From East to West

Today, we finish up our seminar on Chicago's religious history by focusing on a history that is still being written. As we discussed last week, the Immigration Act of 1965 radically changed not only the number of people who immigrated into the United States, but also where people were immigrating from. Where northern and southern Europeans had been the most prominent immigrant groups throughout for over a century, immigrants from Asia and Latin America swiftly became most prominent in the years after the Immigration Act.

Today, we'll conclude with one particular tale of this ongoing demographic revolution. Eboo Patel's memoir Acts of Faith is in part a Chicago story, but it's also a story of many of the themes and issues we've confronted here. Today--and REMEMBER we're meeting in room B91--we'll use Patel's memoir as a way to see what has changed and what has stayed the same in Chicago's 100 years of religious history. What has the city constant done to religion? What has religion constantly done to the city?

A Theology of the Streets

Soul and Food in Chicago, c. 1940s

Elder Lucy Smith, c. 1940s

Today will be discussing the remarkable transformation the city of Chicago--as well as much of the urban north--experience throughout the twentieth century. Where Chicago's African Americans comprised only 1% of the population in 1900, bu 1970 that number would reach 33%. The vast majority of these black migrants were rural southerners running away the oppressive conditions of the segregating south and running towards the economic opportunities in the factories of the urban north. But this demographic and economic transformation also had distinctly religious manifestations as well. We'll be talking about the alternative religiosities and theological innovations of black southerners in the great white north. We'll consider the architectural peculiarities of store front churches, the Pentecostal denominations of Elder Lucy Smith, as well as the rise of Gospel Music in Chicago. As an example, here's Elder Smith's daughter, who became a popular gospel singer in Chicago and abroad.

Bibles and Ballots

Last week we looked at a strain within American Protestantism who thought the traumas of urban-industrial life in places like Chicago necessitated religion adapt and be made new to remain relevant. This week, we're looking at another strain in American Protestantism who thought those same changes demanded religion hold on even stronger to its traditional beliefs. We'll be talking about a couple of different facets of American evangelicalism and fundamentalism, but none is more more visually entertaining than the animated preaching of Billy Sunday. Here are some of the few videos taken of the preacher before his death.

Christ the Carpenter

As we discussed last week in our comparison of Catholic parishes and Jewish synagogues, the ccentral working theme for the class has emerged. The enormity, the complexity, the diversity and the insanity of the city of Chicago forced religious communities to make certain adaptions to survive urban life. And as we saw, these adaptions were not always welcomed. For our discussion of Protestants in the city, we'll be spending two weeks discussing the kinds of adaptions and reactions churches went through in engaging the city--adaptions and reactions that in many ways continue to influence today's culture wars.

We begin with the emergence of a "Social Gospel" among liberal Protestant theologians at the turn of the twentieth century. The University of Chicago was one of the most important intellectual centers for the social gospel movement, and we'll be reading a central text by University of Chicago theologian Shailer Mathews. Read pages 24-35.

And then we'll discuss one of these Social Gospel ideas in practice with the Chicago Commons. The organization is actually still in existence, but the original building run by Graham Taylor at Grand and Morgan stands in disrepair.

God in America on PBS

As per our discussion of the "God in America" series forthcoming on PBS, here is the information for those of you that are interested.

The series' Website, with information on show times and episode summaries, is here.

And here is the extended trailer for the event.

From Shtetl to the City

Chicago's rich and lengthy Jewish history is perhaps the most overlooked aspect of the city's religious history. But in 1900 Chicago's Jewish population was the third largest in the United States at over 60,000 and nearly equaled the Jewish population of Berlin. This session on Jewish Chicago will continue our focus on the local realities of Chicago's religious history, but will also consider the traumas of international immigration as well as the internal diversity of a specific religious group. The only reading for this week available online is Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch's address "The Concordance of Judaism and Americanism."



A central focus of this meeting will be the Jewish community and market that emerged--partly by choice, partly by force--around Maxwell Street. While the city's Jewish history might be understudied, the Chicago Jewish Historical Society remains a premier repository for Chicago Judaica. And while Maxwell Street is now more known as the birthplace of the blues as opposed to Chicago's earliest Jewish community, the Street's Jewish heritage lives on with the aptly named musical group: the Maxwell Street Klezmer Band! Take a Listen: