis had
established mission outposts in three different places: Basim, India; Balas-
ore, India; and Cape Town, South Africa.167
For all of Cullis’s apparent successes in the areas of foreign and domes-
tic missions, his Consumptives’ Home, and faith healing, by the mid-1880s
he was the recipient of an increasing number of attacks on his public faith-
healing ministry, for which he was most well known. Liberal theological per-
spectives on sin and human nature, along with a tendency to minimize the
impact of the supernatural on everyday events, began to gain more support-
ers in the society at large, and this took support away from faith-healing ad-
vocates. The practice of faith healing also came under attack because some
of its advocates were beginning to draw parallels between God’s ability to
save from sin through the atonement and God’s ability to save from sickness
through a similar faith in Christ.
This caused a rift to occur among healing advocates. R. Kelso Carter and
A. B. Simpson advocated for faith healing’s parallelism with the atonement,
such that if someone did not receive healing as requested it was because that
person similarly lacked a saving faith in Christ. Daniel Steele, S. L. Gracey,
and William McDonald saw divine healing as something that God does on
occasion but did not see the lack of a healing experience as being due to the
requesting individual’s lack of faith.168 Carter’s and Simpson’s understanding
of healing as a necessary outworking of belief in Christ’s atonement was also
present in one of A. J. Gordon’s sermons published in 1880.169
The most prominent opponent of faith healing in Methodism was James
Monroe Buckley, editor of the influential Christian Advocate magazine
in New York City. As early as 1882, Buckley criticized Cullis for giving the
Old Orchard Methodist campground “a reputation as great as the grotto at
Lourdes has among Roman Catholics.” As the faith-healing movement grew
and became more extreme in its claims by the mid-1880s, the frequency of
criticism toward the movement grew as well, from Buckley and others.170
Even though Cullis was never as extreme as some later faith healers, his
own work was often associated with less legitimate practitioners of faith
healing.
Among Boston Methodists, the fiery Reverend L. T. Townsend, a profes-
sor of preaching at Boston University School of Theology, criticized Cullis
for his inconsistency in practicing medicine and for being an advocate of
faith healing. Indeed, Cullis never fully explained this apparent contradic-
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 tion other than to note that God works in different ways at different times.
In a rebuke to Townsend in the Zion’s Herald, Steele criticized him for not
getting to know Cullis better. “The lecture-room of Dr. Townsend has been
for more than fifteen years within three minutes’ walk of Dr. Cullis, whom
he might have consulted if he wished to avoid errors which lay burdens on
his friends to correct, while they cumber the religious press with a needless
discussion.”171 Townsend seems to have taken Steele’s advice and was won
over to his side in support of Cullis. In 1890 Townsend preached at Cullis’s
Faith Convention in Intervale, New Hampshire, and in 1892 was a trustee of
Cullis’s institutions.172 By the late 1880s Cullis’s prominence among Boston
evangelicals started to diminish as other ministries began that seemed more
exciting to supporters. The controversy among faith-healing advocates them-
selves also damaged Cullis’s reputation.173
The most famous proponent of divine healing in Boston, Mary Baker Eddy
of the Christian Science Association, also critiqued Cullis. The only evidence
of their interaction, however, appears in a letter from Eddy to the editor of the
Boston Globe in which she accuses Cullis of lacking rigorous faith in divine
healing because he continued to use ordinary medical practices. Eddy wrote,
“The Globe reports Dr. Cullis, the leader of the ‘Faith Cure,’ saying that he al-
ways employs drugs, hygiene, and material methods first, and God last in his
practice. The Scriptures say, ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven.’ When one’s
faith in matter is foiled, and as a dernier [or last] resort one exercises faith
in God! Dr. Cullis admits that God has all power then questions his power to
raise a man who has fallen in the street. He reasons that God cannot deliver
the mother in travail, for this is the proper province of drugs, the knife and
forceps!”174 Cullis seems to have stayed above the fray with regard to this at-
tack, as he had on so many other issues of ecclesiastical conflict, but Eddy’s
criticism, which she shared with Luther Townsend, about Cullis’s inconsis-
tency as a physician/faith healer remained unanswered.
When Cullis died in March of 1892, his trustees tried to continue his work.
The trustees for the newly organized “Corporation of Faith Missions at Home
and Abroad” had oversight for all ministries with the exception of the Con-
sumptives’ Home, Cancer Home, Spinal Home, and orphanages. These trust-
ees of the Faith Missions Corporation included Daniel Steele as president, L.
B. Bates, Professor L. T. Townsend, E. D. Mallory, and Mrs. Lucretia A. Cullis.
Steele, Bates, and Townsend were all Methodist Episcopal clergymen. Mal-
lory was a pastor at one of Cullis’s independent churches but was described
as having been a Wesleyan pastor in Canada. This list of Methodist clergy-
men is important, as it illustrates the institutions’ Wesleyan character. The
trustees for Cullis’s other branch of work, consisting of the Consumptives’
Home and affiliated institutions, included some of the same individuals men-
tioned above in addition to William Claflin and A. J. Gordon, the sole non-
Methodist clergyman on the board of Cullis’s institutions.175 Attempts at con-
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 tinuing Cullis’s institutions after his death failed miserably, however, as a
result of the nationwide financial crisis in 1893 and the apparent inability of
the institutions to raise support without Cullis’s charismatic draw.
This chapter tells the story of a vast amount of institution building by
evangelicals in Boston. The Home for Little Wanderers, Boston University,
and the New England Conservatory of Music are all institutions that survive
to this day in Boston even if their character has often changed dramatically.
The founders of these and other organizations established in the years follow-
ing the Civil War all derived like-minded motivation from the American holi-
ness movement, which espoused the possibility of eradicating sin from one’s
personal life. With memories of how slavery had recently been destroyed
through the influence of holiness preachers so fresh in their minds, it was not
much of a leap of imagination to believe that similarly well-organized institu-
tions could conquer poverty as well.176 As explained in the following chapter,
their anti-Catholic feelings were often present as well—with the apparent ex-
ception of Charles Cullis, whose more refined Episcopalian sensibilities seem
to have inoculated him against such sentiments.
Evangelicals’ method of combining revivalism and social reform was varied.
For Morgan, revivalism took place in his lecturing and preaching in Boston’s
Music Hall and elsewhere, while his social reform efforts focused on newspa-
per boys and the plight of labor. Tourjée’s North End Mission and avid skills
as choirmaster for the Moody revival embraced a number of different evan-
gelistic strategies while also seeking to improve the lives of the North End
poor. Cullis’s expansive ministries similarly integrated revivalistic concerns
with health care and skillfully brought together a wide array of people and
movements in his faith-healing ministries, publications, and Tuesday after-
noon meetings for holiness. His ability to start an educational institution that
became the pioneer Bible institute and his involvement in foreign missionary
endeavors is also extraordinary. The faculty at the Faith Training College in-
cluded some of the most influential leaders at a national level in the holiness
movement and incipient pentecostalism. This chapter has accentuated the
creative ways in which evangelical leaders collaborated with one another and
with persons outside the bounds of their evangelical faith in order to accom-
plish their goals. The leaders and the institutions they led were poised “at a
crossroads” ready to move in different directions in subsequent years.

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 c h a p ter th ree

Evangelicals and Boston Politics

“The Next Protestant Move Will Be No Boys’ Play”

Evangelical enthusiasm for institution building and revivalism in the years

immediately prior to and following the Civil War was accompanied by equal
enthusiasm for more explicitly political activity in Boston. Upstart evangeli-
cals, as they viewed their crossroads of growing influence in Boston, saw that
they had a stake in Boston politics even if—as this chapter will show—they
had not yet mastered the nuances of the Boston political scene and some-
times overestimated the extent of their influence.
Evangelicals threw themselves into the hornet’s nest of politics in their
anti-Catholic organizing but were constantly fluctuating in their support for
the labor movement and related causes. At first glance, the combination of
anti-Catholic organizing and involvement in the labor movement may ap-
pear to be strange bedfellows for evangelicals in Boston since there were
many Roman Catholic laborers in the city who found a brutal anti-Catholic
campaign offensive. Indeed, this was just one of several contradictions evan-
gelicals struggled with in Boston politics as they tried to come to terms with
both their fear of Roman Catholic influence and ambiguous pride in their
working-class roots. The spotty enthusiasm of some evangelicals for such (ul-
timately unsuccessful) experiments as the Nationalist clubs and the Society
for Christian Socialists discussed in this chapter illustrates just how difficult
it was for some leaders to find a way forward in the midst of the crossroads.
Around the nation, the 1880s were a time when evangelicals became
more worried about their increasingly marginal position in growing Ameri-
can cities. Nothing symbolized that sense of unease more clearly than Josiah
Strong’s national best seller Our Country, which was published in 1885 and
gave voice to many evangelical concerns in Boston and elsewhere.1 Our Coun-
try recognized that urban America no longer looked much like “ours” when
seen from the vantage point of evangelicals’ American-born and largely rural
group identity. The Haymarket tragedy, which occurred a year after Strong’s
book was published, likewise raised concerns about the labor movement,
which many evangelicals still wished to support but found it difficult to do so
in as robust a manner as an earlier generation.
Strong framed his book by outlining eight “perils” to the nation in the
1880s: immigration, Romanism, religion and the public schools, Mormon-

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 ism, intemperance, socialism, wealth, and the American city. These eight per-
ils, Strong believed, threatened the “unparalleled opportunity God has con-
ferred on this generation,” and his listing them doubtless helped to spur the
growing anti-Catholic sentiment when five of these “perils” converged simul-
taneously in the Boston public schools crisis of 1888–1889. Questions about
immigration, Roman Catholicism, religion and the public schools, intemper-
ance, and the city all came to a head in the caustic debates that reached their
climax in the summer of 1888—just as Boston evangelicals’ camp meeting
season was getting under way.

the political context of boston evangelicals

Evangelicals in Boston were not resigned to the inevitability of the Roman
Catholic “peril” facing their nation. If anything, they were remarkably resilient
in their hope that Boston would remain a sparkling citadel of American Prot-
estantism for years to come, and they were ready to fight to keep it that way.
The delusions of grandeur some evangelicals maintained about their place
in American society portrayed the evangelical sense of anxiety better than
anything else. In 1881 New England Methodist Episcopal historian Daniel
Dorchester confidently predicted that the Roman Catholic Church was in the
process of inevitable decline in North America. Dorchester may have been
an excellent historian, but he was not a good futurist.2 A few years earlier an-
other Methodist author could hardly contain his over-the-top assessment of
Protestantism in the city. “Throughout its history the Church has devoted its
best resources to the cities. It has given them its treasures. In them it has em-
ployed its highest skill, culture, and learning. There it has reared its grandest
temples and gathered its greatest assemblies. . . . The great cities of Christen-
dom are to-day towering bulwarks of the Christian faith. They are fountains
of evangelic [sic] life whence roll the streams that gladden the moral deserts
of the world and make them to blossom as the rose.”3
Roman Catholics too were heady with optimism about their future in
America, and ultimately more accurate in their prediction. In the middle of
the D. L. Moody campaign of 1877 The Pilot, an Irish Catholic newspaper, of-
fered a humorous timeline of the “Pilgrim’s Progress” from 1620 to 1976 and
predicted that in 1976 “[a] monument is erected to the last Puritan.”4
In order to gain a more precise reading of the makeup of Boston’s religious
populations, a head count of church attendance was performed in 1882 by the
Boston Advertiser—perhaps in the hope of highlighting Protestant strength.
When the results were in, one commentator noted ruefully that Roman Cath-
olic numbers were drastically underestimated and that if the tally had been
more accurate the count of Roman Catholics “would undoubtedly equal the
Protestant in number.”5 In spite of the faulty data collection, the number of

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 figure 3.1. Boston Advertiser census for Protestant denominations, 16 April 1882.

Roman Catholics counted was still 49,337—only twelve thousand fewer than
the combined attendance of the seven largest Protestant groups in the survey
(not including the Unitarians).6 Based on the 1880 census of the total Boston
population, the survey revealed that approximately 34 percent of Bostonians
had attended church on that particular day. Although American Protestants
were not satisfied with this percentage of urban church attendance, one ob-
server pointed out that church attendance in American cities was far better
than in either London or Berlin at this time.7
Two additional observations are also of importance in the 1882 Boston Ad-
vertiser census. Although representing a relatively small percentage of the
city’s population as a whole, the figure of 2,058 persons who attended wor-
ship services at two African-American Methodist churches (not affiliated with
the Methodist Episcopal denomination) is significant since the total black
population of Boston in 1880 was only 5,873. It is possible that some con-
gregations also contained a number of interracial couples since, in 1877, fully
38 percent of Boston African-American marriages were to whites, the high-
est percentage of intermarriage recorded in us history.8 Also worthy of note,
the numbers of adherents among the relatively new groups of Methodists
and Baptists (11,604 and 15,570, respectively) were approximately equivalent
to the numbers from the long-established Episcopalians and (Trinitarian)

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 figure 3.2. Percentage of U.S. immigrants by country of origin, 1850–1909. The
figures used to construct this graph were obtained from David Ward, Cities and
Immigrants: A Geography of Change in Nineteenth-Century America (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1971), 53. Statistics for Canadian immigration between 1886
and 1893 were not recorded, and thus the representation above is misleading.

Congregationalists (12,040 and 16,103, respectively). These roughly equal

numbers may have accentuated the feelings of rivalry between the upstart
evangelicals and the more generally Brahmin denominations.
The long rivalry between Protestant and Catholic in Boston saw dramatic
changes in the 1880s that were beyond any denomination’s control. In con-
trast to earlier years, when the majority of immigrants were from northern
and western Europe, the 1880s ushered in a new kind of immigration from
the more culturally and linguistically foreign southern and eastern regions
of Europe.9 This shift in national immigration trends is represented in figure
3.2.
The growing Catholic presence in American cities but especially in Bos-
ton had dramatic political ramifications. The hard-fought electoral victory
of Boston’s first Irish-born mayor, Hugh O’Brien, in December 1884 was the
beginning of a new era in Boston politics and a precursor to future conflict
between Roman Catholics and evangelicals.10
The Boston political arena that saw the election of the city’s first Irish-born
mayor in 1884 was dramatically different from the state’s political scene in
1868, when Methodist William Claflin was elected governor of Massachu-
setts. But the distance between these two events involved more than simply
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 a passage of years. There were complex differences between state and city
politics, and the interrelationships between the two must be examined care-
fully. Boston political historian Geoffrey Blodgett has observed that “Boston
was the only big city in America where the distance between City Hall and
the State House could be crossed in a ten-minute walk. That space was filled
with cultural mistrust.”11
Blodgett’s statement about the city’s geography and politics provides
a helpful interpretive lens for disentangling the conflict and compromises
made in state and city politics in this period. The view of politics from the
State House was literally and figuratively a more “wide-angle lens” perspec-
tive than the view from City Hall. Politicians wrangling in the State House
had a panoramic view of the Boston Common—a beautiful city park with
large shade trees and a thick network of sidewalks beckoning Boston resi-
dents, rich and poor, to take a leisurely stroll. But the politics that took place
in the State House was anything but a “walk in the park.” The Common-
wealth’s politicians stood at the top of the “City on a Hill,” but they struggled
to influence the rapidly changing city that was laid before them.
The Republican Party dominated the Massachusetts political scene in the
years after the Civil War, but by 1873 its grip on power was loosening. The
Republicans’ powerful appeal among working-class voters gradually weak-
ened as the party became increasingly identified with business interests to
the neglect of workers. This occurred at the same time that evangelical de-
nominations such as the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Baptists in-
creasingly aligned with business interests as well—just as Moody had done in
the financing of his ministries. The Republicans in Massachusetts sought in
vain for a new rallying point to engage working-class voters.12 The polarizing
national issues of the Civil War era no longer sufficed.13
In the 1870s the Republicans also faced competition from the growing
strength of third-party movements of the Labor Reformers and the Prohibi-
tionists, whose parties formed in 1869 and 1870 respectively. Wendell Phil-
lips received the nomination of both of these parties and nearly won against
the incumbent William Claflin in the race for governor of Massachusetts in
1870. Although victorious, Claflin captured only 53 percent of the popular
vote in that election. Forty-five percent of the votes for Phillips were from the
Irish-born population, whom Phillips attracted by his oratorical eloquence in
eulogizing Irish patriot Daniel O’Connell.14 William Claflin’s own father, Lee
Claflin, was listed as a vice president of the Prohibition Party convention in
1870 that endorsed Wendell Phillips in his run against Lee Claflin’s son!15 The
Radical Republicans still received most of the votes from workers in these
years, but their hold on that segment of the population was declining.16 In
contrast to later years, 65 percent of industrial workers in the United States
in 1870 were American-born and part of the considerable rural-to-urban mi-
gration that took place at the time.17
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 In addition to competition from rival political parties, the national Repub-
lican Party itself split between the Stalwart Radicals who backed President
Grant in 1872 and the Liberal Republicans who shunned Grant and accused
his administration of corruption and ineptitude. Grant still won reelection
in 1872 by a large margin. William Claflin served as chairman of the Repub-
lican National Committee from 1868 to 1872 and was influential in Grant’s
landslide victory in 1872. The 1874 congressional election, however, did not
go so well for the Stalwart Republicans, as the nation had descended into
a deep financial crisis a year before. The 1874 election brought a dramatic
partisan shift from a Republican-controlled Congress to a Democratic-
controlled Congress.18 This was merely a brief interlude in Republican vic-
tories, and in 1876 the Methodists were again instrumental in getting Re-
publican Rutherford B. Hayes elected to the White House in the most con-
troversial election of the century. Rutherford Hayes’s wife, “Lemonade Lucy”
Hayes, was loved by teetotalist evangelicals for her refusal to serve alcoholic
drinks in the White House.
Massachusetts politics in 1874 followed the national pattern of frustration
with Republican administrations in the face of economic turmoil. The Demo-
crats regained control of the governor’s chair after years of Republican domi-
nance and also took away the Republican control of congressional seats.19
Democratic victories in 1874 notwithstanding, Republicans continued to win
the gubernatorial elections for most of the late nineteenth century with only
a few brief interruptions by Democrats.20
Many Boston evangelicals maintained a commitment to the Stalwart Re-
publican cause, but they were frustrated with President Hayes’s compromises
with southerners and other interests after his election. These sentiments are
illustrated in a lecture given by Boston University’s professor of preaching,
Luther T. Townsend, in February 1878 to the Boston Preachers’ Meeting.21
This took place a few months after the climax of the 1877 national railroad
strike and Hayes’s military intervention to break it. Townsend lectured on
the “darkest danger to the republic” coming from Roman Catholicism, the
“increasing chasm between capital and labor,” disagreement over national
monetary policies, and the “dominance of southern power in Congress.” He
argued that the country might require a monarchy to prevent the encroach-
ing dangers. When Townsend pointed to former President Grant as the man
to lead a future us monarchy, “great applause was rendered.” The Zion’s Her-
ald praised this lecture as a “discussion to make patriots think” and criticized
Boston daily newspapers for their negative portrayal of the lecture.22
Townsend symbolized the stubborn and scrappy tactics of many Boston
Methodists and other evangelicals as they evoked memories of President
Grant’s administration as the hope for the nation. Boston Brahmins used
different tactics in navigating the contrasting political cultures of the State
House and City Hall. Their political stance was far more nuanced than the
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 hotheaded evangelical efforts to oppose the growth of Irish Catholic power
in the city.
Boston Brahmins employed three main strategies to deal with the grow-
ing Irish presence in Boston politics. The first strategy was to continue Re-
publican control of the Massachusetts State House. If they could not have
City Hall, at least they could have the State House. This gave Brahmins some
psychological reassurance that they were still able to wield a degree of control
in their once-Puritan city. A second strategy utilized by Boston’s Protestant
elites was to insulate themselves from Boston politics by founding numer-
ous clubs and charitable organizations of their own outside the influence of
city politics.23 The third and perhaps most successful strategy upper-class
Bostonians utilized was to collaborate with Irish Democrats in city politics.
With the exception of Hugh O’Brien, the three Boston mayors who served the
longest in the last twenty years of the nineteenth century were upper-class
Yankee Democrats.24
This group of Brahmin collaborators included the famous Massachusetts
Mugwumps who bolted from the Republican Party over the 1884 presiden-
tial candidacy of James Blaine, whom they believed to be corrupt. The Mug-
wumps were small in number and very late in aligning themselves with the
Boston Irish. Elite Bostonians had been building a relationship with the city’s
growing Irish political base since the 1850s, when Irish and Yankees united
to oppose antislavery agitation. Most of the participants in the Mugwump
movement were elite graduates of Harvard University. While national is-
sues had given birth to their movement, in the Boston context they were now
aligned “with a [Democratic] party whose local character sorely tried their
minority sensibilities.”25 The Mugwumps nevertheless provided a fresh infu-
sion of members with good political connections into the Yankee-Irish alli-
ance in Boston politics. They were also loud critics of the anti-Catholic move-
ment of the late 1880s. Although the two groups differed from one another in
so many class preferences, the “contrast of ambience between the saloon life
of the Irish and the Back Bay card parties and club dinners favored by Yankee
lawyers and their friends should not obscure a shared opposition to the dry
ethic.”26
Evangelicals were the major proponents of the “dry ethic” in Boston, and
their political decisions were increasingly determined by a candidate’s po-
sition on the licensing of liquor establishments. As oftentimes single-issue
voters, these evangelicals dealt with the ethnic political transitions in Boston
politics less smoothly than did the upper-class members of Boston society.
Instead of collaborating with the Irish or seeking other channels of influence,
the upstart evangelicals chose to fight. Although more similar to the Irish in
terms of social and economic status, Boston evangelicals remained far more
distant from the Irish than more elite Bostonians who sought to hold on to
the political power that was once theirs.
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 The view of Boston from City Hall differed significantly from the State
House view. It did not afford one a sweeping panorama of the Boston Com-
mon. City Hall was just a few blocks from the capitol building, but its view
was that of the bustling streets. Irish-born Hugh O’Brien knew how to navi-
gate these streets with great political precision, and O’Brien’s victory in 1884
was not really a surprise. By the late 1870s Boston was “the most predomi-
nantly Irish of the Nation’s major cities and one of its most reliably Demo-
cratic bailiwicks.”27 Democrats in the city of Boston gained power in the 1870s
just as they gained power at the state level because of the long financial crisis
that began in 1873.
O’Brien’s 1884 election as mayor demonstrated his ability to attract both
Irish and non-Irish voters. His successful reelection campaign in 1885 fur-
ther revealed just how much of the Republican vote he was able to garner
after one year in office. In 1884 O’Brien had won by 3,326 votes; in 1885 he
won by 8,580 votes, with most of his gains taking place in the traditionally
Republican wards. O’Brien’s weakest showing in 1885 was in Ward Twenty-
one, the serene but not stylish neighborhood of Roxbury and also the home
of many evangelicals. A decade earlier Boston Methodists had started new
churches in Ward Twenty-one and in Ward Eighteen (the western half of the
South End), which was the second-strongest Republican ward in 1885 after
Ward Twenty-one.28 These areas of Republican strength notwithstanding,
the final count of votes showed that O’Brien received the “largest plurality [of
votes] given a candidate for mayor in recent years.”29
Those Boston newspapers which were Republican in their orientation por-
trayed the political situation of 1884 as a struggle between reform and ma-
chine politics while condemning the “despicable” efforts to criticize O’Brien
because of his Irish heritage and Roman Catholicism.30 No doubt one of these
despicable efforts was the work of Independent Methodist Henry Morgan,
who had died just nine months before O’Brien’s election. In 1883 Morgan re-
issued new editions of three of his books filled with anti-Catholic sentiment;
just one of Morgan’s books, Boston Inside Out! had already sold in excess of
fifteen thousand copies by this time—after being in print only three years.31
Positive endorsements of the 1883 release of The Fallen Priest printed on the
final pages of the book came only from Baptist and Methodist periodicals as
more sophisticated Protestant magazines preferred to remain silent.32
Morgan’s Fallen Priest explicitly condemned Alderman Hugh O’Brien and
drew a connection between him and the corruption of the Roman Catho-
lic Church. Similar words from Morgan’s pen about Roman Catholicism and
Boston public schools were a foreshadowing in 1883 of the diatribes launched
by other Methodists and Baptists in 1888–1889. “[P]olitics, and not piety,
is [the Catholic hierarchy’s] forte and calling; that to them more than any
other cause Boston’s downfall is due; that war to the knife is declared on free
schools; that the Boston Latin and High School, costing three quarters of
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 a million, is now nearly empty; that the twenty-eight parish schools of this
diocese, with their military drills, are already breathing threatenings and
slaughter, saying, “Let the Yankees beware”; that Catholic supremacy means
supreme corruption[.]”33 Morgan’s fear of increasing numbers of parochial
schools, though clearly paranoid, was based on the observable fact of the
growing number of parochial schools in the Boston Archdiocese.34
In spite of the invectives put forth by Henry Morgan, Hugh O’Brien went
on to become a very successful mayor of the city. He was a great politician and
proved himself to be very effective in addressing Boston’s perplexing social
and economic problems. O’Brien played a mediating role in Boston politics
and ably built alliances with Boston’s elite while also championing the cause
of the working man. His mayoral address in the winter of 1885 was an ex-
ercise in nonpartisanship. O’Brien never mentioned his Irish heritage and
assured his listeners that “[a] democratic government, in the highest sense
of the term, is not of a partisan character. It is simply impartial justice to the
people of all parties.”35 O’Brien was mostly able to keep this promise as he was
reelected three additional times and earned a reputation as a sensible man-
ager of the city’s finances. He eventually lost his position as mayor, however,
owing to the anti-Catholic feelings of too many Boston evangelicals.

anti-catholic organizing
Anti-Catholic feelings and the resulting protest activity among evangelicals
in the 1880s were constituent elements of evangelical identity. They were
partly a continuation of the Know-Nothing or American Party movement of
the mid-1850s, which also arose in response to concerns over Irish immi-
gration and was very influential in the politics of Massachusetts and other
northeastern states. After the Civil War anti-Catholic organizers would not
experience the same degree of success, but it was not for lack of trying. The
American Protestant, a nativist newspaper begun in Boston in the 1870s, has
been described as a North American transplant of Orangeism in Ireland.36
Other efforts to organize Protestants against Roman Catholics soon followed.
A detailed look at another of Henry Morgan’s graphic novels reveals how
Morgan stirred up emotions of readers in their parlor rooms that would, a
few years later, be expressed in the streets and voting booths.
Morgan’s 1880 Boston Inside Out! Sins of a Great City! A Story of Real Life
has been said to contain the most “impassioned bigotry” toward the Roman
Catholic Church of any American social Christian novel published in the late
nineteenth century.37 Boston readers already knew they could expect a hard-
hitting novel from the rough-and-tumble preacher-author of Ned Nevins, the
News Boy, which had been published thirteen years previously; but now the
target of Morgan’s attack was the Roman Catholic priesthood instead of a
miserly Jewish landlord.
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 With melodramatic flourish, Morgan’s newest book vividly portrayed a
scene in which a Roman Catholic priest named Father Titus is drawn to Rose
Delaney, a young woman raised Protestant but who had married a Catholic
husband—clearly a poor matrimonial choice. During her time in the confes-
sional, the priest schemes to arrange a meeting at the rectory later in the
day. As darkness falls upon the city, Morgan describes the “spider” priest lur-
ing the unknowing “fly” into his trap, where he administers wine laced with
a drug. He then rapes the defenseless Rose.38 The reader’s outrage toward
the priest is heightened when Father Titus succeeds in convincing Rose to
keep quiet about the crime.39 The book ends with the death of Father Titus
after Rose Delaney finally exposes his wrongdoing. Roman Catholic priests
were not alone in the groups or causes that Morgan condemned, although
he reserved his most vitriolic attacks for them. The novel cited the sins of
gambling, liquor, “pre-natal murder,” and raised fears of the lodging house
culture in Boston.40
By 1883, the Boston press was having an increasingly hard time stomach-
ing Morgan’s strident condemnations of Catholicism, and it quickly grew
more critical of Morgan’s crusade. As one might expect, the Brahmin Boston
Evening Transcript was significantly more critical of the book than the Meth-
odist Episcopal Church’s Zion’s Herald.41 Morgan may not have been fully
accepted by that denomination, but his “Independent Methodist” connection
still made him part of their extended family. The Roman Catholic hierarchy
reacted with tremendous disdain toward Morgan’s writings and speeches.
John Boyle O’Reilly, the editor of the archdiocesan newspaper The Pilot, re-
sponded vigorously to Morgan’s charges. Morgan welcomed the attack. “I felt
encouraged. Reform cannot be accomplished without blows on both sides.”42
For all his vituperative remarks against the Roman Catholic priesthood,
Morgan was surprisingly generous toward the Catholic faithful. In an Octo-
ber 1882 lecture given at Boston’s Horticultural Hall two years after the first
release of Boston Inside Out! Morgan praised the Catholic Church as contain-
ing “some of the purest, noblest men that walk the earth. A Catholic helped
me to repair my church more than all others—gave $1000 to the work. Lib-
eral Catholics said to me, ‘Your expositions are all true, Mr. Morgan. They
are needed. Catholics are at the bottom of much of Boston’s wickedness and
immorality. It grieves us to say it. The priesthood is rotten. We want reform
in the church, in the priesthood. Then we shall not be ashamed that we are
Catholics.’”43 One prominent Catholic who had earlier supported Morgan—at
least in 1868—was Patrick Donahue, the editor of The Pilot prior to O’Reilly.
Morgan even dedicated the second edition of The Fallen Priest in 1883 to “my
Catholic friends throughout the nation.”44
Such conciliatory remarks from Morgan toward Roman Catholics illustrate
an important aspect of anti-Catholic sentiment and the motives of evangeli-
cals in their campaigns. Anti-Catholic political organizing and heated rheto-
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 ric should not be interpreted as simply hatred of Catholics. To be sure, many
evangelicals did hate Catholics, but this should not obscure the fact that their
hatred sometimes was a public expression more than it was a private one—or,
a matter of politics more than utter disdain for their neighbors. The above re-
marks by Morgan illustrate this exceedingly well. Catholics were often feared
by evangelicals as job stealers and community wreckers who took over once-
Protestant neighborhoods, but in their efforts of revivalism and social reform
evangelicals also made attempts—however imperfectly expressed—at genu-
inely trying to help their Catholic neighbors. It is also important to recall that
there were relatively few incidents of explicit violence toward Catholics. On
the other side, Catholics were well aware of the political motives and even
discriminating in their assessment of participants in the anti-Catholic cam-
paigns. In a backhanded compliment, The Pilot noted that one evangelical
preacher was “not an unprincipled mountebank” like some of his colleagues
but a member of “the better class of anti-Catholic bigots.”45
The anti-Catholic campaigns of the mid– to late 1880s involved a con-
vergence of three major constituency groups in Boston: evangelical women,
recent British-American immigrants, and many evangelical clergymen. Bos-
ton women with newfound suffrage for School Committee elections made
their first significant impact on Boston politics in the 1884 election season.
The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, under the national leadership of
Methodist Francis Willard and local leadership of Rev. A. J. Gordon’s wife,
Maria Gordon, was one of the most effective organizations in mobilizing
women to vote.46
In 1884 the wctu mobilized women in opposition to one School Commit-
tee member who, they believed, had been influential in causing a school to
close because it violated a state law stipulating that schools and saloons be
four hundred feet apart. Demanding that the saloon be closed instead, the
wctu and other temperance organizations convinced the Registered Women
Voters of Boston to drop the offending Catholic from their list of nomina-
tions. Although this ultimately did not lead to victory in the elections, women
had shown their power for future elections.47
Protestant women’s mobilization caused Catholic leaders to stand up and
take notice as priests urged Catholic women to register to vote for the Public
School Committee in the 1885 election. Twice as many women voted in the
1885 School Committee elections as in 1884—many of them Catholics.48 News
of efforts to get out the Catholic women’s vote was met by increased activism
among Protestant women as well. The Suffolk county wctu, led by Maria
Gordon, warned that “a failure on your part to aid by your vote . . . will con-
vict you of insincerity in your professions of interest in children’s welfare, and
put upon you the responsibility of keeping them in ignorance.”49 The grow-
ing momentum of evangelical women’s organizing occurred shortly after the
arrest of a handful of outdoor preachers on the Boston Common. The ensu-
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 ing newspaper stories heightened evangelicals’ belief that Mayor O’Brien was
conspiring to squelch public preaching of the Gospel.50
In the 1885 election, the high number of women voters in Roxbury and
especially in Ward One of East Boston was also due to large numbers of Brit-
ish-American and Maritime Province immigrants who were militantly Prot-
estant and lived in these neighborhoods.51 Still, Boston voters again elected
a Democratic slate of School Committee members without a single woman
representative. Only eight of the twenty-four members of the School Com-
mittee were Catholic, the majority of members being Brahmin Democrats.52
Over the next three years, the heated conflict over School Committee elec-
tions became less intense as the Republican Party sought to regain its footing
after losing ground to the Prohibition Party in local elections.53
The next event to mobilize anti-Catholic sentiment was only peripher-
ally related to the Boston Public School Committee. In the summer of 1887
twenty-four British-American lodges organized a celebration of the fiftieth
anniversary of Queen Victoria’s reign. An attempt by Catholics to prohibit
the celebration in Boston’s Faneuil Hall failed with a tie vote by the city’s al-
dermen, split along religious lines. Boston Irish leaders had previously held
many meetings in favor of Irish home rule at Faneuil Hall, a place packed
with symbolic significance as a “cradle of liberty” for the colonialists’ battle
against British oppression a century before.
With their failure to block the “Royalist Banquet” from taking place in the
historic hall, John Boyle O’Reilly, the editor of the Boston Catholic magazine
The Pilot, organized a rally of Boston Irish to protest the British-American
meeting that would take place the following night. On the day of the British-
American celebration, a massive crowd gathered outside the esteemed hall,
and the entire Boston police force of eight hundred men was called out to
protect the relatively small crowd of four hundred gathered inside. Over the
following year the British-Americans became increasingly organized in their
efforts to oppose Catholic candidates for public office.54
The “Loyal Women of American Liberty” worked to bring out the British-
American women’s vote with remarkable success.55 The leader of this group,
Mrs. Margaret Shephard, was one of the most colorful and effective person-
alities in the anti-Catholic campaign. A recent immigrant from England,
Shepard had previously served in the Salvation Army in England and claimed
to have been an “escaped nun.” Upon arrival in Boston in 1887, she attended a
Baptist church in the East Boston neighborhood and gave biweekly addresses
in the Tremont Temple that attracted huge audiences.56 Shepard continued to
work strenuously for the anti-Catholic cause for several years until newspa-
per articles emerged claiming that she had lied about her past.57
As evangelical women and British-American immigrants were becoming
more organized, a galvanizing storm of anti-Catholic sentiment struck when,
in 1888, two school controversies brought focus to the movement and also
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 brought evangelical pastors to the fore as rhetorical leaders. The first school
controversy began in January 1888 and revolved around the state-imposed
inspections of private schools. The bill was defeated on May 24, 1888, largely
because of cooperation between upper-class Yankee Protestants and Catho-
lics. Harvard University president Charles W. Eliot, Massachusetts Institute
of Technology president Francis A. Walker, and Unitarian orator Dr. Edward
Everett Hale were among the prominent Protestant spokespersons against
the bill.58
The second school controversy began just as the first one was ending in
May of 1888 and involved a world history textbook authored by William
Swinton. A teacher at Boston’s English High School, Charles B. Travis, be-
came a political target when asked by a student what an indulgence was. He
responded that it was “a permission to commit sin.” On June 12 the School
Committee voted to discontinue use of Swinton’s textbook, as its content was
deemed anti-Catholic in nature. The offending teacher was also reassigned
to a different school.59 This caused a groundswell of anti-Catholic rhetoric
from evangelical pulpits, and numerous mass meetings were held at Tremont
Temple, Faneuil Hall, and Maverick Congregational Church in East Boston—
a neighborhood with a large proportion of Maritime Province immigrants.
The identified featured speakers at these mass gatherings were mostly Bap-
tist and Methodist clergymen, plus Reformed Episcopalian James M. Gray
(the future president of Chicago’s Moody Bible Institute), Congregationalist
A. H. Plumb, and Universalist Alonzo A. Miner.60 The main Methodist Epis-
copal pastors who were active in the anti-Catholic campaign included J. W.
Hamilton of People’s Church, Luther T. Townsend of Boston University, D. H.
Ela of Bromfield Street Church, Louis A. Banks of St. John’s Church in South
Boston, and Daniel Dorchester of Walnut Street Church in Chelsea.61
One prominent Congregationalist pastor, the Reverend Dr. Joseph T. Du-
ryea of Central Congregational Church, was decidedly opposed to the gather-
ing anti-Catholic forces and was the only Protestant clergyman on the School
Committee. Although not present for the initial vote in June, later that fall
Duryea voted along with Catholics and other Yankee allies to discontinue
use of the offending anti-Catholic textbook. He and like-minded Protestants
were strongly condemned by the gathered crowds at Tremont Temple and
other venues.
Duryea’s vote on the School Committee seemed to make the crowds suspi-
cious of even moderately conservative Congregationalists. At a July 11, 1888,
meeting Congregationalist Rev. A. H. Plumb, who was the most sympathetic
to Roman Catholics of all the speakers, proposed that “a good Catholic may
be a good citizen.” At this suggestion, the crowd cried out in protest “No!” “Sit
Down!” and “Go to Duryea!” but the chairperson intervened, and the crowd
allowed him to complete his speech. Plumb’s sympathetic stance toward
Roman Catholics was consistent with the policies of the Congregationalist
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 City Mission Society. By this time, city missionaries of the society no longer
sought to convert Catholics but rather sought to render more material assis-
tance.62 This was in stark contrast to Methodist or Baptist Christian workers,
who still enthusiastically tried to convert Catholics.
The July 11, 1888, meeting that took place in Faneuil Hall was the climax
of the anti-Catholic movement as angry Methodists, Baptists, and others pro-
tested the dismissal of Swinton’s textbook. The crowd was so large that an
overflow meeting of two thousand persons was held simultaneously just a
five-minute walk away at Tremont Temple. Clergy from Methodist, Baptist,
and Reformed Episcopal churches delivered fiery speeches against Roman
Catholicism.63 At this meeting, Reformed Episcopalian Rev. James M. Gray
also honored the work of “Miss Caroline E. Hastings,” who had recently re-
signed as the Benjamin Waterhouse Professor of Anatomy at the Boston Uni-
versity School of Medicine.64 She was one of two women on the School Com-
mittee who cast the only two votes in favor of keeping Swinton’s textbook. In
her midforties, Dr. Hastings became a member of the Boston School Com-
mittee in February 1888 and was the twelfth Protestant on the committee,
which also had eleven Catholics and one Jew. Hastings was a rural migrant
from Barre, Massachusetts, and graduate of Mt. Holyoke Seminary who
worked alongside Mrs. Eliza Trask Hill, leader of the militantly Protestant
Independent Women Voters organization, to bring out the women’s vote in
the anti-Catholic campaign.65
In her analysis of women’s temperance and suffrage organizations in Bos-
ton, Polly Welts Kaufman noted the important demographic differences be-
tween female suffrage and temperance leaders. Women leaders who came
from rural backgrounds and were part of evangelical groups, like Caroline
Hastings and Eliza Trask Hill, were more likely to be vigorously anti-Catholic
than women who were Boston natives and members of the Unitarian tradi-
tion. The women in the latter group also tended to organize on the basis of
suffrage, while rural and evangelical women focused on antiliquor legisla-
tion.66 Such a finding among female political organizers is consistent with
what was happening among male religious leaders as well. Native Bostonians
were more likely to seek alliances with Catholics, while recent rural migrant
Methodists and others were more likely to oppose them.
The July 11, 1888, meetings at Tremont Temple and Faneuil Hall also gave
birth to a new organization with an often-repeated name in Boston politics, the
Committee of One Hundred.67 This committee worked in the ensuing months
to pressure the Boston School Committee to repeal its June decision and to
register voters to defeat Catholic candidates in future elections. The exact iden-
tity of all the persons involved in the Committee of One Hundred was never
revealed to the public and remains unknown to this day. A smaller group of
clergymen at Faneuil Hall whose identities are known, since they spoke at the
meeting, were charged to organize and expand themselves into a committee
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 of one hundred.68 These clergymen included A. A. Miner, Universalist; Philip
Moxom, Baptist; James M. Gray, Reformed Episcopalian; A. H. Plumb, Con-
gregationalist; D. H. Ela, Methodist Episcopal; Luther T. Townsend, Method-
ist Episcopal professor at Boston University School of Theology.69
In the months after the Committee of One Hundred was formed, Luther
T. Townsend was perhaps the most mean-spirited spokesperson of the anti-
Catholic campaign. The following excerpt from one of Townsend’s speeches
on September 29, 1888, is one of the sharpest pieces of rhetoric:

The next Protestant move will be no boys’ play. It will come in the refusal
of Protestant employers to retain Catholic wage-workers whenever the
latter vote against their employers’ interests simply at the dictation of
the priest. If the clerical party can interfere with personal freedom why
not the Protestants? This will cut off the source of revenue of the clerical
party. What will be the next move we don’t know, and we don’t care. The
streets will be filled with the idle; there may be insurrections, blows, but,
we hope, not blood. But if the clerical party makes this move, it must take
the consequences.70

The British-American Citizen, a Boston weekly for recent immigrants from

Britain and Canada, commended Townsend for this speech and chided the
Boston Evening Transcript for calling Townsend “unchristian” for making the
remarks.71
The former pastor of the Baptist Tremont Temple, Rev. Justin Fulton, was
similarly severe in his attacks on the Roman Catholic Church in public meet-
ings in Boston and was even more trenchant in print—picking up where Mor-
gan’s books had left off.72 Some years after leaving the pastorate at Tremont
Temple in 1873, Fulton started his own society, the “Pauline Propaganda,” to
fund his anti-Catholic work. He was also an avid supporter of Charles Cullis’s
ministries since the inception of Cullis’s work.73 Fulton’s Why Priests Should
Wed surpassed even Henry Morgan’s books for its bold denunciations of the
Roman Catholic priesthood. He had sharp words for liberal Protestants who
were too favorably disposed toward Catholicism as well. In a reference to
the growing movement toward ritualism in the Episcopal Church (discussed
in the previous chapter), Fulton condemned “Episcopalians on the way to
Rome” who were “establishing their confessionals, and lighting their candles”
and who “object to having their folly pointed out.”74
Why Priests Should Wed caused a stir in the Boston publishing world as it
called into question what the societal standards of obscenity ought to be in
published books. The publisher apparently entered into an agreement with
the author to publish the book and then refused to print it because of the
alleged obscenity. The publisher appealed to the Massachusetts attorney gen-
eral to suppress the book it had previously agreed to publish but to no avail.
The publisher did, however, line out sentences that were of a particularly
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 “prurient nature,” but these blacked-out sections remained in the book, leav-
ing it to the reader to imagine what they contained about priests’ immoral
behavior. In many of the pictures in the book, however, no such imagination
was necessary. Grotesque drawings of Catholics torturing Protestants hun-
dreds of years earlier in Europe were liberally scattered throughout the text.
On the rear cover of the book was a picture of a strong arm with Fulton’s
name written on it extended from heaven with a dagger in hand ready to
vanquish a priest lurking in the shadow (see figure 3.3).75
Methodist clergyman and historian Daniel Dorchester published an anti-
Catholic book that was significantly less incendiary than Fulton’s. In Roman-
ism versus the Public School System, published in 1888, Dorchester made ob-
vious reference to work by Fulton and apologized that his own book was “not
as sharp and severe as some would desire.” Dorchester concluded the book
by urging “American citizens [to] seriously ponder the hostile attitude of the
Roman Catholic Church toward our public school system, and her pernicious
influence upon the future prospects and citizenship of the multitude of chil-
dren trained in her parochial schools.”76
In the 1888 election, the combined political power of British-American
women and men, other evangelical women, and clergymen swept Mayor
Hugh O’Brien out of office. A total of 19,490 women voted, and no Catholics
or Democrats were elected to the School Committee. The Committee of One
Hundred saw the majority of its slate of nominees to the School Committee
elected, even defeating two Republicans who sought to tone down the inten-
sity of the anti-Catholic rhetoric. In spite of this marked success in organizing
women voters in Boston, in subsequent years there was a dramatic falling off
of women’s participation in the School Committee vote. Only 10,051 women
voted in 1889 and only 7,430 in 1890.77 The heightened convergence of inter-
ests, people, and fiery religious rhetoric could not be sustained in the years
after the Boston public schools crisis.
Anti-Catholic organizing continued in many municipalities and even
briefly rose to the surface in a state-level anti-Catholic campaign in 1889
and again through the work of the American Protective Association in 1893.
Methodist Episcopal pastor and state representative Samuel L. Gracey intro-
duced a school inspection bill in February 1889 requiring children between
the ages of eight and fourteen to go to a public school or state-approved
private school for twenty weeks a year. The most objectionable piece of the
legislation for Catholics was the proposed $100 fine for anyone who sought
to persuade a parent to withdraw a child from public schools and a $300
fine for anyone threatening a parent to do so. Nathan Matthews, a Brahmin
Democrat and future mayor of Boston, was among the most vocal Protestant
opponents of the bill.78 A substantially less objectionable version of the bill
passed, which eliminated any talk of fines and largely resembled a law al-
ready on the books.79
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 figure 3.3.
Back cover of Why
Priests Should Wed
(1888). Image from
Justin D. Fulton, Why
Priests Should Wed
(Boston: Rand Avery
Company, 1888).

In the 1890s, after having experienced the multiple manifestations of anti-

Catholic rhetoric and political organizing, Roman Catholic leaders differed
only slightly from one another in whom they named as the most feared Prot-
estant group. The Catholic Pilot noted the historical irony of Baptist perse-
cution of Catholics. “Our Baptist brethren, who used to be whipped at the
cart’s tail by the Boston Puritans, in the old days (and honestly deserved it,
if their manners and morals were as bad as they are now), are foremost in
the work of persecuting others for conscience sake today.”80 A Roman Catho-
lic bishop described the Methodist denomination as the group most to be
feared in late-nineteenth-century America.81 Through the anti-Catholic fer-
vor in Boston many evangelicals were able to rediscover and express—albeit
in hateful ways—the unity of purpose that drew them together in the Boston
crossroads. It may have reminded them as well of the unity of purpose they
experienced in the 1877 Moody campaign and in the annual summer camp
meeting revivals where they together pursued their goals of sanctification.

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 evangelicals and the labor movement
Methodists, along with many other evangelicals in America, were no strang-
ers to the labor movement in the years following the Civil War. There was
ample precedent for this among British Methodists as well.82 Key leaders in
the American labor movement were Methodists including William Sylvis of
the National Labor Union, Richard Trevellick, Edward H. Rogers, Samuel
Fielden, and Richard Hinchcliffe.83 New England Methodist leaders confi-
dently predicted at the end of the Civil War that Christ would “renew the land
in holiness and love, and end the luxurious absorption by a few families of the
people’s wealth.” The sin of slavery had been vanquished. Surely other great
sins of the nation would soon follow.84 When this did not occur as quickly or
as easily as hoped, however, the moral and strategic clarity of the evangelical
vision to sanctify the city became quite blurred.
A particularly important figure among these Boston Methodist labor lead-
ers was Edward H. Rogers, a Methodist class leader, ship’s carpenter, and
representative to the Massachusetts legislature in 1865 and again in 1867. He
was a leader of the Christian Labor Union and its magazine Equity, one of
several early labor movement newspapers that sought to nurture an alliance
between the Christian faith and workers.85 Like Henry Morgan, Edward H.
Rogers was not always diplomatic in his criticisms of Boston church leaders
with whom he disagreed.86
In the late 1860s there were probably no two Boston evangelicals more
strongly associated with the plight of the workingman or woman than Henry
Morgan and Edward Rogers. Rogers was agitating for workers’ rights as a
strike leader and state representative while, at the same time, Morgan was
calling for such things in his books, sermons, and lectures. In 1872 Rogers
wrote an influential tract, Eight Hours a Day’s Work, that is considered a
classic example of labor movement writing of the period.87 Even though Mor-
gan’s and Roger’s time of service in the Massachusetts legislature was sepa-
rated by one year, their prominence in that body as chaplain (Morgan) and
influential Labor Committee member (Rogers) suggests that they were well
acquainted with one another’s work.88
Rogers and Morgan had similar theological convictions about the central-
ity of holiness in the Christian life as well. Rogers’s thirty-five-year association
with Methodist Episcopal holiness leader Willard F. Mallalieu suggests that
Rogers took his Methodist and holiness commitments very seriously. Mal-
lalieu presided at the marriage of Rogers and his second wife, was a charter
subscriber to Rogers’s magazine Equity, and in 1904 still praised his former
parishioner’s achievements. Rogers’s church, the Walnut Street Methodist
Episcopal Church in Chelsea, tried unsuccessfully in 1869 to convince him
to enter the ordained ministry of the Methodist Episcopal Church.89 Rogers
resisted but urged that more attention to workers’ plight, their material and
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 spiritual needs, would make the churches a more welcoming place for workers
and would serve as the “supreme test” for the holiness doctrine’s validity.90
By the 1880s, however, Methodists and other evangelicals were beginning
to be less enamored of the labor movement and less personally connected
to it. The growing presence of Roman Catholic leadership in the movement
was one major reason for this as was the growing affluence of some evan-
gelicals who, by the 1880s, were beginning to feel closer sympathy with busi-
ness interests. Anti-Catholic organizing of the mid – to late 1880s in Boston
began at the same time as the “Great Upheaval” of the us labor movement
that reached its climax in 1886. Nationwide there were 1,432 work stoppages
caused by strikes that year, and membership in the Knights of Labor union
grew from 104,000 in 1885 to 702,000 in 1886.91 Hundreds of thousands
of workers went on strike to push for an eight-hour day in cities around the
country in the week leading up to the May 4, 1886, Haymarket tragedy in
Chicago, which killed at least seven persons and injured scores of others.
The Knights of Labor, led by Irish Catholic Terrence Powderly, was a lead-
ing organization in the eight-hour day movement in Chicago as it gained
momentum in the months prior to the Haymarket tragedy. Ironically, many
national leaders of the Knights of Labor were not enthusiastic about the
eight-hour day movement, as they preferred to work on more foundational
issues to totally restructure the American economy. Knights of Labor leaders
emphatically tried to control the public relations nightmare brought on by
the Haymarket violence as newspapers across the country blamed anarchists
as its cause. In spite of very harsh rhetoric condemning those who had in-
stigated the riot, the Knights of Labor became guilty by association, and the
eight-hour day campaign lost momentum after 1886.92
In Boston, the Methodist Zion’s Herald expressed clear disdain and frus-
tration in regard to the Haymarket tragedy. “All of this [violence] has greatly
injured the cause of the laboring man, and repressed the sympathy that
might be felt in his behalf in the community, in the present unhappy strikes.
No one has a deeper interest in the suppression and effectual punishment of
such wretches than the workingmen.”93 This firm response was similar to the
Methodist weekly’s response to the 1877 railroad strike and significantly less
incendiary than the opinions expressed by the Boston-based Congregational-
ist, which called for Gatling guns to be unleashed on the strikers just as it had
advised in 1877.94
A growing sense of unease among evangelicals in Boston toward their Irish
Catholic mayor was also emerging in the same two-year period (1886–1888)
as the Haymarket tragedy and the anti-Catholic campaign. Some evangeli-
cals attempted to unseat O’Brien by appealing to evangelicals’ ties with labor
radicals in Boston. The candidate chosen to accomplish this takeover of the
mayoralty was the “old-fashioned labor radical” George McNeill, one of the
founders of the Eight Hour League in 1865 and a longtime friend of Meth-
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 odist Edward H. Rogers.95 But evangelical support of McNeill was tepid at
best. Rogers’s friend the Reverend Jesse Jones, editor of the Christian Labor
Union’s short-lived periodical Equity, spoke on behalf of George McNeill dur-
ing the 1886 campaign, but he garnered fewer than 4,000 votes, compared
with nearly 19,000 for the Republican candidate and more than 23,000 for
Democrat Hugh O’Brien. McNeill’s showing was very poor compared with
tallies achieved during the heyday of labor advocacy among Radical Repub-
licans in the late 1860s and early 1870s.96 There were even allegations that
Republicans (with their evangelical adherents) had secretly funded the labor
candidate in an attempt to split the Democratic vote.97 Labor organizers
and many evangelical leaders had grown apart from one another, but nei-
ther group wanted to acknowledge this fact as each sought the support of the
other.
Jesse Jones, George McNeill, and Edward H. Rogers shared a pragmatic
but hopeful disposition toward labor’s interaction with business leaders and
believed strongly that the Christian faith should take the plight of workers
seriously. They had some support from Boston religious leaders. At one meet-
ing in Wesleyan Hall of the Boston Evangelical Alliance on March 15, 1886,
McNeill spoke of injustices toward Chinese workers. He stressed the impor-
tance of sending missionaries to China “to preach the gospel of Christ and
high wages, for they are one and the same thing.”98
McNeill’s belief that progress would take place by more conciliatory
processes than confrontational tactics was consistent with the views of the
Knights of Labor and the New England Methodists. The Knights of Labor,
of which McNeill was a part, “espoused cooperation with employers, favored
arbitration over strikes, and pledged to use the democratic process to achieve
their ends. Unwilling to accept the wage system, they imagined a cooperative
commonwealth in which economic life, like political life, would be organized
democratically.”99 Similarly, the Methodist preachers in the New England An-
nual Conference passed a lengthy resolution just a few weeks prior to the
Haymarket riot that encouraged labor and capital alike to “look each other in
the face, agreeing to be fair and just, and reconciliation will not be far away.”
Although in retrospect such sentiment may appear naive, at the time it was
a careful articulation of a middle ground that acknowledged “[t]he heart of
Christ, who is never unmindful of the oppressed, is in closest sympathy with
the men of toil” and yet cautiously praised capitalists, “whose valuable ser-
vices are recognized.” The resolution expressed “entire approval of arbitra-
tion” and supported the Sherman bill that was currently under consideration
in the us Congress, which would have created a commission to investigate
and mediate labor conflicts.100
The carefully articulated Methodist support for labor—in essential agree-
ment with the Knights of Labor—shared the same destiny as the mighty
labor union. After the 1886 Haymarket tragedy, membership in the Knights
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 of Labor declined as quickly as it had grown. McNeill’s poor showing in the
December 1886 mayoral election in Boston was a symptom of that decline
as well as illustrative of the inability of a class-based campaign for labor to
take Irish votes away from Irish candidate Hugh O’Brien.101 Boston politics
was polarized by growing anti-Catholic sentiment in these years, and labor
concerns simply could not draw Protestant and Catholic laborers together
strongly enough to pull out an election victory. McNeill’s speech before the
Boston Evangelical Alliance in March did not gain much support either from
the clergy or from their parishioners at the polls in December. Evangelicals
were far more engaged by local referendum items that would have made Bos-
ton or other municipalities “no license” towns banning liquor sales.
McNeill may have lost the 1886 election in part because of lukewarm evan-
gelical support, but on the day after the election, the Zion’s Herald neverthe-
less revealed the Methodist weekly’s lingering positive feelings toward labor.
Edward H. Rogers’s article in this issue, titled “Holiness,” argued that the pas-
sage of an eight-hour day law had “a very direct relation” to the “spread of
holiness” in America.102 Rogers argued that the holiness movement had not
realized its full potential and “that the key to the adoption of individual or
general holiness is to be found in the application of the social forces of our
being to the affairs of life in Christian communities.”103 The belief that holi-
ness and politics were interrelated was something Rogers shared with Meth-
odist abolitionists from a generation before, and this connection lingered in
the minds of Methodists even after the Haymarket tragedy.104 In the same
issue there was also an article that rebuked an Episcopalian who had publicly
criticized Methodists in the Boston Sunday Herald for, among other things,
taking most of their members from among the poor. The Zion’s Herald editor
responded that he was grateful for the “indirect commendation.”105
The December 1886 failed campaign of George McNeill demonstrated that
labor would not find much support in middle-class evangelical circles, even
though the Methodist denomination’s leadership sometimes saw themselves
as representatives of the poor. The Methodists had recently constructed their
“People’s Church,” which did, in fact, reach out to many common laborers.
The Baptists’ Tremont Temple did likewise.106 But neither People’s Church
nor Tremont Temple were in the impoverished, overcrowded districts of the
North End. People’s Church stood rather on the periphery of the prestigious
Back Bay neighborhood (see figure i.2). Tremont Temple was situated in the
midst of the downtown business district.
The geographical location of People’s Church symbolized the ambiguous
political and social position of Boston Methodism and many other evangeli-
cals at the time. People’s Church was just fashionable enough to be one of the
city’s main venues for large religious and political meetings, but its location
at the northeast corner of Berkeley Street and Columbus Avenue was an am-
biguous place between Boston’s affluent Back Bay neighborhood and the in-
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 creasingly working-class South End.107 Similarly, Tremont Temple could host
mean-spirited anti-Catholic rallies one month and also be the place where
more refined community and church groups met owing to its central loca-
tion. Methodists and other evangelicals were increasingly becoming a very
heterogeneous group comprising the solidly middle-class, the newly rich,
and the poor. Such class diversity made class-based organizing a hard sell, as
the election returns for labor candidates clearly demonstrated. That diversity
also makes it nearly impossible to draw a neat picture of where, precisely,
evangelicals stood at their crossroads.

nationalist clubs and the society of christian socialists

In the wake of the Haymarket tragedy, the anti-Catholic campaigns, and the
growing unease of evangelicals toward the labor movement there were a few,
more reflective, attempts at ameliorating the plight of American workers. Na-
tionalist clubs and the Society of Christian Socialists were two such attempts
that drew together evangelicals and more established Protestants as well.
Both organizations were founded in Boston and both were less boisterous
and less successful organizations than labor unions in defending the rights of
the working class, but they nonetheless did develop a national following.
Edward Bellamy’s best-selling utopian novel, Looking Backward, 2000–
1887, a foundational work for the growth of socialism in the United States,
set the tone for many sympathetic people in the middle class as its sales
soared from 10,000 in 1888 to 300,000 a year later. The novel offered a fu-
turistic look at Boston in the year 2000, when poverty was predicted to have
disappeared.108
Taking their inspiration from Bellamy’s novel, a group of Boston residents
founded the first Nationalist club in 1889 and advocated having “all indus-
tries operated in the interest of all by the nation—the people organized.”109
Two years later, the Nationalist clubs had expanded to 162 chapters around
the country and were publishing a magazine, the Nationalist. With the sup-
port of Nationalist club members in Boston who desired a more explicitly
Christian organization to promote the socialist cause, the Society of Christian
Socialists was born and began publishing its own magazine, The Dawn, in
April 1889 with W.D.P. Bliss as its tireless editor.110 Although based in Boston,
W.D.P. Bliss sought to appeal to a national audience rather than limit himself
to the local scene.
The Society of Christian Socialists was founded in one of the Baptist mis-
sionary rooms at Tremont Temple in Boston on February 18, 1889.111 The
twenty original founders of this group were mostly members of the National-
ist Club of Boston and included nine clergymen (including Methodist, Epis-
copalian, Baptist, Unitarian, and Universalist pastors), nine laymen, and
two women.112 The founding meeting occurred in the same church building
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 as anti-Catholic rallies seven months earlier but attracted a much different
set of people.113 Most of the members of the Society of Christian Socialists in
Boston were Episcopalians who had not participated in the bitterly fought
Boston public schools crisis of 1888.114 The six years’ worth of issues of The
Dawn clearly illustrate that the overwhelming majority of the organization’s
members were Episcopalians, with only a smattering of Congregationalists
and other religious groups represented.
For the first two years of the magazine’s existence, the Methodists’ building
at 36 Bromfield Street was identified as its publishing headquarters, but this
commitment of office space was not indicative of official Methodist endorse-
ment or significant involvement in the organization as a whole.115 After a year
of publication, an issue of The Dawn still identified only one Methodist cler-
gyman on its list of contributors. Professor Daniel Dorchester, Jr., taught po-
litical economy in the College of Liberal Arts at Boston University beginning
in 1884. He was the son of Daniel Dorchester, Sr., who had written a famous
American church history text and mildly anti-Catholic tome in the 1880s.116
The only other Methodist clergyman mentioned in The Dawn was Bishop
John H. Vincent, who was praised in one issue for his endorsement of Chris-
tian socialism.117 Labor radical and Methodist layman Edward H. Rogers was
an active participant in the Society of Christian Socialists and explicitly criti-
cized the Methodists for distorting their understanding of holiness into “a
wretched fallacy of pure spirituality” to the neglect of concern for the poor.118
Baptist participation in the organization was similarly limited to Rev.
Philip Moxom, who as pastor of First Baptist Church in Boston’s Back Bay
neighborhood sponsored one of the first book discussion groups about Chris-
tian socialism with some young men in his parish.119 As Dorchester was not
representative of Methodist involvement in the Society of Christian Socialists,
so also Moxom was not representative of Boston Baptist interest in the new
Christian Socialists. In an 1891 letter to his mother, Maria, Ernest Gordon
heaped ridicule on his father’s Baptist colleague for the “hyper-respectability”
symbolized in “Dr. Moxom’s gown.” Many Boston Baptists would have shared
Ernest’s dismissive attitude toward Moxom’s elite Back Bay church.120
Direct attacks against more conservative forms of Christianity—to recip-
rocate the sentiment of the young Ernest—were infrequent in The Dawn as
the magazine sought (unsuccessfully) to appeal to a wider audience. In one
letter to the editor, however, concerning several elite Back Bay churches’ in-
vitation to D. L. Moody to perform a revival in the city in 1891, the sarcasm
was biting.

I have noticed, with great satisfaction, that the pastors of the various
churches in that section of our city known as the Back Bay, have united
in an invitation to Mr. Moody to conduct a series of meetings in that lo-
cality. This is as it should be; the presence and labors of such a practical

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 and earnest evangelist cannot fail to be productive of greater good among
these cultured and wealthy citizens, than among those who frequent the
“by ways” and slums of our great city. First of all, they have time for the
consideration of religious truths; they are not compelled to labor from ten
to fourteen hours per day to maintain an existence. Then, their situation in
life ought to be conducive to such a frame of mind as is most favorable to
spiritual advancement; they are not tormented day and night with anxiety
as to the fate of wife and children, should sickness overtake them; they are
not engaged in a well nigh hopeless struggle with hunger and want; they
are not driven by weariness and exhaustion and despair to the excesses of
physical appetite. . . . Surely here is “good ground” for gospel seed. And in
the hope that this favored class may be led to a candid consideration of the
“first principles of the Gospel of Christ,” I venture to suggest a few themes
for their reflection in the hours of religious awakening that are sure to fol-
low the labors of the evangelist. . . . [A list of biblical passages follows; they
tell of God’s concern for the poor.] If such themes as these shall be matter
of instruction and meditation, the great evangelist can afford to spend his
time at the Back Bay; but in all consistency let not his labor be confined
to telling the people how to get further benefits out of God for themselves
[emphasis in the original].121

The Society of Christian Socialists has been described by historian Henry

May as “by far the most effective of radical Christian organizations” in the
country, but its influence on the national or local scene was actually very
small.122 May’s optimistic assessment fails to convey the small number of ad-
herents and the perpetual financial crisis of the organization. W.D.P. Bliss
single-handedly performed a great proportion of the work of the society
through writing and numerous speaking engagements around the country.
In September 1890 he lamented that, with the exception of proceeds from the
sale of The Dawn, the Society of Christian Socialists had “no reliable source
of income other than the annual fee of one dollar, paid by each of its one hun-
dred members.”123 With only a scant one hundred members after almost two
years of existence, the society was far from being a major social movement.
Four years later an anxious W.D.P. Bliss appealed unsuccessfully to his read-
ers to help him achieve a regular circulation of one thousand subscribers in
order to save The Dawn.124 Its wealthy Episcopalian financial base no doubt
helped to make up for a very lackluster circulation but was not able to prevent
The Dawn from going under in 1896.125
W.D.P. Bliss was, by far, the most important leader in the Society of Chris-
tian Socialists. The son of a Congregationalist missionary to Turkey, Edwin
Elisha Bliss, W.D.P. Bliss began his career as a Congregationalist pastor. After
two short pastorates, he became an Episcopalian and developed a friendship
with the Reverend Phillips Brooks.126 After serving as rector of Grace Church
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 Episcopal in South Boston from 1887 to 1890, Bliss served at Trinity Church’s
labor-outreach mission, the Church of the Carpenter, when it was founded in
1892.127 Prior to leading the Society of Christian Socialists Bliss also worked
for the Knights of Labor in 1886 and was the Labor Party candidate for lieu-
tenant governor of Massachusetts in 1887. He continued his work for orga-
nized labor for more than forty years.128
Temperance and suffrage advocate Mary Livermore was a vice president of
the Society of Christian Socialists and an associate editor of The Dawn with
Bliss. Nationally known as “the queen of the platform,” she loved the Society
of Christian Socialists for its combination of social and economic reform and
its strong advocacy for the rights of women. “No movement has ever before
so taken possession of me and filled me with such buoyant hope.”129 Born in
Boston in a Baptist family, Livermore later became a Universalist but had no
shortage of connections with key Boston evangelical leaders. In the late 1860s
she was invited to preach at Henry Morgan’s church on at least three occa-
sions. Livermore was previously mentioned in connection to Frances Willard
who, at Moody’s urging, refused to share a platform with her at a temper-
ance meeting. Livermore also served on a board of visitors for Eben Tourjée’s
New England Conservatory of Music and delivered an address at the second
cornerstone-laying ceremony for People’s Church (Methodist) in 1882.
In spite of all of Livermore’s and Bliss’s hard work, the Society of Christian
Socialists struggled politically as well as financially as it sought to be politi-
cally pragmatic in a highly charged national atmosphere toward organized
labor and socialism. Much of the struggle of the Christian Socialists can best
be understood by understanding the struggle of W.D.P. Bliss. Although he
was a committed socialist, Bliss refused to endorse the Socialist Labor Party
in 1891 for strategic reasons, and The Dawn instead endorsed the populist
People’s Party.130 Bliss did not officially become a member of the Socialist
Party until 1912. He was interested in promoting a broad movement of radi-
cal reform and for that reason sometimes distanced himself from organiza-
tions that sought more limited gains such as Henry George’s single tax sys-
tem or the national ownership of industry, which was the Nationalist clubs’
single-minded focus.131
The difficult, politically pragmatic choices Bliss made personally and as
the leader of the Society of Christian Socialists are best understood from a
theological perspective. In contrast to more liberal Protestant leaders who
sometimes equated Jesus’ humanity with an ethical mandate for social re-
form to the neglect of the transcendent nature of God’s work in the world,
Bliss insisted on the fundamental importance of Jesus’ atonement and other
elements of orthodox theology. Bliss’s more orthodox theology may be traced
to his missionary father. He embraced the social teachings of Christian scrip-
tures but stopped short of simply replacing a divine Jesus with a human
one. Christian Socialism, Bliss argued, was socialism but “in the name and
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 spirit and on the principles of Jesus Christ.” He struggled with the tendency
of “Christian Socialism” in the larger sense of the term to “mean little more
than a vague interest and too often to become only a catchword[.]” He was
looking for a more intellectually rigorous synthesis of theological belief and
social reform but found himself struggling to mobilize people around highly
nuanced ideas.132
As a lifelong Methodist who was more a student of politics than of nu-
anced theological argument, Frances Willard used the “Christian Socialism”
label in a way similar to the way “social Christianity” was used in previous
decades. It was a way to stress God’s concern for the poor. Willard became a
member of the Society of Christian Socialists in 1889 and was a contributor
and associate editor for The Dawn for several years. She rarely, however, con-
tributed articles to The Dawn.133 In her 1893 presidential address before the
Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Willard emphasized that in “every
Christian there is a socialist; and in every socialist a Christian.”134 Willard was
not really trying to be reductionistic about the Christian faith in this remark
but rather, as an astute organizer, to draw attention to the common ground
shared by socialists and Christians.
Just as Bliss’s outlook on life can be understood by looking at his theologi-
cal orientation as the son of a missionary, so also Willard’s work for the tem-
perance cause and for Christian socialism should be seen in light of the com-
mitments she had to Methodist holiness theology, something her biographers
have tended to downplay.135 As a young woman, Willard had an experience of
entire sanctification at a holiness revival led by Phoebe and Walter Palmer
in January 1866 in Evanston, Illinois. A few years earlier, while a student at
North Western Female College, she had begun a lasting friendship with the
president of the school, Randolph S. Foster, and had visited him again in New
York in 1863. In the 1880s Bishop Foster was one of the champions of the
holiness movement, and Willard remained committed to the cause as well. In
the late 1880s Willard reflected on the twenty years since her 1866 experience
at a Phoebe Palmer revival and noted that “since then I have sat at the feet of
every teacher of holiness whom I could reach.”136
The 1886 strikes across the country were a turning point for Willard in her
advocacy of labor issues alongside her work for temperance and commitment
to holiness theology.137 After the publication of Edward Bellamy’s Looking
Backward in 1888, Willard’s endorsement of socialism was clear.138 Willard’s
close friendship with Terrence Powderly, the national leader of the Knights
of Labor, beginning around the time of the Haymarket tragedy in 1886 also
would have influenced her developing ideas about socialism.139 Powderly was
not in favor of the eight-hour day movement, as he believed it detracted from
more foundational—albeit theoretical—concerns. He stressed instead social-
ist principles such as an opposition to the wage system of labor and called for
a “system of cooperation” in its place, much as the Society of Christian Social-
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 ists would have done.140 Willard firmly endorsed the Knights of Labor in an
1890 article in The Dawn and called it the “most efficient body in this land for
the protection of women, in equal pay for equal work, and of children from
the stunting of body and mind through servitude that is little better than
slavery.”141 Powderly’s appreciation for the temperance cause was reciprocal
in his public pronouncements as well as in his behavior. Perhaps in order to
please his temperance movement friend, Powderly never drank alcohol while
the leader of the Knights of Labor.142
Frances Willard’s important role in the 1877 Boston Moody revival and
her subsequent endorsement of the Society of Christian Socialists illustrate
the creative mixture of ideas that were motivating evangelicals as well as the
change in emphasis among some from the holiness movement’s enthusiasm
in camp meetings to the social gospeler’s political platform.143 The earlier
commitments to holiness were not shunned; they were more a foundation for
more pressing political activity. Moody and Willard may have stood together
at a crossroads in 1877, but by 1893 they were some distance apart from one
another while Willard and Livermore could now more easily share a stage.
The labor movement’s “Great Upheaval” had brought them together.
The complex stances that individuals such as Bliss and Willard took to-
ward socialism in its various manifestations are mirrored in the stances of
large denominations such as the Methodist Episcopal Church. The denomi-
nation’s scholarly journal, the Methodist Review, often contained articles rep-
resenting a wide spectrum of attitudes toward socialism and the related labor
movement. Some articles were stridently opposed while others were sympa-
thetic even under the scrutiny of the conservative journal editor’s pen.144 The
New England Methodist magazine, Zion’s Herald, in 1890 urged readers not
to be alarmed by use of the term “socialism” and offered a vague definition of
the term that would have resonated with the activist heart of Frances Wil-
lard: “Christian Socialism deals with people, with the masses, with society at
large, rather than with the individual.”145
National organizations and movement leaders such as the Nationalist
clubs, the Society of Christian Socialists, Frances Willard, and W.D.P. Bliss
did not have a large impact on Boston’s local political scene even if two of
these organizations had their birth in the city. It is important to remember
that these movements and people derived much of their inspiration from a
utopian novel by Edward Bellamy. Even the Knights of Labor that Willard
loved was ultimately drawn to a more idealistic world of alternate economic
theories while also working for more gradual improvements for the American
worker. The power politics of Boston worked with less utopian ideas as grass-
roots organizers and political operatives were forced to be more concrete and
local in their focus.
This chapter has illustrated the complex ways that Boston evangelicals and
other Protestants interacted with national, state, and city politics by looking
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 at critical events in the anti-Catholic movement and the labor movement.
The roles Willard and Bliss played in the Society of Christian Socialists illus-
trate how things had changed from an earlier era of vigorous labor support by
Edward Rogers and Henry Morgan. Far from standing on the sidelines, evan-
gelicals persistently sought to initiate and react against political movements
of their day usually led by Brahmin Protestants or the increasingly powerful
Boston Irish. Their organizing shows the thick network of the evangelical
crossroads even if it did not result in any sustained political dynasties as it
did for the Irish in Boston politics. The evangelicals were still a force to be
reckoned with.
Baptists and Methodists showed their greatest political strength in city
politics during the Boston public schools crisis of 1888. Their anti-Catholic
feelings and organizing became a unifying motif for Boston evangelicals in
a rather hateful way, much as the holiness movement sought to unify them
around aspirations for “perfect love.” Edward Rogers most explicitly sought
to draw connections between the holiness movement and the labor move-
ment, but he had difficulty persuading many Boston evangelicals about this
as they looked with fear on the gathering numbers of Roman Catholics and
foreigners who were entering the labor movement.

