The Indian Frontier, 1846-1890, by Robert M. Utley

Robert M. Utley, The Indian Frontier, 1846-1890. Revised Edition. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2003. Pp. xix, 325.

First published in 1984, The Indian Frontier, 1846-1890 was revised and then reissued in 2003. The revised edition is part of the Histories of the American Frontier Series published by the University of New Mexico Press. The rich narrative is supplemented by 99 illustrations and 12 useful maps.

According to the back cover, author Robert M. Utley is "a retired Chief Historian of the National Park Service and has written over fifteen books on a variety of aspects of history of the American West." In his Foreword, the eminent historian Howard R. Lamar called Utley "one of the most popular and productive historians of the American West" (xiii).

Of course, no historian who writes about the American frontier can avoid Frederick Jackson Turner's thesis first presented in 1893. In his Preface, Utley explains that as Turner saw things, experiences on the frontier--"a trader's frontier, farmer's frontier, rancher's frontier, miner's frontier"--are what made Americans and America exceptional. Turner did not completely neglect the Indians on the American frontier. However, he did treat them merely as "an influence in shaping the special American character" (xv). In other words, as Turner described things, Indians were not characters on the stage that was the American West. They were more like props in a drama that kept the spotlight on whites who were moving west. Nevertheless, unlike some other historians who regard "frontier" as just another f-word, Utley refuses to reject the Turner thesis. He prefers instead to treat it as "a conceptual framework, however simplistic, within which to develop themes of western American history" (xv). By design, Utley's work revises, qualifies, and supplements Turner's outlook. That is the book's most prominent feature from the standpoint of theoretical perspective. How could anyone move west in nineteenth-century America without encountering and dealing with Indians? Utley brings the obvious answer to that question into this exploration of the American frontier. Hence the title of his book.

What follows here is my summary, chapter by chapter. I made fuller notes for some parts more than for others. So, some chapter summaries are quite long, while others are much more concise.

Chapter One: The Indian West at Midcentury

Utley begins with the growing presence of white people in the Indian country during the 1840s. With the annexation of Texas in 1845 and the ensuing U.S.-Mexico War, American citizens moved further west into newly acquired lands. "[T]he United States at midcentury boasted a population of more than 20 million, a counting utterly beyond the comprehension of the western natives. By 1860, 1.4 million would live in the West; by 1890, 8.5 million" (4). The author discusses various influences that forever changed the Indian frontier: European diseases, the horse, and the gun. Dependence upon the gun changed balances of power and, of course, meant that Indians were dependent on the white man for gun "powder, lead, and repairs" (14). And, all such impact meant environmental change, what William Cronon has called Changes in the Land.

First contact between Indians and white men was almost always due to the arrival of a trader. This created new tastes and wants, especially liquor. The trader was most often the first white person an Indian ever saw, as opposed to a missionary. Utley summarizes a central point of this chapter as follows: Many natives of the Trans-Mississippi West had changed in response to the arrival and presence of white people "in or near their world." However, until the 1840s, "the changes had been evolutionary and mostly within the bounds of traditional culture. Henceforth they would be revolutionary and finally destructive of traditional culture" (26).

Chapter Two: Foundations of a New Indian Policy, 1846-1860

White imagination saw Indians in basically two ways: There was the good Indian, the noble savage, to be destroyed by civilizing him. Then, there was the bad Indian, the ignoble savage, to be destroyed by killing him. Either way, as part of the landscape of the frontier, Indians would have to be conquered (29-31).

When push came to shove, possessing Indian land was more important, more pressing than the question of how to civilize Indians (31). The making of treaties with Indians often ascribed to chiefs an authority that did not match up with tribal realities. Chiefs were not elected officials with constitutional authority. Indian politics operated much more by consensus. A chief's leadership utterly depended on a group that was willing to follow.

Founded in 1824, by 1890 the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs "was the most powerful force in the lives of Indians" (37). "The Indian Bureau had two purposes: to extinguish Indian land titles and to grapple with the vexing problem of what to do with people whose title had been extinguished. . . . Only in Texas was there no immediate question of title; on entering the Union, the state had retained jurisdiction over all its vacant land and refused to concede that the Indians owned any of it" (38). "Besides the army and the Indian Bureau, a third institution of government dominated Indian relations: Congress" (41).

The environmental impact of white westward travel and immigration was considerable. The arrival of white traders, and especially U.S. agents with their desire to establish treaties that favored the whites, treaties that Indian leaders often did not understand, led to a radical decline in Indian population (48-49).

Unlike the situation in the rest of America, Texans were having none of the treaty business. Texas never acknowledged Indian right to or ownership of any land in the state (52). Part of the "solution" to Indians in Texas was to drive them north of Red River into the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations, where the Texas government leased land from those nations for the incoming Indians (esp. 52).

Chapter Three: When the White People Fought Each Other, 1861-1865

Apache leaders in places like New Mexico began to having violent interactions with whites in 1860-61. Much of this was precipitated by the discovery of gold in old Spanish copper mines and the subsequent influx of miners (66). Following deadly encounters, the Apaches noticed soldiers marching away to the east. The Indians assumed that the whites were giving up and going away. Of course, what they did not realize was that whites were now mobilizing for the Civil War. But the whites were not gone for long. They soon returned to the Indian frontier due to "Abraham Lincoln's need for western gold and silver and western political support for the prosecution of the war." This "dramatized how little the war slowed the pace of the western movement" (72).

"No Indians experienced more trauma than the Five Civilized Tribes of the Indian Territory. Many of those people owned slaves and felt a natural affinity for southerners. Also, geographical proximity gave the Confederacy an edge over the Union. The Choctaws and Chickasaws went overwhelmingly with the South" (73).

Utley describes troubles in Minnesota, New Mexico, Colorado. He details the Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado. "By 1865 military force as the solution to the Indian problem had achieved virtually unchallenged supremacy. In Indian matters President Lincoln had shown himself a humanitarian, but the struggle with the Confederacy ruled his White House years, and he left Indian affairs almost entirely to Congress and the Indian Bureau" (92).

Then, in 1864, U. S. Grant put John Pope in charge of the Great Plains. Pope basically regarded all Indians in that huge swath of territory as hostile. Many were, thanks to incidents like Sand Creek. Pope's policy was essentially war against all plains Indians, all the time. Many Indians fled north. Some of them were looking merely to escape. But others looked to join up with tribes of the northern plains in order to take the fight to the white man.

Utley tells the story of Adobe Walls in 1864. The War came to an end. Stories about Sand Creek horrified many Americans. So, there were new attitudes regarding Indian policy. Some argued for a policy of "conquest by kindness" (96-97). Thus, sometime around 1865, the U.S. political leaders spoke in terms remarkably different from previous years. Whereas the earlier times had been bloody, beginning in 1865 the language was rhetoric of peace, which was confusing to the Indians.

Chapter Four: War and Peace: Indian Relations in Transition, 1865-1869

This chapter describes a post-war period during which mistrust and atrocities on both sides led American federal policy in the direction of "the rifle" as opposed to "the peace pipe"; this, in spite of the peace rhetoric that became popular at war's end. In other words, by fits and starts U.S. policy towards the Indian became more aggressive and hostile. Thus, the years that immediately followed the war were characterized by broken treaties, ambushes, massacres, and the failure of the treaty policy. It is no coincidence that leaders of the U.S. Army at this time were battle-hardened veterans of the war.

Chapter Five: Grant's Peace Policy, 1869-1876

Grant began his presidency with the promise of a Peace Policy. At the same time, he said, "Those who do not accept this policy will find the new administration ready for a sharp and severe war policy" (128). So, although the official rhetoric emphasized peace, it seems that Grant's effective policy had two sides. Grant appointed Ely S. Parker, a full-blooded Seneca, Commissioner of Indian Affairs (130). Again, this was part and parcel of a dedication to "conquest by kindness." Still, Grant's policies were enacted by dozens of army officers, not to mention that the Indian Bureau was part of the War Department. Nonetheless, there were sometimes genuine attempts at kindness and justice (132).

Utley describes the frustrations for both Indians (in his specific example, Apaches) and U.S. representatives to Indians. The Great Father was slow in making decisions and providing the promised means of survival. Frequently, after a long wait, the Indians would be delivered a unsatisfactory message. However, some officials like Vincent Colyer and General Oliver Otis Howard did well as advocates of the Indians and made good decisions.

Utley turns to the Fort Sill Agency in the western Indian Territory. Kiowas and Comanches were the tribes of interest here. Lawrie Tatum, a determined Quaker, became agent. Tatum tried to get the Kiowas to stop raiding in Texas. Colonel Benjamin H. Grierson at Fort Sill was the military complement to Tatum's agency. Grierson was devoted to the peace policy, even though that meant that some of his military peers looked down on him.

