Protestant Revivals Research Articles

Christian Circulations: Global Christianity and the Local Church in Penang and Singapore 1819-2000 by Jean DeBernardi (review)

Reviewed by: Christian Circulations: Global Christianity and the Local Church in Penang and Singapore 1819-2000 by Jean DeBernardi Barbara Watson Andaya Christian Circulations: Global Christianity and the Local Church in Penang and Singapore 1819-2000. By Jean DeBernardi. Singapore, NUS Press, 2020. Pages i-xx, 430 pp, Index, illustrations, ISBN 978-981-325-109-0. This is a big book, with a big goal, stated in the Introduction and reiterated in the Conclusion: in tracing the origins and legacies of the Christian Brethren network in Asia, Jean DeBernardi aims to "investigate the history of evangelical Christianity as a transnational and regional social movement, with a focus on Penang and Singapore … a history of the globalization of Christianity and the local church" (pp. 14, 358). She argues that the narrative of Christianity in Asia has underestimated the global reach and impact of the Brethren, especially in the indigenization of Chinese churches, both in China and overseas. At the same time, she emphasizes that this is a history of "continuities and discontinuities" in which threads are taken up but fade away, only to reappear again in new iterations that have helped shape modern practices and contemporary recollections. Bringing together the connections and interruptions that permeate the Brethren story obviously presented a major challenge. At the outset any reviewer must acknowledge the years of research behind the compilation of so much information, beginning in the early 1990s and effectively continuing until the manuscript's final submission. The Preface and Acknowledgements serve to remind us that accessing church archives and personal collections in Singapore, Malaysia and Britain and arranging interviews with Brethren leaders involved establishing relationships of trust built on a sensitivity to cultural attitudes and religious beliefs; for this alone the author should be congratulated. In the pages that follow, and in response to the formidable task of organization, she has divided her material into four parts, bookended by an Introduction and a Conclusion. The Introduction sets the stage by pointing to the lack of research on the Brethren, their commitment to evangelism and social change, their role in missionizing in Asia, their insistence on the New Testament as a model for Christian practice, and the tensions that could arise from variations in theological interpretations. The problematic association between Christian missions and colonialism is implicit in [End Page 206] the brief overview of the history of Penang and Singapore. As a methodological tool, DeBernardi proposed an exploration of "diagnostic events" that reveal conflict and competition, while connecting local contexts to global developments. This approach can be buttressed by "the theory of practice" that recognizes the influence of entrenched social structures in any community but also acknowledges individual agency in reaching decisions and making appropriate choices. Part 1, The Open Brethren Movement, describes Brethren origins in Dublin and Bristol, giving particular attention to the break in 1848, when the Open Brethren, led by George Müller, refused to accept the mysticism of John Darby, leader of the "Exclusive" Brethren. The Open Brethren evolved to form a loose network of independent churches that questioned accepted modes of Christian practice and shared the conviction that a centralized organization and an ordained hierarchy of clerics stunted Christian growth. Inspired by German Pietism and Protestant revivalism, Brethren missionary activities reached well beyond Europe. Letters, pamphlets, reports and magazines publicized their evangelical projects while charitable groups like the British Foreign and Bible Society, the Religious Tract society and especially the Scriptural Knowledge Institution (established by Müller) supported missionaries in Africa and Asia with written material and funds. While Müller's missionary projects concentrated on China, the co-founder of the Open Brethren movement, Anthony Groves, worked in India. He mentored the Tamil evangelist, John Arulappan, who was drawn into the "discontinuities" that could occur when Asian indigenous churches emphasized racial equality and when belief in individual empowerment saw little need for an ordained clergy. The focus of Part II, Penang and China, is the relationship between Penang (regarded as a gateway to China) and the Brethren's Chinese mission. The London Missionary Society, with Samuel and Maria Dyer as a foremost missionary couple, set up its operations in Penang, but outreach to Malays was disappointing. By...

Class identity in times of social mobilization and labor union revitalization: Evidence from the case of Chile (2009–2019)

Over the past decade, there has been a revival of social protest and labor union activity in Chile. In this article, we examine the effects of this phenomenon to analyze its influence on working-class identity. Using International Social Survey Programme surveys from 2009 and 2019, we investigate whether class location and union membership affect people’s subjective identification with the working class and how that effect may have changed over the decade. Our findings suggest that subjects who are situated in a ‘subordinated’ class position (unskilled workers or informal self-employed workers) are more likely to identify with the working class compared to subjects located in a privileged class position (employers, experts, or managers). However, surprisingly, our analysis does not indicate that working-class identity is reinforced by union membership. In addition, our results do not demonstrate that the effect of class or union membership has strengthened over the past decade. At the end of this article, we offer some possible explanations for these findings.