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 c h a p ter f o ur

The Salvation Army and Other Evangelical

Organizations Led by Women, 1884–1892
“Aggressive Christianity”

It was pouring rain on March 23, 1869, in Boston, but this could not keep
six Methodist women from gathering at Tremont Street Methodist Episcopal
Church in the South End for the founding meeting of the Methodist Episco-
pal Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society (wfms). The Methodists’ wfms was
not the first women’s foreign missionary organization that was nationwide in
its scope, having been preceded by the nondenominational Woman’s Union
Missionary Society in 1860 and a Congregationalist society a few years later,
but it soon became the most powerful. In 1910 the wfms was proclaimed “the
greatest Woman’s Missionary Society in the country” by Baptist leader Helen
Barrett Montgomery.1
At the dawn of the twentieth century there were more than forty women’s
denominational missionary societies in America with approximately three
million active members.2 Helen Barrett Montgomery illustrated the get-
serious attitude of these organizations: “Until all Christian women have
learned that the cross of Christ is not to be sung about nor wept over, nor
smothered in flowers, but set up in the midst of our pleasures; that our Lord
never commanded us to cling to that cross, but to carry it, the work of the
missionary circle will not be done, nor its warfare accomplished.”3
It is tempting to linger on the fiery rhetoric of the great “queens of the
platform” such as Helen Barrett Montgomery, Frances Willard, or Mary Liv-
ermore to find the secret to the success of evangelical women’s organizational
strength. Their speeches were powerful and certainly influential, but the heart
of evangelicals’ women-led organizations in Boston was most fully expressed
in the hymns and prayers spoken in simple parlor rooms, camp meetings, and
Sunday School gatherings rather than on public platforms. The final refrain
of an 1879 poem by Mary Sparkes Wheeler best conveys the mobilizing force
and devotional piety of the movement:

Women who lingered near Calvary weeping,

Last at the cross when all others had fled,
First at His grave, where the angels were keeping
Watch o’er the tomb of Immanuel dead.

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 Dead? Nay. “Why seek ye the dead ‘mong the living?
Jesus is risen! The angels proclaim.
Go teach all nations, eternal life giving
Freely to all who believe in His name.
Haste till the ends of the earth are awaking,
Shout, as on love’s swiftest pinions ye flee.
Watchman in Zion, behold the light breaking!
Help now those women who labor with thee!4

Long before it was fashionable to speak of “globalization” and its influ-

ence on urban America, women’s foreign missionary organizations brought
a vivid awareness of the world to evangelical women—and men. Rather than
distracting from issues at home, women’s foreign missionary organizations
focused women’s energy both in defense of their families and toward their op-
pressed sisters in North End alleys and faraway lands. Missionary societies,
with their thick network of local affiliates across the nation, laid the organi-
zational infrastructure on which the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union
later constructed its empire.5
In many respects, the women’s missionary societies had an even more
widespread impact than the wctu. They certainly had more members. By
1910 wctu auxiliaries around the nation claimed nearly 250,000 mem-
bers—far fewer than the women’s missionary societies’ 3,000,000.6 Women’s
missionary organizations also boldly sought to change cultural practices in
foreign countries that oppressed women, established the first women’s hos-
pitals in several countries, and began women’s colleges in India, Korea, and
elsewhere.7 Missionary women’s greater social activism at this time was ex-
pressed in the movement’s rallying cry of “Woman’s Work for Woman.” It was
a departure from the greater emphasis placed earlier on evangelistic efforts,
even if women in the late nineteenth century mostly emphasized evange-
lism and social reform in vibrant interaction with one another.8 An earlier
women’s mission theory that stressed the importance of modeling a Christian
home for potential converts to witness firsthand remained a striking feature
of women’s urban ministry efforts in this period.
A few years after its own work in foreign mission began, the wfms was
strong enough to lend a hand to urban mission efforts in Boston. In 1873
Eben Tourjée asked the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society to help raise
funds at a fair for the struggling Boston Missionary and Church Extension
Society as a financial depression swept the nation. The bmces and the wfms
shared the proceeds from the fair, but the wfms generously agreed to help
the struggling bmces and only took one-fourth of the total proceeds for it-
self. Examples of such cooperation between foreign and domestic mission-
ary endeavors were an important and ongoing dimension of the missionary
movement in the period.9
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 By the 1880s the wfms’s finely tuned organizational apparatus was in-
strumental in helping several more urban mission and temperance efforts to
gain support as the “Woman’s Work for Woman” mission theory seamlessly
expanded into urban ministry concerns. The Woman’s Home Missionary So-
ciety began work in New England in 1881; East Boston Immigrant Home
started work in 1886; the New England Deaconess Association was estab-
lished in 1889.10 All three organizations were founded as evangelical women
were manifesting their political power in the Boston public schools crisis of
1888. No doubt the wfms’s infrastructure was also a tremendous benefit for
anti-Catholic organizers at this time.
Always an astute observer of the political milieu, wctu president Frances
Willard discerned the growing strength of the transdenominational woman’s
foreign missionary movement in the 1880s and 1890s and dramatically ex-
panded the wctu’s activities beyond the temperance cause.11 In her 1881
presidential address she proclaimed that the time was ripe to “do everything,”
and she did. Raising the age of consent, advocacy for the poor, children’s edu-
cation issues, and even “high tech” ideas to make women’s housework less
tedious became part of the wctu’s bold program to conquer the problems
women and their families faced.12
Willard also became involved in international affairs as she learned from
women missionaries about the problems of alcohol around the world. She was
also deeply disturbed by the British involvement in the opium trade in India
and China.13 Her “Polyglot Petition” was an astonishing collection of seven
million signatures from around the world calling on heads of state to enact
the prohibition of alcohol in their countries.14 It likely came as little surprise
when the World’s Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (wwctu) decided
to hold its 1891 inaugural meeting in Boston—the origin of so much of the
movement’s energy. The wwctu gathered at Faneuil Hall with the Polyglot
Petition draped over the historic building as a visible sign of women’s orga-
nizing power. Boston evangelical women were likely reminded of their show
of local political power a few years prior during the Boston public schools
crisis.15
There were many reasons for the growth of women-led organizations after
the Civil War. The growth of cities, rural-to-urban migration, increased im-
migration, changing ideas about gender roles for both men and women, and
expanding educational opportunities for women are all important factors.
Thousands of women were propelled into the vacuum of leadership created
by the thousands of men who had left their jobs in cities in order to fight
in the Civil War. After the Civil War many women remained in important
leadership roles. The number of women who worked outside the home sky-
rocketed to 2.6 million or 15.2 percent of the total workforce by 1880. This
represented a 30 percent increase in women’s employment from 1870.16 The
devastating loss of a generation of men’s lives during the war also meant that
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 figure 4.1.
Depiction of the Woman’s
Temperance Crusade of
1873–1874. Courtesy of
the Library of Congress
American Memory
Collection, “Woman’s
Holy War. Grand Charge
on the Enemy’s Works,”
New York, Currier &
Ives, 1874.

there was a dearth of eligible marriage partners, thus making the single life a
common reality for many women.
Women’s exclusion from the clergy ranks of most denominations forced
them to be creative in developing ministries where their gifts could be utilized.
In the 1880s women’s “separate sphere” of activity was expanding. Women’s
“spaces” in Boston changed dramatically between the 1870s and 1890s as they
ventured into public roles denied their forbears.17 The ways women navigated
urban spaces in Boston varied considerably depending on neighborhood, so-
cial class, employment, and educational background. For single evangelical
women in Boston a host of organizations and churches emerged that sought
to help them navigate this space so foreign to the predominantly rural homes
from which they came.
Scholars have spent a great deal of time describing the notion of “separate
spheres” for women and men in the Victorian era, but evangelical women
in the late nineteenth century—and especially Methodist women—were not
as rigidly confined to a “separate spheres” doctrine as many have thought.
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 Whereas many upper-class Boston women experienced the early 1890s as a
liberating breakdown of their “separate sphere” of influence, many evangeli-
cal women probably viewed it more as a matter of course.18 Boston University,
for example, was coeducational from the start in the 1860s, and by the time of
Moody’s revival in 1877, 23 percent of enrolled students were women.19 Har-
vard University, by contrast, was not coeducational until the 1970s. Frontier
Methodism was a similarly gender-egalitarian movement as women preach-
ers roamed the countryside and countless married women offered motherly
advice to young itinerant preachers who passed through.20 Phoebe Palmer’s
rise to national leadership in the holiness movement after the Civil War
would have been unthinkable in Boston Congregationalist or Episcopalian
circles. The greater acceptance of gender equality among evangelicals also
extended to their greater willingness to allow women to preach—as Moody
did with Frances Willard in 1877. In 1869—the same year that Methodist
women founded their missionary society—Margaret Van Cott became the
first woman in the Methodist Episcopal Church to be formally granted a local
preacher’s license.21
As rural or foreign immigrants themselves, many evangelical women in-
volved in urban mission work could easily understand the difficult situations
facing poor immigrant women who struggled to care for their families. Prot-
estant women who were more affluent would have shared a concern about
such issues but were ultimately more distant from them. The lack of social
distance between poor immigrants and evangelicals—especially in the case
of Salvation Army women—also made it easier for the evangelical women to
understand how revivalism and social reform belonged together, as the evan-
gelicals recognized that caring for their own children’s Christian upbringing
went hand in hand with difficult realities of household economics. Protestant
women who were more affluent, yet still trying to bridge class differences,
faced a greater chasm between their lifeways and those of many poor women,
which caused their social reform activity to take on a more professionalized
and distant demeanor.22
The pervasive influence of the holiness movement in American evangeli-
calism and the familial ties between women’s organizational leaders and Bos-
ton University professors were additional reasons for the success of Boston
evangelical women’s organizations in this period. The vital emphasis on ho-
liness piety is evident in the reports of chapter meetings and in the wfms
publication the Heathen Woman’s Friend, edited by Harriet Warren, the wife
of Boston University president William F. Warren.23 Joint annual meetings
between the wfms and the Woman’s Home Missionary Society sometimes
took place at camp meeting sites in New England.24 Harriet Binney Steele,
wife of holiness theologian Daniel Steele, was “enthusiastic in the support of
the wfms, speaking for it publicly in every State in New England.” She was
also a strong advocate of urban mission efforts like those of the Methodist
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 deaconesses and the Charles Cullis institutions that her husband supported.25
Mrs. Lee Claflin and Mrs. Isaac Rich, the wives of two of the main benefactors
of Boston University, were also prominent members of the wfms. Having
the Wesleyan holiness movement as a common inheritance, and the strong
relationships between Boston University faculty and students, were also in-
tegral factors in the success of another mostly women-led organization, the
Salvation Army.26

the salvation army

British in its origins, the Salvation Army arrived in the United States in 1879
and established its first corps (local church) without the explicit support
of General William Booth. Amos and Annie Shirley and their seventeen-
year-old daughter, Eliza, emigrated from Britain to Philadelphia and began
setting up corps. They had permission from Booth to use the name Salva-
tion Army, but they were given no financial support. “If it is a success,” Booth
declared, “we may see our way clear to take it over.”27 It was a success, and
additional “reinforcements” arrived soon thereafter in New York. The Salva-
tion Army rapidly expanded from 12 corps in three cities in 1880 to 246 corps
in twenty-seven different states in 1888.28 From 1880 to 1884 the number
of soldiers (laypersons) involved in the Army increased as well, from 412 to
5,000.29
The Salvation Army’s “invasion” of Boston in September 1884 under the
leadership of Captain Annie Shirley inaugurated a remarkable style of urban
mission in the once-Puritan city. A month before coming to Boston, Annie
Shirley lost her husband, Amos, in a drowning accident but remarkably sol-
diered on. For Shirley, there was no time for mourning amid her battle for
souls on the streets and in rented storefronts in the poorest neighborhoods
of Boston. Annie Shirley shared the ribald style of Salvation Army founders
General William Booth and Catherine Booth and passed this on to her fol-
lowers with remarkable ease. Neither the Booths nor Annie Shirley ever met
Father Taylor or Henry Morgan, but they most certainly would have loved
them and their bold approach to ministry.
Annie Shirley’s leadership of the Boston Salvation Army was not unique
because she was a woman. Single women regularly served as officers (pastors)
of local corps. National figures from 1888 demonstrate that single women
comprised a full 45.5 percent of Salvation Army officers. Women officers were
also the clear majority in Boston corps from 1888 to 1907. In 1888, the first
year that records were kept in Boston, women were identified as leading the
two Boston corps for most of the year.30 Women’s pastoral leadership was only
one of the reasons—and probably not the most important one—for church
leaders to raise their eyebrows in both suspicion and delight over these latest
upstart evangelicals on the Boston scene.
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 Before coming to Boston in September 1884, the Salvationists made friends
with prominent evangelicals and received some publicity in the Boston press.
The earliest praise the Army received in New England came from the pen of
holiness theologian Daniel Steele. In a front-page article in the Zion’s Herald
in August 1881, Steele praised the Salvation Army and simultaneously deliv-
ered a stinging backhanded criticism of his own Methodist Episcopal denom-
ination. “There seems to be a great tendency in every evangelical movement
to push off from the masses as soon as it has attained respectability through
numbers, and to become stiff-jointed through ecclesiasticism and afraid of
soiling its robes by working any longer in the gutter. So it begins to die of
respectability. What a mercy to our fallen world it is that God does not shut
up His Spirit to work in denominations formal and rheumatic, but often goes
down to the bottom of the social ladder and starts a new movement. Booth
is John Wesley’s soul marching on.”31 Two years later Steele continued to pro-
mote the efforts of the Salvation Army and persuaded his friend William Mc-
Donald to publish Catherine Booth’s Aggressive Christianity, thus introduc-
ing the Salvation Army’s work to a wider evangelical American audience.32
In 1883 a Congregationalist journal, The New Englander, published a more
critical analysis of the Salvation Army, although it too praised its “greatest
service” to the Christian church in demonstrating “the possibility of bringing
the most abandoned classes of society under the saving power of the gospel.”33
The journal condemned the Salvation Army’s “absolutism” due to its hier-
archical structure, “the general neglect of religious instruction,” and, most
severe of its liabilities, the “irreverence of many of its extremely sensational
methods.”34 These criticisms ensured that the Salvation Army would receive a
less than enthusiastic welcome from many of Boston’s elite citizens.
The Salvation Army’s first Boston meeting on September 7, 1884, was de-
scribed in detail on the front page of the Boston Globe. A master at getting
publicity—good and bad—Captain Shirley had paid a visit to the offices of the
Globe two days prior to holding her first meeting in the city to ensure press
coverage. The choice of the Boston Globe as the paper to write about the event
was a good one. The Globe tended to be a more Democratic-leaning newspa-
per with less of a Brahmin reputation than the Republican-leaning Evening
Transcript or Boston Advertiser.35 Shirley doubtless hoped that word of the
Army’s arrival would spread through the saloons, slums, and wharves of Bos-
ton more readily than through the elaborate parlors of Boston’s Back Bay.
The Salvation Army’s integration of aggressive revivalism and social re-
form stood in dramatic contrast to the style of the elite Boston social wel-
fare network known as the Associated Charities. Begun the same year as the
Salvation Army’s arrival in Philadelphia, the national charity organization
movement had one of its earliest and most mature organizations in Boston.
The Associated Charities built on previous Brahmin poor relief organizations
that sought to organize charity work on a citywide basis. Few evangelicals
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 were associated with this network of elite charities.36 When the Associated
Charities began hiring Catholic staff to visit the poor in 1893, the division
between them and Boston’s upstart evangelicals—who still sought to convert
Catholics—became even more significant.37 The Associated Charities was
sometimes criticized for its excessive concern with “efficiency” at the expense
of a more humane approach. Catholic editor of The Pilot John Boyle O’Reilly
even put his criticism of Associated Charities to verse: “The organized charity
scrimped and iced; In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ.”38
The Salvation Army was about as far from proclaiming a “cautious and
statistical Christ” as one could get in Boston, yet it displayed a remarkable
ability to stay out of the fray in the fiery anti-Catholic controversies of the
late 1880s. The Salvationists’ frequent meetings at Boston venues such as the
Tremont Temple (Baptist) and Clarendon Street Baptist Church and People’s
Church (Methodist) indicate that they were probably sympathetic and cer-
tainly aware of other evangelicals’ involvement in anti-Catholic organizing.
However, since the Salvationists were frequently subjected to mob violence
themselves, they were understandably reticent to join in the particularly bit-
ter attacks toward Roman Catholics.39 Direct political organizing was also
simply not a priority for the Army or part of the repertoire of techniques they
were accustomed to using at this early stage in their development.40 The first
concrete evidence of the Salvation Army in Boston openly doing any kind of
political organizing came in October 1892.41
The first Salvationist meeting in Boston took place in a rented hall on
North Russell Street in the West End, five blocks from where Charles Cullis
had started a mission church a few years earlier.42 The Boston Salvationists
soon began holding regular meetings in a rented auditorium of the Windsor
Theatre on the corner of Dover and Washington streets in the South End. The
Clarendon Street Baptist Church was one of the closest Protestant Churches
to this theater, located just four blocks to the north. Its pastor, A. J. Gordon,
was among the Army’s earliest supporters and was the only non-Salvationist
in Boston to be mentioned in The War Cry (the Army’s magazine) as preach-
ing at a Salvation Army event in these early years.43 Commissioner Frank
Smith drew ironic attention to the “excellent company” Salvation Army of-
ficers enjoyed when they were jailed for unlawfully preaching on the Boston
Common along with A. J. Gordon, W. F. Davis, the superintendent of Tour-
jée’s North End Mission, and a dozen others.44
In addition to their brazen evangelistic rallies and parades in the “open
air” of Boston, the Salvation Army reached out to the downtrodden in the
midst of their lives of misery in the dreary North End grog shops. Records
show that Salvation Army storefront corps were almost as transient as many
of the sailors and poor persons in the North End. Addresses for their corps
changed with remarkable frequency—perhaps partly because of eviction by

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 disgruntled landlords.45 It was in the bars and on the streets where Salvation-
ists sold their magazine, The War Cry, to raise funds and publicize their work,
all for the goal of saving souls among the poor. The importance of The War
Cry as a fund-raising tool ought not to be underestimated. An account of the
Army’s national income from October 1884 to March 1886 shows that the
gross income from sales of The War Cry and the children’s magazine Little
Soldiers provided approximately half of the $63,618 national budget for the
seventeen-month period.46
The Salvation Army’s growth was not steady in the early years, since
the organization was mired in a conflict that resulted in a major schism in
1884, just as the Boston “invasion” began. In 1884 the Army reported that
it had 250–300 officers. A year later that part of the Army still under Gen-
eral Booth’s command reported having only 50 officers in all of America. The
number of corps also dropped precipitously between 1884 and 1885, from
104 to 17.47 Confusion over the existence of two Salvation Armies in America,
one loyal to William Booth and the other led by Thomas Moore, caused dif-
ficulty for Salvationists in the Boston area. Prior to the October 1884 schism,
the Salvation Army just north of Boston in Salem, Massachusetts, reported
three hundred conversions with the same number of people attending early
morning prayer meetings. After the schism, an officer was sent back to Salem,
where she found only ten soldiers who had remained true to the Army under
General Booth, making it necessary to begin a new corps in Salem.48 As late
as 1888 the Salvation Army’s continued existence was apparently questioned
by the local Boston press, which noted with surprise an April 1888 “open-air”
worship service held on the Boston Common, the first such service in over
four months.49
The divisions the Salvation Army faced from within were made all the
worse by the opposition they faced from the outside, from both educated
elites and drunken crowds incited to violence by tavern owners fearful that
Salvationists would take away customers. In one account of Salvationists vis-
iting Boston saloons selling The War Cry, a young man is reported to have
hesitated when invited to purchase the magazine, stating “I have just got five
cents, and I must buy this drink.” The Salvationists had almost convinced
the man to buy their magazine when the “rumseller” threw them out on the
streets where, according to the Salvationists, “a large crowd had collected,
which, as we went on, increased and followed us.”50
The author of this and similar articles in The War Cry was known as “Happy
Jenny, the Colored Lass,” who likely was a member of the troupe of Salvation-
ists visiting the saloons. African-Americans in the Salvation Army benefited
from a denominational policy of racial equality that was remarkable for the
period. In August of 1885 the head of the Salvation Army in America, Com-
missioner Frank Smith, proclaimed that the Army must be “among the first

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 Christian communities of America who will faithfully and wholly break down
the wall of partition, separating the white from the colored, whom the Lord
has brought from a common captivity and bondage.”51
Methodists in New England shared a similar perspective on race relations
at this time—having been at the forefront of the abolition movement in their
own denomination.52 They also would have been reminded of their own his-
tory of harassment a generation earlier, another similarity that strengthened
many Methodists’ support of the Army.53 The historical relationship between
the Salvation Army’s contemporary struggles against violent opposition and
earlier Methodist experience was reported in a Newburyport, Massachusetts,
newspaper in support of the Army and reprinted in The War Cry.

The Salvation Army is receiving a good deal of abuse for following

methods which have been found effective in religious work often in
the past. . . . The Salvationists are only repeating the work of the early
Methodists, and their experience is strikingly familiar in many points,
as anyone can see who reads the history of the Methodist movement.
That church has settled down into a regular denomination, respectable
and quiet. When it was a missionary church, seeking converts from
the poorest, most ignorant and vilest . . . it encountered the same vio-
lence of opposition, the same denunciations of its low methods, and the
shouting Methodists were no more a beautiful spectacle to the regu-
lar churchmen of England or to the New England Congregationalists
than the Salvation Army is now, and the objections were very much the
same.54

The following account of an injury inflicted in 1885 on one of the youngest

Salvation Army officers in Boston, seventeen-year-old Captain Alice Terrell,
illustrates the personally challenging nature of the work in the midst of op-
position: “Once in Boston we were out in the march, and about everybody
except me had been hit by stones or other missiles. . . . Just as I mounted the
curb, however, to go into the hall on North Russell and Cambridge [streets],
I was struck by a rock. Major Gay caught me as I fell, and carried me, insen-
sible, into the hall. Though that was seven years ago, I feel the effects of that
blow to this day.”55
The boldness of the mostly female Salvation Army officers in Boston was
a striking example of self-sacrifice for the men of Boston University School
of Theology. The young and attractive Captain Terrell recalled that “[m]any
students from a theological seminary used to help us on these [saloon] ex-
cursions, and some of them have told me since that this work made them the
men they afterwards became.”56 Gender differences between the male Bos-
ton University School of Theology students and the mostly female Salvation
Army officers no doubt played into the relational dynamics between the two
institutions. On only one occasion did this lead to marriage between a semi-
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 nary student and a Salvationist, Samuel Brengle and Elizabeth Swift. Since
most Salvation Army officers were from the working classes, with minimal
formal education compared with Methodist seminary students, there was
probably a class barrier to close friendships between members of the two or-
ganizations. Elizabeth Swift’s college education was relatively unique for a
Salvation Army officer.57
Samuel Logan Brengle, in 1884 a first-year student at Boston University
School of Theology, was deeply impressed with the Salvation Army and re-
counted that the Army was responsible for the entire sanctification of “sev-
eral” of his fellow seminarians. Brengle noted that he attended Salvation
Army meetings “every chance I had.” His mentor at the university, theology
professor Daniel Steele, no doubt played an important role in encouraging
him and other students to avail themselves of the Salvation Army. Brengle
was impressed with General William Booth when he heard him speak at
Tremont Temple on June 1, 1885, and again at a lecture to Boston University
School of Theology students and faculty on “that central doctrine of Method-
ism,” Christian perfection.58 Although clearly impressed by Booth, Brengle
was absolutely smitten that same summer when he met his future wife, Eliza-
beth Swift. Two of his seminary classmates had urged Sam to meet Elizabeth,
which he did for the first time at a meeting in Newton, Massachusetts.59
After marrying Elizabeth, Samuel Brengle left the Methodists and went
to London to attend officer’s training, only to be put to work shining other
cadets’ boots. General Booth and other Salvationist leaders were suspicious
of Brengle’s motives as an exceptionally well-educated recruit and wanted to
test his resolve. His faith was tested as well by such menial tasks. “The devil
came at me and reminded me that a few years before, I had graduated from
a university, that I had spent a couple of years in a leading theological school,
had been pastor of a metropolitan church, had just left evangelistic work in
which I saw hundreds seeking the Savior, and that now I was only blacking
boots for a lot of ignorant lads. My old enemy is the devil! But I reminded him
of the example of my Lord, and he left me.” Brengle prayed, “Dear Lord, Thou
didst wash their feet; I will black their boots!”60
Brengle proved himself worthy and became the Salvation Army’s leading
holiness theologian and evangelist, but not before he was struck and nearly
killed by a ruffian’s brick in Boston shortly after being assigned there in Janu-
ary of 1889. His work in Boston was also made difficult by the “cold shoulder”
he received from at least two of his former professors at Boston University
School of Theology because of his identification with the Army. Daniel Steele
remained supportive, but holiness movement leader William McDonald,
“who had been like a father” to Brengle, “spoke rather sneeringly” of his Sal-
vationist uniform when McDonald saw him.61 Prior to his departure from
Methodism, Brengle was a rising star in the holiness movement as an evan-
gelist and had served for ten months in 1885­–1886 as McDonald’s assistant
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 while McDonald was president of the National Camp Meeting Association.
Toward the end of his life, McDonald had a change of heart and confessed to
Brengle, “I think that if I were a young man again I would join the Salvation
Army.”62 Brengle’s enthusiasm for holiness found expression in the written as
well as preached word. Charles Cullis published one of Brengle’s first articles
in his holiness magazine Times of Refreshing; it was later reprinted as a tract
selling thousands of copies.63
The Salvation Army had many other Methodist supporters as well. In the
first two years of publication of the American War Cry the Methodists were
the most frequently mentioned denomination supportive of the Salvation-
ists’ work. In March 1886 at the Eastern Territory’s sixth anniversary celebra-
tion held in Boston, “a young gentleman offered to give dinner to twenty-five
of the [Salvation Army] officers, and when they arrived at the address they
found themselves in the Boston University, entertained and waited upon by
the students. God bless and sanctify the young intellect of our land.”64 Serv-
ing dinner and providing entertainment for twenty-five officers was no small
undertaking and would have likely involved the cooperation of a number of
students.
Although evangelicals were generally supportive of the Salvation Army, the
occasional criticism of the Army by McDonald and others is equally revealing
about some evangelicals’ struggle to come to terms with their social status
in Boston. The School of Theology’s new, lavish building on Beacon Hill at
72 Mt. Vernon Street, dedicated in November 1886, displayed the students’
sophistication but also stood in contrast to the their sense of responsibility
toward the poor. The dinner that students served to Salvation Army officers
at their school may have exposed students’ discomfort with their own status-
conscious milieu even before they moved, a few months later, to Mt. Vernon
Street, an address that author Henry James once called “the only respectable
street in America.”65 The students probably wondered if they should accept
their growing similarity to the established denominations of New England,
as their fancy location suggested, or whether they should rather embrace the
primitive Methodism in the spirit of the Salvation Army. Much like the Sal-
vation Army, Boston University School of Theology drew young men from
many rural areas and small towns around the country who would have felt
out of place yet understandably proud of their respectable surroundings.66
An 1886 Zion’s Herald editorial titled “Aggressive Work in Cities” expressed
a kind of “status anxiety” similar to what the divinity students experienced.
The article noted the slackening in recent years of Methodist growth in the
cities and proposed one innovation pioneered by British Methodist preacher
Hugh Price Hughes, who had started a preaching ministry in the fashionable
West End of London. “We have as yet only sent men among the poorest and
most vicious portions of our cities. This work is not to be overlooked; but the

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 hour, it seems to us, has come, when we should send picked men, the rare
preachers, holy and apt to teach, into any portion of the city where there is a
population without a temple of worship, and permit such men to remain and
work out all their possibilities[.]”67
Less than a year after serving dinner to twenty-five Salvation Army of-
ficers, the School of Theology students seemed to resolve—at least
temporarily—their sense of status anxiety and their responsibility for urban
mission. Gathered at a “class meeting” (a group to promote holiness among
Methodists) at the School of Theology in February 1887, Professor Hinckley
Mitchell reported, “we all felt as if we heard a voice saying, ‘Ye are the light of
the world.’” They then asked “is the School as a school proving itself worthy
of its splendid location and giving light to the dark places of Boston? The
question took such a hold upon those present that within a few days thirty
had pledged themselves to spend at least one evening a week in missionary
work.”68 They started their work in the North End and held a service at Tour-
jée’s North End Mission. This was the beginning of increased urban mission
efforts in Boston churches by seminary students that eventually led to the
settlement house work in the early 1890s discussed in the following chapter.
There were other factors in the nation at large contributing to a greater
focus on urban ministry, but the Salvation Army’s witness in Boston was the
most immediate primary influence that stoked Boston University School of
Theology students’ renewed fervor for urban mission in the late nineteenth
century. In addition to attending Salvationist meetings, assisting with their
saloon work, hearing General Booth lecture at their school, hosting offi-
cers for a dinner, and committing themselves to renewed action among the
city’s poor, Boston University School of Theology students actually sought to
mimic specific Salvation Army techniques and its militaristic organization.69
One fond observer reported their activities with admiration in the St. Louis
Methodist journal, the Central Christian Advocate.

They have organized themselves into a “Brotherhood” for the purpose of

doing evangelistic work in the “slums” of the city, and in the “down town”
churches. They choose one of their own number for their captain and
pledge themselves to give absolute obedience to him in this work, so that
when he orders an attack or a march or a muster they cannot plead a hard
lesson or a lecture or a “rare privilege” to attend a concert. They must go.
And they do go. They are nearly all good singers and when they march
through the streets of the North End they sing our grand old hymns while
one of their number leads with a cornet. They are pelted with stones, rot-
ten potatoes, eggs, etc., but they feel that this is only another evidence that
they are in the apostolic succession. When they have gathered a crowd they
stop and hold a prayer meeting and invite sinners “forward” for prayers. In

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 their street meetings during the past year, about eighty have manifested a
desire to become Christians. In these meetings they have the protection of
the police. . . . They all testified that it had done more for them than their
studies in the school, in that it had developed in them Christian experience
and common sense.70

Several years later a Boston reporter noted at least one North End resident
confusing Methodists with the Salvation Army during an outdoor evangelis-
tic event. “Out of one of the alleyways hastens a fat German woman in a calico
dress. Her neighbor in the window above asks: ‘Vhat ish dem, der Salvations?’
And then comes the answer: ‘Nein, dem’s der People’s Church.’”71 The tech-
niques for street evangelism utilized by the Salvationists had spread from the
Methodist seminary students into the nation’s largest Methodist church.
Daniel Steele also mimicked the Salvation Army in an 1886 proposal to
complement the Methodist Episcopal Church’s system of theological edu-
cation with a training school system more similar to that of the Salvation
Army.72

There is room for a less learned ministry, full of faith and the Holy Ghost—
a reservoir of eloquence ready to be poured out upon the thirsty multitudes
through the spigot of street language. If Methodism affords this ministry
no training-school, and maintains a literary standard which excludes it,
the Benjamin Abbotts and the Taylors (E. T. and W.)73 of the future will be
trained by the Salvation Army, or by some other organization near to the
popular heart, and our grandchildren will be discussing how our Church
can arrest her steady decline, and bridge the chasm between her and the
unsaved masses. . . . We have lately noticed, with a very lively interest, the
establishment in Chicago by the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of
the Methodist Episcopal Church, of a school for training female mission-
aries for both the home and the foreign work. This is a step in the right
direction.74

Steele’s support here of the Chicago Methodists’ deaconess school took place
after he had already been a supporter for a number of years of Charles Cullis’s
deaconess school. Later in the article, Steele also mentioned Charles Cullis’s
ten-year-old Faith Training College as an example to be emulated by the
Methodist Episcopal Church.
In the area of foreign missions, too, at least one Methodist held up the
example of the Salvation Army for emulation. In 1885 The War Cry printed
an article from a Methodist supporter praising the Salvation Army for its
frugal habits and effectiveness in India. The supporter criticized Methodist
Episcopal missionaries for their relative reluctance to “go and live with the
natives,” stating that the Salvation Army was “doing this work and should

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 have our prayers and our money.”75 New England Methodist Catherine B.
Sherman, the wife of the Reverend David Sherman, was also very supportive
of the Salvation Army. Before her death in 1885 she was reported to have read
Catherine Booth’s Aggressive Christianity “again and again.” Her husband,
Rev. David Sherman, was a Methodist Episcopal preacher and Boston presid-
ing elder from 1874 to 1876. He also served as vice president of the North End
Mission in 1874.76
Relationships among members of the Boston Salvation Army, the Method-
ist Episcopal Church, and other evangelicals were also strengthened at sum-
mer camp meetings at Old Orchard Beach, Maine. The Salvation Army first
conducted camp meetings at this location in August 1885, sharing space with
the Methodists, Baptists, Episcopalians, and others.77 A year earlier Charles
Cullis had purchased his own campground in Intervale, New Hampshire.78 In
1886 A. B. Simpson began sponsoring camp meetings at Old Orchard Beach,
where he had been healed through Cullis’s ministry five years earlier.79
As the Salvation Army ministry in Boston grew, it gradually became far
more acceptable to even some of the most elite members of Boston society.80
In 1889 Maud Booth restarted the Salvation Army Auxiliary League for the
purpose of gaining wealthy persons’ support for the Army’s work. The league
had started in 1884 under the direction of Thomas Moore but had disbanded
as a result of the schism.81 By 1893 there were a total of two hundred auxil-
iary organizations in Boston and its immediate surrounding towns.82 At least
one auxiliary meeting was held in the exclusive Back Bay neighborhood of
Boston.83 At these parlor room meetings, Maud Booth often spoke about the
Army’s work among the poor and received generous support from wealthy
patrons. This kind of fund-raising focused on the Salvation Army’s social
work programs and was an attempt to implement General William Booth’s
scheme laid out in his Darkest England and the Way Out, published in 1890.
General Booth’s plans described in the book did not even begin to take shape
in the United States until Emma and Frederick Booth-Tucker assumed com-
mand of the Army in the United States in 1896.84
Boston Unitarian and orator Edward Everett Hale featured the Salvation
Army rather prominently in his novel If Jesus Came to Boston. The narrator
of the story speaks of a mysterious friend, whom the reader readily identifies
as Jesus himself, who comes to visit Boston to see all the fine work Christians
are doing. A female officer of the Salvation Army is the first Christian worker
to meet Jesus at the dock where she is assisting an Italian immigrant in mak-
ing contact with her family back in Italy. Later in the story Jesus meets a
Salvation Army “Slum Sister” busily cleaning the dirty tenement of a poor
sick woman. Hale lavishes praise on the Salvationist. “My friend [Jesus] was
so pleased, that I thought for a moment he would go on his knees and finish
the job. But she would not let him do that. She said, as if she knew him better

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 than I did, ‘Oh, you have more important work to do, and I am nearly done
here’; and then she asked me what she could do for me.”85
Elite Bostonians’ growing fondness for the Salvation Army in the 1890s
backfired on the Salvationists when Major Edith Marshall, who had led the
Army’s Auxiliary League national organization, resigned from the Salvation
Army to join an Episcopal Church in Boston’s South End in 1903. Dissatisfied
with the Army, Edith Marshall stated that she appreciated the Episcopalians’
religious devotion and the “stability, order, completeness and dignity” that
the Episcopal Church provided.86 On the other hand, the Salvation Army also
gained one elite Bostonian as a recruit. Miss Jennie C. Newcomb, a Welles-
ley College botany professor, joined the Army in 1892 and worked among
the poor in Roxbury. Before joining the Army she also served as a teacher
at Moody’s Northfield Seminary and was described as a “warm friend” of
Moody’s.87
By 1893, nearly a decade after the Salvationists began their work in Boston,
the commander of the Salvation Army boasted that “over 20,000 souls have
professed to be saved since The Army’s advent in Boston.”88 By December
1893 the Army had expanded to six corps in Boston and twenty-two corps in
eastern Massachusetts.89 The six corps were located in nearly every neighbor-
hood of Boston: the South End, Roxbury, East Boston, Dorchester, Jamaica
Plain, and the North End.
In addition to the corps ministries in operation in 1893, the Salvation Army
also conducted what it called its rescue and slum work. By 1893 this involved
“two Slum posts, a Slum corps, and four officers.”90 These “Slum Brigades,” as
they were called when they began in 1889, differed from the settlement house
or deaconess movements beginning to take root in America at the time.91
Slum brigades did not establish a separate space for religious or secular com-
munity meetings in poor neighborhoods. Praised in Hale’s If Jesus Came to
Boston, the “Slum Sisters” simply moved into small tenement rooms where
they assisted their neighbors with child care, cleaning, and other “neighborly”
activities.92
The Salvation Army’s increased involvement in social welfare projects
was part of a national effort spurred on by the new leadership of Emma and
Frederick Booth-Tucker in 1896. Throughout the country, according to one
report, the number of social welfare institutions directed by the Army tripled
from 28 to 85 between 1896 and 1898.93 The rescue work performed by the
Boston Salvationists included, by 1893, a Home for Fallen Women begun in
August 1892 in Dorchester and supervised by two female officers. In its first
year of operation over forty women had been assisted at the rescue home.94
By 1900 the Salvation Army in Boston had added a Labor Bureau for the un-
employed, four men’s shelters with a total of 541 beds, a women’s shelter with
21 beds, a women’s hotel with 31 rooms for more affluent women working in
downtown department stores, a Salvage Warehouse, a Second-Hand Store, a
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 restaurant, and a social relief office to take care of miscellaneous needs.95 The
abuse that the Army had suffered from Boston residents in both the printed
press and on the streets when the Salvationists first arrived in 1884 had al-
most completely disappeared by 1895.
The Salvation Army’s work among immigrant groups in Boston also ex-
panded in the 1890s. As was the case with the Slum Brigades, the first officers
in charge of the Salvationists’ Swedish work in Boston were also women: Cap-
tain Graham and Lieutenant Olson.96 The first Salvation Army Swedish corps
(Boston #6) was established in December of 1893 and was located at vari-
ous addresses on Hanover Street in the North End. In 1896 another Swedish
corps opened up on 1088 Tremont Street in the South End.97 Of all of the
immigrant groups entering Boston in the 1880s—of which the Italians were
by far the most rapidly increasing population in the city—the Salvation Army,
like their Methodist counterparts, was most successful with Scandinavians.
By 1906 the Salvation Army had seventy-seven foreign-language corps in the
United States. Fifty-five of those corps were Swedish.98 Both Methodists and
the Salvation Army were simply more attuned to rural Protestants, whether
they were from the British Isles or Scandinavia.

east boston immigrant home

The growing tide of immigrants coming into Boston was impossible for
evangelical groups like the Salvation Army, the Methodists, or Baptists to
ignore, and yet it was not until May of 1888 that a specific ministry effort
was launched by Methodists to meet the immigrants when and where they
were at their most vulnerable—on the chaotic East Boston wharves as soon as
ships packed with immigrants docked. In the late 1880s there was a growing
fear among evangelicals that some newly arrived immigrant women, defense-
less and exhausted from the transatlantic voyage, were easy targets for crimi-
nals who would trick them and force them into lives of prostitution as “white
slaves.”99 The East Boston Immigrant Home sought to prevent this horror
by meeting ships in the early morning hours as they entered the harbor and
inviting to the home “all unprotected and friendless young girls, also women
and children waiting for friends or in need of advice.”100 The Immigrant Home
also offered prayer services and a sewing school and benefited greatly from
the tireless efforts of Mrs. Amanda A. Clark, a Swedish immigrant herself and
superintendent of the home for twenty-eight years.101
The East Boston Immigrant Home was the Methodists’ first specialized
ministry for immigrants along the docks. The Reverend Daniel S. Sorlin, him-
self a Swedish immigrant and pastor of the Boston Swedish Mission, was the
first to propose a home for immigrants, which he did after working a num-
ber of years as a missionary among Swedes with the Boston Missionary and
Church Extension Society. In the winter of 1887–1888 Sorlin strengthened
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 his case for the new ministry initiative by calling on some powerful friends in
New England Methodism. Methodist clergyman Varnum A. Cooper, leader of
the Home for Little Wanderers, and his wife, the president of the New Eng-
land Annual Conference Woman’s Home Missionary Society, were enthusi-
astic in their support. Sorlin himself had been one of the very first converts
to Methodism in Sweden and had worked alongside Rev. O. G. Hedstrom on
the famous bethel ship in New York harbor in the mid-1870s.102 Interest in
immigrant work also benefited from the strength of the women’s foreign mis-
sionary movement, as advocates of home mission efforts frequently noted the
similarities between foreign and home missionary work and proclaimed “[s]
ave America and you save the world!”103
Other evangelical Protestant groups also sponsored work among immi-
grants at this time.104 Such work had occurred as a matter of course for de-
cades as city missionaries encountered immigrants in their daily rounds of
visitation in poor Boston neighborhoods. By the early 1890s most Protestant
denominations also sponsored at least one missionary or social worker on the
docks to assist immigrants even if few had established immigrant homes of a
scale similar to the Methodists’ East Boston Immigrant Home. By the 1920s
Baptist workers among immigrants on the docks appear to have been the
most prevalent of all the denominations even though they had a later start
than some other groups. Most of these dock missionaries and even govern-
ment workers with immigrants were women.105
In the first two years the East Boston Immigrant Home moved twice, each
time to successively larger dwellings, until in May of 1890 a house was pur-
chased by the Methodist Episcopal Woman’s Home Missionary Society that
contained thirty-three rooms in all, four times the number of rooms in the
original Immigrant’s Home.106 The new home’s location could not have been
better: it was directly across the street from the East Boston pier of the Cu-
nard Line—one of the largest passenger shipping companies in the North At-
lantic.107 The number of people served at the Immigrant Home increased ac-
cordingly. One hundred forty-four persons were cared for at the new home in
the first six months, and 411 were assisted in the first year. In 1890, the tran-
sition year when the Immigrant Home moved to its new location, about five
hundred immigrants were boarded and nearly five thousand meals served.
The home also sponsored a total of 188 religious meetings the same year.108
This outpouring of aid made the Methodists’ Immigrant Home the leading
Protestant effort in immigrant assistance in the city.109
The Reverend Daniel Sorlin’s and Amanda Clark’s ability to initiate such
a new urban mission in Boston underscores a significant difference between
Methodists and more well-established denominations such as the Congre-
gationalists or Episcopalians. The latter denominations were much less suc-
cessful in reaching out to immigrants and unlikely to permit an immigrant
to initiate and then lead a new mission venture. In her survey of Boston im-
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 migrant churches between 1890 and 1940, Farmelant noted that there were
nearly three times as many Methodist and Baptist immigrant churches as
there were Congregational and Episcopal churches. In these years, Con-
gregationalists established ten immigrant churches including two Swedish
churches, and the Episcopalians established six immigrant churches. By con-
trast, the Baptists established twenty-seven and the Methodists twenty im-
migrant churches. For Methodists, most of this growth took place between
1920 and 1926, when they established seventeen immigrant churches in New
England. The spadework for this growth began in the last decade of the nine-
teenth century with Sorlin’s proposal to establish the East Boston Immigrant
Home.110
By 1896 the home had expanded its original purpose—which was to serve
as a temporary boardinghouse for immigrant women—and began to offer
other services as well. The Immigrant Home’s stated purpose in 1896 was “to
watch over, care for, and provide a temporary home for female immigrants
and to furnish them with industrial training, to maintain a day nursery and
temperance restaurant and to care for orphan and destitute children of immi-
grants, and to conduct missionary operations.”111 Its expansive ministry effort
doubtless helped Methodists to gain credibility as a denomination that was
concerned with the plight of immigrants. The home continued in operation
until 1931, when falling numbers of immigrants due to the Great Depression
made its task less urgent than it had been in previous decades.112

the new england deaconess home and training school

The establishment of a deaconess home training school for New England
Methodists in 1889 was the culmination of Methodist women’s ministry ef-
forts in Boston in the late nineteenth century. Charles Cullis’s deaconess house
had already been in operation for twenty years when the Boston Methodists
decided the time was ripe for a similar venture. Cullis had already clearly
established that there were plenty of opportunities for women to get involved
in both urban and foreign mission work as nurses, visitors, and evangelists.113
The twenty years of growth of the wfms, the temperance movement, the East
Boston Immigrant Home, and the Salvation Army all pointed to both the vi-
tality of women’s ministry as well as the need to more efficiently train women
for their work at home and abroad. The early church origin of the title of
“deaconess” gave women’s ministry an added measure of credibility to wield
against those who might challenge the legitimacy of their work.114
The decision to approve a new office of “deaconess” in the Methodist Epis-
copal denomination in 1888 was a direct outgrowth of the foreign missionary
movement. The “Woman’s Work for Woman” mission theory being promoted
by the wfms was integral to the establishment of the deaconess office, as
Methodist women in urban centers realized that poor women were given in-
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 adequate attention in ministry efforts. The earlier foreign missionary empha-
sis on modeling the “Christian home” was also self-consciously adopted by
Methodist deaconess homes around the country. Both the East Boston Im-
migrant Home and the Deaconess Home and Training School used the term
“home” very intentionally as an organizing principle for their work. An early
report about the Deaconess Home stressed “that we have here not merely an
institution, but a real home. The house is a model of neatness and home com-
fort. Its furnishings, though simple, are in no way suggestive of the asceticism
of the convent. The atmosphere of the Home is cheerfully Christian. All the
apparent conditions of life in the Home are favorable to rest and inspiration
for the consecrated women who go in and out in loving ministry among the
lowest and most afflicted of the city’s poor.”115
The first institutional initiatives to establish deaconesses were born on
the Methodist foreign mission field in Germany and India. Methodists in
Germany raised the idea of deaconesses in 1864 as they witnessed some of
their young women leaving their fledgling denomination to become Lutheran
deaconesses.116 By 1878 there were seven trained deaconesses of the Method-
ist Episcopal Church in Germany, a full ten years before the main decision-
making body of that denomination formally recognized the deaconess of-
fice. The actual petitions in 1888 to establish the deaconess office originated
with a woman missionary in India, Isabella Thoburn.117 By 1910 a total of
twelve deaconess schools had been founded by the Methodists in the United
States.118
Conversations among Methodists in New England to establish a “Ladies
Seminary” first occurred as early as 1869—the same year that Boston Uni-
versity was incorporated. There was ample precedent for such an institution,
as Mt. Holyoke Female Seminary and similar institutions had been estab-
lished already in the late 1830s and the women’s colleges were beginning to
emerge in the 1860s.119 The committee to look into the feasibility of a ladies’
seminary included William Claflin, Isaac Rich, Jacob Sleeper, the Reverend
L. R. Thayer, and the Reverend W. R. Clark. In spite of the interest that was
expressed at this early date, no ladies’ seminary was ever established. Instead,
Methodist women in New England first poured their energies into the practi-
cal work of the wfms and “home missions” before they established formal
educational institutions for women.120
Daniel Steele’s early leadership in the teaching of deaconesses at the
Charles Cullis deaconess institution and Faith Training College would have
been known by Methodists in Boston when the New England Deaconess
Training School began.121 The establishment of the Methodist Episcopal dea-
coness home in Boston no doubt would have gratified Steele as he advocated
three years earlier for such training schools modeled on the example of Sal-
vation Army training garrisons and the wfms training school in Chicago.
Steele himself taught deaconesses at the New England Deaconess Training
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 School shortly after the school was established and for ten years thereafter.122
Other faculty at the school consisted mostly of area pastors and teachers who
taught without pay. Holiness advocate and Methodist pastor William Nast
Brodbeck served as president of the New England Deaconess Training School
during its first three years.123
The dedication service of the training school was flush with enthusiasm as
one speaker noted that there were seven thousand deaconesses in Germany
alone—primarily among the Lutherans—and thus set imaginations ablaze
with what American Methodists could do with a similar number. Mr. O. M.
Durrell, in his opening address, stated that “in taking up this work” the Meth-
odist Church is “putting on its armor anew.” The stated purpose of the New
England Deaconess Home and Training School at its official incorporation
on June 21, 1889, was “to train evangelistic workers in both home and for-
eign fields and to utilize the energies of Christian women in active religious
work.”124
The Deaconess Training School was located at 45 East Chester Park—
now Massachusetts Avenue—in Boston, a few blocks to the west of Franklin
Square, where Eben Tourjée had moved the New England Conservatory of
Music in 1882. The work of Eben Tourjée and the North End Mission would
have been brought to mind for many of the attendees of the dedication cer-
emony.125 Tourjée’s pastor, Rev. W. R. Clark, who had influenced Tourjée to
found the North End Mission, gave the dedicatory prayer, and Eben Tourjée’s
daughter Mrs. Clara Tourjée Nelson sang a solo at the event. W. R. Clark had
also served on an 1869 committee charged with exploring the establishment
of a ladies’ seminary for the New England Annual Conference.126
In her opening address, Isabella Thoburn stated that the new school had
received fifty applications for admission within a few months. Only twelve of
these applicants were admitted to the school.127 The low acceptance rate at the
school during its initial years is striking. One of the features of the deacon-
ess schools around the country was that they “outdid the more conventional
[academic] institutions in extending a welcome to all possible students.”128
With an acceptance rate lower than 25 percent, this was apparently not the
case in the initial year of the New England school.
After the first six months of their work in Boston the twelve deaconesses
who had been accepted into the training program had already posted some
impressive statistics. They had made 1,799 visits with people in their homes,
distributed nearly a thousand tracts, spent 302 hours in the classroom, and
devoted forty-two days to nursing activity. They had also sought to get the
word out about their institution, speaking at fifteen different meetings to in-
form churches about their work.129 This flurry of activity was balanced by an
equally impressive list of required reading, which included books on the his-
tory of Methodist women, the deaconess movement in Europe, biblical stud-
ies, nursing texts, and even the disputed anti-Catholic world history textbook
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 by William Swinton that was the spark that ignited the Boston public schools
crisis of 1888–1889.130
In the training school’s second year of operation, tragedy struck: two of the
students died. Nevertheless, at the end of that year, in the spring of 1891, the
first six women graduated from the school. A few months later two women,
Miss Clara Organ and Miss Mary Lunn, were consecrated as deaconesses.
Mary Lunn, who had already graduated from the Chicago Deaconess Training
School, served as the New England Deaconess Home’s first superintendent.
Clara Organ later went on to minister at the Methodists’ settlement house
among the mostly Russian and Polish Jews of Boston’s North End by offering
a sewing school in addition to regular visitation.131 Two women enrolled at
the school in the spring of 1891 were training for foreign missionary work in
China and Japan.132 In 1892 the number of women at the school increased to
seventeen and remained approximately the same for the next few years.
Although the Deaconess Home and Training School was begun as an
institution for women, the financial control of the school was ultimately in
the hands of men.133 Only two of the original eight trustees of the Deaconess
Home were women—Harriet Warren and Emma Watkins. Harriet Warren,
the wife of Boston University president William Warren, served as the editor
of the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society’s publication Heathen Woman’s
Friend from 1869 until her death in 1893.134 Having lived previously with her
husband in Germany for several years, she most certainly would have had the
most personal knowledge of how deaconesses functioned on the European
continent.135 Emma Watkins was later credited, along with her husband the
Reverend T. Corwin Watkins, with raising a substantial amount of money for
the Deaconess Hospital in Boston, which was founded in 1896.136
The Deaconess Home and Training School faced many challenges in its
day-to-day work in the city and also struggled to come to terms with its own
relative affluence. In the summer of 1893 an article appeared in the Zion’s
Herald questioning both the purpose of the institution and its location in a
middle-class section of the city.

The Training School is a necessity—must it not be several schools? The

parish work is demanded, and training therefor. But there is also work
among the unchurched—the women and children of foreign speech, the
vicious and the criminal; all these bring contact with sickness and demand
the nurse’s skill and the hospital. Shall the home of these Christian women
be in the midst of the poverty and wretchedness to which they minister?
Shall it be out in the salubrious suburbs where the hospital must be? Shall
the training school be in the midst of the slums, or with the hospital? Shall
all be together in the North or West End, or in Brookline or the [Roxbury]
Highlands?137

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 The Methodist deaconesses never did move the Home and Training School
to a more impoverished section of the city, although many of the women con-
tinued to work in such areas and some graduates did live in the North End
Methodist settlement house established in 1893.
The women at the New England Deaconess Training School also faced
outright opposition from within the denomination. In 1891, the same year
that two training school students died, there was a verbal attack made on
the school by Mr. Seth C. Cary at the Alpha Chapter alumni gathering of the
Boston University School of Theology. Cary argued that the training school
should be open to everyone on the grounds that its exclusion of men by virtue
of its identity as a women’s school was unnecessary and anachronistic. “[I]f
these same people had not been the foremost in demanding that the doors of
all schools in the church should be opened to women . . . it would have been
less of a surprise.” He went on to explain how he believed these schools’ edu-
cation of a “few women” introduced unnecessary and unhelpful divisions in
the educational system of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

Now, this is one of the strange matters that you do not even see discussed
in the papers of our church, though it would be difficult to find almost any
other topic that is not ventilated, and I have waited long before begin-
ning the agitation. But what is even more inexplicable, is the fact that a
movement is on foot to create a Deacon’s Training School [presumably, for
men]. Why not be consistent, and have a separate training school for each
grade, and both sexes, from Exhorter up to that of Bishop? That would at
least be logical, but then it only shows how strangely distorted some great
questions may become.138

The choice of wording Cary utilized suggests a degree of male hostility

toward the New England Deaconess Training School’s female leaders and
the “freaks, and whims, and ill-advised action” that they undertook. Cary ap-
pealed instead to what he likely saw as the male virtues of “wise guidance,
great leadership, and a careful clinging to Providential indications.”
Cary went on to say that Methodism, in fact, needed innovative institu-
tions for the purpose of training laypersons for effective and useful ministry.
He argued that those institutions needed to be structured under established
seminaries and that the seminaries needed to continue to expand their cur-
riculum, provide a “lengthened course, and higher requirements for matricu-
lation.”139 It is interesting—and predictable—that Cary made no argument
for ways to expand the inclusion of women at Boston University School of
Theology. In 1890 the student enrollment list contained only five women. All
these women were special students, apparently not admitted to a particular
degree program. In future years much of Cary’s proposal came true even as
his animosity toward the Deaconess Home and Training School decreased.
Cary was a teacher at the deaconess school in 1900.140 By 1914 it was renamed
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 the New England Training School for Christian Service, and in 1918 it was
absorbed by Boston University and eventually became its Department of So-
cial Work.141
The animosity expressed toward the Deaconess Home and Training
School by an alumnus from the Boston University School of Theology was not
a unique phenomenon. The Boston Missionary and Training School, founded
by A. J. Gordon, opened on October 2, 1889, just a month before the New
England Deaconess Home and Training School.142 While not subject to criti-
cism as a training school for women, Gordon’s school was indirectly attacked
by William Fairfield Warren of Boston University, who feared it would pro-
vide insufficient theological education for Christian workers and inhibit mis-
sion education in American congregations. Warren preferred that missionary
training take place within the context of a theological seminary.143 Gordon’s
interest in Plymouth Brethren theological teachings also brought on Baptist
criticism of his school.144
This chapter illustrates the important roles many evangelical women
played in organizations in Boston that, in the case of the Woman’s Foreign
Missionary Society, also extended far beyond Boston’s borders. It is unsur-
prising that the wfms, as one of the most powerful women’s organizations in
the period, also influenced the founding of several of the other organizations
for “home mission.” The vibrant relationship between the promotion of for-
eign missionary interests and home mission efforts such as the East Boston
Immigrant Home was mutually reinforcing and rarely, if ever, was seen as a
matter of competition for scarce funds to go toward either foreign or home
mission efforts. In the case of the Methodists’ Deaconess Home and Training
School women were trained for work across town as well as across oceans.
The Salvation Army was unique as a denomination that fully accepted
women as pastors of local congregations. The Army was mimicked in many
ways in its early years in Boston even if its embrace of women as pastoral
leaders was an innovation most other upstart evangelical groups found too
bold. The Salvation Army’s “Slum Sisters” embraced a level of poverty in their
living situation that exceeded that of the Methodist deaconesses and points to
the diversity of approaches in the crossroads of evangelical urban ministries
in late-nineteenth-century Boston.
Evangelical women’s organizations in Boston were also exceptional in their
ability to avoid theological controversy, which was forcing many male-led
organizations and churches to make choices in favor of either revivalism or
social reform (discussed in the following chapter). Although some women at
places such as the Methodist deaconess school were trained in theology and
were certainly well versed in biblical studies, for the most part evangelical
women were very pragmatic and flexible in their approach to ministry among
the poor. Debating the relative merits of revivalism and social reform may
simply not have been appealing to them.
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 c h a p te r f iv e

Evangelical Consensus and Division

“All of This Confusion and Hurt”

There is no precise “crossroads moment” in the history of Boston evangelical-

ism, where one group of evangelicals marched decisively down one road and
another went a different direction. Rather than Robert Frost’s image of two
roads diverging in the peace and quiet of the New England woods, we are
better served if we picture the boisterous, crowded scene on Boston street
corners after a Red Sox game. For readers familiar with Boston, the asym-
metrical intersection of six streets known as Kenmore Square, a block away
from the Fenway ballpark, is an apt image. In this lively scene, groups of peo-
ple appear to be walking together only to diverge in the next block—and the
direction they move is not clear, as the Boston streets take unexpected twists
and turns. Boston evangelicals similarly collaborated with each other on one
day and sparred against one another on another day—at times choosing to go
their separate ways and at times not. The religious scene of Methodist, Bap-
tist, and Salvation Army adherents in Boston in the 1890s and early 1900s
was a complex crossroads, but any attempt to too-quickly divide evangelicals
into tightly defined religious “camps” obscures as much as it reveals.
Historians of this turbulent period in American Christianity have tended
to accentuate the divisions among so-called fundamentalists and modern-
ists and have often retrospectively imposed the divisions of the 1920s on the
1890s.1 The tendency to focus on intellectual developments to the neglect of a
detailed analysis of a particular social context has served to accentuate these
divisions. Likewise, historians’ tendency to concentrate attention on the main
protagonists of the controversies has given the impression that all American
Christians lined up—more or less neatly—on one side of the divide or the
other. This simply was not the case. Some evangelicals (especially Method-
ists) looked for a third way through the controversies, found a way to avoid
the controversies altogether, or became embroiled in various denominational
power struggles only peripherally related to the major intellectual challenges
posed by modernity.
Evangelicals sparred on a whole assortment of different issues in the
1890s. New methods of interpreting the Bible, known as “higher criticism,”
prompted heresy trials and arguments among biblical scholars that quickly
spread to the rank-and-file clergy. Varying degrees of openness or defensive-

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 ness toward adherents of other religions provoked divisions as people re-
sponded in different ways to such dramatic events as the World’s Parliament
of Religions in 1893. The relative importance of social reform and revivalism
was also debated as some evangelicals who had been raised in the revivalistic
throes of mid-nineteenth-century America looked back on their childhood
experiences with a more jaundiced perspective. Other evangelicals viewed so-
cial reform work with skepticism and wondered what long-term good it was
doing for the church as a whole when, as many believed, the imminent return
of Jesus would reveal such tasks to have been futile distractions from the real
work of “soul saving.” All these concerns had been around for some time. In
the 1890s, however, the rancorous debates were louder than they had been
for some time.

moderating methodists
Unlike the Baptists and the Presbyterians, who eventually suffered national
denominational splits due to fractious debates over higher criticism and other
theological debates, the Methodist Episcopal Church saw no equivalent divi-
sion. The Methodists “weighed in,” to be sure, on the intellectual debates of
the day, but they did so in a rather moderate way. The Salvation Army, owing
to its relatively small size and uneducated corps of clergy, mostly avoided the
swirling debates about higher criticism and world religions. A careful look
at how New England Methodism differed from other evangelicals over the
polarizing issues of higher criticism and attitudes toward world religions il-
lustrates how complex the crossroads were. The Methodists were not able
to “hold the center” for very long as the polarities became more dramatic in
American Christianity in subsequent years.
The 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago was a challenge
to the piety of American evangelical leaders. For the first time, they were
confronted—either in newspaper reports or in person—with self-evidently
pious adherents of world religions other than Christianity or Judaism. Many
evangelicals struggled to make sense of this, while others either condemned
the World’s Parliament or were grandiose in their praise. The Zion’s Herald
response to the World’s Parliament illustrates the dissonance New England
Methodists felt at this event and displays their attempt to take a moderating
stance on what was, for many, a polarizing issue. In a concluding remark for
a three-article series on the Parliament of Religions, the editor of the Zion’s
Herald chose his words carefully:

We have endeavored to help our readers to an intelligent and sympathetic

familiarity with this assembly because we believe it to have been one of the
most important religious councils of the century. We do not, however, by
any means endorse all that was said upon that platform. That Christianity
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 and its Founder have not suffered by comparison with other Oriental reli-
gions and their reputed founders, need not be affirmed. The general pur-
poses of the parliament, the spirit of “sweet charity” manifested by all who
shared in the deliberations and discussion, the intelligent and wholly frank
utterances of the representatives of other religions, must serve to remove
much of the misconception and prejudice which are prevalent respecting
these “hory faiths” and the people who so tenaciously adhere to them. The
editor of this paper was privileged to be present at the last session—the
“love feast” of the parliament. To look into the gentle and spiritual faces
of the representatives from India, Japan, China, and other Eastern lands,
and listen to their profound thought, spoken in most instances in classic
and fitting English, was a revelation to us that must affect our thinking
and action for the remainder of life. In the influence which it is to exert
upon missionary effort in the several lands represented, the result must be
unspeakably important, valuable and permanent.2