Ultimately, the Salt Creek Prairie Massacre of 1871 frustrated Tatum and set off William Tecumseh Sherman. Satanta, a Kiowa chief, was proud and unrepentant. Like most tribes, encroachment by whites and U.S. federal policy divided the Kiowas. The Kiowa war chief was Lone Wolf. Kicking Bird led the Kiowa peace faction (see photos pp. 144-45).

The final paragraph of the chapter reads, "But in essence Grant's Peace Policy was chiefly about peace, and peace it did not achieve. The public could thus hardly be faulted for failing to note the persistence of the Peace Policy when war so dominated the Indian news. Indeed, the era of the Peace Policy featured some of the bitterest warfare in the history of Indian relations" (154).

Chapter Six: Wars of the Peace Policy, 1869-1886

" 'The campaigns in Arizona did not owe their ultimate success to any particular Waterloo-like victory, as much as they did the covering of a great deal of ground by a comparatively small number of men, permitting the Indians no rest and rendering any and every hiding place insecure.' " (155, quoting a report from 1890).

Utley relates the army's Walter Schuyler and his troops tracking down Apaches in Arizona in 1873 (155-58). The freedom of the Kiowas and Comanches came to an end in 1875 (160). The general rule was: Those Indians on the reservation are friendly and the federal Indian Bureau is responsible for them; Those off the reservation are hostile and the army must be responsible for them (161). This made sense, but the realities were never quite that simple (162-63). When war was brought to Indians, it tended to be the "total war" made (in)famous by the likes of Sherman and Sheridan during the Civil War (164).

"Man for man, the [Indian] warrior far surpassed his blueclad adversary in virtually every test of military proficiency; but unit for unit--however great the numbers--the Indians could not come close to matching the discipline and organization of the army. When Indians made the mistake of standing and fighting on the army's terms, they usually lost." However, the west was not won as a result of military conquest. Instead it was "an aggressive and highly organized society" (166).

Events like the Modoc War on the west coast in 1872-73 and especially "Custer's Last Stand" in 1876 marked the demise of the Peace Policy (171). Utley also tells of the Red River War of 1874-75.

Finally vanquished, the Nez Perces wound up in I.T., just like the Modoc had before them, in spite of promises made to the Nez Perces by the army. By 1881, only the Apaches "had not yet been made to face the truth that the reservation represented their only possible destiny" (187). Their leaders were Victorio and Geronimo. The reservation designated for them was a terrible place to live: no game, lots of snakes, etc. Eventually, Geronimo and other Apaches gave up and "the Indian Wars of the United States came to a close in Skeleton Canyon, Arizona, on September 4, 1886" (196). The Apaches were loaded up on trains that took them to Florida.

Chapter Seven: The Vision of the Reformers, 1865-1890

The chapter begins by describing the Mohonk House resort in upstate New York. The Smileys, Quaker twin brothers, were the owner-operators. Beginning in 1883, this was the cite of an annual Mohonk Conference of reform leaders and organizers, self-appointed friends of the Indians. The conference did not include Catholics, nor groups who fought for the right of Indians to simply be Indians. The official name of the gatherings was the Lake Mohonk Conference of the Friends of the Indians.

The emphasis of virtually all of these reformers was education. Utley tells the story of how in the 1870s and 80s especially, it seems, various crusaders, leaders, and reformers fighting in behalf of their visions for Indians were active and influential in American politics. For example, Helen Hunt Jackson, who published A Century of Dishonor in 1881, hoped that her book would do for Indians what Uncle Tom's Cabin did for slaves. Another factor that promoted reform interest were the stories about and statements from Indians themselves. These "aroused public sympathy and reinforced what the crusaders were saying" (201).

Such interest in Indians led to cooperation. The greatest organization of the time was the Indian Rights Association, founded and led by William Welsh. Groups like this one set out to "civilize" Indians. "This vision of the ideal Indian sharply delineated the paramount self-image of American society in the late nineteenth century. It was a vision of an 'Americanized' American Indian. By the 1880s and 1890s, despite conventional platitudes about separation of church and state, 'Americanism' represented virtually a fusion of nationalism and Protestantism" (203).

According to reformers, the first step was to "detribalize" Indians, that is to "individualize" them. "Once the individual had broken free of the tribal heritage, the reformers' program would power the final stage, the leap into the mainstream of American life" (204). Eventually, "all Indians could be submerged in the body politic of America" (205).

"In the Indian reform crusade of the 1880s, four issues overshadowed all others, both in their potential consequences for the Indians and in the zeal with which the reformers attacked them: land, education, law, and purification of the Indian Bureau. Give the Indians fee ownership in their own plot of land. Educate them in preparation for citizenship and self-support. Extend law for their protection against whites and other Indians. Upgrade reservation management to speed the civilization process and the dissolution of the reservations" (205).

Henry L. Dawes, U.S. senator from Massachusetts, was the champion of severalty for Indians (206). His leadership generated the Dawes General Allotment Act of 1887 (207).

Beginning in the 1880s, the U.S. began appropriating funds for the establishment and operation of schools among the Indians. By then, of course, church groups had been conducting educational work for many years, especially Roman Catholics. Various denominations had conducted virtually all formal schooling among the Indians. Thus, they received much of the funding that the federal government had appropriated. This was true because government schools could not set up and start running as fast as the money was becoming available. The churches were more than willing to accept any surplus funds. This situation naturally generated religious contests for government money.

Captain Richard Henry Pratt was founder and president of the Carlisle School, Pennsylvania, the greatest of the off-reservation boarding schools for Indians. Pratt spoke of a sudden and total immersion "in our civilization" (211).

"Not amid the cushioned comforts of Lake Mohonk, but on the reservations, where spoilsmen ran the programs, were the theories of the reformers put to the test. Lake Mohonk provided the perfect setting for spinning the theories, for it so perfectly mirrored the life and values of the reformers themselves, and therefore the life and values considered ideal for the Indians. But the polished lobby of Mohonk House differed from the hard environment and society of the reservation as night differed from day, and what seemed so ideal and attainable at Mohonk proved considerably less so on the reservation. There, to their pain and sorrow, several generations of Indians were fated to grapple with the legacy of Mohonk" (217-18).

Chapter Eight: The Reservation, 1880-1890

Utley narrates the obliteration of the buffalo in the 1870s and 80s. This "doomed the Plains Indians' way of life and forced them to settle on the reservations." How? Because going off reservation was for the purpose of hunting buffalo. The animals also provided the means of survival when Indians killed one. So, the demise of the buffalo basically took all the fun out of going off the reservation.

Utley distinguishes between nonprogressives (traditionalists) versus progressives among the Indians (223). A third distinction can be described as those who resisted when they could, but who gave in when they had to (225).

The Sioux began to experience the confinement of the reservation, and agents discouraged the hunt because hunting, it was said, perpetuated in the Indians "all the cruel and wicked propensities" (226). The vision quest was directly related to the hunt and to warfare. So, due to reservation life, the vision quest fell into irrelevance (230). It was much the same story for the sun dance as well (230-31).

" . . . the main explanation for the spread of Christianity lay in the nature of the Indian spiritual belief, which did not bar the new from living comfortably next to the old--so long as the Christian holy men did not demand too insistently that the old be cast aside. The Indian spiritual life centered on a quest for personal power. The white man visibly possessed power. Therefore, his God might also be petitioned for power along with the traditional Sioux deities" (231).

"Like Christianity, education elicited ambivalent reactions from the Sioux. On the one hand, they sensed its importance in helping them to cope with the white people in the new world forced on them. On the other hand, they feared what it would do to the hearts and minds, indeed the Sioux identity, of their children. On both counts, of course, they were right" (231).

Federal officials pressed individual homesteads and farming on the Indians (232). Major General George Crook to the leaders of the Sioux Indians: "It strikes me that you are in the position of a person who had his effects in the bed of a dry stream when there was a flood coming down, and instead of finding fault with the Creator for sending it down, you should try and save what you can" (236).

In 1890, President Harrison announced that the land ceded by the Sioux was now open to settlement, news which came as a shock to the Sioux (239).

Chapter Nine: The Passing of the Frontier, 1890

The "spoils system" had one of its most abusive manifestations at the Pine Ridge reservation in Dakota. Two incompetent, desperately in-debt government agents were there: Royer and Gleason. Around this time, a desperate attempt by the Sioux and other tribes showed up in the form of the Ghost Dance. The dance had apocalyptic dimensions. Its participants hoped for the emergence of a world of bliss. And, it promised protection from the white man's bullets and cannon balls. In the standoff between the two sides, Sitting Bull was killed. Then, there was a melee in which 150 more Indians were killed, and 50 wounded. "Instead of armed challenge to the reservation, the Ghost Dance was a desperate bid for divine salvation where all else had failed. It ended in violence because of an incompetent Indian agent and a tragic accident born of mutual distrust, misunderstanding, and fear" (248-49).

