Building the Old Time Religion

Women Evangelists in the Progressive Era

Priscilla Pope-Levison

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781479889891
• eBook ISBN: 9780814708255
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: World History

2015 Smith/Wynkoop Book Award presented by the Wesleyan Theological Society

2014 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

During the Progessive Era, a period of unprecedented ingenuity, women evangelists built the old time religion with brick and mortar, uniforms and automobiles, fresh converts and devoted protégés. Across America, entrepreneurial women founded churches, denominations, religious training schools, rescue homes, rescue missions, and evangelistic organizations. Until now, these intrepid women have gone largely unnoticed, though their collective yet unchoreographed decision to build institutions in the service of evangelism marked a seismic shift in American Christianity.

In this ground-breaking study, Priscilla Pope-Levison dusts off the unpublished letters, diaries, sermons, and yearbooks of these pioneers to share their personal tribulations and public achievements. The effect is staggering. With an uncanny eye for essential details and a knack for historical nuance, Pope-Levison breathes life into not just one or two of these women—but two dozen.

1
Tents, Autos, Gospel Grenades

Evangelistic Organizations

At the appointed hour, on a sultry, mid-July afternoon, the highly decorated, customized Model T autovan, nicknamed “Rome’s Chariot,” arrived on the corner of Washington Street and Chestnut Hill Avenue in Brighton, Massachusetts. In the autovan rode Martha Moore Avery and David Goldstein, the featured lecturers for the meeting to be held that evening sponsored by the Catholic Truth Guild. The Model T had been modified to hold evangelistic meetings from within its doors. It housed a moveable platform, complete with a stand-up rostrum known as the “perambulating pulpit” that folded out at a forty-five-degree angle from the front of the car. Its four seats could also be removed or stacked on top of one another to form a table, and ample storage compartments carried large quantities of Catholic literature.

Designed as an eye-catching spectacle, the autovan generated a crowd simply by driving into town. Its decorations blended American patriotism and Roman Catholic devotion. On one side, it sported a sentence from George Washington’s farewell address: “Reason and experience forbid us to believe that national morality can prevail where religious principles are excluded.” A miniature star spangled banner decorated the hood to demonstrate that “this Catholic apostolate campaigns for rendering to America what belongs to America—loyalty.”¹ The Catholic nature of the enterprise shone forth in a large crucifix topped by an electric light and in the yellow and white chassis colors, borrowed from the papal flag. In addition, in cardinal red letters, the refrain from the Holy Name hymn, penned by Boston’s Archbishop William O’Connell, covered the other side of the car: “Fierce is the fight for God and the right; sweet name of Jesus in Thee is our might.”² The autovan received a blessing from O’Connell two days before its maiden voyage on July 4, 1917, to Boston Commons, where the first meeting took place.

The Catholic Truth Guild (CTG), the premiere evangelistic organization founded by Catholic laity in America, hosted its inaugural meeting in Avery’s Boston home in the winter of 1917.³ Twenty-five people signed the charter membership list in support of CTG’s purpose to “send its members out into the highways and byways in city squares and street corners, proclaiming the truths of Faith.”⁴ The first name on the membership list and the only woman’s name was Martha Moore Avery.

The CTG illustrates the institution building that women evangelists developed around their evangelistic meetings during the Progressive Era. This phenomenon differentiates them from their counterparts in previous generations. Earlier in the nineteenth century, evangelists like Harriet Livermore, Jarena Lee, Nancy Towle, and Zilpha Elaw, the so-called “strangers and pilgrims” featured in Catherine Brekus’s groundbreaking study, had labored single-handedly as preachers, publicists, and pastors at the altar.⁵ What changed toward the century’s end was that women conducted evangelistic meetings, from advance planning to the final offering, under the auspices of an evangelistic organization. These organizations assumed different configurations. Some remained centered on the individual evangelist, like Maria Woodworth-Etter’s or the CTG, which never evolved beyond Avery and Goldstein, despite the twenty-five initial signatures. Another evangelistic organization, the Apostolic Faith Mission headed by Florence Crawford, stretched across several cities and states. From each Apostolic Faith Mission (AFM) headquarters, volunteer evangelists, both women and men, departed regularly to hold meetings on street corners and rural crossroads. Still another arrangement took shape in the Evangelistic Department of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). This department within a national organization, headed and staffed by women, depended upon the work of thousands of WCTU evangelists across the country who reported to superintendents at the state, district, county, and local levels.

