Holy Humanitarians

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In Holy Humanitarians, Heather D. Curtis argues that evangelical media campaigns transformed how Americans responded to domestic crises and foreign disasters during a pivotal period for the nation.

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In Holy Humanitarians, Heather D. Curtis argues that evangelical media campaigns transformed how Americans responded to domestic crises and foreign disasters during a pivotal period for the nation.

Image courtesy of interviewee. May 7, 2024

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This video video is a detailed discussion by a scholar who has researched the historical response of American Christians to suffering, particularly focusing on the late 19th century. The scholar's interest began with their first book, "Faith in the Great Physicians," which examined how Christians coped with physical suffering during a time of theological change and medical advancement. Subsequently, they explored how Christians responded to the suffering of others globally, including humanitarian disasters, war, and economic hardship, leading to their current work titled "Holy Humanitarians."

The Christian Herald Association, which published a major Christian newspaper from 1890 to 1910, played a significant role in these efforts by publicizing various forms of suffering and organizing charitable responses. The newspaper combined religious teachings on charity with modern journalism techniques to raise awareness and solicit funds for humanitarian efforts. Its leadership, including Louis Klos and Thomas DeWitt Talmage, emphasized that aiding the suffering was an obligation for all American Christians, transcending denominational boundaries.

The scholar highlights various initiatives supported by the Christian Herald, like orphanages and relief campaigns during famines, and the unique position of the Christian Herald as a faith-based alternative to more secular organizations like the American Red Cross. They also discuss how the Christian Herald drew connections between religious duty and national identity, promoting the idea of America as a morally responsible global force.

The narrative covers the challenges faced by the Christian Herald, particularly as new social movements emerged, and shifts occurred in both American humanitarianism and the landscape of charitable organizations. This video video concludes with reflections on the legacy of the Christian Herald, suggesting its influence persists in contemporary discussions about humanitarianism, social justice, and the responsibility of charitable organizations today. This video video encourages modern readers to recognize and learn from the historical dynamics of humanitarian aid as they continue to address current issues of poverty and suffering.

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As a scholar, I've been interested in exploring

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how Christians define

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and deal with various kinds of suffering.

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So my first book was called Faith in the Great Physicians,

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suffering in Divine Healing in American Protestantism from

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1816 to 1900.

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And in that I explored how a group

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of Christians in the late 19th century US coped

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with physical illness, during a time

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of really great theological change

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and also innovation in the medical sciences.

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So when I got done with that book

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and I thought, okay, I've, I've thought about how it is

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that Christians deal with physical suffering within

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themselves, but what about suffering out in the world?

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What about when they encountered the suffering of others?

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How did they respond to various forms of suffering,

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like humanitarian disasters, famines, floods, earthquakes,

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suffering caused by war or imperialism

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or economic downturns?

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Um, and how did Christians in the late 19th century decide

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which kinds of those sufferings they would pay attention to,

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who suffering mattered, and how to respond to it?

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So those were some of the things

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that got me interested in researching this book

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that eventually led to Holy Humanitarians.

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Yeah, so I first started researching this questions of,

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Christians confronting various forms of suffering

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through missionary archives.

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So I was deep in the bells of Yale Divinity School archives

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and some missionary records,

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and I came across this reference

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to the Christian Herald Association,

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which was sponsoring an orphanage in Fuji China.

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Um, so I was thinking about suffering of children

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who were left parentless

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and thinking about missionaries on the field.

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And I thought, well, what is

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that thing the Christian Herald?

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Something I hadn't heard about?

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So, I started digging around

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and eventually I discovered

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that the Christian Herald was the world's most popular

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Christian newspaper from about 1890 to 1910.

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And that played a really major role in publicizing

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and responding to suffering across the United States

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and around the globe during its heyday,

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while also supporting various charitable organizations like

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the orphanage in eo, a Fresh Air Summer Home

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for children in the state of New York, an industrial school

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and post reconstruction air,

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the post reconstruction Air South,

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and most prominently, the Bowery Mission,

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which is a soup kitchen in New York City

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that still exists today.

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So, so I, this was what the newspaper was.

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So I started to look for copies of it,

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and I eventually discovered that the only surviving full run

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of the newspaper was housed in the Christian Harald Harald

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headquarters in New York City, which still existed.

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The newspaper was no longer being published at that time,

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but the Bowery Mission was still in operation.

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So I wrote to the, director of Outreach, James Macklin,

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and he invited me to come down and take a look.

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And, over the next several years, I spent hours

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and hours in the back room

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of the Christian Herald headquarters, getting to know

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James Macklin, the current president

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of the Bar mission today, James Winans,

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his colleague Julie Roma,

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and, ed Morgan, who was the president of that time

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at the, at the mission.

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And they really, I'm saying all this

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because it wasn't a traditional archival experience they

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had, I had to really gain their trust

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and they had to trust me to tell their story.

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Um, and they became really important conversation partners

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over the course of that time.

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I'm really grateful to them for allowing access to

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that treasured resource.

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And I think one of the things I'm most proud

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of about the project is the fact that,

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with the partnership of the Tufts Library,

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which I'm also very grateful for, we were able to digitize

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through internet archive, a full, most

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of the run of the newspaper.

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So now it exists for other scholars to be able to look at.

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So now if you go to internet archive

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and you see the Christian Herald,

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you can do your own research

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and there's, you know, so much, it's a fantastic research

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for thinking about religion in general.

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Humanitarianism in particular, during, from the 1880s,

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we have digitized up to about 1920,

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and we're still have a little piece left to go.

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So, besides that, you know, I spent a lot

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of time in archives, other archives

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of other missionary newspapers,

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looking at correspondence of the main figures,

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thinking about looking at competing organizations,

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which I may talk about at, at some point.

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The Red Cross was at the major competitor

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for the Christian Herald at the time.

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Um, so that's what I did.

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Yeah, so as I said,

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the Christian Herald really was the most influential

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religious newspaper in the US during its heyday from 1890

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to about 1910.

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And really key to that CE success was Louis Klos,

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who was an entrepreneurial philanthropist

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who purchased the paper in 1890

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and really worked to make it the nation's premier purveyor

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of humanitarian aid.

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And he partnered with this really

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charismatic preacher named Thomas dewitt Talmage,

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who is the pastor of the Brooklyn Tabernacle Church,

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which was at the time the United States

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largest congregation.

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So the two of them, really teamed up

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to combine biblical teachings about charity with

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emerging technologies of modern journalism.

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So things that we think of,

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sometimes we think about yellow journalism,

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it's right in that era.

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So they use gripping headlines, heartrending reporting,

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graphic photographs of suffering people to convince readers

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that aiding the affliction.

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The afflicted was really the obligation

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of every American citizen.

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So what they did was they solicited firsthand accounts

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of suffering and also photographs

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of calamities from this vast network of missionaries

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that they knew throughout the

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United States and around the world.

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So again, that connection to China is

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because they had a personal connection

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with those missionaries, and they, they were also,

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although Talmage himself was a member

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of the Christian reform denomination,

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they were very nondenominational.

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So the newspaper reached out was Presbyterians

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Episcopalians, Methodist Baptist, Dutch Reformed,

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I mean, any, they really had this idea

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of being broadly evangelical,

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and they used a small e it wasn't, we don't,

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we wanna be careful not to conflate the meaning of

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that term, and I'll get into a little bit more about

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what they meant by it at the time.

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So they just had these contexts,

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in all different denominations.

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And then they capitalized on sort

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of the interdenominational context

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and technological innovations.

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I've talked a little bit about journalism,

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but for example, this is also the era of the invention

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of the transatlantic telegraph.

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So that may possible the rapid transmission of news.

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So they could get a report about political conflict in

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Armenia from the missionaries over there right away,

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you know, as opposed to waiting for letters to come by boat.

