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Edward Bellamy's Religious Thought

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2021

Joseph Schiffman
Joseph Schiffman*
Affiliation:
Long Island University Brooklyn 1, N. Y.
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Extract

Looking Backward, America's classic contribution to theutopian novel, has a religious genesis which has never been fully explored. Although Edward Bellamy has received widespread critical attention, his thought has not been adequately related to the religious temper of his time and region. Reared in traditional Calvinist concepts with emphasis on prayer, soul-searching, and individual respectability, Bellamy propounded new, daring concepts of the divine to meet the challenges posed by the industrialization of New England. In his religious doubts and strivings, he drew from, and contributed heavily to, three inter-related movements that reshaped religious thought in late nineteenth-century America—the New Theology, the Religion of Humanity, and the Social Gospel. This paper presents religion as a major genetic factor in Edward Bellamy's social thought and in modern American intellectual.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 68 , Issue 4-Part1 , September 1953 , pp. 716 - 732
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1953

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References

1 The first contemporary critic to write of religion at a central motivating force is Bel-lamy was Walter A South, whose unpublished M.A. thesis, “The Religion of Edward Bellamy,” done in 1937, is in the Columbia University Library. Smith's thesis, though rather short, it very helpful for Bellamy's early religions experiences. Arthur E. Morgan, to whom all Bellamy acholars are indebted, has discussed Bellamy's religious thought at some length in Edward Ballamy (New York, 1944), and in The Philosophy of Edward Bellamy (New York, 1945). As a result of Morgans work, primarily, contemporary critics are generally aware of Bellamy's religious motivation. However, neither Morgan nor Smith attempted to view Bellamy against the rich, suggestive background of the religion current of his time.

2 It has been impossible to learn the reasons for Rufus Bellamy's resignation. Mrs. Edward Bellamy, surviving widow of the author, believes thai her father-in-law's theology was “too liberal” for his congregation, but this would not explain how be was able to hold his pulpit for thirty-four years Mrs. Bellamy recalls that Rufus Bellamy's, smoking was criticized by some members of his parish as improper conduct for a Baptist minister (con-versation with the writer, April 1950).

3 “Edward Bellamy : a Biography,” Ch. I. Green, a close associate of Bellamy's, never finished the biography he planned to do. Unpublished, it is part of the Bellamy Collection in the Houghton Library, Harvard university. Several researchers have availed themselves of Green's MS., Morgan and Smith among them.

4 Reprinted b a collection of Bellamy's short stories, The Blindman's, World (Boston, 1898), pp. 347-448. Originally, the story, “With the Eyes Shut,” was published in Harper's Monthly, LXXIX (Oct. 1889).

5 Bellamy's own characterization of his notebooks and journals, Bellamy Collection, Note-book I, pp. 31-32 After Morgan completed hi. biography of Bellamy, he deposited most of the materials he had used at Harvard, where they are available for further research. Con-sisting mainly of Bellamy's notebooks and journals, large parts of which are still unpub-lished and unworked, the Bellamy Collection possesses great interest for anyone working on Bellamy and his times. The collection, not completely catalogued as yet, but arranged in binders under a numbering system worked out by Morgan, can be consulted in the Houghton Library. Unfortunately, Bellamy did not data his notebooks and journals, so that it it impossible to reconstruct the development of his religions thought chronologically. The problems is complication further by the facts that an unascertainable number of his papers and MSS were disposed of by Mrs. Edward Bellamy after her husband's death in 1898, and that a good many remaining MS materials were lost in a fire in the home of Mason A. Green several years later.

Throughout this study, Bellamy's MSS. are reproduced exactly as they appear in the original. They have all been transcribed by my wife, Elizabeth Schiffman. Misspellings and the free style of punctuation that Bellamy used in his private writings are carried here with no attempt at editing. Subsequent references to the Bellamy Collection will appear in the text of this paper.

6 “How I Wrote Looking Beckward,” Ladies' Home Journal, DK, No. 5 (April 1894). Re-printed in Edward Bellamy Again (Kansas City, 1937), pp. 217-229

7 “Economic History of a Factory Town: A Study of Chicopee, Massachusetts,” Smith Call. Studies in Hist., xx, 1-4 (Oct 1934-July 1935), 25, 48. The industrial history of Chicopee presented here is drawn mainly from this study.

8 “Overworked Children In Our Mills,” 5 June 1873, p. 2. Bellamy worked for the Springfield Doily Union from 1872 to 1876, writing editorials and book reviews. His con-tributions to the newspaper, unsigned, have been identified and collected by his daughter, Mrs. Marion Bellamy Earnshaw, sod by his grandson, Bellamy Earnshaw. They have graciously allowed me to quote from their copy.