John Song: Modern Chinese Christianity and the Making of a New Man by Daryl R. Ireland

Reviewed by: John Song: Modern Chinese Christianity and the Making of a New Man by Daryl R. Ireland T. H. Barrett Daryl R. Ireland, John Song: Modern Chinese Christianity and the Making of a New Man. Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2020. xix, 248 pp. US$49.95 (hb). ISBN 978-1-4813-1270-1 To most readers interested in Chinese Christianity, John Sung (to give the historically more usual form of his name; September 27, 1901–August 18, 1944) will be little more than a brief entry in reference works; to a smaller number he will be fondly remembered as the fountainhead of a rich stream of Chinese Protestant revivalism that flows strongly to this day. To Daryl Ireland, this man has been initially and perhaps is even now something of a puzzle, but he also proved the starting point for a narrative that cannot but grip the attention of anyone capable of responding imaginatively to the turbulent world of a Republican China yearning for something new, and something better. Ireland clearly shows how these yearnings in Sung’s case prompted a sequence of reinventions by himself and by others that subverts any easy expectations of definitive biography. Instead, we are treated to a fine characterization of the period followed by a startling sequence of vignettes, taking us from a young student beset by mental health issues in a strange land, through journeys hither and yon within China and overseas, and finally on to the tragedy of a successful spiritual physician unable to heal himself, succumbing to illness well before his time, and yet once more far from his native place. In some respects, the author has foreshortened the narrative of Sung’s life in a way that is not entirely helpful. We learn little of his Fujian childhood with his pastor father, whereas by contrast the first English-language biography of his subject, by Leslie T. Lyall,1 follows a more predictable trajectory, including an intriguing photograph of Sung senior using visual aids on an easel to preach to a crowd. Lyall also appends a provisional chronology of his life, covering his departure for Ohio Wesleyan University in 1920 (BA 1923), his graduate work at Ohio State University (Ph.D. in Chemistry, 1926), the mental crisis he experienced at Union Theological Seminary in 1927 (given by Lyall, in accordance with the narrative formerly prevailing, a rather bland spiritual interpretation), his 1928 marriage and then meeting with the Shanghainese preacher Andrew Gih (though Sung eventually mastered some Mandarin, one suspects their common language was English), followed from 1930 by frenetic evangelistic activity. By 1931 he had reached as far as Manchuria, followed in 1932 by Canton and Hong Kong, and Shandong, Shanxi, Guangdong, and back north to Inner Mongolia in 1933. After splitting from Gih and his fellows in 1934, he branched out in 1935 not only through the provinces of China but also to the Philippines and Malaya, including Singapore, with 1936 seeing him return to the Nanyang, after first spending a week or so in Japanese-controlled Taiwan. Though for 1937 he confined his activities to China, in 1938 he was off again to Thailand, back to Yunnan, and then in October once more in Singapore, plus Kuala Lumpur and Penang, In 1939 two trips to Java were followed by excursions to Makassar and Ambon, combined with further visits to Singapore; from 1940 onwards his declining health kept him in Beijing.2 Ireland is probably right in abandoning Lyall’s solely China Inland Mission view of China and the Chinese diaspora and, cutting to the chase, trying to read the key aspects of Sung’s life against the tides of early twentieth century Chinese history taken as a whole. But an update of Lyall’s appendix at least might have helped the reader to navigate the largely implied rather than clearly signalled chronology. [End Page 328] There is, in any case, much to be gained from reading this book. First, the author does not disguise the way in which he has crafted a compelling narrative from very disparate materials. In the United States he has found records that give us access to the mind of...

Protestant Revivals (Awakenings) and Transformational Impact: A Comparative Evaluation Framework Applied on the Revival among the Zulus (South Africa)

This article addresses paucity in literature on the conceptualising of the true nature of a Protestant revival. Through a literary review and document study, the article aims to compile a Protestant revival evaluation criterion (PREC) to assess protestant revivals. This was done by integrating the distinctives (characteristics) of Evangelical revivals throughout history as described by prominent scholars such as Armstrong, Cairns, Edwards, Lloyd-Jones and Sprague in general. In addition, various past and present examples and exponents of true and juxtaposing anti-revivals were investigated and beacons set for sustainable revival. From the PREC, three levels were established by which to assess revivals: individuals (micro), the church (meso) and surrounding communities (macro). For the case study, information was gleaned from multiple sources, including interviews, documents, sermons, newsletters, observations and research reports. Applying the PREC in a case study, demonstrates how it operates as a valuable tool; in this case, the revival among the Zulus in KwaSizabantu, South Africa.

“Red Tom” Hickey: The Uncrowned King of Texas Socialism by Peter Buckingham

Reviewed by: “Red Tom” Hickey: The Uncrowned King of Texas Socialism by Peter Buckingham Michael Phillips “Red Tom” Hickey: The Uncrowned King of Texas Socialism. By Peter Buckingham. Elma Dill Russell Spencer Series in the West and Southwest. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2020. Pp. x, 403. $45.00, ISBN 978-1-62349-755-2.) Thomas Aloysius Hickey, the fiery leftist journalist who cofounded the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance and inspired the formation of the Renters’ Union, which fought for the redistribution of land in Texas, died of throat cancer in 1925. He subsequently sank into obscurity. As noted by author Peter Buckingham, pioneering Texas labor history scholars Ruth Alice Allen and James R. Green began researching the life of the Irish immigrant who became a dynamic force in the Socialist Labor Party and the Knights of Labor before he settled in Texas. Neither was able to produce a comprehensive Hickey biography due to a lack of adequate archival sources. Buckingham, however, discovered a rich trove of papers collected by Hickey’s widow, Clara Boeer Hickey, donated to the Southwest Collection at Texas Tech University, where two of the radical’s nieces were professors. This find has allowed Buckingham to produce a vivid portrait of a volatile, pugnacious man who, through his newspaper The Rebel and his tireless public speaking, helped bring socialism to its high point in the Lone Star State in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Hickey had long rejected the Catholicism of his youth, seeing the church as a cowardly collaborator in the British oppression of his homeland. Once in Texas, Hickey appreciated the impact of emotional, evangelical Protestant revivals and brought that style to his political proselytizing. Though Buckingham may overstate Hickey’s role, Hickey’s activism was a major reason that the Socialist Party gubernatorial nominees in 1912 and 1914 surpassed the Republican standard-bearers and that the Socialists became the second most popular party in the state, behind the [End Page 141] dominant Democrats. Finding an explicitly revolutionary message in scriptural passages describing the land as a bounty provided by God to be shared equally by all, Hickey became a star in socialist encampments in which he freely quoted from the bible. He powerfully tapped into the religious sensibility already characteristic of the Texas Left. An outsider, Hickey quickly grasped he could mobilize farmers to battle the rapidly escalating levels of land tenancy in Texas by evoking Christ more than Marx. Unfortunately, Hickey also advanced another central tenet of the Texas catechism, white supremacy. In New York City after his arrival in the United States, Hickey absorbed the anti-Black racism of the Irish immigrant community, which stemmed from fierce job competition. Hickey portrayed African Americans as intellectually deficient, and as sexual predators and enemies of white labor. Buckingham argues that the racism in Hickey’s writings was sporadic and that as he got older, perhaps influenced by the growing racial consciousness of his friend Eugene V. Debs, he moderated his views. One of the few weaknesses of this book is that Buckingham strains too much to absolve Hickey of his bigotry. Nevertheless, Hickey condemned the 1916 lynching of Jesse Washington in Waco and, rejecting the virulent anti-Mexican racism in Texas, welcomed Latinx tenant farmers into the Renters’ Union and hailed Mexican revolutionaries as role models for the Texas rural underclass. A key strength of “Red Tom” Hickey: The Uncrowned King of Texas Socialism is Buckingham’s detailed and nuanced understanding of revolutionary politics in Ireland that influenced the Texas radical, the interminable internecine struggles within the socialist movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the role of Texans who were involved in Woodrow Wilson’s administration in crushing socialism in their home state. This solidly researched book should be of great interest to scholars of labor history, American radicalism, and Texas history. Michael Phillips Collin College Copyright © 2021 The Southern Historical Association

Ethos at stake: roads to success among Chinese small businesses in Milan, Italy

PurposeThis paper aims to check the presence of such relationship in the field. Certain values are at stake for the success of economic behavior. Since the genesis of modern capitalism, a set of beliefs proper of Calvinism (mainly Predestination but also Beruf, inner-worldly asceticism, role of Sects […] ) was said by Max Weber to cause an anxiety about salvation and generate a propensity to economic success as a sign of election. The author argues on the contrary that the Calvinist belief in the Perpetual Assurance of Salvation might cause a sense of self-efficacy able to favor economic success. To observe this in action today, it is crucial to consider the evolution that the Protestant ethic went through migrating first in North America and, finally, through the Protestant revival of China. Wenzhou is called “Jerusalem of China” for its large Protestant community that is also strongly involved in business. Some scholar already pointed out the presence among those entrepreneurs of this Protestant ethic (Yi Xiang, Boss-Christian […]).Design/methodology/approachThe data presented in this comparative qualitative study pertain to ethnographic observations, job-shadowing and interviews done among Chinese Christian and non-Christian entrepreneurs from Wenzhou living in Milan, Italy.FindingsThe results show, with some adjustments, the presence of a Chinese version of the Protestant ethic overlapping with several values proper to the Chinese context (Confucianism, lineage, social network). The extension of the study to other cases must be done with caution considering the non-causal justificatory role of the belief.Originality/valueSuccessful entrepreneurship involves specific social, cultural and even religious aspects that move beyond mere business strategies.

Religious Insanity: A Diagnosis at the Intersection of 19th Century American Religion and Psychiatry.

Among the more common admission diagnoses of patients admitted to 19th century American asylums that have now disappeared completely from the psychiatric nosology is "religious insanity." This article presents a review of the historical and sociological research, which suggests the theory that religious belief and practice was a common cause of insanity, hence the diagnosis of "religious insanity." The way in which the diagnosis developed at the intersection of Protestant revival movements and the growth of modern asylum psychiatry in the United States, and thereby served several important functions in psychiatry and society, is discussed. The article concludes with reflections on how the rise and fall of the theory of religion as a primary cause or contributor to insanity in the 19th century mirrors the often conflicted relationship between religion and psychiatry in modern history and the difficulty in drawing scientifically reliable and morally justifiable lines between spiritual experience and mental illness in any cultural period.

Questioning Similarities: Prohibition in the United States and Finland

Only two republics have ever adopted national alcohol prohibition in peacetime, and they did so at almost exactly the same time. For these reasons and others, historians of temperance have considered prohibition in Finland and the United States to be essentially similar. In fact, despite originating at the same time, the two are quite dissimilar. American prohibition came out of Protestant revivalism and a capitalist desire for worker efficiency. By the late nineteenth century two powerful temperance organizations, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Anti- Saloon League, had emerged to lead the movement for domestic prohibition and to evangelize for prohibition abroad. Prohibition in Finland came out of the movement to achieve a cultural and political nationalism. Temperance was part of the Turku academics’ attempt to create a virtuous unified peasantry and working class. The working class, in particular, used the temperance movement to organize their movements. While the United States and Finland were the only two republics to undertake national prohibition, the US largely ignored the Finnish experiment. They praised it in the early 1920s only to emphasize its later failures as a way of trying to obscure their own inability to achieve a viable policy.

Books and Periodicals in Brazil 1768–1930: A Transatlantic Perspective by Ana Claudia Suriani da Silva and Sandra Guardini Vasconcellos (eds)

Reviews 110 in the world and the largest Pentecostal, and also the world capital of Spiritism (Kardecism). Here she traces the three main currents of Protestantism in Brazil to early twentieth century, then ‘conversion Protestantism’ which originated in US Protestant Revivalism, and, lastly to Neo-Pentecostalism, which has emerged recently and which is characterized by the ‘Theology of Prosperity’. She makes the important point that there is no separation between before/after Brazil/London; rather they are interconnected transnational religious spaces. Moreover, Brazilian immigrants in the UK do not fit neatly into the dichotomy of ‘local’ and ‘global’. She is interested in how Brazilian immigrants negotiate their religious beliefs and how they create new connections between different practices in different places and, what they ‘do’ with religion. She aptly explains to the reader how religion is ‘practiced, experienced, imagined and embodied by migrants as they create and inhabit spaces that span multiple scales’ (p. 7). Religious remittances is a concept she explores commendably. Sheringham found common patterns of downward mobility among migrants, and that Brazilians are most likely to be irregular in their legal status. She underscored current threads in her research, which include how the church became ‘family’ (the church as a refuge); a search for a sense of belonging (religious community or immigrant); that faith was a way to suppress saudades (a Portuguese word for ‘homesickness’); that returning to Brazil presented a further challenge of re-adaptation; and, lastly, that religious remittances play an important role in the return context as well as in the migration process. She argues that economic reasons should not mask multiple and inter-related decisions to migrate including the role of religion — which she makes convincingly. She concludes that transnational religious spaces are exclusionary as much as they are inclusionary. Sheringham effectively and skilfully reveals the interplay between religion and transnationalism. This is a well-researched book with excellent sources. This book is a must-read for all levels of diaspora and immigrant students and scholars. Ana Claudia Suriani da Silva and Sandra Guardini Vasconcellos (eds), Books and Periodicals in Brazil 1768–1930: A Transatlantic Perspective (Oxford: Legenda, 2014). 294 pages. Print. Reviewed by Orna Levin (Unicamp, Brazil) Although many essays been written about the expansion of the British book market and the corresponding increase in readership during the nineteenth century, British transatlantic exchanges have usually been considered within the framework of the English-speaking world, to the exclusion of Brazil. Recent studies, however, suggest that after the Portuguese court moved to Rio de Janeiro, in 1808, as a result of the Napoleonic invasion of southern Europe, the British traders and European commercial agents who followed did more Reviews 111 than simply settle there, introducing new cultural patterns that affected various aspects of daily life and providing local people with new political references and liberal ideas. This new collection of essays recently published by Legenda, which has the suggestive title of Books and Periodicals in Brazil, 1768–1930: A Transatlantic Perspective, edited by Ana Cláudia Suriani, Lecturer in the School of European Languages, Culture and Society, University College London, and Sandra Vasconcelos, Lecturer in English Literature at the University of São Paulo, should help to overcome the lack of familiarity on the part of European readers with topics relating to this aspect of Brazil’s place in international book history. The thirteen essays included in the publication will help readers better understand how the advance in printing techniques and the publishing trade contributed to a larger circulation of books, magazines and musical scores, among other forms of printed production. In particular, they turn our attention to less evident issues behind the editorial enterprises, which were run mainly by British, Portuguese and French dealers. The chapters encourage a deep analysis of the cultural transference that was made possible, to a large extent, by the increasing availability of foreign titles for reading. Foreign periodicals, such as the Edinburgh Review, Monthly Magazine, Blackwood’s Magazine, Revue Britannique and Journal de Débats, along with a variety of fictional and non-fictional books, provided readers with a constant source of information. They also provided a literary model for local editors to launch Brazilian periodicals. Furthermore...