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Um, similarly, the introduction

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of the Kodak portable camera in 1888 enabled eyewitnesses

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to document humanitarian catastrophes going on.

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And then there were printing processes

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that facilitated the reproduction

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of those images in the paper,

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and they were really at the cutting edge of that journalism.

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We don't hear about them often when we think about some

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of the other magnates in journalism at the time,

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but they really did, pioneer a lot of those efforts.

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And so what they hoped was

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so combining these firsthand accounts of disasters happening

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around the world, these vivid photography

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would both raise awareness of affliction

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and also sell newspapers, which it did.

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It was very successful at both things.

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So I think one of the things to keep in mind is that,

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you know, CoLab and Talmage are,

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really complicated individuals with who were very successful

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and, and clear about their ambitions for their newspaper.

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Um, and they combined sort of their religious faith

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with this, you know, very entrepreneurial spirit.

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Um, so they started out, like at first kind

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of chronicling their, these different catastrophes.

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So there was a big famine in Russia in 1892.

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Um, and then they very quickly turned from just saying like,

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Hey, there's all these things going on to making a case

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that their readers had a moral obligation to respond.

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And then actually using the newspaper as a fundraising tool,

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to collect money that then they would send abroad to,

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provide relief.

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So that's kind of a, a little sketch of

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how the newspaper got started,

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and I can, I'm happy to talk about, kind

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of continue the story of how they expanded

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Outward to different humanitarian com campaigns.

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Yeah, so I mean, as you say, there's a really broad array

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of, examples we could talk about.

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So the Bowery mission, the homelessness

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among New York City's unemployed,

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became the most enduring of their ministries.

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Um, I mentioned

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before the industrial school in the south, in South Carolina

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that, catered

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to formerly enslaved persons get providing education.

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And then they had, you know, beginning in Russia moving

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through Armenia to, Cuba, India, China,

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Scandinavia, Macedonia, Japan, Italy, Mexico,

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San Francisco.

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They had all kinds of humanitarian campaigns.

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So a disaster would happen.

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They would publicize it, they would say,

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we're opening the Christian Herald Famine Relief campaign,

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send your donations in.

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And then every week they would publish a list of people

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who had donated to the cause.

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And at a certain point they would close the, close the fund,

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and then they would send all the money to missionaries.

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So just for example, during the India famine campaign

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of 1900, which was their most successful campaign,

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and which also I may,

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if I can at one point hold up the cover of the book,

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it's the image of the cover of the book, is sort

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of celebrating this successful famine relief campaign.

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They collected over $1.2 million for food assistance,

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medicine and orphan care.

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Um, and all of those offerings, like I said, went directly

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to local volunteers, and those were usually missionaries.

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And India, it certainly was,

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they created a missionary council that

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included representatives from different denominations in

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India, and those volunteers doled out the money, right?

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They decided where it most needed to go.

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So the strategy was the missionaries, we've got this network

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of people already on the ground.

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They know the language, they know the culture,

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they're familiar with the needs and conditions, and

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therefore they can disseminate aid quickly and effectively.

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So in this way,

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to the Christian Herald really set itself apart deliberately

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from, emerging competitors like the American Red Cross.

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So in Armenia, there was a, at, at the Ottoman Empire,

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at a certain point was targeting Armenian Christians,

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and there was a massacres happening,

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and American missionaries had been there for

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almost a century, really decades at that point.

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So the Christian Herald sort of was in contact

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printing letters from missionaries explaining

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what was happening, sending relief to the missionaries to

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provide for people on the ground.

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The American Red Cross sent over American aid workers,

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Clara Barton herself went, and it was really challenging

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because she didn't know the language, she had no idea

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what the politics were.

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And so the Christian Herald was sort

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of setting itself up saying, Hey, you know,

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we've got a network and this is how age should be done.

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At the same time, early on,

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Claire Barton was a notoriously poor record keeper,

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and the Christian Herald made a point

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of publishing an audited account of its like,

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here's all the money we received,

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here's how we were spent it.

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And they publish a balance sheet, you know,

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after the close of the campaign

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and really tried to say, you know, we are,

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we should be entrusted with, I mean, at this time,

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it's important to remember there is no infrastructure at the

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federal level for providing aid.

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There's no U-S-A-I-D, there's no agencies

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that are officially doing this.

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So the Christian Herald is trying to say,

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we should be at the forefront of this

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for the American Nation.

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And they were arguing as well that having an explicitly

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religious vision for aid was something important

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that would identify the United States as a different kind

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of world power than other world powers.

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So they sort of had this idea that we're not going to be

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imperialists like the British, right.

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We're not gonna establish an empire.

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We're gonna establish a moral empire,

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and that's gonna be pervade through Christian charity.

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So they're really quite successful.

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By the time Lops died in 1910,

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subscribers have donated over $3.3 million

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to both domestic and international crises.

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And that's about in today's good dollars.

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So 2024, it's about a hundred million dollars in aid.

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And really the Red Cross by, at that exact moment,

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no other relief organization came remotely close to

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that fundraising capacity

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or sort of popular concern for suffering.

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So, I can talk a little bit more about why I think,

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do I have a couple more minutes

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to say why I think they were so successful?

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Yeah. Well, I mean, definitely, I mean,

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and Lops had lots of critics.

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There's a, I mean, part of the book

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that I love is just the absolute, like take down fight

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between himself

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and Clara Barton, who, I mean, she, he thought she was,

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you know, egotistical

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and, you know,

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not a poor poorly managing her organization.

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And she thought he was, a real charlatan, right?

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That he was. And so they really,

14:06.825 --> 14:08.485
really disagreed with one another.

14:09.265 --> 14:12.005
And, but he was a very savvy businessman.

14:12.265 --> 14:15.805
Um, so, but he also had a message, I mean, think Klos

14:15.805 --> 14:18.005
and Talmage had this message, and it was multi-pronged.

14:18.065 --> 14:22.725
So one part of it was that philanthropy is something

14:22.725 --> 14:24.885
that every American should be involved in, right?

14:24.885 --> 14:27.085
This wasn't an elite practice.

14:27.085 --> 14:29.445
And at some point, I'll talk about sort of the contrast

14:29.445 --> 14:31.485
between the Christian Herald

14:31.505 --> 14:33.485
and say the rise of,

14:34.425 --> 14:37.885
the big Carnegie Rockefeller sort of wealthy family.

14:37.985 --> 14:40.845
So that model of philanthropy, coop

14:40.845 --> 14:41.925
and Alman said, you know what?

14:41.925 --> 14:44.005
Every person, even if you have a nickel

14:44.025 --> 14:46.405
or a dime, that's gonna make a difference,

14:46.405 --> 14:47.685
that can buy a loaf of bread.

14:47.945 --> 14:49.845
And they actually would publicize,

14:49.845 --> 14:52.125
like Sunday school classes would send in,

14:52.295 --> 14:53.645
would like take collections,

14:53.705 --> 14:56.485
and kids would go without dinner for a week

14:56.505 --> 14:58.485
and send the money that they're gonna spend on dinner

14:58.505 --> 14:59.525
to the Christian Herald.

14:59.525 --> 15:03.405
And so this was this sort of popular democratizing thing

15:03.755 --> 15:04.765
that he said,

15:04.985 --> 15:08.405
and they said, should be characteristic of Americans, like,

15:08.405 --> 15:11.045
this is how Americans were gonna stand out in the world.

15:11.945 --> 15:14.645
Um, and they also, like, the part

15:14.645 --> 15:16.485
of the religious dimension is I mentioned

15:16.485 --> 15:17.965
before that they are trying

15:18.025 --> 15:21.965
to build bridges across various denominations.