Utley relates the histories of Indian Territory, Oklahoma Territory, and early statehood. There was no Indian warfare in Alaska. There just weren't many Indians there, and the land was so vast.

The Dawes Act succeeded in only one of its goals: it moved Indian land into white ownership. All of the other idealistic goals of the act never came true for Indians. Still, Utley insists that it is unfair to refer to 19th reformers "racists."

Did the Reformation Really Begin in 1517? Pre-Conditions of the Protestant Movement

Later this year, the world will mark the 500th anniversary of the dawn of the Protestant Reformation. Don't worry, if you forget there will be plenty of reminders in late October.

That's all well and good. But it's not my focus here. Instead, with this post I want to highlight some of the historical factors that represent pre-conditions of Luther's posting of the Ninety-Five Theses in the fall of 1517.

From the sixteenth century until the mid-twentieth century, almost all interpreters agreed that the Protestant Reformation had its start with Martin Luther’s acts of “heroic individualism." As historian Bernd Moeller has described it, this now-outdated story of the origins of the Reformation pictured Luther as “a great sage, a kind of spiritual colossus, who attains his Reformation breakthrough, draws the broad consequences, and then drags people with him as he strides through history handing out his truths right and left.”[1] But sometime during the mid-1900s, scholars began to conclude that “Luther as sage and Wittenberg as Jerusalem” was an incomplete story. Other people and places—like Huldrych Zwingli in Zurich, John Calvin in Geneva, and a number of lesser-known leaders and locations—were vital to the rise of Protestantism in the sixteenth century.[2]

What historians sometimes call the “Luther affair”—specifically, events from the life of Martin Luther beginning in 1517 and continuing into the early 1520s—was directly related to and grew out of the long crisis of late medieval Christendom.[3] This crisis can be described as a struggle between competing ideas about the recovery of apostolic Christianity, the quest for the true church. As many interpreters have noted, the late middle ages were characterized by a perceived absence of meaning in life, accompanied by deep anxiety over personal guilt and destiny. The consequences of sin were a deserved death and an uncertain eternal future.[4]

A common report about the young Martin Luther is that he experienced torturous dread and despair over matters of the spirit and his unanswered questions about relationship with a sovereign God. But we should add that Luther was not alone. It appears that what he called his Anfechtungen, his “afflictions” or “tribulations,” were not unique. They were typical, if not always so intense in other people.[5] However, the medieval combination of spiritual malaise and psychological disturbance were not the only preoccupations of the time. There was also in the pre-Reformation age something that Lucien Febvre called “an intense appetite for the divine.”[6]

Because the character of the true church was a focal question of the time, much of the contemporary discussion included words like renovatio and reformatio. Such terms pointed to a solution in the renewal of genuine Christianity, and especially in the rehabilitation of the apostolic church.[7] So towards that end, what kinds of proposals emerged during the decades leading up to the Luther affair?

Curialism

One prominent and lingering vision of the apostolic church centered on the pope and the Curia Romana, the papal court. The essence of this view, commonly known as Curialism, was unmistakably expressed in a papal bull issued by Boniface VIII in 1302 titled Unam sanctum; that is, The One Holy (Church). In it, Boniface makes a comparison: in the same way that there was only one ark of safety, constructed under the leadership of only one man, so there is only one apostolic and universal church, safeguarded by a single power and presided over by only one leader. The conclusion of the document epitomizes the claims of Curialism: “We declare, state, define and pronounce that it is altogether necessary to salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.”[8]

But the papal crises of the fourteenth and early-fifteenth centuries did much to undermine all such pronouncements. After the death of Boniface, the so-called Babylonian Captivity (1309-1377), during which the papacy was exiled in Avignon, was followed by the Great Western Schism (1378-1417), when the loyalty of the Church was divided between two and sometimes three different popes. In short, no sooner did Boniface insist on the Curialist vision than unfortunate events practically renounced it.[9] Still, papal claims to authority did not die.

Conciliarism

Historians have given the name Conciliarism to a competing vision for the true church. Significantly, this alternative view, which asserted that ecumenical church councils were superior to papal authority, developed directly out of the crisis of Curialism. Its claim to authority grew from the conviction that in addition to Peter and his successors, the biblical witness also provides for the authority of councils, the first of these being the so-called “Jerusalem Council” recorded Acts chapter 15.

In response to the struggles over authority that had begun over a hundred years earlier, the Council of Constance (1414-1418) deposed all three of the current popes and elected Martin V as the new pope. It also provided for future ecumenical councils and, most tellingly, decreed that the decisions of these gatherings should serve as checks to papal authority. After all, in keeping with a phrase enshrined in canon law--“unless he deviates from the faith”--the decision of a pope was not above the judgment of the church. Conciliarism did not deny the authority of the pope. It did deny that his authority was absolute and unqualified. At any rate, although the Council of Constance succeeded in its goal to rescue the papacy, it failed to establish councils as an effective alternative to the model of absolute papal supremacy.[10]

Popular Heretics and Dissenters

In addition to Curialism and Conciliarism, the late medieval period saw the rise and lingering effects of any number of dissenters and heretics. The presence of these groups—Lollards, Hussites, Waldensians, and Spiritual Franciscans, to name a few—underscored the pressing desire and need for reform. Here, space provides for the discussion of only one prominent heresy.

Lollardy (sometimes spelled Lollardie) was the name given to an English heretical movement that began near the end of the fourteenth century. Its origins can be traced back to the teaching, the personal network and, above all, the writings of John Wyclif (c. 1324-1384). [11] In his early writings, Wyclif made a compelling argument for the disendowment of clerics who were not in grace but in mortal sin. In that state, he asserted, they had no divine right to position or power. This, of course, made him popular with the devout clergy who agreed with him. Most of all, it made him popular with the English Crown, eager to profit from prospective disendowments. Early on, Wyclif had a benefactor in John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. It was primarily Gaunt’s influence that led to his entry into royal service as a sort of schooled advocate who could help to undermine church privilege and the authority of the pope. During those years, Wyclif stayed busy writing and preaching.

On May 22, 1377, Pope Gregory XI issued five papal bulls condemning the views of Wyclif. Detained for a time at Oxford, he was soon released due to popular support there. By the late 1370s, however, Wyclif was doing more than simply attacking the abuses of the church. Most significantly, he dismissed the traditional understanding of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the doctrine of transubstantiation. Thus, in May of 1381, William Barton, chancellor of Oxford, presided over a committee that condemned such heresy, though without specifically naming Wyclif. Then, on June 13, 1381, Corpus Christi day, peasant rebels, angry over an attempt to freeze wages, came to the outskirts of London and entered the city.[12] During three days of mayhem, they killed Simon Sudbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury. In his De blasphemia, Wyclif mentioned the revolt. Although he never acknowledged even an indirect contribution to the catastrophe, at least some chroniclers of the day disagreed. They saw a connection between Wyclif's influence and popular sentiment. By then, Wyclif was no longer regarded as an interesting and useful radical, but more as a dangerous and loathsome heretic. He could no longer count on the critical support of some of the clergy and aristocracy, and by October 1381 he had retreated to his out-of-the-way parish in Lutterworth where he died at Mass on the last day of 1384. The period in which Wyclif wrote his more-popular works and led a public life had lasted hardly more than a decade. But he left behind many books and treatises, in English as well as in Latin, and not a few personal associates who were still at Oxford or who had since gone out from there, providing leadership for the group now known as the Lollards. Indirectly, this heresy was the source and inspiration for the later Hussite movement in Bohemia, which is where most of the surviving Wyclifite texts have been recovered.