One might conjecture that these organizations provided untold opportunities for women’s involvement and leadership, but the evidence appears mixed. In the multicity-based AFM, some women did participate in local evangelistic meetings, but as it developed into a denomination, as we will see in the next chapter, no woman broke into the top echelon of leadership. Much more beneficial for women at all levels was the WCTU Evangelistic Department, which enlisted a host of women evangelists to plan and lead meetings in keeping with its mission statement: “To enlist more women who shall preach the Gospel, and to train the workers.”⁶ According to Frances Willard, WCTU president, this department registered “an aggregate of several thousands of women who are regularly studying and expounding God’s Word to the multitude.”⁷ For the evangelistic organizations that galvanized around a woman as the principal evangelist, prospects for other women to gain a foothold in management or to earn the spotlight as the featured speaker did not materialize. Women fared better in Billy Sunday’s multimillion dollar evangelistic organization, the largest in the Progressive Era. Along with countless women volunteers, more than a dozen women worked full-time for the organization, including its astute business manager, Helen Sunday.

Evangelistic Meetings

“Catholic Truth Guild”

Through the day and night

Be it dark or bright

The horizon we do scan

For a loving view of the guild so true

For woman, child, or man

Are filled with glee whene’er we see

The Catholic Truth Guild van.

The Guild serene with Dave Goldstein

Mrs. Avery and Corbett

Should you listen to their pleadings

The time you’ll ne’er regret

You will thank the God of Heaven

Who sent his only Child

To lead us into Heaven

Through the Catholic Truth and Guild.⁸

This poem, most likely penned by Avery, sketches a general outline of evangelistic meetings: an audience (“For woman, child, or man”) gathers around a speaker (“Should you listen to their pleadings”) who delivers a religious message to secure a favorable response (“To lead us into Heaven”). Meetings like these stand at the fulcrum of American Christianity, from preaching campaigns in New England churches before the Revolutionary War, to Roman Catholic parish missions in the nineteenth century, to Kathryn Kuhlman’s twentieth-century radio and television broadcasts. Remarkably, evangelistic meetings retain a strong ecumenical resonance across churches and denominations, despite differences in theology and polity. Catholic historian Jay Dolan finds these three points of resonance between Roman Catholic and Protestant evangelistic meetings: (1) they are conducted by itinerant evangelists; (2) they incorporate techniques specific to the genre, such as music, publicity, and “how-to” handbooks; and (3) they emphasize a conversion experience.⁹ Dolan’s conclusion in this regard holds up when we consider the meetings of two women evangelists—Avery, a Roman Catholic, and Woodworth-Etter, an early Pentecostal. Avery, who valued reason and argument, designed the lecture as the centerpiece of the meeting. Woodworth-Etter, in stark contrast, relied on emotion and ecstatic behavior, including body-contorting trances and vivid visions of heaven and hell. Nevertheless, despite what appears on the surface to be intractable differences, Dolan’s three elements can easily be identified in meetings sponsored by the CTG and the Woodworth-Etter organization.

The CTG revolved around two itinerant evangelists, Avery and Goldstein, both of whom converted to Catholicism as adults. As already noted, Avery reasoned her way into Catholicism at age fifty-three after considering several religious and secular ideologies, most notably Socialism. Goldstein, who was mentored by Avery, converted to Catholicism shortly after she did, and together they founded the CTG to acquaint the American populace with the Truth of Catholicism. They proposed, through the CTG, the lofty goal of making America Catholic: “Now that America is gradually slipping from its oldtime prejudice against, and people are getting curious to find out all about the Church which they recognize is THE Church after all it would seem as if a magnificent effort should be made to bring the light to those in darkness, and who have no means of finding that light except by the efforts of zealous Catholics.… We have our opportunity. Let us not shirk it. The whole country is thinking and thinking hard as to what Catholicity means.… The time seems to be ripe. Let us hope that God will send the right assistance to make AMERICA CATHOLIC.”¹⁰ During its first summer of operation in 1917, the CTG sponsored eighty meetings in ninety days. As it grew in recognition and popularity, its summer schedule increased to one hundred fifty meetings held in Boston and its suburbs as well as towns throughout New England, like Marblehead, Massachusetts, and Somerville, New York.

Given their proclivity to capture the intellect, Avery and Goldstein designed the CTG meeting around a lecture. They always delivered a prepared speech on a Catholic topic, such as the Catholic perspective on a doctrinal question (the divinity of Christ, sacraments, origin of the Bible), or the Catholic Church’s accomplishments (charitable works, contributions to education, service among the poor), or contemporary issues (Socialism, democracy, the economy, women’s roles) presented from a Catholic perspective. In a favorite lecture given countless times, Avery made the connection—albeit quite circuitously—between the Catholic Church and democracy. She opened with the claim that democracy can be traced to the Ten Commandments, the Israelite law code recorded in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, and from there to the advent of Christianity, specifically the birth of Christ. From this pronouncement, she traced the origin of democracy not to America’s Declaration of Independence but two millennia earlier to Bethlehem’s cradle. According to Avery, “this is the democracy upheld and fostered by the Catholic Church.”¹¹ Based upon this established link between democracy and Catholicism, she continued with the main assertion of her lecture, namely that “America is the fruit of the Catholic Church on civil ground” because both the nation (America) and the Church (Roman Catholic) embrace democracy. Or, in a nutshell, “true Catholicism…inspires true Americanism”; thus the Catholic Church is the “true exponent” of democracy.¹² It was this symbiosis between Catholicism and American patriotism that the CTG autovan embodied with its vibrant decorations.