15:22.665 --> 15:25.445
So the 1880s and nineties is when we're just starting

15:25.445 --> 15:28.285
to see in the United States debates

15:28.405 --> 15:31.485
among American Protestants about how to interpret the Bible.

15:32.225 --> 15:36.765
Um, we are seeing social prejudices with the, fall

15:36.765 --> 15:38.285
of reconstruction in the South,

15:38.345 --> 15:40.525
and sort of an attempt to overcome the

15:40.525 --> 15:41.925
divisiveness of the Civil War.

15:42.505 --> 15:44.645
Um, disagreements about race.

15:44.735 --> 15:48.245
We're seeing debates about immigration to the United States,

15:48.425 --> 15:51.005
particularly from Asia,

15:51.025 --> 15:53.605
but also Russia, Eastern Europe.

15:54.425 --> 15:57.245
Um, so there's a lot of antagonism

15:57.345 --> 15:59.605
and cultural conflicts in the American public,

15:59.865 --> 16:04.845
and they are arguing that we can get past debates about all

16:04.965 --> 16:08.205
of these things, especially theology, if we just focus on

16:08.205 --> 16:09.485
what Americans have in common

16:09.905 --> 16:11.405
and what Americans have in common.

16:11.505 --> 16:12.885
And by Americans at that time,

16:12.885 --> 16:14.925
they made American Protestants mostly.

16:16.025 --> 16:18.845
We can not worry about, you know, that one of the,

16:18.845 --> 16:20.445
my bet the best lines that to,

16:20.585 --> 16:22.085
in the book is like, who cares?

16:22.085 --> 16:25.325
Who wrote the penit took the first five books of the Bible?

16:25.795 --> 16:27.125
Like, let's not worry about that,

16:27.185 --> 16:28.445
but let's worry about that.

16:28.445 --> 16:30.005
We're following Jesus' command

16:30.005 --> 16:31.245
to love your neighbor as yourself.

16:31.245 --> 16:32.845
Like certainly that's the golden rule.

16:33.345 --> 16:34.485
We can all agree on it.

16:34.905 --> 16:36.885
So that was sort of one thing that they did.

16:37.865 --> 16:39.685
Um, and in order to do that, they're like,

16:39.685 --> 16:42.325
we're not gonna talk about all these controversial subjects

16:42.445 --> 16:45.285
in the newspaper, so we're not gonna publicize if you know

16:45.385 --> 16:48.485
so and so in the Presbyterian denomination is kicked out

16:48.485 --> 16:51.565
for being a heretic for how he interprets the Bible.

16:52.225 --> 16:56.005
Um, and also, we're not gonna publicize, you know,

16:56.005 --> 16:57.325
we're not gonna be political, we're not,

16:57.325 --> 17:01.445
they did talk about they would, have coverage

17:01.445 --> 17:03.605
of presidential candidates and that sort of thing,

17:03.605 --> 17:04.805
but they would do both sides.

17:05.865 --> 17:08.245
Um, and although their most,

17:08.295 --> 17:10.725
their target audience is white Protestants,

17:10.755 --> 17:13.645
they also were somewhat ecumenical.

17:14.025 --> 17:15.485
Um, they took pains

17:15.485 --> 17:17.805
to include stories about African American churches

17:18.185 --> 17:19.325
and charities.

17:19.945 --> 17:21.485
Um, they reported on the plight

17:21.485 --> 17:24.245
of Native Americans at the time, which is pretty unique

17:24.305 --> 17:25.685
for American Protestants.

17:26.265 --> 17:28.805
Um, they also were very pro-immigration

17:28.905 --> 17:31.045
and anti the Chinese Exclusion Act

17:31.045 --> 17:33.245
or the Asian Exclusion Act that were, so,

17:33.245 --> 17:36.405
they were very welcoming towards Asian immigrants.

17:37.305 --> 17:40.965
Um, they highlight the work of Jewish philanthropists,

17:41.305 --> 17:44.365
and they actually built some bridges with Catholics

17:44.385 --> 17:47.085
and all of that at a time when lots

17:47.085 --> 17:49.645
of Protestant leaders were supporting racial segregation,

17:49.855 --> 17:51.525
expressing antisemitism

17:52.225 --> 17:53.725
and accusing the pope of trying

17:53.725 --> 17:55.725
to take over the United States with these, you know,

17:55.725 --> 17:56.845
conspiracy theories.

17:57.035 --> 17:58.605
Like this was somewhat noteworthy

17:58.635 --> 18:02.005
that they did have this very big tent kind of attitude.

18:02.465 --> 18:06.605
Um, and then another sort of theology point,

18:06.785 --> 18:09.605
and this can be my last one if I'm running outta time on

18:09.605 --> 18:13.605
this question, was that, by sort of publicizing all

18:13.605 --> 18:16.285
of these events all around the world, they,

18:16.305 --> 18:18.445
so they had on one hand, like g that our,

18:18.445 --> 18:19.725
we love our neighbors ourselves.

18:19.725 --> 18:23.285
That's a key text. Another key text is,

18:23.435 --> 18:27.685
acts 17 from the New Testament, God has made one blood

18:27.745 --> 18:30.045
of one blood all nations of men

18:30.145 --> 18:31.725
or of human beings, we would say now.

18:32.385 --> 18:35.365
And that was, you know, charity had to be worldwide.

18:35.425 --> 18:38.805
It didn't matter about race, class or nationality.

18:38.905 --> 18:41.645
So they also regularly quoted, story

18:41.645 --> 18:45.525
of the Good Samaritan who crossed racial and ethnic lines

18:45.745 --> 18:48.725
and saying, we can't just be concerned, we can't be tribal.

18:49.305 --> 18:51.845
We can't just be concerned about our own denomination

18:51.865 --> 18:55.605
or our own region, but we have to extend mercy

18:56.105 --> 18:57.925
and charity around the world.

18:58.065 --> 18:59.365
So, and this is where maybe,

18:59.645 --> 19:01.365
I don't know if we'll be able to see this too.

19:01.395 --> 19:03.965
Well, there's, I have

19:03.965 --> 19:05.565
to un blur my background for a second.

19:05.715 --> 19:06.765
Yeah, there it is.

19:06.825 --> 19:09.565
So the cover of the Christian Herald is from,

19:10.075 --> 19:13.645
this is a photograph from their 1900 newspaper cover

19:13.645 --> 19:17.285
that shows the success of the India Famine campaign.

19:17.285 --> 19:21.125
And you can see how they're, representing here a lot

19:21.125 --> 19:22.245
of their different efforts.

19:22.345 --> 19:24.045
So there's a veiled woman here,

19:24.565 --> 19:26.045
probably from the Armenian campaign.

19:26.045 --> 19:29.005
There's the Indian Famine Relief here.

19:29.425 --> 19:32.725
Um, this is the Bowery mission represented here,

19:33.625 --> 19:35.605
and all of this here again, this is the

19:36.165 --> 19:37.645
children's home being represented.

19:38.545 --> 19:41.725
So, and it's titled America The Almanar of the World.

19:42.145 --> 19:43.725
And this is a really, I mean,

19:43.765 --> 19:45.125
I can say more about this later as well,

19:45.125 --> 19:46.645
it's a really complicated image,

19:46.785 --> 19:49.165
but it shows that they felt

19:49.955 --> 19:53.605
that the United States was this redeemer nation

19:53.835 --> 19:55.405
that possessed this unique power

19:55.625 --> 19:59.285
and resources to help the need and oppressed.

19:59.285 --> 20:01.245
So it's a very, when I show it to my students, they're like,

20:01.245 --> 20:03.925
that's the, you know, genesis of the white savior image.

20:04.025 --> 20:05.085
I'm like, yes, it is.

20:05.145 --> 20:07.405
In some ways I don't wanna claim that that's the start,

20:07.405 --> 20:10.645
but that's very much like, let's go out into the world not

20:10.645 --> 20:11.845
through an imperial frame

20:11.985 --> 20:14.365
or if the imperial frame is going to be through charity.

20:14.985 --> 20:18.765
Um, that gets a little complicated when they get involved.

20:18.865 --> 20:22.285
And the America does become an imperial power, when it,

20:22.285 --> 20:24.285
gets involved in the Philippine war.

20:25.025 --> 20:28.245
And there they start to argue, you see a pivot where like,

20:28.355 --> 20:31.285
well, actually, you know, if war is being done to

20:31.925 --> 20:35.005
liberate oppressed peoples elsewhere, it can be a form

20:35.005 --> 20:36.645
of humanitarianism too.

20:37.465 --> 20:40.725
Um, and that's one place where we start to get into tensions

20:40.725 --> 20:43.405
where critics start to say, wait a second.

20:43.515 --> 20:46.605
Like, is that really, like, who, who who is saying

20:46.625 --> 20:47.885
who needs to be liberated?

20:48.585 --> 20:52.445
Um, is this kind of hierarchical image really representing

20:52.985 --> 20:54.125
the kingdom of God?

20:54.315 --> 20:57.325
That that is saying all nations of men are, you know,

20:57.325 --> 21:00.245
in Jesus Christ, every, there's neither Jew nor Greek slave,

21:00.265 --> 21:01.725
nor free male nor female.

21:01.825 --> 21:04.205
So now I'm speaking from the voice of many

21:04.205 --> 21:07.045
of the missionaries on the ground who felt that some

21:07.045 --> 21:09.245
of the Christian Herald's perspective

21:09.905 --> 21:11.565
was somewhat paternalistic, right.

21:11.625 --> 21:13.845
And imperialistic in its own way. Yeah.

21:13.945 --> 21:15.525
So there's a couple different factors

21:15.525 --> 21:16.805
that go into the decline.

21:16.885 --> 21:20.085
I mean, one is, as I just, the solidarity

21:20.085 --> 21:22.205
that they built becomes increasingly

21:22.205 --> 21:23.685
difficult to maintain, right?

21:23.725 --> 21:26.125
Especially after cops dies in 1910.

21:26.305 --> 21:30.605
So as, tensions mount within Protestantism around

21:31.125 --> 21:33.685
biblical interpretations, we've got the beginnings

21:33.685 --> 21:36.085
of debates between what come, come

21:36.085 --> 21:37.765
to be called fundamentalist Christians

21:37.825 --> 21:39.005
and modernist Christians.

21:39.835 --> 21:43.885
It's hard for the Christian Herald to ignore that, right?

21:44.065 --> 21:46.525
And then over time, eventually those groups,

21:46.595 --> 21:47.605
both fundamentalists

21:47.605 --> 21:50.405
and modernists begin to create their own newspapers.

21:50.545 --> 21:53.685
So, the modernists create the Christian century.

21:54.295 --> 21:57.325
Eventually by the 1940s, the evangelicals,

21:57.345 --> 22:00.085
the fundamentalists who become then new evangelicals,

22:00.105 --> 22:03.405
so different worth use of the term than the way K

22:03.505 --> 22:06.325
and Talmage were using it, create Christianity today.

22:07.185 --> 22:09.725
Um, and so market share goes down, right?

22:09.725 --> 22:11.645
That's one, issue.

22:11.705 --> 22:14.485
But even prior to that, there are a series of things.

22:14.625 --> 22:17.725
So the American red, so there's fractures

22:17.725 --> 22:20.165
with American presentism that I just described.

22:20.745 --> 22:23.045
Um, there's the growth of the US state.

22:23.185 --> 22:27.045
So the, the federal government does begin to create at,

22:27.145 --> 22:29.085
in partnership with the Red Cross Act,

22:29.485 --> 22:33.445
actually a federal structure for overseas disaster relief.

22:33.985 --> 22:36.085
And that starts to happen at the turn of the century

22:36.185 --> 22:37.885
and into, and by World War I,

22:38.225 --> 22:41.485
the Red Cross is really a quasi-governmental agency.

22:42.185 --> 22:43.845
Um, and in part it wins out

22:43.845 --> 22:47.325
because it does have a much more secular message, right?

22:47.325 --> 22:49.805
There's, it's not sort of wetting its message

22:49.805 --> 22:53.605
with this very explicitly biblical, campaign.

22:54.545 --> 22:58.885
By the 1930s, we have the expansion of the welfare state.

22:59.065 --> 23:01.765
So there's, you know, that in the US there's infrastructure

23:01.815 --> 23:04.325
being put in place to care for people

23:04.345 --> 23:05.365
who are falling through.

23:05.455 --> 23:06.645
There is a safety net

23:06.645 --> 23:08.845
where there wasn't in the 1880s and nineties.

23:09.625 --> 23:12.125
We also have the professionalization of social work.

23:12.225 --> 23:13.805
So social work, and, you know,

23:13.845 --> 23:16.725
philanthropy becomes its own aid.

23:16.725 --> 23:19.205
They're the creation of, you know, professional schools.

23:19.305 --> 23:21.285
You can become trained as a social worker.

23:21.385 --> 23:23.645
And that wasn't the case in the eighties and nineties.

23:24.545 --> 23:26.365
Um, and then finally you've got the rise

23:26.365 --> 23:29.925
of these massive family foundations, the Carnegies

23:29.925 --> 23:31.085
and the Rockefellers, right?

23:31.085 --> 23:32.085
Really eclipse

23:32.865 --> 23:35.525
and diminish the Christian Herald stature

23:35.625 --> 23:36.885
as a relief agency.

23:37.065 --> 23:38.165
So,

23:38.225 --> 23:39.845
and that's a point it might be worth

23:39.885 --> 23:41.325
dwelling on a little bit.

23:41.625 --> 23:45.085
Um, I've talked about sort of this sense that,

23:46.365 --> 23:47.925
Talmage and CLOs had that you have

23:47.925 --> 23:49.805
to aid anyone who needs help, right?

23:49.825 --> 23:51.045
And they did both. I mean,

23:51.235 --> 23:53.445
they were really about emergency relief.

23:54.305 --> 23:57.765
Um, and at the same time they did lobby

23:57.945 --> 24:00.005
for broader structural solutions as well,

24:00.145 --> 24:02.245
but they start to get really critiqued.

24:02.245 --> 24:05.765
So one of the signature, the surviving entity

24:05.765 --> 24:07.405
of the Christian Herald today is really the

24:07.405 --> 24:08.645
Bowery mission in New York City.

24:09.265 --> 24:13.845
Um, that, enterprise, as long as, as well as other sort

24:13.845 --> 24:15.125
of soup kitchens in New York,

24:15.125 --> 24:18.965
came under blistering attack in the early 20th century by

24:19.735 --> 24:22.285
proponents of what was called scientific charity.

24:23.325 --> 24:25.465
So one of the leaders of that movement was

24:26.085 --> 24:28.705
the industrial magnate, Andrew Carnegie, right?

24:28.805 --> 24:33.505
And Carnegie, in his view, if wealth came

24:33.505 --> 24:35.305
to the worthy, like if you worked hard,

24:35.685 --> 24:39.545
if you saved responsibly, if you lived a virtuous life,

24:40.445 --> 24:41.465
you would become wealthy.

24:42.735 --> 24:47.065
Therefore, if you were poor, that meant that you were lazy,

24:47.885 --> 24:49.465
irresponsible

24:49.805 --> 24:52.265
and engaging in some kind of immoral,

24:52.315 --> 24:53.985
maybe usually drunken behavior.

24:54.425 --> 24:56.545
I mean, maybe there were some times where, you know,

24:56.545 --> 24:58.505
there was some kind of misfortune, but by,

24:58.505 --> 25:00.105
and by, like, that was the equation.

