Lived Theologies and Literature

Religion was largely ingrained into the identity and everyday existence of the nineteenth-century American woman, shaping the literature female authors produced. Nineteenth-Century American Women Write Religion examines this vast collection of fiction, political writings, poetry, and memoirs to explore the diversity of religious discourse of the time as told by authors, activists, and faith believers, including Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Angelina and Sarah Grimké, Louisa May Alcott, Rebecca Harding Davis, Harriet E. Wilson, Sarah Piatt, Julia Ward Howe, Julia A. J. Foote, Lucy Mack Smith, Rebecca Cox Jackson, and Fanny Newell. The collaborative product of ten scholars, this work focuses specifically on the lived theologies of these women, illuminating the ways they used the language of religious sentiment amidst the largely repressive context they found themselves in.

Mary McCartin Wearn opens with an introduction of the text, writing:

“Women’s literature of the nineteenth century provides an excellent artifact through which to illustrate the complicated and varied experience of religion in women’s lives. While feminine piety was a powerful force in the home, church, and community, women’s spiritual leadership was largely unofficial…

In a world where women were declared religious by nature but denied any official stature within the Church, the written word became an excellent means of establishing cultural authority and expressing faith in the public sphere.”

For more information on the book, click here.

Fellow travelers are scholars, activists, and practitioners that embody the ideals and commitments of the Project on Lived Theology. We admire their work and are grateful to be walking alongside them in the development and dissemination of Lived Theology.

For more of “On the Lived Theology Reading List,” click here. To engage in the conversation on Facebook and Twitter, @LivedTheology, please use #LivedTheologyReads. For more recommended resources from our fellow travelers, click here, #PLTfellowtravelers. To sign up for the Lived Theology monthly newsletter, click here.

Working People and the Rise of Social Christianity in Chicago

While the late 1800s brought a period of tremendous economic growth to the United States, this Gilded Age also revealed the extreme poverty and inequality suffered by the working class. In Union Made, author Heath W. Carter credits the beginnings of a new discipline– American Social Christianity– to these common laborers rather than the more often credited middle-class spiritual leaders of the day.

Workers believed God stood behind organized labor; institutional church leaders had strayed from the true gospel in their suspicions and reservations. With more and more working believers turning away from a false church, Carter writes that American Christianity was saved only when pastors embraced the plight of the common man in the spirit of the Social Gospel. Penned in the midst of a “New Gilded Age” developing today, Union Made offers a new way forward through lessons from the past.

Reviews and endorsements of the publication include:

“In contemporary America, where the gulf between the rich and poor threatens to yawn that wide again, Christianity and conservative politics have become so intertwined that many American believers are convinced that their faith mandates small government….Carter, however, shows us a different route.” —Church History

“No mere opiate or tool of oppression, working-class faith emerges from the pages of this extraordinary book as the generative force that made the nineteenth-century social gospel viable. Social Christianity made resistance against industrial capitalism and its barons a possible and necessary thing. Combining the finest qualities of classic social, urban, and labor histories with the curiosities of our scholarly (and political) moment, Union Made is a sharp, much-needed reminder that American Christianity has not always been free-market in persuasion or comfortable on the corporate side. Beautifully crafted, it is also a stirring must-read.” –Darren Dochuk, author of From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of EvangelicalConservatism

“In recovering these working-class voices, Carter makes a significant scholarly contribution to the field of American religious history while also deepening our understanding of the labor movement during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. More than just recasting the origins of Social Christianity, he reminds us of the profound moral debates that surrounded the rise of industrial capitalism and reveals how workers campaigned for justice as forcefully and ardently within the religious sphere as they did in the political and economic arenas.” –Thomas Rzeznik, The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

Find more information on the book here.

Fellow travelers are scholars, activists, and practitioners that embody the ideals and commitments of the Project on Lived Theology. We admire their work and are grateful to be walking alongside them in the development and dissemination of Lived Theology.

For more of “On the Lived Theology Reading List,” click here. To engage in the conversation on Facebook and Twitter, @LivedTheology, please use #LivedTheologyReads. For more recommended resources from our fellow travelers, click here, #PLTfellowtravelers. To sign up for the Lived Theology monthly newsletter, click here.