Renaissance Humanism

One critical pre-condition to the rise of the Reformation was Humanism. Consistent with the goals of the Renaissance, Humanism was “the movement to recover, interpret and assimilate the language, literature, learning and values of ancient Greece and Rome.”[13] According to Charles Nauert, humanist culture began and grew from the time of Petrarch forward. As Nauert explains, it developed initially from a practical concern. In Italy, those who bore the responsibilities of civic leadership were searching for greater access to useful knowledge. In the Greek and Roman classics, they found what they believed was a superior wisdom, moral philosophy, and rhetorical theory.[14]

As most surveys relate, during the fifteenth century, humanism crossed the Alps and entered northern Europe. There, it took on a decidedly Christian form. In Italy, humanist scholars had searched for ancient wisdom, insight that could inform leaders amid changing economic times and political challenges. But north of the Alps, Christian Humanists sought ancient wisdom that was distinctively theological in content.[15] However, this distinction should not be taken too far. As R. N. Swanson points out, although Christian Humanism has been associated with the Renaissance once it had traversed the Alps, in fact virtually all Humanists, including those in Italy, were Christians. It is true, to take a prime example, that Lorenzo Valla used his skill in order to discredit the Donation of Constantine. Yet we should not conclude that Valla rejected Christianity. In fact, he “overtly accepted Christianity’s spiritual demands, producing a commentary on the Lord’s Prayer and asserting that philosophy and reason were insufficient tools for dealing with theology.”[16] And, according to the vision put forward by Marsilio Ficino around 1476, humans should achieve their potential by exercising individual will, thus becoming co-creators with God “in a re-ordering of the world, and in order to attain salvation after death.”[17]

There can be no doubt that Humanism was highly significant to every branch of the Reformation. Luther, for example, developed his views of Pauline theology while using a Greek New Testament edited by Erasmus, a signal achievement of the period. Zwingli and Calvin were likewise trained in humanistic studies before they emerged as reformers. A specific example of the connection can be identified in Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses. Decades earlier, Valla had shown that the Greek word metanoia did not mean “do penance,” but rather “repent.” That is, in its imperative form the word did not call for participation in the ritual of penance; instead, metanoia expected an about face, a change in heart that would lead to a change in life. According to this distinction, Luther identified a meaning, rooted in the original Greek text of the New Testament, that effectively undermined the sale of indulgences. It is no accident that the very first of Luther’s theses reads: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent’ [Matt. 4:17], he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” In this and in other ways, Renaissance Humanism served as part of the intellectual scaffolding that made the Reformation project a possibility.

The Printing Press and Movable Type

Any discussion of the Reformation must consider the invention of the printing press and the advent of movable type in the fifteenth century. In her ground-breaking 1979 work, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, Elizabeth Eisenstein linked this invention to three movements that unfolded in early modern Europe: the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Scientific Revolution.[18] Eisenstein argued that complaints and protests like those issued by Luther were hardly new. Therefore, we should regard the novelty of the printing press and not the theology of the reformers as the critical difference. Luther himself seems to have acknowledged as much when he wrote that printing was “God’s highest and extremest act of grace, whereby the business of the Gospel is driven forward.”[19] For example, the Ninety-Five Theses were composed in October 1517. By December, just a few short weeks later, three separate editions were printed almost simultaneously by printers located in three separate towns.[20] Along this line, Margaret Aston remarked:

The theses . . . were said to be known throughout Germany in a fortnight and throughout Europe in a month . . . Printing was recognized as a new power and publicity came into its own. In doing for Luther what the copyists had done for Wycliffe, the printing presses transformed the field of communications and fathered an international revolt. It was a revolution.[21]

Due to the printing press, the Reformation world featured much greater access to and knowledge of the biblical text in its original languages than ever before.[22] This, combined with consumers’ appetites for printed works fed by the lucrative publishing business, means that even if Luther and Zwingli had never been born, something on the order of the Reformation we know would have occurred.

The Political and Religious Context of Germany

Coming into the sixteenth century, the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation was, in the words of Peter G. Wallace, “a fragmented federation with over 500 semi-autonomous jurisdictions that extended over northern Italy and much of Central Europe under the theoretical suzerainty of an elected Emperor.”[23] Among the entities claiming both autonomy and authority were seven electors, dozens of lay and ecclesiastical princes, more than sixty Imperial free cities, and hundreds of Imperial knights. Within this context, in 1514 Albert of Brandenburg, already the bishop of both Magdeburg and Halberstadt, became the new cardinal-bishop of Mainz. But in exchange for his position, Albert had made big promises to the papal Curia. Along with his pledge to pay the annates, the first year’s income from his benefice, Albert promised to contribute to construction of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. To finance these obligations, he incurred huge debts. This was the very reason why Johannes Tetzel, the now infamous seller of indulgences, was hawking his wares just beyond the boundaries of Saxony. Frederick the Wise, Luther’s prince and the founder of the University of Wittenberg, had not allowed Tetzel and others like him to enter his territory. When Saxons crossed the border to purchase indulgences, Luther became incensed and vehemently preached against all such dubious exchanges. This episode, inherent to the politics of the day, is precisely what triggered the Luther affair.[24]

To summarize then, the late-middle ages were characterized by calls for religious reform and by renewal movements. During the many decades leading up to the Reformation, the Catholic Church resisted calls to restore to Western Christendom the security and satisfaction that people desire from religion. The development of Renaissance Humanism, combined with the printing press and the advent of movable type, created the matrix out of which a long-awaited Reformation quickly grew.

Notes

[1] Bernd Moeller, Imperial Cities and the Reformation, trans. H. C. Erik Midelfort and Mark U. Edwards, Jr. (Durham, NC: Labyrinth Press, 1982), 13, as quoted by C. Scott Dixon, Contesting the Reformation (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 1-2.

[2] Dixon, Contesting the Reformation, 3.

[3] The expression “Luther Affair” is a favorite of C. Scott Dixon’s. See his Contesting the Reformation (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 3, 9, 14, 25, etc. Before Dixon, Peter G. Wallace used the term “Luther affair” in his work The Long European Reformation: Religion, Political Conflict, and the Search for Conformity, 1350-1750 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 75-81.

[4] For the late medieval period as “An Age of Anxiety,” see Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1988), 22-30.

[5] Roland H. Bainton provides a portrait of young Luther’s turmoil and desperation in Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1950) ch. 2, esp. page 31, where Bainton states that Anfechtung is a word “for which there is no English equivalent. It may be a trial sent by God to test man, or an assault by the Devil to destroy man. It is all doubt, turmoil, pang, tremor, panic despair, desolation, and desperation which invade the spirit of man.” A fuller description can be found in David P. Scaer, “The Concept of Anfectung in Luther’s Thought,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 41, no. 1 (January 1983): 15-30.

[6] Lucien Febvre’s expression is reported in George, Theology of the Reformers, 30, n. 23.

[7] The Latin term reformatio and its cognates were commonly used during the late medieval period to speak of reform impulses or movements in any number of different areas: the law, politics, and the academy, for example. Thus, when Martin Luther and Huldrych Zwingli preached a message of reform, they were using language that was familiar. Yet, by the end of the sixteenth century the Reformation had come to mean, specifically, the well-known movement most closely associated with Luther. See Dixon, Contesting the Reformation, 8-9. John W. O’Malley relates that the idea of the need and even requirement of church reformation emerged as early as the eleventh century. As the two terms were used, reformatio meant “implementation of legal norms,” whereas renovatio referred to a much wider range of meaning. See O’Malley, Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 16-20.

[8] George, Theology of the Reformers, 31-32. Carter Lindberg’s discussion of this episode implies that the strong assertion of Boniface VIII was a reaction to the growing strength of secular powers and the decline of the pope’s authority. See Lindberg, The European Reformations (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1996), 42-43.

[9] George, Theology of the Reformers, 33. On the people and events surrounding this chapter of church history, see also Patrick Collinson, The Reformation: A History (New York: Modern Library, 2006), 23-27.

[10] Fuller accounts are provided by, for example, George, Theology of the Reformers, 33-35; Lindberg, The European Reformations, 46-51; and Euan Cameron, The European Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 49-51.

[11] Here I depend heavily upon Anne Hudson and Anthony Kenny, “Wyclif [Wycliffe], John,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 60: 616-30.

[12] Norman F. Cantor, The English: A History of Politics and Society to 1760 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967), 253-54.

[13] Peter Burke, “The Spread of Italian Humanism,” 2, as quoted in R. N. Swanson, Religion and Devotion in Europe, c. 1215—c. 1515 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 175.

[14] Charles G. Nauert, Jr., Humanism and the Culture of Renaissance Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 8-51.

[15] See, for example, Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, Early Modern Europe, 1450-1789, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 138-43; C. Leonard Allen and Richard T. Hughes, Discovering Our Roots: The Ancestry of Churches of Christ (Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 1988), 15.

[16] Swanson, Religion and Devotion in Europe, 176.

[17] Ibid., 176-77.

[18] Here, I will refer not to Eisenstein’s massive original work of 1979, but to the late edition of her abridgment: Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

[19] Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, 165. For this quote, Eisenstein credits M. H. Black, “The Printed Bible,” in Cambridge History of the Bible, ed. S. L. Greenslade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), 3:432.

[20] Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, 169.

[21] Ibid., 171. Here, Elizabeth Eisenstein cites Margaret Aston, The Fifteenth Century: The Prospect of Europe (London: Thames & Hudson, 1968), 76.

[22] Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, 179.

[23] Wallace, The Long European Reformation, 77.