25:00.445 --> 25:04.785
So the job of philanthropists was to work scientifically.

25:05.055 --> 25:08.705
That was the term, to figure out who deserved help.

25:08.775 --> 25:11.345
Like the deserving poor, maybe those who were trying

25:11.345 --> 25:13.025
to pull themselves up by their bootstraps,

25:13.025 --> 25:14.745
or maybe they had a misfortune,

25:15.565 --> 25:18.305
and the derelicts who lived off free handouts, right?

25:18.325 --> 25:20.985
And so we still have this in our culture, right?

25:20.985 --> 25:24.145
There's still debates about who really deserves help.

25:24.965 --> 25:27.145
So Carnegie and his,

25:27.525 --> 25:30.145
allies in the San Scientific Charity movement said,

25:30.245 --> 25:32.345
if you're gonna run a soup kitchen like the Barry Mission,

25:32.345 --> 25:33.985
you're just perpetuating the problem.

25:34.175 --> 25:37.905
Like you are, enabling people to live off the doll.

25:37.925 --> 25:41.705
And instead you should, sort of go out

25:41.725 --> 25:42.865
and register people,

25:43.205 --> 25:45.105
and you figure out not give aid to anybody

25:45.165 --> 25:47.665
who doesn't really work for it and deserve it.

25:48.365 --> 25:52.265
And you should establish institutions to help people sort

25:52.265 --> 25:53.425
of work their way up.

25:53.605 --> 25:54.945
So libraries,

25:54.945 --> 25:57.145
we've got the Carnegie Library in New York, right?

25:57.155 --> 26:00.345
We've got, educational institutions,

26:01.005 --> 26:02.705
art galleries, public parks.

26:02.705 --> 26:04.545
So it was sort of, you give people the tools

26:04.685 --> 26:06.665
to learn how to help themselves.

26:07.725 --> 26:10.425
So as this kind of idea gains authority,

26:11.555 --> 26:14.065
ction Talmage are basically acknowledge like, okay,

26:14.065 --> 26:15.585
there are some scientific methods

26:15.655 --> 26:19.185
that maybe could help us improve efficiency in philanthropy,

26:19.285 --> 26:22.065
but they really repudiated the claim

26:22.095 --> 26:24.425
that charity led to delinquency.

26:24.425 --> 26:28.385
And I think this has to do in part with, sort of being,

26:28.475 --> 26:30.865
again, like closer to the ground,

26:31.085 --> 26:33.025
and involved in this charitable work.

26:33.885 --> 26:36.225
So rather than blaming the needy

26:36.225 --> 26:39.825
or unemployed for their situation, K

26:39.965 --> 26:41.825
and Talmage both, like, especially in

26:41.825 --> 26:44.885
around the eight later 1890s turn of the 20th century,

26:45.705 --> 26:48.365
really tried to publish articles saying, we've gotta get

26:48.365 --> 26:49.565
to the root of the problem.

26:49.985 --> 26:51.645
And what would we call today?

26:51.645 --> 26:52.925
They didn't use this language,

26:52.945 --> 26:54.565
but we would say they started

26:54.585 --> 26:57.565
to recognize the structural elements of inequality, right?

26:57.625 --> 26:58.845
And to,

26:59.145 --> 27:01.925
and they did say, I mean, they were always,

27:02.355 --> 27:05.605
they would never say this directly about Carnegie.

27:05.605 --> 27:08.325
They did feature him, you know, in their newspaper

27:08.385 --> 27:09.725
as a, you know, philanthropist.

27:09.825 --> 27:13.445
But they did say things like, if, if anybody was

27:13.445 --> 27:15.685
to be accounta held accountable for suffering,

27:16.305 --> 27:18.205
it was the wealthy industrialists

27:18.205 --> 27:21.005
who weren't paying a fair wage,

27:21.065 --> 27:23.085
who were inflating prices, who were

27:23.725 --> 27:26.565
amassing colossal fortunes on the backs of their workers,

27:27.055 --> 27:29.685
extracting resources from colonized peoples.

27:30.025 --> 27:34.325
So they said, you know, in, again, in somewhat

27:34.325 --> 27:38.325
of a diplomatic way, most of the time, that instead of

27:38.845 --> 27:41.405
building libraries, I mean, well, colleges, libraries, all

27:41.405 --> 27:43.525
that's great, but what really need to happen is

27:43.525 --> 27:46.925
that Carnegie should offer higher salaries, explain,

27:47.065 --> 27:50.605
expand employment opportunities, support legislation

27:50.705 --> 27:52.765
to ensure fair labor and housing conditions.

27:53.585 --> 27:57.645
Um, and one of their, in the 19 early 20th century,

27:58.005 --> 28:01.085
actually, so the early 19 hundreds, one of their,

28:01.565 --> 28:04.565
featured authors was a minister named Charles Sheldon.

28:05.265 --> 28:08.405
Um, Charles Sheldon is famous today for the acronym

28:08.595 --> 28:11.925
what ww JD what would Jesus do?

28:12.745 --> 28:17.685
Um, and he published a serial novel in the pages

28:17.685 --> 28:20.325
that Christian Herald, called Christian Socialism.

28:20.865 --> 28:25.125
And he basically argued for what a sort of a program of,

28:25.505 --> 28:30.005
pri of making, you know, private, like common goods,

28:30.005 --> 28:32.605
common ownership of public utilities, that sort of thing,

28:33.165 --> 28:36.165
redistributing wealth, like it really was a,

28:36.365 --> 28:38.325
a socialistic vision of the future.

28:38.665 --> 28:41.765
And that's partly what Talmage were behind as well.

28:42.585 --> 28:44.165
So a really different, but,

28:44.265 --> 28:46.125
but in the end, like that, just that vision

28:46.305 --> 28:48.805
as we know in the United States, does not win out.

28:49.385 --> 28:53.405
Um, it is the vision of the Carnegies and the Rockefellers,

28:53.505 --> 28:56.245
and eventually they, they just can't compete with

28:56.945 --> 28:59.805
the massive fortunes that are put together

28:59.825 --> 29:02.485
and the family foundations that are set up to preserve

29:02.485 --> 29:03.725
that generational wealth.

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And they, they just can't compete in the marketplace either

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of sort of religious newspapers

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or of philanthropic foundations.

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And so they, they sort of pull back,

29:14.045 --> 29:15.925
they start focusing the paper.

29:16.005 --> 29:17.805
I mean, KLO dies, Talmage died earlier.

29:18.025 --> 29:22.525
So by like the time of World War One,

29:22.985 --> 29:25.245
the new editors of the paper decide they're gonna

29:25.925 --> 29:28.325
refocus the paper on more religious themes,

29:28.665 --> 29:31.125
and they're gonna kind of divest themselves of most

29:31.125 --> 29:33.325
of its charitable enterprise, with the exception

29:33.325 --> 29:34.845
of the Bowery Mission.

29:35.185 --> 29:36.325
And the, it's called,

29:36.425 --> 29:38.125
it was called Mont Lawn Children's Camp.

29:38.145 --> 29:41.845
And it exists today still in some children's programs

29:41.845 --> 29:43.285
that the Barry Mission runs.

29:44.025 --> 29:47.965
Um, they kept on publishing the paper until about the 1990s,

29:47.985 --> 29:49.285
and then they closed it down.

29:49.425 --> 29:52.485
And now the, it really, if you go online looking

29:52.505 --> 29:54.005
for the Christian Herald Association,

29:54.005 --> 29:55.005
you'll find the Barry Mission

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and, they're still going strong.

29:57.395 --> 30:01.005
Yeah. So I think there's, the book has a lot

30:01.025 --> 30:03.845
to teach us about the topics of humanitarianism,

30:03.905 --> 30:07.365
and I talk about this, mostly in the epilogue.