Let Us Live! Empowerment and the Rhetoric of Life in the Japanese Precarity Movement

The precarity movement (or antipoverty movement) represents a startling revival of public protest in Japan. This revival can be understood as a turn to a more confrontational stance within an already active current of freeter activism. My aim is to throw light on this shift by focusing on the General Freeter Union/PAFF in Tokyo and its emergence from the “Dame-ren circles” of Tokyo. I argue that the precarity movement has functioned to a large extent as a vehicle not only for external change in society but also for empowerment of its participants with particular attention being given to marginalized groups that have long been unable or unwilling to voice discontent in public, and that this has been a crucial element in the revitalization of protest. I give particular attention to, firstly, the formation of the category of the “precariat” in Japan and its relation to predecessor terms such as good-for-nothing” (dame) or lower stratum (kasô). Secondly, I turn to the vitalistic element in the precarity movement's discourse, which is evident in the celebration of fun and the sensual or bodily experience of being “alive.” The rhetoric of “life” in the precarity movement functions as a lens through which the shift to a more confrontational stance can be traced and nuances in this shift studied. In the precarity movement, “life” tends to be pictured in two different ways: one in which an older ideal of “simply living” lives on, but mainly as a dream of what would be possible in a better society; and another in which struggle and revolt are themselves seen as the source of a liberation of life. I conclude by arguing that many of these reorientations build on the legacy on Dame-ren but also crucially transform this legacy. These transformations have helped the precarity movement to not only open up new forms of participation for subaltern groups but also to present itself as untainted by older forms of radicalism, thus contributing to the revival of protest activism.

Protestant Revivals in China with Particular Reference to Shandong Province

Revivals have been a regular feature of the missionary enterprise. The modern Catholic and Protestant missionary movements themselves emerged from major religious revivals in the Western world. On the nineteenth-century China mission fields, Protestant missionaries from the mainline denominations frequently lamented the fact that their often nominal convert communities were lacking in Christian spirit and called for reinvigoration campaigns. It was, however, in the twentieth century that several large-scale revival movements occurred, starting with the ‘Manchurian revival’ of 1907–8 and culminating in the great ‘Shandong revival’ of the 1930s. The years after 1908 saw the rise of Chinese ― as well as some foreign ― full-time revivalists engaging in evangelistic efforts to reach the native Christian as well as non-Christian populations. The Canadian Presbyterian Jonathan Goforth (1859–1936) and the Shandong evangelist Ding Limei (1871–1936) are the most prominent representatives of the early campaigns of Christian renewal. In the 1920s, in spite of the fundamentalist/modernist controversy and anti-Christian agitation by nationalist and revolutionary forces in China, revivalism actually intensified. The principal focus of this paper will be on the new currents of spiritual regeneration that came with the proliferation of mostly small and sectarian missions of Holiness or Pentecostal provenance. Pentecostal ideas, in particular, contributed to the growth of Chinese independent churches and the wave of revivalism that swept across parts of China in the early 1930s. Such ‘gifts of the spirit’ as prophecy, divine healing and speaking in tongues, as well as a strong pre-millenarian belief, energised many of the more radical indigenous revivalists at this time. Other well-known Chinese evangelists had been influenced by the Holiness movement or Plymouth Brethren ideas. The Chinese dimension, especially in the context of Shandong province, is receiving particular attention in this paper.

Major Protestant Revivals in Korea, 1903–35

This paper reviews five major revivals and four revivalists of colonial Korea and discusses key issues of the revivals. It has three aims: to search for a new perspective on the interpretation of the revivals of colonial Korea; to map a new lineage of the revivals; and to provide contemporary Korean Protestant churches in crisis with some issues to consider for their renewal. The conventional image of the revivals in the colonial period has been that they were ‘passive, otherworldly, and introversive’. This stereotypical image reflects the historical context of the nationalist or minjung theologians of the 1970s and 1980s. They criticised contemporary mass revival meetings for their orientation toward emotionalism, individual salvation and prosperity, church-centred growth and dispensationalism. They argued that ahistorical revivalists were actually supporting the dictatorial government by depoliticising the churches. Yet a revised interpretation began to emerge from the late 1980s. And the first centennial of the 1907 P'yŏngyang Revival in 2007 has produced heated debates on its historical meaning for the renewal of a declining church. This paper emphasises the positive side – the nationalistic, reformative and indigenous elements of revivalism – without ignoring the negative legacy. I discuss Yi Tonghwi's revival in Hamgyŏng province and East Manchuria in 1908–11 as a development of the first revival of 1903–7. And I will identify the influence of Daoism, rather than that of shamanism, on the revivalists.

Chicago in the age of capital: class, politics, and democracy during the Civil War and Reconstruction

In this sweeping interpretive history of mid-nineteenth-century Chicago, historians John B. Jentz and Richard Schneirov boldly trace the evolution of a modern social order. Combining a mastery of historical and political detail with a sophisticated theoretical frame, Jentz and Schneirov examine the dramatic capitalist transition in Chicago during the critical decades from the 1850s through the 1870s, a period that saw the rise of a permanent wage worker class and the formation of an industrial upper class. Jentz and Schneirov demonstrate how a new political economy, based on wage labor and capital accumulation in manufacturing, superseded an older mercantile economy that relied on speculative trading and artisan production. The city's leading business interests were unable to stabilize their new system without the participation of the new working class, a German and Irish ethnic mix that included radical ideas transplanted from Europe. Jentz and Schneirov examine how debates over slave labor were transformed into debates over free labor as the city's wage-earning working class developed a distinctive culture and politics. The new social movements that arose in this era--labor, socialism, urban populism, businessmen's municipal reform, Protestant revivalism, and women's activism--constituted the substance of a new post-bellum democratic politics that took shape in the 1860s and '70s. When the Depression of 1873 brought increased crime and financial panic, Chicago's new upper class developed municipal reform in an attempt to reassert its leadership. Setting local detail against a national canvas of partisan ideology and the seismic structural shifts of Reconstruction, Chicago in the Age of Capital vividly depicts the upheavals integral to building capitalism.