[24] Wallace, The Long European Reformation, 75-77. See also Richard L. DeMolen, “The Age of Renaissance and Reformation,” in The Meaning of the Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Richard L. DeMolen (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), 1-25.

Works Cited

Bainton, Roland H. Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther. Nashville: Abingdon, 1950.

Cameron, Euan. The European Reformation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.

Cantor, Norman. The English: A History of Politics and Society to 1760. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967.

Collinson, Patrick. The Reformation: A History. New York: Modern Library, 2006.

Dixon, C. Scott. Contesting the Reformation. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.

George, Timothy. Theology of the Reformers. Nashville: Broadman Press, 1988.

Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe. 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Hudson, Anne. The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Hudson, Anne, and Anthony Kenny, “Wyclif [Wycliffe], John,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, 60: 616-30. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Lindberg, Carter. The European Reformations. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1996.

Nauert, Charles G., Jr. Humanism and the Culture of Renaissance Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

O’Malley, John W. Trent And All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.

Scaer, David P. “The Concept of Anfectung in Luther’s Thought,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 41, no. 1 (January 1983): 15-30.

Swanson, R. N. Religion and Devotion in Europe, c. 1215—c. 1515. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Wallace, Peter G. The Long European Reformation: Religion, Political Conflict, and the Search for Conformity, 1350-1750. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E. Early Modern Europe, 1450-1789. 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

The Non-Class, One Cup Churches of Christ

Ronny F. Wade, The Sun Will Shine Again, Someday. Springfield, MO: 1986. xvi + 208 pp.

The subtitle of this book says it all: “A history of the non-class, one cup Churches of Christ.” The author, Ronny F. Wade, is a long-time, widely-regarded preacher within this group. As one might expect, the history he writes is characterized by advocacy. He is much like the sports announcer who, while calling the game, always cheers for his team.

A bit of background and explanation. The contemporary mainline non-instrumental Churches of Christ adopted the practice of having various Bible classes—sometimes called Sunday School—around the beginning of the twentieth century. They also adopted the use of individual cups for the Lord’s Supper. But not everyone went along. Ever since then, the “non-class, one cup Churches of Christ” have made up a marginal, though significant, group. Also, they are convinced that other congregations of the Churches of Christ—not to mention the rest of the Christian world—are in sin, unfaithful to the Lord. Thus, Wade refers to those outside the group as “digressives,” even those people who sympathize with the conclusions of "digressives" but who do not treat those conclusions as tests of fellowship.

Wade sometimes provides general background for the story he tells. For example, in Chapter Three he relates the rise of the Sunday School Movement, beginning in Great Britain and moving to America. At other points, Wade focuses on intimate doctrinal and personality conflicts within the non-class, one cup group. For instance, he sometimes quotes at length the correspondence between warring preachers and debaters quibbling over the terms in the propositions to be discussed. In these sections, the book seems more like a chronicle than a history.

Throughout, the author provides little in the way of social or political context for his story. Wade notes in Chapter Seven that the group he belongs to remained pacifist even during and after the Second World War. But he tells the reader very little about the group’s interactions with the federal government, which must have been a fascinating story still waiting to be told. Instead, the author focuses on what he knows so well: minute doctrinal history and the biographies of leading preachers, men like Dr. G. A. Trott, Homer L. King, J. Ervin Waters, and J. D. Phillips. Consequently, his book is almost always descriptive rather than analytical.

The Sun Will Shine Again, Someday includes numerous photos of leading preachers in the non-class, one cup movement. Documentation appears at the end of each chapter. The book is missing an index, which would have been useful.

Readers will likely admire the conviction and tenacity of the group Wade has described, They might also lament what some will view as the narrowness and penchant for remaining small and insular. Thirty years have passed since this book was first published. It would be interesting to know what has happened since then. Perhaps the author, now in his eighties, would consider producing an updated edition of his work. Either way, this book is an important secondary source on its topic.

Tulia, Texas Wildfires, February 28, 2017

On Tuesday, February 28, 2017, wildfire broke out west of Tulia, Texas. Aided by parched fields and raging winds that were sometimes gusting over 50 miles an hour, the fire spread rapidly. In a short time, many homes and businesses in town were in jeopardy of catching fire. I don't know much about how this blaze was contained and extinguished. What I do know is that a large number of firefighters from Tulia and the surrounding area worked tirelessly through the afternoon and night. Thanks to them, Tulia was saved with what has to be considered minimal damage. In addition, local law enforcement did a great job blocking off streets and keeping the public safe. It was an impressive performance all the way around. After coming home from school that afternoon, Michele was evacuated. I was still driving home from Lubbock. (I was driving 85 mph north. The wind was pushing 50 mph west). Again, thanks to the hard work of many firefighters we were able to return home that night at around 9:30. Several days later, I took a walk with my camera. Here's a bit of what I saw. For a larger shot, click on individual photos:

The house top center is two doors down from ours.


All of the grass around the house I call "The Observatory" is completely charred. (On the far left, Michele's red car can be seen parked in our driveway). On closer inspection, it's obvious that this place nearly caught fire. See closeup below.




The large field just north of McKenzie Park, completely burned.



Looking north, with the Tule Creek bed in the foreground. The orange hue of the grass is due to fire retardant dropped from planes stationed at Amarillo.


A closer look at the orange residue. South Austin Avenue., next to McKenzie Park.


At the alleyway just north of McKenzie Hills housing addition, the fire was stopped.



Looking south and east towards the houses in McKenzie Hills



On the west side of Austin Avenue, firefighters scraped a line meant to stop or slow down the spread of the flames.

Demons, Baseball, Skynyrd and More! My Sweet Sixteen Books of 2016

For someone pursuing a doctorate in History, I really didn't do that much reading last year. Much of the time I was skimming books by the dozens and reading lots of reviews. Still, I did manage to read from cover to cover a good number of books that I simply should have read, some of which I actually wanted to read. On occasion, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that a title I had been avoiding was much more engaging than I thought it would be. And, I wound up reading a few books that had almost nothing to do with my academic program. Anyway, out of that group of titles I thoroughly digested last year, here are sixteen of my favorites:

European History

1. Roland H. Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (Abingdon Press, 1950). Back in the day when I was hanging out at Yale Divinity School, people uttered the name Roland Bainton with something like reverence. The name plate below his giant portrait might just as well have read Solomon or Paul. After reading this book, I understand a bit more about why. Here I Stand was likely the twentieth century's best biography of Martin Luther in English. It was certainly the most popular and influential. Yes, it represents old-school historiography. More recent works, for example, rightly emphasize that Luther was no Lone Ranger of the Reformation. Without other leaders and places like Zwingli in Zurich and Calvin in Geneva, nothing from Luther's legacy would ever have worked out the way it did. But in an age when Europeans and Americans were more comfortable with the idea of a singular, patrician leader like Franklin Roosevelt, this book was the perfect biography. It's still a great read.

2. Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style (Clarendon Press, 1972). The author begins this contemporary classic with a basic assertion: "the style of pictures is a proper material of social history." In other words, paintings do not simply illustrate history once it is established by documents. Instead, paintings should be thought of and used as primary sources, along with documents. Or, as the author concludes, "the visual is  . . . the proper complementary to the verbal." This book goes a long way in establishing works of art as primary sources for understanding history. Baxandall's reflection at the end of the book about the actual primacy of the visual is by itself worth the price of admission. More historians should know this book.

3. Jerry Brotton, The Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2006). The Very Short Introductions series keeps reeling me back in. A year goes by, I forget everything I didn't like about the last volume I read, and I wind up trying out some other title. It's not that the authors of the series aren't great scholars. They are. The problem, in my opinion, is the format. The small size of these introductions means they're more than an article, less than a complete survey. It's a tough awkward job for any author. However, with this particular volume, Jerry Brotton manages to pull it off. His coverage of the Renaissance begins with a good survey of the historiography, and then proceeds with sections on art, literature, humanism, religious reformation(s), women, exploration, etc. If you don't read any other book on the topic, read this one.

4. George Huppert, After the Black Death: A Social History of Early Modern Europe, 2nd edition (Indiana University Press, 1998). Huppert specifies that his chronological coverage runs from the first outbreak of the Black Death in Europe in 1347 to its last appearance at Marseilles in 1721. Why this periodization? He explains: "After the Black Death had done its work, the survivors became more prudent. They did not allow themselves the luxury of multiplying again to the point of outstripping their resources as dramatically as they once had. To forestall famine, they learned to control population growth" (ix). This is the organizing theme for what has to be one of the most engaging social histories of the period. For students of Early Modern Europe, this is a must read.