30:08.385 --> 30:11.365
So I mean, I'll I'll say kind of in two, two things.

30:11.625 --> 30:13.885
One is, although, you know, nobody's heard

30:13.885 --> 30:15.205
of the Christian Herald today, right?

30:15.445 --> 30:17.045
I mean, unless you've read my book, maybe

30:17.045 --> 30:19.405
unless you've been to the Bar Mission, everybody's heard

30:19.405 --> 30:20.805
of the Rockefeller Foundation,

30:20.925 --> 30:22.565
Carnegie the American Red Cross,

30:23.465 --> 30:25.245
and yet I really do believe

30:25.245 --> 30:27.445
that the Christian Herald's relief campaigns

30:27.515 --> 30:28.885
left a lasting mark.

30:29.245 --> 30:32.325
I think, the cover that I showed

30:32.325 --> 30:36.525
before with the United States as this kind of savior alman

30:36.525 --> 30:40.525
or of all nations affected the way humanitarian relief

30:40.805 --> 30:42.045
happened even for the Red Cross.

30:42.145 --> 30:44.685
So in the book, I have an image of the Red Cross in,

30:44.705 --> 30:47.405
in World War i's very similar sort

30:47.405 --> 30:48.845
of presenting the United States,

30:49.145 --> 30:52.125
having this divinely ordained responsibility to rescue

30:52.985 --> 30:55.885
the afflicted and the United States throughout the 20th

30:55.885 --> 30:59.245
century, really engaged in a lot of humanitarian

30:59.765 --> 31:03.005
interventions, you know, often staged as war, right?

31:03.145 --> 31:05.325
As well, just like it was in the Philippines.

31:05.505 --> 31:08.845
And, you know, if we were to catalog a lot, those,

31:08.845 --> 31:12.005
like many of those relief efforts have saved lives.

31:12.945 --> 31:14.965
Um, there's also been critics

31:15.185 --> 31:18.005
of those aid agents, agencies, and efforts.

31:18.065 --> 31:20.205
So my own colleague at Tufts, Alex Deval

31:20.705 --> 31:23.885
and others have talked about how disaster remediation

31:23.985 --> 31:27.445
and development activities have often fueled corruption

31:27.445 --> 31:30.005
and host countries exacerbated poverty,

31:31.125 --> 31:32.885
bolstered authoritarian regimes.

31:33.625 --> 31:35.965
So there's that, to think about.

31:35.995 --> 31:37.685
There's also the use of images.

31:37.885 --> 31:40.605
I mean, the Christian Herald really was, I do make a case

31:40.605 --> 31:44.805
that they're really the pioneer of using what gets called,

31:44.905 --> 31:48.685
you know, famine porn, really just these images

31:48.685 --> 31:49.885
of people in pain

31:50.505 --> 31:53.325
and aid agencies have relied on those kind kinds

31:53.325 --> 31:54.525
of images up to the present.

31:54.805 --> 31:57.685
I mean, I think, we can think about, you know,

31:57.685 --> 32:01.085
recent IMA images in the US of, border crossers,

32:01.085 --> 32:02.965
people coming from Mexico into the US

32:03.185 --> 32:05.205
and their shock value, right?

32:05.225 --> 32:08.165
And so there too, I think ethicists really warn about the

32:08.165 --> 32:10.605
implications of that, those kind of images.

32:11.235 --> 32:15.005
They're effective, but they reinforce inequalities between

32:15.925 --> 32:18.125
privileged donors and relief recipients

32:18.145 --> 32:22.245
and sort of reproduce the structural, nature of that

32:22.315 --> 32:24.565
that requires us to have charity in the first place.

32:24.745 --> 32:27.405
So there's that to think about we

32:27.405 --> 32:29.445
with thinking about the Christian Herald, what can we

32:30.135 --> 32:32.405
learn from the blind spots, right,

32:32.405 --> 32:33.765
that the Christian Herald had?

32:33.865 --> 32:36.325
And what are the blind spots that we still have?

32:36.425 --> 32:38.405
So I think I chose that image for the cover

32:39.435 --> 32:42.405
because it's easy to judge that era, right?

32:42.405 --> 32:45.965
And say, look at how, you know, paternalistic they were.

32:46.145 --> 32:49.645
But we also can see that, you know, the ongoing legacy of

32:49.645 --> 32:52.485
that, I think in our own relief efforts today.

32:53.545 --> 32:57.365
On the other hand, I think the newspaper's arguments

32:57.505 --> 33:01.045
for extending compassion beyond national borders

33:01.045 --> 33:03.365
and social barriers remain really relevant.

33:03.425 --> 33:07.285
So I've already alluded to debates we have today in the US

33:07.345 --> 33:09.805
and really around the world about poverty assistance,

33:10.035 --> 33:12.645
immigration, global inequality,

33:13.305 --> 33:15.485
how do we create a justice society?

33:15.985 --> 33:19.525
Um, so some of the questions I talked about with my friends

33:19.555 --> 33:21.285
that I made at the Christian Herald is,

33:21.355 --> 33:23.325
does charity create dependency?

33:23.905 --> 33:27.445
Um, who gets to help from philanthropist,

33:27.975 --> 33:29.525
which disaster makes the news?

33:29.545 --> 33:30.805
We have this right now. I mean,

33:30.805 --> 33:33.085
what's happening in in Ethiopia, right?

33:33.225 --> 33:35.845
And, versus,

33:36.025 --> 33:38.925
and things that are getting coverage, things that don't,

33:39.425 --> 33:42.325
is what do we do about i meeting emergency needs versus

33:42.385 --> 33:44.165
trying to invest in efforts

33:44.265 --> 33:46.365
to alleviate structural inequality?

33:47.065 --> 33:48.165
Um, how should a,

33:48.345 --> 33:50.085
an organization like the Barry mission today,

33:50.085 --> 33:51.845
like should they be trying to do both

33:52.065 --> 33:53.805
or should they concentrate on one?

33:54.625 --> 33:57.605
Um, how can we encourage empathy for people

33:57.625 --> 34:01.525
who are suffering without reinforcing these inequalities,

34:01.745 --> 34:04.325
social disparities, racial discrimination,

34:04.385 --> 34:07.125
gender bias, nationalist hierarchies?

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So I think my hope is that in reading this book, people

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who are in trying to make the world a better place will

34:15.445 --> 34:17.445
recognize some of the things that get, that, you know,

34:17.515 --> 34:21.325
that can get involved when you start asking those questions.

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Um, and maybe there's something in what, what the collapse

34:25.205 --> 34:28.285
and Talmage were saying that we might, learn from.

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So I, I wonder if clap to claim that true Christianity must,

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he said is can't be limited to our own tribe,

34:36.065 --> 34:37.485
our own nation, our own race.

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That has to be, it shouldn't matter.

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You should be able to give to anyone,

34:42.625 --> 34:45.285
in the us How do we, you know, is that something

34:45.285 --> 34:47.765
that would resonate with contemporary evangelicals who are

34:47.765 --> 34:50.605
so concerned about the border,

34:50.735 --> 34:52.485
about preserving a white America,

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and here's one of their forebearers, WWJD, you know,

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people wear this on their wristbands,

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was promoting Christian socialism.

35:00.955 --> 35:03.965
Like, is there something there that could be reclaimed

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by religious traditions that seemed to really be moving

35:07.345 --> 35:08.685
in a different direction?

35:08.905 --> 35:11.765
Um, you know, are there some folks out there that want

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to recapture Klaus's vision that sort of the gospel

35:15.345 --> 35:18.285
of charity trumps the gospel of wealth, Carnegie's vision.