Long before Avery spoke at CTG meetings, she had already gained a reputation as a seasoned lecturer, earning $3 a day plus expenses while on the lecture circuit.¹³ She first gave public lectures under the auspices of the First Nationalist Club when she moved to Boston in 1888.¹⁴ At the pinnacle of her Socialist phase, several Socialist groups in the Midwest invited her to give a lecture tour.¹⁵ She also lectured several times a week in her Karl Marx class, which she began in order to educate Boston Socialists on the philosophical and economic underpinnings of Marxism.

After she quit the Socialist Party and converted to Catholicism, she, along with Goldstein, joined forces with an anti-Socialist organization in Boston, the Common Cause Society, founded in 1912 at the height of the party’s popularity, when 6 percent of American voters cast ballots for the Socialist presidential candidate, Eugene Debs.¹⁶ The Common Cause Society (CCS) adhered to Pope Leo XIII’s sociological principles, particularly his anti-Socialism, as evident in the preamble adopted by the organization: “To defend our national inheritance, and advance the cause of equity within the sphere of economics upon the basis laid down by Pope Leo XIII in his encyclicals on the social problems of our times, especially to bring forth by argument and given facts the falsity of Socialist principles and their treasonable use of the ballot.”¹⁷ Support of these principles stood as the only membership requirement, thus allowing Max Mason, a charter member and a Jew, to retain his membership despite opposition.¹⁸ With few exceptions, however, the CCS maintained a strong Catholic identity, with close to 80 percent Catholic members in 1913.¹⁹

During the winter months, the CCS sponsored hour-long public lectures on Sunday evenings in Franklin Union Hall, and in the summer, open-air lectures on Boston Commons on Sunday afternoons. For both venues, more than one thousand people regularly gathered to hear lectures on “The Dangers of Socialism” or “The Origin of Civil Authority.”²⁰ Following the lecture, opponents were invited up to the platform to voice objections and engage in public debate with the lecturer for another hour. Avery and Goldstein quickly rose to prominence in the CCS as featured lecturers, and Avery served as president from 1922 to 1929. Yet this avenue for lectures and leadership did not fulfill Avery’s and Goldstein’s ardor to make America Catholic.²¹ To that end, they founded the CTG.

The lecture format of a CTG meeting fit the well-established template of Roman Catholic evangelism to non-Catholics. In the parish mission, instituted by priestly orders in the mid-nineteenth century, for example, the morning service consisted of an address on a Catholic doctrine or devotional practice. In his mission manual, Father Walter Elliott, a Paulist priest and leading evangelist to non-Catholics, explained that the forty-five minute talk should not only clarify confusion but also answer “in a kindly manner” any questions or “difficulties” raised by the audience.²²

Elliott, like Avery, held to the grand design of making America Catholic, and he exhorted all Catholics, especially the laity, to be missionaries to the American people.²³ To inaugurate his campaign to “win America for Christ,” Elliott resigned as editor of the Catholic World in order to work full-time holding missions aimed at non-Catholics. His 1893 speech, “The Missionary Outlook in the United States,” given at the Columbian Catholic Congress held in conjunction with the Chicago World’s Fair, invigorated Catholic lay evangelism in America at a time when other leading Catholics sounded the same call. Several years earlier in 1889, at the First Lay Catholic Congress in Baltimore, Henry Brownson, son of the well-known Catholic convert and writer, Orestes Brownson, insisted that laity bear the Catholic message wherever they go. Brownson explained, “A layman can often get the ear of a non-Catholic that the priest cannot reach, and an intelligent explanation of Catholic doctrine and practice by a layman will, in many cases, carry more weight than that made by a priest, because it is in a language and form of thought better understood and appreciated, and is less likely to be thought insincere.” The previous day and in another part of the country, Archbishop John Ireland expounded the same message: “Laymen are not anointed in confirmation to the end that they merely save their own souls and pay their pew rent. They must think, work, organize, read, speak, act, as circumstances demand.”²⁴

However, these advocates of lay evangelism, who had charged Catholic laity to make Catholicism at home in America, stood on the wrong side of the Americanist contro...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Converted, Called, Commissioned: A Phalanx of Institution Builders
• 1. Tents, Autos, Gospel Grenades: Evangelistic Organizations
• 2. Mothers, Saints, Bishops: Churches and Denominations
• 3. Biblical, Practical, Vocational: Religious Training Schools
• 4. Soap, Soup, Salvation: Rescue Homes and Rescue Missions
• Conclusion
• Appendix: Evangelists and Institutions
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index of Names and Subjects
• Index of Scripture References
• About the Author