5. Giovanni Levi, Inheriting Power: The Story of an Exorcist (University of Chicago Press, 1988). Don't be fooled by the sexy title. This book really isn't about an exorcist. It's about the complex world of a small-town priest in northwestern Italy in the 1690s. Along with a few other Italian historians, author Giovanni Levi is one of the founding fathers of a sub-discipline known as microhistory. No, that word doesn't refer to a tiny topic or bite-sized history. As Carlo Ginzburg explains it, think instead of what you do with a microscope: intense, detailed analysis. That's exactly what Levi gives the reader. If you want to learn about the history of exorcism, read something else. If you're interested in the detailed reasons why, for example, people in the early modern era sometimes got a much higher price when selling land to a family member as opposed to a complete stranger, then Inheriting Power might be for you. Just don't take it to the beach. It's not that kind of book.

6. Gary K. Waite, Eradicating the Devil’s Minions: Anabaptists and Witches in Reformation Europe, 1525-1600 (University of Toronto Press, 2007). According to the author, this work “examines the rhetoric used against Anabaptists and their specific treatment by churchmen, interrogators, and executioners in the light of the magical world view that we know dominated the culture of the sixteenth-century populace.” In other words, Eradicating the Devil’s Minions compares the persecution of religious dissidents with that of the largely fictitious sect of devil-worshipping, magic-performing witches. Bottom line: in the era of the early Reformation, some people treated religious devotees as though they were witches, and vice versa. Seems like that sort of thing has a way of coming back around.

American Religion

7. Paul Johnson, A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837, 25th-Anniversary edition (Hill and Wang, 2004). The early-nineteenth century Protestant revivals collectively known as the Second Great Awakening have deeply influenced American religion from the antebellum period to the present day. Because of its broad, long-lasting significance, historians have raised questions about how the Awakening began, what contributed to its rise, and what its essential character was. Some time around the 1960s, historians began probing the possibility that the revivals involved something more than just religion. For example, were there social, economic, and cultural contexts to the revivals? First published in 1978, A Shopkeeper's Millennium is one of the seminal works along this line of study. We get a taste of what Johnson is up to when he writes: “Revivals were a means of building order and a sense of common purpose among sovereign, footloose, and money-hungry individualists." Some religious people who have read Johnson's work have accused him of being reductionistic. They think that Johnson has taken a thoroughly-religious episode in American history and has turned it into something else entirely. I'm not sure that that criticism will stick. Read it and see what you think. Either way, like many others, you'll probably be pulled in by this engaging book.

8. Michael J. Lee, The Erosion of Biblical Certainty: Battles over Authority and Interpretation in America (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). As the author describes it, this book "examines how learned Americans dealt with the new and often unsettling ideas" coming out of Europe in the early eighteenth century, and that raised critical questions about the status of the Christian Scriptures and how they should be understood. Lee argues that by taking up evidentialist challenges to conventional views and literal interpretations of the Bible, American biblical scholars "gradually became increasingly naturalistic in their understanding of revelation." In effect, they conceded "that the Bible was accountable to outside authorities and needed to be reconciled to new fields of knowledge." The majority of English rational Protestants were confident that true reason would never contradict what the Bible affirmed. They believed that, if anything, rational inquiry would always confirm the Scriptures. Their American counterparts agreed. But neither group seems to have anticipated that their latitudinarian approach would subject revelation to independent investigation to test its veracity. In effect, the assumptions and presuppositions of the debate turned out to be the sources of the decline of traditional positions during the nineteenth century.

9. Ussama Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East (Cornell University Press, 2008). On one level, Artillery of Heaven simply tells the story of American Protestant missionaries and one As’ad Shidyaq. Born in 1798, Shidyaq lived in that part of the Ottoman Empire now known as the Lebanese Republic. His life forever changed when he became the first convert to Protestant Christianity in that part of the world, and was subsequently tortured and killed. He thus became the first Protestant martyr of the American mission to the Middle East. As interesting and significant as this story is, Makdisi has received special notice for how he tells it. In general, most historical accounts of Christian missionary work are examples of institutional, denominational history. This is only natural since those producing the historiography are members of the community of faith that conceived and conducted the mission activities they describe. Makdisi presents another possibility. As he puts it, "[t]he only way to tell a story of a cross-cultural encounter involving Americans and Arabs is to enlarge dramatically the conventional scope of inquiry."

10. George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture. New edition (Oxford University Press, 2006). The first edition of this book appeared in 1980 and instantly became a classic of American religious history. Marsden's basic conclusion was that fundamentalists of the late-19th and early-20th centuries  "experienced profound ambivalence toward the surrounding culture." He acknowledges that such is true of many distinct groups and movements. But, he notes, conservative Protestants in the U.S. went from being respectable in the 1870s to being peripheral and a laughingstock by the 1920s. What happened? Marsden answers that historians can only respond to such questions not by proving anything—not scientifically, anyway—but by an illumination that comes by way of what he calls "sympathetic insight." In his description of fundamentalism in America, Marsden begins by insisting that the phenomenon was essentially a religious movement. At the same time, like all other religious movements, fundamentalism lived within and responded to a distinctive culture. And that has everything to do with its character.

11. Mark R. Stoll, Inherit the Holy Mountain: Religion and the Rise of American Environmentalism (Oxford University Press, 2015). This book begins with an important historical footnote: back in 1967 Lynn White Jr. published an essay in Science magazine "claiming that Christianity had caused the environmental crisis." As Stoll points out, White's idea is one that lingers "in the back of a lot of people's minds when they think about religion and the environment." The author noticed, however, that many figures in the history of American environmentalism grew up in either Congregational or Presbyterian churches, both types "in the Calvinist tradition." What was the connection? Starting with questions like that, Stoll has written a unique book, one that "overlays American environmental history on American religious history." He makes a solid case that, in fact, religion had everything to do with the rise of American environmentalism, and that a person's formative religious outlook brings with it a controlling theology and view of the world, facets of thought that always make a difference in the way a person considers nature. Our environmental crises would not improve with the disappearance of religion, but it might improve with a religious tradition that could, like the old Calvinists, bring about systemic change for the better.

12. Molly Worthen, Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism (Oxford University Press, 2014). This book is an intellectual history of conservative Protestantism in America from the end of the Second World War to the early years of the twenty-first century. Worthen defends her approach by pointing out that while not all thoughts and thinkers are equally good, scholars must take into account "that all people think, and that material forces alone cannot explain human experience." Though not herself an evangelical, Worthen evinces a real appreciation for her subjects and what she calls their crisis of authority. So, what does she believe is the crisis? In order to hear her answer, we must first understand her idea that the identity of American evangelicals is revealed not so much by their beliefs, but by their struggles. Worthen insists that what unites modern evangelicals is not their doctrinal conformity--which they have never been able to achieve--but their shared questions "borne out of their peculiar relationship to the convulsions of the early modern era." In other words, if we want to comprehend who evangelicals are, we should listen not to their confident affirmations, but to the questions and doubts with which they constantly wrestle.

American Political and Cultural History

13. Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-class Culture in America, 1830-1870 (Yale University Press, 1982). Ever wondered why charades is a well-known game in America? As Karen Halttunen explains, it has something to do with cultural changes that unfolded in the U.S. beginning in the 1830s. The so-called Market Revolution and the growth of cities in America generated a new social phenomenon: anonymity, the problem (and potential) of becoming a face in the crowd. In a sprawling city unknown by the young man who had recently moved there seeking a job, who could he trust? America's response to this question was to establish certain habits, manners, and clothing that would make up the look and the way of respectable people. These kinds of social and cultural markers would indicate, it was hoped, who the good people were. The weakness of the plan, of course, was that when motivated by some less-than-virtuous desire, bad people could adopt the look just as well as good folks could. There are reasons why con men often succeed.

14. Jill Lepore, New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan (Knopf, 2005). Grave suspicions about slave insurrections. The heartless treatment of black people: falsely accused, arrested, jailed, beaten, falsely convicted, and then burned at the stake or hanged, one after the other. It's all the stuff of the antebellum South, right? Not always. In this case, such horrors were perpetrated in pre-Revolutionary New York City! Read it and weep. The detail of this book will engage and impress you. The episode it relates will make you wonder about bigger questions: How is it that we human beings justify inhumanity? How do we legitimize incredible violence? Lepore is one of the most popular American historians of our day, and with good reason. She has an eye for great stories and tales that have yet to be really told.

15. Mark Ribowsky, Whiskey Bottles and Brand New Cars: The Fast Life and Sudden Death of Lynyrd Skynyrd (Chicago Review Press, 2015). Disclaimer: If you check out the Amazon reviews of this book, you'll hear it panned and pummeled again and again. Informed fans and self-appointed sleuths love to hate it. I decided to read it anyway, as a sort of guilty pleasure. Ribowsky is a good writer, maybe a bit too "good," as he often uses sappy language and way too many words for my taste. Sometimes, reading Ribowsky is like watching a B-rate movie that you just can't pull yourself away from. Sure it's kind of cheesy, but you don't want to miss what comes next. He emphasizes the essential and central role played by Ronnie Van Zandt. The band was always his band. In fact, Ribowsky convincingly argues that without Ronnie, there would never have been anything like Lynyrd Skynyrd.

