Heath Carter, PhD Candidate in History, University of Notre Dame
“Scab Ministers, Striking Saints: Christianity and Class Conflict in 1894 Chicago”
Time: 12:30pm, Monday, February 1st, 2010
Place: Swift Hall, Room 400
Food: Snacks provided, feel free to bring your lunch
Paper: Copies available by emailing kwagner@uchicago.edu
Heath will be presenting a chapter from his dissertation, tentatively titled “Religion and the Industrial Order in Chicago, 1865-1930.” In order to provide some context for this chapter, an introduction to his dissertation follows:
Introduction/Historical Problem
Arguably no other institution shaped the lives of urban-dwelling northerners in the period between 1865 and 1930 as much as the churches. Religious communities acted as the geographical anchors of neighborhoods, served as central hubs for social interaction, shaped the way that people viewed the world, mediated the adjustment to northern life, and provided for the welfare of their members. Their centrality within the context of people’s everyday lives is well attested in the histories of Chicago’s sundry communities – native-born and immigrant, black and white.
Yet religion is frequently brushed over in retellings of this period’s central story: the contests surrounding the emergence, evolution, and entrenchment of industrial capitalism. This study does not seek to “add” religion to the existing narrative. Rather, it contends that the incorporation of religious institutions, individuals, and ideologies into the story will entail a reassessment of how class identities were realized and maintained; of why capitalist forms of economic organization prevailed over socialist ones; and of how social class shaped religious affiliation, organization, and ideologies throughout this period.
Dissertation Questions
In seeking to illumine these connections, this study will explore the following research questions:
1) To what extent did religious persons, institutions, and ideologies facilitate and/or inhibit working-class consciousness and organization in Chicago? How did these relationships change over time?
2) To what extent was the city’s merchant and industrial elite knit together through religious networks? What was the relationship between their religious ideas, activities, and associations on the one hand, and their economic and political commitments on the other? How did these relationships change over time?
3) What was the extent and nature of class-based conflict within local congregations and other religious institutions? How did these dynamics change over time?