More conservative evangelicals such as Boston Baptist leader A. J. Gordon

and the revivalist D. L. Moody would have none of this careful searching for a
middle ground exemplified by the Zion’s Herald editor. For them, the World’s
Parliament of Religions was simply an unacceptable compromise of Christi-
anity’s uniqueness among world religions. In contrast, more liberal Protes-
tants such as Lyman Abbott and Washington Gladden participated enthusi-
astically in the gathering. The chief organizer of the nascent “social gospel”
movement, Josiah Strong, hailed the Parliament of Religions as inaugurating
nothing less than a new era of human history.3
The Methodist search for middle ground was also evident in the growing
debate over biblical higher criticism in the waning years of the nineteenth
century. In the same year as the World’s Parliament of Religion the Zion’s
Herald published a “symposium” on higher criticism. The lengthy article con-
tained the opinions of twenty-five preachers and theologians about the new
approach to biblical interpretation. While critical of those higher critics who
sought to eliminate the role of the supernatural, the overwhelming majority
of the contributors expressed a favorable attitude toward most higher criti-
cism and urged a balanced and patient study of the research.
Daniel Steele’s remark about higher criticism was typical of other Boston
University School of Theology professors and pastors featured in the article.
“Abstain from wholesale denunciation before reading what the Higher Criti-
cism has to say. Even then do not dogmatize unless you are an expert in the
Hebrew language. This is a battle to be fought by the few, not by the many. So
long as the Old Testament as a whole has the endorsement of Jesus Christ, the
fountain of inspiration, the truth incarnate, I shall not lose any sleep through
fear that it will be destroyed by the advancing scholarship of the world. The
Word of the Lord endureth forever. Do not drop your revival work in order to
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 defend it. When you have time, read up.”4 Steele and countless other Method-
ists maintained a strong emphasis on revivalism and living the holy life, and
he encouraged his readers to avoid getting distracted by intellectual debates.
Steele’s fears were realized at the Boston University School of Theology
two years later, in 1895, when Methodists charged Old Testament profes-
sor Hinckley G. Mitchell with heresy for his use of higher criticism. Years
earlier, in 1886, Mitchell and Steele had been key faculty participants in the
seminarians’ renewed enthusiasm for urban mission work prompted by the
Salvation Army’s “invasion” of the city. In 1895 Mitchell was charged with
heresy by thirty-eight of his students, a full 10 percent of the student body.
After Mitchell acknowledged that his method of teaching was wrong, the case
against him was closed—but not for long. In 1899 nine students again ac-
cused Mitchell of heresy. After another investigation, the Boston University
trustees unanimously approved his reappointment in November 1899, sub-
ject to the approval of the Methodist bishops, which Mitchell received during
the summer of 1900 at the denomination’s General Conference.5
The Boston University School of Theology faculty defended Mitchell. The
most striking endorsement of Mitchell once again came from Daniel Steele in
1900 in a Zion’s Herald article published just prior to the Methodist Episco-
pal bishops’ ruling on Mitchell’s orthodoxy that resulted in his reappointment
to the school. In his defense of Mitchell, Steele playfully confessed that, in a
commentary manuscript he was writing many years earlier, he had struggled
with some passages in the Old Testament book of Joshua. “It was in 1864
that I wrestled with this question, long before any orthodox American scholar
had adopted the theory of composite authorship. Such a theory would have
solved my difficulty. But, clinging to tradition as I did, I felt impelled to adopt
a theory which strongly leans toward the new theory of plural authorship. . . .
[B]ut I did not know enough to invent a Greek name for my discovery and
get it copyrighted, nor had I courage sufficient to proclaim myself the first
evangelical higher critic in America!”6 For Steele and many other Methodists,
the concern over higher criticism was unnecessarily exaggerated, and Steele
sought to put people at ease. Steele’s defense of Mitchell worked in 1900, and
Mitchell remained at his teaching post; he would not be so fortunate in 1905,
when the Methodist Episcopal bishops finally refused to confirm his appoint-
ment as a professor at the School of Theology.7
Changing and even contradictory Methodist attitudes toward revival-
istic strategies could also be found on the pages of the Zion’s Herald. That
magazine’s editor could, in one year, strongly criticize Moody’s revivalistic
techniques and strident opposition to higher criticism and, a few years later,
praise him for his revivals in Boston. In 1892 the Zion’s Herald explicitly
criticized D. L. Moody. “The day has gone by when you can convert a man
by throwing a Bagster Bible at his head; the thunder has quite gone out of
that mode of attack.”8 In 1897, however, the Zion’s Herald applauded Moody’s
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 return to Boston with two partner evangelists who carried out a successful
evangelistic campaign in three downtown churches—including the flagship
Methodist People’s Church. (The practice of holding less centralized evan-
gelistic meetings in favor of multiple-site but smaller events, as Moody did
in Boston in 1897, was becoming increasingly popular and was the method
utilized by Wilbur Chapman in his Boston campaign in 1909, to be discussed
in a later chapter.)9
Prominent leaders of the social gospel at the beginning of the twentieth
century were almost uniformly opposed to the revivalistic techniques of
Moody. Historian Janet Fishburn has noted that Unitarian Francis Green-
wood Peabody, a Harvard ethics professor, was the only major social gospel
leader who had not been raised in a revivalistic tradition and thus appreci-
ated Moody’s revivalism in ways his counterparts could not. They viewed it as
an outmoded relic of their past, while Peabody found the emotional warmth
and exuberance of Moody a welcome contrast to his coolly intellectual Uni-
tarian background. The best organizer of the social gospel leaders, Josiah
Strong was sympathetic toward some aspects of revivalism—especially the
use of smaller multiple-site but simultaneous evangelistic rallies—but he too
strongly criticized Moody’s approach.10

holiness movement divisions

Methodists were reticent to give in to the growing polarization in 1890s
America regarding world religion, higher criticism, and revivalism; the same
could not be said about the denomination’s most long-standing dispute, the
place of the holiness movement and the theology of entire sanctification—
something that had as much to do with Christian piety as with intellectual
concepts. One scholar of the movement has described the 1880s as the “de-
cade of decision” for the holiness movement’s place in the Methodist Episco-
pal Church.11 Multiple events contributed to the growing rift. The death of
Rev. John Inskip in March of 1884 contributed to the increased factionalism
or “come-outerism” within the movement.12 As the charismatic founder of the
National Camp Meeting Association for the Promotion of Holiness, Inskip
was able to maintain unity in the organization far better than his successor,
William McDonald.13 Soon individuals and churches began departing from
established denominations to found their own independent churches. This
was done much to the dismay of William McDonald, Daniel Steele, and other
holiness movement leaders.
The factionalism within the Wesleyan holiness movement is evident in New
England Annual Conference debates of the Methodist Episcopal Church, as
well as in the creation of independent “holiness churches” in the area. Many
of these independent churches eventually joined together to form the Central
Evangelical Holiness Association in 1890.14 A year earlier, as a response to the
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 growing “come-outerism” among Methodist holiness advocates in New Eng-
land, the New England Annual Conference resolved that as pastors “we will
not organize nor associate ourselves with Holiness Associations in our charges
. . . [and] advise our people not to organize, or to associate themselves with
so-called Holiness Associations, independent of the church and of their pas-
tors. We believe that the meetings of such associations are often the occasion
of jealousy and ill-feeling, that they tend to division in the church, and that
they unjustly reflect upon the faithfulness of the church and the pastors to
the doctrines of the church.”15 Holiness meetings not only caused division on
the doctrine of entire sanctification within the churches, as the New England
pastors gathered at conference stated, but also revealed class divisions within
a denomination becoming increasingly wealthy and respectable.
Strong advocates of holiness were among the Methodist pastors on the
conference’s Special Committee on Holiness Associations, which crafted the
1889 resolution. Daniel Steele, William Nast Brodbeck, and S. F. Upham all
served on the special committee, were involved with Boston urban mission
work, and were leaders in the holiness movement.16 Individuals like Daniel
Steele probably viewed the passage of the 1889 resolution as a pragmatic ne-
cessity to prevent schism. But Steele’s strenuous efforts to hold the center
together would not be enough in subsequent years.
In 1892 the New England Annual Conference again issued a strongly
worded statement against holiness groups, and Daniel Steele put forward an
eleventh-hour resolution to give holiness groups some measure of freedom
to meet. As an expression of their respect for Steele, the delegates applauded
Steele’s report—but they did not adopt it.17 Steele had pushed for this kind
of flexibility nearly twenty years earlier in his best-selling 1875 book, Love
Enthroned, but by 1892 the conflict had grown too strong.18 By then some of
Steele’s fellow holiness advocates had already begun to leave the Methodist
Episcopal Church, and Steele was having much more difficulty serving as a
reconciling force in the New England Methodist connection.19
In 1895 the publication of New England Methodist James Mudge’s Growth
in Holiness toward Perfection, or Progressive Sanctification was a frontal as-
sault against many holiness advocates in its argument against instantaneous
experience of sanctification. Mudge’s book prompted considerable debate in
the pages of the Methodist Review and other periodicals, and Daniel Steele
and L. R. Dunn wrote books refuting Mudge.20 What had been mostly a mat-
ter of church discipline in the New England Annual Conference’s decision op-
posing unsupervised holiness meetings in 1892 was now a theological chal-
lenge by a respected clergyman and former missionary to India.21
New England Methodism was most affected by these holiness debates, but
their effects were national in scope. In one particularly striking 1893 Zion’s
Herald article, Southern Methodist Bishop A. G. Haygood sought to reframe
the terms of debate by seeking to eliminate use of the very term “holiness” in
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 Methodist Episcopal circles. He criticized the excesses of the holiness move-
ment—especially divine healing. The bishop encouraged Methodists to cease
using the term “holiness” to describe come-outers since Methodists, he ar-
gued, also believed in holiness. He went on to argue that the attempt to define
what is and is not meant by holiness “is responsible for all of this confusion
and hurt.” Haygood marginalized holiness advocates by urging Methodists
not to talk about holiness since it was “in its nature indefinable.”22 That holi-
ness became an idea to be defined rather than an experience to be lived is
symptomatic of the growing intellectualization of Methodist leadership and
theological faculties in the 1890s.23
In spite of denominational leaders’ arguments against the holiness move-
ment, many rank-and file-Methodists continued to believe strongly in
the importance of entire sanctification. Holiness movement scholar Vinson
Synan has argued that within the Methodist Episcopal Church of the 1890s
“one-third to one-half ” of America’s four million Methodists “were com-
mitted to sanctification as a second work of grace” and that no more than
100,000 Methodists left to join holiness denominations.24 The ongoing
popularity of Daniel Steele’s books is further evidence that many Methodist
laypersons were still inspired by the call to “entire sanctification.” The
continued presence of holiness theology and enthusiasm for entire sancti-
fication in the Methodist Episcopal Church remained a key motivator for
the denomination in its ongoing interest in foreign and home mission
work.25
During the late 1880s and early 1890s there were also harsh words ex-
changed between Wesleyan evangelicals and the more Calvinistic adherents
of the Keswick holiness tradition. The Keswick tradition received its name
from the town of Keswick, England, where large conferences were held in
the 1870s to encourage personal holiness among attendees. The main dif-
ference between the Wesleyan and the Keswickian schools of thought was
whether sin could be completely eradicated from the believer’s life or not.
The Wesleyans believed it could; the Keswickians believed it could not.26 D.
L. Moody and Boston pastor James M. Gray believed that sin could not be
eradicated; they were two advocates of this more Reformed perspective on
holiness. The wider implication of a Calvinist theology of predestination was
an even greater point of contention for Steele and other Methodists than the
differences over the doctrine of entire sanctification. Sparring between the
Calvinists and the Wesleyans was nothing new for either side; it was an in-
tegral part of the Methodist movement from its earliest days. John Wesley
and John Fletcher had led the debate for the Methodists in the mid – to late
1700s, and Steele became the leader of the debates in America a hundred
years later.
The renewed debate between Calvinists and Wesleyans—so far as the New
England context is concerned—began at the second gathering of the Prophetic
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 Conference in Swampscott, Massachusetts—located north of Boston. It was
at this meeting, in the summer of 1876, that Steele became more personally
acquainted with the ideas of John Nelson Darby, the Plymouth Brethren, and
the millenarian ideas that were to constitute much of the theology of D. L.
Moody and other leaders of nascent fundamentalism in America.27 Just three
months prior to the 1877 Moody revival, Steele wrote a series of articles in the
Advocate of Christian Holiness warning his readers against these individuals,
who “were strongly flavored with the doctrines of the Plymouth Brethren.”28
In subsequent years Steele wrote several books containing arguments
against Calvinism.29 He also joined Catherine Booth in criticizing what she
called the Calvinists’ “Oh wretched man that I am religion.”30 It was Steele’s
Antinomianism Revived, published in 1887, that contained his most pointed
attacks. In that book Steele sarcastically criticized Baptist pastor A. J. Gordon
for his adoption of certain Calvinist ideas espoused in the Prophetic Con-
ferences in which Gordon participated. “Dr. Gordon’s resurrection for the
elect only, needs only an atonement for the elect alone to put a very hand-
some finish upon the system, making it symmetrical and beautiful.” Steele’s
remarks illustrate that his concerns about Plymouth Brethren teachings on
premillennialism and predestination had grown in the ten years since the
Swampscott gatherings, just as the Prophetic Conference movement had
also grown in its influence.31 However, even after Steele’s strong criticisms of
Gordon, both leaders were able to continue as supporters of Charles Cullis’s
institutions throughout the late 1880s and early 1890s. Cullis, the grand me-
diator of divergent evangelical opinions, wisely placed them on two different
boards of trustees that oversaw different aspects of his sprawling network of
institutions.32
By the mid-1890s, after Methodist holiness advocates had lost debates in
New England Annual Conference meetings, the rallying cries against the Kes-
wick holiness adherents and Calvinism also quieted down. A year after Gor-
don’s death in February of 1895, an article about the Gordon Training School
proudly noted: “Hitherto we have not been favored with many Methodists in
connection with our school, but now that denomination is ably represented,
both on the executive committee and among the students.”33 The persistent
belief in entire sanctification and the pragmatic disposition among Method-
ists at the grassroots in the 1890s helps to explain the expanded Methodist
participation at the Gordon Training School in 1896.34 This school taught
the importance of growth in holiness even if the way it did so would have
sounded strange to Methodist ears. Steele’s criticism of Gordon nearly ten
years earlier no longer carried the same weight.
Methodists who were skeptical about higher criticism but who could at
least tolerate a premillennial view of eschatology may have also found ref-
uge at this school, as did many persons who wanted practical training for
ministry but had neither the time, money, academic ability, nor inclination
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 for seminary training. That there was substantial support for the opposition
to higher critical methods of biblical interpretation is substantiated by the
very popular tenure of Rev. James W. Mendenhall as editor of the Method-
ist Review from 1888 to 1892. Mendenhall greatly increased the number of
subscriptions to the denominational journal and in 1892 was reelected to the
editorship by 86 percent of the delegates to the Methodist General Confer-
ence. Mendenhall died suddenly shortly thereafter. The theologically moder-
ate New England Methodist pastor James Mudge stated that Mendenhall’s
editorial pen could be best characterized as being “a spirited onslaught on
rationalism which was almost immediately inaugurated and was maintained
with immense vigor to the very end. The editor gave himself up with entire
abandon and enthusiasm to this crusade against Old Testament criticism.
The editorials in which he denounced those who had strayed from the safe
paths of orthodoxy, and whom he regarded as wicked disturbers of the peace,
amaze one by their length and number.”35
Mendenhall’s brief editorial career at the Methodist Review illustrated the
growing chasm between what laypersons liked to see in their denomination’s
official publications and what was occurring in the Methodist seminaries.
The advocacy of holiness teaching, for example, was in rapid decline by the
first few years of the twentieth century in the Methodist denomination’s theo-
logical schools. Writing in a scholarly journal in 1906 on changes in Meth-
odist theology, Boston University professor of systematic theology Henry
C. Sheldon described the future of the traditional understanding of entire
sanctification as “far from being bright.” In a single paragraph, Daniel Steele
and other theologians were dismissed as representing—“if not always with
entire lucidity”—the teaching of entire sanctification in the late nineteenth
century.36 What had been the very center and lifeblood of Methodist theol-
ogy for nearly two centuries had become little more than a footnote—at least
among New England Methodist academics.
Boston University’s philosophical theologian Borden Parker Bowne was
rapidly taking center stage as Methodism’s most prominent theologian at
the close of the century. A member of the Boston University School of The-
ology faculty from 1876 to 1910, Bowne began to develop a new school of
philosophical Pragmatism in the late 1890s that would later be known as
Boston Personalism. Bowne was not overtly hostile to the doctrine of entire
sanctification but rather simply sidestepped the issue. Bowne was raised in
a home where the magazine Guide to Holiness was present “by the shelful
[sic].” Daniel Steele even praised Bowne’s Principles of Ethics as containing
a philosophical defense of the doctrine. With Bowne, however, the teachings
on entire sanctification were transformed into a philosophy that was far less
congenial to Methodist piety than holiness doctrine had been.37
Whereas Mitchell challenged orthodox belief by questioning the historical
origins of biblical text, Bowne’s philosophical approach reinterpreted the na-
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 ture of Christian experience itself, a theme that had previously been the do-
main of the holiness movement.38 Bowne was also more successful in dodging
charges of heresy in 1904 than his colleague Hinckley Mitchell and was able
to remain at Boston University until his death in 1910.39 With sensitivity to
Methodism’s focus on Christian experience and with deep respect for Bowne,
Harvard philosopher William James noted in 1902 “how the ancient spirit of
Methodism evaporates under those wonderfully able rationalistic booklets
(which everyone should read) of a philosopher like Professor Bowne.”40
In spite of James’s advice, everyone did not read Bowne’s philosophical
treatises, and thus, as important as his contributions were among intellectu-
als, their impact on popular religiosity was initially far less significant. With-
out the need to craft finely tuned position papers, many Methodists and other
evangelicals found themselves sympathetic to opponents on both sides of the
religious questions pertaining to holiness, premillennialism, world religions,
and higher criticism. In the 1870s Charles Cullis erected a “big tent” that was
able to embrace Unitarians and Baptists in his Faith Training College; many
evangelicals in the 1890s sought to do likewise on many of the divisive is-
sues of their day. Methodist Episcopal fervor for foreign missions remained
strong, and Methodists’ moderate acceptance of higher criticism did not sub-
stantially lessen their evangelistic interests.
Remarkably, there was also enough common ground shared by revivalism
and social reform to hold most Wesleyan and Calvinist (or premillennialist)
evangelicals together in joint ministry efforts at the turn of the century. In
1909 Boston Methodists were integral participants in the Wilbur Chapman
“Simultaneous Campaign” in Boston, and J. W. Hamilton, former pastor of
the Methodist People’s Church, served side by side with followers of A. J. Gor-
don in the Evangelistic Association of New England. Methodist support of D.
L. Moody’s 1891 and 1897 Boston revivals was similarly strong, even if fewer
Boston residents showed interest in Moody in those years than in 1877.41
The following eloquent but cautionary statement about the social gospel
made in 1898 by the Zion’s Herald editor Charles Parkhurst exemplified the
position of Methodists who remained grounded in the holiness tradition and
revivalism but were seeking to respond to the growing concern about the so-
cial problems surrounding them.

The one danger now is that earthly goals may be sought by earthly roads
and forces. The complete obliteration of poverty and its replacement by
universal affluence is the golden dream of many social reformers, but it is
not the ideal set before us by Jesus Christ. Too many aim at altering the
circumstances. Only the transformation of the soul can effect the trans-
formation of the world, and only the spiritual dynamic of the Gospel can
effect the transformation of the soul. Amid the manifold philanthropies
and the endless multiplication of societies we are tempted to forget the

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 real mission of the church, which is not to preach fine systems of morality
to the unconverted, but to convert them. Her work is to impart new life to
those who are dead and life more abundant to those who already possess
it. It is in the supernatural region that religion lives, moves, and has its
being. Moral expedients and reforms are good, but only as means to moral
transformations. Instruction in ethics and politics must be subordinated
to filling men with the life of God. The New Jerusalem is not built by the
strength of man, whose breath is in his nostrils. We may clear the site and
prepare the way, but that is all. It descends out of heaven from God.42

Parkhurst’s remark would have been warmly embraced by the vast major-
ity of Boston evangelicals in the 1890s as they worked together in revivalism
and social reform in the city.
There were efforts to achieve a creative yet moderate stance toward the
divisive issues of the day, but there was nevertheless a growing religious di-
vide between Wesleyan and Calvinist evangelicals in Boston. Contemporaries
would not have observed this growing divide as the establishment of clearly
demarcated groups; the shifts among evangelicals at these crossroads were
often subtle and perhaps not discernible by outside observers or even by key
evangelical leaders in spite of occasional invectives by opposing sides.
Two main factors—more connected to ministerial practice than to intel-
lectual theories—contributed to the growing divide between evangelicals
in Boston in the 1890s. The first was in their differing decisions about how
much time, energy, and resources to devote to alleviating the social problems
of the day versus converting individuals to the Christian faith. Wesleyan and
Calvinist evangelicals believed in both, but the Calvinists were beginning to
place greater emphasis on evangelistic efforts while the Wesleyans gradually
chose to invest more energy in social welfare initiatives. These differing prior-
ities for urban mission were based on the premillennialists’ more pessimistic
outlook on human nature and eschatology and the Wesleyans’ correspond-
ingly more optimistic stance on these questions.
The growing divide between premillennialists and Wesleyan evangelicals
can also be understood by examining their different reaction to liberal Prot-
estantism. Wesleyans and premillennialists were usually not opposed to one
another directly, but the premillennialists grew to greatly dislike Protestant
liberalism while Wesleyans became more amenable to it. Wesleyans and pre-
millennialists simply did not share the same enemy. The growing interest
among premillennialist evangelicals in the Prophecy Conference movement
also distanced them from Wesleyans, who, for the most part, did not partici-
pate.43 The Keswick understanding of holiness would have been a less signifi-
cant factor in the developing rift between these different types of evangelicals
in Boston except insofar as it was linked with more pessimistic views of human
nature, which also contributed to the growing divide between the groups.

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 The Baptist A. J. Gordon and the Methodist E. J. Helms exemplify the
growing divisions among evangelicals better than any two figures in Boston.
The differences between these two men are not reducible to their denomi-
national differences. There were Methodists such as Mendenhall (discussed
above) who would have found common cause with A. J. Gordon more than
with Edgar Helms later in his life. Likewise, there were Baptists who would
have found more in common with Helms than with Gordon. The differences
between Gordon and Helms sprang from more contextual circumstances in
their lives, and from the respective theological and practical decisions each
of them made.

archetypes of division: a. j. gordon and e. j. helms

Gordon’s embrace of premillennialism increasingly caused him to stress re-
vivalism over social reform from the late 1880s until his death in February of
1895.44 Fellow Baptist Walter Rauschenbusch would, in subsequent years, be-
come equally famous for his enthusiastic espousal of social reform in the “so-
cial gospel.” In 1890 Gordon exemplified an abiding sense of social concern
when he cautioned readers of his magazine, the Watchword, about “[w]hat a
temptation it is to get out of partnership with the suffering world, and to get
into some quiet retreat where there is nothing to disturb the spirit’s tranquil-
ity.” In 1894, however, Gordon was more resolute in his stress on individual
conversion as opposed to social reform. His anger toward Protestant liber-
als was also clearly evident. “Go into the liberal churches where they boast
so loudly of their ethical preaching, and their high morality, and their strict
integrity; and ask them how many drunkards they picked up from the gut-
ter last year, changing them into sober men who can pray and sing praises to
God. They cannot show you one; I find they are condemned by this test.” The
same year, in an editorial in the Watchword, Gordon urged “Preach Jesus; be
not drawn away from this one theme amid all moral preaching and ethical
preaching and political preaching.”45
Although Gordon continued to believe in the value of social reform and
members of his church participated in rescue mission efforts, Gordon’s
priorities were elsewhere. These priorities became more pronounced among
his followers after his death, and much of Gordon’s embrace of social reform
efforts grew cold in the hands of his followers.46 It was clear what
direction Gordon’s church was taking when Gordon’s friend James M.
Gray served as supply pastor of Clarendon Street Baptist Church after
Gordon’s death.47 Premillennialist evangelicals’ primary involvement in
rescue mission work drew its inspiration from D. L. Moody’s famous saying
that he began using in the mid-1870s: “The way it looks to me is this: Here is
a vessel going to pieces on the rocks. God puts a life-boat in my hands,
and says: ‘Rescue every man you can.’”48 Holiness advocate Daniel
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 Steele explicitly criticized Moody’s imagery of a “vessel going to pieces” as
a “pessimistic Plymouth [Brethren] idea” in his 1899 book Substitute for
Holiness.49
Moody’s metaphor of a shipwrecked vessel breaking apart in a turbulent
ocean was also criticized by the lead organizer of the nascent social gospel
movement, Josiah Strong, who instead called on American Protestants to
“save the wreck itself.”50 Strong sought to do precisely this when he assumed
leadership of the Evangelical Alliance in 1886 after receiving wide acclaim
for his book Our Country. The Evangelical Alliance was the country’s most
significant ecumenical organization in the late nineteenth century and was
the country’s intellectual and organizing center for pastors interested in so-
cial reform.51
At an 1887 conference of the Evangelical Alliance (of which he was still
a member), A. J. Gordon threw down the gauntlet against Josiah Strong’s
expansive goals for social change and what the conference called a “revival
of ethics.”52 Gordon called instead for a “revival of vital piety.” A week prior
to this conference Gordon had given the inaugural address at the founding
meeting for the Evangelistic Association of New England (eane), a new orga-
nization competitive with the Evangelical Alliance. The eane represented the
beginning of institutional fissure within the evangelical network in Boston.
A measure of Protestant consensus persisted, but with this new organization
Gordon and like-minded evangelicals distanced themselves from the Evan-
gelical Alliance under Josiah Strong’s leadership.53 Strong eventually stepped
down from leadership of the Evangelical Alliance in 1898 because others in
the organization differed with his radical views on the social implications of
Christianity.54
The idea for organizing the eane started with Mr. John E. Gray, who pre-
viously served as a librarian for the ymca as well as assistant secretary to
M. R. Deming, the general secretary of the Boston ymca from 1873 to 1887.
Gray received inspiration for the organization from a similar group in Lon-
don that he became acquainted with during a trip to that city.55 The eane
claimed to be the only transdenominational association in the country exclu-
sively devoted to evangelistic work. “Our desire is that the Good News should
be preached not only in churches, but in halls, school houses, tents,
barns, from the gospel carriage, to the fishermen along our
coasts, and to the lumbermen in our forests [capitalization in the
original].”56
In making this very focused claim for evangelistic work outside church
walls, the eane—with A. J. Gordon at its helm—was going against the tide
in the developing “institutional church” movement, which sought to attract
members through practical but largely secular programming within local
churches in addition to the churches’ more traditional spiritual emphases.
The term “institutional church” was coined by William Jewett Tucker in 1888
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 in reference to the Boston Congregationalists’ Berkeley Temple.57 The Meth-
odists’ Morgan Memorial Church, located a few blocks from Berkeley Temple,
rivaled the Congregationalist church in the diversity of its offerings. (Morgan
Memorial is discussed in greater detail below.)
The eane’s ministry had two emphases. The organization sought to hold
open-air evangelistic services around New England either independently or
with other organizations such as the ymca. In its second year the eane held
forty-one outdoor services including sixteen on the Boston Common and
thirteen at Crescent Beach in South Boston. The second emphasis was to sup-
ply churches and organizations with approved evangelists who were a part of
the eane’s approved “pool” of preachers. According to the eane’s second an-
nual report, the North End Mission utilized the evangelist supply services a
total of thirteen times, twice as much as any other organization.58 This pulpit
supply service was most useful to churches that were congregational in their
polity (mostly Baptists and Congregationalists) and thus lacked a centralized
means of clergy deployment, but Methodist Episcopal pastors and members
of most Protestant denominations also served on the organization’s govern-
ing board.59 The eane’s meeting minutes indicate that there was “initial diffi-
culty in finding an Episcopalian who would consent to membership, but after
considerable searching, an evangelical Anglican was located.”60
The urban focus of the organization in its early years quickly gave way to
a greater focus on rural New England. But the move did not come without
debate. In the eane’s very first year of existence most members called for
greater attention to rural New England, but Methodist Episcopal Rev. L. B.
Bates countered that the need for evangelism was greater in the city. “There
was no city in the world but London that contained a greater variety of na-
tionalities than Boston, and it was estimated that within a certain range in
the northerly part of Boston, there were more than forty different languages
and dialects spoken.”61 Other members of the organization were less con-
vinced, and by the fourth year of the eane’s work only one of the seventy-one
evangelistic services sponsored by the eane was held within the city limits
of Boston.62
In spite of the eane’s nonsectarian aspirations, the organization was most
identified with the chairman of the examination committee, Rev. A. J. Gor-
don. Gordon and his close friend the Reformed Episcopalian pastor James
M. Gray were the most consistent members of the examination committee
charged with the duty of screening potential evangelists who would comprise
the eane’s available pool of preachers. It is difficult to discern to what extent
the premillennial orientation of these pastors influenced the organization as
a whole, but the presence of these two avid premillennialists on the exami-
nation committee suggests that premillennial views were strongly preferred
if not a requirement for eane endorsement of evangelists. The Niagara
conference of 1890—a major forum for premillennial teachings—was also
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 prominently advertised in the organization’s magazine.63 Several members of
A. J. Gordon’s church were also active in the organization.64 For a brief period
following Gordon’s death in February of 1895, the eane’s monthly magazine
even served as the Gordon Missionary Training School’s magazine.65
After Gordon’s death, the Evangelistic Association of New England con-
tinued to focus most of its energies on evangelistic activities in rural New
England rather than Boston. However, in September 1894 and again in 1895
the eane held weekly evangelistic services at Boston’s Music Hall. On at
least one occasion the chief divisional officer of the Salvation Army, Major
William Brewer, was invited to lead the evangelistic service at Music Hall.66
D. L. Moody led an evangelistic service under the eane’s auspices at the same
venue in 1895, during his second visit to the city since his 1877 revival. Moody’s
reception in 1890s Boston was far different from the one he had received
in 1877.67 The city had changed dramatically in the intervening years, and
Moody could no longer bring in large audiences comparable to the throngs of
people who had come to see him in 1877.
If A. J. Gordon and the eane constitute the best example of premillen-
nialists’ increased focus on individual conversion, Methodist pastor Edgar
J. Helms and Morgan Memorial Church constitute the best example of the
Wesleyans’ increased interest in social reform. Helms sold a successful news-
paper business in Iowa to go to Boston University School of Theology in 1889
at the age of twenty-six.68 He felt a call from God to become a missionary to
India and wanted to prepare for this ministry by gaining an excellent theo-
logical education. At seminary, Helms studied with Bowne and admired his
ideas enough to continue studying with him after graduating in 1893.69 As
Boston Methodism’s most promising seminary graduate, Helms was a found-
ing member of Boston University’s settlement house, became superintendent
of the Methodists’ Boston Missionary and Church Extension Society from
1893 to 1895, and began serving as pastor of the Morgan Chapel in 1895—the
same year as A. J. Gordon’s death.
Four years into his pastorate, in 1899, Helms also asserted his personal
yearning for instantaneous sanctification in spite of Mudge’s and others’
published assertions against this staple doctrine of the holiness movement.
Helms wrote a letter to his parishioners expressing a desire to be entirely
sanctified and urged his parishioners to join him in seeking entire sanctifica-
tion on Pentecost of that year.

Your pastor is groaning for a complete deliverance from the power of sin.
He yearns to be cleansed from impure desire and be so filled with God’s
spirit that he can be daily, every day, what God wants him to be. Do you
not desire this for yourself? Christ came to destroy the works of the Devil.
He sent his Spirit to abide with us. If we have the Spirit in Pentecostal
fullness we shall not continue to doubt and fall into sin as we now do.
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 The anniversary of Pentecost is May 21. The disciples waited together in
prayer ten days before the Spirit fell on them. We are going to celebrate
this birthday of the Christian church by ten days of waiting and seeking for
the power of the Holy Spirit. There will be day and evening services to be
announced later. Will you not join with me in seeking power for yourself
and the church by remembering these meetings morning and noon and
night and by attending them when the time comes. They begin Thursday
May 11 [emphasis in the original].70

This letter is a clear illustration that Helms still believed in both instanta-
neous sanctification and the power of sanctification to fully eradicate sin in
the believer’s life.71 Although a lifelong admirer of Bowne’s Personalist meta-
physics, in these early years Helms seems to have pastored from a heart that
had been shaped by the holiness tradition for most of his life.
In 1895 Helms also studied with Francis Greenwood Peabody, a profes-
sor of social ethics and the most prominent advocate of the social gospel on
Harvard’s faculty at the time.72 The same year Peabody had Helms as a stu-
dent, Peabody gave an address before the Unitarian National Conference and
urged his hearers not to emphasize the humanitarian aspects of philanthropy
to the detriment of the spiritual aspects of the work. “The life with God, the
sentiment of worship, the conception of humanity as organic and perfect-
ible, the impulse of the ideal life, as manifested in Christ, —these are not
extraneous interests, set apart from the practical problems and needs of the
time: they are the lofty source from which the whole stream of modern phi-
lanthropy derives its freshness and its breadth. Let that source dry, and the
stream will shrink.”73 Instead of having a secularizing influence, the Unitar-
ian Peabody, with his affection for revivalism, may have ironically bolstered
Helms’s holiness piety.
In contrast to other Boston settlement houses, the University Settlement
at first focused most of its energies on evangelistic efforts. It was only as time
went on that its focus increasingly turned to “social and educational ways.”74
Two years after starting his ministry at the University Settlement, Helms de-
voted a considerable amount of space in his first book to defending the settle-
ment against individuals who criticized it for expending too much effort on
evangelistic efforts to the neglect of social work. Helms responded sharply to
this criticism:

There is no necessity of neglecting either. All along we have believed we

had a mission to these critics as well as our neighbors. The conceit that
these people [poorer residents of the North End] will have nothing to do
with one if he maintains a manly, frank, Christian profession, we believe
to be a delusion of the devil. From what we have heard, our social work has
never suffered as severely from Roman Catholics and Jews as has that of
those who have tried to give them the impression that they had no faith
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 or convictions worth speaking of. It is difficult for these people to under-
stand the purely disinterested motive that many philanthropists and social
reformers insist upon as the mainspring of their action. We confess, our-
selves, that it seems to us a little ungrateful that a child who is indebted to
the Gospel of Jesus Christ for all that he has of noble motive and life and
liberty, should prefer to withhold from Him the honor that is His due and
pose before His enemies as a pagan. . . . Whenever we find a man . . . we do
all we can to convert him. We believe this is what the Master meant when
He commanded that we should “make disciples of all the nations.”

The opposite criticism, that the University Settlement should spend all its
time in evangelistic efforts, was simply dismissed by Helms. He noted that
whenever individuals who criticized the settlement in this way were intro-
duced to the dire circumstances of extreme poverty in the North End, they
immediately retracted their criticism. In his defense, Helms also stressed that
the inevitable need to address social welfare concerns alongside the evange-
listic work followed the example set by foreign missionaries.75
Helms’s move toward a more radical social gospel framework for his
ministry occurred gradually, as had Gordon’s move in the opposite direc-
tion. Helms emphasized evangelism and holiness doctrine to his parishio-
ners, but gradually his Morgan Memorial Church in the South End began
to focus greater amounts of energy on social problems, with comparatively
less emphasis on individual conversion. In a dissertation examining “insti-
tutional” churches in Boston’s South End, Jonathan Dorn describes Morgan
Memorial as a different kind of institutional church. “Pentecostal fire and
so-called business methods coexisted in awkward and ironic balance. A stan-
dard wisdom of the institutional church movement advised ministers to tone
down prosyletic [sic] fervor in order to attract the unchurched and non-
Protestant. Helms continued to hold revivals ‘in the old-time Methodist way’
even as he developed a mandate for the secular work of his new venture—
Goodwill Industries. One of Morgan Chapel’s distinctive features was its dual
personality—the ‘Are You Saved?’ handbills on one hand and the sign-
painting classes on the other.”76
Helms’s visit to Germany in 1899 introduced him to major figures in
Christian socialism and tipped the scales in his own thinking toward a pri-
oritization of social work over evangelistic work.77 The articles he wrote for
the Zion’s Herald about his experiences in Germany revealed his sense of
enthusiasm over what he had observed there. He wrote admiringly of the
founder of the German “Inner Mission” movement, Johann Wichern, whose
own administrative talents in establishing orphanages, asylums, workhouses,
and like institutions in the mid–nineteenth century were soon mirrored in
the work of Morgan Memorial Church by the turn of the twentieth century.
Adolph Stöcker, the founder of the German Christian Socialist movement,
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 also impressed Helms, and he interviewed Stöcker for a Zion’s Herald article
in February of 1900. Helms seems to have especially appreciated the care-
ful way in which Stöcker was able to distinguish his own Christian socialism
from that of “revolutionary and immoral” atheistic socialists in Germany.78
In a 1901 address given before the International Epworth League Con-
vention in San Francisco, Helms delivered his most ringing endorsement
of Christian socialism along with an attack against misplaced priorities in
the church. Although separated by only two years, the Pentecost letter to his
parishioners in the summer of 1899 that expressed his desire to be entirely
sanctified was a world away from his remarks made in San Francisco. In his
speech Helms greatly downplayed the role of the church and the transcen-
dent power of the Holy Spirit he had so emphasized in his Pentecost letter.

The best examples of Christian brotherhood today are not found in the
organized church, but in state institutions, and labor and philanthropic
organizations, many of them independent of the church. It costs more to
be philanthropic than it does to be dogmatic. It is easier to propagate faith
than to demonstrate love. Schools and churches are cheaper to found and
maintain than hospitals, asylums and orphanages. The spirit of Christ out-
side the organized church has established these material evidences of the
Christ love—these hospitals, asylums and orphanages; while the church is
not taking her chief pride in works of merciful love, but in her schools and
church edifices as the material evidence of her faith. The church has evi-
dently prized her love of truth higher than her love of man. . . . Wherever
the spirit of Christ is found—the spirit of loving trust in God and man—
there is the true church universal [emphasis in the original].79

A few months earlier Helms predicted in another speech, this one before
Boston preachers, that “ten years from now it will be generally recognized
that the second-coming theories as preached by such saints as Moody and
Gordon and others have done injury, great injury, to evangelism.”80 These ad-
dresses represent a watershed in Helms’s thinking that would have also been
present among many of his contemporaries. It also may represent a greater
influence of Professor Bowne’s ideas on Helms.81
The intellectual and cultural challenges faced by Methodists in Boston
from higher criticism, premillennialism, and the social gospel were handled
cautiously by Methodist leaders, rather than by clear denunciation or em-
brace. Over time and in the practical setting of urban mission priorities,
Methodist support or rejection of these intellectual and cultural challenges
became more clearly articulated. A. J. Gordon and his followers in the 1890s
and early years of the twentieth century gradually distinguished themselves
from their evangelical counterparts in the Methodist tradition primarily in
their different practical choices in urban mission. For this branch of Boston
evangelicals, theological rhetoric against liberalism was far more pronounced
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 than it was among Methodists. The Methodists were simply not receptive to
nascent fundamentalist movements, such as the Bible Prophecy Conferences,
that mobilized more conservative evangelicals.
Edgar Helms best symbolizes the Methodist response to the intellectual
challenges of his era in his movement toward a more liberal theology after
his months in Germany in 1899. Helms’s watershed experience in Germany
in 1899 serves as an appropriate year of demarcation for Boston Methodists’
greater embrace of liberal ideas. Professor Border Parker Bowne’s Personalist
metaphysics became more widely disseminated around 1899 as well. Bowne’s
continued teaching responsibilities at Boston University School of Theology
until 1910 made him an important player in Methodist theology nationwide
but especially in Boston. Bowne’s thought rapidly displaced the teaching on
entire sanctification, which had been prominent at the school in earlier de-
cades. Boston Methodists remained involved in the evangelistic efforts of
1907 and 1909, but the center of Methodist leaders’ identity increasingly fo-
cused on social gospel principles to the detriment of their earlier evangelistic
fervor.82
The intellectual crossroads of Boston evangelicals and their pragmatic deci-
sions about ministry were related to one another in complicated but mutually
reinforcing ways. Evangelical motivations and methods intersected in cre-
ative ways that caused evangelicals to spar against one another on one day
and work together on the next. People such as Daniel Steele, A. J. Gordon,
Edgar Helms, and others were sometimes able to keep the tension lively be-
tween opposing viewpoints, but their successors seemed less adept in these
negotiations. In the midst of the powerful social and political forces buffeting
the city of Boston, it was difficult for church leaders to reflect carefully on the
theological choices they were making as they carried out their ministry. As we
will see in the next chapter, new immigrant leaders brought a completely dif-
ferent history and intellectual background to these challenges, and this was
hard for American-born leaders like Helms to fully understand.

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Hartley_Book.indb 136 10/12/10 12:01:41 PM
 c h a p te r s ix

The North End and

South End in the 1890s
“Let Us Re-take the North End for Methodism”

Boston had become the most Catholic city in America by 1890. The evangeli-
cals had to adapt to this changing environment. Accepting this change was
not easy for Protestants even though the signs of this new demographic reality
had been building for decades. The federal census of 1890 demonstrated that
out of a city population of 448,477 a total of 185,188 persons (41.3 percent)
identified themselves as Catholic. By 1906 the number of Catholics increased
to 258,936 or 42 percent of the city’s population. By comparison, the five cit-
ies as large as or larger than Boston had significantly lower percentages of
Catholic communicants in 1890: New York City, 25.5 percent; Chicago, 23.8
percent; Philadelphia, 18.6 percent; Brooklyn, 24.9 percent; St. Louis, 16.8
percent.1 The nation’s cities had changed a great deal in the post–Civil War
years, and Americans increasingly recognized that they had to come to terms
with these facts.2
Some people made the adjustment more easily than others. Social gos-
pel organizer Josiah Strong’s 1893 book, The New Era, contained statistical
analysis seemingly stuck in an older era; Strong ignored census data to argue
that Boston was still the most Protestant of the seven largest American cities.
Rather than using demographic data, he focused on comparing the number
of Protestant churches to the population of the city. This method of measur-
ing religiosity yielded exaggerated numbers for Protestants, as their churches
were smaller than Catholic churches, and Strong made no assessment of the
membership of the individual Protestant churches.3
Josiah Strong was too simplistic in his description of Boston Protestant-
ism in 1893, but the census statistics do show some gains in membership
from previous years; yet those gains were minimal compared with Roman
Catholic growth in the city.4 Compared with population statistics from the
time of Moody’s 1877 revival, Protestant churches in Boston experienced
modest growth in terms of absolute numbers but a decline relative to the
growth in the city’s population at large. The one exception was the Protestant
Episcopal Church, which grew at a significantly faster rate than the others.
The Episcopalians’ 61 percent growth between 1890 and 1906 was the only
rate of increase among Protestant denominations that came close to match-

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 figure 6.1. Comparison of 1890 and 1906 federal census membership numbers for
Protestant denominations in Boston. The 1890 and 1906 statistics were obtained from
Carroll, Report on Statistics of Churches in the United States at Eleventh Census:
1890; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Special Reports; Religious Bodies, 1906: Part 1,
Summary and General Tables (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1910).

ing the Roman Catholics’ 71 percent growth during the same years. The full
reason for the Episcopalians’ growth is difficult to ascertain but is likely, in
part, due to the continued pattern of immigration from the British Isles and
the Maritime Provinces, both of which had many Anglican adherents.5 The
decline in Unitarian members is also noteworthy in light of their dominance
a century earlier.6 Evangelical efforts in revivalism and social reform—and
statistical gymnastics—no matter how heroic, could do nothing to stop the
flow of Roman Catholic immigrants flooding into Boston harbor.
The North End was the neighborhood that first received each new wave
of immigrants whether they were Irish, Jewish, or Italian. The North End
was not a large area of city real estate; it could be easily traversed in a fifteen-
minute stroll. But in part because of its compact size, it illustrated the big
changes happening in the 1890s better than any other neighborhood in the
city. The North End had long been Boston’s most notorious slum tenement
district with labyrinthine streets where children played, drunken sailors
stumbled, and prostitutes sought customers. The evangelicals were there too
in the 1890s—just as they had been in earlier decades, when Father Taylor
preached to sailors and kept Transcendentalist onlookers spellbound by his
raucous sermons.
The North End held a special place in upstart evangelicals’ hearts, as many
evangelical ministry efforts in Boston had begun there a century earlier. Both
the Methodists and the Baptists established their first Boston churches in the
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 North End in the 1700s.7 The Home for Little Wanderers was first housed in
what was the Second Baptist Church founded in 1743, and the Methodists’
first church, begun in the early 1790s, was on a street known as “Methodist
Alley” in the North End (see figure 6.2).8 The North End neighborhood, of
course, also had great significance for Boston’s earliest European residents,
the Puritans. In an 1893 article about new evangelical mission efforts in the
North End, a Boston Globe reporter made reference to the ancient Puritans
interred in the Copp’s Hill burial ground, noting ruefully that “only the dead
remain” after a “lingering descendant of the Puritans” recently left his North
End home for the suburbs.9 Evangelicals noted the dissonant images of Ital-
ian children playing amidst the Puritan tombstones in the North End’s cem-
etery even if some probably conceded that it was a strangely suitable location
for children’s games in the otherwise densely packed squalor of North End
tenements.10
Although remaining solidly Roman Catholic throughout the late nine-
teenth century, the North End neighborhood in the 1880s was in the midst
of a radical demographic change as Irish families were replaced by Italian
and Jewish immigrants. By 1895 two-thirds of the North End was predomi-
nantly Italian, and Irish households remained only on the periphery of the
neighborhood. A decade later their presence diminished further.11 The new
Italian Catholics were more receptive to Protestant missionary efforts than
their Irish Catholic predecessors had been. The Italians simply did not have
the history of Protestant–Catholic conflict that was tearing Ireland apart, and
many Italians held a more jaundiced view of the Roman Catholic Church and
the Papal States that the church lost in 1870.
Evangelical ministries (discussed in previous chapters) that began in the
North End in the 1870s had disappeared or changed dramatically by the
1890s. The Home for Little Wanderers left the North End for the South End
in 1889. Father Taylor’s mission to seamen had become a Roman Catholic
church by the 1870s, but the Baptist Bethel for seamen remained in the North
End. The Methodist church on Hanover Street had been bought by the Con-
gregationalists, who were renting part of the space to a Jewish synagogue.
Two founders of North End ministry efforts, Eben Tourjée and Charles Cullis,
had both died in 1891 and 1892, respectively. Tourjée’s North End Mission
persevered in the community for another decade after his death, but Cullis’s
mission efforts in the North End quickly diminished as his institutions strug-
gled for lack of funds and folded in the wake of the 1893–1897 depression.
Evangelicals in Boston vacillated in their rhetoric about the North End,
at times exhibiting desperation and other times displaying jubilant hopeful-
ness. Many evangelicals would have readily declared the North End the place
where “Satan hath his seat and synagogue,” just as they had in the 1870s.12
When settlement house leader Edgar J. Helms proclaimed in 1894 “Let us
re-take the North End for Methodism,” he was recalling the neighborhood’s
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 hallowed past as a place of sacred origins for Methodists—something other
Methodist leaders echoed as well.13
Appeals to history in Methodist books and pamphlets were not always suf-
ficient to convince their Methodist readership to support new urban mission
initiatives. Methodist leaders sometimes sought to shame church members
into supporting city missions by noting their comparatively small monetary
investment in city missions in contrast to Congregationalist, Episcopalian,
and Unitarian financial outlays. These other groups contributed as much as
seven times the amounts handed over by Methodist adherents, although the
results gained from such investments were frequently less noteworthy. 14 One
historian of the Congregationalists’ City Missionary Society described Daniel
Waldron, the leader of the cms in 1892, as “conservative, thoroughly conser-
vative. There were no new ventures undertaken during his era [1892–1918],
no launching into the unknown, no innovations, no asking strange and up-
setting questions, but a careful, orderly, refined carryout of a well-tested pro-
gram.”15 Figure 6.2 shows the locations of several new evangelical ministry
sites in the North End that are discussed in this chapter as well as older evan-
gelical efforts that had disappeared by the 1890s.

boston politics in the 1890s

The demographic changes occurring in the North End in the 1890s were
symptomatic of the growing fragmentation in Boston politics between 1893
and the close of the nineteenth century. From 1890 to the end of 1894, Bos-
ton mayor Nathan Matthews held together a fragile Irish/Yankee Democrat
alliance and was regarded as an efficient manager of the city’s affairs. During
Matthews’s term of office, however, local ward bosses became increasingly
powerful. When the panic of 1893 hit the Boston economy, the Irish/Yankee
Democrat alliance withered away as Matthews failed to respond. A Republi-
can mayor gained brief control of City Hall in December 1894, and Matthews
made a bitter departure as he condemned the “insidious encroachment of
socialism” and proudly asserted that no city money was spent for unemploy-
ment relief.16 “Nathan Matthews had entered public life a sturdy Democratic
reformer. He returned to private life a narrow, fearful conservative, his robust
reform energies stunted by economic collapse.”17
The rise of the social gospel and the decline of the holiness movement in
New England Methodism in the 1890s paralleled the economic depression of
1893–1897 and the increased difficulties of the poor and unemployed. By the
fall of 1893 the crisis on Wall Street had begun to affect New England. Hard-
est hit were the clothing, leather, and woolen industries, already in decline
prior to the crisis. The textile industry was the core of New England’s manu-
facturing economy. It employed 36.9 percent of wage earners in the region
in 1880 but dropped to 31 percent of wage earners by 1900.18 An 1893 survey
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 figure 6.2. Map of selected North End Protestant institutions, 1890–1910. By the mid-
1890s, the former Hanover Street Methodist Episcopal Church housed Gaetano Conte’s
Italian Methodist Episcopal Church. The actual building, however, was probably not
owned by the Methodists. The Medical Mission, established by University Settlement
worker Harriet C. Cooke, was located two doors down from University Settlement at 40
Hull Street. By 1895 the Methodist Seamen’s Bethel was the Roman Catholic Church of
the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

estimated that 37 percent of the 26,645 members of Boston craft unions were
out of work in the fall of 1893.19 The response of the cautious and conserva-
tive Mayor Matthews to this crisis was to form a Citizen’s Relief Committee
of Brahmin philanthropists and reformers to employ 5,761 people in pub-
lic works projects around the city. This did little to solve the unemployment
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 problem. In February 1894 a crowd of six hundred unemployed workers
stormed the State House to protest unemployment.20
Ward bosses around the city quickly filled the vacuum of Matthews’s pas-
sivity in the face of the financial crisis and regrouped in order to regain the
mayor’s chair.21 In December 1895 the Democrats gained control of the may-
oralty with thirty-six-year-old Josiah Quincy, who started his political life as
a Mugwump defector from the Republican Party in 1884 but shrewdly sided
with the Irish and against the Mugwump reformers’ idealism. By 1890 the
Irish constituted a majority of the city’s population. As a state representative
beginning in 1886, Quincy was instrumental in getting major pieces of labor
legislation passed that made Massachusetts the most progressive state in
America in its labor laws by the early 1890s. Quincy continued his tradition
of labor advocacy as mayor of Boston from 1896 to 1900 as he “combined the
vision of a municipal socialist, the sophistication of a responsible aristocrat,
and the sinuous flexibility of a professional politician.”22
Quincy’s ability to creatively combine a socialist’s idealism with a politi-
cian’s pragmatism made Boston perhaps come closer to a socialist ideal than
any other city in the country. Historian Geoffrey Blodgett argues that with
Quincy “[a]t no time in the past had the humanitarian urges of proper Bos-
ton been so systematically exploited by the city government.”23 Municipal
bathhouses, swimming pools, children’s playgrounds, and other community
projects in the South End and elsewhere sought to improve public health. A
public gymnasium in East Boston built in 1897 was the first of its kind in the
nation. Although not universally appreciated by New England Methodists,
Quincy apparently earned the respect of the Methodist superintendent of the
city missionary society. The Boston Missionary and Church Extension Society
newsletter praised Quincy as having “a policy that is far-reaching. In many
respects does this appear, but in none more than in his urgent and repeated
recommendations for parks, playgrounds, bathhouses, public conveniences,
and improved sanitary conditions generally.”24
Renewed attention was also given to tenement housing problems exac-
erbated by the depression of 1893–1897. A law passed in the late 1890s in
Massachusetts and New York permitting the seizure of property dangerous
to public health was enforced enthusiastically under Quincy’s watch. Jacob
Riis heaped praise on Boston in his 1902 book The Battle with the Slum when
he noted that Massachusetts “destroyed twice as many unfit houses as we did
in New York and stood their ground on its letter, paying the owners the bare
cost of the old timbers.”25
Powerful books—some of them including the new photojournalism—
brought urban poverty and housing issues to the attention of Bostonians. The
photographic views of poverty captured by Jacob Riis in the 1890 publication
of How the Other Half Lives made a striking impact on many Americans.
Unfortunately, when Riis’s book was first published in 1890, his photographs
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 had to be redrawn by hand since printers had not yet perfected a way to re-
produce photographs easily in books. The redrawn pictures still illustrated
the desperate situation of tenement dwellers but not as powerfully as Riis’s
photographs.26 The publication of William Booth’s Darkest England and the
Way Out the same year as Riis’s book combined to increase the sense of ur-
gency many evangelicals felt toward social problems and ushered in a new era
of social work by the Salvation Army and others in America.27 Many Boston
evangelicals shared some of the overwhelming confidence Booth displayed in
his book for remedying society’s ills, even if they could not go along with his
extravagant plans for massive work programs and farm colonies across the
globe.
Although not a comprehensive program for reform, Methodist pastor
Louis A. Banks’s muckraking book White Slaves, published in 1892, sought to
do for Boston’s housing problems what Riis had done for New York just two
years earlier. Banks followed in the tradition of Jacob Riis in documenting
the “worthy poor” he met in walks through the tenement districts of Boston’s
North End and as a Methodist pastor in South Boston. A year after White
Slaves was published, Banks was pastor of Temple Street Methodist Epis-
copal Church in Boston’s West End and also ran as the Prohibition Party’s
candidate for governor of Massachusetts. Banks’s book was filled with a re-
former’s fervor to right the wrongs of dire poverty in Boston’s tenements and
sweatshops. The use of about forty actual photographs reprinted in the book
no doubt shocked many of his readers who had seen Riis’s books, which had
only sketches for illustrations.28 The book made it clear that the ugliness of
poverty in Manhattan’s Lower East Side displayed in Riis’s book was also
present in Boston’s North End.29
B. O. Flower’s 1893 publication Civilization’s Inferno; or, Studies in the So-
cial Cellar was virtually identical to Banks’s White Slaves, with the exception
that Flower’s book did not have photographs for illustrations and was more
explicitly socialist in its proposed solutions to the tenement problem.30 Both
Flower’s and Banks’s books built on the incredible success of Edward Bel-
lamy’s utopian novel Looking Backward, 2000–1887.31 Most of the examples
given in Flower’s book were of poor people employed in the textile industry
hard hit by the depression of 1893. Flower reported scenes he observed on
neighborhood walks “within less than an hour’s walk of palatial homes on
Commonwealth Avenue” with Rev. Walter J. Swaffield of the Baptists’ Bethel
in the North End. Flower praised the mission for its work with sailors, the
unemployed, and children.32
Flower’s book was significant for its explicit use of social gospel terminol-
ogy, such as the “fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.” Flower crit-
icized the church for being “subsidized by gold” and because “she has failed
in her true mission—that of establishing on earth an ideal brotherhood.” The
author’s assertion that “far more drunkenness is caused by abject poverty and
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 inability to obtain work than want is produced by drink” was a hallmark of
social gospel reasoning and a reversal of the more usual argument for tem-
perance, which claimed that drunkenness was a cause rather than a result
of poverty.33 The use of sociological concepts and a growing belief in “social
salvation” and the tenets of the social gospel were beginning to become part
of the consciousness of Boston readers by the early 1890s even while direct
appeals to socialism became less frequent.34
There was a creative—if discordant—mingling of social gospel rhetoric
with harsh anti-Catholic speeches in the 1890s. For example, in an announce-
ment for the newly founded Anti-Tenement House League in 1893, two of
the three featured speakers at the Methodists’ People’s Church were the Rev-
erends Alonzo A. Miner and Emory J. Haynes. Miner was a key speaker at
anti-Catholic protest meetings in 1888, and Haynes was pastor of Tremont
Temple, where many of these meetings were held.35
The five years separating the two meetings—where in one Catholics were
bitterly condemned and in the other praised (albeit indirectly) as part of the
“brotherhood of man”—were clearly years of remarkable growth in the social
gospel movement, but they were also years of growth for anti-Catholicism
across the country. Participants in both of these movements would have been
unlikely to see their actions as contradictory even if more detached observers
may have raised some questions. As discussed in a previous chapter, anti-
Catholic animosity tended to be framed in terms of a political contest and
primarily targeted the Roman Catholic hierarchy for its alleged attempts to
gain control of the American republic. The general Catholic population was
also feared to some extent, especially in the 1890s as growing numbers of
southern and southeastern European immigrants arrived in Boston, radically
changing the city as the Irish had done years earlier. There was also a more
altruistic side to evangelical-Catholic engagement, as evangelical initiatives
in revivalism and social reform sought to reach out to Catholic neighbors.
It was not always easy to predict which of these evangelical sentiments—
competition, fear, or altruism—would dominate at any particular time.
When Josiah Quincy ran for mayor in December 1895, one of the most
significant challenges he faced was a resurrected anti-Catholic movement,
which had shown in no uncertain terms the fear and rivalry felt by members
of the American Protective Association.36 Five months before the election, on
July 4, 1895, an apa parade in East Boston turned into a riot and resulted in
one death. In a speech denouncing the Democratic candidate for mayor, Jo-
siah Quincy, the Reverend James Boyd Brady, an American Protective Asso-
ciation (apa) supporter and Methodist Episcopal pastor of People’s Temple,
delivered an incendiary speech charging that a vote for Quincy was a vote for
“rum sellers.” Brady condemned as well Irish politician Patrick Maguire and
his publication, the Republic:

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 Now, here is a paper. By reading this we see how things are. This is Pat
Maguire’s Republic. He calls you apa men “the inhabitants of cellars.” He
says that the apa temple on Columbus Ave. [People’s Temple] is “a re-
cruiting station for the [Republican mayoral candidate] Curtis forces,”
that the parson Brady is “an Irishman from Connemara” (applause and
laughter) that he is the “leading spirit of the movement,” and that “through
the weekly apa and Orange organ he has declared that the city clerk the
city collector and one or two other officials who have escaped the ax are
creatures of Rome and must be driven out.” Well, supposing I did. I say
it again (applause). . . . I have been reading this. It is full of all kinds of
scurrilities and lies, and as an emblem of my respect for Patrick Maguire
I stamp upon his paper (throwing the paper down and stamping on it).
(Great applause and laughter).37

Brady went on to praise the apa’s newspaper for being the “one paper in
Boston” not controlled by the liquor-licensing interest.38 Boston historian
John Galvin has argued that Maguire’s use of circulated copies of Brady’s fiery
address at Democratic rallies was the key ingredient to the Democratic vic-
tory in the mayoral race against the Republican incumbent Mayor Curtis.39
Brady’s speech stands in stark contrast to the praise Quincy received from the
superintendent of the Methodist Boston Missionary and Church Extension
Society two years later.
James Brady’s skill at delivering political speeches was certain, but he also
presided over a tremendous expansion of People’s Church in the South End
in the 1890s. The church had its cornerstone laid in 1877 just after the Moody
revival and was known as the largest Methodist church structure in the na-
tion. In 1895 People’s Church officially renamed itself People’s Temple in an
attempt to appear more modern to potential members. The name change
from People’s Church to People’s Temple mimicked a similar move by Berke-
ley Congregational Church three blocks to the south, which had renamed it-
self Berkeley Temple in 1888 and has been known as the first “institutional
church” in America.40 The institutional church movement in America had,
as its core belief, the idea that the church needed to reach out to the poor
community with a variety of special programs of both a secular and sacred
nature.41 With these new methods coupled with New England Methodism’s
most fiery preacher, People’s Temple experienced meteoric growth from 1895
to 1899 and doubled in size from 1,000 to 2,000.42 But this was not sustained
after Brady left. From 1899 to 1900 the membership at the church plum-
meted from just over 2,000 to 364.43
Methodists’ continued faithfulness to the anti-Catholic cause in the
1890s was also evident in their response to international politics.44 Unlike
the Brahmin Congregationalists and Episcopalians who founded the Anti-
Imperialist League in 1898, the Methodists in New England wholeheartedly
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 favored American imperialist expansion in 1898, especially in reference to
the Philippines. They were proud to follow the lead of Methodist President
William McKinley in the Oval Office. The debate over America’s imperialistic
endeavors overseas was most prominent in American politics for the decade
beginning in 1892 and ending in 1902 but became a matter of particularly
heightened concern after the invasion of Manila Bay.45
Methodists in this period easily equated the nation’s successes with their
own denomination’s success. A sermon preached by the Reverend Charles
L. Goodell at the Hanson Place Methodist Church in New York City in May
1898 is a seamless convergence of Methodist support for imperialism, anti-
Catholic fervor, and missionary enthusiasm fired by Dewey’s conquering of
the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay.46

Today we step on a higher level and serve notice upon the world that we
are the friends of the oppressed everywhere. . . . I was never so proud of
America as I am today. The old flag never looked so glorious to me. It
is floating in the East today the proud protector of 9,000,000 of the op-
pressed. The thunderous shock of Dewey’s cannon blew the rack and the
thumb-screw and the whole paraphernalia of medieval persecution off the
face of the earth forever. . . . The hoarse roar from the cannon’s throat is
the first note in the song, “Peace on earth, good will to men.” I watch the
banners of the world tonight, and when I see what each one represents, I
glory in the fact that without dispute the flag that presses closest after the
crimson cross is the Stars and Stripes.47

Although few Methodists could match Goodell’s flamboyant rhetoric of

approval of the Spanish-American War, Methodists were almost universally
perceived by others as being imperialists in their political views. The Zion’s
Herald noted this fact proudly in an editorial on February 1, 1899, stating
that the secretary of the Anti-Imperialist League, Erving Winslow, had been
“unable, after weeks of inquiry and investigation, to secure the name of a
single prominent representative of the Methodist Church who was willing
to pronounce himself an anti-imperialist.” He went on to say that in other
denominations he had found those in sympathy with the movement which he
represented, but not one in the Methodist body.” The editor of the Zion’s Her-
ald noted that “[t]he term ‘imperialism,’ therefore, has no terror for Method-
ists. . . . ‘The world is my parish,’ said our founder, John Wesley.”48
When the Anti-Imperialist League was founded in Boston in 1898, its par-
ticipants were a group of individuals very similar to those who had organized
against evangelicals in the anti-Catholic Boston public schools crisis ten years
earlier. They tended to be Brahmin Democrats.49 The only Republicans who
could be found in the Anti-Imperialist League were older in age. These indi-
viduals saw the Anti-Imperialist cause as parallel to the abolitionist cause in
the Civil War, much as older Methodist labor radicals like Edward H. Rogers
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 and Henry Morgan maintained their support for labor while younger Meth-
odists tended to abandon or at least neglect the cause.50

evangelistic settlement houses

Although younger Methodists tended to shun the issues held dear by ear-
lier labor organizers, they nonetheless used some of the same methods as
people like Henry Morgan. Street preaching, schools for poor children, sew-
ing classes, and fiery rhetoric never went out of style—even if the new crop
of Methodist leaders now seemed more self-conscious in their use of “old-
fashioned” methods. Former Iowan newspaperman Edgar J. Helms was the
leader of the new Methodist settlement house and eagerly brought a journal-
ist’s eye to the work when he reported that “[t]he beginning of our public
work of proclaiming the Gospel to the Jews was a most Methodistic one. A
Gospel-Wagon drives up to the corner of Prince and Salem streets. A throng
of Jews at once gathers, and after a few songs the Hebrew Professor at Boston
University [Hinckley G. Mitchell] stands up and preaches to the people. This
is a real old-fashioned Methodist scene. It is culture popularized. It is the
University in touch with the masses of the lowest.”51
The Methodists’ University Settlement house, founded in November of
1892, was given its name because of its connections to Boston University
students and recent graduates from the Methodists’ Deaconess Home and
Training School who worked there.52 University Settlement began in Boston’s
West End, but its founders very quickly decided that the North End was a
better place because its needs seemed greater and because their neighbors
in the West End were suspicious of their motives and annoyed by the young
adults’ eagerness to knock on their doors for no reason other than to visit. The
University Settlement moved to the North End in January of 1893—across
the street from the historic Copp’s Hill burial ground, where Puritan fathers
Increase and Cotton Mather were interred.53
University Settlement was the first settlement house in the North End, but
in the city of Boston as a whole it followed the Congregationalists’ Andover
House started in 1891 in the South End. William Jewett Tucker, a Congrega-
tionalist and professor at Andover Theological Seminary, was the early leader
for this initiative, but Robert Woods of Andover House quickly rose to national
leadership in the settlement house movement. Not to be outdone, Welles-
ley College professors and students were instrumental in founding Denison
House, also in the South End, the same year as University Settlement.54
These new initiatives to establish settlement houses were the result of a
combination of international, national, and local trends. In 1891 there were a
total of six settlement houses in existence in the United States. By 1897 there
were seventy-four of them in American cities, largely owing to continued
middle-class concerns over immigration and the economic depression that
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 began in 1893. Settlement houses in America ranged from being completely
secular in their orientation to explicitly religious and even evangelistic. The
Methodist settlement house was the most evangelistic of the ones established
in Boston in the early 1890s. The settlement house movement received much
of its inspiration from the first settlement house, Toynbee Hall in London,
established in 1884.55 The deaconess movement, which had also originated in
Europe, contributed to the development of the settlement house movement
in American Methodism but had less impact among more secular settlement
houses.
Settlement house workers saw themselves as engaged in work that was
monumental in its importance. Nothing illustrates this better than an ad-
dress given by Robert Woods in 1892 at the first national gathering of settle-
ment house workers in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The choice of Plymouth as
a place of meeting was packed with symbolic meaning in Woods’s address.
Woods stated that “we are working toward vast changes in the life of modern
society, not perhaps so visible and outward as those involved in the begin-
nings of nations, but so profound as to be likely to make over the inner and
closer life of modern people.”56 Woods and other settlement house workers
sought to begin a new kind of nation. Indeed, as they surveyed the dramatic
changes of the American city in their lifetime alone, the nation must have
seemed radically new.
The Methodist settlement house workers in Boston built on earlier local
institutions as well for their work. The North End Mission, the Cullis institu-
tions, the deaconess home, the East Boston Immigrant Home, and the Sal-
vation Army were all important predecessors to the Methodist settlement
house.57 Initially focused on street ministry and then on working directly
with local churches, the Methodist seminary students’ creation of a settle-
ment house was their first foray into establishing an extra-parochial ministry
among the poor in Boston. The deaconesses and other women involved at
the settlement house would have been far more accustomed to acting outside
local church structures, as leadership opportunities within churches were
more limited. After all, women Methodists had already established the East
Boston Immigrant Home and the Deaconess Training School a few years
prior.
The settlement house benefited considerably from the volunteer labor
provided by enthusiastic teenagers and young adults from local Methodist
youth organizations known as Epworth Leagues. (Epworth, England, was
the boyhood home of John Wesley.) Although Epworth Leagues had sev-
eral earlier antecedent organizations in American Methodism, the Epworth
Leagues themselves began in 1889, and in less than a year there were 100,000
members and two thousand chapters across the country.58 Epworth League
members and (mostly female) students from Boston University’s College of
Liberal Arts provided a great deal of voluntary work and financial backing for
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 the settlement house. An April 1895 annual report stated that “[m]ore than
fifty volunteer workers from the Epworth Leagues and Boston University,
etc., have given regular and systematic service.”59
The enthusiasm college students felt for this work was enhanced by the
near quadrupling of national enrollments of eighteen – to twenty-one-year-
olds in undergraduate institutions between 1870 and 1900.60 Young and sin-
gle adults with few family obligations discovered they could contribute their
free time to new ministry initiatives. The growth of the Student Volunteer
Movement in mobilizing college students for foreign missionary service also
had significant “spillover” effects for urban mission efforts as young adults
collaborated—often across denominational lines—to found new institutions.
For example, two Methodist young adults from Temple Street Methodist
Episcopal Church in the West End collaborated with a young person from
Clarendon Street Baptist Church and another from Park Street Church to
establish the Merrimac Rescue Mission in the West End in 1899, which even-
tually became the still-extant Boston Rescue Mission.61
The reaction in the Boston press to the new Methodist settlement house
ranged from exuberant praise to yawning skepticism. Both the Boston Globe
and the Evening Transcript praised the University Settlement, calling it
“original” when compared with Andover House and Denison House because
of its mix of evangelistic and social work.62 The most critical reaction to the
Methodists’ new work was from the Christian Socialist paper The Dawn.
“Surely, Boston has settlements enough. If they would only work more for
social reconstructive justice than do most such philanthropists, there would
be little need of ‘settlements among the poor.’”63
The Methodist settlement house differed from Andover House and Deni-
son House in three important ways. First, University Settlement was not lo-
cated in the South End but rather, with the exception of a few short months at
the start, in the North End. The North End was a more impoverished neigh-
borhood than the South End in the 1890s. A neighborhood study published
in 1898 and conducted by Robert Woods and the Andover House noted that
the South End “advanced a step” in assimilating immigrants when compared
with the North End, which was a more geographically isolated neighborhood
and possessed a more exclusively immigrant population.64 The South End was
a crossroads for commerce and culture and was a place where some second-
generation European immigrants moved in order to escape the North End.65
The South End was still a poor neighborhood, but the significant presence of
American-born rural migrants along with first – and second-generation im-
migrants helped the neighborhood to be more stable economically.66
The two neighborhoods also differed in the mid-1890s in that the North
End was an overwhelmingly male environment while the South End had more
gender balance. Estimates run that in the 1880s and 1890s approximately 70
percent of North End residents were male. Unlike previous immigrants, who
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 tended to come mostly as families, Italian immigrants were much more likely
to be men who often came to America alone and would often return to Italy
after a few years.67 However, the list of activities of settlement house workers
shows that they still had plenty of work to do among women and children in
the North End. University Settlement, on at least one occasion, was mistaken
for an orphanage by a visitor because of the numerous neighborhood chil-
dren in the house.
A second important difference between the Methodist settlement house
and the others was its gender-inclusive nature and more family-like atmo-
sphere. Andover House and Denison House were exclusively men’s and
women’s settlements, respectively, while the Methodist settlement house had
five men and four women living there. The homelike atmosphere of the Uni-
versity Settlement was far from a mere afterthought for the Methodists. In
describing their first few months of work, Mrs. Eugenia Helms, the wife of
Edgar J. Helms, stated, “[w]e felt that our first duty was to make a home.”68
This emphasis on the “Christian home” was a well-established model for
women foreign missionaries and deaconesses as they sought to teach by ex-
ample that the Christian message leads to positive changes in the household
for women. This foreign missionary history would have been familiar to Mrs.
Eugenia Helms and others as graduates of the Deaconess Home and Training
School.69
A settlement house comprising both men and women was not entirely
understood by at least one Congregationalist observer as he compared the
Methodist settlement house to Andover House and “the girls’” Denison
House. “[S]ome of the married theologues have established their wives as
housekeepers and thus a genuine home atmosphere is created.” Unknown to
the Congregationalist observer, two of the four women at University Settle-
ment, Eugenia Helms and Clara Organ, were Methodist deaconesses with
ministry responsibilities of their own and hardly “housekeepers.”70 The third
woman was the mother of seminarian Rollin H. Walker, who also lived in
the house, and the fourth was the sister of seminary student W. S. Naylor.71
Such an arrangement of older and younger residents—some from the same
family—contributed to the home atmosphere of the University Settlement.
The presence of older settlement house workers among young adults no
doubt also assured supporters that proper precautions were taken to prevent
sexual impropriety among the residents.
Promotional materials about the settlement house and other aspects of
Methodist urban mission work also exhibited the more egalitarian nature of
the Methodists’ ministry when compared with those of Congregationalists
and other older denominations. The illustrated cover of the Boston Mission-
ary and Church Extension Society’s newsletter Our City contained eight illus-
trations of urban ministry scenes. Prominently placed at the top of the page
was a man preaching in a setting outside a local church. Of the remaining
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 seven illustrations, five depicted women ministering to the poor while only
two additional images were of men.72
The rhetorical importance of having a “home atmosphere” in a settlement
house was not an exclusively Methodist idea, but the ability to make such an
atmosphere a practical reality was a unique Methodist contribution. In his
1892 address Robert Woods emphasized the importance of a home atmo-
sphere. “First of all, the settlement should begin by being as nearly as pos-
sible a home. It is a disadvantage, I think, to have, from the first, easy public
access to the house. The residents should be neighbors, and should become
acquainted in the same natural way by which neighbors come to know one
another in the simpler circles of society. . . . The first and constant effort of
the settlement should be to have its men or its women come into relations of
friendliness and intimacy with the people in their homes [emphasis added].”73
Woods assumed that single-sex settlement houses would be the norm, but he
did not identify this as a potential contradiction to the settlements’ goal of
being “a home” in the community.
By contrast, an 1898 article on the Methodists’ University Settlement con-
veyed a story that illustrated the extent to which their settlement house re-
sembled an actual home. “We did have a dainty little Pauline born in our
home, who was in danger of being spoiled, if love ever can spoil. A lady visit-
ing us one day looked at the fair-haired, blue-eyed little maiden and said,
“What a pretty baby! Is her mother living?” Mrs. Helms clasped the little
pet closely and proudly replied, I am her mother.” The attention given to the
Helms’s baby in the home illustrated to the settlement house residents how
difficult life was for neighborhood children, who would have received far less
attention owing to the work responsibilities of their poor parents. The settle-
ment workers apparently took the task of caring for neighborhood children
very seriously, since the residents had to correct at least one observer who
believed that the house was an orphanage.74
A third difference between University Settlement and both Andover and
Denison settlements was the University Settlement’s more pronounced evan-
gelistic goals, which, at times, had to be defended by Edgar Helms and others
in the face of critics who believed that the mission should be wholly philan-
thropic and secular.75 Robert Woods affirmed the importance of a “deep and
broad” religious motive for settlement house workers. Woods urged, however,
that this motive should seek to demonstrate to the neighborhood “the insig-
nificance of differences compared with the unity of spirit in which every man
is in some sense religious.”76 This sentiment was a far cry from the evangelistic
fervor contained in Helms’s 1894 book promoting the work of the settlement,
which proclaimed, “[l]et us retake the North End for Methodism.”77
Evangelistic efforts were infused with new energy upon the arrival of
Harriet Cooke nine months after the establishment of the settlement house.
Harriet Cooke, who had been a history professor and one of E. J. Helms’s
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 teachers at Cornell College in Iowa, had just completed three years of min-
istry and study at the Mildmay Deaconess House in England.78 Her student,
Edgar Helms, wrote of his former teacher with deep appreciation: “Obedient
to a heavenly vision, she left her pleasant college work to take a part in this
greatest problem of our age—to evangelize our American cities.”79 Her lead-
ership abilities were clear as she led the “women’s department” at the settle-
ment house and founded a Medical Mission just two houses away.80 Three
months after her arrival, her former student Edgar Helms was appointed as
pastor of a new Methodist church he wanted to establish in the North End.
The evangelistic orientation of the University Settlement was most clearly
evident in its attempts to convert the Jewish population in the North End.81
During the summer of 1894 Harriet Cooke and other University Settlement
workers led a new initiative to invite two evangelists from London who spe-
cialized in converting Jews.82 The London evangelists, Rev. John Wilkinson
and Rev. Joseph Adler, held several meetings at Clarendon Street Baptist
Church, the Baptist Bethel, Gordon’s Training School, and other places.
Moody’s Northfield Training School also sent money and bouquets of flow-
ers with scripture verses attached to assist in the evangelism of Boston Jews.
The Methodists’ cooperation with Moody and A. J. Gordon’s church illus-
trates the extent to which Wesleyans and premillennialists could still work
together on evangelistic efforts in spite of their theological differences on
other matters.83
The evangelistic efforts with Jews prompted considerable complaints, re-
sulting in mass protest meetings of Jews in the North End. A series of three
articles in a Boston newspaper focused on the Jewish communities’ com-
plaints about Protestants proselytizing Jewish children. A reporter investi-
gated the North End Mission, the University Settlement house, and the Bap-
tist Bethel and interviewed leaders of these three organizations. Of the three,
the University Settlement’s Harriet Cooke—now the clear spokesperson for
the house—was most forthcoming in admitting that “[w]e should like to con-
vert the Jews to become Christians.” However, her claim that “we make no
direct effort to do so” is extraordinary in light of her efforts to recruit the Lon-
don evangelists and the well-established programs at the settlement house to
reach out to the Jewish community. The leadership of the North End Mis-
sion, on the other hand, which had become primarily a Unitarian endeavor,
was decidedly against evangelization of Jews.84
A November 1894 issue of the Methodist newsletter The Signal Light re-
printed several evangelistic tracts that explicitly utilized many Old Testament
scripture passages in order to demonstrate the truth of the Christian faith
to Jews. The same November newsletter also contained an article, “How to
Win Catholics,” that illustrated the Methodists’ continued evangelistic and
anti-Catholic fervor. 85 An annual report published in 1894 for the Methodist
settlement house also reported that the evangelistic services held for Jews in
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 the former Hanover Street Methodist Church building (but in 1894 owned
by the Congregationalists) had to cease because the building was also used
as a Jewish synagogue. Jewish leaders complained to the Congregationalist
owners of the building, and the Methodists “were unceremoniously thrust
upon the street.”86
The Methodist settlement house was distinct from other Boston settlement
houses for its evangelistic emphasis, gender inclusivity, and geographical lo-
cation in the North End; in most other aspects it was typical of settlement
houses cropping up across the country in the 1890s. Distinct “departments”
were established within the settlement house to focus on ministry with the
Portuguese immigrants, with lodging house residents, and with Italian im-
migrants, and there was also a special department addressing the needs of
women. The University Settlement’s work with women involved a variety of
different activities including house-to-house visitation, sewing classes, and
other classes for women and girls. In the sewing classes Deaconess Clara
Organ and Harriet Cooke focused their attention on training the more af-
fluent Italian girls so that these girls could, in turn, assist their poorer neigh-
bors. “We are thus training up home missionaries at our doors.”87
In September 1893 the Woman’s Home Missionary Society of the
Methodist Episcopal Church sponsored Miss Nellie Huff from Cape Por-
poise, Maine, to serve as the sole Protestant missionary to the seven-
thousand-strong Portuguese immigrant community in the Boston area.
A generous contributor at this time also sponsored a Portuguese convert,
Joseph F. Durao, in his studies at Boston University School of Theology.88 Most
of the missionary activity with the Portuguese took place at the East Boston
Immigrant Home rather than at the University Settlement location itself. The
Portuguese had a relatively small presence in the North End; their neigh-
borhood comprised less than one city block. The collaboration of the whms
and the East Boston Immigrant Home is an example of how the University
Settlement was able to garner the growing enthusiasm of Boston Methodism
for city missions. Helms’s leadership of the Boston Missionary and Church
Extension Society in these early years helped facilitate this cooperation.89
The University Settlement also sought to address the growing numbers of
individuals residing in the city’s lodging house district in the South End. The
number of people living in lodging house establishments grew tremendously
between 1860 and 1900 both in absolute numbers and as a proportion of
the city’s population. In 1860, 7.6 percent of Boston residents lived in lodg-
ing houses or boardinghouses. This proportion grew to 8.4 percent by 1880
and 14 percent by 1900. In absolute terms, the numbers of lodging house
and boardinghouse residents grew from approximately 11,000 individuals in
1860 to 26,737 by 1900. The growth in lodging house establishments was
especially a cause for concern among social reformers and settlement house
workers in Boston, as lodging house mores represented a departure from the
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 earlier boardinghouse tradition, which included a degree of supervision over
residents. Reformers feared that since lodging houses lacked supervision of
young adults by older adults, the residents were turning to dangerous and
sexually illicit activities.90
Seminary graduate and future missionary to India T. P. Fisher led the set-
tlement house’s ministry among Boston’s lodging house residents. Fisher’s
work in the lodging houses clearly followed the methodology of the Salva-
tion Army. First, he went into lodging houses to distribute “Christian news-
papers.” After several trips, Fisher was able to gain the trust of the lodging
house owner and residents enough to hold a worship service at the house.
Fisher also utilized a “baby organ” and would bring friends who could play
other musical instruments. He noted, according to one newspaper report of
his work, how the well-known Protestant hymns “Where is my Wandering
Boy Tonight” and “Nearer my God to Thee” were some of the lodging house
residents’ favorite songs.91 This musical preference of lodging house residents
revealed their social status, as many were new rural migrants to the city.92
Fisher noted that his work in the lodging houses was seasonal in nature and
did not take place in the spring and summer, as many of the residents of the
lodging houses were transient and lived elsewhere during these seasons, per-
haps moving back to rural areas for farm-related labor.93
Of all of the ministries at the University Settlement, the work with resi-
dents of the lodging houses in Boston was perhaps the most familiar of ven-
ues for Methodists, because the lodging house residents and the young Meth-
odists were of similar age and social status as rural migrants in Boston. It is
likely that some of the lodging house residents were also students at Boston
University.94 Ten years earlier, when People’s Church was constructed, its
young members too had found work with lodging house residents and other
young rural migrants fruitful. Approximately 65 percent of the marriages
performed at People’s Church between 1884 and 1886 were for couples where
one or both persons had been born outside metropolitan Boston, most often
in rural New England or the Maritime Provinces of Canada.95 At the turn of
the century, People’s Temple was located in the very heart of Boston’s lodging
house district.
The focus on evangelism at the settlement house so evident in 1894 was
fading by 1898, as illustrated in several articles in the Methodist urban min-
istry newsletter, Our City. Both Edgar Helms and Harriet Cooke exemplified
this shift in their writing about the city and their ministry efforts. In one
article, after stressing the settlement’s example as a Christian home, Cooke
condemned the city for filling in the Charles River estuary known as Back Bay
and building up a posh new neighborhood there because of its negative effect
on the North End. “[W]e have been robbed of our encircling ocean to build
up our ‘Back Bays,’ which never can be as beautiful as this favored spot with
its implement of hills and its bright setting of ocean tides which bring health
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 and refreshment in their strong current of ebb and flow.” She went on to criti-
cize taxation policies that favored the more wealthy areas of the city.96 An
article on the University Settlement in the Evening Transcript in 1896 spoke
admiringly of the Methodists’ work in the North End, noting that many re-
ligious services were held at the settlement house, but quickly stressed that
proselytism was “not attempted nor encouraged.”97
By the late 1890s a geographical division of labor had arisen among North
End Methodists. At the settlement house the residents increasingly focused
on social welfare concerns. There was more than enough to keep them oc-
cupied. At the new church in the North End the same settlement house resi-
dents tended to express a more evangelistic outlook as they assisted Edgar
Helms in his dream of building an institutional church much like People’s
Temple in the roughest neighborhood of the city.

gaetano conte and the north end italians

A little more than a year after beginning the University Settlement house,
the settlement house workers founded the North End Methodist Episcopal
Church on December 15, 1893, with a clear goal of its being a multicultural
endeavor. Edgar Helms was named the “preacher in charge” of this new
church effort, and he left the settlement house tasks in the capable hands of
his former college professor. But the settlement house and the church were
not really separate from one another. Individuals at the settlement house
were placed in charge of “class meetings” or small groups comprising Ital-
ian, Jewish, and Portuguese members.98 At its founding meeting in Decem-
ber, the church accepted as members one Jew, fifty Italians, nine Portuguese,
one Swede, and seventeen Americans. Shortly after this multiethnic church
was founded, however, the Italian ministry became independent of North
End Methodist Episcopal Church in spite of Edgar Helms’s protest. The Por-
tuguese and Swedish ministries soon followed and became independent as
well.99 In a 1916 letter recalling his early days of ministry in the North End,
Helms noted his disappointment. “[T]here was no unity to our endeavors
and the work began to decline.”100
Helms’s goal of a multiethnic congregation in the North End may not have
succeeded, but of all of the Methodists’ efforts in the North End, their work
among the Italians became the most successful. This success was due to the
remarkable talents of two immigrant Italian Methodists, Gaetano Conte and
his wife, Clorinda.101 Born in 1859 in a well-educated Roman Catholic family,
Gaetano Conte became a Methodist at the age of seventeen as an indignant
response to his father’s religious hypocrisy, marital infidelity, and neglect.
The Methodists encouraged the charismatic and freethinking Gaetano, and
the itinerant life served him well. He was an entrepreneur at heart and soon
grew restless if he stayed in one place for too long. At the age of twenty-four,
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 Gaetano met and soon married Clorinda while in Rome for a brief period of
study. Clorinda was a Protestant teacher with an entrepreneurial flair of her
own and would establish schools wherever Gaetano established or revived
churches—on both sides of the Atlantic.102
Prior to coming to the United States in September 1893—the same month
as Harriet Cooke’s arrival—the Contes had already served the Methodist
Church of Italy for more than ten years, primarily in southern cities of Italy
such as Naples, Venosa, Palermo, and Messina. The Contes’ work in Boston
followed the pattern for ministry that Gaetano and Clorinda had started
many years earlier in Italy. While Gaetano performed other tasks necessary
to begin a new church, Clorinda visited immigrants in their homes, talked
with mothers about struggles of parenting, presented classes on child care
and homemaking, and emphasized the importance of learning English.103
Gaetano and Clorinda Conte’s wide exposure to southern regions in Italy
served them extremely well as they sought to evangelize North End Italians
who likewise came from southern provinces of Italy and settled in a North
End segregated according to Italian immigrants’ regional origin and dialect.
Most of the Italians in the North End at this time came from either Sicily
or Avellino, a province immediately to the east of Naples where Conte had
spent much of his adolescent years.104 The newly arrived Conte family thus
in some ways understood the North End streets better than evangelicals who
had lived in the city all their lives. The complex evangelical crossroads now
had an immigrant Italian to strengthen their work.
The Conte family’s affluent and educated background in Italy also helped
them develop helpful relationships with members of Boston’s upper-class so-
ciety.105 Toward the end of his life, Conte wrote a book in Italian about his ex-
periences in America and conveyed to his readers a humorous anecdote that
revealed his more refined tastes in artwork. Conte described the controversial
frieze of two naked boys above the door of the Boston Public Library and
noted that such an immodest depiction of the human body was “the object of
long vigils” by some of Boston’s more prudish residents.106 Clorinda Conte was
popular at the cultured Women’s Educational and Industrial Union (weiu)
for her weekly six-month-long series of weekly lectures on Italian literature.107
Through these classes Clorinda became acquainted with Julia Ward Howe
and Edward Everett Hale, who soon became integral and powerful players in
the Contes’ work in the North End and helped them gain national recogni-
tion as well.108 The Contes’ youngest daughter, Gertrude, became somewhat
of a local theater star when she was chosen among local Boston Italian girls
to perform in an Italian play at the Tremont Theatre starring a famous Ital-
ian actress, Eleanor Duse. Nine-year-old Gertrude was apparently chosen, in
part, because she spoke a “pure” Italian unlike other immigrant children who
spoke a less desirable dialect.109
Although the lack of unity at the North End Methodist Episcopal Church
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 was a source of disappointment for Edgar Helms, it is unlikely that the Italian
work in the North End could have succeeded if the Italians had remained at
the church. Reverend Gaetano Conte was simply too independent and suc-
cessful a leader to remain in a church led by Edgar Helms, who was four years
younger than the ambitious thirty-five-year-old Conte. The disproportionate
number of Italians in the North End Methodist Episcopal Church compared
with other ethnic groups in the church also would have made continued close
cooperation among the groups difficult.
The Italian Methodist Episcopal Church in the North End was established
as a separate entity in November of 1894, and five months later the church
claimed a total of 29 full members and 203 probationary members.110 The
Epworth League for this church posted even more remarkable growth with a
total of 221 regular members and 259 associate members by April of 1895.111
Harriet J. Cooke of the University Settlement praised the Sunday school at the
Italian church—no doubt the work of Clorinda—as a “model Sunday School.”
Methodist deaconesses and members of area Epworth Leagues frequently
volunteered at the Italian mission.112 An annual report for the Boston Mis-
sionary and Church Extension Society boasted that, in Gaetano Conte’s first
six months of work, more Italians had been converted to Methodism in Bos-
ton than to the entire Methodist Church in Italy during the year 1892–1893.
Furthermore, it noted that this one pastor’s success in Boston was achieved
at a cost of $1,000, a fraction of the $45,000 and thirty-one preachers of the
Methodist Church in Italy.113
Subsequent years showed continued vitality of the Italian Methodist Epis-
copal Church of the North End. In 1898 the Italian church claimed 150 regular
members and 234 probationary members. By 1900 the church’s membership
stabilized and remained between one hundred and two hundred members
for the next decade. In 1900 the Italian church also moved from its hall on
the corner of Cross and Hanover streets to the historic hall on Hanover Street
where the Hanover Street Methodist Episcopal Church had worshipped de-
cades earlier.114 In 1902 a new pastor from Italy assumed leadership of the
church. The work among Italians was reported to be struggling with division
but still “had a good year.”115
The Italian Methodist Episcopal Church was the first Protestant Ital-
ian church in the North End but not the first successful organizing effort
by Gaetano and Clorinda Conte. They also made important contributions as
city and national leaders in social welfare and advocacy efforts for Italian im-
migrants.116 In September 1894, just a year after arriving in Boston, Gaetano
Conte established the Association for Protecting Italian Workmen in Boston
and later also established a branch in New York City. Conte’s work in advocat-
ing for Italian workers brought him considerable fame in Boston, and he was
seen as a key leader of the nearly fifteen thousand Italians in the city.117 Con-
te’s work even brought praise from the Italian government, which awarded
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 Conte’s Association for Protecting Italian Workmen a several-thousand-
dollar grant.118 During the McKinley administration Gaetano Conte was in-
vited to the White House for conferences on the subject of immigration.119
The Association for Protecting Italian Workers was founded with con-
siderable fanfare and with the support of some of the biggest names among
Boston Brahmin social reformers. On May 31, 1894, a large conference was
held to begin the process of establishing the organization. Conte and two
thousand followers marched from the University Settlement in the North
End to Faneuil Hall. At Faneuil Hall, the editor of the New England Maga-
zine, Edwin D. Mead, served as chairperson of the meeting. Unitarian orator
Edward Everett Hale—whom Conte called the “Tolstoy of America”—also
spoke. William Lloyd Garrison served as one of the committee members for
the new organization when it was formally established in September.120
The Association for Protecting Italian Workmen had departments that
provided legal aid, employment assistance, English classes, banking services,
newspaper publication, and other services for the Italians of Boston. The
most high-profile contribution of the University Settlement for Italians was
its exposure of the corrupt business practices of Italian padroni or “bosses”
who charged exorbitant rates for Italian immigrants’ remittances back to
family in Italy.121 The padroni also helped Italian workers secure employment
with various “contractors” but demanded huge commissions from the work-
ers. In many cases the Italians were shortly fired from their jobs to provide
the padroni with another opportunity to obtain a commission for his employ-
ment services.122
Members of the Italian community who were involved in various corrupt
schemes found the exposure of their work to the wider Boston press problem-
atic and published many articles in Italian newspapers condemning Conte,
and on one occasion someone attempted to assassinate him.123 Letters from
the Methodist “Epworth League House Commission” identified members of
the Italian Epworth League as the ones responsible for exposing the mis-
deeds of the Boston Italian padroni.124 Italian newspapers fired back with
condemnations of Conte but were overshadowed by muckraking journalism
that reached a wider American readership in Boston. Author B. O. Flower
was one of these journalists; he served as editor of the Boston magazine The
Arena from 1889 to 1899. Edward Everett Hale’s magazine, Lend A Hand,
also brought to light the padroni problem in Boston.125
In addition to receiving support from some of the most prominent Boston
Brahmins of the day, Methodist leaders and the Methodist press also praised
Conte’s new labor organization. Edgar Helms served on one of the commit-
tees for the new organization, and R. H. Walker of the University Settlement
spoke at the Faneuil Hall meeting of the Association for Protecting Italian
Workmen. Professor Hinckley G. Mitchell praised Conte as “the best friend
your countrymen have” in a public endorsement of Conte’s new newspaper,
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 L’Amico Del Popuolo.126 Six years earlier, when Methodists and Baptists met
at Faneuil Hall in the midst of the Boston public school crisis of 1888, Edwin
D. Mead and Edward Everett Hale were some of the most vocal opponents of
the anti-Catholic movement, but they were now finding common cause with
Methodist Gaetano Conte, who exhibited his own variety of anti-Catholic
feeling.127
When Gaetano Conte compared the Immigration Restriction League and
the American Protective Association, he favored the more vehemently anti-
Catholic apa even while some of his most valued contacts in Boston were
prominent members of the more polite and refined Immigration Restriction
League. The Immigration Restriction League, Conte noted, was for the “most
part Unitarian in religion, [and] looks with indifference on the alliance of
the Catholics with the Democratic party while the apa, having a better un-
derstanding of Catholicism, directs their forces especially against them.”128
Conte’s Brahmin supporters would have likely shuddered at such support of
the apa. Conte, as a Methodist of upper-class background, maintained good
relationships with both the apa and the more religiously tolerant Boston
Unitarians.
Conte was a significant asset for the apa in Boston in the mid-1890s. On
September 20, 1895, just two months after a Fourth of July 4 apa parade in
East Boston that ended in violence, Gaetano Conte led a parade through the
streets of the North End honoring the twenty-fifth anniversary of the “fall of
the papal power” (loss of the Papal States occurred in 1870) and Italian uni-
fication. It was a parade primarily comprising members of the Boston Italian
Epworth League or the “Circolo Umanitario Educativo” as it was called in
Italian.129 Among the marchers was Methodist Portuguese pastor Joseph F.
Durao and a Protestant Italian missionary from New York City. As leader of
the parade, Gaetano Conte presented a bouquet of flowers to a representative
of the apa newspaper, the Daily Standard. Conte presented the bouquet as
“homage of a people who, having had for long centuries the practical experi-
ence of clerical oppression, salute the Daily Standard, a representative of
liberty which, righteously jealous of its rights, would prevent the well known
papal ambitions in this free land.” This parade and speech was just the begin-
ning of an entire day’s worth of celebratory events that the apa newspaper
proudly reported as its lead story.130
For all the public disapproval Conte displayed toward the Catholic hier-
archy, as evidenced by his hearty endorsement of the apa, he seems to have
reserved his greatest personal disdain for the Irish, who in the mid-1890s
still comprised almost half the population of the North End. Conte claimed
that about four-fifths of the 3,124 arrests for drunkenness in the North End
in 1901 were of Irish, and he was distrustful of the Irish ward bosses who
still represented the North End at City Hall. Conte also strongly criticized
North End Jews but was most critical of Irish women in the North End: he
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 exaggerated to his Italian readers in 1906 that “most of their women are
prostitutes.”131
Conte returned with his family to Italy in 1903 after a whirlwind ten-year
stay in Boston. The Methodist Church in Italy appointed him to serve in
Palermo—a decision with which he was not entirely pleased. He found his
work in Palermo to be discouraging and soon moved to Venice—all the while
being very engaged in social welfare efforts with the Methodists just as he had
been in Boston. Conte’s move to Italy also gave him an opportunity to rest and
reflect, and he soon discovered that he could no longer affirm the orthodox
Christian creed required of him as a Methodist preacher. He soon began the
Italian Free Believers Association, which was Unitarian in its sympathies and
stressed social welfare efforts a great deal. He resigned from the Methodist
Church in 1911 and received a warm farewell from his clergy colleagues, who
requested that the words “honorably dismissed” be written on his ordination
certificate.132 Gaetano Conte died in Italy in 1917.

morgan memorial church and goodwill industries

Edgar Helms may have been unsuccessful in his first attempt to establish a
multiethnic institutional church in the North End, but he was resoundingly
successful in his efforts to accomplish something similar at Morgan Memo-
rial Church in the South End. In the early years of the twentieth century Mor-
gan Memorial was the most famous Methodist urban ministry effort on the
eastern seaboard.133 It had been started decades earlier by the famous Henry
Morgan, and Edgar Helms was able to recapture much of the spirit of reviv-
alism and social reform of its founder after being appointed to the church
in 1895 with the express purpose of making Morgan Chapel an institutional
church. While People’s Church in 1888 sought to attract the masses, it never
went as far as did Morgan Chapel in providing a multitude of self-help indus-
tries and other projects. The precipitous decline at People’s Temple after the
fiery James Brady’s departure in 1899 occurred at the same time that Morgan
Memorial was being recognized as a national success.
In 1891 Daniel Steele made the first proposal in New England Methodism
for the establishment of a Methodist “institutional church” modeled after the
work of Hugh Price Hughes in London and the Congregationalist Berkeley
Temple in Boston:134

Not every church can support a Methodist Bureau of Employment; but it

is evident that there should be such an institution if we would retain our
hold upon our own young people who are steadily flowing from the coun-
try into our cities in constantly increasing streams. Help in finding work
and a suitable boarding-house, kindly offered by the church to the young

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 man or young woman, a stranger amid the perils of a great city, will tend to
bind them to the church with the strong tie of gratitude. To those who say
that we have delegated this to the ymca and the ywca we reply, these in-
stitutions are not the church, nor does this kind of work done by them very
strongly bind the beneficiaries to the church. It has long been my private
opinion, now publicly expressed, that any institution which does the work
that the church ought to do in order to save the masses, is, in the long run,
a detriment rather than a help to the church.

In the same article Steele called for a Methodist Bureau of Charities, a

church with a reading room, daily evangelistic services, and young peoples’
choirs “composed of all the young people of any musical talent to be found in
all the Methodist congregations.” In reference to the choirs, Steele explicitly
called for a successor to Eben Tourjée to revive Methodist enthusiasm for
congregational singing.135
Reverend E. P. King immediately took up many of Steele’s suggestions
while pastor of Morgan Chapel from 1891 to 1895. With the assistance of
University Settlement volunteers, Morgan Chapel began a Men’s Institute or-
ganized by Harriet J. Cooke, an industrial school for boys and girls, a reading
room, a relief department, and free Sunday breakfasts. Evangelistic work was
also present at Morgan Chapel, but the church struggled considerably until
Edgar Helms assumed leadership of the church in 1895. Harriet J. Cooke and
Edgar J. Helms, following Steele’s lead, wrote articles calling for the estab-
lishment of an institutional church for Boston Methodism.136
When Helms became pastor of Morgan Chapel, he built on the founda-
tions established by E. P. King and created several new departments at the
church: spiritual, social and amusement, educational, and industrial. He also
founded a music school, industrial schools for children and actual indus-
tries for adults, an employment agency, a day nursery, and a lodging referral
service.137 A salvage ministry begun in 1895 that became known as Good-
will Industries became his most lasting legacy. More traditional activities for
churches such as temperance clubs, youth groups, and frequent evangelistic
revivals were also part of Morgan Chapel in the first five years of Helms’s
leadership. The intensity with which Morgan Chapel maintained an empha-
sis on evangelistic work alongside the many businesses and social service ef-
forts distinguished it from other institutional churches in the country, which
tended to downplay their evangelistic fervor.138
Helms consciously sought to blur the lines between secular and sacred.
This fusion of sacred and secular was most symbolically represented in his
adaptation of Henry Morgan’s baptistry in the church sanctuary as a water
reservoir for the showers offered to the public in the basement of the building.
Helms’s provision of shower facilities and use of union laborers in a printing

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 business at the church were parallel developments to Mayor Josiah Quincy’s
similar new initiatives of hiring union laborers for a city printing department
and the construction of the Dover Street Bath House in the South End.139
Morgan Chapel’s rise to prominence in the city of Boston was another fas-
cinating example of a convergence of rural migrants successfully using politi-
cal and social contacts with more elite Boston residents to accomplish their
work. The predominance of Iowans at Morgan Chapel is particularly intrigu-
ing. Edgar and Eugenia Helms, W. M. Gilbert (an associate pastor at Morgan
Chapel for a time), and Harriet J. Cooke all were originally from Iowa. This
is not as surprising as it may seem; in the late nineteenth century Iowa was
the midwestern center of strength for the holiness movement.140 People such
as Harriet Cooke and Edgar Helms sought to bring that holiness enthusiasm
to the whole world.
The rural origins of upstart evangelicals did not prevent them from work-
ing effectively with the Unitarian Benevolent Fraternity of Churches and with
other recruits who came from elite backgrounds to work at Morgan Chapel.141
One worker, Elizabeth Emmons, betrayed her more refined religious sensi-
bilities when she requested that Helms not “sing those gospel songs about the
blood of the Lamb. I cannot agree with their theology and I am distressed by
their gory sound.” Helms suggested to her that she mentally replace the word
“blood” with “love.” Emmons found this a helpful suggestion and no longer
had difficulty with Helms’s blood atonement theology. Another worker, Mary
Fagan, reportedly gave up her job working as a maid in a Back Bay mansion
to work at Morgan Chapel as director of the kindergarten and day nursery.
Even before Edgar Helms was appointed to Morgan Chapel, Kate Hobart,
a Unitarian and member of Arlington Street Church, joined Mrs. Helms in
starting the industrial school at Morgan Chapel.142 A kindergarten was also
established, and Lucy Wheelock’s Kindergarten Training School near Copley
Square provided teachers.143
In less than five years of work at Morgan Chapel, Edgar Helms and his
many coworkers had transformed a nearly defunct chapel into an institu-
tional church with a national reputation. A “Harvard expert” apparently
praised it for running the best mission kindergarten and industrial school,
and Methodist authors praised it as the best institutional church in Boston.144
In 1900 Josiah Strong singled out Morgan Chapel as one of the best examples
of an American institutional church operating on a limited budget. Strong
also praised St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in New York City for the
work done with a practically unlimited budget thanks to its connections with
Vanderbilt money.145
As Morgan Chapel was approaching the pinnacle of its success, there were
shifts under way in Helms’s own thinking. After a trip to Germany and ex-
posure to socialism there he began to downplay the role of the local church
and increasingly spent his energy on the burgeoning industries and social
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 welfare work performed at Morgan Chapel. The 1902 construction of a new
church building that critics chastised as looking more like a warehouse than
a church was a symbolic expression of Helms’s growing desire to appeal to
secular people with secularized architecture devoid of religious symbolism.
In response to his critics, however, Helms chose to erect what would have
been seen as a very modern electric cross on the top of the building that an-
nounced the priorities of the church: “Life, Love, Hope, Faith, and Brother-
hood.”146 By 1910 the self-help industries were booming, but church member-
ship remained under two hundred members, and few of them participated in
the more secular departments at Morgan Memorial. Helms did not entirely
lose his evangelistic fervor and continued to seek conversions at special evan-
gelistic services, but they were given far less priority than in earlier years.147
By the mid-1890s the South End was becoming a popular attraction for
many Christian organizations and social reform agencies perhaps compet-
ing to do similar work. The Salvation Army Salvage Warehouse and Second-
Hand Store was begun before Edgar Helms even began as pastor at Morgan
Chapel and started Goodwill Industries.148 The Salvationists’ Social Relief
Headquarters at 866 Washington Street also housed their Labor Bureau, two
hotels with a total of 205 beds, and the Reading Room. This social services
complex was located precisely in between, and two blocks away from, both
the Wellesley College Denison House and Morgan Chapel.149 In 1891 the So-
ciety of Christian Socialists also established a large complex a few blocks to
the east called the Wendell Phillips Union, which also offered an employment
bureau and space for labor organizations and social reform societies to meet.
Boston abolitionist Wendell Phillips served as the keynote speaker for the
grand opening of this center for socialism, labor, and reform.150
The global success of Goodwill Industries, which began as one of Morgan
Memorial’s industrial self-help ministries, brought notoriety to the church,
but the church and Helms should be remembered for more than this. Helms
and the church he led had been a place where revivalism and social reform
were held in creative synthesis for many years. Helms’s early connection to
holiness movement piety was clear even if it diminished as the years wore on.
But Helms soldiered on in his work and remained identified as a “minister
emeritus” of Morgan Memorial Church until his death in 1942. At his funeral
the champion of American liberal Protestantism, Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam,
delivered the eulogy.151 In light of Oxnam’s mid-twentieth-century leader-
ship of American Protestant liberalism, Helms’s early youthful exuberance
to “retake the North End for Methodism” now seemed very “old-fashioned”
indeed.
This chapter’s focus on the North End and the South End illustrates once
again the important role played by women, recent European immigrants,
and rural migrants in the crossroads of revivalism and social reform. Anti-
Catholic feelings remained strong into the 1890s, but now the anti-Catholic
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 organizing was led by an immigrant Protestant rather than an American-
born Protestant. Although significant, this period of anti-Catholic fervor
lacked the widespread exuberance of anti-Catholic feeling present in 1888
because it did not coincide with a galvanizing political event of similar pro-
portions to those of the Boston public schools crisis and increasingly seemed
dissonant in the face of social gospel rhetoric about the “Fatherhood of God
and the brotherhood of man.”
The importance of upper-class Boston residents as strategic partners for
evangelical leaders again emerges in this chapter. A similar partnership was
an element of evangelical urban mission work decades earlier in the ministry
of Henry Morgan, Eben Tourjée, and Charles Cullis, but in the 1890s this
strategy became more pronounced for a different reason. The social distance
between Methodists and upper-class Bostonians had become less dramatic
than it had been in the 1860s and 1870s owing to the rising income levels
of Methodist adherents. The relationships between evangelicals and Boston
Brahmins were thus, in a sense, more natural. Upper-class Bostonians played
an important role in Clorinda and Gaetano Conte’s work as well as in the Sal-
vation Army’s expanded social ministry. Edgar Helms’s ability to efficiently
mimic the work done by the Salvation Army and Mayor Quincy’s adminis-
tration may have been as much due to his ability to build relationships with
powerful people in Boston society as it was due to his unwavering concern
for the poor.

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 c o n c lus io n

“The Most Marvelous Revival

of All of Her History”

In 1906 and 1909 Boston once again played host to two dynamic evangelists
who sought to bring revival to the city as D. L. Moody had done thirty years
earlier. Moody had died in 1899, and the visiting evangelists, local pastors,
and laypersons invoked his memory often and earnestly drew comparisons
between Moody’s 1877 revival and the new ones under way. But Boston and
the evangelical community had changed in thirty years. The city was larger
and more pluralistic, with streams of immigrants from southern and south-
eastern Europe rapidly supplanting the Boston Irish in the North End slums.
The city’s geography was also different. The Back Bay neighborhood, just in
the process of being reclaimed from the Charles River estuary in 1877, was
now firmly established as one of the city’s most respectable residential areas
and had several ornate Congregational and Episcopal churches in the neigh-
borhood to prove it.
Boston city politics had also undergone a sea change. On January 1, 1907,
John F. Fitzgerald was inaugurated as the city’s first Boston-born Irish mayor.
This event, along with the death of Mayor Patrick Collins in September of
1905, effectively ended the long tradition of the Irish-Brahmin alliance in city
politics that had been championed by Hugh O’Brien and others. Irish lead-
ers realized they no longer needed Brahmin politicians to win elections, and
upper-class Protestants were now firmly marginalized in Boston politics. The
less affluent evangelicals were even more so.1 Ironically, the marginalization
of the Brahmin Protestants in Boston politics occurred just as Methodists
were “mainstreaming” and increasingly resembling their upper-class Prot-
estant neighbors in their social gospel emphases—as the changing ministry
of Edgar Helms’s Goodwill Industries made clear. To be sure, Methodists’
history of anti-Catholic fervor in earlier years, though now greatly subdued,
gained them few friends in City Hall.
The Boston Archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church also under-
went a major transition around 1910. In August of 1907 Archbishop John
Williams died after serving as the head of Boston Catholicism since 1866.
Williams’s successor, William Henry O’Connell, was an efficient administra-
tor of the archdiocese’s vast network of institutions and worked to central-
ize power far more than Archbishop Williams had done in previous years.

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 In 1908 the Boston Archdiocese’s 850,000 members, nearly two hundred
churches, six hundred priests, and sixteen hundred sisters easily dwarfed any
Protestant denomination’s infrastructure.2 The prediction one evangelical
historian made in 1881 about the impending demise of American Catholi-
cism was proven overwhelmingly wrong.
Major changes had taken place within the evangelical community in the
years since the Moody campaign. No longer unified by the holiness move-
ment revival of the post–Civil War years, evangelicals were a less cohesive
group. A new generation of leaders no longer had a shared set of experiences
or assumptions about the world. The Civil War and its immediate aftermath
was not the unifying national event for leaders of the evangelical community
born around 1860, as it had been for leaders in D. L. Moody’s generation who
were in young adulthood as the Civil War began. The shape of the evangeli-
cal urban mission was also different in 1906. As a whole, evangelicals were
wealthier and far more tolerant toward their increasingly respectable Roman
Catholic neighbors. The Gipsy Smith and J. Wilbur Chapman campaigns
of 1906 and 1909 provide one lens through which the changed city and the
changed evangelical crossroads may be understood.
Gipsy Smith’s 1906 campaign in Boston was not his first time in the city;
he had led a seven-week revival there twelve years earlier. His 1896 revival
was a more localized—but still dramatic—success. He was the guest evan-
gelist for the fiery and stridently anti-Catholic preacher James Boyd Brady
at the Methodists’ People’s Temple. Smith’s campaign in the South End re-
sulted in eight hundred new members at Brady’s church and prompted Brady
himself to claim an experience of entire sanctification—a memorable event
for the entire congregation. On the fifth Sunday of Smith’s preaching Brady
announced, “The sermon this morning has been for my own soul. I feel my
need of the experience of which our brother has been speaking, and I am
going down to that communion rail for myself. I am going there to seek my
Pentecost.” The congregation responded with over two hundred persons ris-
ing from their seats to kneel at the communion rail beside their pastor. The
People’s Temple congregation even asked Gipsy Smith to succeed Brady as
pastor of People’s Temple—an offer Smith declined.3
Gipsy Smith’s 1906 revival began on October 29 at Tremont Temple and
concluded a month later. His style was described by one journalist as “far
removed from the bombastic, melodramatic roaring of some evangelists,”
but Smith was far from a polite and staid lecturer. Like Moody before him,
Smith had an earthy air about him befitting a former Primitive Methodist
and Salvation Army officer.4 Gipsy Smith was born in 1860 in England and
experienced a conversion to Christianity in a Primitive Methodist chapel at
the age of sixteen. His real name was Rodney Smith, but he always went by
the name “Gipsy,” which identified his Romany ethnic origin. A year after his
conversion, in 1877, Gipsy Smith became a Salvation Army officer but was put
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 out of the Army five years later by William Booth for accepting a gold watch
from admiring townspeople where he worked as an officer. This act was a
violation of Salvation Army rules against receiving such gifts.5 Smith was un-
deterred by this turn of events and continued in his career as a successful
itinerant evangelist in the United Kingdom, the United States, France, and
South Africa.
In spite of the frequent comparisons between the Smith and Moody cam-
paigns, the city’s reception of Gipsy Smith in 1906 was symbolically less im-
portant than Moody’s and its ultimate impact less significant.6 In contrast
to Moody, who had requested that a six-thousand-seat tabernacle be con-
structed specifically for the 1877 revival, Gipsy Smith held his evangelistic
services in the Baptists’ Tremont Temple. With a seating capacity of approxi-
mately three thousand, Tremont Temple was a large space but not as large as
Moody’s tabernacle, and Smith’s use of it required no coordinated effort by
Boston church leaders to build a new $30,000 auditorium, as they had done
for Moody. In addition, Smith’s revival was one month in length as opposed
to three months for Moody’s campaign.
Approximately 2,500 persons were estimated to have been converted be-
cause of Gipsy Smith’s influence, a number the Boston Transcript described
as “larger than the record of any month’s work by any evangelist in the recent
history of the city.”7 Although Smith’s 2,500 converts in a one-month cam-
paign did demonstrate a more efficient “take” of converts than Moody’s 6,000
in three months, the larger size of the city (600,000 instead of 300,000)
meant that the Smith revival had a far smaller net impact.8 Furthermore,
Smith’s practice of only requiring a convert to sign a decision card instead
of attending “inquirers’ room” meetings following the evangelistic service, as
Moody had done, also may have reduced the level of commitment required of
converts and increased their number.9
The people who attended the Moody and Sankey meetings in 1877 did not
differ much from those who attended meetings with Gipsy Smith.10 In cel-
ebration of Smith’s successes, a special service was held on Thanksgiving Day
in 1906. In his announcement of the event Gipsy Smith noted that it was to be
an “American and English Thanksgiving.” The pastor of Park Street Church
and primary organizer for the Gipsy Smith campaign, Arcturus Conrad, re-
marked in agreement, “Yes[,] both flags will be up and the cross will be above
both of them.” Gipsy Smith, on one occasion, also made reference to the very
well-dressed appearance of his audience while lamenting the disappointingly
low collection plate offering from the previous night’s service, which also had
people “all dressed as well as you are!”11 These remarks suggest that Gipsy
Smith was focusing on middle-class Anglo-Americans for his revival.
Eighteen months after the Gipsy Smith campaign ended, Boston pastors
again made plans for another evangelistic campaign to come to Boston, but
this time the revival was to utilize a different strategy. A “simultaneous cam-
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 paign” led by J. Wilbur Chapman and Charles M. Alexander took place from
January 26 through February 21, 1909, and involved twenty-seven evange-
listic meetings happening each evening at different churches around Boston
and its suburbs. Instead of a single, unifying location and evangelist as in past
events, the 1909 campaign allowed participating churches to seek converts
in a way best suited to their particular emphases as a congregation. Of the
hundreds of churches involved in this campaign, only two of them were Epis-
copal churches (located in Charlestown and North Cambridge). Prominent
Episcopal churches that had been active in the Moody revival such as Trinity
Church in Copley Square and Emmanuel Church on Newberry Street were
never mentioned as participants in the Chapman campaign.12 In addition to
the local church revivals, Chapman and Alexander led services twice a day at
a centralized location—Tremont Temple.
During the 1909 Boston revival, the Methodist pastor of the East Bos-
ton bethel, the Reverend Lewis B. Bates, proclaimed that “Boston is sharing
in the most marvelous revival of all of her history.” The comparisons to the
Moody revival were accurate in many ways. Twenty-two years younger than
Moody, Chapman was regarded as Moody’s protégé and had often received
advice from Moody about his career.13 At an overflow meeting to Chapman’s
Tremont Temple service, L. B. Bates asked the crowd gathered in Faneuil
Hall how many remembered Moody. Many of those in attendance stood up.14
Newspaper accounts of the revival were also effusive in their praise of Chap-
man and carried headlines such as “Dr. Chapman calls the Boston Revival
Greatest Demonstration since Pentecost.”15 Chapman considered the Boston
revival to be the greatest revival of his life.16
In the South End, the comparisons to Moody’s revival were the most ex-
plicit. The venue for the South End meetings was the Methodists’ People’s
Temple on the corner of Columbus Avenue and Berkeley Street. At one ser-
vice, the music director at People’s Temple announced that the organ to be
used during that church’s revival services was the very same organ utilized
during the Moody revival of 1877. One evening as well, after the evangelistic
rally was held at People’s Temple, a crowd of 350 “composed largely of women
and children” paraded through the streets of the South End with a Salva-
tion Army band leading the way. The parade went down Berkeley Street by
the former site of the Moody tabernacle and stopped there to sing a hymn,
continued toward Washington Street by the Roman Catholic Cathedral of
the Holy Cross, and then returned to People’s Temple (for street locations see
figure 1.3).17
The Salvation Army’s prominent presence during the Chapman campaign
was on full display on February 12 when General Evangeline Booth was in-
troduced by Chapman and preached a revival sermon to the Tremont Temple
crowd. “Several hundred” Salvation Army officers and soldiers (laypersons)
were present at Tremont Temple that night to hear their leader preach. Evan-
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 geline Booth was an occasional speaker at Chapman’s Winona Bible Confer-
ence in Indiana and spoke at several of his city evangelistic campaigns.18 On
February 12 she and Wilbur Chapman together presided at the dedication
ceremony for a new Salvation Army Rescue Home in the Dorchester neigh-
borhood of Boston.19
In contrast to Moody and Smith, Wilbur Chapman seemed to pay more
attention to reaching the poorer populations of Boston and sought the coop-
eration of the Salvation Army to help him with this focus.20 In a 1908 book
Chapman illustrated his interest in social reform by quoting Harvard Uni-
versity social ethics professor (and Unitarian) Francis Greenwood Peabody
at length. Chapman described Peabody’s Jesus Christ and the Social Question
as “the position of the best advocates of Social Reform.” That Peabody’s book
utilized German higher criticism extensively, in this instance at least, was ap-
parently not problematic for Chapman in 1908, as it was for other members of
the Niagara Bible Conference movement in which Chapman participated.21
At the end of the month-long Chapman campaign (which cost approxi-
mately $20,000) the lead organizer of the event was reticent to make precise
estimates of the number of converts gathered by all the revival venues. Un-
like the Moody campaign of 1877, which was largely dependent on Moody
and Sankey, Chapman’s campaign involved the work of twenty-seven evan-
gelists at many different churches. It is possible that the revival organizers
did not wish to provide a precise count of converts gained at the various sites
out of fear that such statistics would cause feelings of competition to emerge
among churches that would have been counterproductive to the effort. In
his book about the campaign, Arcturus Conrad noted only that “[h]undreds
and hundreds of men and women are entering into the membership of our
churches. . . . In practically all the co-operating churches from 25 to 100 per-
sons have already been received into membership.”22
The Smith and Chapman revivals represented the enduring relevance of
large revival meetings for Boston evangelicals. Even if the heyday of the New
England holiness movement’s camp meetings had passed, many continued in
operation. The urban revivals would have recalled for older participants ear-
lier days of revival under D. L. Moody’s leadership or at such places as Old Or-
chard Beach, Asbury Grove, or Eastham. The revivalistic language continued
for evangelicals even if the accent of the embattled doctrine of entire sanctifi-
cation was now more difficult to notice in a much larger city. The evangelicals’
revivalistic language was also no longer the lingua franca for a city increas-
ingly populated by immigrants who spoke many different languages.
There are four main conclusions that may be drawn from this study of
the evangelical crossroads in Boston from 1860 to 1910. First, evangelicals’
work in both revival and social reform was astounding for its breadth in these
years. Their methods worked, but their social and religious impact has been
vastly underestimated by urban historians. Second, the character of evan-
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 gelicals’ social welfare efforts changed in the fifty years under consideration,
and their motives for undertaking these efforts changed as well. A relentless
pragmatism on the part of evangelical urban mission leaders was more in-
fluential than evolving theological debates for the shaping of many evangeli-
cals’ ministry efforts. Third, evangelicals possessed an exceptional ability to
pay attention to the migration movements swirling about them and to bridge
religious, class, cultural, and national boundaries to accomplish their goals
in revivalism and social reform. Finally, the interrelationship of home mis-
sion and foreign mission for evangelicals was also noteworthy. The interplay
of these ministry strategies, of theological ideas and other motivations, and
of the charismatic figures who led the way in crossing boundaries of class
and ethnicity illustrates the complex ways evangelicals navigated the Boston
crossroads.

the strategies worked: the impact of

evangelical revival and social reform
The vast array of services provided in the many rescue missions, immigrant
homes, industrial education programs, inexpensive hotels, and orphan-
ages, including even banking services, was a testimony to the effectiveness
of the upstart evangelicals’ social welfare work in Boston. Largely forgotten
by Boston urban historians, evangelicals’ contributions to the city were as
significant as those made by Brahmin Protestants, even if the statues and
other monuments that dot the city’s parks and boulevards fail to recognize
the upstarts’ contributions. Today, the simple plaque recognizing the place
of Moody’s conversion to Christianity on Court Street symbolizes the under-
stated significance of evangelicals’ impact in Boston a hundred years ago—in
the areas of revivalism as well as social reform.
Evangelicals were often more effective than their more affluent Protestant
neighbors in ministries among the poor, since the cultural similarities between
evangelicals and poorer rural migrants and immigrants were greater than they
were for upper-class Protestants. The success that Independent Methodist
Henry Morgan enjoyed in reaching out to Irish newspaper boys in the 1860s
was partly the result of his vulgar style, which no Congregationalist or Episco-
palian could match. At Morgan’s death in 1883, the Boston Globe was unequiv-
ocal in proclaiming his popular appeal. “No man has been better known in
Boston for the last quarter of a century than this indefatigable minister.”23 The
Salvation Army was similarly praised. After enduring brick-throwing Boston
mobs when they first arrived in the 1880s, the Salvation Army was eventually
lauded as one of the most successful organizations ministering to the city’s
poor. The Salvationists rapidly gained the admiration of more affluent Bos-
ton citizens who were willing to overlook the Army’s less refined qualities first
chastised in the respectable press when they invaded the city in 1884.
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 The Salvation Army and Henry Morgan may be names most associated
in people’s minds with social welfare efforts (the Massachusetts affiliate of
Goodwill Industries is still called “Morgan Memorial Goodwill Industries”),
but their commitment to revivalism was equally pronounced. Morgan spoke
to thousands in his Music Hall revivals while the Salvation Army paraded
through the streets and quietly peddled their War Cry in saloons, always
looking for lost souls to save. The music ministry of Eben Tourjée and Boston
University students at the North End Mission also focused on evangelistic
concerns in ways not always clearly delineated from the social reform efforts
they also engaged in.
The trajectory Methodists and other evangelicals were following toward
increased respectability was uneven and inconsistent. When many evangeli-
cals became more respectable in the 1890s, they nonetheless continued to
demonstrate greater success than the long-established Protestant denomina-
tions in reaching poorer Boston residents. Pride in “old-fashioned” Method-
ist street preaching in the 1890s North End and continued fervor for evange-
listic efforts among Jews coexisted in a sometimes uneasy tension with social
gospel rhetoric. The Evangelistic Association of New England also promoted
“open air” preaching and more explicitly shunned social gospel rhetoric.
By contrast, in these years the Congregationalists’ City Missionary Society
increasingly focused on the bureaucratic efficiency of the organization and
studiously avoided creative mission efforts.24 The greater success of Method-
ists and (especially) Baptists in establishing immigrant churches in the early
twentieth century suggests that they were more effective than Congregation-
alists in addressing immigrants’ concerns and more willing to allow immi-
grant Christians to take leadership in addressing those concerns.25
As the flood of immigrants continued to add to the population of Bosto-
nians in need of assistance, however, it was not possible for evangelicals to
meet the demand. No poverty relief efforts conducted in the city could claim
that their work resulted in a reduction of the absolute number of impover-
ished individuals in Boston in this period.26 The challenges were simply too
complex and too massive. As the Roman Catholic Church in Boston became
wealthy and stable, Catholic institutions provided much of the material assis-
tance through parochial schools, colleges, and other organizations that was
previously offered by evangelicals and Brahmin Protestants.27 The anti-Cath-
olic rhetoric of many evangelicals may have helped to prod Roman Catholics
to establish their own social welfare institutions and thus, ironically, in the
long run to improve the life situation of Roman Catholics in the city. A simi-
lar unintended “spillover effect” occurred with Moody’s revival in 1877 when
Roman Catholics initiated a successful rival revival at St. Francis De Sales
Church in Lower Roxbury.

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 the ideas changed: the separation of
revivalism and social reform
The different paths taken by A. J. Gordon and Edgar Helms exemplify the
widening breach between evangelicals’ attitudes toward revivalism and so-
cial reform. Both preachers promoted the ideals of the holiness movement
in their early ministries but ended their careers in much different places.
Among Methodists and the Salvation Army, which were less influenced by
the fundamentalist movement, urban mission involved a change in strategy
from an emphasis on evangelistic activity to social welfare and reform proj-
ects. These two spheres of action were rarely, if ever, fully separated from one
another in any of the urban mission efforts under consideration prior to 1910.
But over time a shift of priorities away from revivalism did occur. This shift
was most evident in the work of the North End Mission, the Salvation Army,
the University Settlement, and the ministries of Morgan Memorial Church in
the South End.
The reasons why and how this shift of priorities occurred are complex
and, in the Boston context, involve the interaction of five principle factors:
the growing affluence of evangelical adherents and resulting distance from
the labor movement; generational change in leadership; the decline of the
holiness movement as a unifying narrative of Christian piety; the decline of
anti-Catholicism in the face of an increasingly respectable Roman Catholic
population; and the emphasis on pragmatic needs of the city more than theo-
logical arguments.
Nothing symbolized the increasingly wealthy status of Boston evangeli-
cals better than the changes that took place in evangelical attitudes toward
the labor movement. In the late 1860s and 1870s it was possible for Henry
Morgan to be vociferous in advocating for the labor cause and still be equally
anti-Catholic in his remarks. Prominent Methodist laymen such as Governor
William Claflin and Edward H. Rogers and Methodist pastor Willard
Mallalieu were avid supporters of a labor community that was still primarily
composed of American-born workers. After the Haymarket tragedy of 1886,
Methodist leaders had to advocate for labor in more abstract terms and is-
sued carefully worded statements of support. In the 1890s the tendency of the
working class to be predominantly Roman Catholic rather than Protestant
was lamented by ship’s carpenter and labor organizer Edward H. Rogers as
an old man when he left the Episcopal Church of the Carpenter in 1896 to
return home to his Methodist church in Chelsea. The Church of the Carpen-
ter and many Methodist Episcopal churches as well simply could no longer
attract many members of the labor movement with their abstract rhetoric of
support.
The class distinctions between evangelicals and upper-class Protestants
so important to evangelical identity in earlier decades had also substantially
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 diminished by 1910, and the urban mission efforts of the two groups began
to look more similar to one another. Although there were not many Method-
ists involved in the Society of Christian Socialists, Methodists were also not
opposed to them or their methods in any meaningful way in the 1890s. The
Christian Socialists’ difficulty in expanding beyond their small Episcopalian
base illustrates how little any one Protestant group was able to effectively
engage the labor community in the 1890s.
Only in the first decade of the twentieth century did Methodists and oth-
ers become more concerned with labor’s cause as part of the ascendant so-
cial gospel movement, but by this time most evangelicals were outsiders to
the labor movement they had led in the 1860s. For example, the Methodist
Social Creed of 1908 was a complete list of the labor movement’s concerns
and quickly became a mainstream Protestant document with nearly whole-
sale acceptance by the Federal Council of Churches. The Methodist Social
Creed best illustrated where the center of Methodist energy was increasingly
located. The Methodists in New England were now a part of mainstream
American Protestantism and certainly advocated for the labor community
but did not often join workers on the streets or in picket lines—and increas-
ingly did not worship with them either.28
The growth of Salvation Army social welfare efforts, with decreasing at-
tention given to church-planting efforts in the 1890s, was also evidence of
the Army’s growing wealth as Salvationists skillfully raised funds in Back Bay
parlors and suburban homes through their network of two hundred auxiliary
organizations in Eastern Massachusetts. As a fund-raising tool the auxiliary
meetings were far more effective than selling The War Cry in North End sa-
loons, even if the latter was no doubt a better evangelistic strategy and more
consistent with the Salvationists’ “aggressive Christianity.”
The generational changes that took place among leaders of holiness evan-
gelical urban missions in the late nineteenth century also affected the char-
acter of the institutions founded by people who had come of age during the
Civil War or earlier. Leaders such as Edgar J. Helms embraced the zeitgeist
of the 1890s characterized by the optimism of the social gospel, which was
also more critical of traditional emphases on individual conversion.29 The
previous generation was more able to hold a stress on individual conversion
together with social concern in part because the passion against slavery prior
to and during the Civil War held by many evangelicals was also within living
memory of the time of Methodism’s greatest evangelistic fervor in the first
few decades of the nineteenth century.
The inability of the holiness movement to serve as a unifying force for
Boston evangelicals became increasingly obvious in the late nineteenth cen-
tury and ironically contributed to the secularization of urban mission efforts.
As the most numerous of the participants in the holiness movement, most
members of the Methodist Episcopal Church did not make an explicit choice
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 to shun holiness ideas. Rather, these ideas were simply no longer taught as
fervently as they once had been. Once a unifying doctrine, church teachings
on entire sanctification became the most divisive doctrine in the Method-
ist Episcopal Church and may be seen as the Methodist equivalent to the
fundamentalist/modernist controversy that fractured other denominations
in the early twentieth century. Some holiness movement advocates left the
Methodist Episcopal denomination for more congenial communities, which
eventually formed the Church of the Nazarene and pentecostal denomina-
tions a few years later.30
The declining influence of the holiness movement among evangelical
urban mission leaders led them to a new movement that had some of the
old emotional appeal. The “social piety” and political agenda of the social
gospel gradually replaced the dominant personal piety and optimism of the
holiness movement in early-twentieth-century mainline Protestantism. A
concern for the poor was certainly a vital part of the late-nineteenth-century
holiness movement, but it was not the “heart” of the movement in the same
way that it was for the later social gospel movement. The persistent appeal
of Daniel Steele’s Love Enthroned, reprinted in 1923, demonstrates that holi-
ness movement piety lived on to some extent in the Northeast, but in a more
vestigial form in a region that had given birth to the movement through the
efforts of Timothy Merritt and others. Holiness movement leadership at the
beginning of the twentieth century was found increasingly in the South and
the Midwest.
The holiness movement that extolled the possibility of being made “perfect
in love” diminished among Methodist Episcopal clergymen at the same time
and as quickly as the movement that extolled a visceral hatred of the Roman
Catholic hierarchy. The growing evangelical tolerance toward Roman Ca-
tholicism took some of the fighting energy out of the movement’s urban mis-
sion efforts and paved the way for more respectable ventures in social reform
and welfare activities. The anti-Catholic movement that peaked in 1888 and
1895–1896 quickly diminished in cities on the eastern seaboard by century’s
end. At the same time, Catholics had gained too much political power in east-
ern cities to be seriously challenged. They had won the contest for Boston,
and it was time for evangelicals to make peace with this fact.31 Nevertheless,
the organizing ability of evangelical women and clergypersons that had been
honed to near perfection through the anti-Catholic movement was able to be
reappropriated for social gospel crusades even if such crusades were of a less
vulgar quality.
Intellectual innovations such as higher criticism, evolution, and premi-
llennialist interpretations of scripture did not affect some evangelicals as
much as others. Evangelicals who would become part of American funda-
mentalism in the 1920s had become increasingly pessimistic about the desir-
ability of social reform by 1900 and gradually drew back from their earlier
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 involvement in such activities. The decline in social welfare efforts among
those evangelicals more influenced by the Niagara Bible Conference move-
ment and fundamentalist theology has been the subject of considerable dis-
cussion by many scholars. One of D. L. Moody’s most famous lines and one
spoken at nearly all his revivals—including Boston’s—captured the thinking
of many evangelicals of his day who focused less on social reform concerns.
“The way it looks to me is this: Here is a vessel going to pieces on the rocks.
God puts a life-boat in my hands, and says: ‘Rescue every man you can. Get
them out of this wrecked vessel.’ So God wants us to get our family of the
wrecked world into the ark of safety, as Noah did his family, and have them in
Christ, and if they are in Christ they are safe.”32 Such a focus on an individual’s
salvation and corresponding disregard for the “wrecked vessel” of the world
caused some evangelicals to reprioritize their initiatives toward evangelistic
rallies and away from social welfare.33
But evangelicals of a more Methodist and pragmatic bent were less preoc-
cupied with these concerns, as Daniel Steele made clear in his tepid advice
to pastors regarding higher criticism—“when you have time, read up.” Intel-
lectual debates took place among Methodists on the pages of the Zion’s Her-
ald, but for the Methodist laypersons, women, and recent immigrants who
were leading the urban mission efforts, the impact of the debates was indi-
rect and subtle. Well-educated Methodist clergymen were being drawn to the
ethical implications of Borden Parker Bowne’s Personalism, but this philo-
sophical system did not directly affect the majority of Methodist preachers
or the grassroots mobilizers for urban mission. Personalism would eventually
be influential in the theological education and activism of Boston Univer-
sity graduate Martin Luther King, Jr., but for many pastors before King, the
Personalist philosophy taught at Boston too often distanced them from their
parishioners’ piety and failed to provide them with an adequate replacement
to energize them for mission as the holiness movement had done for earlier
generations.
Urban ministry practitioners such as Gaetano and Clorinda Conte, Eben
Tourjée, Harriet Cooke of the University Settlement, Amanda A. Clarke of
the East Boston Immigrant Home, and Salvation Army officers were sim-
ply not very interested in intellectual debates that seemed distant from their
concerns for the poor. For example, during his ten years in America, Conte’s
intellectual struggles were very subdued, and he showed few signs of pulling
back from his evangelistic fervor. It was only after his return to Italy that his
intellectual questioning of orthodox Christianity came to the fore in his own
thinking and led him to embrace Unitarian ideas. Daniel Steele engaged and
criticized more Calvinistic evangelicals such as A. J. Gordon, but he did so as
an intellectual leader in Methodism who simultaneously advocated for more
basic theological education similar to that offered by the Salvation Army and
deaconess training institutes.
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 The lack of concern for intellectual debate among Wesleyan evangelicals
may also help to explain how their urban mission efforts rather easily became
secularized. The Methodist urban missionaries were so concerned about
doing their social service work that they seemingly did not think about how
it was becoming less the church’s work and more the province of the profes-
sionalizing field of social workers. This professionalizing process was evident
when in 1909 the Methodists’ Deaconess Training School no longer offered
courses in sociology but rather required its students to take such courses at
the nearby Simmons College. By 1918 the deaconess school was absorbed by
Boston University and eventually became that university’s School of Social
Work.34

the leaders’ success at crossing boundaries

This book has argued that there was an important difference between upstart
evangelicals, who were often recent migrants to the city, and more firmly es-
tablished Protestant groups such as the Congregationalists and Episcopalians;
but the differences between these groups was never absolute. The personal
relationships among upper-class Protestants and many evangelical leaders il-
lustrate the evangelicals’ ability to cross class boundaries in order to promote
their cause. Unitarians such as Edward Everett Hale and Francis Greenwood
Peabody were, at key times, important collaborators with evangelicals in the
city. Congregationalists with upstart sentiments such as the Reverend E. N.
Kirk were also vital supporters of both Henry Morgan and Dwight L. Moody
early in their careers. Phillips Brooks’s communion rail controversy with Uni-
tarian James Freeman Clarke in 1877 and Moody’s subsequent invitation for
Brooks to preach at the tabernacle illustrate how Protestants across a theo-
logical spectrum sought to work together. Moody’s advice to Frances Willard
to not appear on the same platform with the Universalist Mary Livermore
also illustrates the subtle inconsistencies of the movement. At other times,
the lines of division between the upstart evangelicals and more established
Protestants were far from subtle, as in the case of the anti-Catholic movement
in the 1880s, which firmly divided the Methodists and the Baptists from most
Unitarians, Congregationalists, and Episcopalians.
The lay-led nature of much of the urban mission work enabled “boundary
crossing” to occur far more easily than if such efforts had been led entirely by
clergymen. Episcopal layman Charles Cullis, more than any other individual
in this book, exemplifies the ability to unify an amazing array of people to
work for his institutions. If Charles Cullis had been a clergyperson, he would
have found it more difficult to bring together so many different people in a
single organization and likely would have become absorbed by the contro-
versy between the Reformed and Protestant Episcopalians.
Women demonstrated a similarly remarkable ability to organize diverse
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 constituencies for the sake of urban mission and social reform. Their activi-
ties in foreign missionary, anti-Catholic, and temperance movements demon-
strated their profound political skillfulness. Their leadership as well in build-
ing institutions for urban mission in this period is an often overlooked aspect
of the social gospel movement that took hold in many churches in the early
twentieth century. In Boston, the deaconess training schools of Cullis and the
Methodists, the East Boston Immigrant Home, the Salvation Army, and the
University Settlement house were all institutions where female leaders were
particularly prominent. Even in local church congregations, women’s ability
to act as key fund-raisers and organizers was vital for the success of many of
the urban mission efforts.
The frequency with which rural migrants were key players in evangeli-
cal urban mission efforts is another striking example of evangelicals’ abili-
ties to cross boundaries. Rural migrants’ “urban marginality” enabled them
to reach out to persons that longtime Boston residents could not easily ap-
proach. The Boston pastors and church workers who came from the state
of Iowa alone included Morgan Memorial Church pastors Edgar J. Helms
and W. M. Gilbert, women’s ministries leader at University Settlement and
founder of the Methodist Medical Mission in the North End Harriet J. Cooke,
and the Reverend B. B. Scott of Charles Cullis’s Grove Hall Church and later
missionary to India.35 There were numerous other migrants from rural New
England and parts of the Midwest who were similarly drawn to Boston with
hopes of economic advancement, theological education, or simply adventure.
The amount and importance of rural migrants’ and women’s leadership in
evangelical institutions did not change markedly over the fifty years of this
study but rather remained one of the more consistent elements of evangelical
urban mission efforts.

the influence of the foreign missionary movement

The growth in the foreign missionary force also exerted a profound influ-
ence on urban mission efforts in Boston and no doubt contributed to city
missionaries’ enthusiasm for reaching city residents who had immigrated
from foreign countries. Social gospel historians have tended to pay insuffi-
cient attention to the foreign missionary movement that was so dominant in
most American congregations at the time of the rise of the social gospel. For
example, one of the major leaders of the foreign mission enterprise in Amer-
ica, the Reverend A. T. Pierson of Philadelphia, was very involved in urban
mission work in the nation’s cities.36 Gaetano Conte also reported that some
Methodist churches in Italy largely consisted of Italians who had previously
been members of his North End congregation.37 The influence of immigrant
leaders Daniel Sorlin, Gaetano Conte, Clorinda Conte, and others were vital
to Methodists’ ability to cross cultural boundaries in Boston after 1880.
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 In 1860 faith mission efforts by J. Hudson Taylor, William Taylor, and
Charles Cullis had not yet begun. By 1910 American missionaries included a
growing number of “faith mission” personnel sent by independent mission-
ary agencies outside the control of denominational boards. The numbers of
American missionaries had increased so much that the American missionary
force was coming close to surpassing that of the British. In 1910 the amazing
strength of the foreign missionary movement in America was on full display
at the World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh and the Woman’s Mission-
ary Jubilee that took place the same year. These gatherings were the culmi-
nation of the nineteenth-century missionary movement and, in the case of
the Woman’s Missionary Jubilee, were vivid demonstrations of the grassroots
organization of women for mission across North America.38 These gatherings
were big news for all Protestant leaders and no doubt also influenced urban
mission efforts in American cities. The key leader of the 1910 Woman’s Mis-
sionary Jubilee, Helen Barrett Montgomery, emphasized many of the same
values of the social gospel movement in her stress on the emancipation of
women.39

the legacy of nineteenth-century evangelicals

in boston
The complex interrelationship of people, political events, urban mission ef-
forts, and the city’s geography described in this book illustrates the contested
ground on which evangelical urban mission took place in Boston from 1860
to 1910. Evangelicals’ urban mission and their group identity changed over
time, just as Boston’s geography was transformed by landfills and streetcars.
The geographical terrain of Boston in the nineteenth century is difficult to
recognize in the contemporary city, but if one knows where to look, remnants
of the past can still be seen today. Many of the evangelical urban mission ef-
forts that had their genesis more than a hundred years ago are likewise diffi-
cult to recognize, but they are nonetheless present in contemporary Boston.
The heirs of nineteenth-century urban mission efforts may be seen in
many churches and other institutions that dot the Boston landscape. Beth
Israel–Deaconess Hospital, Boston Rescue Mission, Boston University, Gor-
don Conwell Theological Seminary, Hattie B. Cooper Community Center,
Home for Little Wanderers, Morgan Memorial Goodwill Industries, the New
England Conservatory of Music, the Salvation Army, and Vision New Eng-
land (formerly the Evangelistic Association of New England) can all trace
their origins back to upstart evangelical urban mission efforts of the late
nineteenth century.
It is perhaps easiest to see the legacy of evangelical revival and social re-
form in contemporary urban mission efforts in Boston that are largely led by
recent immigrants from Latin America, the Caribbean, and other countries
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 of the Southern Hemisphere. For these immigrants, the interrelationship of
home and foreign missions finds expression in new ways as their churches in
Boston send money and sponsor mission efforts in the countries that their
immigrant congregants call home. As in the late nineteenth century, immi-
grant groups today continue to develop relationships with more established
Protestants in the city as they create an infrastructure of institutions that
often operates “under the radar” of the Boston religious establishment, both
Protestant and Catholic.40 While there is no single movement that mobilizes
immigrant communities in a rearguard fashion today as the anti-Catholic
movement did in the late nineteenth century, the growing pentecostal com-
munity in Boston still finds inspiration in the fully sanctified Christian life.
As such, it is perhaps the most direct heir of the nineteenth-century holiness
movement in Boston today.
Americans who call themselves evangelicals in the early twenty-first cen-
tury face many of the same challenges as their forebears in Boston in the late
nineteenth century. They too confront a new crossroads in their religious and
political lives. And the ways they navigate these crossroads in particular so-
cial contexts will likely be no less complex than the courses traveled by those
who have gone before them.41

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Hartley_Book.indb 180 10/12/10 12:01:52 PM
 notes

introduction
1. Paul Nussbaum, “The Purpose-Driven Pastor,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 8 January
2006. Michael Lerner, “Michael Lerner and Jim Wallis in Discussion,” Tikkun, 1
November 2005. Krista Tippett and Jim Wallis, “The New Evangelical Leaders, Part 1:
Jim Wallis,” Speaking of Faith, National Public Radio, 29 November 2007.
2. Alan Gilbert has illustrated the way similar dynamics took place in eighteenth-
and nineteenth-century England between Nonconformist churches and the Church of
England. Alan D. Gilbert, Religion and Society in Industrial England: Church, Chapel,
and Social Change, 1740–1914 (London: Longman, 1976). Mark Peel, “On the Margins:
Lodgers and Boarders in Boston, 1860–1900,” Journal of American History 72, no. 4
(1986): 833. Mark Peel’s language of “marginality” is adopted from Robert Ezra Park’s
use of the term. Robert Ezra Park, “Human Migration and the Marginal Man,” The
American Journal of Sociology 33, no. 6 (1928): 881–893.
3. Margaret Lamberts Bendroth, Fundamentalists in the City: Conflict and Division
in Boston’s Churches, 1885–1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 16–22.
4. Omar M. McRoberts, Streets of Glory: Church and Community in a Black Urban
Neighborhood (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). McRoberts’s text is an
intriguing companion to this one, as it focuses on the contemporary situation of churches
in Boston with a particular focus on immigrant congregations.
5. Anna Lisa Schmidt, “Executive Summary: A Population Perspective of the United
States,” Population Resource Center, http://www.prcdc.org/summaries/uspopperspec/
uspopperspec.html. Accessed on 1 December 2007. Andrew Walls, “The Ephesian
Moment,” in The Cross-cultural Process in Christian History, ed. Andrew F. Walls
(Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2002).
6. The absolute number of immigrants is greater in our own day than it was one
hundred years ago, but the percentage of the U.S. population who are foreign-born is
lower than it was a century ago.
7. This quotation is attributed to Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, Jr., Speaker of the U.S. House
of Representatives from 1977 to 1987.
8. The nuances of the private lives of evangelicals (their prayers, family habits, and
worship), while no less important, are accorded less attention in this study.
9. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 3–32.
10. Holmes called Boston the “Hub of the Solar System” in an 1858 Atlantic Monthly
series of articles that was reprinted in book form several times. Oliver Wendell Holmes,
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (Boston: Phillips, Sampson, and Company, 1858).
John Corrigan, Business of the Heart: Religion and Emotion in the Nineteenth Century
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
11. Bendroth; Thomas H. O’Connor, The Boston Irish: A Political History (Boston:
Northeastern University Press, 1995); Thomas H. O’Connor, Boston Catholics: A History
of the Church and Its People (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998).