16. George Vecsey, Baseball: A History of America's Favorite Game (Modern Library, 2006). If you're a long-time, well-versed fan of baseball, this book won't tell you much that you didn't already know. On the other hand, if you're more like me--someone who likes baseball, who keeps up with a certain team, but who doesn't know that much about the history of the game--then this book is for you. Vecsey is a veteran New York Times sports columnist who writes chapters as though they were long magazine articles. Some of his chapters tell stories of dark episodes (for example, "The Black Sox" and "Four Scandals"). Other chapters focus on the life and times of incredible players and personalities ("The Babe" and "Jackie Robinson"). Vecsey has a serious crush on almost all of his subjects, but he doesn't allow love to get in the way of insight. Above all, he knows how to write. The result is a book that, if you care anything about baseball, you'll wind up savoring like a good cup of coffee or a favorite dessert.

So, what were some of the better things you read in 2016? Has anyone else read the titles (or authors) I've listed here? And, what's on your reading agenda for 2017?

Demon Possession in Context: Giovanni Levi's Microhistory of a Seventeenth-Century Exorcist

Giovanni Levi, Inheriting Power: The Story of an Exorcist, translated by Lydia G. Cochrane. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Pp. xxviii, 209.

Inheriting Power was first published in Italian in 1985. A microhistory, the book focuses on the village of Santena and the surrounding region in northwestern Italy during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, particularly the 1690s. In a real sense Giovan Battista Chiesa, the exorcist of the subtitle, is nearly incidental to the world that the author reconstructs. In fact, Levi once described his book as an exploration of “one village’s land transactions studied to discover the social rules of commercial exchange at work in a market which had yet to be de-personalized.”

Chapter 1 tells the story of how Chiesa, the suffragan priest of Santena in northwestern Italy, became a regional celebrity healer and exorcist during the warm months of 1697. For his unconventional ministry to hundreds of people, Chiesa was summoned to answer before church authorities in Turin. Apparently, under canon law, not much of a case could be made against him. If he was ever sentenced, we do not know what the penalty was. After his trial in November 1697, none of the available records so much as mention him. He practically vanishes.

We do not know his date of death, nor what became of him, nor what new ties he may have forged. His history can only be read backward, by asking who he was, where he came from, who his friends and his family were, and why he became a healer and gathered a following (19).

Nonetheless, the promise of Levi’s study is that “even though there is no correspondence here between symbolic representations and the polarized social reality, the patterns of behavior of the chief actors in this local flare-up of the ancient war against the Demon can be tied to an underlying context of passions and conflicts that took years to develop and were not riding the momentary wave of a new cult” (12). Levi’s research question asks about the political and socio-economic contexts of events that might otherwise appear to be simply unusual.

Chapter 2 explores three contemporary massari (i.e., middling) families. Levi reveals how it was that within these families, the systems of dependence and assistance extended well beyond the boundaries of the truly-modern nuclear family. “In reality, there is a sort of anachronism in considering the household as the sole unit of analysis” (60). Levi also notes how these extended families deliberately diversified their occupations and activities as a means to survival and success. His point is that this was a world where the majority of the population was fairly obsessed with the “search for security.” Thus, Levi suggests that when the people of Santena and the surrounding area turned to Giovan Battista Chiesa for divine help, they were responding to the need for greater predictability and control in an uncertain world (64-65).

In Chapter 3, Levi identifies a trio of hypotheses stemming from his study to this point:

(a) “The relative value of goods was not completely free to vary; it expresses proportions determined by conditions existing in the community, and it contributed to the persistence of such conditions.” Here, the operative word is community.

(b) “The relative value of goods did not have the same significance for all members of the community. Significance varied in relation to position on the scale of wealth and social status of the contractual parties.”

(c) “The situation in Santena at the end of the seventeenth century was in no way exceptional. It was one example of land-market mechanisms common to many other areas in Piedmont during the ancien régime.” This was not an impersonal market world controlled by supply and demand. Rather, it was concerned with “justice” and a “just price,” a world in which “relative value was the result of concrete social situations” (80-81). Levi explains this interpretation with land-sale statistics that reveal a wide range of prices. (See his graphs on p. 90). The differences clearly depend on the identity of the buyer. Specifically, did a peasant sell part of his land to a family member, a near neighbor, or to an outsider?

Chapter 4 uses “the biography of Giovan Battista Chiesa's father to describe a highly mobile and dynamic relationship between the community and a local political leader” (100). Here, Levi shows how for many years the father of our main character accumulated and leveraged local authority as he served his community in ways that extended far beyond his official responsibilities. When he died in 1690, his son “felt his position was unassailable, and he must have considered himself invested with the same boundless power that his father seems to have exercised in the community” (122).

Chapter 5 takes the reader back to the year 1694, when our future exorcist was brought up on charges that he neglected his priestly responsibilities and, more to the point, pilfered funds and abused his clerical authority. It was no coincidence, writes Levi, that 1694 marked the height of a desperate time. During the previous four years, traveling armies trampled and pillaged the region, a terrible hail storm ruined virtually all the produce of an entire growing season, and heavy snows in late spring shortened yet another growing season. The crisis led to a number of premature deaths (125-27). Just before these events, Giovan Battista Chiesa’s father had died, and the priest dealt ruthlessly with peasants who were desperate to bury their dead, but who could not pay the price for a religious burial.

Chapter 6 resembles Chapter 3 in that it also examines extended families. But here, Levi turns from the massari of Chapter 3 to families of notables. Among these wealthier residents of Santena, in a family with several sons it was common for one of them to become a priest. Consequently, all land to which he held title would be tax-exempt. Upon the death of one of his brothers, the priest could transfer ownership of his land to the son(s) of the deceased. The sisters of these sons would be married off to respectable massari families who would provide for them well enough, but who would not expect large dowries. About this world, Levi remarks: “A strong potential for change lurked beneath established hierarchies that had become self-sustaining and rigid. Messianism and miracles often find living space in an ambiguous climate of truce and dissatisfaction, of outward peace and latent conflict, in which no equilibrium ever is definitive or stable” (157).

A brief final chapter returns the reader to the story of Giovan Battista Chiesa. The mercenary priest of 1694 became the apparently-generous healer and exorcist of 1697. What had changed? “It does not seem accurate,” writes Levi, “to say that he took up exorcism in an attempt to find a way to keep the prestige and the power that he had showed himself so incapable of maintaining after the death of this father. It is highly probable that as his preaching garnered successful cures, he himself began to believe sincerely in the new powers of healing that many saw in him” (162), a false dichotomy as I see it. The hundreds of people healed by Chiesa came from peasant, massari, and even notable backgrounds. However, all of them were “secondary personages in their respective kinship groups.” Not one of them was a first-born son or the head of a family. Apparently all of them were men and women “who felt a pressing need to find a reason for their misfortunes” (163). Many of their troubles “went back to complex problems of administration of all the many local communities in the state” as Victor Amadeus II “fought to affirm the central power of the state” (168).

Note: If you've made it this far down the page, then you know that the foregoing is a book report, a summary. For more about Inheriting Power, see the great review by Stephen Greenblatt, “Loitering in the Piazza,” which appeared in the London Review of Books in 1988.

The Religious Roots of American Environmentalism

Mark R. Stoll, Inherit the Holy Mountain: Religion and the Rise of American Environmentalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. xiii, 404.

Mark Stoll, Associate Professor of History and Director of Environmental Studies at Texas Tech University, begins this wide-ranging study with an important historical footnote: in 1967 Lynn White Jr. published an essay in Science magazine "claiming that Christianity had caused the environmental crisis," a notion that lingers "in the back of a lot of people's minds when they think about religion and the environment" (1).

Stoll noticed, however, that many figures in the history of American environmentalism grew up in either Congregational or Presbyterian churches, both types "in the Calvinist tradition" (2). What was the connection? Starting with questions like that, the author has written a book that "overlays American environmental history on American religious history" (6). Stoll further describes his work and identifies his thesis as follows:

Inherit the Holy Mountain uses religion as a wholly new tool for dissecting American environmental history. Historians have invoked a long list of factors to explain the motivations behind conservation and environmentalism: nationalism; monumentalism; Transcendentalism; democratic ideals; growing appreciation for wilderness; nostalgia for the disappearing frontier; alarm at disappearing game; antimodernism; fear of urban pollution, corruption, disorder, immigrants, and class conflict; automobiles and leisure time; and masculine ideals of conquest and domination. All of these factors, and more, played their roles. Yet as this book shows, a religious perspective gives the history and development of environmentalism a trajectory, unity, and power. Rather unexpectedly, even to the author, religion turns out to provide extraordinary insights into environmental movement's past--and future (9).