Subway to Street: Spaces of Traumatic Memory, Counter-memory and Recovery in post-Aum Tokyo

Understandings of urban space in Tokyo underwent two significant revisions in the 1990s, focused on the spaces of the subway and the street. These revisions occurred around the 1995 subway sarin gas incident and in the revival of street protest in new social movements. The article brings together the two spaces by discussing how one group of sarin incident victims staged a commemorative event in 2005 – the Memorial Walking Care – to re-engage with underground sites of traumatic memory by walking a Underground route above them along the streets. It draws on the recognition in Murakami Haruki's Underground of a violence in Japanese society figuratively and literally lurking beneath the feet; and on sociologist Mōri Yoshitaka's theorisation of the street as a potential site for new oppositional politics. Situating the event within the frames of trauma theory and performance studies, I read the Memorial Walking Care as both traumatic repetition of loss and potential working through of trauma. The underground and the street act as spatial and conceptual markers for the difference between these processes.

Protest and Democracy in Latin America’s Market Era

Existing studies hold that Latin America’s market turn has had a demobilizing effect on collective political activity despite the presence of democracy. However, recent work has documented the revival of protest in the region, emphasizing the repoliticization of collective actors in the wake of economic liberalization, especially when democracy is present. This article expands the theoretical scope of the repoliticization perspective, providing the most comprehensive test of the demobilization and repoliticization hypotheses to date. Using time-series data from seventeen Latin American countries, the article confirms the repoliticization view by showing that protest increases with economic liberalization in democratic settings.

Technology, Innovation, and Southern Industrialization: From the Antebellum Era to the Computer Age (review)

T H E A L A B A M A R E V I E W 304 Technology, Innovation, and Southern Industrialization: From the Antebellum Era to the Computer Age. Edited by Susanna Delfino and Michele Gillespie. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008. xiii, 215 pp. $24.95. ISBN 978-0-8262-1795-0. In their introduction, editors Susanna Delfino and Michele Gillespie declare that “southerners from the early nineteenth century onward were as eager to embrace technology and innovation as any other Americans; they, too, viewed technology as a path to profit and modernity” (p.17). Technology, Innovation, and Southern Industrialization is a collection of essays that, the editors correctly believe, will help bring what has been deficient in the history of technology—scholarship about the South. During the region’s transformation from agriculture to manufacturing (and beyond ), southern entrepreneurs were, and are, technological innovators and adaptors, not merely consumers dominated by northern technology. This second volume in the New Currents in the History of the Southern Economy and Society series—a product of the Southern Industrialization Project—addresses some of the South’s unique challenges during industrialization , including chronic capital shortages, the creation of northern and southern economic networks, and the political and economic implications of a society based on slavery and agriculture. In his foreword, Gavin Wright laments that “the inclination to hype or denigrate antebellum southern industry has carried over into modern scholarship,” and applauds the case studies in this book as the cure to such “macro generalizations” about the South and technology (pp. viii– ix). He notes that these essays “contribute to a broader transformation in the field of economic history” and towards integrating history and economics (p. xi). Delfino and Gillespie provide a solid introduction for the four antebellum and three twentieth-century case studies. They observe that although recent historians of early American technology have found diverse regional characteristics, most of the new scholarship pertains to the North. The slave South, many scholars still assume, never modernized enough to become a significant user of technology. The editors argue, however, that southerners weighed the costs and benefits of technology for their particular situation. Most importantly the essays “explain the multiple contexts in which innovation and the adoption of new technologies could occur in the South, and the technologies’ varying degrees of success in specific time periods, industries, and places” (p. 2). Wright, Delfino, and Gillespie place strong emphasis on the antebellum period. O C T O B E R 2 0 0 9 305 In the first chapter, Robert H. Gudmestad contends that the steamboat ’s introduction into the Old Southwest “strengthened and diversi- fied the southern economy” not only by accelerating development of the plantation and slavery, but also spurring commerce and the establishment of trade and communication networks (p. 38). Not surprisingly, antebellum southerners eagerly adopted, and invested in, the new technology . Sean Patrick Adams finds that in the Richmond coal basin of Virginia, “the interests of the plantation trumped the interests of the mine,” despite great potential in terms of demand, entrepreneurship, and a British technological model of mineral extraction (p. 60). Whether it was steam engines, immigrants, labor, corporate charters, or railroads, Harry Heth found that slavery, in various indirect ways, limited his mine’s competitiveness. Richard Follett argues that Louisiana sugar planters readily adopted steam-powered milling, invested heavily in other technologies , and sought to create a factorylike system, but their identities as slave owners held back the industry. Theirs was “an industry and region rooted not in collective progress, associationalism, or collaboration, but rather focused on individual self-sufficiency, independence, and private investment” (pp.75–76). Curiously, Follett undercuts this argument by providing examples of planters acting communally. Gillespie’s chapter investigates Henry Merrell, a mechanic, mill manager, and textile manufacturer in Georgia and Arkansas, whose career embodied lessons of “building networks of knowledge within and across regional lines to encourage technological innovation” (p. 99). Merrell sought to combine Protestant revivalism, the most advanced machinery, a local community of shared technological knowledge, and a regional cooperative network to spur southern industrialization. The first four essays fit so well...