Hartley_Book.indb 181 10/12/10 12:01:52 PM

 12. Oscar Handlin, Boston’s Immigrants, 1790–1880: A Study in Acculturation
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1991); Stephan Thernstrom, The
Other Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in the American Metropolis, 1880–1970, Harvard
Studies in Urban History (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1973); Sam Bass Warner,
Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston, 1870–1900, 2nd ed. (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1978).
13. A recent review of the state of American urban religious history is Jon Butler,
“Protestant Success in the New American City, 1870–1920,” in New Directions in
American Religious History, ed. Harry S. Stout and D. G. Hart (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1997). The work by Hugh McLeod offers an excellent introduction
to the large body of work available on urban religion in Britain and on the European
continent. Hugh McLeod, Class and Religion in the Late Victorian City (Hamden,
Conn.: Archon Books, 1974); Hugh McLeod, European Religion in the Age of the Great
Cities, 1830–1930, Christianity and Society in the Modern World (London: Routledge,
1995); Hugh McLeod, Secularisation in Western Europe, 1848–1914 (New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 2000).
14. Ralph E. Luker, “Review Essay: Religion and Social Control in the Nineteenth
Century American City,” Journal of Urban History 2, no. 3 (1976); Anthony J. Steinhoff,
“Religion as Urban Culture: A View from Strasbourg, 1870–1914,” Journal of Urban
History 30, no. 2 (2004); Diane Winston, “Review Essay: Babylon by the Hudson;
Jerusalem on the Charles: Religion and the American City,” Journal of Urban History
25, no. 1 (1998). For a discussion of urban history as a field of study in the American
context see Carl Abbott, “Thinking about Cities: The Central Tradition in U.S. Urban
History,” Journal of Urban History 22, no. 6 (1996): 695.
15. David K. Adams and Cornelis A. Van Minnen, eds., Religious and Secular Reform
in America: Ideas, Beliefs and Social Change (New York: New York University Press,
1999); Barton J. Bernstein, “Francis Greenwood Peabody: Conservative Social Critic,”
New England Quarterly 36, no. 3 (1963): 320–337; Sarah Deutsch, Women and the City:
Gender, Space, and Power in Boston, 1870–1940 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2000); Jonathan Dorn, “‘Our Best Gospel Appliances’: Institutional Churches and
the Emergence of Social Christianity in the South End of Boston, 1880–1920” (Ph.D.
diss., Harvard University, 1994); Peter C. Holloran, Boston’s Wayward Children: Social
Services for Homeless Children, 1830–1930 (Boston: Northeastern University Press,
1994); Nathan Irvin Huggins, Protestants against Poverty: Boston’s Charities, 1870–1900
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1971); Arthur Mann, Yankee Reformers in the Urban Age:
Social Reform in Boston, 1880–1900 (New York: Harper and Row, 1954); Barbara M.
Solomon, Ancestors and Immigrants: A Changing New England Tradition (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1956). One of the more detailed analyses of the Associated
Charities in Boston is an unpublished master’s thesis by Brenda M. Lawson, “Starving
While Waiting for a Friend: Assessing the Success of the Associated Charities of Boston,
1879–1899” (M.A. thesis, Simmons College, 1996).
16. I have chosen to place less emphasis on the old debate about whether churches
were proponents more of social reform or of social control. I share Hugh McLeod’s
assessment that the “most interesting studies have not been those which assume a neat
fit between religion and social roles, but those which have explored the unintended
consequences of people’s beliefs, and the contradictions between different deeply held

182 · Notes to Pages 4–5

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 convictions. This is one area in which ambiguity is all important and clear cut answers
are generally wrong.” Hugh McLeod, Religion and Society in England, 1850–1914 (New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 222.
17. Arthur J. Vidich and Stanford M. Lyman, American Sociology: Worldly Rejections
of Religion and Their Directions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985). On evangelical
involvement in social welfare in New York City see Norris Magnuson, Salvation in the
Slums: Evangelical Social Work, 1865–1920 (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press and the
American Theological Library Association, 1977). On antebellum evangelical involvement
see the classic work by Timothy L. Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform: American
Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1957).
18. Lorraine Garkovich, Population and Community in Rural America (New York
and Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1989), 63, 85.
19. Josiah Strong, Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis, revised ed.
(New York: The Baker & Taylor Co., 1891).
20. Alan A. Brookes, “The Exodus Migration from the Maritime Provinces to Boston
During the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century” (Ph.D. diss., University of New
Brunswick [Canada], 1979).
21. A similar class diversity was operative among Congregationalists at this time.
Margaret Bendroth, personal communication, 11 August 2005.
22. This “puzzle of American Methodism” has been most prominently noted by
Nathan Hatch in a presidential address given before the American Society of Church
History in 1994. It has been reprinted several times. Nathan O. Hatch, “The Puzzle of
American Methodism,” in Methodism and the Shaping of American Culture, ed. Nathan
O. Hatch and John H. Wigger (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001). The lack of attention
given to Methodists during the Civil War period is also evident in otherwise fine works
such as Mark A. Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University
of North Carolina Press, 2006).
23. David Martin, Pentecostalism: The World Their Parish (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002);
Vidich and Lyman; Donald E. Miller and Tetsunao Yamamori, Global Pentecostalism:
The New Face of Christian Social Engagement (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2007).
24. Margaret Bendroth focuses a great deal more on Calvinist evangelicals to explain
the rise of American fundamentalism. Bendroth. For an explanation of Methodists’
lack of involvement in the fundamentalist movement see Glenn Spann, “Theological
Transition within Methodism: The Rise of Liberalism and the Conservative Response,”
Methodist History 43, no. 3 (2005).
25. I was introduced to this metaphor with relation to a different topic in religious
history in courses at Boston University with David Hempton.
26. For a review of the influence of premillennialism in American religion of this
era see Ernest R. Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American
Millenarianism, 1800–1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 151–161.
Sandeen also notes the small number of premillennial Methodists.
27. Catherine Booth, Aggressive Christianity: Practical Sermons, with an Introduction
by Daniel Steele, D.D. (Boston: McDonald & Gill, 1883), 11, 70.
28. James H. Moorhead notes that until about 1910 it was still possible for people with

Notes to Pages 5–8 · 183

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 a premillennial outlook to cooperate with those with a postmillennial outlook but that
this became increasingly difficult in subsequent years. See James H. Moorhead, World
without End: Mainstream American Protestant Visions of the Last Things, 1880–1925
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 102.
29. Jesse T. Peck, “Dangers to New England Methodism,” Zion’s Herald, 54, 12 July
1877, 217.
30. Richard Carwardine, Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 3.
31. Leigh E. Schmidt illustrates the importance of the New England region for the
development of early-nineteenth-century Protestant liberalism. Leigh E. Schmidt,
“Cosmopolitan Piety: Sympathy, Comparative Religions, and Nineteenth-Century
Liberalism,” in Practicing Protestants: Histories of Christian Life in America, ed. Laurie
F. Maffly-Kipp, Leigh E. Schmidt, and Mark Valeri (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2006).
32. Charles Wesley, “Love Divine All Loves Excelling,” United Methodist Hymnal
(Nashville: United Methodist Publishing House, 1989), 384.
33. Timothy Merritt, The Christian’s Manual: A Treatise on Christian Perfection, with
Directions for Obtaining That State (New York: N. Bangs and J. Emory for the Methodist
Episcopal Church, 1825). For an excellent study of Merritt and the doctrine of holiness in
early New England Methodism see Glen Alton Messer, “Restless for Zion: New England
Methodism, Holiness, and the Abolitionist Struggle, circa 1789–1845” (Th.D. diss., Boston
University, 2006), 233. Messer argues that Merritt’s Guide may be seen as evidence of
the holiness doctrine’s decline in official New England Methodist circles even as it also
symbolized its expansion outside those circles. The Guide was published in Boston from
1839 to 1845. Charles Edwin Jones, Perfectionist Persuasion: The Holiness Movement
and American Methodism, 1867–1936 (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1974), 2.
34. George Hughes, Fragrant Memories of the Tuesday Meeting and the Guide to
Holiness, and Their Fifty Years’ Work for Jesus (New York: Palmer and Hughes, 1889).
35. There were others who briefly owned the Guide to Holiness after Timothy Merritt
and before the Palmers purchased the journal. Timothy Smith, 124, 171; Vinson Synan,
The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition: Charismatic Movements in the Twentieth Century,
2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 18. Merritt’s Guide to Christian Perfection had
its name changed to The Guide to Holiness.
36. Jones, 20–21. “John Inskip on National Camp Meeting, Vineland, N.J., 1867,” in
Frederick A. Norwood, ed., Sourcebook of American Methodism (Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 1995), 383–391. Frederick Douglass cited in David W. Blight, Race and Reunion:
The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press, 2001), 43.
37. For an explanation of this connection in antebellum New England Methodism see
Messer, 141. James Buckley was distressed by the lack of Methodist involvement in social
welfare institutions and called for Methodists to found more hospitals and other social
welfare institutions in 1881. Such a move was already under way. James M. Buckley,
“Editor James Buckley Expresses Publicly the Need for Methodist Hospitals (1881),” in
The Methodist Experience in America: A Sourcebook, ed. Kenneth E. Rowe, Russell E.
Richey, and Jean Miller Schmidt (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2000).

184 · Notes to Pages 8–10

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 38. “Dr. McDonald’s Illness,” Zion’s Herald, 79, 11 September 1901, 1161; “Dr. and
Mrs. Daniel Steele: Golden Anniversary,” Zion’s Herald, 78, 8 August 1900, 1001.
39. William McDonald, “Close of the Fourth Volume,” Advocate of Christian Holiness
4, no. 12 (1874): 282.
40. Minutes and Retrospective Register of the Eighty-third Session of the New England
Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church (Boston: James P. Magee, 1882), 105.
41. “Dr. and Mrs. Daniel Steele: Golden Anniversary,” Zion’s Herald, 8 August 1900,
1001. John Fletcher was an eighteenth-century Methodist in Britain and a close colleague
of John Wesley. Leroy E. Lindsey, “Radical Remedy: The Eradication of Sin and Related
Terminology in Wesleyan-Holiness Thought, 1875–1925” (Ph.D. diss., Drew University,
1996), 82. Daniel Steele, Love Enthroned: Essays on Evangelical Perfection (New York:
Nelson & Phillips, 1875), 142.
42. Henry C. Sheldon, “Changes in Theology among American Methodists,” American
Journal of Theology 10, no. 1 (1906): 46. For a discussion of Methodism’s initial reticence
to embrace theological liberalism or fundamentalism see Spann.

chapter one
D. L. Moody Arrives in a Changing Boston
1. The Reverend E. N. Kirk of Mount Vernon Congregational Church was instrumental
in Moody’s early Christian formation. In subsequent years Kirk was also instrumental in
helping new evangelical initiatives for social reform to get organized. Heather D. Curtis,
“Visions of Self, Success, and Society among Young Men in Antebellum Boston,” Church
History 73, no. 3 (2004).
2. During his time in Boston, Mr. Moody stayed at the home of Henry F. Durant, Esq.,
at 30 Marlboro Street. Boston Daily Journal, 24 January 1877.
3. “The Great Revivalists: Arrival of Moody and Sankey,” Boston Daily Journal, 27
January 1877.
4. “Moody and Sankey. The Work of Evangelization Begun,” Boston Daily Journal,
29 January 1877, 1.
5. “Moody and Sankey; Preparations for their Coming; Dedication of the Tabernacle a
Remarkable Religious Gathering,” Boston Daily Journal, 26 January 1877, 1.
6. “Moody and Sankey. The Work of Evangelization Begun,” Boston Daily Journal,
29 January 1877, 1.
7. “Moody and Sankey: Preparations for their Coming,” Boston Daily Journal, 26
January 1877.
8. Methodist Episcopal Church pastor John Atkinson, in an 1877 article, documented
church membership statistics to be the following: Baptists 9,387; Congregationalists
(Trinitarian) 7,730; Methodist Episcopal 5,145; Episcopalian 4,405. These statistics were
obtained by Atkinson from “the latest official statistics.” John Atkinson, “Methodism in
the Cities of the United States,” Methodist Quarterly Review 59 (July 1877). For more
empirical information about the denominational loyalties of Boston residents see my
dissertation, Benjamin L. Hartley, “Holiness Evangelical Urban Mission and Identity in
Boston, 1860–1910” (Th.D. diss., Boston University, 2005), 41–51.
9. For a discussion of Moody’s leadership of the Chicago YMCA see James F. Findlay,

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 Dwight L. Moody: American Evangelist, 1837–1899 (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1969), 112–118.
10. YMCA Board of Managers Minutes, 1871–1884, Snell Library Archives,
Northeastern University, Boston, Mass.
11. “The Great Revivalists: Arrival of Moody and Sankey,” Boston Daily Journal, 27
January 1877.
12. Jesse Jones, “The Marriage of God and Mammon,” Equity: A Journal of Christian
Labor Reform 2, no. 7 (1875): 26. Ezra Farnsworth was president of the board of
managers for the North End Mission in 1876, an organization to be discussed later in the
book. Report of the North End Mission, March 1876, Healey Library archives, University
of Massachusetts at Boston, Mass.
13. The iconoclastic preacher Henry Morgan is also not identified on the list of
participants for the organizing committee in spite of his reputation as one of the city’s
most successful revivalists. One may speculate that Morgan too, a strident advocate for
the cause of labor, may have had feelings toward Sturgis similar to those of Jesse Jones.
Morgan nonetheless praised Moody and looked forward to the benefits of the revival in a
lecture delivered to several hundred persons a few weeks before Moody’s arrival. Morgan
was praised by a journalist reporting on the event as one who had “made more than a
thousand converts” in the city. “The Great Revival in Boston: The Rev. Henry Morgan
Explains How it Can be Made Successful,” Boston Daily Globe, 8 January 1877.
14. “Moody and Sankey: The Work of Evangelization Begun,” Boston Daily Journal,
29 January 1877.
15. Ibid.
16. Statistical information for figure 1.4 was obtained from the following sources:
Henry K. Carroll, Report on Statistics of Churches in the United States at Eleventh Census:
1890 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1894); Report on Population of the
United States at the Eleventh Census: 1890, Part 1, vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Office, 1895); Thirteenth Census of the United States Taken in the Year 1910:
Volume 1, Population, General Report and Analysis (Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Office, 1913); U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistics of the Population of the
United States at the Tenth Census (June 1, 1880), vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Office, 1883),; George E. Waring, Report on the Social Statistics of Cities: Part 1,
the New England and the Middle States (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office,
1886).
17. Sam Bass Warner, Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston, 1870–1900,
2nd ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978). Many years after Streetcar Suburbs’s
publication, Warner named its documentation of income segregation as the book’s most
important contribution. Robert Wiebe, “The Urban Historian as Citizen: In Honor of
Sam Bass Warner, Jr.,” Journal of Urban History 22, no. 5 (1996): 628. Henry C. Binford
has argued that the process of suburbanization took place earlier than Warner has argued
in Streetcar Suburbs. Henry C. Binford, The First Suburbs: Residential Communities on
the Boston Periphery, 1815–1860 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985). Carol A.
O’Connor, “Review Essay: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia,” Journal of Urban History 13,
no. 3 (1987): 354–361. David Ward, Cities and Immigrants: A Geography of Change in
Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 125–143.
18. The Washington Village section of South Boston was annexed in 1855. Roxbury

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 was annexed in 1867, Dorchester in 1869, and West Roxbury, Brighton, and Charleston
in 1873. Carroll D. Wright, The Social, Commercial, and Manufacturing Statistics of
the City of Boston, from the United States Census Returns for 1880, and from Original
Sources, with an Account of the Railroad and Shipping Facilities of the City (Boston:
Rockwell and Churchill, City Printers, 1882), 8.
19. Toward the end of the Moody campaign, the editor of the Catholic newspaper The
Pilot noted the “grand churches which are growing up in the city” and boasted that “it
is questionable if any city in the Union can now point to a finer group of new Catholic
churches than Boston.” “Holy Week in Boston,” The Pilot 40, 7 April 1877, 5. A few
months later Methodists also noticed (with alarm) the Catholic building projects at this
time. “Methodism in Boston,” Zion’s Herald 54, 16 August 1877, 260.
20. For an analysis of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross parish in this period see James
M. O’Toole, “Portrait of a Parish: Race, Ethnicity, and Class in Boston’s Cathedral of the
Holy Cross, 1865–1880,” in Boston’s Histories: Essays in Honor of Thomas H. O’ Connor,
ed. James M. O’Toole and David Quigley (Boston: Northeastern University Press,
2004).
21. Thomas H. O’Connor, Boston Catholics: A History of the Church and Its People
(Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998), 129–130, 162.
22. For a photograph of Mission Church in 1878 and the mudflats in the background
see Anthony Mitchell Sammarco, Images of America: Roxbury (Dover, N.H.: Arcadia
Publishing, 1997), 87.
23. Susan L. Emery, A Catholic Stronghold and Its Making: A History of St. Peter’s
Parish, Dorchester, Massachusetts, and of Its First Rector, the Rev. Peter Ronan, P.R.
(Boston: Geo. H. Ellis, 1910).
24. Henry K. Carroll, The Religious Forces of the United States: Enumerated, Classified,
and Described; Returns for 1900 and 1910 Compared with the Government Census of
1890; Condition and Characteristics of Christianity in the United States: Revised and
Brought Down to 1910 (New York: Scribner, 1912), 407, 414–415.
25. Also worthy of note was the construction of a new building for Old South (Trinitarian)
Congregational Church completed in December of 1875, the same month as the Cathedral
of the Holy Cross. Old South is located just a block away from Trinity Church.
26. Gillis J. Harp, Brahmin Prophet: Phillips Brooks and the Path of Liberal
Protestantism (Lanham, Md.: Rowan & Littlefield, 2003), 86.
27. Stephen H. Tyng was a part of the Niagara Bible Conference movement and was
an advocate of premillennialism. A few years earlier, James Freeman Clarke’s church
was purchased by a Methodist preacher, the Reverend Henry Morgan, with the financial
assistance of Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts William Claflin. The contributions
of Henry Morgan and William Claflin will be extensively discussed in the following
chapter. Walter Unger, “‘Earnestly Contending for the Faith’: The Role of the Niagara
Bible Conference in the Emergence of American Fundamentalism, 1875–1900” (Ph.D.
diss., Simon Fraser University, 1981), 256.
28. Harp, 89.
29. “Moody and Sankey; An Immense Evening Congregation; Sermon by Phillips
Brooks,” Boston Evening Journal, 20 March 1877.
30. The Boston tabernacle was somewhat less expensive and smaller than
the Chicago tabernacle, which had been constructed for a cost of approximately

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 $60,000. The total cost of the New York City revival was placed at $40,000. “Moody
and Sankey; Preparations for their Coming; Dedication of the Tabernacle,” Boston
Daily Journal, 26 January 1877, 2; “The Ten Commandments,” Boston Daily Globe,
27 April 1877, 2; Boston Morning Journal, 19 April 1876, 2; Darrel M. Robertson, The
Chicago Revival, 1876: Society and Revivalism in a Nineteenth-Century City, Studies
in Evangelicalism Series, ed. Kenneth E. Rowe and Donald W. Dayton (Metuchen,
N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1989), 84.
31. Harp, 88–89.
32. Boston Daily Journal, 24 January 1877.
33. Boston Daily Journal, 27 January 1877.
34. Ernest B. Gordon, Adoniram Judson Gordon: A Biography (New York:
Fleming H. Revell, 1896), 96–101. One hundred twenty-five persons were added to
the membership rolls in 1877, the greatest growth ever recorded for the church. Scott
M. Gibson, A. J. Gordon: American Premillennialist (Lanham, Md.: University Press
of America, 2001), 63.
35. Curtis Lee Laws is credited with coining the term “fundamentalist” for
religious conservatives in the early twentieth century.
36. Frances E. Willard, Glimpses of Fifty Years: The Autobiography of an American
Woman (Chicago: Woman’s Temperance Publication Association, 1889), 357–358.
37. “After the Revival,” Boston Daily Globe, 4 May 1877. For a recent account
of Willard’s contribution as an evangelist see Laceye C. Warner, Saving Women:
Retrieving Evangelistic Theology and Practice (Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press,
2007).
38. Wendy Hamand Venet, A Strong-Minded Woman: The Life of Mary Livermore
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005).
39. Willard, 359–361.
40. Willard later became a radical advocate for organized labor and Christian
socialism beginning in the mid-1880s. This will be discussed later in chapter 4.
41. “The Meeting at Faneuil Hall,” Boston Daily Globe, 14 February 1877, 5. For a
sympathetic account of the railroad workers’ struggle in the 1877 railroad strikes in
Boston and elsewhere see Robert V. Bruce, 1877: Year of Violence (Chicago: Elephant
Paperbacks, Ivan R. Dee, 1987), 35.
42. Boston Daily Globe, 9 February 1877.
43. With regard to the railroad strike of 1877 Darrel Robertson has argued that
the Moody and Sankey meetings in Chicago probably “hardened the response of
middle-class evangelicals to the strikers” since “Moody’s sermons reinforced existing
Protestant attitudes about political economy.” Robertson, 156.
44. Henry Morgan, “The Railroad of Life,” Boston Daily Globe, 13 August, 1877,
2. The connection Morgan makes between the abolitionist cause and the labor
movement was common for labor radicals in the period.
45. Report of the North End Mission (Boston: Press of Frank Wood, 1883). Tourjée
purchased the hotel with the funds he received from selling his own home in Auburndale.
Once it was refurbished, Tourjée and his family lived on the top floors of the former
hotel. Leo Eben Tourjée, “For God and Music: The Life Story of Eben Tourjée,
Father of the American Conservatory, 1960,” manuscript, p. 180, The Archives at The
New England Conservatory of Music, Boston, Mass.

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 46. The June 1869 Peace Jubilee, held to celebrate the end of the Civil War, was an
immense gathering. A coliseum that seated 50,000 individuals was erected in Boston’s
Back Bay, choir members from around the country were recruited, and orchestra
members came from Europe to perform at the event. One observer described the
gathering as follows: “The magnitude and costliness of the enterprise exceeded any
musical demonstration the modern world had ever witnessed.” The total cost of the event
was $281,426. Sarah B. Lawrence, “The Great Peace Jubilee of 1869,” in The Many Voices
of Boston: A Historical Anthology, 1630–1975, ed. Howard Mumford Jones and Bessie
Zaban Jones (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1975), 282. Tourjée, p. 112–142.
47. “The Weapons We Use on North Street,” The North Street Beacon Light, North
End Mission Records, Healey Library archives.
48. Boston Journal newspaper clipping, 3 April 1872, contained in Scrapbook of the
North End Mission, Healy Library archives.
49. “Words of Parting,” Boston Daily Globe, 30 April 1877.
50. Bruce J. Evensen, God’s Man for the Gilded Age: D. L. Moody and the Rise of
Modern Mass Evangelism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 178–179.
51. For a discussion of the Boston press’s coverage of Moody and their increase in
sales see ibid., 173.
52. Ibid., 169–171. One Boston Herald reporter also confessed that he had been saved
at a Moody meeting. James B. Dunn, Moody’s Talks on Temperance, with Anecdotes
and Incidents in Connection with the Tabernacle Work in Boston (New York: National
Temperance Society and Publishing House, 1877), 153.
53. Gibson, 64.
54. Arthur Warren Smith, Baptist Situation of Boston Proper: A Survey of Historical
and Present Conditions (Boston: Griffith-Stillings Press, 1912), 19.
55. The term “institutional churches” was used to describe congregations in the 1890s
that offered a wide array of social services and special programs of a more secular nature
in order to attract members. Jonathan Dorn, “‘Our Best Gospel Appliances’: Institutional
Churches and the Emergence of Social Christianity in the South End of Boston, 1880–
1920” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1994), 34–35.
56. City Missionary Society, Sixty-first Annual Report of the City Missionary Society,
Boston, for the Year 1877 (Boston: Frank Wood, 1877), 10.
57. Samuel W. Dike, “A Study of New England Revivals,” American Journal of
Sociology 15, no. 3 (1909). 361–378.
58. Second Annual Report of the Evangelistic Association of New England, May 30,
1889, (Boston: Winship, Daniels, & Co., 1889).
59. The Boston Herald further claimed that the costs for the event fell on the city
churches while the benefits mainly accrued to the suburban ones. Evensen, 176.
60. Minutes of the Seventy-Eighth Session of the New England Annual Conference of
the Methodist Episcopal Church, held at Common-Street Church, Lynn, April 4–11, 1877
(Boston: James P. Magee, 1877), 29.
61. Minutes of the Seventy-Ninth Session of the New England Annual Conference
of the Methodist Episcopal Church, held at Westfield, Mass., April 3–10, 1878 (Boston:
James P. Magee, 1878), 47.
62. Atkinson, 487; Dike, 365. The methodologically problematic calculation of
statistics by Dike in 1909 led Bruce Evensen to similarly underestimate the effect of

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 the Moody campaign of 1877 on the Methodists of Boston and surrounding eastern
Massachusetts towns. Evensen, 180.
63. Findlay, 271–272. Darrel Robertson’s study of the Moody revival in Chicago
confirmed Findlay’s findings although without finding much of a positive benefit for
Methodists in that city. Robertson, 148–150.
64. A small chapel and the adjacent parsonage, however, were completed during the
summer of 1877 as the first phase of construction for People’s Church at the intersection
of Columbus and Berkeley. It was estimated at this time that the People’s Methodist
Episcopal Church building would cost approximately $50,000. Minutes of the Seventy-
Eighth Session of the New England Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church,
held at Common-Street Church, Lynn, April 4–11, 1877 (Boston: James P. Magee, 1877),
29.
65. James Dunn in J. W. Hamilton, The People’s Church: A Full Account of the
Exercises at the Laying of the Cornerstone, Corner of Columbus Ave. And Berkeley St.,
Boston, Monday Afternoon, 2 O’clock, May 28th, 1877 (Boston: James P. Magee, 1877),
32. After the Boston campaign was completed at the end of April 1877, Moody visited
smaller towns in New England and thus was near enough to the city to come for the
cornerstone-laying ceremony.
66. James Dunn in ibid.
67. “Catholic Missions,” The Pilot, 17 February 1877, 5. The concurrent holding of
revivals by Catholics and Protestants in this period has also been noted by Bruce C.
Nelson, “Revival and Upheaval: Religion, Irreligion, and Chicago’s Working Class
in 1886,” Journal of Social History 25 (Winter 1991): 243–244. The similarities and
differences between Catholic and Protestant revivalism have been discussed by Jay P.
Dolan, Catholic Revivalism: The American Experience, 1830–1900 (Notre Dame, Ind.:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1978).
68. Henry Morgan, Boston inside Out: A Story of Real Life (Boston: American Citizen
Co., 1895), 6–7.

chapter two
The Early Years of Evangelical Institution Building, 1858–1883
1. Howard Mumford Jones, The Age of Energy: Varieties of American Experience,
1865–1915 (New York: Viking Press, 1971).
2. Sargent Bush, “The Pulpit Artistry of Father Taylor: An 1836 Account,” American
Literature 50, no. 1 (1978); Allan MacDonald, “A Sailor among the Transcendentalists,”
New England Quarterly 8, no. 3 (1935).
3. John Corrigan, Business of the Heart: Religion and Emotion in the Nineteenth
Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 22.
4. Henry Morgan, Music Hall Discourses, Miscellaneous Sketches, Ministerial Notes,
and Prison Incidents. Also, Song of Creation, a Poem. To Which Is Added a Sketch of
His Life, 2nd enlarged ed. (Boston: H. V. Degen and Son, 1860), xvii. Henry Morgan,
Shadowy Hand; or, Life Struggles. A Story of Real Life, 7th ed., extra chapters ed.
(Boston: Shawmut Publishing Company, 1883), 107. Morgan also preached a temperance
sermon at the Baptists’ Tremont Temple and visited almshouses and hospitals in the
city.

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 5. Morgan, Shadowy Hand, 205–206.
6. Ibid., 213.
7. Henry Morgan, The Fallen Priest, Story Founded on Fact; Key and Sequel to Boston
inside Out, 3rd ed. (Boston: Shawmut Publishing Co., 1883), preface.
8. A thousand dollars would have been at least double the annual salary of a common
laborer.
9. Morgan, Shadowy Hand, 226.
10. Kathryn Teresa Long, The Revival of 1857–58: Interpreting an American Religious
Awakening (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 66.
11. Morgan, Shadowy Hand, 244–245.
12. Ibid., 245. Sixteen years earlier, Kirk had also written Plea for the Poor, which
emphasized the importance for the church to focus more on the poor. Kirk’s Mt. Vernon
Congregational Church was one of the more revivalistic Congregationalist churches in
the city at this time. Kirk’s interest in revivalism and social reform would have made
Morgan an appealing colleague for Kirk. Edward N. Kirk, Plea for the Poor (Boston:
Tappan and Dennett, 1843). Heather D. Curtis, “Visions of Self, Success, and Society
among Young Men in Antebellum Boston,” Church History 73, no. 3 (2004): 617.
13. Ivan D. Steen, “Ministering to the Poor of Boston: The Work of the Reverend
Henry Morgan,” in Massachusetts in the Gilded Age: Selected Essays, ed. Jack Tager and
John W. Ifkovic (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1985), 200.
14. Morgan, Shadowy Hand, 260. Huntington struggled with his Unitarian beliefs
throughout his five years at Harvard University. He wrote a Trinitarian orthodox
confession of faith in December of 1859, just a few months after hearing Morgan’s Music
Hall discourses. Arria S. Huntington, Memoir and Letters of Frederic Dan Huntington
(Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1906), 164.
15. Morgan, Shadowy Hand, 262.
16. Morgan, Music Hall Discourses, 12.
17. Morgan, however, identified no Methodist clergy on the list of clergy endorsements
at the end of the Music Hall Discourses. In 1864, however, the editor of the Methodists’
Zion’s Herald, Rev. Gilbert Haven, was favorably disposed toward Morgan’s Union
Mission Society. Henry Morgan, Fourth Anniversary Celebration of the Boston Union
Mission Society, in Franklin School Building, January 17, 1864. Report by the Pastor,
Rev. Henry Morgan, and Addresses by Gov. Andrew, Judge Russell, and Hon. Josiah
Quincy, Jr. Also Addresses to Newsboys, by Ex-Mayor Wightman, Wendell Phillips, and
J. D. Philbrick, Esq. (Boston: Henry W. Duton and Son, 1864).
18. Methodist growth in New England was a matter of growing concern for the
religious establishment in the 1830s. Maura Jane Farrelly, “God Is the Author of Both:
Science, Religion, and the Intellectualization of American Methodism,” Church History
77, no. 3 (2008): 663.
19. Corrigan, 249. Timothy L. Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform: American
Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1957), 20–21. The exponential growth of Methodism in the early republic, however, had
waned considerably by this time. See David Hempton, Methodism: Empire of the Spirit
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 212.
20. In the 1890s, the Franklin School was located on Waltham Street near Tremont
Street. Its earlier Washington Street location is mentioned in “Organization of Morgan

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 Memorial, December, 1861 as related by Rev. Henry Morgan” published in the Boston
Sunday Herald, 19 April 1863, Box 1, Morgan Memorial Church Records, Boston
University School of Theology Library, Boston, Mass.
21. Morgan, Fourth Anniversary Celebration of the Boston Union Mission Society,
1–11.
22. Corrigan, 20.
23. Morgan, Fourth Anniversary Celebration of the Boston Union Mission Society, 5.
24. This denomination is described by Timothy Smith as having been founded in
the New York vicinity during the Civil War by Hiram Mattison and other Methodist
Episcopal clergymen who desired a return to a more primitive Methodism, work among
the poor, and greater allowance for lay representation in church governance. Smith, 165.
“Organization of Morgan Memorial, December 1861: As Related by Rev. Henry Morgan,”
reprint from Boston Sunday Herald, 19 April 1863, Morgan Memorial Church Records,
Box 1, Folder 1, Boston University School of Theology Library. Morgan’s church sent
delegates to St. John’s Methodist Church in New York for a meeting of the Independent
Methodists. Previously, the Independent Methodist Church has been described as
a denomination founded by Morgan and the Boston Union Mission Society alone
without an awareness of its existence beyond Morgan’s own church. Steen, 201. Hiram
Mattison was an opponent of Phoebe Palmer throughout the 1850s and believed that
her “shorter way” of holiness was too easy and involved “mere consecration” rather than
an “essential change” by the Holy Spirit. Charles Edward White, The Beauty of Holiness:
Phoebe Palmer as Theologian, Revivalist, Feminist, and Humanitarian (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan Publishing House, Francis Asbury Press, 1986), 53.
25. Morgan, Fourth Anniversary Celebration of the Boston Union Mission Society, 11.
26. Henry Morgan, Ned Nevins, the News Boy; or, Street Life in Boston, 4th ed.
(Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1867), 7. Daily Evening Voice, 13 April 1867, 1.
27. Morgan, Ned Nevins, 5.
28. Consumption was the leading cause of death in the United States after the Civil
War until 1909. It was sometimes referred to as the Great White Plague. Oscar Handlin
has documented the correlation between a higher tuberculosis death rate and increased
population density of neighborhoods in the city of Boston in 1865. Willis Barnes, The
Great White Plague, Consumption: Cause, Treatment, Prevention (New York: Willis
Barnes, 1897); Oscar Handlin, Boston’s Immigrants, 1790–1880: A Study in Acculturation
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1991), 254.
29. Morgan, Fourth Anniversary Celebration of the Boston Union Mission Society,
11.
30. Morgan, Ned Nevins, 165–166.
31. “Organization of Morgan Memorial, December 1861: As Related by Rev. Henry
Morgan,” reprint from Boston Sunday Herald, 19 April, 1863. Morgan Memorial Church
Records, Box 1, Boston University School of Theology Library. Henry Morgan, “Letter
from Henry Morgan to Miss Alice Baker, 1870,” collection of Massachusetts literary
letters, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Mass.
32. Julia Ward Howe also preached at Morgan’s church. Morgan, “Letter from
Henry Morgan to Miss Alice Baker, 1870,” collection of Massachusetts literary letters,
Massachusetts Historical Society. Wendy Hamand Venet, A Strong-Minded Woman: The
Life of Mary Livermore (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005).

192 · Notes to Pages 37–39

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 33. Philip L. Giles, “A Millennium Denied: Northern Methodists and Workers, 1865–
1886,” Methodist History 26, no. 1 (1987): 33.
34. The still-extant Claflin building—named after the governor and other prominent
members of the Claflin family—stands across the street from the Massachusetts State
House at 20 Beacon Street.
35. William Claflin, Address of His Excellency William Claflin to the Two Branches
of the Legislature of Massachusetts, January 7, 1871 (Boston: Wright & Potter, State
Printers, 1871), 67. This rare document is held in the pamphlet collection at Boston
University School of Theology Library.
36. Charles Sidney Ensign, “Hon. William Claflin, Ll.D.,” New England Historical
and Genealogical Register 61 (April 1907): 114.
37. Morgan, Shadowy Hand, 323.
38. Ivan D. Steen, “Cleansing the Puritan City: The Reverend Henry Morgan’s Antivice
Crusade in Boston,” New England Quarterly 54, no. 3 (1981): 409–410.
39. Morgan, Shadowy Hand, iv.
40. Morgan, The Fallen Priest, unpaginated back matter.
41. The School of Theology, the School of Medicine, the College of Music, and the
School of Law were all in operation by 1873. Kathleen Kilgore, Transformations: A
History of Boston University (Boston: Boston University, 1991), 32–42.
42. Today, the three dormitories overlooking the athletic fields on Boston University’s
campus are named after these three individuals.
43. Donald B. Marti, “Laymen, Bring Your Money: Lee Claflin, Methodist
Philanthropist, 1791–1871,” Methodist History 14, no. 3 (1976).
44. Ibid., 176. Ensign, 112.
45. Neil Harris, “The Gilded Age Revisited: Boston and the Museum Movement,”
American Quarterly 14, no. 4 (1962): 545–566.
46. Peter C. Holloran, Boston’s Wayward Children: Social Services for Homeless
Children, 1830–1930 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1994), 125. Sleeper was
identified as one of the first prominent supporters of Charles Cullis’s Consumptives’
Home. Charles Cullis, A Work of Faith. History of the Consumptives’ Home, Nos. 4 & 6
Vernon Street, and the First Annual Report, to September 30, 1865; with an Introduction
by Rev. F. D. Huntington, D.D., and Rev. E. N. Kirk, D.D., Vol. 1 (Boston: J. E. Farwell
and Co., 1868).
47. Holloran, 73.
48. Richard Morgan Cameron, Boston University School of Theology, 1839–1968
(Boston: Boston University School of Theology, 1968), 21.
49. Cited in Kilgore, 44.
50. Margaret Lamberts Bendroth, Fundamentalists in the City: Conflict and Division
in Boston’s Churches, 1885–1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
51. William Claflin cited in Marti, 165.
52. S. W. Coggeshall, “Methodism in the Cities,” Zion’s Herald 54, 5 April 1877, 106.
53. Cameron, 22. Ronald C. White, Liberty and Justice for All: Racial Reform and the
Social Gospel, 1877–1925 (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1990), 119–120.
54. “Dr. and Mrs. Daniel Steele: Golden Anniversary,” Zion’s Herald, 8 August 1900,
1001. At Binney’s death in 1878, it was said that his Compendium had reached a circulation
of forty thousand copies in the English language alone. By 1878 it had been translated

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 into six languages including Arabic, Chinese, German, Swedish, Bulgarian, and Spanish.
Minutes of the Seventy-Ninth Session of the New England Annual Conference of the
Methodist Episcopal Church, held at Westfield, Massachusetts, April 3–10, 1878 (Boston:
James P. Magee, 1878), 44.
55. Daniel Steele, Love Enthroned: Essays on Evangelical Perfection (New York:
Nelson & Phillips, 1875), 129. This excerpt also demonstrates Steele’s own argument
against Calvinist theologians and their belief in a “limited atonement,” namely, the belief
that Jesus Christ’s redemption has only been intended for a limited number of chosen
individuals.
56. Holloran, 33.
57. “The Pecuniary Value of a Child,” Little Wanderers Advocate, April 1865, 59. Home
for Little Wanderers administrative offices, Boston, Mass.
58. Holloran, 14. Recent scholarship on the history of child welfare in Boston includes
the following: Matthew A. Crenson, Building the Invisible Orphanage: A Prehistory of
the American Welfare System (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998); Susan S.
Walton, To Preserve the Faith: Catholic Charities in Boston, 1870–1930 (New York:
Garland, 1993).
59. It was a Christian worker from the Howard Mission who may have been responsible
for the reform of a drunkard named Jeremiah McAuley, who went on to become “one
of the most important founders of the modern rescue mission movement.” Norris
Magnuson, Salvation in the Slums: Evangelical Social Work, 1865–1920 (Metuchen,
N.J.: Scarecrow Press and the American Theological Library Association, 1977), 9. A
detailed account of McAuley’s conversion to evangelical Christianity is found in R. M.
Offord, ed., Jerry McAuley: His Life and Work with Introduction by the Rev. S. Irenaeus
Prime, D.D. And Personal Sketches by A. S. Hatch, Esq., 2nd ed. (New York: New York
Observer, 1885), 9–19.
60. Holloran, 125, 275. Little Wanderers Advocate, February 1865, 19–21. Early
volumes of the Little Wanderers Advocate are available at the current administrative
offices of the Home for Little Wanderers, 271 Huntington Ave., Boston, Mass. At the
time of writing, however, plans were being made to ship the materials to the Healey
Library at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. An earlier organization, the North
Street Mission in the North End, also merged with the Home for Little Wanderers in
these early years. The North Street Mission appears to have been a nonsectarian mission
led by persons of different Protestant backgrounds. It was founded during the revival
year of 1858, but the details of its history appear to have been lost. George S. Hale, “The
Charities of Boston and Contributions to the Distressed of Other Parts,” in The Memorial
History of Boston, Including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630–1880, ed. Justin
Winsor (Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1881), 673.
61. The Boston Female Asylum and the Boston Children’s Aid Society both benefited
from Brahmin support. Holloran, 125. The dean of Boston philanthropy in this period
was Robert Treat Paine, who was also director of the Boston Children’s Aid Society and
president of Associated Charities. Holloran, 56–57.
62. Second Annual Report of the Evangelistic Association of New England, May 30,
1889 (Boston: Winship, Daniels, & Co., 1889).
63. Holloran, 75.
64. The Home for Destitute Catholic Children also opened in 1864. Holloran, 91.

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 65. Walton, 49–50. Methodist preacher Rev. Silas S. Cummins worked at the home
beginning in 1868 as missionary agent. He served the organization for more than two
decades and was primarily responsible for organizing “orphan trains” from Boston to the
American West.
66. Holloran, 151.
67. The First Baptist Church of Boston was established in Charlestown in 1665. The
Second Baptist Church in the North End and subsequently known as the Baldwin-Place
Church was established in 1743. In the late nineteenth century the Baptists only had a
Seamen’s Bethel in the North End, which had been in operation since 1843. In 1864 the
Baptist Bethel relocated to a larger church still in the North End on Hanover Street. This
move was made possible partly by the considerable fund-raising work done by Baptist
women in the Boston area. The Methodists founded their seamen’s mission in North
Square in 1828. Henry A. Cooke, Phineas Stowe and Bethel Work (Boston: James H.
Earle, 1874), 308–328.
68. Minutes of the Seventy-Fifth Session of the New England Annual Conference of
the Methodist Episcopal Church, held at Trinity M. E. Church (Charlestown), Boston
(Boston: James P. Magee, 1874), 55. The New England Annual Conference also organized
an apparently short-lived Wesleyan Home for Orphans and Destitute Children in 1884.
Cooper is identified in the pastoral record as appointed to the home. The still-extant
Hattie B. Cooper Community Center in Roxbury is named after Varnum A. Cooper’s
daughter. Official Minutes and Pastoral Record of the Eighty-Eighth Session of the New
England Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church (Boston: James P. Magee,
1887), 120. Hattie B. Cooper, “History of the New England Conference Society,” in Annual
Report and Thirty-fifth Anniversary of the New England Conference Woman’s Home
Missionary Society, 1915–1916 (Boston: Woman’s Home Missionary Society, 1916).
69. Nineteenth Annual Report and Quarterly Advocate, May 1884 17, no. 9, 178.
Home for Little Wanderers administrative offices, Boston, Mass.
70. Twenty-fourth Annual Report and Quarterly Advocate 23, no. 2. Home for Little
Wanderers administrative offices.
71. Sarah Deutsch, Women and the City: Gender, Space, and Power in Boston, 1870–
1940 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 89–90.
72. Minutes of the Seventy-Sixth Session of the New England Annual Conference of
the Methodist Episcopal Church held at State-Street Church, Springfield, April 7–14, 1875
(Boston: James P. Magee, 1875), 37.
73. The precise location of Charles Cullis’s Fulton Street Mission (established in 1878
and discussed below) is not known, but the street’s location was just to the east of the
Lewis Street Mission identified in figure 2.1. The street identified as “Methodist Alley”
on the map is the location of the first Methodist Episcopal Church established in Boston
in 1795.
74. Undated letter, North End Mission Scrapbook, Healey Library archives, University
of Massachusetts at Boston, Boston, Mass.
75. Leo Eben Tourjée, “For God and Music: The Life Story of Eben Tourjée, Father
of the American Conservatory, 1960,” manuscript, The Archives at The New England
Conservatory of Music, Boston, Mass.
76. Ibid., 39–40.
77. Tourjée’s biographer states that this event occurred in June of 1868. However, the

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 meeting minutes for the Hanover Street Mission and North End Mission first identify
Tourjée’s involvement as the new superintendent of the Sunday School at the mission in
February 1868. The time of Clark’s sermon was most likely June of 1867. as this was also
the time when the Boston Methodists were organizing the Boston Sunday School and
Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Records of the Boston Methodist
Home Missionary Association, Boston University School of Theology Library.
78. Tourjée, 143.
79. The North End Mission 1 (January 1872): 15. North End Mission records, Healey
Library archives.
80. Undated newspaper clipping probably from 1870 or 1871. Scrapbook of the North
End Mission compiled by Eben Tourjée. North End Mission records, Healey Library
archives.
81. North End Mission Annual Meeting Minutes, 25 January 1869. North End
Mission Records, Healey Library archives. For a biography of Gilbert Haven see William
Gravely, Gilbert Haven, Methodist Abolitionist: A Study in Race, Religion, and Reform,
1850–1880 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1973).
82. North End Mission meeting minutes, 3 May 1869. The cooperation between the
North End Mission and the Home for Little Wanderers even led them to be the shared
target of a criminal who claimed to be raising funds for the two organizations but was
charged with swindling people out of their money for his own use. Scrapbook of the
North End Mission.
83. The annual report stated that the recently concluded Civil War had caused a
gender disparity of 100,000 more women than men in the population of Massachusetts.
It noted the tendency of women to be “[d]riven by scarcity of work from the country
to the city, under the impression that here they will find better social advantages.” The
annual report indicated that women who completed the sewing training were able to
earn significantly higher wages. The Boston North End Mission (Boston: Alfred Mudge
& Son, 1871), 7, 9. Healey Library archives.
84. An 8 October 1868 letter from Mrs. Claflin addressed to Tourjée stated that it
“would be impossible for me to have any official connection with the Industrial School.”
Apparently a change of heart had occurred by the 25 January 1869 annual meeting as
Mrs. Claflin is identified as President of the Industrial School along with a board entirely
comprised of women. Scrapbook of the North End Mission.
85. Scrapbook of the North End Mission. The rate of crime in Boston reached an
all-time high in 1875–1878. For an analysis of Boston police arrest reports between 1849
and 1951 see Theodore N. Ferdinand, “The Criminal Patterns of Boston since 1849,” The
American Journal of Sociology 73, no. 1 (1967).
86. Boston Journal newspaper clipping, 3 April 1872, contained in Scrapbook of the
North End Mission.
87. The North End Mission Magazine 1 (April 1872): 28. Healey Library archives.
Music Hall was located just a block away from Tremont Temple, Park Street Church, and
Bromfield Street Methodist Episcopal Church near the Boston Common.
88. “Our Mount Hope Estate,” The North End Mission Magazine 2 (July 1873): 85. In
later years this would also house the Mount Hope Home for Orphan Boys that Tourjée
established. Tourjée, p. 148.
89. “The Peril and the Refuge,” The North End Mission Magazine 1 (July 1872): 38–39.

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 90. “About Home Matters: The Portuguese: The Work of Relief—the School of the
North End Mission,” Boston Post, 8 March 1873, contained in Scrapbook of the North
End Mission; “Work of the Mission among the Portuguese under the direction of Mrs. L.
E. Caswell,” North Street Beacon Light (Boston: Alfred Mudge & Son, 1874), 48. The Irish
who dominated the North End at that time were deemed more resistant than some of the
smaller immigrant groups. In the late 1880s, as Italian immigration patterns increased,
the North End Mission also employed an Italian-speaking missionary and held an Italian
Sunday School. Report of the Boston North End Mission, January (Boston: Daniel Gunn
& Co., 1889), 10.
91. Jesse Jones, “Editorial Notes,” Equity: A Journal of Christian Labor Reform 2, no.
5 (1875): 20.
92. Tourjée, 148.
93. This organization was first named the Boston Sunday School and Missionary
Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. It was only after 1873 that it was known as
the Boston Missionary and Church Extension Society.
94. Minutes from 3 February 1868, Records of the Boston Methodist Home Missionary
Association, Boston University School of Theology Library.
95. Daniel Dorchester, “The Methodist Episcopal Church, Its Origin, Growth, and
Offshoots in Suffolk County,” in The Memorial History of Boston, Including Suffolk
County, Massachusetts, 1630–1880, ed. Justin Winsor (Boston: James R. Osgood and
Company, 1881), 441.
96. Scrapbook of the North End Mission.
97. Report of the Boston North End Mission (Boston: L. F. Lawrence & Co, 1876).
98. Methodist Episcopal churches gave only ten dollars to the mission in 1882. Rev.
L. B. Bates was an accomplished Methodist Episcopal evangelist, holiness movement
advocate, Charles Cullis supporter, and pastor in the New England Annual Conference.
Report of the Boston North End Mission (Boston: Press of Frank Wood, 1883).
99. Report of the Boston North End Mission (Boston: Daniel Gunn & Co., 1892).
100. Annual Report of the Boston North End Mission for the Year 1902 (Boston: The
Garden Press, 1903).
101. Tourjée has been credited as a leader in the conservatory system for music
education in America and served as the first president of the Music Teachers National
Association when it was organized in 1876. James A. Keene, A History of Music Education
in the United States (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1982), 279–280.
Tourjée, 112–142.
102. Kilgore, 56.
103. Figure 2.2 is from Sally Ann Kydd, Boston University, The Campus History
Series (Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Publishing, 2002), 30.
104. Report of the North End Mission (Boston: Press of Frank Wood, 1883). He
purchased the hotel with the funds he received from selling his own home in Auburndale.
Once the former hotel was refurbished, Tourjée and his family lived on the top floors.
Tourjée, p. 180.
105. Tourjée’s Educational Excursions to Europe Including all Traveling Expenses:
Seventh Season, pamphlet published in 1884, Microfilm 204, The Archives at The New
England Conservatory of Music.
106. Tourjée, p. 206.

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 107. Lizzie S. Tourjée, “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy,” in United Methodist
Hymnal: Book of United Methodist Worship (Nashville: United Methodist Publishing
House, 1989).
108. Charles Cullis, Sixteenth Annual Report of the Consumptives’ Home and other
Institutions Connected with A Work of Faith to September 30, 1880 (Boston: Willard
Tract Repository, 1880), 56–57.
109. Paul G. Chappell, “The Divine Healing Movement in America” (Ph.D. diss.,
Drew University, 1983), 106.
110. In November 1871 the Massachusetts Medical Society brought charges against
eight physicians at the Massachusetts Homeopathic Hospital. One of the effects of this
fight between traditional medical doctors and practitioners of homeopathy was that there
was increased support for the homeopathic physicians and their alternative techniques.
Cullis’s vigorous advocacy of faith-healing practices in the years following 1873 would have
found encouragement from this controversy. Jonathan R. Baer, “Perfectly Empowered
Bodies: Divine Healing in Modernizing America” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 2002), 57.
When Boston University’s School of Medicine opened in 1873, it did so with the faculty
from the Massachusetts Homeopathic Hospital. The Massachusetts Female Medical
College also merged with the new Boston University School of Medicine at this time. As
a result, one-third of the students in the first class were female, a very high percentage
for the time but also indicative of a movement that was trying to carve out a niche for
healing techniques that were different from traditional medicine. Kilgore.
111. This debate was initiated by British physicist John Tyndall, who called for an
experiment whereby patients in one hospital ward would receive prayer while patients in
another ward would not. The uproar that this proposal caused led J. O. Means to publish
a book in 1876 titled simply The Prayer Gauge Debate. Means was a Cullis supporter at
the time. Baer, 58.
112. Harriet A. Robeson, Emmanuel Church in the City of Boston, 1860–1960: The
First Hundred Years (Boston: privately printed, 1960), 8.
113. Walter Muir Whitehill and Lawrence W. Kennedy, Boston: A Topographical
History, 3rd, enlarged ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 2000).
Cullis’s pew rent receipts for Emmanuel Church (Episcopal) began in March of 1861. In
previous years one finds pew rent receipts from Grace Church (Episcopal). Charles Cullis
papers, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass. For information on Emmanuel
Church’s work among the poor and the philanthropic spirit of the 1870s see “Reports
to the Parish Association of Emmanuel Church,” American Antiquarian Society. The
Honorable Alexander H. Rice, a prominent member of Emmanuel Church’s vestry in
the late 1860s and early 1870s, was a public supporter of Charles Cullis in 1864. He also
served on the board of trustees for Eben Tourjée’s New England Conservatory. Tourjée,
303–304. Emmanuel Church Vestry Minutes, local church records, Emmanuel Church
(Episcopal), Boston, Mass.
114. Emmanuel Church, Boston, Rector’s Records, 1860, Emmanuel Church. The
same record book also identifies Rev. Huntington as presiding at a wedding between
Elizabeth A. Cullis and Charles H. Hopkins on September 28, 1865. Charles Cullis’s
name does not appear in the vestry records of the 1860s or 1870s.
115. For a full account of Cullis’s experience of entire sanctification see S. Olin

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 Garison, ed., Forty Witnesses: Covering the Whole Range of Christian Experience (New
York: Phillips & Hunt, 1888), 220–222.
116. Charles Cullis, The Tenth Annual Report of the Consumptives Home, and Other
Institutions Connected with A Work of Faith, to September 30, 1874 (Boston: Willard
Tract Repository, 1874), 91.
117. W. H. Daniels, Dr. Cullis and His Work (New York: Garland Publishing, 1985),
259.
118. Allen C. Guelzo, For the Union of Evangelical Christendom: The Irony of the
Reformed Episcopalians (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994),
56. Allen C. Guelzo, “Ritual, Romanism, and Rebellion: The Disappearance of the
Evangelical Episcopalians,” Anglican and Episcopal History 62, no. 4 (1993): 573,
576. Allen Guelzo argues that Episcopal historiography has substantially minimized
the nineteenth-century fight between evangelicals and liberals in that denomination,
preferring instead to promote a “myth of synthesis.” Gillis J. Harp, Brahmin Prophet:
Phillips Brooks and the Path of Liberal Protestantism (Lanham, Md.: Rowman &
Littlefield, 2003), 79–89. Harp argues that Brooks was more of a liberal than previous
scholars have maintained and notes how Trinity’s architecture sent a clear message that
he was not in wholehearted agreement with the evangelicals in his denomination.
119. F. D. Huntington remained a bishop in the Episcopal Church but also contributed
articles to periodicals such as the Palmers’ Guide to Holiness, where he seemed to advocate
for the Reformed Episcopal Church’s methods if not its schismatic move. “Possibly
God wants in His Church, just now, the fiery inspiration of uncalculating zeal, and a
fearless faith, more than mathematical proportions or a faultlessly-adjusted scheme.” F.
D. Huntington, “Miscellaneous Gatherings: Wet the Ropes,” Guide to Holiness (March
1880): 92.
120. James M. Gray, “The Memory of the Just Is Blessed.”: A Sermon Preached in the
First Reformed Episcopal Church in Boston, (Somerset St. Near Beacon,) by the Pastor,
Rev. James M. Gray, November 14, 1880, in Memory of Rev. Samuel Cutler, Founder and
First Pastor of That Church (Boston: J. W. Robinson, 1880), 9–10. By November of 1877
Cutler formally severed ties with the Protestant Episcopal Church and founded the first
Reformed Episcopal Church of Boston at 12 Somerset Street. This was just a few doors
down from Charles Cullis’s home on 16 Somerset Street. The 12 Somerset Street address
in 1882 became Boston University’s College of Liberal Arts. Kilgore, 64–65. Gray’s funeral
sermon notes that Cutler also occasionally served at the North End Mission.
121. Daniels, 121. Cullis remained as pastor of the Grove Hall Church until 1880, at
which point he assumed the pastorate at his Beacon Hill church. Cullis’s Grove Hall
Church merged with Highlands Methodist Episcopal Church in 1900 and was renamed
Greenwood Memorial in 1913. Boston Church Records finding aid, Boston University
School of Theology Library.
122. Nicholson became a bishop in the Reformed Episcopal Church in 1876. He later
became an active participant in the prophecy conferences of the 1880s and 1890s. It
is likely that his premillennial ideas were influential in bringing James M. Gray into
the Reformed Episcopal Church. First a Boston pastor and friend of A. J. Gordon,
James M. Gray almost succeeded Gordon as pastor of Clarendon Street Baptist
Church after Gordon’s death, but he refused the call when it came. Gray would instead

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 become superintendent of Moody’s Chicago Bible Institute and pastor of Moody Church
beginning in 1899. Guelzo, For the Union of Evangelical Christendom, 210–211. John
D. Hannah, “James Martin Gray, 1851–1935: His Life and Work” (Th.D. diss., Dallas
Theological Seminary, 1974); William McGuire King, “Denominational Modernization
and Religious Identity: The Case of the Methodist Episcopal Church,” in Perspectives
on American Methodism: Interpretive Essays, ed. Kenneth E. Rowe Russell E.
Richey, and Jean Miller Schmidt (Nashville: Abingdon Press, Kingswood Books, 1993),
348.
123. By 1875 Charles Cullis and his wife do not appear as supporters of the “Parish
Association” at Emmanuel Church that was involved in urban mission outreach efforts
in Boston. Membership in that association simply required a two-dollar donation.
Cullis’s lack of involvement in this group at his former parish suggests he had for all
practical purposes separated himself from active involvement at Emmanuel Church.
His leadership of Sunday morning worship services would have resulted in a kind of de
facto separation as well. “Reports to the Parish Association of Emmanuel Church,” 1875,
Emmanuel Church records, American Antiquarian Society.
124. The Brighton Street Mission was founded in June of 1877. Up until that time
Cullis’s pastor had continued to provide Sunday worship at the Consumptives’ Home.
Vinton had natural affinities for Cullis’s work, as he had left the medical profession
to enter the Episcopal priesthood. Vinton was also a lifelong friend of the Reverend
Phillips Brooks. Vinton resigned from Emmanuel Church at the end of 1877. Brooks’s
involvement in the Cullis institutions was always marginal and appears to have ceased
by 1875. Thirteenth Annual Report of the Consumptives Home and Other Institutions
connected with a work of faith, to September 30, 1877 (Boston: Willard Tract Repository,
1877). Raymond W. Albright, Focus on Infinity: A Life of Phillips Brooks (New York:
Macmillan, 1961), 17. Daniels, 242. Robeson, 16.
125. Twenty-first Annual Report (Boston: Willard Tract Repository, 1885), 50.
126. Cited in Gray, 10.
127. An 1888 recounting of Cullis’s experience of entire sanctification still identifies
him as an Episcopalian. Garison, ed., 220–222.
128. The dominant denominational representation at the dedication ceremonies
for the founding of the Consumptives’ Home was Baptist and Congregationalist. The
Reverend E. N. Kirk (Congregationalist), the Reverend J. D. Fulton of Tremont Temple
Baptist, the Reverend O. T. Walker of Bowdoin Square Baptist, the Reverend G. W.
Gardiner of the Baptist church in Charlestown, and the Reverend Hague of Charles
Street Baptist all spoke at the dedication event. Only a year later, at the dedication of a
second building, was there significant representation from the Episcopal Church in the
presence of the Reverend F. D. Huntington and the Emmanuel Church choir.
129. The Seventeenth Annual Report of the Consumptives Home and other Institutions
Connected with A Work of Faith to September 30, 1881 (Boston: Willard Tract Repository,
1881), 117–121. The Willard Tract Repository in 1881 alone raised $8,423, presumably
from book and tract sales.
130. George Müller, The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord’s Dealings with
George Mueller, Written by Himself (Boston: Gould and Lincoln, 1861). R. A. Torrey,
Essek William Kenyon, and others were also strongly influenced by Müller. Dale
Hawthorne Simmons, “The Postbellum Pursuit of Peace, Power, and Plenty: As Seen

200 · Notes to Pages 55–56

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 in the Writings of Essek William Kenyon” (Ph.D. diss., Drew University, 1990), 15. For
a discussion of Müller’s influence on A. T. Pierson see Dana L. Robert, Occupy until
I Come: A. T. Pierson and the Evangelization of the World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
2003), 103–108.
131. Cullis’s founding of an orphanage also was partly inspired by Müller, who, in
1862, expanded his orphanage in Bristol, which was soon caring for 2,050 orphans.
Simmons, 12.
132. Daniel Steele cited in Twelfth Annual Report of the Consumptives Home and
Other Institutions Connected with a Work of Faith, to September 30, 1876 (Boston:
Willard Tract Repository, 1876), 38–39. Steele’s relationship with Cullis did not seem
to have been bothered by Cullis’s association with persons who followed the teachings
of John Nelson Darby rather closely such as William R. Nicholson or A. J. Gordon.
As a layman and a Wesleyan holiness advocate Cullis was able to sidestep some of the
theological sparring that was taking place between Steele and followers of the Plymouth
Brethren. For a theological analysis of some of the nuances within the holiness movement
see Myung Soo Park, “Concepts of Holiness in American Evangelicalism: 1835–1915”
(Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 1992).
133. Jesse Jones, “Editorial Notes,” Equity: A Journal of Christian Labor Reform 2,
no. 4 (1875): 16.
134. The Fifth Annual Report of the Consumptive’s Home, no. 11 Willard Street, and
other Institutions Connected with A Work of Faith to September 30, 1869 (Boston: A.
Williams and Co. 1869), 128.
135. Fliedner’s institutions bear a striking resemblance as well to the institutions
founded by August Hermann Francke in the early eighteenth century. Francke, in turn,
influenced the founding of John Wesley’s Orphan House at Newcastle and Whitefield’s
orphanage in Savannah, Georgia. Manfred Marquardt, John Wesley’s Social Ethics:
Praxis and Principles (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1992), 116. W. Reginald Ward, The
Protestant Evangelical Awakening (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press,
1992); Karl Zehrer, “ The Relationship between Pietism in Halle and Early Methodism,”
Methodist History 17, no. 4 (1979): 211–224.
136. Cullis provided a detailed account of his visit to the Kaiserswerth institutions
in his Times of Refreshing magazine. Charles Cullis, “A Visit to the Deaconess Work
at Kaiserswerth, June, 1873,” Times of Refreshing; or, Records of Christian Life and
Christian Testimony 5, no. 7 (1873): 97–100.
137. In fact, William Alfred Passavant, a Lutheran, had already established the first
American deaconess institution in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1850. Theodor Fliedner
and Wilhelm Löhe were among the leaders of the deaconess movement in Germany,
and both had sent deaconess missionaries to the United States prior to the Civil War.
Jeannine E. Olson, One Ministry Many Roles: Deacons and Deaconesses through the
Centuries (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1992), 253–271.
138. It appears that the first institution after Cullis to institute a deaconess office in
Boston was Episcopal Emmanuel Church. Parish Association records from 1875 identify
deaconesses who are part of that church’s philanthropic work. The Methodist Episcopal
Church utilized the ministry of deaconesses more than any other denomination in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. C. Golder, History of the Deaconess Movement
in the Christian Church (New York: Eaton and Mains, 1903); Sarah Sloan Kreutziger,

