Lady Bountiful, Unashamed

Abstract

Within its relatively narrow scope, this magnificently documented study of the largest of the global humanitarian projects of American Protestants in the 1890s and 1900s demonstrates that government officials of that era were happy to work with religious groups, and that philanthropy and global engagement were not limited to wealthy elites. Hundreds of thousands of churchgoers believed in a national mission to diminish the suffering experienced by all the varieties of humankind. That mission, Heather D. Curtis shows in her close reading of the period’s most popular religious periodical, the Christian Herald, was steeply hierarchical and invariably flattered an American self-conception as virtuous good Samaritans to the world. The whole story, she allows wisely, is “a cautionary tale” (293). Building on the solid foundation of Ian Tyrell’s Reforming the World: The Creation of America’s Moral Empire (Princeton, NJ, 2010) and Julia F. Irwin’s Making the World Safe: The American Red Cross and a Nation’s Humanitarian Awakening (New York, 2013), Curtis zeroes in on Louis Klopsch and Thomas Dewitt Talmage. These enterprising, flamboyant leaders of the Christian Herald drew much scorn for their tawdry sensationalism and shameless self-promotion even as they were highly successful in raising money to help famine victims in India and other needy populations. Talmage was one of the two most famous preachers of his generation, along with his Brooklyn neighbor, Henry Ward Beecher. Talmage’s sermons and tracts were read throughout the United States. In partnership with Klopch and in frank and often contentious competition with the American Red Cross led by Clara Barton, Talmage delivered impressive amounts of aid to non-whites in Asia and Latin America.