35:19.105 --> 35:21.485
So, that's kind of what I hope, you know,

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when people read the book, they might come with those kinds

35:23.965 --> 35:26.645
of questions and really be self-reflective

35:26.665 --> 35:29.285
and see if there are things to learn, sort

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of cautionary tales

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that we can take away from the Christian Herald,

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but also, maybe some truths that would help reshape,

35:37.395 --> 35:39.325
some of the ways that debates about poverty

35:39.545 --> 35:43.045
and disaster are carried out in, in the moment today.

Exploring Christian Responses to Global Suffering

00:00:00 - As a scholar, I've been interested in exploring how Christians define and deal with various kinds of suffering. So my first book was called Faith in the Great Physicians, suffering in Divine Healing in American Protestantism from 1816 to 1900. And in that I explored how a group of Christians in the late 19th century US coped with physical illness, during a time of really great theological change and also innovation in the medical sciences. So when I got done with that book
00:00:33 - that Christians deal with physical suffering within themselves, but what about suffering out in the world? What about when they encountered the suffering of others? How did they respond to various forms of suffering, like humanitarian disasters, famines, floods, earthquakes, suffering caused by war or imperialism or economic downturns? and how did Christians in the late 19th century decide which kinds of those sufferings they would pay attention to,
00:01:06 - So those were some of the things that got me interested in researching this book that eventually led to Holy Humanitarians. Yeah, so I first started researching this questions of, Christians confronting various forms of suffering through missionary archives. So I was deep in the bells of Yale Divinity School archives and some missionary records, and I came across this reference to the Christian Herald Association, which was sponsoring an orphanage in Fuji China.
00:01:38 - who were left parentless and thinking about missionaries on the field. And I thought, well, what is that thing the Christian Herald? Something I hadn't heard about? So, I started digging around and eventually I discovered that the Christian Herald was the world's most popular Christian newspaper from about 1890 to 1910. And that played a really major role in publicizing and responding to suffering across the United States and around the globe during its heyday,
00:02:10 - the orphanage in eo, a Fresh Air Summer Home for children in the state of New York, an industrial school and post reconstruction air, the post reconstruction Air South, and most prominently, the Bowery Mission, which is a soup kitchen in New York City that still exists today. So, so I, this was what the newspaper was. So I started to look for copies of it, and I eventually discovered that the only surviving full run
00:02:41 - headquarters in New York City, which still existed. The newspaper was no longer being published at that time, but the Bowery Mission was still in operation. So I wrote to the, director of Outreach, James Macklin, and he invited me to come down and take a look. And, over the next several years, I spent hours and hours in the back room of the Christian Herald headquarters, getting to know James Macklin, the current president

Digitizing History: The Christian Herald Project

00:03:12 - his colleague Julie Roma, and, ed Morgan, who was the president of that time at the, at the mission. And they really, I'm saying all this because it wasn't a traditional archival experience they had, I had to really gain their trust and they had to trust me to tell their story. and they became really important conversation partners over the course of that time. I'm really grateful to them for allowing access to that treasured resource.
00:03:41 - of about the project is the fact that, with the partnership of the Tufts Library, which I'm also very grateful for, we were able to digitize through internet archive, a full, most of the run of the newspaper. So now it exists for other scholars to be able to look at. So now if you go to internet archive and you see the Christian Herald, you can do your own research and there's, you know, so much, it's a fantastic research for thinking about religion in general.
00:04:14 - we have digitized up to about 1920, and we're still have a little piece left to go. So, besides that, you know, I spent a lot of time in archives, other archives of other missionary newspapers, looking at correspondence of the main figures, thinking about looking at competing organizations, which I may talk about at, at some point. The Red Cross was at the major competitor for the Christian Herald at the time. so that's what I did.
00:04:43 - the Christian Herald really was the most influential religious newspaper in the US during its heyday from 1890 to about 1910. And really key to that CE success was Louis Klos, who was an entrepreneurial philanthropist who purchased the paper in 1890 and really worked to make it the nation's premier purveyor of humanitarian aid. And he partnered with this really charismatic preacher named Thomas dewitt Talmage,
00:05:15 - which was at the time the United States largest congregation. So the two of them, really teamed up to combine biblical teachings about charity with emerging technologies of modern journalism. So things that we think of, sometimes we think about yellow journalism, it's right in that era. So they use gripping headlines, heartrending reporting, graphic photographs of suffering people to convince readers
00:05:46 - The afflicted was really the obligation of every American citizen. So what they did was they solicited firsthand accounts of suffering and also photographs of calamities from this vast network of missionaries that they knew throughout the United States and around the world. So again, that connection to China is because they had a personal connection with those missionaries, and they, they were also, although Talmage himself was a member

Interdenominational Contributions to Humanitarian Journalism

00:06:17 - they were very nondenominational. So the newspaper reached out was Presbyterians Episcopalians, Methodist Baptist, Dutch Reformed, I mean, any, they really had this idea of being broadly evangelical, and they used a small e it wasn't, we don't, we wanna be careful not to conflate the meaning of that term, and I'll get into a little bit more about what they meant by it at the time. So they just had these contexts, in all different denominations.
00:06:48 - of the interdenominational context and technological innovations. I've talked a little bit about journalism, but for example, this is also the era of the invention of the transatlantic telegraph. So that may possible the rapid transmission of news. So they could get a report about political conflict in Armenia from the missionaries over there right away, you know, as opposed to waiting for letters to come by boat. similarly, the introduction of the Kodak portable camera in 1888 enabled eyewitnesses
00:07:22 - And then there were printing processes that facilitated the reproduction of those images in the paper, and they were really at the cutting edge of that journalism. We don't hear about them often when we think about some of the other magnates in journalism at the time, but they really did, pioneer a lot of those efforts. And so what they hoped was so combining these firsthand accounts of disasters happening around the world, these vivid photography
00:07:53 - and also sell newspapers, which it did. It was very successful at both things. So I think one of the things to keep in mind is that, you know, CoLab and Talmage are, really complicated individuals with who were very successful and, and clear about their ambitions for their newspaper. and they combined sort of their religious faith with this, you know, very entrepreneurial spirit. so they started out, like at first kind of chronicling their, these different catastrophes.
00:08:25 - and then they very quickly turned from just saying like, Hey, there's all these things going on to making a case that their readers had a moral obligation to respond. And then actually using the newspaper as a fundraising tool, to collect money that then they would send abroad to, provide relief. So that's kind of a, a little sketch of how the newspaper got started, and I can, I'm happy to talk about, kind
00:08:54 - Outward to different humanitarian com campaigns. Yeah, so I mean, as you say, there's a really broad array of, examples we could talk about. So the Bowery mission, the homelessness among New York City's unemployed, became the most enduring of their ministries. I mentioned before the industrial school in the south, in South Carolina that, catered to formerly enslaved persons get providing education. And then they had, you know, beginning in Russia moving

Christian Herald's Humanitarian Campaigns and Impact

00:09:27 - Scandinavia, Macedonia, Japan, Italy, Mexico, San Francisco. They had all kinds of humanitarian campaigns. So a disaster would happen. They would publicize it, they would say, we're opening the Christian Herald Famine Relief campaign, send your donations in. And then every week they would publish a list of people who had donated to the cause. And at a certain point they would close the, close the fund,
00:09:56 - So just for example, during the India famine campaign of 1900, which was their most successful campaign, and which also I may, if I can at one point hold up the cover of the book, it's the image of the cover of the book, is sort of celebrating this successful famine relief campaign. They collected over $1.2 million for food assistance, medicine and orphan care. and all of those offerings, like I said, went directly to local volunteers, and those were usually missionaries.
00:10:28 - they created a missionary council that included representatives from different denominations in India, and those volunteers doled out the money, right? They decided where it most needed to go. So the strategy was the missionaries, we've got this network of people already on the ground. They know the language, they know the culture, they're familiar with the needs and conditions, and therefore they can disseminate aid quickly and effectively. So in this way,
00:11:00 - from, emerging competitors like the American Red Cross. So in Armenia, there was a, at, at the Ottoman Empire, at a certain point was targeting Armenian Christians, and there was a massacres happening, and American missionaries had been there for almost a century, really decades at that point. So the Christian Herald sort of was in contact printing letters from missionaries explaining what was happening, sending relief to the missionaries to
00:11:30 - The American Red Cross sent over American aid workers, Clara Barton herself went, and it was really challenging because she didn't know the language, she had no idea what the politics were. And so the Christian Herald was sort of setting itself up saying, Hey, you know, we've got a network and this is how age should be done. At the same time, early on, Claire Barton was a notoriously poor record keeper, and the Christian Herald made a point of publishing an audited account of its like,
00:12:02 - here's how we were spent it. And they publish a balance sheet, you know, after the close of the campaign and really tried to say, you know, we are, we should be entrusted with, I mean, at this time, it's important to remember there is no infrastructure at the federal level for providing aid. There's no U-S-A-I-D, there's no agencies that are officially doing this. So the Christian Herald is trying to say, we should be at the forefront of this for the American Nation.