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 “Going on to Perfection: The Contributions of the Wesleyan Theological Doctrine of
Entire Sanctification to the Value Base of American Professional Social Work through
the Lives and Activities of Nineteenth Century Evangelical Women Reformers” (Ph.D.
diss., Tulane University, 1991).
139. Seventh Annual Report of the Consumptives Home, no. 11 Willard Street, and
other Institutions Connected with A Work of Faith to September 30, 1871 (Boston: Willard
Tract Repository, 1875). The modern deaconess movement began in the mid–nineteenth
century in Germany and focused on social work among the poor.
140. Seventeenth Annual Report of the Consumptives Home and other Institutions
Connected with A Work of Faith to September 30, 1881 (Boston: Willard Tract Repository,
1881), 63.
141. Daniels, 187.
142. Times of Refreshing; or, Records of Christian Life and Christian Testimony 5,
no. 7 (1873): 1.
143. Boardman’s Higher Christian Life and Hannah Whitall Smith’s Christian’s
Secret of a Happy Life were both very popular books and sold extremely quickly when
they were released. In 1872 the publishing volume of tracts was more than 500,000
copies. Chappell, 120. Melvin Dieter describes Boardman as “essentially a part of the
Wesleyan holiness movement” in spite of his efforts to resist Wesleyan terminology.
Melvin E. Dieter, The Holiness Revival of the Nineteenth Century (Metuchen, N.J.:
Scarecrow Press, 1980), 50. Roy Leonard Williams has argued with more convincing
evidence that Boardman’s views on holiness were a kind of “middle ground on which the
proponents of various holiness theologies could unite.” Such an assessment is consistent
with Boardman’s teaching role at Charles Cullis’s Faith Training College. Roy Leonard
Williams, “William Edwin Boardman (1810–1886): Evangelist of the Higher Christian
Life” (Ph.D. diss., Calvin Theological Seminary, 1998), 200.
144. Chappell, 104.
145. A. J. Gordon, The Ministry of Healing: Miracles of Cure in All Ages (Boston: H.
Gannett, 1882). Chappell, 224.
146. Scholars who have documented aspects of the history of faith healing in America
include the following: Baer; Chappell; Raymond J. Cunningham, “From Holiness
to Healing: The Faith Cure in America, 1872–1892,” Church History 43 (December
1974); Heather D. Curtis, Faith in the Great Physician: Suffering and Divine Healing
in American Culture, 1860–1900 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007);
Donald W. Dayton, “The Rise of the Evangelical Healing Movement in 19th Century
America,” Pneuma 4, no. 1 (1982); Robert Bruce Mullin, “The Debate over Religion and
Healing in the Episcopal Church, 1870–1930,” Anglican and Episcopal History 60, no. 2
(1991); Ronald L. Numbers and Darrel W. Amundsen, eds., Caring and Curing: Health
and Medicine in the Western Religious Traditions (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1986); Simmons. In order to accentuate other aspects of Cullis’s ministry, his
contribution to the faith-healing movement will not be extensively analyzed in this
study.
147. William McDonald and John E. Searles, The Life of Rev. John S. Inskip, President
of the National Association for the Promotion of Holiness (Chicago: Christian Witness
Company, 1885), 280.
148. The public’s excessive emphasis on Cullis’s faith-healing ministry was a problem

202 · Notes to Pages 57–58

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 even during Cullis’s lifetime and especially after Cullis’s publication of his book Faith
Cures in 1879. By the late 1880s individuals had to be reminded that faith healing was
only one dimension of Cullis’s work. Cunningham, 501.
149. Daniels, 221.
150. Kilgore, 64. Daniel Steele began serving as chairperson of the board of trustees
for the Faith Training College in 1875, the same year the college was first incorporated.
The Eleventh Annual Report of the Consumptives Home and other Institutions Connected
with A Work of Faith to September 30, 1875 (Boston: Willard Tract Repository, 1875).
151. Daniels, 360–361. Not everyone was pleased with the establishment of institutions
like the Faith Training College. During the late 1880s, in meetings of the Inter-Seminary
Missionary Alliance, such institutions were sometimes criticized by seminaries for their
relative lack of educational rigor. Inter-Seminary Alliance, American Inter-Seminary
Missionary Alliance Tenth Annual Convention, October 17th to 20th, 1889 (Cincinnati:
Elm Street Printing Co., 1889), 96.
152. William Boardman appears on the faculty list only in 1875. Charles Wesley
Emerson began teaching at the Faith Training College in 1877. There was considerable
turnover among faculty at this college, most likely because they were unpaid for their
work. The Eleventh Annual Report of the Consumptives Home and other Institutions
Connected with A Work of Faith to September 30, 1875 (Boston: Willard Tract Repository,
1875), 103; The Thirteenth Annual Report of the Consumptives Home and Other
Institutions Connected with A Work of Faith to September 30, 1877 (Boston: Willard
Tract Repository, 1877).
153. Women were very gradually becoming accepted as preachers during this period.
New England Methodists were at the forefront of this movement. In 1876 Miss Anna
Oliver from Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts (a neighborhood of Boston), was licensed as a
local preacher, and in 1880 she was put forth for ordination in the New England Annual
Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church but was subsequently rejected. At the
General Conference of 1880 her case was debated as well with the full support of the
New England Annual Conference delegation, but she was again refused ordination. J.
W. Bashford, “Does the Bible Allow Women to Preach?” in Frederick A. Norwood, ed.,
Sourcebook of American Methodism (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), 446–456.
154. Charles Wesley Emerson’s religious importance as a teacher of one of the
influential leaders of nascent pentecostalism in the twentieth century, William Essek
Kenyon, has been previously examined in a dissertation by Simmons, 20–31.
155. Ibid., 23.
156. John Main Coffee and Richard Lewis Wentworth, A Century of Eloquence: The
History of Emerson College, 1880–1980 (Boston: Alternative Publications, 1982), 16.
157. The nature of Emerson’s medical training is rather suspect, as it was from the
Eclectic Medical College of Pennsylvania, which apparently sold diplomas rather freely
to interested persons. Simmons, 22.
158. Coffee and Wentworth, 57. See also Charles Wesley Emerson, Stenographic
reports of the Saturday Lectures, given by Dr. Charles Wesley Emerson, during the school
year 1893–94 (Boston: Emerson College of Oratory, 1894), Emerson College Library
archives, Boston, Mass.
159. The position of Cullis’s Faith Training College as the first Bible school in America
is relatively unknown but has been previously argued by Dale H. Simmons, E. W. Kenyon

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 and the Postbellum Pursuit of Peace, Power, and Plenty (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press,
1997), 5.
160. At Cullis’s 1881 Faith Convention, Rev. A. B. Simpson experienced a miraculous
healing and went on to establish faith cures as an integral aspect of the Christian and
Missionary Alliance’s practices. Simpson would have known about Cullis’s Faith Training
College, as it was well established at this time. Magnuson, 68. For more information
about the 1880s’ missionary training institutes see Virginia Lieson Brereton, Training
God’s Army: The American Bible School, 1880–1940 (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1990).
161. The history of the Boston Missionary Training School is outlined in Scott M.
Gibson, A. J. Gordon: American Premillennialist (Lanham, Md.: University Press of
America, 2001), 131–142.
162. Daniels, 280.
163. The church in Dorchester was begun at the request of church members from
the vicinity after several churches had closed owing to “misfortune or dissension.” It
was short-lived as a church under Cullis’s direction. After local church conflicts were
resolved, the churches of the area were again able to resume their work. Daniels, 282. At
the dedication of the Lewis Street Mission, Charles Cullis noted that, years earlier, the
building had housed the Boston Baptist Bethel for work among sailors. The Reverend
Phineas Stowe, the pastor at the Baptist Bethel for decades, died in November 1868
and was warmly memorialized at his funeral by the leading Baptist pastors in the city.
A children’s choir from the Reverend Toles’ Home for Little Wanderers performed at
the funeral in 1868. Fifteenth Annual Report of the Consumptives Home and other
Institutions Connected with A Work of Faith to September 30, 1879 (Boston: Willard
Tract Repository, 1879), 157. Cooke, 22.
164. See figure 2.1 for the location of the Lewis Street Mission in the North End.
Daniels, 284–292. City Missionary Society, Sixty-third Annual Report of the City
Missionary Society, Boston, for the Year 1879 (Boston: Frank Wood, 1879), 1–13.
165. Twentieth Annual Report of the Consumptives Home and other Institutions
Connected with A Work of Faith to September 30, 1884 (Boston: Willard Tract Repository,
1884).
166. Lucy Drake Osborn and her husband later founded an annual gathering for
returning foreign missionaries in Wesley Park, Ontario. They also established the Union
Missionary Training Institute of Brooklyn, New York, which became one of the more
important promoters of Methodist Bishop William Taylor’s method of self-supporting
mission work. Charles Edwin Jones, Perfectionist Persuasion: The Holiness Movement
and American Methodism, 1867–1936 (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1974), 53–54.
167. Seventeenth Annual Report of the Consumptives Home and other Institutions
Connected with A Work of Faith to September 30, 1881 (Boston: Willard Tract Repository,
1881), 70–85.
168. Samuel L. Gracey and Daniel Steele, Healing by Faith: Two Essays (Boston:
Willard Tract Repository, 1882). Samuel L. Gracey was the husband of Mrs. Lillie
Thompson Gracey. Samuel Gracey served in the Massachusetts state legislature for two
terms representing the city of Salem, where he had pastored a Methodist Episcopal
church. During President Harrison’s administration he was appointed the U.S. consul to
Foochow, China. He was recalled from that office during the Cleveland administration

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 and reappointed there under President William McKinley. The Chinese government
bestowed special honors on him for his valuable service during the Boxer rebellion of
1902. Official Minutes of the One Hundred and Sixteenth Session of the New England
Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church held in Trinity Church Springfield April
10–15, 1912 (Boston: Charles R. Magee, 1912), 132–33.
169. Baer, 112.
170. Baer, 63, 167–173.
171. Daniel Steele, “Faith and Bone-Setting,” Zion’s Herald 62, 13 May 1885, 146.
172. Today there is a side street in the Grove Hall neighborhood of Roxbury named
“Intervale”—the only physical reminder of Cullis’s institutions in this neighborhood of
Boston.
173. Baer, 172.
174. Letter written to the Boston Globe by Mary Baker Eddy, 24 April 1888, Early
Organizational Records, The Mary Baker Eddy Library, Boston, Mass. Luther Townsend,
A. J. Gordon, and many others also issued strong criticisms of Mary Baker Eddy and her
new teachings. Bendroth, 23.
175. Twenty-eighth Annual Report of the Consumptives Home and other Institutions
Connected with a Work of Faith to September 30, 1892 (Boston: Willard Tract Repository,
1892), 5.
176. For a detailed account of the influence of the New England holiness movement on
abolition see Glen Alton Messer, “Restless for Zion: New England Methodism, Holiness,
and the Abolitionist Struggle, circa 1789–1845” (Th.D. diss., Boston University, 2006).

chapter three
Evangelicals and Boston Politics
1. Josiah Strong, Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis, revised ed.
(New York: The Baker & Taylor Co., 1891), viii, 172.
2. Dorchester also noted the significant Methodist losses in the North End and
West End sections of Boston. He nevertheless confidently proclaimed that those losses
had been more than compensated by Methodist growth in expanding suburbs such as
Roxbury and Dorchester. Daniel Dorchester, “The Status of Methodism in Boston and
Vicinity,” Zion’s Herald 58, 27 January 1881, 20. Sydney Ahlstrom has called Dorchester’s
Christianity in the United States “probably the finest work of its kind ever published.”
Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1974), 9; Daniel Dorchester, The Problem of Religious Progress
(New York: Phillips & Hunt; Cincinnati: Walden & Stowe, 1881). Daniel Dorchester,
Christianity in the United States from the First Settlement Down to the Present Time
(New York: Cranston and Stowe, 1888). John Atkinson, “Methodism in the Cities of the
United States,” Methodist Quarterly Review 59 (July 1877): 483.
3. Atkinson, 483. Seven years earlier, in 1870, the Methodist Quarterly Review proudly
stated that “in Methodism alone [there is] a numerical and moral force sufficient to
withstand and overwhelm any opposing force of Popery in a contest which must depend
on public opinion and legislation.” “Romanism and the Common Schools,” Methodist
Quarterly Review 52 (April 1870), 220.
4. In the 1870s The Pilot published numerous articles noting the growth of Catholics

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 in America and the decline of Bostonian descendants from Puritan stock. Cited in Francis
R. Walsh, “The Boston Pilot: A Newspaper for the Irish Immigrant, 1829–1908” (Ph.D.
diss., Boston University, 1968), 216–221.
5. “The Comparative Attendance of Protestant and Catholic Church-Goers,” Methodist
Quarterly Review 64 (October 1882): 758–759.
6. Attendees of Methodist Episcopal churches in the city of Boston may have visited
other churches on this Sunday, as the pastors were all away from their pulpits at their
annual conference gathering. The number of Baptists is probably overestimated, as the
Baptist churches in Boston were more likely than other groups to hold both afternoon
and evening services in addition to a morning service, and thus it is quite likely that more
Baptist parishioners were counted twice. Roman Catholic numbers were underestimated
owing to the large number of early morning worship services in Roman Catholic parishes,
which were not counted at all. “Church Attendance, the Boston Congregations Figured
Up,” Boston Advertiser, 18 April 1882.
7. “The Comparative Attendance of Protestant and Catholic Church-Goers,” 758–
759. This percentage of church attendance is roughly equivalent to that found in other
major American cities but sharply divergent from attendance patterns in Berlin and, to
a somewhat lesser extent, London. Jon Butler, “Protestant Success in the New American
City, 1870–1920,” in New Directions in American Religious History, ed. Harry S. Stout
and D. G. Hart (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 306–307; Hugh McLeod,
Piety and Poverty: Working-Class Religion in Berlin, London, and New York, 1870–1914,
Europe Past and Present Series (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1996). For a study of
Chicago’s religiosity in this period see Bruce C. Nelson, “Revival and Upheaval: Religion,
Irreligion, and Chicago’s Working Class in 1886,” Journal of Social History 25 (Winter
1991): 233–253.
8. Those Baptist churches that were predominantly African-American are not easily
identifiable from these data. It is possible that some of the African-American Methodists
were counted twice, as there was both an afternoon and an evening service at these
churches and individuals could have gone to both services. Official church statistics
in the Methodist Episcopal Church in New England do not clearly demarcate which
congregations were predominantly African-American. On interracial marriage rates see
Elizabeth Hafkin Pleck, Black Migration and Poverty, Boston, 1865–1900 (New York:
Academic Press, 1979), 209. In the preface to a book celebrating the opening of People’s
Church, Rev. J. W. Hamilton stressed that the church would be a place where interracial
marriages were welcomed. J. W. Hamilton, ed., The People’s Church Pulpit (Boston: The
People’s Church, 1885), xvii.
9. The Methodist Review published an extensive three-part article “symposium” in
1891 that analyzed the subject of immigration. The final article described the character
of immigrants since 1880 as inferior to that of previous immigrants because of their
greater poverty, poorer morals, lack of “love of country,” and criminal nature. George L.
Curtiss, “Duty of This Nation and the Church toward Immigration,” Methodist Review
73 (September 1891): 721.
10. Hugh O’Brien received 27,494 votes, three thousand more than the incumbent,
Augustus Pearl Martin. Lawrence W. Kennedy, “Power and Prejudice: Boston Political
Conflict, 1885–1895” (Ph.D. diss., Boston College, 1987), 125.
11. Geoffrey Blodgett, “Yankee Leadership in a Divided City, 1860–1910,” in Boston

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 1700–1900: The Evolution of Urban Politics, ed. Ronald P. Formisano and Constance
K. Burns (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984), 90. For an examination of the
wrangling between state and city politicians over the police force see Roger Lane,
Policing the City: Boston, 1822–1885 (New York: Atheneum, 1971).
12. Dale Baum, The Civil War Party System: The Case of Massachusetts, 1848–1876
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), 164–210.
13. David W. Blight offers an excellent analysis of the push toward a premature
resolution of differences between North and South in the way the Civil War was
remembered during the Reconstruction period. The national mood was far from the
polarizing politics of the war years. David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in
American Memory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 2001).
14. Kennedy, 81. Years earlier, in 1864, Phillips had won over Henry Morgan’s
newsboys with a similar eulogizing of Daniel O’Connell.
15. Baum, 155. Donald B. Marti, “Laymen, Bring Your Money: Lee Claflin, Methodist
Philanthropist, 1791–1871,” Methodist History 14, no. 3 (1976): 181.
16. The Republican Party’s continued attempt to appeal to workingmen in these years
can be most vividly observed in a pamphlet published in 1871 by an anonymous “Practical
Mechanic.” “The Republican Party the Workingman’s Friend,” in Labor Politics: Collected
Pamphlets, vol. 2, ed. Leon Stein and Philip Taft (New York: Arno & the New York Times,
1971).
17. Nell Irvin Painter, Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877–1919 (New
York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1987), 10.
18. Baum, 183. See also Richard H. Abbott, “Massachusetts: Maintaining Hegemony,”
in Radical Republicans in the North: State Politics during Reconstruction, ed. James
C. Mohr (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976); Richard Peter Harmond,
“Tradition and Change in the Gilded Age: A Political History of Massachusetts, 1878–
1893” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1966).
19. Baum, 183. See also Abbott, Harmond.
20. Peter Eisinger notes that from 1884 to 1930 only one Irishman held the
governorship of Massachusetts and that for only two years. Non-Irish Democratic
governors led the state for only an additional seven years during this thirty-six-year span.
Peter K. Eisinger, “Ethnic Political Transition in Boston, 1884–1933: Some Lessons for
Contemporary Cities,” Political Science Quarterly 93, no. 2 (1978): 234–236.
21. Patrick Riddleberger has succinctly defined Stalwart Republicans as those
individuals who remained supportive of the Grant administration after 1872. Patrick
W. Riddleberger, “The Radicals’ Abandonment of the Negro during Reconstruction,”
The Journal of Negro History 45, no. 2 (1960): 88. Intraparty Republican factions were
extremely complex in this period. For a review of this complexity see Allan Peskin, “Who
Were the Stalwarts? Who Were Their Rivals? Republican Factions in the Gilded Age,”
Political Science Quarterly 99, no. 4 (1984). Dale Baum, “The Massachusetts Voter:
Party Loyalty in the Gilded Age, 1872–1896,” in Massachusetts in the Gilded Age: Selected
Essays, ed. Jack Tager and John W. Ifkovic (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press,
1985).
22. “Townsend’s Fate of Republics,” Zion’s Herald, 7 February 1878, 42. Grant’s
presidency ended in 1876. Townsend was also a “cautious supporter” of Dr. Charles Cullis’s
faith-healing work and advised the medical community in 1885 to accept elements of

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 faith healing for what help it could offer. Raymond J. Cunningham, “From Holiness to
Healing: The Faith Cure in America, 1872–1892,” Church History 43 (December 1974):
513.
23. Eisinger, 234, Arthur Mann, Yankee Reformers in the Urban Age: Social Reform
in Boston, 1880–1900 (New York: Harper and Row, 1954), 7; Barbara M. Solomon,
Ancestors and Immigrants: A Changing New England Tradition (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1956), 56–57; Alexander W. Williams, A Social History of the Greater
Boston Clubs ([Barre, Mass.]: Barre Publishers, 1970), 4.
24. Frederick O. Prince, Nathan Matthews, and Josiah Quincy were all Harvard
University graduates from upper-class families. Blodgett, 92.
25. Geoffrey Blodgett, “The Mind of the Boston Mugwump,” The Mississippi Valley
Historical Review 48, no. 4 (1962): 622. The Mugwump movement has been described
as “the most overstudied reform-minded political elites in American history.” Dale Baum,
“‘Noisy but Not Numerous’: The Revolt of the Massachusetts Mugwumps,” The Historian
41, no. 2 (1979): 241. The “Committee of One Hundred” organized in the wake of Blaine’s
receiving the Republican nomination for president did not contain a single known
Methodist representative. George Frederick Williams papers, Box 1, containing Committee
of One Hundred correspondence, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Mass.
26. Blodgett, “Yankee Leadership in a Divided City,” 93–97.
27. Paul Kleppner, “From Party to Factions: The Dissolution of Boston’s Majority
Party, 1876–1908,” in Boston 1700–1980: The Evolution of Urban Politics, ed. Ronald P.
Formisano and Constance K. Burns (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984), 111.
28. “A Great Majority: Mayor O’Brien leads Mr. Clark 8,580 Votes,” Boston Daily
Advertiser, 16 December 1885. O’Brien’s greatest areas of strength were, predictably, in
the North End and West End of Boston. Other Republican strongholds were in Boston’s
Back Bay and the western half of the South End (Ward Eighteen). The adjacent eastern
half of the South End (Ward Nineteen) voted with almost the exact reverse percentages of
Ward Eighteen in favor of O’Brien. At this time, the South End had nearly completed its
metamorphosis from a somewhat trendy neighborhood to a more depressed area of the
city. City of Boston, City of Boston Voting Precincts, 1889 (Boston: City of Boston, 1889).
29. “A Great Majority: Mayor O’Brien leads Mr. Clark 8,580 Votes,” Boston Daily
Advertiser, 16 December, 1885, 1. On December 14, 1885, one day prior to the 1885
election, a prominent advertisement in the business-oriented Boston Daily Advertiser
newspaper listed 119 names of prominent citizens who publicly supported O’Brien for
mayor. On election day the paper carried a rebuttal advertisement, “Fraud Exposed,”
claiming that “many” of the names of citizens who supposedly endorsed O’Brien were
forgeries. This rebuttal advertisement, however, named only four who specifically denied
being supporters of O’Brien. None of the 119 were known Methodist leaders. Boston
Daily Advertiser, 14 and 15 December 1885.
30. Eisinger, 223.
31. Henry Morgan, Catholic Church in Politics: For Sale or to Let. Who Run the City of
Boston? Who Pay the Bills? Who Furnish the Criminals and Paupers? Lectures on the Key
and Sequel To “Boston inside Out” (Boston: Shawmut Publishing Co., 1883), 1; Henry
Morgan, The Fallen Priest, Story Founded on Fact; Key and Sequel to Boston inside Out,
3rd ed. (Boston: Shawmut Publishing Co., 1883); Henry Morgan, Shadowy Hand; or,
Life Struggles. A Story of Real Life, 7th ed. (Boston: Shawmut Publishing Co., 1883).

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 32. Morgan, The Fallen Priest. It is difficult to know whether it was the growing
political power of Irish Catholics in Boston that compelled Morgan to publish new issues
of his books or whether it was Morgan’s own realization that he was dying of a respiratory
illness he had struggled with for many years.
33. Ibid., preface.
34. Between 1879 and 1884 Catholic schools in the Boston Archdiocese had doubled
from seventeen to thirty-four, and in 1884 the Third Plenary Council of American Roman
Catholic Bishops set as a goal the establishment of a school in every parish. This was never
achieved, but the number of children in parochial elementary schools doubled between
1880 and 1900. Elite Protestants in Boston would have been less concerned than others
about this loss of public school students to parochial schools since a greater proportion
of upper-class Bostonians did not send their children to public schools at all but rather to
Philip’s Andover and other elite private schools. Thomas H. O’Connor, Boston Catholics:
A History of the Church and Its People (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998),
138. In 1880 there were 405,234 Catholic students in parochial elementary schools,
and in 1900 there were 854,523. James Hennesey, American Catholics: A History of the
Roman Catholic Community in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press,
1981), 114, 186–187.
35. Hugh O’Brien, Inaugural Address of Hugh O’Brien, Mayor of Boston, before the
City Council, January 5, 1885 (Boston: Rockwell and Churchill, 1885), 63.
36. Baum, The Civil War Party System; Kennedy, 82; Alvin Packer Stauffer, “Anti-
Catholicism in American Politics, 1865–1900” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1933),
1–87. The most infamous case of anti-Catholic rioting in Boston prior to the 1880s was
the 1834 burning of the Ursuline Convent in Charlestown. Nancy Lusignan Schultz, Fire
and Roses: The Burning of the Charlestown Convent (Boston: Northeastern University
Press, 2002).
37. Robert Glenn Wright, The Social Christian Novel (New York: Greenwood Press,
1989), 63. Wright analyzes 145 social Christian novels written during the last thirty years
of the nineteenth century.
38. Morgan is making reference to a popular book at the time on the dangers of city
life. Henry W. Herbert, The Spider and the Fly; or, Tricks, Traps, and Pitfalls of City Life
(New York: C. Miller & Co., 1873).
39. Henry Morgan, Boston inside Out: A Story of Real Life (Boston: American Citizen
Co., 1895), 19.
40. Morgan’s South End neighborhood was rapidly becoming the major lodging
house district in Boston, and many evangelicals looked with grave concern on the many
unsupervised young adults living in close proximity to one another. In the story, two
prominent female characters from rural New England fall prey to the wiles of young
men from prestigious Beacon Hill families whom Morgan portrayed as having too
much leisure time on their hands. Morgan’s portrayal of two wealthy young men from
Beacon Hill as villains illustrates both Morgan’s own more modest social location as
well as his critical attitude toward the lifestyles of the Boston elite and stalwart defense
of the labor movement. Albert Benedict Wolfe, The Lodging House Problem in Boston
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1913). Ivan D. Steen, “Cleansing the Puritan City:
The Reverend Henry Morgan’s Antivice Crusade in Boston,” New England Quarterly 54,
no. 3 (1981): 398.

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 41. Steen, 401–407.
42. Cited in ibid., 405.
43. Morgan, Catholic Church in Politics, 39–40.
44. Morgan noted the presence of Mr. Donahue at the auction for the church building
he would buy through the financial assistance of William Claflin and remarked at how
he knew Donahue would not bid against him since Donahue believed Morgan did
important work. Morgan, Shadowy Hand, 324. Morgan, The Fallen Priest, dedication
page.
45. Cited in Kennedy, 224.
46. Women had received the right to vote in elections for the Boston School Committee
in 1879, but owing to cumbersome poll tax requirements and other factors they did not
significantly affect School Committee politics until 1884. Lois Bannister Merk, “Boston’s
Historic Public School Crisis,” New England Quarterly 31, no. 2 (1958): 172–177.
47. Democrats across the nation and in the city of Boston were swept into power in
1884 including many Democratic members of the School Committee.
48. The heavily Catholic wards in the North End posted the largest numbers of
women’s votes, surpassing Roxbury. which had previously led in garnering the most
women’s votes since 1879, the year women first gained the right to vote in School
Committee elections.
49. Cited in Margaret Lamberts Bendroth, Fundamentalists in the City: Conflict and
Division in Boston’s Churches, 1885–1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005),
61.
50. See ibid. for an analysis of the arrest of preachers on the Boston Common in 1885
and the public reaction to it.
51. Polly Welts Kaufman, “Boston Women and City School Politics, 1872–1905” (Ed.D.
diss., Boston University, 1978), 190. Alan A. Brookes, “The Exodus Migration from the
Maritime Provinces to Boston during the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century” (Ph.D.
diss., University of New Brunswick [Canada], 1979), 216–217.
52. Kennedy, 161.
53. Merk, 175, 181. John T. Galvin, “The Dark Ages of Boston Politics,” Proceedings of
the Massachusetts Historical Society 89 (1977): 90–91, James J. Kenneally, “Catholicism
and Woman Suffrage in Massachusetts,” Catholic Historical Review 53 (1967): 43–49.
54. Lawrence W. Kennedy, “The Irish Question and Boston Politics,” in Boston’s
Histories: Essays in Honor of Thomas H. O’Connor, ed. James M. O’Toole and David
Quigley (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004), 129–133. Kennedy, “Power and
Prejudice,” 188–189.
55. Kaufman, 202–203.
56. Kennedy, “Power and Prejudice,” 231.
57. Ruined by the scandal, Shepard faded from the local and national scene as
Catholics gleefully sought to discredit the anti-Catholic movement in its entirety.
Bendroth, 80–81.
58. Galvin, 105.
59. Kaufman, 209–210. William Swinton, Outlines of the World’s History, Ancient,
Mediaeval, and Modern, with Special Relation to the History of Civilization and the
Progress of Mankind (New York: Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor and Company, 1874).

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 60. Miner received indirect praise from the Catholic Pilot when it described him
as “‘not an unprincipled mountebank like Fulton’ but a member of ‘the better class of
anti-Catholic bigots.’” Cited in Kennedy, “Power and Prejudice,” 224. In an 1878 article
in the Methodist Zion’s Herald, Miner was praised as possibly being a representative
of the more conservative faction within the Universalist Church, which held that a person
could choose to become a Christian sometime after death and thus not be condemned
for all eternity. The article condemned a disturbing trend among Universalists who
believed in the nonexistence of hell. “Future Punishment,” Zion’s Herald 54, 21 March
1878, 90.
61. Methodist pro-labor radical Edward H. Rogers (mentioned later in this chapter)
would have still been a class leader at Walnut Street Church at this time. Louis A. Banks
wrote a very popular book in 1892 about the “worthy poor” of Boston based on his
experience as a pastor. Louis A. Banks, White Slaves; or, The Oppression of the Worthy
Poor (Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1892).
62. John Leslie Dunstan, A Light to the City: 150 Years of the City Missionary Society
of Boston, 1816–1966 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), 161. The comprehensive institutional
history of the Boston Archdiocese published in 1945 noted that “Catholics today may
gratefully recall that the Unitarians, the Episcopalians, most Universalists, and many
Congregationalists held strictly aloof from the [anti-Catholic] movement.” In fact,
several prominent religious leaders from these groups explicitly condemned the anti-
Catholic campaigns. Robert Howard Lord, Edward T. Harrington, and John E. Sexton,
History of the Archdiocese of Boston in the Various Stages of Its Development, 1604 to
1943, vol. 3 (Boston: Pilot Pub. Co., 1945), 107.
63. The respectable Brahmin and Republican-oriented Boston Evening Transcript
newspaper advertised the meeting at Faneuil Hall but noted (in error) that “[t]his
assemblage is not intended, as we understand it, to array public opinion against any
particular form of religion.” “The School Meeting at Faneuil Hall,” Boston Evening
Transcript, 11 July 1888, 4.
64. James M. Gray did not introduce her to the audience using her professional title
as a physician.
65. The other woman who voted to keep Swinton’s textbook was Emily Fifield, a
Unitarian. Although not an evangelical, Fifield was from a small New England town.
She was not honored at the anti-Catholic meeting on July 11, 1888, along with Hastings,
but she was instrumental in getting Hastings nominated in the first place to serve on the
committee with her. Kaufman, 205, 455.
66. Hastings’s precise denominational affiliation is unknown. One can only catch
a glimpse of her Christian piety. When she reported to her alma mater, Mt. Holyoke
Seminary, about her life’s experiences she stated, “Have nothing in the way of a brilliant
record. Have tried to serve the Master.” Ibid., 207. The American Woman Suffrage
Association, led by Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown Blackwell, was based in Boston
ever since it split from the more radical National Woman’s Suffrage Association in the
years after the Civil War. Bendroth, 61.
67. Committees of One Hundred had been organized on at least two other occasions
in the few years previous to 1888, but they were completely unrelated to one another.
In 1886 a Committee of One Hundred endorsed George McNeill for mayor. In 1884

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 there was yet another Committee of One Hundred formed to oppose James Blaine’s
Republican candidacy for president. “For O’Brien,” Boston Globe, 15 December 1886, 1.
Kennedy, “Power and Prejudice,” 167.
68. In Faneuil Hall, the resolution specifically stated that the following persons were
to organize a committee of fifty who would “unite with a similar committee just appointed
at the overflow meeting in Tremont Temple.” “Indignation: The Public Schools,” British-
American Citizen, 14 July 1888. The British-American was a newspaper for the British-
American immigrant community in Boston. It contained considerable news about
Britain, the Maritime Provinces, and anti-Catholic organizing.
69. Philip Moxom became a significant social gospel leader in the mid-1890s but
eventually left the Baptists for the Congregationalists because of what he perceived to be
Baptists’ unfriendly attitude toward workers. Lawrence B. Davis, Immigrants, Baptists,
and the Protestant Mind in America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973), 62; C.
H. Hopkins, The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1940), 125–128. Rev. David H. Ela served on the Special Committee on
Holiness Associations in 1889 and the Special Committee on the East Boston Immigrants’
Home for the New England Annual Conference. He also led the Methodists’ Boston
Missionary and Church Extension Society in the early to mid-1890s.
70. Cited in Lord, Harrington, and Sexton, 122. On the same day as Townsend’s
speech the Boston Evening Transcript maintained a moderate Republican position
and critiqued Roman Catholic attempts to influence the Boston public schools but also
criticized “religious bigots on either side.” “The Phenomena at City Hall,” Boston Evening
Transcript, 29 September 1888.
71. “Dr. Townsend’s Critics,” British-American Citizen, 29 September 1888, 4. The
same issue of the newspaper reported that Eliza Trask Hill and Margaret Shepard spoke
to a large audience of black Methodists as well at the Charles Street African Methodist
Episcopal congregation on Sunday evening. “Our Schools!” British-American Citizen, 29
September 1888, 4.
72. Justin Fulton, Washington in the Lap of Rome (Boston: W. Kellaway, 1888); Justin
D. Fulton, Why Priests Should Wed (Boston: Rand Avery Company, 1888), 303; Justin D.
Fulton, The Fight with Rome (Marlboro, Mass.: Pratt Brothers, 1889), 22–25. Lawrence
Kennedy incorrectly noted that Fulton became pastor of Tremont Temple again in the
summer of 1888. Kennedy, “Power and Prejudice,” 224. An anniversary publication for
that church identifies Rev. Emory J. Haynes as pastor from 1885 to 1890. Haynes had
previously been a Methodist Episcopal pastor and returned to Methodism again in 1891
after reconsidering his views toward baptism, which had led him to leave the Methodists
in the first place. Fulton was pastor of Tremont Temple from 1864 to 1873. Tremont
Temple Baptist Church: A Light in the City for 150 Years (Boston: Tremont Temple Baptist
Church, 1989). “Report of Special Committee on Emory J. Haynes,” Official Minutes of the
Ninety-Second Session of the New England Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church,
held in Common St. Church, Lynn, April 8–14, 1891 (Boston: McDonald and Gill, 1891),
87.
73. Justin D. Fulton attended the twenty-fifth anniversary celebration of Charles
Cullis’s Consumptives’ Home in 1889 and was recognized as one of two clergymen
who had been involved with Cullis’s Consumptives’ Home since its inception. The
other clergyman was Bishop F. D. Huntington of the Episcopal Church. Twenty-fourth

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 and Twenty-fifty Annual Reports of the Consumptives Home and other Institutions
Connected with a Work of Faith to September 30, 1889 (Boston: Willard Tract Repository,
1892).
74. Fulton, Why Priests Should Wed, 22.
75. Ibid.
76. Daniel Dorchester, Romanism Versus the Public School System (New York: Phillips
& Hunt; Cincinnati: Cranston & Stowe, 1888), 3–4, 351. At the New England Annual
Conference in 1889 Daniel Dorchester, David Sherman, and W. I. Haven served on the
standing committee and presented a report on “Romanism and the Public Schools.”
Official Minutes of the Ninetieth Session of the New England Conference of the Methodist
Episcopal Church held in Trinity Church, Worcester, April 10–16, 1889 (Boston: Alfred
Mudge & Son, 1889), 84–85.
77. Kennedy, “Power and Prejudice,” 282.
78. Robert A. Silverman, “Nathan Matthews: Politics of Reform in Boston, 1890–
1910,” New England Quarterly 50, no. 4 (1977): 628.
79. Kennedy, “Power and Prejudice,” 280–281. Samuel L. Gracey was previously
discussed in chapter 2 for his role in Charles Cullis’s faith-healing ministry and his future
work as a U.S. ambassador to China at the end of the nineteenth century.
80. Cited in Bendroth, 69.
81. “What should be the attitude of Methodism toward the Roman Catholic Church,”
Zion’s Herald, 3 April 1895, 210.
82. E. J. Hobsbawm, Labouring Men: Studies in the History of Labour (New York:
Basic Books, 1964).
83. Philip L. Giles, “A Millennium Denied: Northern Methodists and Workers, 1865–
1886,” Methodist History 26, no. 1 (1987): 33.
84. Gilbert Haven cited in David Montgomery, Beyond Equality: Labor and the
Radical Republicans, 1862–1872 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), 78. Gilbert Haven
was one of the most radical advocates of racial equality in the Methodist Episcopal
Church throughout the 1860s and 1870s. He served as editor of the Zion’s Herald from
1867 to 1872 and was elevated to the Methodist episcopacy in 1872. William Gravely,
Gilbert Haven, Methodist Abolitionist: A Study in Race, Religion, and Reform, 1850–
1880 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1973).
85. Aaron Ignatius Abell argued that the Christian Labor Union was the first labor
organization to explicitly connect labor with the Christian faith. Subsequent historical
research has shown this to not be the case. Aaron Ignatius Abell, The Urban Impact
on American Protestantism, 1865–1900 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press and H.
Milford Oxford University Press, 1943), 21; Montgomery, 209. For recent work on the
relationship of labor and Christianity see Jama Lazerow, Religion and the Working Class
in Antebellum America (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian, 1995); Teresa Ann Murphy,
Ten Hours’ Labor: Religion, Reform, and Gender in Early New England (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press: 1992); William R. Sutton, Journeymen for Jesus: Evangelical
Artisans Confront Capitalism in Jacksonian Baltimore (State College: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1998).
86. Jesse Jones, “The Marriage of God and Mammon,” Equity: A Journal of Christian
Labor Reform 2, no. 7 (1875): 26. Ezra Farnsworth was president of the board of managers
for the North End Mission in 1876, an organization to be discussed later in this chapter.

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 Report of the North End Mission, March 1876, Healey Library archives, University of
Massachusetts at Boston, Boston, Mass.
87. Philip Laurence Giles, “Workingman and Theologian: Edward Henry Rogers
(1824–1909) and the Impact of Evangelicalism on the Making of the American Working
Class” (Ph.D. diss., University of Rochester, 1990), 149; Edward H. Rogers, “Eight Hours
a Day’s Work: A Lecture,” in Labor Politics: Collected Pamphlets, vol. 2, ed. Leon Stein
and Philip Taft (New York: Arno & the New York Times, 1971).
88. It would have been hard for any labor leader in Boston at this time to be unaware
of the popularity of Morgan’s Ned Nevins, the News Boy. Henry Morgan’s name does not
appear in the Christian Labor Union’s publication Equity: A Journal of Christian Labor
Reform in 1874–1875, even though he would have been a clear supporter of this journal’s
goal of promoting a biblical perspective on the labor question: “[The journal] takes the
ground that Jesus Christ was the Supreme Reformer of all history, as well as the Saviour
from sin; and that the reorganization of society into The Kingdom of Heaven is essential
to the curing men of sin, and the making them fully ‘Sons of God.’ For the current year it
will be chiefly occupied with presenting practical steps which may now be taken towards
that end, by any who love their fellow-men better than they love money.” Jesse Jones ed.,
Equity: A Journal of Christian Labor Reform 2, no. 5 (1875): 20.
89. Mallalieu was the person primarily responsible for securing for Rogers a place on
the speaker’s platform for the 1887 meeting of the Evangelical Alliance in Washington,
D.C., in spite of Rogers’s lack of clergy credentials. Prior to joining the Methodist
Episcopal church in Chelsea in 1858, Rogers attended the Hawthorne Unitarian Church
in the same city. The pastor of the Unitarian church at that time was the Reverend F.
D. Huntington, who would later become an Episcopal priest, bishop, and enthusiastic
advocate of the holiness movement and the Society of Christian Socialists. Giles,
“Workingman and Theologian,” 74. “Record of Progress,” The Dawn 2 (May 1890): 42.
90. Edward H. Rogers, “Holiness,” Zion’s Herald 63, 15 December 1886, 398.
91. Samuel P. Hays, The Response to Industrialism: 1885–1914, 2nd ed. (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1995), 87. See also Tom Juravich, William F. Hartford,
and James R. Green, Commonwealth of Toil: Chapters in the History of Massachusetts
Workers and Their Unions (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996), 45–46.
92. The actual persons who were truly guilty of throwing the bomb that triggered the
Haymarket riot are still not known. Anarchists were blamed for the crime. Paul Avrich,
The Haymarket Tragedy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984), 181–220.
93. Bradford K. Pierce, “Editorial Comment,” Zion’s Herald 63, no. 19 (12 May 1886):
4. Six months before the Haymarket tragedy the Zion’s Herald was most critical not of
labor but of European immigrant labor radicals “who have renounced faith in God and
man” and who “openly seek the destruction of the church, the state, and the family,”
“Great Social Question,” Zion’s Herald 62 (25 November 1885): 372.
94. In the wake of the Haymarket riot, the Congregationalist specified that “a Gatling
gun or two, swiftly brought into position and well served, offers, on the whole, the most
merciful as well as effectual remedy.” The Gatling gun was also proposed in the July 25,
1877, issue. Cited in Henry Farnham May, Protestant Churches and Industrial America
(New York: Harper, 1967), 93, 101. For a historiographical review of the relative neglect of
religious issues in the populist movement and some suggestive lines for further research

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 see Randall J. Stephens, “The Convergence of Populism, Religion, and the Holiness-
Pentecostal Movements: A Review of the Historical Literature,” Fides et Historia 32, no.
1 (2000): 51–64.
95. Kennedy, “Power and Prejudice,” 167.
96. “For O’Brien,” Boston Globe, 15 December 1886, 1.
97. James R. Green and Hugh Carter Donahue, Boston’s Workers: A Labor History
(Boston: Boston Public Library, 1979), 74.
98. Boston Globe, 15 March 1886, cited in Giles, “Workingman and Theologian,”
223. In 1892 Christian Socialist W.D.P. Bliss asked Rogers and George McNeill to write
the creed for the Church of the Carpenter, a mission church supported as well by the
Reverend Phillips Brooks. Juravich, Hartford, and Green, 51.
99. May, 102.
100. Official Minutes of the Eighty-Seventh Session of the New England Annual
Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church held at Washington-Street Church,
Newburyport, April 15–20, 1886 (Boston: James P. Magee, 1886), 56–57. Henry May
noted how the Haymarket riot caused alarm in Protestant communities, and this is true
to an extent. Green and Donahue, 74. Nevertheless, the official resolution from the New
England Annual Conference before the riot and subsequent articles after Haymarket
in the Zion’s Herald remained hopeful. The Zion’s Herald reported on a lecture given
at Boston’s Tremont Temple by social gospeler Washington Gladden about the conflict
between labor and capital: “The Doctor sought, in a candid way, to do justice to both the
employer and the workingman, pointing out the grievances of the latter, the mistakes and
sufferings he falls into in the present violent way of attempting to secure his rights, and the
measures for an honorable and peaceful adjustment of the struggle. It was a wholesome
and able consideration of the question, now submitted to the last and violent ordeal for
adjudication.” “Personal and Miscellaneous,” Zion’s Herald 63, 12 May 1886, 4.
101. Giles, “Workingman and Theologian.”
102. Edward H. Rogers, “Holiness,” Zion’s Herald 63, 15 December 1886, 398.
103. Edward H. Rogers, “Holiness,” Central Christian Advocate 10 February 1886,
2–3. This was the first of a six-article series titled simply “Holiness.” For a listing of most
of Rogers’s publications see appendix 2 of Wolfe, 14.
104. Glen Alton Messer, “Restless for Zion: New England Methodism, Holiness, and
the Abolitionist Struggle, circa 1789–1845” (Th.D. diss., Boston University, 2006).
105. Bradford K. Pierce, “Methodism and Her Critic,” Zion’s Herald 63, 15 December
1886, 400.
106. Marriage records from the new Methodist “People’s Church” in Boston’s South
End between 1880 and 1884 reveal a constituency comprising many laborers and
tradesmen with relatively few individuals representing the professional classes. A list
of members from any other Back Bay congregation would have shown a much different
constituency. People’s Temple Church Records book, 1877–1884. Boston University
School of Theology Library, Boston, Mass. Bendroth.
107. A study of the lodging house problem in Boston in 1904 provides a history of the
South End’s economic decline. “It is not possible to assign any definite date for the exodus
[of the affluent from the South End]. All we can say is that it began in the seventies,
gained momentum during the early eighties, and was practically finished before 1890.

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 By 1885 the South End had become dominantly a lodging-house section.” A rapid drop in
real estate prices on Columbus Avenue, where People’s Church was located, precipitated
the decline of the rest of the neighborhood. Robert Archey Woods, The City Wilderness:
A Settlement Study (New York: Garrett Press, 1970), 5. See also Dorchester, The Problem
of Religious Progress.
108. Robert C. Elliott in Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward, 2000–1887, Riverside
ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966), vii. James Dombrowski, The Early Days of
Christian Socialism in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), 84.
109. Dombrowski, 93.
110. The Nationalist was financed, for the most part, from sales of Edward Bellamy’s
utopian novel, Looking Backward. Ibid.
111. “Our Record of Progress,” The Dawn 2, no. 1 (May 1890): 39.
112. “The Society of Christian Socialists in Boston” The Dawn 1, no. 1, (1889): 3. The
Methodist clergyman present at this meeting was not identified in available sources.
113. No significant evidence of anti-Catholic sentiment could be found in The Dawn
throughout its seven years of existence. The editor of the Catholic magazine The Pilot
contributed poetry on at least one occasion, and the magazine’s editor, W.D.P. Bliss,
praised O’Reilly as a great Christian Socialist. John Boyle O’Reilly, “A Poem,” The Dawn
2, no. 5 (September 1890).
114. The marked increase in discussion of the working classes in the Church of England
from 1880 to 1900 would have also likely helped the Society of Christian Socialists to be
appealing to Boston Episcopalians. Kenneth Stanley Inglis, Churches and the Working
Classes in Victorian England (London: Routledge and K. Paul, 1963), 23.
115. It was not until the December 18, 1890, issue of the magazine that the address of
the editor was identified as something other than 36 Bromfield Street. W.P.D. Bliss ed.,
The Dawn 3, no. 2 (1890): 1.
116. In 1891 Daniel Dorchester, Sr., was appointed to a government post as
superintendent of Indian schools in the United States and had also served as a presiding
elder in several districts of the Methodist New England Annual Conference.
117. Vincent was one of the founders of the Chautauqua Institution movement. W.P.D.
Bliss, “Editorial Outlook,” The Dawn 2, nos. 3 and 4 (1890): 159.
118. Edward H. Rogers, “Church Socialism,” The Dawn 3, no. 18 (1892): 8. Around
this time Edward H. Rogers left the Methodist Episcopal Church to join W.D.P. Bliss’s
Episcopal Church of the Carpenter.
119. “The Church: What Churches and Clergyman are Doing and Can Do for Social
Reforms,” The Dawn 2, no. 2 (1890): 98. With the exception of Moxom’s “class” almost
all the Boston churches mentioned in this article were Episcopalian.
120. Bendroth, 95.
121. Letter to the editor, The Dawn 3, no. 5 (1891): 11–12.
122. May, 242. Dombrowski, 108.
123. W.D.P. Bliss, “Editorial Outlook,” The Dawn 2, no. 5 (1890): 199.
124. “Departments,” The Dawn 2, no. 5 (1890): 199. W.D.P. Bliss, “To Our Old
Subscribers,” The Dawn 6, no. 1 (1894): 2. Numerous sample copies were sometimes
sent to persons requesting them. On one occasion five hundred sample copies were sent
to a supporter in Kansas City. “To Subscribers,” The Dawn 6, no. 3 (1894): 34.

216 · Notes to Pages 86–88

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 125. The frequent lengthy insertions of Christian Socialist reflections on particular
Sundays and feast days in the liturgical year is evidence that the readership of The Dawn
may have been limited chiefly to Episcopal priests. Such sermon aids would have been
very foreign to a less educated reader. Sermons given at various Episcopal churches in
Boston were also often reprinted. In 1895 Bliss responded to criticism that The Dawn
had become very Episcopal in its orientation by boldly proclaiming that the Episcopal
Church offered the greatest opportunity for church unity toward which Christian
Socialists must strive. Francis Watts Lee, “Notes on the Social Teaching of the Christian
Year,” The Dawn 6, no. 2 (1894): 10; W.D.P. Bliss, “Questions and Answers,” The Dawn
7, no. 1 (1895): 2–3.
126. Edwin Elisha Bliss worked for thirty-six years in Constantinople as an editor
of various Christian newspapers and at least one Bible handbook in the Armenian
language. “Bliss, Edwin Elisha,” in Dictionary of American Biography, ed. Allen Johnson
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1929). Daniel Bliss, a relative of Edwin Elisha Bliss,
founded the Syrian Protestant College (now American University) of Beirut.
127. Giles, “Workingman and Theologian,”, 224. Arthur Meier Schlesinger, The Rise of
the City, 1878–1898 (New York: Macmillan, 1933), 341. The Church of the Carpenter was
officially founded in 1892, but the Mission of the Carpenter started at least a year earlier.
An article and announcement of the mission was printed in the December 1890 issue of
The Dawn 3, no. 1 (1890): 8.
128. “Bliss, William Dwight Porter,” in Dictionary of American Biography, ed. Allen
Johnson (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1929), 377; Dombrowski, 96. One of the
vice presidents of the Society of Christian Socialists at its founding was Mrs. Mary A.
Livermore, who became well known as an organizer and fund-raiser for Union hospitals
during the Civil War and subsequently became involved in women’s suffrage and
philanthropic causes. Henry Morgan, “Letter from Henry Morgan to Miss Alice Baker,
1870,” Collection of Massachusetts literary letters, Massachusetts Historical Society,
Boston, Mass. Leo Eben Tourjée, “For God and Music: The Life Story of Eben Tourjée,
Father of the American Conservatory, 1960,” manuscript, 304, The Archives at The
New England Conservatory of Music, Boston, Mass. Celebration of Second Cornerstone
Laying, July 3, 1882, People’s Temple Records containing pamphlets, Boston University
School of Theology Library. Dombrowski, 99–100.
129. Wendy Hamand Venet, A Strong-Minded Woman: The Life of Mary Livermore
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005), 225–226.
130. The Dawn’s political pragmatism remained even after Bliss purchased The
Dawn in December 1890 for the stated purpose of wanting to make “a more pronounced
political stand.” W.D.P. Bliss, “Editorial,” The Dawn 3, no. 1 (1890): 2.
131. On at least one occasion Bliss ran a balanced article in The Dawn that entertained
the contrasting approaches of Edward Bellamy and Henry George. Ezra P. Gould,
“Henry George or Edward Bellamy: Which, or Neither?” The Dawn 2, no. 2 (1890):
53–65. Richard B. Dressner, “William Dwight Porter Bliss’s Christian Socialism,” Church
History 47 (March 1978): 72.
132. Bliss cited in Dressner, 68. For more discussion of W.D.P. Bliss’s activities see
Peter J. Frederick, Knights of the Golden Rule: The Intellectual as Christian Social
Reformer in the 1890s (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1976), 81–98.

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 133. May, 127.
134. Ruth Bordin, Woman and Temperance: The Quest for Power and Liberty, 1873–
1900 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981), 117.
135. The tendency to downplay the influence of the holiness movement on Willard is
evident in Ruth Bordin, Frances Willard: A Biography (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1986), 156.
136. The influence of the holiness movement on Frances Willard is clearly evident in
diary entries from January through March 1866. Her retelling of her experience of entire
sanctification is in S. Olin Garison, ed., Forty Witnesses: Covering the Whole Range of
Christian Experience (New York: Phillips & Hunt, 1888); Carolyn De Swarte Gifford,
ed., Writing Out My Heart: Selections from the Journal of Frances E. Willard, 1855–96
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 221–227. See also Mary Earhart, Frances
Willard: From Prayers to Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944), 45, 61.
For Foster’s role in the holiness movement see Kenneth O. Brown, Inskip, McDonald,
Fowler: “Wholly and Forever Thine”: Early Leadership in the National Camp Meeting
Association for the Promotion of Holiness (Hazleton, Pa.: Holiness Archives, 1999), 247;
Charles Edwin Jones, Perfectionist Persuasion: The Holiness Movement and American
Methodism, 1867–1936 (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1974), 56.
137. Livermore also experienced a turning point at this time and became far more
strident in her condemnations of industry and her advocacy of labor. Earhart, 287–289.
138. Ibid., 74–75.
139. The precise nature of Willard’s relationship with Powderly is still a mystery. In a
diary entry she described “the real romance” of her life as being “unguessed save by a trio
of close friends.” Biographers of Willard disagree in their speculation about Willard and
Powderly’s relationship. Powderly was ten years her junior and already married. Bordin,
Frances Willard, 143; Harry J. Carman, Henry David, and Paul N. Guthrie, eds., The
Path I Trod: The Autobiography of Terence V. Powderly (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1940), 268–270; Earhart.
140. Carman, David, and Guthrie, eds., 365.
141. Frances Willard, “Christian Socialism and Temperance,” The Dawn 2, no. 1
(1890): 7.
142. Terrence Powderly resigned as head of the Knights of Labor in 1893. May, 159.
143. For Willard’s own assessment of her time in Boston during the 1877 Moody revival
see Frances E. Willard, Glimpses of Fifty Years: The Autobiography of an American
Woman (Chicago: Woman’s Temperance Publication Association, 1889), 356–361.
144. Cited in Eisinger, 231. G. M. Steele, “Industrial Reconstruction,” Methodist
Review 73 (January–February 1891): 43.
145. “Society as Christian Socialism views it” Zion’s Herald, 31 December 1890.

chapter four
The Salvation Army and Other Evangelical Organizations Led by
Women, 1884–1892
1. Helen Barrett Montgomery in Dana L. Robert, American Women in Mission: A Social
History of Their Thought and Practice (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1997), 137.
The Congregationalists also formed a woman’s foreign missionary organization in 1868,

218 · Notes to Pages 90–93

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 and women from other denominations soon followed in setting up separate women’s
organizations devoted to the cause of foreign missions. Several stained glass windows
commemorating this event and the original eight founders of the WFMS still exist at
the former Tremont Street church—now New Hope Baptist Church in the South End.
Francis Baker, The Story of the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, 1869–1895 (Cincinnati: Curts and Jennings, 1898), 12–18.
2. Dana L. Robert, “The Influence of American Missionary Women on the World
Back Home,” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 12, no. 1
(2002): 68.
3. Robert, American Women in Mission, 254.
4. Mary Sparkes Wheeler, Zion’s Herald, February 1879. The full text of the poem is
also cited in ibid., 125.
5. Ian Tyrrell, Woman’s World / Woman’s Empire: The Woman’s Christian Temperance
Union in International Perspective, 1880–1930 (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1991).
6. Norton Mezvinsky, “The White Ribbon Reform, 1874–1920 (Ph.D. diss., University
of Wisconsin, 1959).
7. The most famous of these is Ehwa Women’s University in South Korea. Robert,
American Women in Mission, 137.
8. Ibid., 130.
9. Meeting minutes, 6 October 1873, Records of the Boston Methodist Home
Missionary Association, Boston University School of Theology Library, Boston, Mass.
The WFMS similarly assisted urban mission efforts in other regions of the country.
Lewis R. Dunn, “Mission Churches a Necessity” Zion’s Herald 58, 18 August 1881, 257.
See Robert, “The Influence of American Missionary Women on the World Back Home,”
85.
10. The national organization of the Woman’s Home Missionary Society was begun
in 1880, but the founding meeting of the first auxiliary in New England did not take
place until June of 1881. Initially, its focus was more on western states and the American
South, but the WHMS soon became more concerned about large cities in the Northeast
as well. Woman’s Home Missionary Society Secretary’s Minutes, 2 June 1881, Boston
University School of Theology Library, Boston, Mass. The strong connection between
the WFMS and the WHMS is also made explicit in R. S. Rust, “The Woman’s Home
Missionary Society,” Methodist Review 69 (September 1887): 653–678.
11. Willard’s personal interest in expanding the WCTU internationally had been
developing for several years prior to 1881. Tyrrell, 19.
12. Bordin notes that Willard’s call to “do everything” had more to do with tactics (the
time was ripe for all kinds of action) than with reckless expansion of a diffuse set of goals.
Ruth Bordin, Woman and Temperance: The Quest for Power and Liberty, 1873–1900
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981), 131, 191–193.
13. Tyrrell, 39.
14. Marsh Chapel at Boston University has a large stained glass window depicting
Frances Willard in the midst of reams of paper from the Polyglot Petition.
15. Tyrrell, 45.
16. Robert E. Weir, Beyond Labor’s Veil: The Culture of the Knights of Labor (University
Park,: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 70–71.

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 17. Sarah Deutsch, Women and the City: Gender, Space, and Power in Boston, 1870–
1940 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 4; Mark Peel, “On the
Margins: Lodgers and Boarders in Boston, 1860–1900,” Journal of American History
72, no. 4 (1986): 832; Arthur Meier Schlesinger, The Rise of the City, 1878–1898 (New
York: Macmillan, 1933), 141; Suzanne Spencer-Wood, “A Survey of Domestic Reform
Movement Sites in Boston and Cambridge, Ca. 1865–1905,” Historical Archaeology 21,
no. 1 (1987): 7–31.
18. Deutsch, 3–24. For a detailed examination of the complexities of Methodist
piety in the mid- to late nineteenth century and how it affected women’s roles at home
and in the wider society see A. Gregory Schneider, The Way of the Cross Leads Home:
The Domestication of American Methodism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1993), 120–121. See also Catherine Brekus, “Female Evangelism in the Early Methodist
Movement, 1784–1845,” in Methodism and the Shaping of American Culture, ed. Nathan
O. Hatch and John H. Wigger (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 2001).
19. “The President’s Annual Report of Liberal Abstract Therefrom—the Higher
Education of Women,” Boston Daily Globe, 10 January 1877. The report went on to
describe Boston University as “the first and only [university] in the world, organized
from the bottom and throughout for both men and women impartially.”
20. Jean Miller Schmidt, Grace Sufficient: A History of Women in American
Methodism, 1760–1939 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1999), 59.
21. Single events such as the licensing of Van Cott must not obscure the countless
more informal ways the evangelical movement affirmed women’s roles as evangelists and
church leaders. Dee Andrews, The Methodists and Revolutionary America, 1760–1800:
The Shaping of an Evangelical Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
2000), 115; Rosemary Skinner Keller, “Creating a Sphere for Women: The Methodist
Episcopal Church, 1869–1906,” in Perspectives on American Methodism: Interpretive
Essays, ed. Russell E. Richey, Kenneth E. Rowe, and Jean Miller Schmidt (Nashville:
Abingdon Press, Kingswood Books, 1993).
22. See Deutsch. The women’s organizations featured in Deutsch’s text tended to
comprise more upper-class women than the women’s organizations discussed in this
chapter. They were also of a more secular character.
23. Robert, American Women in Mission, 142–143.
24. On at least one occasion the two organizations chose to hold the annual
meetings for both organizations at the Asbury Grove camp meeting site. Woman’s
Home Missionary Society Secretary’s Minutes, 1881–1892, Boston University School of
Theology Library. Dana L. Robert, “Holiness and the Missionary Vision of the Woman’s
Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1869–1894,” Methodist
History 39, no. 1 (2000).
25. Newspaper obituary of unknown source, Daniel Steele biographical file, Boston
University School of Theology Library. Daniel Steele had even been the pastor of
Tremont Street Methodist Episcopal Church three years after the WFMS was founded
at that church and served as a professor at Boston University School of Theology from
1884 to 1893. “Dr. and Mrs. Daniel Steele: Golden Anniversary,” Zion’s Herald, 8 August
1900, 1001. 72 Mount Vernon Street Scrapbook, Boston University School of Theology
Library.
26. Robert, American Women in Mission, 142.