The Mobilization of Opposition to Economic Liberalization

Opposition to economic liberalization has intensified since the late 1990s, with Latin America often standing at the forefront of new social and political movements that challenge market globalization. The revival of social protest and populist or leftist political alternatives has shattered the technocratic consensus around neoliberal policies in the region. By demanding an expanded set of social citizenship rights, these movements are also contesting the terms under which popular sectors were reincorporated politically under the new democratic regimes of the 1980s. This “second” historical process of mass political incorporation differs in fundamental ways from that associated with the process of labor incorporation in the first half of the twentieth century. It is marked by a more pluralistic set of social subjects, a more decentralized organizational structure, and more fluid patterns of institutional development. Existing scholarship often fails to explain variation in the patterns of social and political mobilization, due to both methodological and theoretical limitations—in particular, a tendency to focus on outcomes with little variation on the dependent variable, and a failure to engage theoretically with the literature on social fragmentation and demobilization. There is thus a need to problematize the process of mobilization by conducting more rigorous comparative research on a broader range of social responses to market liberalization.

More Than Fluff: Protestant Revivals in the 1950s

32 Historically Speaking May/June 2008 More Than Fluff: Protestant Revivals in the 1950s John G. Turner Late in 1951, the UCLA football team approached its finalgame of the season against archrival USC. After stumbling early in their season by losing three of their first four games, the Bruins had recovered, winning three in a row before settling for a tie against Washington. Itwouldn't be a banneryear, buta triumph overUSCwouldgive them a winning season and local bragging rights. Donn Moomaw, UCLA's All-American linebacker, helped the Bruins best the Trojans by returning an interception for a critical touchdown in a 21 -7 victory. Moomaw attributedhis featto prayers he offered while attendinga meetingof a fledglingorganization: Campus CrusadeforChrist.Moomaw'sgirlfriendhad invited him to the meeting, where he met Bill Bright, the founder of the movement. Bright invited Moomaw to attend Hollywood's First Presbyterian Church the morning after the USC game. After church, Bright talked Moomaw through a series of Bible verses about sin and salvation, and the two men kneeledonBright's livingroomflooras the starathlete receivedJesus Christas his savior. Soon,Moomawbecame a featured speakerat Campus Crusade events at UCLAandatodierGoldenState colleges. Hereferred toJesus Christas his new "quarterback." Many other UCLA gridiron stars experienced similar conversions through Campus Crusade, and dieytalkedabouttheirfaithinsimilarterms.BobDavenport , an All-American fullback, calledJesus Christ "the greatest Coach and Quarterback ever." Most of the stars onUCLA's 1954national championship football team—nicknamed die "Eleven from Heaven"— were outspoken Christians, many of whom made "decisions for Christ" underBillBright's influence.1 Jesus as "the greatest Coach and Quarterback ever?"A Godwhoanswersprayerswithinterceptions, touchdowns, and victories? It's easy for historians to make fun of the banalities of 1950s religion, as professions of religiosity in thatdecade provide scholars withgreatmaterial.TheIdealToyCompanymarketed a doll thata child could make "kneel in aprayingposition ," and the actressJane Russell actually called God "a livin' doll." NewYork's Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church introduced "Dial-A-Prayer" for a "spiritual life in a busy day," promising "one minute of inspiration ." Even as church attendance and public displays ofreligiositysoaredandCongressadded"underGod" to the Pledge of Allegiance, surveys revealed that Americans knew very little about the faiths to which they ostensibly adhered. A 1951 Gallup poll claimed that53% of Americans couldnotname even oneof the four gospels (I suspect that many did not know the meaningoftheword"gospel").ManyAmericansproclaimedavapid sortof religiouspluralism. A 1958 contestant on Twentieth Century-Fox's Sing, Boy, Sing! proclaimed: "I think all religions are the greatest." Billy Graham, April 11, 1966. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [reproduction number, LCDIG -ppmsc-03261]. President Eisenhower—born to Mennonite parents butbaptized as aPresbyterian twelve days afterhis inauguration —proclaimedthat"ourgovernmentmakes no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don't care what it is."2 To be sure, therewere banal elements of 1 950s religion , and these cropped up in Billy Graham's wellknown crusades as well as in the more obscure meetings of Campus Crusade. Graham often invited athletes, servicemen, and actresses to his meetings in ordertopiqueaudienceinterestandgainahearingfor his message. He used updated music and patriotic themes forthe samepurpose. "Weusedeverymodern means," Graham explained, "to catch the ear of unconverted young people and then punched them straight between the eyes with the gospel." And yet Graham's preaching always included warnings about hell and straightforward discussions about salvation. His statements about hell were not fluffy—he read Jonathan Edwards's "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" to his audience duringhis 1949 Los Angeles crusade. Hardly unconcerned about the subsequent fate of his converts, Graham's organization expended considerable time and money developing follow-up strategies thatincluded funnelingconverts intochurches andarrangingvisitations andBible studies . Beneath its veneerof showmanship and celebrity, the Graham campaigns were serious business. The same was true of Bill Bright's Campus Crusade for Christ. Crusaders referred toJesus Christ as their "best friend," their "quarterback," and their "Head Coach." Such frivolous statements, however, obscure the fact diat Campus Crusade called on students tomakedeepcommitments toBiblestudy,moral living,and,mostof all,personalevangelism. "I'mplaying on God's varsity now," commented Moomaw upon his decision to enter the ministry. Again, Moomaw's commentsounds hackneyed,butitalsoincluded a commitment to attend seminary and forego a professional football career for the pastorate...