9 Quoted in Smith, p. 45. Reprinted in Edward Bellamy Steaks Again (Kansas City, 1937), pp. 218-221.

10 It was not published until 1940 when Arthur Morgen edited it in a limited edition for the Antioch Bookplate Company of Yellow Springs, Ohio, under the dual title of The Religion of Solidarity by Edward Bellamy and The Philosophy of Edward Bellamy by Arthur E. Morgan. The tiny volume scon went out of print, and has not been reissued. Later, an abridged version of Bellamy's essay appeared in Morgan's The Philosophy of Edward Bellamy (New York, 1945), together with several other studies of Bellamy by Morgan.

11 Springfield Daily Union, 13 March 1875, p. 6.

12 See Daniel Day Williams, The Andover Liberals: A Study in American Theology (New York, 1941).

13 Bellamy used a Comtean idea, the adoration of woman as a symbol of the human race, in his story, “A Positive Romance,” first published in Century Îœagazine, XXXVIII (Aug 1889), and republished in The Blindman's World.

14 So named by Charles Hopkins, The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism (New Haven; 1940), p. 28. Gladden', career and influence are discussed by Hopkins, pp. 24-38. and by Henry F. May, Protestant Churches and Industrial America (New York, 1949), pp. 171-175. Most of my information about the Social Gospel movement and its literature is taken from Hopkins and May, both excellent volumes.

15 “Literary Notices,” Springfield Daily Union, 1 June 1876. In 1878, when Washington Gladden became editor of Sunday Afternoon, A Magazine for the Household, published in Springfield, Bellamy contributed a temperance story, “Taking a Mean Advantage.” to the Jan-Sept. issue of 1879. The magazine was dedicated, in Gladden's words, “to mix Christianity with human affairs.…” By writing for this magazine, Bellamy made his first direct contact with social gospelers in the literary world, it would seem. The story, “Taking a Mean Advantage,” has gone completely unnoticed by literary scholars. Morgan, for ex-ample, did not list in his bibliography of Bellamy, writings (Edward Bellamy, pp. 431-434, “Work, of Edward Bellamy”).

16 In a conversation with the writer, Feb. 1950.

17 Allan Seager, They Worked for a Better World (New York, 1939), p. 108.

18 From correspondence between Bellamy and Ticknor quoted in Caroline Ticknor, Glimpses of Authors (Boston, 1922), pp. 112-121.

19 Modern library Ed., pp. 265-266.

20 Page 109. The quotations from McNeill, Bascom, and Ely can be found in Hopkins, pp. 88 and 107. Another founder of American sociology, Albion Small said, “Jesus was, after all, the profoundest economist.” Quoted in James Dombrowski, p. 9.

21 George D. Herron, Washington Gladden, and Albion Small were contributors to The Down Hopkins writes of the magazine, pp. 175-179.

22 A phrase used by Ernest Lee Tuveson in his suggestive study of the Protestant revival of Hebrew millennial thought, Millennium and Utopia: A Study in the Background of the Idea of Progress (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1949).

23 In his prefatory sketch to The Blindman's World, p. vi.

24 To a Believer in the Bible,“ Talks on Nationalism (Chicago, 1938), pp. 66-67. This volume consists of articles first published by Bellamy in the New Nation, 1891-93.

25 See Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches, trans Olive Wyon (London, 1931), II, 696-697.

26 The full reading list is reprinted in Morgan, Edward Bellamy, pp. 146-147.

27 The statement of Thomas Dixon Jr., pastor of the 23rd St. Baptist Church, New York, quoted in Dombrowski, p. 89, n. 16. Dombrowski states: “Bellamy's books made a strong appeal to the clergy and to social reformers, perhaps because the religious theme figures to prominently.”

28 Quoted in Morgan, Edward Bellamy, p. 407.

29 Talks en Nationalism, pp. 166-167.

30 “To a Believer in the Bible,” Talks on Nationalism, pp. 65-66.

31 Talks on Nationalism, pp. 35, 68, 188.

32 Reward Bellamy Speaks Again, pp. 139-140.

33 May, p. 91, refers to the strike years of 1877, 1886, and 1892-94 as “The Three Earthquakes … impossible to ignore and difficult to explain away.”

34 See John Hope Franklin, “Edward Bellamy and the Nationalist Movement,” NEQ, XI (Dec. 1938), 739-772.

35 Quoted in Morgan, The Philosophy of Edward Bellamy, pp. 84-85.

36 Hopkins discusses the F.C.C.C.A. in his chapters “Social Christianity Becomes Official,” and “The Churches Federate For Social Action,” pp. 280-317.

37 D. Appleton and Co., New York, 1897. All my quotations are from this, the first edition.

38 In two chapters, “Neither in This Mountain Nor at Jerusalem,” and “Eritis Sicut Deus,” pp. 252-269.

39 Quoted in Morgan, Edward Bellamy, p. 420.