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 27. Robert Sandall, The History of the Salvation Army, Volume 2, 1878–1886 (London:
Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1956), 229.
28. In 1880 this work received official support from Booth, and he sent George Scott
Railton, the son of Wesleyan missionaries, to take over the American work. Railton and
six female officers arrived in New York on March 10, 1880, now considered the official
inauguration of the Salvation Army’s work in America.
29. The rapid growth of the Salvation Army continued from 1890 to 1910. Based on
census data comparing returns from 1890 and 1910, the Salvation Army posted a 201
percent increase, or an increase of 17,533 Salvationists, nationwide. Henry K. Carroll,
The Religious Forces of the United States: Enumerated, Classified, and Described;
Returns for 1900 and 1910 Compared with the Government Census of 1890; Condition
and Characteristics of Christianity in the United States: Revised and Brought Down to
1910 (New York: Scribner, 1912), 469.
30. For nine out of twelve months in 1888 the two Boston corps were led entirely by
female officers. In 1888 only two male officers were assigned to a Boston corps for a total
of three months and not during the same months. Disposition of Forces records, 1888–
1907, Salvation Army Archives and Research Center, Alexandria, Va. These statistics
are consistent with national trends in the Salvation Army in 1888, as 45.5 percent of
officers were single women while 38.5 percent were single men. Married officers in 1888
comprised 16 percent of the total. Lillian Taiz, Halleluja Lads and Lasses: Remaking
the Salvation Army in America, 1880–1930 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2001), 169. See also Pamela Walker, “Pulling the Devil Down: Gender and Popular
Culture in the Salvation Army, 1865–1892” (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 1992).
31. Daniel Steele, “The Salvation Army,” Zion’s Herald 58, 18 August, 1881, 1. The New
York–based holiness magazine Guide to Holiness issued a similarly laudatory article on
the Salvation Army in May of 1880. “Editorial,” Guide to Holiness, (May 1880,): 148.
Another New York nondenominational journal, the Christian Herald and Signs of Our
Times published by T. DeWitt Talmadge, carried six positive articles on the Salvation
Army in 1880, the year of its New York arrival, and criticized New York City newspapers
for their inaccurate portrayal of the Army. “The Salvation Army Work in New York,”
Christian Herald and Signs of Our Times, 25 March 1880, 847.
32. Catherine Booth, Aggressive Christianity: Practical Sermons, with an Introduction
by Daniel Steele, D.D. (Boston: McDonald & Gill, 1883).
33. “The Salvation Army,” The New Englander 6, new series (July 1883): 437.
34. Ibid., 431–432.
35. Biographical file for Amos Shirley, Salvation Army Archives and Research Center;
“Boston Besieged,” Boston Daily Globe, 8 September 1884, 1. “An Impending Invasion,”
6 September 1884, reprint of Boston Daily Globe article in The Salvation Army in the
Eighties (Boston: Provincial Headquarters, 1952), 1. Salvation Army Archives and
Research Center. The Republican-oriented Evening Transcript made no mention of the
Salvation Army’s invasion of Boston.
36. The first charity organization society in the United States was in Buffalo, New
York. Frank Dekker Watson, The Charity Organization Movement in the United States:
A Study in American Philanthropy (New York: Macmillan, 1922), 178. Matthew A.
Crenson, Building the Invisible Orphanage: A Prehistory of the American Welfare System
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998); Nathan Irvin Huggins, Protestants

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 against Poverty: Boston’s Charities, 1870–1900 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1971);
Watson.
37. Brenda M. Lawson, “Starving While Waiting for a Friend: Assessing the Success
of the Associated Charities of Boston, 1879–1899” (M.A. thesis, Simmons College, 1996),
29–41. By 1885 the Congregationalist City Missionary Society was also no longer trying
to convert Catholics to Protestant Christianity. John Leslie Dunstan, A Light to the City:
150 Years of the City Missionary Society of Boston, 1816–1966 (Boston: Beacon Press,
1966), 184.
38. John Boyle O’Reilly cited in Robert Bremner, From the Depths: The Discovery
of Poverty in the United States (New York: New York University Press, 1956), 53. The
Pilot has been described as “one of the most influential immigrant newspapers, ‘the
Irish Bible,’ of nineteenth century America.” Beginning in 1829 under the name Jesuit
or Catholic Sentinel it was owned by Irish immigrants for many decades until, in 1908,
it became the official weekly for the Boston Archdiocese. Francis R. Walsh, “The Boston
Pilot: A Newspaper for the Irish Immigrant, 1829–1908” (Ph.D. diss., Boston University,
1968), iv–vii.
39. “The Minstrel in Massachusetts,” American War Cry, 12 May 1888, 4. The article
reported on a large meeting the Salvation Army held at Tremont Temple in either April or
May 1888, just as the bitter anti-Catholic campaign was beginning to heat up. The article
noted that two “saved Roman Catholics” testified at this meeting. Such a testimony by
two former Catholics may have contributed to the fighting atmosphere between some
Protestants and Roman Catholics. For a recent analysis of the Salvation Army and social
strife in Montreal, Canada, see Norman Murdoch, “Marching as to War: The Salvation
Army Invasion of Montreal, 1884–1885,” Fides et Historia 35, no. 1 (2003): 59–89.
40. The Salvation Army was involved in politics elsewhere in the country. At national
headquarters in New York City, Commissioner Frank Smith was an enthusiastic supporter
of Henry George immediately upon arriving in New York from England. George made
an unsuccessful bid for mayor under the United Labor Party in the city of New York. The
Army also supported striking Pennsylvania coal miners in 1888 and issued a national
appeal for financial assistance for the struggling corps in the coal-mining region. The
divisional officer of the region referred to the strikers as “our class of people.” “The
Great Strike,” American War Cry, 28 January 1888, 1. Edward H. McKinley, Marching
to Glory: The History of the Salvation Army in the United States, 1880–1992, 2nd ed.
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 78–79.
41. Their political action involved the systematic visitation of homes to urge support
of what they called the “Salvation Temperance Crusade.” They also held special meetings
and street demonstrations in order to persuade voters to vote for the temperance cause.
“The Columbian War: New England Division,” The Conqueror 1, no. 9 (October 1892):
305.
42. Cullis’s Brighton Street Mission appears to have closed after 1879 and does not
appear as a Cullis ministry in 1884. Twentieth Annual Report of the Consumptives Home
and Other Institutions Connected to A Work of Faith to 30 September, 1884 by Charles
Cullis (Boston: Willard Tract Repository, 1884).
43. A. J. Gordon preached at a Salvation Army meeting in the Windsor Theatre in
April 1885. “Windsor Theatre, Boston,” American War Cry, 25 April, 1885, 3. In his
biography of A. J. Gordon, Scott Gibson mistakenly describes Emma M. Whittemore as

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 a Salvation Army officer. Emma M. Whittemore wrote a column for Gordon’s magazine,
Watchword, in the 1890s. Although Whittemore was very involved in rescue mission
work and a frequent speaker at Salvation Army events, there is no evidence in Salvation
Army archives that she ever served as a Salvation Army officer. Scott M. Gibson, A. J.
Gordon: American Premillennialist (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2001),
151.
44. Frank Smith, Salvation War in America (New York: Headquarters and Trade
Department, 1885), 27–28.
45. Disposition of Forces records, 1888–1907, Salvation Army Archives and Research
Center.
46. Frank Smith, The Salvation War in America for 1885 (New York: Headquarters
and Trade Department, 1886).
47. Taiz, 23–24. The schism of 1884 occurred in large part because of conflicting
understandings of property law between General Booth in England and Major Thomas
Moore in command of the American Army in New York. Over the objection of General
Booth, Moore filed a preliminary petition to incorporate the Army under New York law
in July of 1883. Relations between American Salvationists and General Booth further
deteriorated when Booth did not attend the fourth anniversary celebration of the Army
in Brooklyn. In October 1884, when Moore refused to yield to an officer sent by Booth to
take command away from Moore, two Salvation Armies emerged. McKinley, 29–37.
48. “A Youthful Veteran,” The Conqueror (November 1892): 324.
49. “Boston No. 2,” American War Cry, 28 April 1888, 15. The confusion caused by
the 1884 schism lasted for five years until in October 1889 the two Salvation Armies once
again united. McKinley, 34.
50. “Salooning,” American War Cry, 30 May 1885, 2. A similar complaint made by a
saloon keeper is recorded in the following month’s issue as well. “Salooning: Boston, No.
1,” American War Cry, 13 June 1885, 4.
51. Cited in Taiz, 52.
52. Glen Alton Messer, “Restless for Zion: New England Methodism, Holiness, and
the Abolitionist Struggle, circa 1789–1845” (Th.D. diss., Boston University, 2006).
53. The most well-known case of Methodist persecution would have been in 1833,
still in living memory of many people fifty years later. In 1833 a famous court case
accused Methodist preacher Ephraim Avery in the murder of a pregnant young woman
who had worked in the mills of Fall River. This case brought an immense amount of
criticism of Avery and, by association, the Methodist Episcopal Church of New England,
and many effigies of Avery were burned in protest. A book written at the time with mill
owners’ interests in mind contrasted the chaotic and sexually charged Methodist camp
meetings with the order and decorum of New England mill town factories. Many mill
workers were Methodists. Tavern owners disturbed by Methodist organizing around
temperance joined in the fray as well and encouraged mobs to oppose Methodism. David
Richard Kasserman, Fall River Outrage: Life, Murder, and Justice in Early Industrial
New England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986). Anti-Methodist
feelings were also expressed in a Congregationalist journal in the 1850s complaining
of the Methodists’ excessive emotionality at camp meetings. John Corrigan, Business
of the Heart: Religion and Emotion in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2002), 22. See also Eric Baldwin, “The Devil Begins to Roar: Opposition

Notes to Pages 100–102 · 223

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 to Early Methodists in New England,” Church History 75, no. 1 (2006). Methodist
identification with the Salvation Army was not universal, as more genteel Methodists
sought to distance themselves from the Salvation Army’s work. Explicit criticism of the
Salvation Army appeared in the Methodist Review. “Recent Doings of the Salvation
Army,” Methodist Review (May 1885): 451–452.
54. “The Salvationists: What the Newburyport Herald Thinks About the Soldiers,”
American War Cry, 21 February 1885, 1.
55. “A Youthful Veteran,” The Conqueror 1, no. 10 (November 1892): 324.
56. Ibid, 322–323.
57. Taiz, 50.
58. William Brewer, “Boston,” The Conqueror 2, no. 6 (July 1893): 253. R. David
Rightmire, Sanctified Sanity: The Life and Teaching of Samuel Logan Brengle
(Alexandria, Va.: Crest Books, 2003), 11.
59. Rightmire, 14.
60. Rightmire, 19.
61. Rightmire, 12.
62. McDonald regretted that toward the end of his life he had increasingly become a
“holiness fighter, fighting for the doctrine, attacking preachers and teachers who did not
accept my preaching, often putting up men of straw and knocking them down.” Kenneth
O. Brown, Inskip, McDonald, Fowler: “Wholly and Forever Thine”; Early Leadership in
the National Camp Meeting Association for the Promotion of Holiness (Hazleton, Pa.:
Holiness Archives, 1999), 231. Rightmire, 22.
63. Rightmire, 12.
64. “Great Opening Day of the Sixth Anniversary of the Salvation Army in America,”
American War Cry, 27 March 1886, 1.
65. Susan Southworth and Michael Southworth, The Boston Society of Architects’ AIA
Guide to Boston (Old Saybrook, Conn.: Globe Pequot Press, 1992), 174.
66. Diane H. Winston, Red-Hot and Righteous: The Urban Religion of the Salvation
Army (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 34.
67. “Aggressive Work in Cities” Zion’s Herald 63, 25 August 1886, 268. Five years later
Hugh Price Hughes spoke to School of Theology students at Boston’s People’s Church,
which would have been the church and neighborhood in Boston most similar to his own
in London. “Hugh Price Hughes in Boston,” Zion’s Herald, 14 October 1891, newspaper
clipping in Mount Vernon Scrapbook box, Boston University School of Theology
Library.
68. . Hinckley G. Mitchell, “The School of Theology and Missions,” Zion’s Herald 71,
7 June 1893, 8. Hinckley Mitchell was a professor of Old Testament and a participant in
the class meeting where this call to more active urban mission on the part of the students
was felt. The student body at the time numbered approximately 150. That 30 of them
became immediately involved in urban mission illustrated that this was a significant
development in the life of the school.
69. “A Youthful Veteran,” The Conqueror 1 (November 1892): 322. Significant
involvement of Boston University School of Theology students with the Salvation Army
in 1885 is mentioned by Samuel L. Brengle in William Brewer, “Boston,” The Conqueror
(July 1893): 253.
70. “Letter from Boston,” Central Christian Advocate, 8 February 1888, 72; Mount

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 Vernon Street Scrapbook, Boston University School of Theology Library. Another
newspaper clipping in the scrapbook dated 15 December 1887 described bands of
students working at the North End Mission and being led by two professors beginning
in the winter of 1886–1887.
71. Boston Globe, 29 July 1893, in “North End Settlement” folder, Morgan Memorial
Church Records, Box 1, Boston University School of Theology Library.
72. It is possible that Steele was referred to a book by his student Samuel Brengle,
whose future wife had just written A Cradle of Empire, which extolled the Salvation
Army’s London Training Garrison and criticized the more scholastic training with
which Brengle was familiar at Boston University. Elizabeth’s book played a decisive role
in convincing Brengle that he must leave Boston University. Brengle wrote that “this
little book finally tipped the scales and dropped me into the Army. . . . [T]he apostolic
simplicity and spirit of devotion of the Army’s school was so different from the scholastic
spirit of the theological school that it broke my heart. Bursting into tears, I cried out,
‘These are my people!’” Rightmire, 16. Elizabeth Swift, A Cradle of Empire (London:
Salvation Army Book Stores, 1885). Salvation Army Archives and Research Center.
73. Steele here is referring to the Boston Methodist Episcopal seamen’s preacher,
Edward Thompson “Father” Taylor, and to Methodist foreign missions leader William
Taylor, who also spoke at Boston University around this time.
74. Daniel Steele, “Non-classical Methodist Theological Schools,” Methodist Review
(May 1886): 455, 457.
75. “The Salvation Army from a Money Standpoint,” American War Cry, 5 September
1885, 1.
76. Official Minutes and Retrospective Register of the Eighty-Sixth Session of the New
England Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church held at Trinity Church,
Springfield, April 9–14, 1885 (Boston: James P. Magee, 1885), 78, 96.
77. “The Camp Meeting at Old Orchard: Intense Enthusiasm,” American War Cry, 15
August 1885.
78. Paul G. Chappell, “The Divine Healing Movement in America” (Ph.D. diss., Drew
University, 1983), 144.
79. Marjorie Hartman Scott, The Old Orchard Beach Camp Meetings, Salvation Army
Northern New England Division, 1995. Salvation Army Archives and Research Center.
80. By the early 1890s the Army could count as enthusiastic supporters Bishop Phillips
Brooks of the Episcopal Church (he became bishop in 1891) and Congregationalist
Joseph Cook. William Brewer, “Boston,” The Conqueror (July 1893): 252. In 1882 Brooks
first encountered the Salvation Army in Britain, but the only good thing he said about it
at that time was that “there was nothing very bad about it, and I am not sure that it might
not do good to somebody.” Raymond W. Albright, Focus on Infinity: A Life of Phillips
Brooks (New York: Macmillan, 1961), 253. Joseph Cook, in an 1894 lecture, praised the
Salvation Army: “If we are to be saved from a starvation army like that which besieged
the State House, it must be through the Salvation Army.” Also in 1894, a commencement
address at Boston University School of Theology lavished a paragraph of praise on the
Salvation Army for its work among laborers. 1894 Epworth League House folder, Morgan
Memorial Church Records, Box 1, Boston University School of Theology Library.
81. Taiz, 43.
82. William Brewer, “Boston,” The Conqueror (July 1893): 252.

Notes to Pages 106–107 · 225

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 83. Edith Marshall, “The Auxiliary League,” The Conqueror (May 1894): 192.
84. William Booth, In Darkest England and the Way Out (New York: Funk &
Wagnalls, 1890). Booth’s ideas for farm colonies and other plans outlined in his book
were tried more enthusiastically in Britain than they were in America. Taiz, 108–111.
85. Edward Everett Hale, If Jesus Came to Boston (Boston: Lamson Wolffe, 1895),
40–41. Hale’s book was written in response to the far more popular 1894 book If Christ
Came to Chicago. W. T. Stead, If Christ Came to Chicago! A Plea for the Union of All Who
Love in the Service of All Who Suffer (London: Review of Reviews, 1894). Whereas Stead
portrayed the dire poverty of Chicago with few examples of Christian action for the poor,
Hale portrayed Boston in a more optimistic light, making mention of the many Christian
workers among the poor.
86. Cited in Jonathan Dorn, “‘Our Best Gospel Appliances’: Institutional Churches
and the Emergence of Social Christianity in the South End of Boston, 1880–1920” (Ph.D.
diss., Harvard University, 1994), 249.
87. Undated newspaper clipping, “Adjt. Newcomb Left Wellesley for Slum Work,”
biographical file, Salvation Army Archives and Research Center.
88. William Brewer, “Boston,” The Conqueror (July 1893): 255. Brewer acknowledged
that this numerical estimate was not based on any rigorous record keeping.
89. Disposition of Forces records, Salvation Army Archives and Research Center.
A narrative account of five of the Boston corps is in William Brewer, “Boston,” The
Conqueror (July 1893).
90. William Brewer, “Boston,” The Conqueror (July 1893): 255. The difference
between a “Slum post” and a “Slum corps” was simply the level of development. A “Slum
post” would usually have fewer participants involved and generally would have been
developed more recently than a “Slum corps.”
91. The Methodist Episcopal Church instituted the office of deaconess in 1888, and
the number of deaconess institutions flourished in Methodism and other denominations
in the ensuing years. Jeannine E. Olson, One Ministry Many Roles: Deacons and
Deaconesses through the Centuries (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1992). The
settlement house movement in America began in 1886. It received its inspiration from
Toynbee Hall in London, which began in 1884. Allen Freeman Davis, Spearheads for
Reform: The Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement, 1890–1914 (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1967), 6–9.
92. Taiz, 42.
93. Taiz, 111.
94. William Brewer, “Boston,” The Conqueror (July 1893), 255. A corps in the Boston
neighborhood of Jamaica Plain and a Swedish corps were both begun in November
1893. Archives at the Salvation Army Massachusetts Divisional Headquarters, Boston,
Mass. “Inauguration of Swedish Work,” American War Cry, 16 December 1893, 8; “New
England Review,” American War Cry, 18 November 1893, 11.
95. William J. Cozens, Church of the Back Street: Annual Report of the Salvation
Army (Incorporated) in Boston for the Year Ending November, 1900, (Boston: New
England Headquarters, 1900), archives at the Salvation Army Massachusetts Divisional
Headquarters.
96. Kristen Petersen Farmelant, “Trophies of Grace: Religious Conversion and
Americanization in Boston’s Immigrant Communities, 1890–1940” (Ph.D. diss., Brown

226 · Notes to Pages 107–109

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 University, 2001), 91. A short-lived beginning to the Salvation Army’s Swedish work
occurred in the summer of 1891. Captain Graham and Lieutenant Olson are identified
on the Disposition of Forces record only for June of 1891. After this time, the record has
no officers assigned to this work. By the end of the year, the Swedish corps completely
disappears from the Disposition of Forces records until, in 1894, it reappears under the
Swedish District Disposition of Forces, a separate administrative unit for work among
Swedes in America. The American War Cry described the inauguration date of work
among Swedes in Boston as December of 1893. “Inauguration for Swedish Work in
Boston,” American War Cry, 16 December 1893, 8.
97. Scandinavian Department Disposition of Forces, Salvation Army Archives
and Research Center. The archive at the Salvation Army New England Divisional
Headquarters in Boston also has some documentation about Boston #6. The current
Salvation Army New England Divisional Headquarters is located at the former site of the
Methodist Episcopal People’s Church in the South End.
98. The Salvation Army’s work among Swedish immigrants began in New York in
1887. McKinley, 59, 63.
99. Farmelant, 85. Louis A. Banks, White Slaves; or, The Oppression of the Worthy
Poor (Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1892).
100. Farmelant, 84.
101. Hattie B. Cooper, “History of the New England Conference Society,” in Annual
Report and Thirty-Fifth Anniversary of the New England Conference Woman’s Home
Missionary Society, 1915–1916 (Boston: Woman’s Home Missionary Society, 1916), 51.
102. Sorlin worked on the bethel ship, the John Wesley, in New York Harbor from
1874 to 1876. Henry C. Whyman, The Hedstroms and the Bethel Ship Saga: Methodist
Influence on Swedish Religious Life (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press,
1992). “Daniel S. Sorlin,” Official Minutes of the Ninetieth Session of the New England
Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, held in Trinity Church, Worcester, April
10–16, 1889 (Boston: Alfred Mudge & Sons, 1889), 113.
103. Woman’s Home Missionary Society Minutes, 1893, Boston University School
of Theology Library. Prior to the late 1880s the Woman’s Home Missionary Society of
the Methodist Episcopal Church had concentrated most of its work among freedmen
in the American South and Mormons in the West. Some small efforts among Chinese
immigrants had begun in 1886 in the western states as well. Cooper, 50.
104. Roman Catholic parishes in East Boston also sponsored women dock workers
among the immigrants. Farmelant, 87.
105. Ibid., 82, 86.
106. The location of the home was first at 10 Haynes Street in East Boston and
subsequently at two locations on Marginal Street. Cooper, 50.
107. Ibid.
108. George W. Mansfield, “Other Institutions—Concluded,” in The Centennial of
New England Methodism, ed. George A. Crawford (Boston: Crawford Brothers, 1891),
543–548.
109. Farmelant, 32.
110. Ibid., 94. Farmelant, 94.
111. “Organizational Records, 1896–1928,” Immigrant Home, East Boston, Boston
University School of Theology Library.

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 112. Farmelant, 31, 94.
113. Cullis’s deaconess home also had a de facto deaconess training school, as many of
the deaconesses attended evening classes in his Faith Training College on Beacon Hill.
114. The curriculum at the training school included books on the recent history of
deaconesses in Europe as well as the ancient history of the church office. First Annual
Report of the New England Deaconess Home and Training School (Boston: McDonald,
Gill, and Co., 1890). Benjamin L. Hartley, “Salvation and Sociology in the Methodist
Episcopal Deaconess Movement,” Methodist History 40, no. 3 (2002).
115. Robert, American Women in Mission, 65–75, 125–188. Official Minutes of the
Ninety-Second Session of the New England Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church,
1891 (Boston: McDonald & Gill & Co., 1891), 74.
116. For an overview of the deaconess movement’s history in Europe and elsewhere
see Olson.
117. Bishop James Thoburn, a well-known missionary from India, led the petitions
through the intricacies of the General Conference with the urgings of his missionary
sister, Isabella Thoburn, who had recently joined forces with Chicago’s Lucy Rider
Meyer in their common cause to establish the office of deaconess in the denomination.
Elizabeth Meredith Lee, As among the Methodists: Deaconesses Yesterday, Today, and
Tomorrow (New York: Woman’s Division of Christian Service, Board of Missions, The
Methodist Church, 1963), 21. Similar movements of “Methodist Sisters” occurred in
Britain in the 1870s under the leadership of Katharine and Hugh Price Hughes—the
most prominent Methodist preacher in Britain at the turn of the century. Hughes praised
the Sisterhood of the West London Mission as “by far the most important departure of
the Mission.” These “sisters” were not called deaconesses, as Hugh Price Hughes “did not
fancy the title.” Dorothea Price Hughes, The Life of Hugh Price Hughes (New York: A. C.
Armstrong & Son, 1904), 202. Philip S. Bagwell, Outcast London, a Christian Response:
The West London Mission of the Methodist Church, 1887–1987 (London: Epworth Press,
1987), 29.
118. Mary Agnes Dougherty, My Calling to Fulfill: Deaconesses in the United
Methodist Tradition (New York: Women’s Division, General Board of Global Ministries,
The United Methodist Church, 1997), 94–170.
119. Robert, American Women in Mission, 92–101.
120. Subsequent years’ records of the New England Annual Conference suggest that
little progress was made on this idea of a women’s seminary. Minutes of the Seventieth
Session of the New England Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, held
at Lowell, Mass., March 24–30, 1869 (Boston: James P. Magee, 1869), 38.
121. Although it is difficult to discern their popular impact, three novels in the
1870s and 1880s explicitly criticized the male office of deacon as it was known in
Congregationalist and Baptist churches. Portrayed as hypocritical and stuck in their
ways, the deacon characters in these novels would have provided a helpful contrast to
the female deaconess movement, which viewed its ministry as a kind of retrieval of a
primitive Christian ideal. Robert Glenn Wright, The Social Christian Novel (New York:
Greenwood Press, 1989), 20, 115, 116, 122.
122. “Deaconess Training School Commencement,” Zion’s Herald 78, 30 May 1900,
686.
123. After his death, Brodbeck was said to be for Methodists in Boston what A. J.

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 Gordon was for the Baptists. William Nast Brodbeck, Sermons and Addresses (New
York: Eaton and Mains, 1898), 75. Official Minutes of the Ninety-First Session of the New
England Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, held in People’s Church, Boston,
April 9–15, 1890 (Boston: McDonald, Gill & Co, 1890), 95.
124. Incorporation minutes of 21 June 21 1889, New England Deaconess Association
Corporation Records: 21 June 1889–22 January 1924, New England Deaconess
Association archive, Concord, Mass. Although the training component of this institution
was rather unique for Methodist women in Boston, the tradition of women organizing
for the purposes of benevolent activities was a long one in Boston. See Anne M. Boylan,
“Women in Groups: An Analysis of Women’s Benevolent Organizations in New York
and Boston, 1797–1840,” The Journal of American History 71, no. 3 (1984): 497–523;
Jonathan Cooney, “‘The Means of Doing Good’: The Methodist Female Relief Society of
Boston, 1828–1868, 2002,” unpublished paper, Boston University School of Theology.
125. The East Chester Park location of the Deaconess Home and Training School was
located between Albany and Washington streets on the western side of Boston’s South
End in the highly Republican Ward Eighteen. The street is now called Massachusetts
Avenue. City of Boston, A Record of the Streets, Alleys, Places, Etc., in the City of Boston
(Boston: City of Boston Printing Department, 1910).
126. The Boston University School of Theology did not wholly exclude women from
taking course work there. Prior to the founding of the deaconess training school, five
women had graduated from the Boston University School of Theology, although none
had done so since 1882: Anna Oliver in 1876; Anna H. Shaw in 1878; Elizabeth H.
Delavan in 1880; Katharine Lente Stevenson in 1881; and Harriet E. Stone in 1882. Other
women took some courses at the seminary but did not graduate. “School of Theology—
Miscellaneous Mention,” Zion’s Herald 71, 7 June, 1893.
127. Undated newspaper clipping found in the inside front cover of New England
Deaconess Association Corporation Records: 21 June 1889–22 January 1924. New
England Deaconess Association archive. This volume contains the incorporation
documents and other minutes from the first decade of the school’s existence.
128. Virginia Lieson Brereton, “Preparing Women for the Lord’s Work: The Story of
Three Methodist Training Schools, 1880–1940, in Women in New Worlds, ed. Hilah F.
Thomas and Rosemary S. Keller (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1981), 181.
129. New England Deaconess Association Corporation Records: 21 June 1889–22
January 1924. New England Deaconess Association archive.
130. For a more detailed analysis of the curriculum of the New England Deaconess
Home and Training School see Hartley, 182–197.
131. New England Deaconess Journal, December 1909, New England Deaconess
Association archive. Edgar James Helms, Epworth League House (University Settlement)
34 Hull Street, Boston: A Religious Social Study Revealing the Religious Destitution and
Consequent Christian Opportunity and Obligation in a Section of Boston Slums (n.p.:
Epworth League House Commission of the First General Conference District, 1894),
64–67.
132. Official Minutes of the Ninety-Second Session of the New England Conference
of the Methodist Episcopal Church, held in Common St. Church, Lynn, April 8–14, 1891
(Boston: McDonald, Gill, & Co., 1891), 75.
133. The board of managers, consisting of fifteen individuals, provided more direct

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 supervision of the Deaconess Home and contained a majority of women. New England
Deaconess Association Corporation Records: 21 June 1889–22 January 1924. New
England Deaconess Association archive.
134. Robert, American Women in Mission, 142–143.
135. Harriet Warren was most likely in Germany at least until 1866, the year her
husband was appointed to the faculty of Boston University.
136. Official Minutes of the One Hundred Thirty-Sixth Annual Session of the New
England Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church held in Leominster, Mass. April
6–11, 1932 (Cambridge: Murray Printing), 116.
137. “Shawmut,” “Boston Letter,” Zion’s Herald 71, 14 June 1893.
138. Seth C. Cary, “The Deaconess Training School of the Methodist Episcopal
Church: A Plan to Broaden and Develop It, and to Transform It into Methodism’s
Greatest Need—a Training School for Christian Workers, 1891,” Address given before
a meeting of the Alpha Chapter alumni organization of Boston University School of
Theology on December 21, 1891, New England Deaconess Home and Training School
Records, Boston University School of Theology Library.
139. Ibid.
140. “Deaconess Training School Commencement,” Zion’s Herald, 30 May 1900, 686.
141. New England Deaconess Journal, June 1914.
142. The Salvation Army also opened a training garrison in Boston the following
summer. “Opening of Men’s Training Garrison at Boston,” American War Cry, 9 August
1990, 7.
143. Inter-Seminary Alliance, Report of the Ninth Annual Convention of the American
Inter-Seminary Missionary Alliance, Boston, Mass., October 25th, 26th, 27th, and 28th,
1888 (Chicago: Clark and Longley, 1889), 17. Five years earlier at this same gathering of
the Inter-Seminary Missionary Alliance Gordon called for a more minimalistic training
regimen for missionaries but with a strong emphasis on transformation by the Holy
Spirit. See Inter-Seminary Alliance, Fourth Annual Convention of the American Inter-
Seminary Alliance, Hartford, Connecticut, October 25, 26, 27, 28 1883 (Hartford: Case,
Lockwood and Brainard Co., 1883), 37–41.
144. Gibson, 134.

chapter five
Evangelical Consensus and Division
1. The polarized nature of American religion in this period is especially accentuated in
Ferenc Morton Szasz, The Divided Mind of Protestant America, 1880–1930 (University:
University of Alabama Press, 1982).
2. “The World’s Parliament of Religions,” Zion’s Herald 71, 11 October 1893, 324.
3. Dana L. Robert, Occupy until I Come: A. T. Pierson and the Evangelization of the
World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 225–233. Szasz, 12.
4. “The Higher Criticism: A Symposium,” Zion’s Herald 71, 22 March 1893, 89.
5. “Aggressive Work in Cities,” Zion’s Herald 63, 25 August 1886, 268. Frederick V.
Mills, “Hinckley Gilbert Thomas Mitchell (1846–1920),” in Dictionary of Heresy Trials
in American Christianity, ed. George H. Shriver (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press,
1997), 294.

230 · Notes to Pages 114–120

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 6. Daniel Steele, “A Good Word for Higher Criticism,” Zion’s Herald 78, 23 May 1900,
649.
7. Richard Morgan Cameron, Boston University School of Theology, 1839–1968
(Boston: Boston University School of Theology, 1968), 41.
8. “The Bible and Higher Criticism,” Zion’s Herald, 13 January 1892, 12. The Zion’s
Herald was usually very sympathetic to the contributions higher criticism could offer.
For example, Boston University Old Testament professor Hinckley G. Mitchell named
the Zion’s Herald editor as a supporter of his when he was under attack for heresy. “Its
editor allowed me to say what I would, in reason, without always taking the trouble to
provide the reader with a ready antidote. He held that there were critics and critics, and
whatever I said or omitted to say, treated me as one of the constructive class. Of course,
he was prejudiced in my favor.” Hinckley G. Mitchell, For the Benefit of My Creditors
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1922), 137–138.
9. Arcturus Z. Conrad, ed., Boston’s Awakening: A Complete Account of the Great
Boston Revival under the Leadership of J. Wilbur Chapman and Charles M. Alexander,
January 26th to February 21st 1909 (Boston: The King’s Business Publishing Company,
1909). “Three Distinguished Evangelists in Boston,” Zion’s Herald 75, 6 January 1897,
16.
10. Josiah Strong, The New Era; or, The Coming Kingdom (New York: Baker & Taylor
Co., 1893), 320–374. Janet Forsythe Fishburn, The Fatherhood of God and the Victorian
Family: The Social Gospel in America (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981), 99.
11. Dale Dunlap, “Tuesday Meetings, Camp Meetings, and Cabinet Meetings: A
Perspective on the Holiness Movement in the Methodist Church in the United States in
the Nineteenth Century,” Methodist History 13, no. 3 (1975): 96.
12. “Come-outerism” is a term scholars have used to describe the action taken by many
individuals and groups to leave established denominations (mostly Methodist) in order
to gain more freedom to focus on the doctrine and experiences of entire sanctification.
Charles Edwin Jones, Perfectionist Persuasion: The Holiness Movement and American
Methodism, 1867–1936 (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1974), 47–61.
13. There was not a generational difference between Inskip and McDonald, as Inskip
was only four years older than McDonald. Kenneth O. Brown, Inskip, McDonald,
Fowler: “Wholly and Forever Thine”; Early Leadership in the National Camp Meeting
Association for the Promotion of Holiness (Hazleton, Pa.: Holiness Archives, 1999), 216.
14. The Church of the Nazarene denomination in New England began with the
People’s Evangelical Church of South Providence, Rhode Island, which formed out of
heated arguments over holiness at St. Paul’s Methodist Episcopal Church also in Rhode
Island. Timothy Lawrence Smith and W. T. Purkiser, Called unto Holiness: The Story of
the Nazarenes (Kansas City, Mo.: Nazarene Publishing House, 1962), 54–73. Jones, 91.
15. Official Minutes of the Ninetieth Session of the New England Conference of the
Methodist Episcopal Church, Held in Trinity Church, Worcester, April 10–16, 1889
(Boston: Alfred Mudge & Son, 1889), 87.
16. Daniel Steele promoted the work of Charles Cullis, the Salvation Army, and the
Methodist Deaconess Home. Samuel F. Upham was a supporter of Charles Cullis’s
work. William Nast Brodbeck was named after the German Methodist holiness leader
William Nast, was pastor and friend to Eben Tourjée, and was a prominent leader in
the Evangelistic Association of New England and other groups. A collection of sermons

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 published after Brodbeck’s death noted his commitment to the holiness movement
and described him as being to Boston Methodists what A. J. Gordon was to the city’s
Baptists. William Nast Brodbeck, Sermons and Addresses (New York: Eaton and Mains;
Cincinnati: Curts and Jennings, 1898), 76. Two other members of the Special Committee
on Holiness Association were David Hough Ela and John Mansfield, both important
leaders of the Boston Missionary and Church Extension Society in the 1890s. Their
careers suggest they were also supportive of the holiness movement although not to the
same extent as Steele, Brodbeck, and Upham.
17. Smith and Purkiser, 60.
18. Daniel Steele, Love Enthroned: Essays on Evangelical Perfection (New York:
Nelson & Phillips, 1875), 413–414.
19. Rev. J. N. Short, also a member of the 1889 Special Committee on Holiness
Associations, left the Methodist connection in 1893 and organized a church in Cambridge
that eventually became the Cambridge Church of the Nazarene. The publisher of the
New England Annual Conference’s annual meeting minutes, Joshua Gill, also organized
the First Evangelical Church of Boston in 1892, which met in the revered Jesse Lee
Chapel for weekly worship. Smith and Purkiser, 62–63. In 1890 the presiding elder of the
Lynn District was instructed to bring up charges against Gill for his violation of the 1889
resolution on holiness meetings. Official Minutes of the Ninety-First Session of the New
England Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, held in People’s Church, Boston,
April 9–15, 1890 (Boston: McDonald, Gill & Co, 1890), 112.
20. Daniel Steele, A Defense of Christian Perfection; or, A Criticism of Dr. James
Mudge’s Growth in Holiness toward Perfection (New York: Hunt & Eaton, 1896). Lewis
R. Dunn, A Manual of Holiness and Review of Dr. James B. Mudge (New York: Hunt and
Eaton, 1895); Smith and Purkiser, 45.
21. James Mudge participated in Indian holiness revivals led by holiness leaders John
Inskip and William McDonald. Brown. Mudge wrote very favorably about the progress of
the holiness movement in India in an 1874 article in the Advocate of Christian Holiness.
James M. Mudge, “Letter from India,” Advocate of Christian Holiness 4, no. 12 (1874):
265–282. Years later Mudge also became a professor of mission at Boston University School
of Theology. Although opposed to teaching on “instantaneous sanctification,” which had
become popularized with Timothy Merritt and Phoebe Palmer earlier in the nineteenth
century, Mudge remained committed to the idea of “progressive sanctification” and
in 1915 could still warmly write of Steele’s contributions in Steele’s official obituary for
the New England Annual Conference. Official Minutes of the One Hundred and
Nineteenth Session of the New England Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church
held in People’s Temple, Boston, April 14–19, 1915 (Cambridge: Charles R. Magee, 1915),
130.
22. Bishop A. G. Haygood, “Disputing About Holiness,” Zion’s Herald 71, 7 June 1893,
178. Vinson Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition: Charismatic Movements in the
Twentieth Century, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 37. Haygood was perhaps
the most ardent critic of instantaneous sanctification in southern Methodism. The Zion’s
Herald also published rebuttal attacks against holiness leader William McDonald for his
critical remarks against the Zion’s Herald in his magazine the Christian Witness. “Dr.
McDonald Again,” Zion’s Herald, 8 December 1890, 388.
23. For a recent review of theological developments in American Methodism see

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 Glenn Spann, “Theological Transition within Methodism: The Rise of Liberalism and
the Conservative Response,” Methodist History 43, no. 3 (2005).
24. Synan, 43.
25. Dana L. Robert, “Holiness and the Missionary Vision of the Woman’s Foreign
Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1869–1894,” Methodist History
39, no. 1 (2000): 15–27.
26. Studies of holiness theologians in this period demonstrate that there was
considerable diversity in teachings on holiness and some of these theologians did not
at all line up neatly as Wesleyan or Keswickian advocates. This was particularly the case
with William E. Boardman, as cogently argued by Williams. Roy Leonard Williams,
“William Edwin Boardman (1810–1886): Evangelist of the Higher Christian Life,” (Ph.D.
diss., Calvin Theological Seminary, 1998), 182–199.
27. The Swampscott meeting of evangelists and Bible teachers included such notables
as revivalist D. W. Whittle, Presbyterian pastor W. J. Erdman, and premillennialist pastor
from Missouri James Hall Brookes. Whittle and Erdman were close associates of Moody
at this time.
28. Daniel Steele, “The Evangelists by the Sea-Side,” Advocate of Christian Holiness
6 (October 1876): 274.
29. Daniel Steele, Mile-Stone Papers: Doctrinal, Ethical and Experimental on
Christian Progress (New York: Nelson & Phillips, 1878); Daniel Steele, Antinomianism
Revived; or, The Theology of the So-Called Plymouth Brethren Examined and Refuted
(Boston: McDonald Gill, 1887); Steele, A Defense of Christian Perfection; Daniel Steele,
Jesus Exultant; or, Christ No Pessimist: And Other Essays (Boston: Christian Witness
Co., 1899).
30. Steele cited in Catherine Booth, Aggressive Christianity: Practical Sermons, with
an Introduction by Daniel Steele, D.D. (Boston: McDonald & Gill, 1883), 11, 70. Steele,
Antinomianism Revived.
31. The increasing popularity of Plymouth Brethren ideas observed in the continued
Prophetic Conferences were doubtless a major concern for Steele. His growing fears
of Plymouth Brethren teaching may have also been spurred on by the recent arrival of
Presbyterian pastor and Prophetic Conference leader Charles Erdman, who pastored
a Presbyterian Church in the Boston area from 1886 to 1888. Ernest R. Sandeen, The
Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, 1800–1930 (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1970), 135.
32. Twenty-eighth Annual Report of the Consumptives Home and other Institutions
Connected with a Work of Faith to September 30, 1892 (Boston: Willard Tract Repository,
1892), 5.
33. “Gordon Training School Items,” The Evangelistic Record 2 (December–January
1895–1896): 14. EANE Records, Goddard Library, Gordon Conwell Theological
Seminary, Hamilton, Mass.
34. The Gordon Training School by this time was more influenced by the more
(Reformed) Keswick understanding of sanctification. Premillennialist teachings would
have held an equally central place in the school’s curriculum.
35. James Mudge, “Seventy-Five Years of the ‘Methodist Review.’” Methodist Review
76, no. 4 (1894): 531. Pennsylvania Methodist Rev. Leander W. Munhall was one of the few
Methodists who also supported the premillennial perspectives prevalent at the Gordon

Notes to Pages 123–125 · 233

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 Training School and was the only Methodist speaker at the 1901 Prophecy Conference
held at Clarendon Street Baptist Church in Boston. At one Methodist ministers’ meeting
Munhall once blamed higher criticism as the cause of a whole host of social ills and
heretical sects. Szasz, 40.
36. Henry C. Sheldon started at Boston University as professor of historical theology
in 1875. He became a professor of systematic theology in 1895. Henry C. Sheldon,
“Changes in Theology among American Methodists,” American Journal of Theology 10,
no. 1 (1906): 46–49.
37. Francis John McConnell, Borden Parker Bowne: His Life and Philosophy (New
York: Abingdon Press, 1929), 13–14.
38. In the 1904 book Methodist Theology vs. Methodist Theologians, author George
W. Wilson blamed “this new theology” for what he saw as the “slowly dying” status
of New England Methodism. George W. Wilson, Methodist Theology vs. Methodist
Theologians (Cincinnati: Jennings and Pye, 1904), 330. Bishop Willard F. Mallalieu of
the New England Annual Conference wrote the introduction to this book and gave it
his hearty endorsement. In the book, Wilson critiqued the theologies of Borden Parker
Bowne of Boston University, W. F. Tillett of Vanderbilt University, and W. C. Huntington
of Nebraska Wesleyan University.
39. For a review of the heresy charges brought up against Bowne see Harmon L.
Smith, “Borden Parker Bowne,” in Dictionary of Heresy Trials in American Christianity,
ed. George H. Shriver (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1997), 38–45.
40. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature
Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion Delivered at Edinburgh in 1901–1902
(New York: Modern Library, 1929), 492. James wrote Bowne a letter in 1901 where he
similarly praised Bowne’s book, The Christian Life, published that year, for its “relaxing
of ancient doctrines” and remarked how “all our sects are doctrinally coming together on
the basis of theism much like that of earlier Unitarianism.” Cited in McConnell, 275.
41. “A Day with Moody,” Zion’s Herald, 14 January 1891, 10; “Mr. Moody,” Zion’s Herald.
21 January 1891, 20. “Three Distinguished Evangelists in Boston,” Zion’s Herald 75, 6
January 1897, 16. Neither the 1891 nor the 1897 revival was received with any measure
of the enthusiasm with which Boston had welcomed Moody in 1877. Scott M. Gibson,
A. J. Gordon: American Premillennialist (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America,
2001), 198.
42. “The Social Gospel,” Zion’s Herald 76, 13 April 1898, 453.
43. Spann.
44. Gibson, 150.
45. Cited in Gibson, 147.
46. A similar ability to hold together a stress on individual and social transformation
could be seen in Gordon’s closest friend at the time of his death, the Reverend A. T.
Pierson. Robert, Occupy until I Come, 216–249.
47. James Gray served as supply pastor at Clarendon Street Baptist Church from April
1897 to May 1898, at which time the church voted to invite him to be their regular pastor.
Gray did not accept this invitation. John D. Hannah, “James Martin Gray, 1851–1935:
His Life and Work” (Th.D. diss., Dallas Theological Seminary, 1974), 114–115.
48. Dwight Lyman Moody, “To All People,” in Comprising Sermons, Bible Readings,
Temperance Addresses, and Prayer-Meeting Talks. Delivered in the Boston Tabernacle,

234 · Notes to Pages 125–128

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 by D. L. Moody. From the Boston Daily Globe Verbatim Reports, Carefully Revised and
Corrected. With an Introduction by Rev. Joseph Cook (New York: E. B. Treat; Chicago:
L. T. Palmer & Co., 1877), 510. The rescue mission work of premillennialists is most
clearly evident in the pages of The Christian Herald and Signs of Our Times, published
in New York City and edited by T. Dewitt Talmadge of Brooklyn. From 1879 to 1884
the number of articles related to interpreting Bible prophecies increased, and thus the
magazine was likely popular among Christians associated with the Prophecy Conference
movement. The journal would have been relatively unpopular among Methodists and
other Wesleyan holiness adherents even though Methodist leaders were occasionally
featured in the magazine. Christian Herald and Signs of Our Times, Harvard Divinity
School archives, Cambridge, Mass. For an analysis of this magazine and mostly New
York City evangelicals’ urban mission work see Norris Magnuson, Salvation in the
Slums: Evangelical Social Work, 1865–1920 (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press and the
American Theological Library Association, 1977).
49. Myung Soo Park, “Concepts of Holiness in American Evangelicalism: 1835–1915”
(Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 1992), 223.
50. Strong, 236.
51. The Evangelical Alliance was American Protestantism’s most important
ecumenical organization in the late nineteenth century and was the country’s intellectual
and organizing center for pastors interested in “social Christianity.” Philip D. Jordan, The
Evangelical Alliance for the United States of America, 1847–1900: Ecumenism, Identity,
and the Religion of the Republic (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1982); Robert, Occupy
until I Come, 126.
52. The theme of the 1887 conference was “National Perils and Opportunities,”
clearly borrowing from Josiah Strong’s Our Country. Strong assumed the leadership of
the Evangelical Alliance in 1886. Robert, Occupy until I Come, 127. Jordan, 143–190.
Gordon also condemned materialism in the church at this conference, saying “We have
no power to prevent men of the world from heaping up colossal fortunes, but our gospel
plainly forbids Christians to do it [emphasis in the original].” Methodist labor radical
Edward H. Rogers also gave a rousing speech at this conference, something he was able
to do even as an uneducated layman because of the connections his former pastor and
now bishop, Willard F. Mallalieu, had with other notables in the Evangelical Alliance.
Cited in Philip Laurence Giles, “Workingman and Theologian: Edward Henry Rogers
(1824–1909) and the Impact of Evangelicalism on the Making of the American Working
Class” (Ph.D. diss., University of Rochester, 1990), 176, 172.
53. Robert T. Rowlands, “Conservative Protestant Efforts to Institutionalize
Revivalism as Seen in the Evangelistic Association of New England, 1887–1971” (M.A.
thesis, Northeastern University, 1971), 14. For a review of the Evangelical Alliance’s turn
toward a more liberal social gospel expression of its activities see Jordan, 155–160. The
EANE is currently known as Vision New England. For an excellent description of Strong’s
theological disposition see James H. Moorhead, World without End: Mainstream
American Protestant Visions of the Last Things, 1880–1925 (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1999), 99. See also Wendy Jane Deichmann, “Josiah Strong: Practical
Theologian and Social Crusader for a Global Kingdom” (Ph.D. diss., Drew University,
1991).
54. Strong’s progressive social views must be seen in light of his simultaneous ability

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 to advocate very racist perspectives in Our Country. Wendy J. Deichmann Edwards,
“Forging an Ideology for American Missions: Josiah Strong and Manifest Destiny,” in
North American Foreign Missions, 1810–1914: Theology, Theory, and Policy, ed. Wilbert
R. Shenk (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 181–188.
55. Rowlands, 8. L. L. Doggett, History of the Boston Young Men’s Christian
Association (Boston: Young Men’s Christian Association, 1901), 44, 59.
56. Second Annual Report of the Evangelistic Association of New England, May 30,
1889 (Boston: Winship, Daniels, & Co., 1889), EANE Records, Goddard Library, Gordon
Conwell Theological Seminary.
57. Jonathan Dorn, “‘Our Best Gospel Appliances’: Institutional Churches and the
Emergence of Social Christianity in the South End of Boston, 1880–1920” (Ph.D. diss.,
Harvard University, 1994), 53.
58. Second Annual Report of the Evangelistic Association of New England, May 30,
1889 (Boston: Winship, Daniels, & Co., 1889). EANE Records, Goddard Library, Gordon
Conwell Theological Seminary.
59. William Nast Brodbeck and L. B. Bates at different times both served on the
examination committee to approve evangelists for the available pool of preachers.
Brodbeck also was in charge of coordinating pulpit supply services for the organization,
a task he seemed to enjoy doing. On one occasion when the difficulty of obtaining
evangelists was mentioned, he teased his colleagues, saying “[y]ou may all have to turn
Methodists and become itinerants.” The Evangelist June 1891 and January 1890. EANE
Records, Goddard Library, Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary.
60. Rowlands, 8.
61. First Annual Report of the Evangelistic Association of New England with
Constitution and Rules and Regulations, May 31, 1888 (Lynn, Mass.: M, A, Leger &
Co., Printers, 1888). EANE Records, Goddard Library, Gordon Conwell Theological
Seminary. At the time, L. B. Bates had been serving as pastor of the Methodist Episcopal
Meridian Street Bethel in East Boston since 1878 and was also serving on the board of
directors for the North End Mission. In 1888 Bates also served on the board of instruction
for Charles Cullis’s Faith Training College. At Cullis’s death Bates was one of the trustees
of the “Corporation of Faith Missions at Home and Abroad.”
62. Fourth Annual Report of the Evangelistic Association of New England, May 27,
1891, EANE Records, Goddard Library, Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary.
63. The Evangelist, May 1890. EANE Records, Goddard Library, Gordon Conwell
Theological Seminary.
64. Gordon’s wife, Maria, his assistant pastor, John A. McElwain, and deacons Charles
W. Perkins and Samuel B. Thing were also involved. Gibson, 260.
65. Ibid., 295.
66. The Evangelistic Record: A Monthly Curative for Infidelity, December 1894.
EANE Records, Goddard Library, Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary.
67. The Evangelistic Record: A Monthly Curative for Infidelity, November 1895.
EANE Records, Goddard Library, Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary. Moody also
came to Boston in 1891 and experienced a lukewarm reception.
68. Boston University Transcript for Edgar J. Helms, 1889, Boston University
Registrar’s Office, Boston, Mass.
69. Charles Wesley Fisher, “The Development of Morgan Memorial as a Social

236 · Notes to Pages 129–131

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 Institution” (Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 1949), 38, 46. In an address made in 1935
Helms told of the profound influence Borden Parker Bowne had on his thinking.
70. Handwritten letter from Rev. Edgar J. Helms dated 5 May 1899, Morgan
Memorial Church Records, 1899 folder, Boston University School of Theology Library.
Helms spent a year studying with Borden Parker Bowne following his seminary studies
prior to 1899. Fisher, 46.
71. Leroy E. Lindsey, “Radical Remedy: The Eradication of Sin and Related
Terminology in Wesleyan-Holiness Thought, 1875–1925” (Ph.D. diss., Drew University,
1996), 71–79, 97. Lindsey argues that the biggest difference between Keswick holiness
advocates and Wesleyan holiness advocates was in the Wesleyans’ belief in the possibility
of sin to be eradicated in a believer.
72. Newspaper clipping from the Christian Register, 1895, Folder for Morgan Chapel
1895–1900, Morgan Memorial Church Records, Boston University School of Theology
Library.
73. Francis Greenwood Peabody, “Unitarianism and Philanthropy,” Charities Review
5 (1895): 32.
74. Hinckley G. Mitchell cited in Fisher, 44.
75. Edgar James Helms, Epworth League House (University Settlement) 34 Hull Street,
Boston: A Religious Social Study Revealing the Religious Destitution and Consequent
Christian Opportunity and Obligation in a Section of Boston Slums (n.p.: Epworth
League House Commission of the First General Conference District, 1894), 79.
76. Dorn, 161.
77. Helms was in Europe visiting both Germany and England from July 1899 to
March 1900. He departed for Europe a month after the previously cited Pentecost letter
to his parishioners. Morgan Chapel Mirror, March 1900, Morgan Memorial 1899 folder,
Morgan Memorial Church Records, Boston University School of Theology Library.
78. Edgar J. Helms, “German Christian Socialism, Part II,” Zion’s Herald 78, 21
February 1900, 237–238. Edgar J. Helms “German Christian Socialism, Part 1,” Zion’s
Herald 78, 14 February 1900, 203.
79. Edgar J. Helms, “Church and Workingman,” Zion’s Herald, 79, 17 July 1901, 919.
80. “The Forward Movement” article from unknown source, Morgan Memorial
Church Records, 1899 folder, Boston University School of Theology Library.
81. Bowne’s Personalism stressed the person as a kind of “ontological ultimate,” which
is evident in Helms’s argument that a “love of man” should be higher than the church’s
“love of truth.” Briefly stated, Personalism may be seen as a reaction to both Hegel’s
philosophical idealism and Marx’s materialism.
82. William McGuire King, “The Emergence of Social Gospel Radicalism: The
Methodist Case,” Church History 50, no. 4 (1981): 439.

chapter six
The North End and the South End in the 1890s
1. Henry K. Carroll, The Religious Forces of the United States: Enumerated, Classified,
and Described; Returns for 1900 and 1910 Compared with the Government Census of
1890; Condition and Characteristics of Christianity in the United States: Revised and
Brought Down to 1910 (New York: Scribner, 1912), 407, 414–415.

Notes to Pages 132–137 · 237

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 2. Christiano has noted that it was not until the 1890s that Americans really understood
that the nation was going through a dramatic urbanization process. Kevin J. Christiano,
Religious Diversity and Social Change: American Cities, 1890–1906 (Cambridge, U.K.:
Cambridge University Press, 1987), 4–6.
3. Josiah Strong, The New Era; or, The Coming Kingdom (New York: Baker & Taylor
Co., 1893), 198–199.
4. The 1890 and 1906 statistics may be obtained from Henry K. Carroll, Report on
Statistics of Churches in the United States at Eleventh Census: 1890 (Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing Office, 1894); U.S. Bureau of the Census, Special Reports; Religious
Bodies, 1906: Part 1, Summary and General Tables. (Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Office, 1910). For articles by contemporaries discussing Methodist gains and
losses by neighborhood see Daniel Dorchester, “Status of Methodism in Boston and
Vicinity,” Zion’s Herald 58, 27 January 1881, 20; J. W. Hamilton, “Leaving the Churches,”
Zion’s Herald 58, 8 September 1881, 281.
5. The late nineteenth century was also a time of ascendancy for the Church
of England in Great Britain. Alan D. Gilbert, Religion and Society in Industrial
England: Church, Chapel, and Social Change, 1740–1914 (London: Longman,
1976).
6. An 1882 history of the Trinitarian Congregational churches in Boston stated
that of the sixteen Congregational churches in Boston “all but two in the early years
of the present century became known as Unitarian. The two remaining Trinitarian
were the First Church in Charlestown and the Old South.” Increase N. Tarbox, “The
Congregational (Trinitarian) Churches of Boston since 1780,” in The Memorial History
of Boston Including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630–1880, vol. 3, ed. Justin Winsor
(Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1882), 404.
7. The First Baptist Church of Boston was actually established across the river in
Charlestown in 1665, but Charlestown was not annexed by the city of Boston until 1874.
The Second Baptist Church, established in 1743 in the North End, was subsequently
known as the Baldwin-Place Church. In the late nineteenth century the Baptists only
had a seamen’s bethel in the North End, which had been in operation since 1843. In 1864
the Baptist Bethel relocated to a larger church still in the North End on Hanover Street.
Henry S. Burrage, A History of the Baptists in New England (Philadelphia: American
Baptist Publication Society, 1894), 48; Edgar James Helms, Epworth League House
(University Settlement) 34 Hull Street, Boston: A Religious Social Study Revealing
the Religious Destitution and Consequent Christian Opportunity and Obligation in a
Section of Boston Slums (n.p.: Epworth League House Commission of the First General
Conference District, 1894), 112.
8. For detailed analysis of this first Methodist society and early Methodist work in
Boston see Glen Alton Messer, “Restless for Zion: New England Methodism, Holiness,
and the Abolitionist Struggle, circa 1789–1845” (Th.D. diss., Boston University, 2006),
81–86.
9. “With Charity for All: University Settlement Makes Many Hearts Glad,” Boston
Globe, 2 October, 1893.
10. Louis A. Banks, White Slaves; or. The Oppression of the Worthy Poor (Boston: Lee
& Shepard, 1892).
11. Block-by-block demographic information on the North End has been

238 · Notes to Pages 137–139

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 compiled by William M. DeMarco, Ethnics and Enclaves: Boston’s Italian North End
(Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1981).
12. Minutes of the Seventy-Sixth Session of the New England Annual Conference of
the Methodist Episcopal Church held at State-Street Church, Springfield, April 7–14, 1875
(Boston: James P. Magee, 1875), 37.
13. George E. Atwood, “University Settlement at Epworth League House,” North
End Settlement, 1893–1894 folder, Box 1, Morgan Memorial Church Records, Boston
University School of Theology Library, Boston, Mass. Atwood was president of the
Boston Missionary and Church Extension Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church
in New England.
14. In 1892 the Methodist Episcopal Church in New England was said to have
contributed $6,000 and “a handful of missionaries” for city missionary work. By
comparison, the Zion’s Herald editor noted that the Congregationalists had twenty-one
missionaries and a budget of $44,455.50, the Unitarians a $20,000 budget, and the
Episcopalians a $25,000 budget with sixteen missionaries. The success of these other
denominations, however, in establishing churches among recent immigrants or the poor
was not commensurate with the greater amount of money they apparently spent. “City
Evangelization,” Zion’s Herald 70, 26 October 1892, 340.
15. The Congregationalist City Missionary Society in 1892 was under the new
leadership of Rev. Daniel Waldron, who stressed that the CMS was not a church extension
society and rather focused on internal efficiency, Christmas and Easter events, hospital
visitation, and the like. John Leslie Dunstan, A Light to the City: 150 Years of the City
Missionary Society of Boston, 1816–1966 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), 196.
16. Geoffrey Blodgett, Gentle Reformers: Massachusetts Democrats in the Cleveland
Era, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), 165. Geoffrey Blodgett, “Josiah
Quincy, Brahmin Democrat,” New England Quarterly 38 (December 1965): 439.
17. Blodgett, Gentle Reformers, 165.
18. The overall unemployment rate in New England in 1895 was 7.8 percent, with
approximately 30 percent of workers reporting at least one period of temporary
joblessness for the year. Joshua L. Rosenbloom, “The Challenges of Economic Maturity:
New England, 1880–1940,” in Engines of Enterprise: An Economic History of New
England, ed. Peter Temin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 156, 80.
19. Leah Hannah Feder, Unemployment Relief in Periods of Depression: A Study of
Measures Adopted in Certain American Cities, 1857 through 1922 (New York: Russell
Sage Foundation, 1936), 83.
20. Blodgett, Gentle Reformers, 161–163. “The Relief of the Unemployed in the United
States During the Winter of 1893–1894,” Journal of Social Science 32 (1894): 8–11.
21. Blodgett, Gentle Reformers, 141–171.
22. Blodgett, “Josiah Quincy, Brahmin Democrat,” 437.
23. Blodgett, “Josiah Quincy, Brahmin Democrat,” 440, 5.
24. Charles A. Littlefield, ed., “Two Excellent Inaugurals,” Our City, 15 January 1898,
1898 Folder, Morgan Memorial Church Records, Boston University School of Theology
Library.
25. Jacob A. Riis, The Battle with the Slum (Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, 1998),
116–123.
26. Five years before, in 1885, George Eastman discovered a way for film to be rolled,

Notes to Pages 140–143 · 239

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 thus enabling cameras to be less bulky. Developments in flash photography also were
important for making Riis’s work possible. Charles A. Madison, preface to How the
Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York with 100 Photographs from
the Jacob A. Riis Collection, the Museum of the City of New York and a New Preface by
Charles A. Madison, by Jacob A. Riis (New York: Dover Publications, 1971), vii–viii.
27. Edward H. McKinley, Marching to Glory: The History of the Salvation Army in
the United States, 1880–1992, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995),70–71.
28. Louis A. Banks, “Pew and Pulpit,” Boston Daily Globe, 23 October 1893, 8.
29. Several cities in the Northeast sought to compare the “Five Points” neighborhood
of New York with their own slums. See Benjamin L. Hartley, “The ‘Five Points’ of
Philadelphia: Evangelism and Social Reform at the Bedford Street Mission, 1850–1900,”
Methodist History 48, no. 1 (2009): 10–22.
30. Robert Bremner, From the Depths: The Discovery of Poverty in the United States
(New York: New York University Press, 1956), 69.
31. For more description of Flower’s other activities see Peter J. Frederick, Knights of
the Golden Rule: The Intellectual as Christian Social Reformer in the 1890s (Lexington:
University Press of Kentucky, 1976), 98–112. In its first year of publication, Bellamy’s
Looking Backward sold 10,000 copies and in its second year sold 300,000 copies. Robert
C. Elliott in Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward, 2000–1887, Riverside ed. (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1966), vii. James Dombrowski, The Early Days of Christian Socialism
in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), 84.
32. The Boston Bethel Mission had been operated by the Baptists at 332 Hanover
Street in the North End since 1864. John Woolman Brush, Baptists in Massachusetts
(Valley Forge, Pa.: Judson Press, 1970), 70; B. O. Flower, Civilization’s Inferno; or,
Studies in the Social Cellar (Boston: Arena Publishing Company, 1893), 49. Several
members of A. J. Gordon’s Clarendon Street Baptist Church were active participants in
the Boston Bethel Mission. Gibson, 153. Flower, 13, 49, 65.
33. Flower, 28, 36. The term “social gospel” began to be used in 1886, having possibly
been coined by Iowa pastor Charles O. Brown. The magazine Social Gospel, which began
in 1898, is largely responsible for the widespread acceptance of the term. The “social
gospel” was not simply about Christian social concern but rather tended to emphasize
the systemic more than the individual nature of sin. Ronald C. White, Liberty and Justice
for All: Racial Reform and the Social Gospel, 1877–1925 (San Francisco: Harper and
Row, 1990), xxi–xxii. Janet Forsythe Fishburn, The Fatherhood of God and the Victorian
Family: The Social Gospel in America (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981), 69. Aaron
Ignatius Abell, The Urban Impact on American Protestantism, 1865–1900 (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press and H. Milford Oxford University Press, 1943), 4, 83. Dana L.
Robert, Occupy until I Come: A. T. Pierson and the Evangelization of the World (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 147.
34. The emergence of sociology in this period is particularly important for the Boston
context since, in the 1890s, Harvard University was at the forefront of the new discipline
of sociology through the work of Francis Greenwood Peabody and Edward Cummings. For
a historical examination of the discipline of sociology see Arthur J. Vidich and Stanford
M. Lyman, American Sociology: Worldly Rejections of Religion and Their Directions
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985). William Graham Sumner at Yale University
is believed to have taught the first course that could be considered sociology in 1876.

240 · Notes to Pages 143–144

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 In 1892, John R. Commons published Popular Bibliography of Sociology specifically
targeting pastors. Dombrowski, 10.
35. “Mass Meeting under the Auspices of the Anti-Tenement House League,” The
Dawn 5, no. 4 (1893): 1.
36. The anti-Catholic American Protective Association was formed in Clinton, Iowa,
in March of 1887 and was relatively small until 1892, at which point the APA became
increasingly popular as an organizing force against growing Catholic power in local
and national politics. The promulgation of a false papal bull calling all Catholics to
massacre “heretics” in September of 1893 played a large role in drumming up support
for the APA. Although its area of greatest strength was in the midwestern regions of the
country, the APA was able to maintain a daily newspaper in Boston for two years that
featured prominently in Boston city politics. For a discussion of the APA see Humphrey
J. Desmond, The A.P.A. Movement (New York: Arno Press and the New York Times,
1969).
37. .“A.P.A. to Support Curtis. Pastor Brady Tells Why He Stands in Favor With
Patriotic Order,” Boston Daily Globe, 9 December 1895, 1. This article was the lead,
front-page story in the Globe. Directly below a nearly complete reprinting of Brady’s
sermon, the Globe ran a very large advertisement urging its readers to vote against the
prohibitionists and their no-license referendum in the December 10 election.
38. “Dr. Brady’s Sermon,” Boston Daily Standard, 9 December 1895, 2.
39. Patrick Maguire’s Republic was established in 1882 to advocate for the interests
of the Irish in both Ireland and America. He was also influential in getting his friend
Hugh O’Brien elected as mayor in 1884. John T. Galvin, “Patrick J. Maguire: Boston’s
Last Democratic Boss,” The New England Quarterly 55, no. 3 (1982): 409. Lawrence
W. Kennedy, “Power and Prejudice: Boston Political Conflict, 1885–1895” (Ph.D. diss.,
Boston College, 1987), 322.
40. The Baptist Tremont Temple in downtown Boston was another church that
discarded the “church” name for the modern “temple.” In the case of Berkeley Street
Congregational Church, the name change to “temple” signified the beginning of the
church’s serious adoption of institutional church methods. Jonathan Dorn, “‘Our Best
Gospel Appliances’: Institutional Churches and the Emergence of Social Christianity in
the South End of Boston, 1880–1920” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1994), 44. Official
Minutes of the Ninety-Ninth Session of the New England Conference of the Methodist
Episcopal Church held in Lafayette Street Church, Salem, April 3–8, 1895 (Boston:
Charles R. Magee), 124.
41. Josiah Strong, Religious Movements for Social Betterment (New York: Baker and
Taylor Company, 1900), 42.
42. Official Minutes of the Ninety-ninth Session of the New England Conference of
the Methodist Episcopal Church, held in Lafayette Street Church, Salem, April 3–8, 1895
(Boston: Charles R. Magee, 1895), 47; Official Minutes of the One Hundredth Session of
the New England Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Held in Asbury First
Church, Springfield, April 8–13, 1896 (Boston: Charles R. Magee, 1896), 226. Gipsy
Smith, Gipsy Smith: His Life and Work (New York, Chicago, and Toronto: Fleming H.
Revell, 1925), 260.
43. Official Minutes of the One Hundred and Fourth Session of the New England
Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, held in First Church, Fitchburg, April

Notes to Pages 144–145 · 241

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 4–10, 1900 (Boston: Charles R. Magee, 1900), 142, 164. Official Minutes of the One
Hundred and Third Session of the New England Conference of the Methodist Episcopal
Church, held in Tremont Street Church, Boston, April 5–11, 1899 (Boston: Charles R.
Magee, 1899), 134.
44. E. L. Godkin, the editor of The Nation, a consistently anti-imperialist periodical,
identified anti-Catholic sentiment among Methodists as the key reason for their support
of the Spanish-American War and described Methodists as one of “the most powerful
propagandists of the McKinley wars.” K. M. MacKenzie, The Robe and the Sword: The
Methodist Church and the Rise of American Imperialism (Washington, D.C.: Public
Affairs Press, 1961), 65.
45. E. B. Tompkins, Anti-imperialism in the United States: The Great Debate, 1890–
1920 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970), 2.
46. MacKenzie, 70, 81.
47. MacKenzie.
48. “Editorial: Methodists are Imperialists,” Zion’s Herald, 1 February 1899, 134.
49. For a list of prominent members of the Anti-Imperialist League see Fred H.
Harrington, “The Anti-imperialist Movement in the United States, 1898–1900,” The
Mississippi Valley Historical Review 22, no. 2 (1935): 211–230.
50. Tompkins.
51. Helms, 32–33, 70. Mitchell was chosen to be “captain” of the Boston University
School of Theology “Students’ Mission Band” in 1894 as part of the seminarians’ mimicry
of Salvation Army militaristic organization.
52. University Settlement was also sometimes called the Epworth League House
because of the support it received from the Methodist youth organizations in the area.
53. University Settlement was first located at 18 Charter Street and then shortly
moved a block away to 34 Hull Street. Helms, 55–56.
54. Sarah Deutsch, “Learning to Talk More Like a Man: Boston Women’s Class-
Bridging Organizations, 1870–1940,” The American Historical Review 97, no. 2 (1992):
398. For a review of Robert Woods’s contributions see Allan Freeman Davis, Spearheads
for Reform: The Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement, 1890–1914 (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1967).
55. Davis, Spearheads for Reform, 6–12.
56. Robert Archey Woods, The Neighborhood in Nation-Building: The Running
Comment of Thirty Years at the South End House (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1923), 2.
57. The Salvation Army never established settlement houses. Their “slum brigades”
were often a more radical expression of living with the poor, as “Slum Sisters” did not
live in their own house but rather in a tenement house apartment where the poor living
conditions would have been a constant presence.
58. Official Minutes of the Ninety-First Session of the New England Conference of the
Methodist Episcopal Church, held in People’s Church, Boston, April 9–15, 1890 (Boston:
McDonald & Gill & Co., 1890), 105.
59. 1897–1899 Epworth League House folder, Morgan Memorial Church Records,
Boston University School of Theology Library.
60. Undergraduate enrollments increased from 62,839 in 1870 to 237,592 in 1900.
Although a significant increase in absolute numbers, this represented only about 4
percent of the total young adult population between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one

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 in 1900. David P. Setran, The College “Y”: Student Religion in the Era of Secularization
(New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007), 63.
61. Boston Rescue Mission Records, Boston Rescue Mission, Boston, Mass.
62. Epworth League House 1894 folder, Morgan Memorial Church Records, Boston
University School of Theology Library.
63. 1892 newspaper clipping from The Dawn, Epworth Settlement, 1893–1894
folder, Box 1, Morgan Memorial Church Records, Boston University School of Theology
Library.
64. The North End’s greater geographical isolation relative to the South End was
largely due to the extensive streetcar lines that went through the South End in order
to get to the more suburb-like districts of Roxbury and Dorchester. Sam Bass Warner,
Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston, 1870–1900, 2nd ed. (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1978), 15–34; Robert Archey Woods, The City Wilderness: A
Settlement Study (New York: Garrett Press, 1970), 38.
65. The Baldwin Place Home for Little Wanderers, discussed in chapter 2, left the
North End in 1889 for the less congested South End. Woods, The City Wilderness, 4,
38–39.
66. In his 1898 study, Robert Woods estimated that the South End population was 30
percent American-born (with parents who had also been born in the United States), 32
percent Irish (first and second generation), more than 11 percent Jewish, and 6 percent
British-American. Small numbers of Italians, non-Jewish Germans, Austrians, French,
and Swedes comprised the remainder of the South End’s population. Woods, The City
Wilderness, 56.
67. From 1895 to 1899 the number of departures from the United States was
approximately half of the number of arrivals. This was the highest repatriation rate of
any five-year period in the late nineteenth century. Sarah Deutsch has estimated that,
in contrast to the mostly male North End population in the same period, as many as 60
percent of residents in Boston’s affluent Back Bay were women. Gaetano Conte, Ten Years
in America: Impressions and Recollections, ed. William R. Conte and Suzanne K. Conte,
translated by Gina Servini (Olympia, Wash.: privately printed, 1976), 103, Massachusetts
Historical Society, Boston, Mass.; Nell Irvin Painter, Standing at Armageddon: The
United States, 1877–1919 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1987), xxxii–xxxiii.
Sarah Deutsch, Women and the City: Gender, Space, and Power in Boston, 1870–1940
(New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 12.
68. The idea that the settlement house should serve as a model American home was
emphasized by Edgar Helms at the close of the first chapter of this book. Helms, 10, 55.
69. Dana L. Robert, American Women in Mission: A Social History of Their Thought
and Practice (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1997), 65–75.
70. Newspaper clipping from the Congregationalist, North End Settlement House,
1893–1895 folder, Box 1, Morgan Memorial Church Records, Boston University School
of Theology Library.
71. Letter dated 7 December 1916 from Edgar J. Helms to William F. Warren
describing the origins of the University Settlement house. North End Settlement, 1893–
1894 folder, Box 1, Morgan Memorial Church Records, Boston University School of
Theology Library.
72. Charles A. Littlefield, ed., “University Settlement: A Study in Sociology,” Our

Notes to Pages 149–151 · 243

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 City, 15 January 1898, Morgan Memorial Church Records, Boston University School of
Theology Library.
73. Woods, The Neighborhood in Nation-Building, 9–14.
74. Charles A. Littlefield, ed., “University Settlement: A Study in Sociology,” Our
City, 15 January 1898, Morgan Memorial Church Records, Boston University School of
Theology Library.
75. Mina Carson, Settlement Folk: Social Thought and the American Settlement
Movement, 1885–1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 63; Helms, 79;
Hinckley G. Mitchell, For the Benefit of My Creditors (Boston: Beacon Press, 1922),
130–131.
76. Woods, The Neighborhood in Nation-Building, 18.
77. Helms, 112.
78. Begun in 1864, the Mildmay institution in London initially focused on training
women as foreign missionaries but very quickly focused more on home missionary work
in England. By the 1890s Mildmay included a hospital, a deaconess home, an orphanage,
an outreach ministry for prostitutes, and numerous other ventures. By the end of the
nineteenth century there were 250 deaconesses and nurses at Mildmay. American
Methodist deaconess advocate Jane Bancroft stated that no other institution “will
perhaps furnish more practical models for American Methodism” than Mildmay. Jane
M. Bancroft, Deaconesses in Europe and Their Lessons for America (New York: Hunt &
Eaton, 1889), 166.
79. Helms, 63.
80. Letter dated 7 December 1916 from Edgar J. Helms to William F. Warren
describing the origins of the University Settlement, North End Settlement 1893–1894
folder, Box 1, Morgan Memorial Church Records, Boston University School of Theology
Library. The Medical Mission was located at 40 Hull Street. Dr. Howard A. Powers of
Boston University School of Medicine was medical director at this mission until his
death in 1916. The Woman’s Home Missionary Society officially assumed oversight of the
Medical Mission in 1895. “History of the New England Conference Society,” in Annual
Report and Thirty-Fifth Anniversary of the New England Conference Woman’s Home
Missionary Society, 1915–1916 (Boston: Woman’s Home Missionary Society, 1916), 52.
81. By 1895 the section of the North End where most of the Jews lived was
approximately one-third the size of the Italian sections and was located just two blocks to
the south of the University Settlement. University Settlement was located in the midst of
the Italian neighborhood inhabited by residents who had immigrated from the province
of Avellino in southern Italy. DeMarco. For a sociological study of the Jewish North End
based on interviews of older residents in the 1960s see Arnold A. Wieder, The Early
Jewish Community of Boston’s North End: A Sociologically Oriented Study of an Eastern
European Jewish Immigrant Community in an American Big-City Neighborhood
between 1870 and 1900 (Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis University, 1962).
82. Edgar J. Helms, Rollin Walker, and T. P. Fisher, all from the settlement house, were
mentioned as key individuals who invited the London evangelists to work with the Jews.
Dr. E. S. Niles was also identified as one of the individuals who invited the evangelists.
Niles previously operated a Jewish Mission on Portland Street, about seven blocks from
the University Settlement. “Boston Bound. London Hebrew Mission Workers Coming:
Will Introduce Work Here: Boston Hebrews Inclined to Believe that they will have no

244 · Notes to Pages 151–152

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 Success,” Newspaper clipping from the Boston Post dated May 1894, Epworth League
House 1894 folder, Morgan Memorial Church Records, Boston University School of
Theology Library.
83. Epworth League House 1894 folder, Morgan Memorial Church Records, Boston
University School of Theology library.
84. “No Attempts to Convert,” 6 May 1895, Morgan Chapel 1895–1900 folder, Morgan
Memorial Church Records, Boston University School of Theology Library. The scrapbook
identifies this as a Boston Globe article, but the article could not be verified as being from
this source. Years earlier the North End Mission had a primarily Methodist identity.
85. The Signal Light 1, no. 4 (1894), 1893–1894 North End Settlement folder, Morgan
Memorial Church Records, Boston University School of Theology Library. Nearly a
decade earlier, the Congregationalist City Missionary Society ceased attempts to convert
Catholics. Dunstan, 184.
86. Record of the Year: Boston Missionary and Church Extension Society of the
Methodist Episcopal Church, 1893–1894 (Boston: Everett Press Company, 1894), 13.
North End Settlement 1893–1894 folder, Morgan Memorial Church Records, Boston
University School of Theology Library.
87. Helms, 62.
88. Durao is later mentioned as a Methodist Portuguese pastor in an 1895 newspaper
article but never appeared as an official member of the New England Annual Conference.
“Free Italy Forever. Two Large Italian Parades March Boston’s Streets. Washington
Statue Decorated.” Boston Daily Standard, 21 September 1895, 1, 7.
89. Helms, 44.
90. Mark Peel, “On the Margins: Lodgers and Boarders in Boston, 1860–1900,”
Journal of American History 72, no. 4 (1986): 813–817. For an excellent analysis of
the ways that single women in particular found the lodging houses to be a liberating
experience see Deutsch, Women and the City, 78–114.
91. 1894 Epworth League House folder, Morgan Memorial Church Records, Boston
University School of Theology Library.
92. Census reports for the period show that, in 1900, 48 percent of boardinghouse
and lodging house residents were American-born of American-born parents while only
28 percent of the general population of Boston could claim this same heritage. Many of
the lodging house residents were rural migrants, and if they were immigrants they were
often of Canadian or British origin. Peel, 817.
93. “His Handbag Organ,” 1895 article in Morgan Chapel 1895–1900 folder, Morgan
Memorial Church Records, Boston University School of Theology Library.
94. The area of the city with the densest population of students at the end of the
nineteenth century was the South End. For a collection of maps, charts, and other details
on the lodging house situation in the South End see Albert Benedict Wolfe, The Lodging
House Problem in Boston (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1913).
95. People’s Church marriage records, People’s Temple Records, Boston University
School of Theology Library.
96. See Our City 2, no. 5 (1898), 1898 Morgan Chapel folder, Morgan Memorial
Church Records, Boston University School of Theology Library.
97. August 1896 Boston Evening Transcript reprint in the 1898 Morgan Chapel folder,
Morgan Memorial Church Records, Boston University School of Theology Library.