So what exactly are those "extraordinary insights"? For one, Stoll shows how Calvinist thought served as the foundation of American environmentalism, "from its moralism to its suspicion of humans in the landscape to its urgent evangelism" (53). All of these had everything to do with the Puritan vision established in books like John Milton's classic, Paradise Lost. Thus, when Ralph Waldo Emerson and other Transcendentalists recommended spending time alone in the woods or some other natural surrounding, they weren't suggesting something new. They were repeating "long-standing Calvinist advice" (41).

Stoll describes the theological ethic of stewardship, accountability to God for all things. This was an old, patristic theme, but one that Calvinists, especially Puritans, revived and emphasized. A Puritan buzzword was improvement. Along this line, one should conserve soil and improve land. A good steward is the farmer who uses the best, most productive techniques, and who also ensures that the land will be productive in years to come. It was actually Huguenots, French Calvinists, who "wrote the pioneering works of modern agriculture" (72).

Moreover, in the same way that American environmentalism was not fathered by Emerson, nor was it born on the Atlantic coast somewhere near Boston and Harvard College. Rather, it was fathered by Calvinist thinkers, and was born along the Connecticut River Valley, near places like Northampton, Massachusetts, and Hartford, Connecticut. The movement's alma mater was Yale College in New Haven, Connecticut, home to Yale Forestry School, the nation's first such postgraduate program (91).

The movement influenced not only schools, but art as well. Born to Congregationalists, famed landscape artists Thomas Cole and his protege Frederic Edwin Church inspired "the nation's leading advocates and creators of parks, forest conservation, and agricultural improvement." Indeed, with only one exception,

every one of them either like Church grew up in New England Congregationalism or was no more than one generation away. The American conservation and environmental movements were born in the elegant steepled churches rising above the greens of Connecticut Valley towns (78).

During the years that surrounded the dawn of the twentieth-century, American Presbyterians, similar to those earlier Congregationalists, built on the Reformed tradition which represented "a virtual training ground for environmental activism" (140). But whereas New England Congregationalists of the nineteenth century focused on the stewardship of the individual over his farm, "Presbyterians . . . called the nation to moral account."

Indeed, the Progressive Era belonged to Presbyterians. "Between 1885 and 1921," Stoll writes, "Presbyterians held the White House for nearly 28 out of 36 years, over three-quarters of the time" (150-51). From the 1880s through the 1940s, Presbyterians headed up the Department of Interior almost the entire time. Their leaders included, among others, John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, and U.S. Presidents Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson. This was the heyday of American conservation. As Stoll notes, however, Presbyterianism in the U.S. has since become liberal and ecumenical, not so confident in its righteousness, less preachy.

Stoll explains that since then environmentalism has not gone away, but has fractured into a number of unorganized impulses and movements. Even to this day, environmentally-minded people are often lapsed, "spiritual but not religious," Presbyterians of some sort. "For three decades after World War II theirs were the most prominent and effective voices for environmental causes" (174). These folks represent a sort of "second wave" of Presbyterian interest in "a proper moral relationship of humans to the natural environment" (175). They include such names as Alice Hamilton, Rachel Carson, Jane Jacobs, and Annie Dillard (193). From Muir to Carson, they exhibit a great capacity for identifying and railing against evil. Yet, unlike the Puritans, they were not so good at holding up a unifying vision for how to order a society.

What has happened more recently? Stoll answers that during the last few decades an "outsider" environmentalist mode replaced the old "insider" conservation ethic. Given that change, it should come as no surprise that Henry David Thoreau's reputation rose spectacularly. During the countercultural 1960s and 1970s Thoreau "was canonized as the greatest saint in the environmentalist pantheon" (215).

Beginning around that time, some African Americans, particularly Baptists, along with Jews, Catholics, Methodists, and Episcopalians, have become involved in environmental issues. But the environmentalism they promote tends to be more about social justice, rather than about "nature, wildlife, and resources" (234). Stoll points out, for example, that unlike the old Congregationalists, contemporary Baptists tend to be much more individualistic than communal. Consequently, environmentalists who grew up Baptist, like the recent presidential candidate Al Gore, tend to preach sermons to individuals rather than to the government about what it should be doing.

Environmentalism stemming from the black church has typically been a fight against "environmental racism" (238-39). On the Roman Catholic front, in the wake of Vatican II, it appears that of all the issues Catholics disagree about (abortion, women in the church, clerical celibacy, etc.), the one thing they agree on is "the centrality of the moral principle of social justice" (243). Indeed, as Protestant environmentalists have faded even more, "Catholics along with Anglicans have fairly taken over the enterprise of environmental writing that is explicitly religious, as opposed to vaguely spiritual" (249). Jewish environmentalism tends to relate to the faith's emphasis on community, and involves human beings as part of the subject. Jewish theology associated with justice and righteousness "implies social goals and duties" (258).

The up-to-date report? "If it is not dead yet, environmentalism is certainly weak, divided, and wandering in the wilderness" (275).

In sum, Stoll makes a solid case that, in fact, religion had everything to do with the rise of American environmentalism, and that a person's formative religious outlook brings with it a controlling theology and view of the world, facets that always make a difference in the way a person thinks about nature. Our environmental crises would not improve with the disappearance of religion, but they might improve with a religious tradition that could effect systemic change for the better.

Race and Civil Rights in 20th-Century U.S. History

If you're interested in exploring how race and civil rights played out in America during the last 100 years, you could hardly find three better books than these. To follow the story chronologically, you would read Boyle, then Branch, and finally Brilliant.

Boyle tells a story from 1920s Detroit. Branch focuses on Martin Luther King, Jr. and the American Civil Rights movement from 1954 to 1963. Brilliant looks at civil rights in California between 1941 and 1978.
The tight monograph in the group is Brilliant. In my opinion, due to book size and literary style, the easiest to read is Boyle. Here's a taste of each one:

Branch, Taylor. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988.

The first thing readers should know is that Taylor Branch has a serious "man crush" on Martin Luther King, Jr. His obvious bias is just fine with me mainly because (a) it's understandable and (b) it's nice when an author doesn't attempt to hide what he really thinks. The second thing to know is that this door-stop of a book is just the first of three volumes chronicling the life and times of MLK. Branch begins with the assumption that the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. "is the best and most important metaphor for American history in the watershed postwar years" (xii). For obvious reasons, he also asserts that any biography of King must relate the story of the civil rights movement. Branch gives some attention to King's predecessors, his family of origin, and his early years. However, this lengthy, engaging narrative really takes off in 1954, when King became the minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery. It ends in 1963 with the March on Washington and, finally, the assassination of President Kennedy. Branch’s focus on King has drawn criticism from those who see the leadership of the civil rights movement through a much wider lens. This book won a Pulitzer Prize.

Boyle, Kevin. Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age. New York: Picador, 2004.

Ask any well-informed American what the 1920s were all about, and the answer will likely include flappers, speakeasies, dancing the Charleston, the Harlem Renaissance, and the growth of jazz. Arc of Justice reveals that the answer should also include the presence of deadly racism in America, even in a northern city like Detroit. Boyle sets out to tell the story of one Ossian Sweet, his family and friends, and the incident and subsequent trial that made him a significant historical figure. A fine piece of journalistic and popular history, this book does not begin with a thesis statement per se. As Boyle continues, however, it appears that he wants to drive home the point that although the saga of Ossian Sweet is a compelling story, one that should be told, of greatest significance is the story's context, an American racism that often seems to recognize no restraint or limit. In that sense, it might be possible to categorize Arc of Justice as a work of microhistory.

Brilliant, Mark. The Color of America Has Changed: How Racial Diversity Shaped Civil Rights Reform in California 1941-1978. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

The main title of this book quotes the insightful lawyer and author Carey McWilliams (1905-1980), who made the observation as early as 1943. McWilliams was referring to a racial diversity in America that simply did not match up with the standard black/white binary conception of racial differences and interests. It was significant that McWilliams lived for many years in California, home to large numbers of Asian-, Mexican-, and Native Americans. Brilliant's book "examines the civil rights consequences of California's racial diversity--how America's 'racial frontier' became America's civil rights frontier" (5). Its coverage begins in 1941, the year the U.S. was dragged into the Second World War, an event that was soon followed by the internment of over 100,000 Japanese Americans. The book concludes in 1978 with the Regents of the University of California v. Bakke "reverse discrimination" case.