How "Exceptional" is the United States?

Historically Speaking May/June 2008 Historically Speaking May/June 2008 Vol. DC No. 5 Contents How "Exceptional"Is2 the United States? Alonzo L. Hamby Beyond Music: Hindemith's Opera6 Mathis der Maler as Political Document Peter Paret The U.S. Army, Counterinsurgency, and the 9 Lessons ofHistory Brian McAllister Linn Religion inAmerican History:12 An Interview with Stephen Pmthero Conducted by Randall J. Stephens Encountering the New: A Forum The Encounter with the New:1 6 A BriefHistory Theodore K. Rabb What is the West?19 Ricardo Duchesne Innovation and Human History21 David Christian The Encounter with the New Revisited 23 Theodore K. Rabb Jobs and Freedom25 Robert M. Zieger Living History: Writing about27 Contemporary Evangelicalism Nicholas Guyatt Apocalyptic Religious Movements in29 American History Stephen J. Stein More Than Fluff: Protestant Revivals in32 the 1950s John G. Turner AIDS and Medieval Leprosy:33 A "Distant Mirror? Luke Demaitre 77ie Year ofthe Great Red Scare36 Anthony Read An Interview with Michael J. Klarman on39 Race andAmerican Legal History Conducted by Randall J. Stephens /s There a Viable Populist Cultural41 Historyofthe United States? David A. Horowitz MilitaryEducation and Social Mobilityin the 43 Late Antebellum South Jennifer R. Green How "Exceptional" Is the United States? Alonzo L. Hamby The idea of America as an exceptional place emerged almost concurrendy with Columbus 's voyages and remains alive today, partiy as wishful fantasy, pardy as European condescension, partly as empirical history. The wishful myth envisions America as a New World, an Edenic place of virgin land, filled with riches and opportunity, a place in which the virtuous can make a fresh start and build a society free from all the failings of the Old World. America is, in the phrase of Thomas Paine, a place to "begin the world anew." European condescension depicts America (commonly understood after 1 776 to be the United States) as a land of innocents out of touch with the realities of human nature. Americans are naive and simpleminded. Europeans, understandinghuman nature and the world as itworks, possess a wisdom that their cousins across the Adantic ignore at their peril. At their worst, Americans are blundering naifs trying to remake the world and simply doing damage in the process. The myths and symbols of a newworld, whether seen from the American or the European perspective , create an ideological fog that gets in the way of historical inquiry. They can neither be wholly discounted nor casually accepted. Itmayjustbe possible to gauge degrees of difference without reference to virtue or naivete. The American Revolution—the culmination of a century and a half of separate development—didindeed occur in an "age of democratic revolutions," as Robert R. Palmer reminded us many years ago. But only the United States emerged from those upheavals as a functioningdemocracy. Itwas thatpalpable democratic uniqueness that attracted Alexis de Tocqueville two generations later. His reference pointwas the French Revolution, which had promised democracy , but had brought forth terror, dictatorship, Napoleon, national defeat, and reaction. A liberalminded aristocrat, he visited the United States to explore whether democracy was in the long run compatible with individual freedom. The mid-19th-century surge of liberalism in Europe had a significant impact in Britain—the one major nation in which liberal ideas had a firm foothold—but much less so on the Continent. The The myths and symbols of a new world, whether seen from the American or the European perspective, create an ideological fog that gets in the way of historical inquiry. revolutions of 1848 failed to deliver on their promise. Louis Kossuth's triumphal tour was across the U.S., not through the streets of Budapest. France soon found itself ruled by Napoleon III, Germany not by liberal '48ers (many of whom fled to the U.S.) but by Bismarck. The first major American historians, whether gifted literary amateurs or Ph.D.-holding professionals, largely assumed a continuity between American and "Anglo-Saxon" or "Teutonic" institutions and ideas. They were usually nationalist enough to celebrate American strength and to believe that the American way might amount to a higher development . They also were patrician enough to consider American culture crude and to worry that the United States mightbe, in contrastto Britain or...

Hysteria repeating itself: Elizabeth Gaskell's Lois the Witch

Elizabeth Gaskell's fictional representation of the witch trials in seventeenth-century Salem, Lois the Witch, was first published serially in Dickens's All The Year Round in 1859. At the time of the novella's serialisation there appeared alarmist descriptions in the press of the recent Protestant revivals, particularly the unruly behaviour of female revivalists in Ulster. This in turn led to numerous conservative accounts in the periodical press (including All The Year Round) of the role of the hysterical woman throughout history. In Lois, however, with its representation of mass hysteria, Gaskell refutes the widespread Victorian belief that hysteria is “natural” for women, a symptom of their vulnerable bodies and minds. This article examines the significance of Lois the Witch as a powerful comment upon women, politics, and history, as well as a text that dramatically responds to the debates engendered by the events in Ulster in 1859.