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 98. Italian immigrant Gaetano Conte was the class leader for the Italians, Joseph
Durao for the Portuguese, and R. H. Walker for the Jews. Helms, 84.
99. Letter from Helms dated 7 December 1916 to William F. Warren detailing the
origins and early history of the University Settlement. North End Settlement 1893–1894
folder, Box 1, Morgan Memorial Church Records, Boston University School of Theology
Library.
100. Helms, 112. Letter from Helms to William F. Warren (see note 98 above). Helms’s
1894 book about the work in the North End appears to have been part of a fund-raising
effort to build a new “institutional church” in the North End.
101. Gaetano Conte was incorrectly identified as a Baptist in Kristen Petersen
Farmelant, “Trophies of Grace: Religious Conversion and Americanization in Boston’s
Immigrant Communities, 1890–1940” (Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 2001), 13.
Although he did not mention him by name, Boston historian Geoffrey Blodgett also
incorrectly identified Gaetano Conte as a Roman Catholic priest and “agent of the APA”
who led a parade honoring the APA and an Italian holiday. Blodgett, Gentle Reformers,
152.
102. William R. Conte, “Gaetano Conte: His Mission and His Hope, 1992,” manuscript,
United Methodist Archives Center, Drew University Methodist Library, Madison, N.J.,
4–16, 20.
103. Ibid. Considerable detail about the Contes’ life in Italy as well as in the United
States before and after their return to Italy is provided in this manuscript written by one
of Conte’s descendants.
104. Conte spent a great deal of time in the city of Venosa as well, which was just
to the east of Avellino Province. The cities of Palermo and Messina are both on the
island of Sicily. For further discussion of the regional demarcations in the North End
see DeMarco.
105. Conte described his father as a “successful lawyer” and his mother as “an
intellectual or an educated lady.” Gaetano Conte cited in William R. Conte, “Gaetano
Conte: His Mission and His Hope,” manuscript, United Methodist Archives Center,
Drew University Methodist Library, 4.
106. Gaetano Conte, Ten Years in America, 17.
107. Gaetano Conte, “Societies for the Protection of Italian Immigrants: Documents
and Illustrations [Scrapbook],” Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Mass., 1906,
10. The Denison House and the WEIU primarily sought to cater to more educated
Italians than did the University Settlement. The WEIU was founded in 1877 by upper-
class women primarily from the Back Bay with established careers of their own. Of the
eight founding members, three were physicians. For more information on the WEIU see
Deutsch, Women and the City, 136–160.
108. William R. Conte, “Gaetano Conte: His Mission and His Hope,” manuscript,
United Methodist Archives Center, Drew University Methodist Library, 34.
109. “Little Boston Girl Who Played with Duse,” Boston Herald, 30 October 1902,
in Gaetano Conte, “Societies for the Protection of Italian Immigrants: Documents and
Illustrations [Scrapbook],” Massachusetts Historical Society, 1906, 13. William R. Conte,
“Gaetano Conte: His Mission and His Hope,” manuscript, United Methodist Archives
Center, Drew University Methodist Library, 131.
110. Official Minutes of the Ninety-Ninth Session of the New England Conference of

246 · Notes to Pages 155–157

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 the Methodist Episcopal Church, held in Lafayette Street Church, Salem, April 3–8, 1895,
(Boston: Charles R. Magee, 1895), 124.
111. In 1903 Gaetano Conte claimed to have five hundred members in his North
End congregation. William R. Conte, “Gaetano Conte: His Mission and His Hope,”
manuscript, United Methodist Archives Center, Drew University Methodist Library, p.
57.
112. Gaetano Conte, “Societies for the Protection of Italian Immigrants: Documents
and Illustrations [Scrapbook],” Massachusetts Historical Society, 1906.
113. The Methodists were one of the leading denominations in Protestant work among
Italians both in the United States and in Italy. The first Protestant work among Italians
in America was begun by an Italian Methodist in New York. Converted in Iowa in 1858
by the Methodists, Arrighi attended Boston Theological Seminary in 1865 and founded
the first Italian Protestant Church in New York in 1881 when he began preaching at the
Five Points Mission that had been founded years earlier by Phoebe Palmer. Arrighi may
have also been the first Protestant to be ordained in the city of Rome. Bishop Matthew
Simpson ordained Arrighi in Rome prior to returning to America in 1881. Frederick H.
Wright, “Italian Methodism in America,” in Religious Work among Italians in America,
ed. Antonio Mangano (Philadelphia: Board of Home Missions and Church Extension
of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1917), 33. John B. Bisceglia, Italian Evangelical
Pioneers (Kansas City, Mo.: Brown-White-Lowell Press, 1948), 18.
114. The location of the Italian Methodists’ new meeting place was 287 Hanover Street,
just around the block from North Square, where Father Taylor’s Methodist mission was
once located. The Italian church in 1900 had 115 regular members and 62 probationary
members. In 1900 the Italian church was under the oversight of the Cambridge rather
than the Boston District in spite of being located in Boston’s North End. Official Minutes
of the One Hundred and Fourth Session of the New England Conference of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, held in First Church, Fitchburg, April 4–10, 1900 (Boston: Charles R.
Magee, 1900), 52, 168.
115. The exact cause of the division in the Italian ministry is not known but may
have had something to do with conflict between Gaetano Conte and the new Italian
pastor, Salvator Musso. Musso remained as pastor of the North End Italian Methodist
Episcopal Church through 1908. Official Minutes of the One Hundred and Sixth Session
of the New England Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, held in First Church,
Boston, April 9–15, 1902 (Boston: Charles R. Magee, 1902), 50, 142. Official Minutes of
the One Hundred and Twelfth Session of the New England Conference of the Methodist
Episcopal Church Held in Trinity Church, Worcester April 8–14, 1908 (Boston: Charles
R. Magee, 1908), 170.
116. As a majority Italian congregation, the North End Methodist Episcopal Church
was founded in 1893, the same year that Kristen Petersen Farmelant has argued that the
Boston Baptist Bethel also founded its Italian work. Farmelant, 100, 266. The Baptists,
however, do not appear to have created an independent Italian congregation, as the
Methodists did a year later in 1894. Meeting minutes of the Boston Baptist Bethel in the
early 1890s make no reference to a specifically Italian church meeting at the bethel but
rather only that the bethel was doing some work among the Italians in the North End.
Boston Baptist Bethel Meeting Minutes, 1888–1917, Trask Library, Andover Newton
Theological Seminary, Newton, Mass. A book that includes a survey of the Baptist

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 situation in New England in 1894 also makes no mention of work with Italians but does
mention work with French, Norwegian, German, Swedish, and Finnish immigrants.
Henry S. Burrage, A History of the Baptists in New England (Philadelphia: American
Baptist Publication Society, 1894), 297–305. A 1912 report of the Baptist situation in
the North End, however, notes that “[a]t the Bethel the preponderance of North End
Italians over North End English-speaking members of church and Sunday school rather
discounts the English-speaking constituency.” Arthur Warren Smith, Baptist Situation of
Boston Proper: A Survey of Historical and Present Conditions (Boston: Griffith-Stillings
Press, 1912), 42. For a good treatment of the Baptists’ relationship to immigrants that is
national in scope see Lawrence B. Davis, Immigrants, Baptists, and the Protestant Mind
in America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973).
117. Gaetano Conte, “Societies for the Protection of Italian Immigrants: Documents
and Illustrations [Scrapbook],” Massachusetts Historical Society, 1906, 5.
118. “Association for Protecting Italian Workmen,” L’Amico Del Popuolo [The Friend
of the People], 16 February 1894, in ibid., 2, 40.
119. William R. Conte, “Gaetano Conte: His Mission and His Hope,” manuscript,
United Methodist Archives Center, Drew University Methodist Library, 37.
120. Gaetano Conte, Ten Years in America, 150. Edwin D. Mead was editor of the
literary journal the New England Magazine from 1889 to 1901. Edwin D. Mead, “Boston
Memories of Fifty Years,” in Fifty Years of Boston: A Memorial Volume Issued in
Commemoration of the Tercentenary of 1930, ed. Elisabeth M. Herlihy, C. K. Bolton, et
al. (Boston: Subcommittee on Memorial History of the Boston Tercentenary Committee,
1932), 27.
121. The problem of corrupt banking practices was also recorded by DeMarco, 82–
83.
122. Further details on the corrupt practices of the padrones is provided by Gaetano
Conte, Ten Years in America, 124–128.
123. Ibid., 146.
124. Fund-raising letter from the Epworth League House Commission, 1894 Epworth
League House folder, Morgan Memorial Church Records, Boston University School of
Theology Library.
125. Cited in Salvatore Mondello, The Italian Immigrant in Urban America, 1880–
1920, as Reported in the Contemporary Periodical Press (New York: Arno Press, 1980),
81–83.
126. Gaetano Conte, Ten Years in America, 138.
127. Kennedy, “Power and Prejudice,” 252.
128. Gaetano Conte, Ten Years in America, 93. A lengthy article in the Methodist
Review in 1891 published a “symposium” on the problem of immigration that also
stressed the need for immigration restrictions and continued to view the Roman Catholic
hierarchy as a tremendous threat. Charles Parkhurst, W. H. Wilder, and G. L. Curtiss,
“Immigration: A Symposium,” Methodist Review, 73 (September–October 1891): 709.
129. The rather secularized Italian “translation” of the Methodist “Epworth League” as
“Society for Humanitarian Education” is revealing in light of Conte’s eventual departure
from Methodism to Unitarianism a few years after he returned to Italy.
130. “Free Italy Forever. Two Large Italian Parades March Boston’s Streets. Washington
Statue Decorated.” Boston Daily Standard, 21 September 1895, 1, 7.

248 · Notes to Pages 157–159

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 131. Gaetano Conte, Ten Years in America, 102. The conflict between the Irish and
Italians in the North End is also discussed in Blodgett, Gentle Reformers, 151–152.
132. A photocopy of this ordination certificate and a detailed description of Conte’s
final years in Italy is provided in William R. Conte, “Gaetano Conte: His Mission and
His Hope,” manuscript, United Methodist Archives Center, Drew University Methodist
Library.
133. See also Dorn; Charles Wesley Fisher, “The Development of Morgan Memorial
as a Social Institution” (Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 1949). Dorn’s dissertation is
particularly helpful for its comparison of Morgan Memorial with three other institutional
churches in the South End of Boston between 1880 and 1920.
134. With the arrival of Rev. Charles Albert Dickinson in 1888, Berkeley Temple
was quickly transformed into a place that offered a wide array of social welfare services,
industrial classes, and religious activities. After less than a year at Berkeley Temple,
Dickinson witnessed a doubling of Sunday morning worship attendance and a total
weekly attendance at various programs of up to five thousand individuals. Dorn, 52.
135. Daniel Steele, “Cathedral Methodism,” Zion’s Herald, 69, 19 August 1891, 257.
136. Helms, 112; Harriet J. Cooke, “The City Problem,” March 1894, North End
Settlement 1894 folder, Morgan Memorial Church Records, Boston University School
of Theology Library.
137. Morgan Memorial ran businesses in dressmaking, millinery, mending, printing,
carpentry, and shoe making. The Morgan Memorial music school offered classes in
a variety of instruments and voice that were taught by faculty at Eben Tourjée’s New
England Conservatory of Music. Dorn, 153–154.
138. Dorn, 161.
139. Blodgett, “Josiah Quincy, Brahmin Democrat,” 441–443; Dorn, 157; Fisher, 95.
140. Vinson Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition: Charismatic Movements in
the Twentieth Century, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 51.
141. Henry Morgan’s bequest of Morgan Chapel included a stipulation that the
Unitarian Benevolent Fraternity of Churches be in charge of the physical property of
the chapel while the Methodist Episcopal Church was given the right to supervise the
ministry that took place there. This arrangement was not always very clear-cut, as the
Benevolent Fraternity of Churches sometimes urged Helms in a particular direction in
his ministry. Dorn, 145.; E. C. E. Dorion, The Redemption of the South End: A Study
in City Evangelization, Constructive Church Series (n.p.: Published for the Epworth
League of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1915).
142. Henry Helms and Eugenia Helms, “Life with Father,” 8 February 1952
manuscript, Morgan Memorial Church Records, Boston University School of Theology
Library; Fisher, 96, 8.
143. Morgan Chapel 1895–1900 folder, Morgan Memorial Church Records, Boston
University School of Theology Library. Wheelock was a Congregationalist from Vermont
who has been called the “Dean of Kindergarteners in America.” Lucy Wheelock, “My Life
Story, 1946,” manuscript, Wheelock College Library, Boston, Mass.
144. Dorn, 162.
145. Strong, Religious Movements for Social Betterment, 60–63.
146. Dorn, 292. Morgan Chapel was renamed Morgan Memorial Church upon the
completion of the new church building in 1902.

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 147. Dorn, 311.
148. Shortly after Major Frank Smith returned to London in 1887 after serving as
head of the Salvation Army in America, he became head of the Army’s social work in
England and established “Salvage Brigades,” which the Boston Salvation Army and
Edgar Helms mimicked. George H. Murphy in a commencement address given in June
1894 also stated that the Salvation Army “sometimes sells [lunch and old clothes] at
a low rate.” Epworth League House 1894 folder, Morgan Memorial Church Records,
Boston University School of Theology Library. Lillian Taiz, Halleluja Lads and Lasses:
Remaking the Salvation Army in America, 1880–1930 (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2001), 106.
149. A helpful map illustrating all the various religious and social welfare institutions
in the South End in 1898 is contained in Woods, The City Wilderness, 176–177.
150. “Wendell Phillips Union,” The Dawn 3, no. 15 (1891): 2. “The Wendell Phillips
Union Opened at 812 Washington Street, a Success,” The Dawn 3, no. 16, (1891): 6.
151. Official Minutes of the New England Conference One Hundred Forty-Sixth Session,
(Boston: Taylor Press, 1942), 936–937. See also Dorn; Fisher. Robert Moats Miller,
Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam: Paladin of Liberal Protestantism (Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 1990).

conclusion
1. Thomas H. O’Connor, The Boston Irish: A Political History (Boston: Northeastern
University Press, 1995), 170.
2. Thomas H. O’Connor, Boston Catholics: A History of the Church and Its People
(Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998), 188, 201.
3. Gipsy Smith, Gipsy Smith: His Life and Work (New York, Chicago, and Toronto:
Fleming H. Revell, 1925), 260, 304. Such an invitation by a Methodist congregation
was also a departure from the normal process of clergy deployment in the Methodist
Episcopal Church.
4. Edward E. Bayliss, ed., The Gipsy Smith Missions in America: A Volume
Commemorative of His Sixth Evangelistic Campaign in the United States, 1906–1907
(Boston: Interdenominational Publication Co., 1907), 62.
5. Gipsy Smith, 2, 90, 131.
6. Editorials in both the Baptist Watchman and in the Congregationalist made
the comparison between the Smith and Moody campaigns. Bayliss, ed., 132, 135. The
Methodist Zion’s Herald also praised Gipsy Smith but without making a comparison to
Moody. “The Gipsy Smith Meetings,” Zion’s Herald, 21 November 1906, 1508.
7. Editorial cited in Bayliss, ed., 137.
8. Bruce J. Evensen, God’s Man for the Gilded Age: D. L. Moody and the Rise of Modern
Mass Evangelism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 178–179.
9. Bayliss, ed., 124, 148.
10. A report from J. Wilbur Chapman’s evangelistic campaign in 1909 stated that 70
percent of the population in the downtown areas of the city were either foreign-born
or the children of foreign-born parents. Arcturus Z. Conrad, ed., Boston’s Awakening:
A Complete Account of the Great Boston Revival under the Leadership of J. Wilbur

250 · Notes to Pages 163–167

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 Chapman and Charles M. Alexander, January 26th to February 21st 1909 (Boston: The
King’s Business Publishing Company, 1909), 14.
11. Bayliss, ed., 148.
12. Conrad, ed., 16, 227–235.
13. John C. Ramsay, John Wilbur Chapman: The Man, His Methods and His Message
(Boston: Christopher Publishing House, 1962), 78.
14. “Faneuil Hall Meeting,” Boston Record, 2 February 1909, newspaper clipping in
John Wilbur Chapman Scrapbook on Boston Revival, microfilm copy, Wheaton College,
Archives of the Billy Graham Center, Wheaton, Ill.
15. “Rev. Dr. Chapman calls the Boston Revival Greatest Demonstration Since
Pentecost,” Melrose Free Press, 12 February 1909, newspaper clipping in ibid.
16. Ramsay, 58–59.
17. Another parade took place the next evening in East Boston and was again led
by a Salvation Army band. “East Boston Minister’s March: Salvation Army leads
Demonstration Before Evening Meeting,” Boston Advertiser, 3 February 1909, newspaper
clipping in John Wilbur Chapman Scrapbook of Boston Revival, microfilm copy, Wheaton
College, Archives of the Billy Graham Center; “Parade South End: Congregation of
People’s Temple Headed by Evangelists and Band Hold Services on Street,” Boston Globe,
2 February 1909 newspaper clipping in ibid.
18. Ramsay, 37–38.
19. Evangeline Booth also preached at Tremont Temple on February 13. “Listened to
Miss Booth: Commander of Salvation Army Makes Stirring Address and is Introduced
by Dr. Chapman,” Boston Evening Transcript, 12 February 1909, newspaper clipping in
John Wilbur Chapman Scrapbook on Boston Revival, microfilm copy, Wheaton College,
Archives of the Billy Graham Center. “Eva Booth Moves Big Revival Audience,” Boston
Advertiser, 13 February 1909, newspaper clipping in ibid.
20. “Dr. Chapman Holds First Slum Meeting,” Boston Advertiser, 30 January 1909,
newspaper clipping in ibid. Wilbur Chapman represented the progressive wing on social
issues among participants in the Niagara Bible Conference movement that espoused
premillennialist perspectives on biblical interpretation. Ramsay, 41–46.
21. J. Wilbur Chapman cited in Walter Unger, “‘Earnestly Contending for the Faith’:
The Role of the Niagara Bible Conference in the Emergence of American Fundamentalism,
1875–1900” (Ph.D. diss., Simon Fraser University, 1981), 267–268.
22. Conrad, ed., 43–54.
23. Ivan D. Steen, “Cleansing the Puritan City: The Reverend Henry Morgan’s Antivice
Crusade in Boston,” New England Quarterly 54, no. 3 (1981): 409–410.
24. John Leslie Dunstan, A Light to the City: 150 Years of the City Missionary Society
of Boston, 1816–1966 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), 187–201.
25. The pronounced statistical growth of Boston Episcopalians at the turn of the
century suggests that they were effective in attracting (and keeping) recent British
and Canadian Anglicans in their churches. The contribution of Maritime Province
immigrants to New England Episcopal churches in the late nineteenth century is an
area in need of further research.
26. Only one study has sought to empirically measure the effectiveness in poverty
alleviation of Boston charities in the late nineteenth century. In her master’s thesis on the

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 Associated Charities in Boston, Brenda Lawson found that between 1885 and 1890 there
was a 19.6 percent decline in new cases taken up by the Associated Charities at a time
when the population of Boston increased 14.9 percent. Subsequent years’ annual reports
for this organization demonstrate that it continued to decline in its influence. Brenda M.
Lawson, “Starving While Waiting for a Friend: Assessing the Success of the Associated
Charities of Boston, 1879–1899” (M.A. thesis, Simmons College, 1996), 3, 56.
27. For a discussion of the plethora of Catholic social welfare institutions see
O’Connor, Boston Catholics, 175–183. See also Susan S. Walton, To Preserve the Faith:
Catholic Charities in Boston, 1870–1930 (New York: Garland, 1893).
28. Even in 1912 the work of earlier Methodists was seemingly downplayed when
Methodist Harry F. Ward declared that the 1908 Social Creed constituted the “entrance
of the Church upon the field of social action.” The Church—and holiness evangelicals in
particular—had entered that field long before 1908. Henry Farnham May, Protestant
Churches and Industrial America (New York: Harper, 1967), 188–190. For a history of
the Methodist Social Creed see Donald K. Gorrell, “The Social Creed and Methodism
through Eighty Years,” in Perspectives on American Methodism: Interpretive Essays, ed.
Russell E. Richey, Kenneth E. Rowe, and Jean Miller Schmidt (Nashville: Abingdon
Press, Kingswood Books, 1993).
29. John C. Waldmeir has recently argued for a kind of cultural studies approach to
the social gospel that looks at the pervasive influence of social gospel ideas in American
society in the late nineteenth century. John C. Waldmeir, Poetry, Prose and Art in the
American Social Gospel Movement, 1880–1910 (Lewiston, U.K.: Edwin Mellen Press,
2002).
30. Vinson Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition: Charismatic Movements in
the Twentieth Century, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997).
31. This was not the case in the American Midwest, where anti-Catholic organizations
were able to continue with considerable popularity for some time. D. H. Bennett, The
Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 179–181.
32. Dwight Lyman Moody, “To All People,” in Comprising Sermons, Bible Readings,
Temperance Addresses, and Prayer-Meeting Talks. Delivered in the Boston Tabernacle,
by D. L. Moody. From the Boston Daily Globe Verbatim Reports, Carefully Revised and
Corrected. With an Introduction by Rev. Joseph Cook (New York: E. B. Treat; Chicago:
L. T. Palmer & Co., 1877).
33. Many scholars have discussed this development at considerable length. Donald
W. Dayton, Discovering an Evangelical Heritage (New York: Harper and Row, 1976);
George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-
Century Evangelicalism, 1870–1925 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1980); Ernest R. Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American
Millenarianism, 1800–1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970); Unger.
34. Benjamin L. Hartley, “Salvation and Sociology in the Methodist Episcopal
Deaconess Movement,” Methodist History 40, no. 3 (2002), 187–196.
35. W. M. Gilbert, Edgar J. Helms, Eugenia Helms, and Harriet Cooke all came
to Boston from Cornell College in Iowa. Gilbert began as associate pastor of Morgan
Memorial Church in 1913. E. C. E. Dorion, The Redemption of the South End: A Study
in City Evangelization, Constructive Church Series (n.p.: Published for the Epworth

252 · Notes to Pages 171–177

Hartley_Book.indb 252 10/12/10 12:01:57 PM

 League of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1915), 117. Edgar James Helms, Epworth
League House (University Settlement) 34 Hull Street, Boston: A Religious Social Study
Revealing the Religious Destitution and Consequent Christian Opportunity and
Obligation in a Section of Boston Slums (n.p.: Epworth League House Commission of
the First General Conference District, 1894), 62–64. Seventeenth Annual Report of the
Consumptives Home and other Institutions Connected with A Work of Faith to September
30, 1881 (Boston: Willard Tract Repository, 1881), 51. Newspaper clipping from Cornell
College alumni/ae newspaper, 1898 folder, Morgan Memorial Church Records, Boston
University School of Theology Library.
36. Dana L. Robert, Occupy until I Come: A. T. Pierson and the Evangelization of the
World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 116–128.
37. Gaetano Conte, “Societies for the Protection of Italian Immigrants: Documents
and Illustrations [Scrapbook],” Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Mass., 1906.
38. Dana L. Robert, American Women in Mission: A Social History of Their Thought
and Practice (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1997), 255–272.
39. She sought to make these values concrete in her later work as the first female
president of a major denomination (the Northern Baptist Convention) beginning in
1921. That Montgomery has been excluded from the list of social gospel leaders perhaps
says more about social gospel historiography than it does about the movement itself.
Kendal P. Mobley, “The Ecumenical Woman’s Missionary Movement: Helen Barrett
Montgomery and The Baptist, 1920–30,” in Gender and the Social Gospel, ed. Wendy
J. Deichmann Edwards and Carolyn De Swarte Gifford (Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 2003), 167–171.
40. The Emmanuel Gospel Center in Boston has done a great deal of research in
documenting the growth of many contemporary immigrant congregations in Boston.
See http://www.egc.org for published research reports on this theme.
41. David Kirkpatrick, “The Evangelical Crackup,” New York Times, 28 October
2007.

Notes to Pages 177–179 · 253

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Hartley_Book.indb 254 10/12/10 12:01:57 PM
 bibliography

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 Evangelistic Association Of New England Records
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 Religious Work of the YMCA Scrapbook, 1916–1918
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 index

African-Americans, 10, 43, 45–46, 62, 67, Baptist Bethel (North End), 46, 139, 141,
101–102, 206n8, 212n71 143, 152, 195n67, 204n163, 238n7,
Aggressive Christianity, 93, 99, 107. See 247n116
also Salvation Army; Catherine Booth Baptists, 1–2, 4, 6, 8, 11, 30, 69, 77, 85,
American Protective Association (APA), 93, 107, 116–118, 126, 130, 159, 200;
80, 144–145, 159, 241n36 Home for Little Wanderers and the,
American War Cry, 100–102, 104, 106, 33, 45; and immigrants, 109–111,
171. See also Salvation Army 171, 246n101, 248n116; individual
Andover House, 147, 149–150 churches of, 7, 22–23, 27, 45–46, 49,
Anti-catholicism, 5, 7, 83, 95, 100, 58–59, 76, 79, 86, 100, 219n1; and the
152, 163–166, 174, 177, 179, 211n65, North End, 138–139, 143, 152, 195n67,
222n39, 252n31; Boston campaigns 204n163, 238n7, 240n32, 247n116;
for, 14, 65, 73, 75–76, 77–80, 92, 144; political activity of, 78–79, 81, 92,
critics of, 71, 75, 77, 80, 81, 146, 159, 176; publications of, 40, 72, 228n121,
171, 172, 210n57, 211n62, 242n44; of 250n6; Society of Christian Socialists
Henry Morgan, 21, 31, 72–73, 172; and the, 86–87, 89; statistics of, 10, 17,
and the labor movement, 83, 85–86, 29, 37, 67, 185n8, 206n6, 206n8. See
92; Methodist and Baptist leaders in, also anti-catholicism; Baptist Bethel;
77, 79, 80, 81, 87, 144–146, 159, 176; Clarendon Street Baptist Church;
origins of, 64, 73–74, 81, 209n36, Gordon, A. J.; Gordon, Maria;
241n36; publications promoting, Moxom, Philip; Rauschenbusch,
30–31, 66, 72–73, 79–80, 113, 212n68, Walter; Tremont Temple Baptist
216n113 Church
Anti-imperialism, 145–146, 242n44, Bates, Lewis Benton, 51, 63, 130, 168,
242n49 197n98, 236nn59 and 61
Asbury Grove (Hamilton, MA), 9, 169, Bellamy, Edward, 86, 90–91, 143,
220n24 216n110, 217n131, 240n31. See also
Associated Charities, 99–100, 182n15, Nationalist Clubs
194n61, 252n26 Bendroth, Margaret, 2, 4, 7, 183n24
Association for Protecting Italian Berkeley Street Congregational Church,
Workmen, 157–158 22, 27, 28, 130, 145, 160, 241n40. See
also Congregationalists; Moody, D. L.;
Back Bay, 71, 88, 154, 162, 165, 189n46, South End
208n28; churches in the, 22, 54, 85, Berkeley Temple. See Berkeley Street
87, 215n106; Moody in the, 15, 22; Congregational Church
Salvation Army in the, 99, 107, 173; Bliss, William Dwight Porter, 86, 88–92,
women in the, 243n67, 246n107 215n98, 216nn113 and 118, 217nn125
Baldwin Place Home for Little and 130–132
Wanderers. See Home for Little Blodgett, Geoffrey, 69, 142, 246
Wanderers Boardman, William, 57–59, 202n143,
Banks, Louis A., 77, 143, 211n.61 203n152, 233n26

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 Booth, Catherine, 98–99, 107, 124. See Martin Luther, Jr.; Mitchell, Hinckley;
also Aggressive Christianity; Booth- Rich, Isaac; Sleeper, Jacob; Steele,
Tucker, Emma and Frederick; Booth, Daniel; Townsend, Luther; University
William; Salvation Army Settlement; Warren, Harriet; Warren,
Booth, Maud, 107 William Fairfield;
Booth-Tucker, Emma and Frederick, Boston University School of Theology. See
107–108 Boston University
Booth, William, 98, 101, 103, 107, 143, Bowne, Borden Parker, 125–126, 131–132,
167, 226n84 134–135, 175, 234nn38–40, 237nn69
Boston Archdiocese. See Roman Catholics and 81
Boston Brahmins, 2, 4, 9, 14, 36, 70, 71, Brady, James Boyd, 144–145, 160, 166,
158, 164 241n37
Boston Missionary and Church Extension Brahmin Democrats, 71, 76, 146
Society (Methodist Episcopal, Brengle, Elizabeth Swift, 103, 225n72
BMCES), 48, 50, 51, 94, 109, 131, 142, Brengle, Samuel, 103–104, 225n72
145, 150, 153, 157, 197n93, 212n69, Brodbeck, William Nast, 52, 113, 122,
232n16, 239n13. See also Methodism; 228n123, 231n16, 236n59
Tourjée, Eben Brooks, Phillips, 31, 40, 60, 88, 200n124,
Boston Missionary Training School 215n98, 225n80; controversy
(Baptist), 60, 116, 124, 152, 204n161 surrounding, 22, 24, 176; and the
Boston politics, 65, 68, 71, 73, 75, 78, 85, construction of Trinity Church,
92, 140, 165 21–22, 199n118. See also
Boston Rescue Mission, 149, 178. See also Episcopalians; Trinity Episcopal
Merrimac Rescue Mission Church
Boston School Committee. See public Buckley, James Monroe, 62, 184
school reform
Boston Sunday School and Missionary Calvinists, 9, 123–124, 126–127,
Society, 197n93. See also Boston 175, 183n24, 194n55. See also
Missionary and Church Extension premillennialism
Society (Methodist Episcopal, camp meetings, 7, 51–52, 66, 91, 169;
BMCES) in antebellum period, 6, 9, 34, 36,
Boston University, College of Liberal 223n53; and the National Camp
Arts, 59, 87, 148, 199n120; Monroe Meeting Association, 10, 62, 104, 121;
School of Oratory, 60; origins of, as site for organizational collaboration,
33, 39–43; School of Medicine, 78, 55, 81, 93, 97, 107, 220n24. See also
193n41, 198n110, 244n80; School of Asbury Grove; entire sanctification;
Music, 25, 51; School of Social Work, holiness movement; Old Orchard
116; School of Theology, 4, 11, 51–52, Beach
59, 62, 79, 102–105, 115–116, 119–120, Cathedral of the Holy Cross (Roman
125, 131, 135, 153, 176, 220n25, Catholic), 19–21, 168, 187nn20 and 25
224nn67–70, 225n80, 229n126, census, 5, 20, 67, 137–138, 221n29
232n21, 242n51. See also Bowne, Chapman, J. Wilbur, 14, 121, 126, 166,
Borden Parker; Brengle, Samuel; 168–169, 250n10, 251n20
Claflin, Lee; deaconesses; Dorchester, Christian Labor Union, 18, 50, 57, 82,
Daniel, Jr; Durao, Joseph F; Helms, 84, 213n85, 214n88. See also labor
Edgar; Henry, Carl F. H.; King, movement; Rogers, Edward

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 Church of the Carpenter, 89, 172, 215n98, Cook, Joseph, 40, 225n80,
216n118, 217n127 Cooke, Harriet, 141, 151–154, 156–157,
City Missionary Society 161–162, 175, 177, 252n35. See also
(Congregationalist), 28, 61, 140, 171, settlement houses; University
222n37, 239n15, 245n85 Settlement
Claflin, Lee, 40–41, 44, 69, 193n34 Cooper, Hattie, 178, 195n68
Claflin, William, 68–70, 112, 172; and Cooper, Varnum A., 45, 110, 195n68
Charles Cullis’s work, 56, 63; and Copp’s Hill burial ground, 139, 147
Henry Morgan’s work, 39–42, 187n27, Cornell College (Iowa), 152, 252n35
210n44; and the North End Mission, Cullis, Charles, 33, 46, 53–56, 61, 63,
48–50, 52 98, 100, 107, 124, 139, 148, 164,
Clarendon Street Baptist Church, 22–23, 176–177, 193n46, 195n73, 197n98,
27, 49, 58, 100, 128, 149, 152, 199, 198n111, 201nn131–132, 204n163,
234n35, 234n47, 240n32 205n172, 222n42, 231n116; and
Clark, Amanda A. 109–110, 175. See also consecration meetings, 7, 54–55, 57,
East Boston Immigrant Home 64; and Consumptives’ Home, 53,
Clark, W. R., 48, 50, 112–113, 196n77 56–58, 60, 62–63, 193n46, 212n73;
Clarke, James Freeman, 22, 39, 187n27 and deaconesses, 56–58, 106, 111,
Congregationalists, 4, 6, 8–9, 17, 42, 177, 201nn136 and 138, 228n113; and
87–88, 130, 139, 153, 165, 170, 176, faith healing, 54, 58, 60, 62–63, 107,
183n21, 191n12, 223n53, 238n6; 198n110, 202nn146 and 148, 207n22;
and anti-catholicism, 77, 79, 211n62, and the Faith Training College, 55,
245n85; and Charles Cullis, 55, 60, 57–59, 106, 126, 202n143, 203n159,
200n128; and immigrants, 110–111, 228n113, 236n61; and foreign mission,
171; and the labor movement, 83, 55, 60–61, 178; and labor movement,
212n69, 214n94; and social welfare 57; and publishing, 58, 61, 104;
efforts, 5, 45, 99, 140, 147, 239n14; relation to the Episcopal Church,
statistics of, 10, 17, 28–29, 68, 185n8; 54–56, 64, 198nn113–114, 199n120,
women, 39, 93, 97, 150, 218n1, 200nn123–124 and 127, 201n138.
249n143. See also City Missionary See also Baptists, Congregationalists,
Society (Congregationalist); healing, holiness movement,
Berkeley Street Congregational Methodism
Church (Temple); Conrad, Arcturus; Cullis, Lucretia, 57, 59, 61, 63
Farnsworth, Ezra; Kirk, Edward N.;
Park Street Church Darby, John Nelson, 124, 201n132
Conrad, Arcturus, 167, 169 Davis, W. F., 100
Conte, Clorinda, 155–157, 164, 175, 177. deaconesses, 108, 148, 152, 178, 201n1337,
See also immigrants; University 228n121, 244n78; of Charles Cullis,
Settlement 53, 55, 57–59, 61, 106, 111–112, 148,
Conte, Gaetano, 141, 155–160, 164, 175, 201n138, 228n113; of the Methodists,
177, 246nn98, 101, and 105, 247nn111 57, 95, 98, 106, 111–116, 147–148, 150,
and 115, 248nn122 and 128. See 153, 157, 175–177, 201n138, 226n91,
also Association for the Protection 228nn114 and 117, 229nn124–125
of Italian Workmen; immigrants; Democratic Party, 70–73, 76, 80, 84,
Italian Methodist Episcopal Church; 99, 140, 142, 144–146, 159, 207n20,
University Settlement 210n47

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 Denison House, 147, 149–150, 163, of, 67, 137–138, 185n8, 251n25. See also
246n107 Bliss, William Dwight Porter; Brooks,
Dorchester, Daniel, Jr., 87 Philllips; Reformed Episcopal Church;
Dorchester, Daniel , Sr., 66, 77, 80, 87, Trinity Episcopal Church
205n2, 213n76, 216n116 Epworth League House. See University
Dorchester (neighborhood), 19, 21, 41, Settlement
61, 108, 169, 187n18, 204n163, 205n2, evangelicals: definition of, 1–3, 5–6;
243n64 theological differences of, 7–8, 127–135,
Durao, Joseph F., 153, 159, 245n88, 201n132. See also anti-catholicism;
246n98 Baptists; Congregationalists; Cullis,
Charles; Episcopalians; healing,
Earle, A. B., 59 holiness movement; Methodism;
East Boston, 76–77, 108–110, 142, Salvation Army
144, 159, 168, 227nn104 and 106, Epworth League (Methodist Episcopal),
236n61, 251n17. See also East Boston 134, 148–149, 157–159, 242n52
Immigrant Home Evangelical Alliance, 84–85, 129, 214n89,
East Boston Immigrant Home, 95, 109, 235nn51–53
110–112, 116, 148, 153, 175, 177. See also Evangelistic Association of New England
Clark, Amanda A. (EANE), 28, 44, 126, 129–131, 171, 178,
economic depression: of 1873, 22, 30, 50, 231n16, 235n53
72, 94; of 1893, 64, 139–143
Eddy, Mary Baker, 63, 205n174. See also Faith healing. See healing
healing Farmelant, Kristen P., 111, 246n101,
Eliot, Charles W., 77 247n116
Emerson, Charles Wesley, 59–60, Farnsworth, Ezra, 18, 26, 50, 186n12,
203n152, 203n154, 203n157 213n86
Emmanuel Episcopal Church, 54–55, Federal Council of Churches, 173
168, 198nn113–114, 200nn123–124, Flower, B. O., 143, 158, 240n31
200n128, 201n138 Fulton, Justin, 79–81, 200n128, 211n60,
Emmanuel Gospel Center, 253n40 212nn72–73
entire sanctification, 6, 9–11, 37, 43, 51, fundamentalists, 3–4, 6–7, 23, 117, 1224,
54, 90, 103, 121–125, 131, 135, 166, 135, 172, 174–175, 183, 185, 188
169, 174, 198n115, 200n127, 218n136,
231n12, Garrison, William Lloyd, 37, 158
Episcopalians, 4–6, 8–9, 17, 29, 33, 42, George, Henry, 89, 217n131, 222n40
44–45, 79, 85, 97, 107, 130, 140, 145, Gladden, Washington, 119, 215n100,
162, 165, 168, 170, 172, 176, 239n14; Gordon, A. J., 13, 23, 45, 58, 60, 62–63,
and Charles Cullis, 54–56, 64, 176, 100, 116, 119, 124, 126, 128–131, 133–
198n113, 200nn124 and 127–128, 135, 152, 172, 175, 199n122, 201n132,
201n138, 212n73; and immigrants, 205n174, 222n43, 228n143, 230n143,
110–111, 138, 251n25; and the Salvation 232n16, 234n46, 235n52. See also
Army, 108, 225n80; and the Society Clarendon Street Baptist Church,
of Christian Socialists, 87–89, 173, Boston Missionary Training School
214n89, 216n114, 118–119 and 125; and Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary,
the split with the Reformed Episcopal 178
Church, 56, 176, 199n118–120, statistics Gordon, Maria Hale, 23, 75, 87

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 Gray, James M., 77–79, 123, 128, 130, Hughes, Hugh Price, 104, 160, 224n67,
199n120, 199n122, 211n64, 234n47 228n117
Huntington, Frederic Dan, 36, 40, 44,
Hale, Edward Everett: If Jesus Came to 54–56, 191n14, 198n114, 199n119,
Boston, 107–108 200n128, 212n73, 214n89, 216n112.
Hamilton, J. W., 77, 126, 206n8 See also Episcopalians
Harvard University, 4, 36, 42, 71, 77, 97,
121, 126, 132, 169, 191n14, 208n24, Immigration Restriction League, 159
240n34 immigrants, 1–3, 5, 97, 109–111, 138,
Hattie B. Cooper Community Center, 178, 144, 149, 163, 165, 169–170, 175,
195n68 178–179, 206n9, 227n104, 239n14,
Haymarket tragedy, 65, 83–86, 90, 172, 248n116; British-American, 75–76,
214nn92–94, 215n100 79, Canadian, 5, 68, 76–77, 79, 154,
Haynes, Emory J., 144, 212n72 212n68, 245n92, 251n25; Chinese,
healing, 53–54, 57–58, 60, 62, 63–64, 227n103; Irish, 14, 21, 33, 37, 46, 66,
123, 198n110, 202n146, 203n148, 71, 83, 138–139, 144, 159, 165, 170,
204n160, 207n22, 213n79 197n90, 222n38, 243n66, 249n131;
Hedstrom, O. G., 110 Italian, 150, 153, 156–158, Jewish, 14,
Helms, Edgar J.: background of, 131, 38, 73, 114, 132, 138–139, 147, 152–153,
151–152, 177, 252n35; changes in 155, 159, 171, 244nn81–82, 246n98;
theological perspective for, 128, 131– Portuguese, 50, 153, 155, 159, 244n81–
135, 162–163, 172–173, 237nn69–70, 82, 245n88; statistics, 5, 18–20, 68,
237n81; Goodwill Industries and, 163, 139, 181n6, 243n66; Swedish,5, 109–
165; North End work of, 133, 139, 147, 111, 155, 226n94, 227nn 96 and 98. See
150–155, 157–158, 243n68; South End also Association for the Protection of
work of, 160–163, 237n77, 246n100, Italian Immigrants; Clark, Amanda
250n148; A.; Conte, Clorinda; Conte, Gaetano;
Helms, Eugenia, 150, 151, 162 East Boston Immigrant Home;
Henry, Carl F. H., 4 Immigration Restriction League; Irish
higher criticism, 117–121, 124–126, 134, in Boston politics; Italian Methodist
169, 174–175, 231n8, 234n35 Episcopal Church, Sorlin, Daniel
holiness movement, 36, 43, 48, 52, Inskip, John, 55, 58, 62, 121, 231n13,
54–55, 57, 59–60, 64, 90–92, 97, 232n21
131, 140, 162–163, 166, 169, 172, 175, Irish in Boston politics, 2, 14, 37, 66, 68,
179, 202n143, 205n176, 214n89, 69, 71–73, 76, 83, 85, 92, 138–140, 142,
218nn135–136, 232n16, 232n21; 144–145, 159, 165, 197n90, 207n20,
conflict in, 14, 85, 103, 121–127, 173– 209n32, 241n39, 249n131. See also
174, 201n132; origins and definition immigrants, Irish
of, 6–12, 33; publications, 11–12, Italian immigrants. See immigrants,
43, 58, 122, 174, 197n198, . See also Italian
Cullis, Charles; entire sanctification; Italian Methodist Episcopal Church, 141,
Methodism; Salvation Army 157, 247n115
Holy Trinity Church (Roman Catholic), 21
Home for Little Wanderers, 33, 43–46, Jones, Jesse, 18, 26, 84, 186n13, 214n88.
49, 64, 110, 139, 178, 194n60, 196n82, See also Christian Labor Union, labor
204n163, 243n65 movement

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 Keswick holiness tradition, 123–124, Mead, Edwin D., 158–159, 248n120
127, 233n26, 233n34, 237n71. See Medical Mission (North End), 141, 152,
also holiness movement; Methodism; 177, 244n80. See also Cooke, Harriet;
Moody, Dwight L. North End; University Settlement
King, E. P., 161 Mendenhall, James W., 125, 128
King, Martin Luther, Jr., 4, 175 Merrimac Rescue Mission, 149
Kirk, Edward N., 36, 44, 176, 185n1, Merritt, Timothy, 9–11, 174, 184n33,
191n12, 200n128 184n35, 232n21
Knights of Labor, 83–84, 89, 90, 91, Messer, Glen Alton, 184nn33 and 37,
218n142. See also Christian Labor 205n176, 238n8
Union; George, Henry; Jones, Jesse; Methodism, 33, 40, 51, 87, 99, 102, 139,
labor movement; McNeill, George; 161, 183nn22 and 24, 212n72; African-
Powderly, Terrence; Rogers, Edward Americans and, 10, 43, 67, 102,
206n8, 212n71, 213n84, 227n103;
labor movement, 1, 14, 18, 24–25, 31, 37– and Charles Cullis, 54–57, 59–60,
40, 49–50, 54, 56–57, 64–65, 69–70, 62–63, 112, 197n98; controversies
82–92, 134, 142, 146–147, 158, 161, and, 12, 35, 37, 62, 115, 117–125, 155,
163, 172–173, 186n13, 188n40, 188n44, 175, 185n42, 223n53, 231nn12 and
209n40, 211n61, 213n85, 214nn88 14, 232nn21–22, 233nn35 and 38;
and 93, 215n100, 218nn137 and 142, distinctiveness of, 1–2, 6–9, 11, 30,
222n40, 235n52 36, 42, 85–86, 117, 134–135, 140, 149,
liberal Protestants, 3, 9, 23, 30, 62, 165, 172–173; education in, 4, 26, 36,
79, 89, 119, 127–128, 134–135, 163, 41–43, 59, 97, 103, 106, 111–113; and
184n31, 185n42, 199n118, 235n53. See the Evangelistic Association of New
also Unitarians; Universalists England, 130, 236n59, and foreign
Livermore, Mary, 24, 39, 89, 91, 93, 176, missions, 43, 106, 111–112, 116, 126,
217n128, 218n137 131, 149–150, 157, 177, 204n166,
lodging houses, 1, 13, 74, 153–154, 225n73; immigrants in, 106, 109–111,
209n40, 215n107, 245nn90, 92 and 155–160, 206n9, 247n113, 248n128–
94, 129; local churches of, 11, 46, 48–49,
52, 77, 82, 93, 97, 100, 106, 121, 126,
Maguire, Patrick, 144–145, 241n39 133, 139, 141, 143–145, 152–153,
Mallalieu, Willard, 82, 172, 214n82, 157, 160, 162, 166, 187n27, 190n64,
234n38, 235n52 195nn67 and 73, 196n87, 199n21,
map of Boston, 13; of the North End, 47, 211n61, 214n89, 220n25, 236n61;
141, 195n73; of the South End, 19, membership statistics of, 10, 17, 29,
245n94, 250n149 46, 67, 124, 145, 185n8, 190nn62–63,
Matthews, Nathan, 80, 140–142, 208n24 191nn18–19, 205n2, 206n6, 238n4;
McDonald, William, 11, 48, 50, 55, 58–60, New England Annual Conference of,
62, 103–104, 121, 224n62, 231n13, 40, 50, 72, 121–122, 184n33, 212n69,
232n21, 232n22 216n116, 239n14; and politics, 39–40,
McKinley, William, 146, 158, 205n168, 68–72, 79–85, 91–92, 142–143, 146,
242n44 204n168, 205n3, 208nn25 and 29,
McLeod, Hugh, 182n13, 182n16 242n44; and poverty, 25, 34, 36–37,
McNeill, George, 83–85, 211n67, 215n98 44–45, 49–51, 85–86, 106, 116, 127,

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 148, 184n37, 252n28; publications of, Methodism; Woman’s Foreign
11, 26, 40–41, 62, 72, 74, 85, 91, 125, Missionary Society; women
154; and revivalism, 8–10, 28–30, 34, Mitchell, Hinckley, 105, 120, 125–126, 147,
55, 166–172; rural migrants in, 11, 14, 158, 224n68, 231n8, 242n51
61, 78, 154; Salvation Army relations Montgomery, Helen Barrett, 93, 178, 253n39
with, 99–100, 102–107, 227n97; Moody Bible Institute, 77, 128
women in, 10, 23, 39, 43, 75, 90, 93, Moody, Dwight L.: and the Boston 1877
107, 109–116, 148–153, 155–157, 177, revival, 8, 12–23, 27–31, 47, 51, 58, 81,
201n138, 203n153, 219nn9 and 10, 137, 171, 186n13; and the Boston 1891
220n18, 226n91, 228n117. See also and 1895 revivals, 87–88, 131, 236n67;
anti-catholicism; anti-imperialism; comparisons to other revivalists in
Boston Missionary and Church Boston, 165–169, 250n6; early years in
Extension Society; Boston University; Boston, 15, 36, 170; controversy with,
camp meetings; Conte, Clorinda; 24, 26–27,87,89, 91, 119–120, 123,
Conte, entire sanctification; Cullis, 124, 128–129, 134, 234n41; preaching
Charles, healing; Gaetano; Helms, style of, 16, 175; relationship to labor
Edgar; holiness movement; labor movement, 24–25, 69, 188n43
movement; Mitchell, Hinckley; Morgan Chapel, 21, 40–41, 131,133,
North End Mission; settlement 160–163, 249n141, 249n146. See also
houses; Steele, Daniel; Tourjée, Helms, Edgar J.
Eben; Wesleyans; Woman’s Foreign Morgan, Henry, 21, 25, 33–34, 39, 64, 72–
Missionary Society; Woman’s Home 73, 75, 82, 89, 92, 98, 147, 164; and the
Missionary Society; Boston Union Mission Society, 37–38;
Methodist alley (North End), 141 and the Methodist Episcopal Church,
Methodist Social Creed, 173, 252n28 34–36, 40; and Morgan Memorial
Mildmay Deaconess House, 152, 244n78. Church (Methodist Episcopal), 40,
See also settlement houses 160, 163, 170–172, 177–178. 249nn137;
Miner, Alonzo A., 77, 144, 211n60 and 146, 252n35 publications of, 30,
missionaries (city), 25, 28, 43, 45, 48, 50, 31, 38–40, 49, 72–74, 79
59–60, 78, 105–106, 109–110, 139, 150, Morgan Memorial Church. See Morgan
153, 176, 177, 239nn14–15, 244n78. See Chapel
also Boston Missionary and Church Moxom, Philip, 79, 87, 212n69, 216n119
Extension Society; deaconesses; City Mugwumps, 71, 208n25
Missionary Society (Congregationalist)
missionaries (foreign), 12, 14, 52, 55, National Camp Meeting Association. See
58–59, 60–62, 64, 84, 88–89, 90, camp meetings
93–95, 106, 110–112, 114, 116, 119, 122, Nationalist Clubs, 65, 86, 89, 91, 216n110
131, 133, 146, 149–150, 178, 201n137, New England Annual Conference
204n166, 221n28, 228n117, 230n143, (Methodist Episcopal). See Methodism
244n78. See also Methodism; New England Conservatory of Music, 25,
Montgomery, Helen Barrett; Taylor, 47, 51–52, 64, 89, 113, 178, 198n113.
William; Woman’s Foreign Missionary See also Tourjée, Eben
Society New England Deaconess Home and
missions. See Cullis, Charles; missionaries Training School, See deaconesses.
(city); missionaries (foreign); newspaper boys, 37, 64, 170, 207n14

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 New York City, 10, 15, 21, 44, 48, 57, 60, O’Reilly, John Boyle, 74, 76, 100, 216n113.
62, 137, 146, 157, 159, 162, 183n17, See also anti-catholicism
188n30, 221n31, 222n40, 235n48 Organ, Clara, 114, 150, 153
Niagara Bible Conference, 169, 175, orphanages, 7, 33, 43, 45, 51, 56–57, 61,
187n27, 251n20. See also 63, 133, 134, 150–151, 170, 195n65,
fundamentalists 196n88, 201nn131 and 135, 244n78,
Nicholson, William Rufus, 55–56, Oxnam, G. Bromley, 163
199n122, 201n132. See also Cullis,
Charles; Episcopalians Paine, Robert Treat, 194n61
North End, 19, 46, 48–50, 85, 147, 154, Palmer, Phoebe, 10, 48, 55, 90, 97,
159, 208n28; churches in the, 45–46, 184n35, 192n24, 199n119, 232n21,
100, 106, 108–109, 148, 150–152, 155, 237n113
157, 177, 205n2, 247n111; immigration Park Street Church, 7, 26, 50, 149, 167,
patterns, 14, 114, 138, 149, 152–153, 196
156, 159, 165, 197n90, 238n11; map Peabody, Francis Greenwood, 121, 132,
of, 47, 141; pre–Civil War history of, 169, 176, 240n34
34, 45–46, 138–139; social reform Peck, Jesse, 8
methods in the, 14, 25, 51, 61, 100, 105, Pentecostalism, 2, 3, 6, 64, 174, 179,
114, 132–133, 139–140, 143, 150, 171, 203n154
173, 177; women in the, 94, 106, 115, People’s Church, 106, 206n8, 224n67,
149, 210n48, 243n67, 244n81. 227n97; as an institutional church,
See also Conte, Clorinda; Conte, 155, 160; involvement in anti-catholic
Gaetano; Helms, Edgar J.; Medical campaigns, 77, 144–145, origins,
Mission (North End); North End 30, 89, 100, 190n64; participation
Mission; settlement houses; Taylor, in revivals, 121, 126, 166, 168;
Edward “Father”; University surrounding neighborhood of, 85, 154,
Settlement 215nn106–107
North End Mission: collaboration with People’s Temple. See People’s Church
Boston University students and other Personalism, 125, 175, 237n81
groups, 51, 61, 100, 105, 113, 130, 148, Phillips, Wendell, 37, 40, 69, 163
171–172, 196nn82 and 84, 225n70, Plymouth Brethren, 116, 124, 201n132,
236n61; methods of, 25–26; 48–50, 233n31
197n90, 199n20; origins of, 25, 46–47, Portuguese immigrants. See immigrants,
186n12, 196n77; in the years after Portuguese
Tourjée, 50– 51, 139, 152, 245n84. See poverty, 24, 33, 38, 46, 48, 64, 86, 114,
also Tourjée, Eben 116, 126, 133, 142–144, 171, 206n9,
Northfield (Massachusetts), 23, 108, 152. 226n85, 251n26. See also North End;
See also Moody, Dwight L. orphanages; Salvation Army; social
gospel; tenements
O’Brien, Hugh, 68, 71–73, 76, 80, 83–85, Powderly, Terrence, 83, 90–91, 218n139,
165, 206n10, 208nn28–29, 241n39. 218n142
See also Irish in Boston politics premillennialism, 130–131, 174, 183n26,
O’Connell, Daniel, 37, 69, 207n14 187n27, 199n122, 233n27, 235n48,
O’Connell, William Henry, 165 251n20; of A. J. Gordon and D. L.
Old Orchard Beach, 55, 107, 169, Moody, 23, 26, 128; in Bible training

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 schools, 60, 124, 233n34; debate North End; O’Brien, Hugh; St. Francis
over, 124, 126–128, 134, 152, 184n28; de Sales Church
definitions of, 7–8 Roxbury, 14, 19, 108, 114, 186n18, 195n68,
Prohibition Party, 69, 76, 143 205n2, 243n64; churches in, 21,
Prophetic Conference movement, 124, 30, 171, 187n22; elections in, 72, 76,
233n31 210n48; Grove Hall neighborhood of,
Protestant Episcopal Church. See 55–56, 205n172
Episcopalians
public school reform, 1, 65, 66, 72–73, sanctification. See entire sanctification
75–76, 78, 80, 87, 92, 95, 114, 146, 159, Salvation Army, in context of evangelical
164, 209n34, 212n68, 212n70, 213n76. movement, 1, 6–9, 107, 117, 148, 168,
See also women; anti-catholicism 172, 251n17; expansion of, 108, 163,
169, 173, 221n29; gender in, 14, 93, 98,
Quincy, Josiah, 142, 144–145, 162, 164, 102–103, 116, 177, 221n30; immigrants
208n24 in, 76, 109, 226n94, 227n96–n97;
legacy of, 178; methods of, 100–101,
Rauschenbusch, Walter, 128 105–106, 118, 131, 143, 154, 166–168,
Reformed Episcopal Church, 21, 55–56, 171, 175, 222n39–40; origins of, 98,
77–79, 130, 199nn120 and 122 221n28; race in, 101–102; similarities
Republican Party, 39, 42, 69–72, 76, 80, to other movements, 25, 38, 105–106,
84, 99, 140, 142, 145–146, 207nn16 242n51, 242n57, 250n48; support and
and 21, 208nn25 and 28, 211n63, criticism of, 99, 101–104, 107–108,
212nn67 and 70, 221n35, 229n125 120, 164, 170, 221n31, 222n43,
revival. See camp meetings; Chapman, 224n53, 224n69, 225n72, 225n80.
Wilbur; Moody, Dwight L.; Morgan, See also Back Bay; Booth, Catherine;
Henry; Smith, Gipsy; South End Booth, Maud; Booth-Tucker, Emma
Rich, Isaac, 41, 44, 98, 112 and Frederick; Booth, William; Boston
Riis, Jacob, 142–143, 240n26 University; Brengle, Samuel; Hale,
Rogers, Edward, 57, 82, 84–85, 87, 92, Edward Everett; North End; South
146, 172, 211n61, 214nn87 and 89, End
215nn98 and 103, 216n118, 235n52 Scott, B. B. 61, 177
Roman Catholics, 4, 20–21, 41, 62, secularization, 3, 8, 129, 132, 148, 151,
65–66, 73, 74, 144, 174, 227n104; 163, 174
Boston Archdiocese of, 20, 40, 74, settlement house, 7, 105, 108, 132, 147–
165–166, 172, 187, 211n62, 222n38; 148, 151, 226n91; of the Methodists
during Moody 1877 revival, 30–31, (University Settlement), 114–115, 131,
66, 190n67; Irish, 5, 68, 71–72, 83, 139, 147–155, 177, 243n68, 244n82. See
139, 159, 209n32; Italian, 139, 155; also Andover House; Denison House;
political engagement of, 75–78, 80–81, University Settlement
83, 159, 174, 210n48, 210n57; poverty Shephard, Margaret, 76
alleviation efforts by, 41, 45, 100, 171, Shirley, Annie, 98
252n27; statistical growth of, 5, 16, Simpson, A. B., 60, 62, 107, 204
18, 21, 66–67, 92, 137–138, 165–166. Sleeper, Jacob, 41, 44, 50, 56, 59, 112,
See also anti-catholicism; Cathedral of 193n46
the Holy Cross; Holy Trinity Church; Smith, Gipsy, 14, 166–167, 250nn3 and 6

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 Smith, Timothy, 183n17, 192n24 institutions, 59, 106, 112, 231n16;
social Christianity, 90, 235n51 leadership of holiness movement,
social gospel, 91, 128–129, 135, 143–144, 43, 62, 97, 123, 125, 135, 174–175,
164–165, 171, 173–174, 235n53; early 231n16, 232nn16 and 21; and Morgan
Methodist response to the, 126, 132– Memorial Church, 160–161; and
135, 140, 173; foreign missions and, the North End Mission, 52; and the
177–178; Francis Greenwood Peabody’s Salvation Army, 99, 103, 106 112,
involvement in the, 121, 132; Josiah 221n31, 225nn72–73, 231n16; and
Strong as leader of the, 119, 121, 129, theological controversy, 119, 120–125,
132, 137; labor movement and, 173, 129, 135, 175, 194n55, 233n31. See also
212n9, 215n100; origins of the term, holiness movement; Methodism
240n33, 252n29; women in, 174, 177, Steele, Harriet Binney, 97
253n39. See also liberal Protestants; St. Francis de Sales Church (Roman
Rauschenbush, Walter; Society of Catholic), 30, 171
Christian Socialists strikes, 24, 83–84, 90, 188n41, 222n40
Society of Christian Socialists, 65, 86–92, Strong, Josiah, 65, 119, 121, 129, 137, 162,
163, 173, 214n89, 216nn112 and 114, 235n52
217nn125 and 128 students, 3, 90, 124, 132, 149, 242n60,
Sorlin, Daniel S. 109–111, 177, 227n102. 245n94; at Boston University, 42–43,
See also Boston Missionary and 51–52, 59, 98, 102–106, 120, 147–149,
Church Extension Society; East 152, 154, 171, 224nn67–69, 225n70
Boston Immigrant Home and 72, 242n51; at the Faith Training
South Boston, 77, 89, 130, 143, 186 College, 53; in high school, 77,
South End (Boston), 14, 19, 21, 51, 149, 209n34; of Tourjée, 47; women, 90,
163, 172, 208n28, 209n40, 215n107, 97, 113–115, 147–148, 176, 198n110.
243nn64 and 66, 245n94; churches suffrage, 75, 78, 89, 211n66, 217n128
in the, 11, 40, 72, 86, 93, 100, 108, Sunday School and Missionary Society
109, 133, 145, 160, 215n106, 219n1, of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
227n97; revival in, 18, 166, 168; social See Boston Missionary and Church
reform institutions in, 37, 40, 46, Extension Society
139, 142, 147, 153, 162, 163, 229n125, Swaffield, Walter J., 143
250n149. See also Berkeley Street Swedish immigrants. See immigrants,
Congregational Church; Cathedral Swedish
of the Holy Cross; Clarendon Street
Baptist; Holy Trinity Church (Roman Taylor, Edward “Father,” 34–35, 46, 98,
Catholic); Moody, Dwight L.; Morgan 138–139, 225n73, 247n114
Chapel; Morgan Memorial Church; Taylor, J. Hudson, 61, 178
People’s Church; Trinity Church Taylor, William, 178, 204n166, 225n73
(Episcopal) temperance, 1, 14, 17, 23, 39, 61, 75, 78,
Steele, Daniel, background of, 11–12, 89–91, 95–96, 111, 144, 161, 177, 190,
220n25; and the Boston Missionary 222n41, 223n53. See also Woman’s
and Church Extension Society, 50; as Christian Temperance Union
Boston University professor, 63, 103, tenements, 2, 25, 46, 107–108, 138–139,
120, 125; and the Cullis institutions, 142–143, 144, 242n57
55–60, 63, 106, 112, 201n132, Thoburn, Isabella, 112–113, 228n117
203n150, 231n16; and deaconess Thoburn, James, 228n117

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 Tourjée, Eben, 13, 23, 25–27, 33, 46–54, Wesleyan Home for Orphans and
56, 61, 64, 89, 94, 113, 139, 161, 164, Destitute Children, 195n68
171, 175, 188n45, 195n77, 196nn84 Wesleyans, 6, 41, 59–60, 63, 84, 98, 121,
and 88, 197nn101 and 104, 231n16, 123, 126–127, 131, 152, 176, 201n132,
249n137. See also New England 202n143, 221n28, 233n26, 235n48,
Conservatory; North End Mission 237n71. See also Cullis, Charles;
Townsend, Luther T., 62–63, 70, 77, 79, holiness movement; Methodists
205n174, 207n22, 212n70 West End, 19, 46, 61, 100, 114, 143, 147,
Transcendentalists, 9, 33, 138, 149, 205n2, 208n28
Tremont Street Methodist Episcopal West Roxbury, 49, 187
Church, 11, 48, 52, 93, 219n1, Wheelock, Lucy, 162, 249n143
220n25 Wichern, Johann, 133
Tremont Temple Baptist Church, 7, Willard, Frances, 13, 23–24, 31, 39, 75,
85–86, 190n4, 196n87, 200n128; and 89–93, 95, 97, 176, 188n37, 218nn135–
anti-catholicism, 77–79, 144, 212nn68 136, 218n139, 218n143, 219nn11–12,
and 72; and revivals, 166–168; and the 219n14
Salvation Army, 76, 100, 103, 222n39, Willard Tract Repository, 54, 58
251n19. See also Baptists; Fulton, 200n29. See also Cullis,
Justin; Haynes, Emory Charles
Trinity Episcopal Church, 21–22, 89, 168, Williams, John, 165
187, 199n118. See also Brooks, Phillips; Woman’s Christian Temperance Union
Episcopalians (WCTU), 23, 75, 90, 94–95, 219n11.
See also temperance
Unitarian Benevolent Fraternity of Woman’s Educational Industrial Union
Churches, 40, 162, 249n141 (WEIU), 156, 246n107
Unitarians, 5, 9, 44, 67, 126, 159, 176, Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society
214n89, 221n62, 239n14 (WFMS), 93–95, 97–98, 106, 111–112,
Universalists, 24, 39, 77, 79, 86, 89, 176, 114, 116, 219nn1 and 9–10, 220n25
211nn60 and 62 Woman’s Home Missionary Society,
University Settlement, 132–133, 141, 147, 95, 97, 110, 153, 219n10, 220n24,
149–155, 157–158, 161, 172, 175, 177, 227n103, 244n80,
242nn52–53, 244nn81–82, 246n107. Woman’s Missionary Jubilee, 178
See also Andover House; Denison women, 3, 86, 168–169; and education,
House; Helms, Edgar; Helms, 58–60, 97, 111–115, 220n19; and
Eugenia; settlement house foreign mission, 14, 93–95, 150,
219nn1 and 7; as immigrants, 50, 97,
Vision New England. See Evangelistic 109–111, 159–160; as leaders, 14, 86,
Association of New England 89, 95, 97–98, 111, 148, 151, 163, 176–
178, 195n67, 220n22; as preachers, 14,
Waldron, Daniel, 140, 239n15 23, 39, 96–98, 107, 203n153, 220n21;
Walker, R. H., 158, 246n98, and “separate spheres” theory, 96–97,
Warner, Sam Bass, 4, 186n17 196n83, 220n18; and social welfare,
Warren, Harriet, 97, 114, 230n135 30, 38–39, 43–44, 49, 51, 91, 108,
Warren, William Fairfield, 42, 52, 97, 114, 112; and temperance, 14, 39, 95; as
116 voters, 75–76, 78, 80, 95, 210nn46 and
Wellesley College, 108, 147, 163 48, 217n128. See also Boston School

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 Committee; Salvation Army; Thoburn, World’s Parliament of Religions, 118–119
Isabella; Union Woman’s Home
Missionary Society; Warren, Harriet; Yankee Democrats. See Brahmin
Willard, Frances; Woman’s Christian Democrats
Temperance Woman’s Foreign Y.M.C.A. (Young Men’s Christian
Missionary Society Association), 17–18, 25, 50–51, 129–
Woods, Robert, 147–149, 151, 242n54, 130, 161, 185n9
243n66, 250n149 Y.W.C.A. (Young Women’s Christian
World Missionary Conference, 178 Association), 161

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