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The Immigrants and Their Gods: A New Perspective in American Religious History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Jay P. Dolan
Jay P. Dolan
Affiliation:
Mr. Dolan is professor of church history and director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism in the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana. This is his presidential address delivered at the annual meeting of the American Society of Church History, 29 December 1987.
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Extract

Twenty years ago Jerald Brauer wrote an essay on the writing of American church history entitled, “Changing Perspectives on Religion in America.” In this essay he noted that “change in perspective marks the writing of the history of religion in America.” After discussing the work of Robert Baird and William Warren Sweet, the two historians whose perspectives most influenced the writing of American church history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries respectively, Brauer then directed his attention to a third and new perspective. This new perspective had developed in the post-World War II era and was the result of the work of Sidney E. Mead, Sydney E. Ahlstrom, Winthrop S. Hudson, and others. Brauer described the new perspective by pointing out how it differed from the work of Sweet. It was clear to Brauer, however, that no one historian or school of historians had yet emerged whose perspective was able to dominate the landscape in the manner that Baird and Sweet had. There really was no new single perspective, but a variety of approaches and interpretations. In other words, in the late 1960s the discipline of American church history was in a state of flux, and “a number of young historians” were, in Brauer's words, “anxious to develop a new perspective through which to view the development and nature of Christianity in America.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 57 , Issue 1 , March 1988 , pp. 61 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1988

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References

1. Brauer, Jerald C., “Changing Perspectives on Religion in America,” in Reinterpretation in American Church History, ed. Brauer, Jerald C. (Chicago, 1968), p. 19.Google Scholar

2. See Dolan, Jay P., “The New Religious History,” Reviews in American History 15 (1987): 449–454;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Butler, Jon, “The Future of American Religious History: Prospectus, Agenda, Transatlantic Problematique,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 42 (1985): 167–183.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. Bailyn, Bernard, “The Challenge of Modern Historiography,” American Historical Review 87 (1982): 2–3;CrossRefGoogle Scholar see also the essay by Degler, Carl N., “In Pursuit of an American History,” American Historical Review 92 (1987): 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. See the bibliographic essay by Sweet, Leonard I., “The Evangelical Tradition in America,” in The Evangelical Tradition in America, ed. Sweet, Leonard I. (Macon, Ga., 1984), pp. 1–84,Google Scholar where he discusses this abundant literature.

5. See Dolan, Jay P., Catholic Revivalism: The American Experience 1830–1900 (Notre Dame, Ind., 1978),Google Scholar for the Catholic side of evangelicalism in the nineteenth century; and Hambrick-Stowe, Charles, The Practice of Piety: Puritan Devotional Disciplines in Seventeenth Century New England (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1982),Google Scholar for a broader understanding of Puritanism.

6. Bossy, John, The English Catholic Community 1570–1870 (New York, 1976);Google Scholar and Delumeau, Jean, Catholicism Between Luther and Voltaire: A New View of the Counter-Reformation, trans. Moiser, Jeremy (Philadelphia, 1977).Google Scholar

7. See Butler, “Future of American Religious History,” for a discussion of some of these studies.

8. A major reason for this movement is the three-volume work, Ruether, Rosemary Radford and Keller, Rosemary Skinner, eds., Women and Religion in America (San Francisco, 1982–1986),Google Scholar which includes essays and primary documents related to American religious history from colonial times to the mid-twentieth century.

9. See Vecoli, Rudolph J., “The Resurgence of American Immigration History,” American Studies International 17 (1979): 49–66;Google Scholar and Archdeacon, Thomas J., “Problems and Possibilities in the Study of American Immigrations and Ethnic History,” International Migration Review 19 (1985): 112–134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. Kasinec, Edward, “Resources in Research Centers,” in Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, ed. Thernstrom, Stephan (Cambridge, Mass., 1980), p. 876.Google Scholar

11. My thanks to Susan White for searching the following journals: American Historical Review, Journal of American History, Church History, and Catholic Historical Review; Hoglund, A. William, Immigrants and Their Children in the United States: A Bibliography of Doctoral Dissertations, 1885–1982 (New York, 1986), p. viii.Google Scholar

12. See Dolan, Jay P., “Immigration and American Christianity: A History of Their Histories,” in A Century of Church History: The Legacy of Philip Schaff, ed. Bowden, Henry Warner (Carbondale, III., 1988),Google Scholar for an examination of the treatment of immigration in American church history during the past century.

13. Religious Bodies 1916 (Washington, D.C., 1919), pt. 1, pp. 76, 85, and pt. 2, p. 457.Google Scholar

14. Smith, Timothy L. demonstrated this in his essay “Religion and Ethnicity in America,” American Historical Review 83 (1978): 1155–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15. Degler, , “In Pursuit of an American History,” p. 7.Google Scholar

16. The Journal of American Ethnic History and the Immigration History Newsletter are publications of the Immigration History Society and provide information on recent publications in this field of study.

17. Dolan, Jay P., The American Catholic Experience: A History From Colonial Times to the Present (New York, 1985).Google Scholar

18. Lucas, Henry S., ed., Dutch Immigrant Memoirs and Related Writings, 2 vols. (Seattle, 1955), 2:89;Google ScholarBlegen, Theodore C., ed., Land of Their Choice: The Immigrants Write Home (St. Paul, Minn., 1955), p. 348.Google Scholar My thanks to Michael Hamilton, who greatly assisted me in the study of published collections of immigrant letters.

19. Correspondence of Denis and Michael Hurley, Carson, Nevada, to parents in Clonakilty, Ireland, 6 January 1876, Archives of City of Cork, Ireland.

20. Lucas, , Dutch Immigrant Memoirs, 2:168;Google ScholarBlegen, , Land of Their Choice, p. 187.Google Scholar

21. Unidentified letter, 7 March 1876, Schrier Collection, Ms. 8347, National Library, Dublin, Ireland; Blegen, , Land of Their Choice, p. 430.Google Scholar

22. See Erickson, Charlotte, Invisible Immigrants: The Adaptation of English and Scottish Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century America (Coral Gables, Fla., 1972), pp. 87–92,127–128.Google Scholar

23. Dolan, , American Catholic Experience, pp.221–240.Google Scholar