Moral Empire Through Christian Charity

00:12:36 - religious vision for aid was something important that would identify the United States as a different kind of world power than other world powers. So they sort of had this idea that we're not going to be imperialists like the British, right. We're not gonna establish an empire. We're gonna establish a moral empire, and that's gonna be pervade through Christian charity. So they're really quite successful.
00:13:06 - subscribers have donated over $3.3 million to both domestic and international crises. And that's about in today's good dollars. So 2024, it's about a hundred million dollars in aid. And really the Red Cross by, at that exact moment, no other relief organization came remotely close to that fundraising capacity or sort of popular concern for suffering.
00:13:38 - do I have a couple more minutes to say why I think they were so successful? Yeah. Well, I mean, definitely, I mean, and Lops had lots of critics. There's a, I mean, part of the book that I love is just the absolute, like take down fight between himself and Clara Barton, who, I mean, she, he thought she was, you know, egotistical and, you know, not a poor poorly managing her organization. And she thought he was, a real charlatan, right?
00:14:06 - really disagreed with one another. And, but he was a very savvy businessman. so, but he also had a message, I mean, think Klos and Talmage had this message, and it was multi-pronged. So one part of it was that philanthropy is something that every American should be involved in, right? This wasn't an elite practice. And at some point, I'll talk about sort of the contrast between the Christian Herald and say the rise of, the big Carnegie Rockefeller sort of wealthy family.
00:14:40 - and Alman said, you know what? Every person, even if you have a nickel or a dime, that's gonna make a difference, that can buy a loaf of bread. And they actually would publicize, like Sunday school classes would send in, would like take collections, and kids would go without dinner for a week and send the money that they're gonna spend on dinner to the Christian Herald. And so this was this sort of popular democratizing thing that he said, and they said, should be characteristic of Americans, like,
00:15:11 - and they also, like, the part of the religious dimension is I mentioned before that they are trying to build bridges across various denominations. So the 1880s and nineties is when we're just starting to see in the United States debates among American Protestants about how to interpret the Bible. we are seeing social prejudices with the, fall of reconstruction in the South, and sort of an attempt to overcome the

Unity Amidst Racial and Cultural Conflicts

00:15:42 - disagreements about race. We're seeing debates about immigration to the United States, particularly from Asia, but also Russia, Eastern Europe. so there's a lot of antagonism and cultural conflicts in the American public, and they are arguing that we can get past debates about all of these things, especially theology, if we just focus on what Americans have in common and what Americans have in common.
00:16:12 - they made American Protestants mostly. We can not worry about, you know, that one of the, my bet the best lines that to, in the book is like, who cares? Who wrote the penit took the first five books of the Bible? Like, let's not worry about that, but let's worry about that. We're following Jesus' command to love your neighbor as yourself. Like certainly that's the golden rule. We can all agree on it. So that was sort of one thing that they did. and in order to do that, they're like, we're not gonna talk about all these controversial subjects
00:16:45 - so and so in the Presbyterian denomination is kicked out for being a heretic for how he interprets the Bible. and also, we're not gonna publicize, you know, we're not gonna be political, we're not, they did talk about they would, have coverage of presidential candidates and that sort of thing, but they would do both sides. and although their most, their target audience is white Protestants, they also were somewhat ecumenical.
00:17:15 - to include stories about African American churches and charities. they reported on the plight of Native Americans at the time, which is pretty unique for American Protestants. they also were very pro-immigration and anti the Chinese Exclusion Act or the Asian Exclusion Act that were, so, they were very welcoming towards Asian immigrants. they highlight the work of Jewish philanthropists, and they actually built some bridges with Catholics
00:17:47 - of Protestant leaders were supporting racial segregation, expressing antisemitism and accusing the pope of trying to take over the United States with these, you know, conspiracy theories. Like this was somewhat noteworthy that they did have this very big tent kind of attitude. and then another sort of theology point, and this can be my last one if I'm running outta time on this question, was that, by sort of publicizing all of these events all around the world, they,
00:18:18 - we love our neighbors ourselves. That's a key text. Another key text is, acts 17 from the New Testament, God has made one blood of one blood all nations of men or of human beings, we would say now. And that was, you know, charity had to be worldwide. It didn't matter about race, class or nationality. So they also regularly quoted, story of the Good Samaritan who crossed racial and ethnic lines and saying, we can't just be concerned, we can't be tribal.

Global Compassion and American Humanitarianism

00:18:51 - or our own region, but we have to extend mercy and charity around the world. So, and this is where maybe, I don't know if we'll be able to see this too. Well, there's, I have to un blur my background for a second. Yeah, there it is. So the cover of the Christian Herald is from, this is a photograph from their 1900 newspaper cover that shows the success of the India Famine campaign. And you can see how they're, representing here a lot
00:19:22 - So there's a veiled woman here, probably from the Armenian campaign. There's the Indian Famine Relief here. this is the Bowery mission represented here, and all of this here again, this is the children's home being represented. So, and it's titled America The Almanar of the World. And this is a really, I mean, I can say more about this later as well, it's a really complicated image, but it shows that they felt that the United States was this redeemer nation
00:19:55 - and resources to help the need and oppressed. So it's a very, when I show it to my students, they're like, that's the, you know, genesis of the white savior image. I'm like, yes, it is. In some ways I don't wanna claim that that's the start, but that's very much like, let's go out into the world not through an imperial frame or if the imperial frame is going to be through charity. that gets a little complicated when they get involved. And the America does become an imperial power, when it, gets involved in the Philippine war.
00:20:28 - well, actually, you know, if war is being done to liberate oppressed peoples elsewhere, it can be a form of humanitarianism too. and that's one place where we start to get into tensions where critics start to say, wait a second. Like, is that really, like, who, who who is saying who needs to be liberated? is this kind of hierarchical image really representing the kingdom of God? That that is saying all nations of men are, you know,
00:21:00 - nor free male nor female. So now I'm speaking from the voice of many of the missionaries on the ground who felt that some of the Christian Herald's perspective was somewhat paternalistic, right. And imperialistic in its own way. Yeah. So there's a couple different factors that go into the decline. I mean, one is, as I just, the solidarity that they built becomes increasingly difficult to maintain, right? Especially after cops dies in 1910. So as, tensions mount within Protestantism around
00:21:33 - of debates between what come, come to be called fundamentalist Christians and modernist Christians. It's hard for the Christian Herald to ignore that, right? And then over time, eventually those groups, both fundamentalists and modernists begin to create their own newspapers. So, the modernists create the Christian century. Eventually by the 1940s, the evangelicals, the fundamentalists who become then new evangelicals, so different worth use of the term than the way K

Decline of Christian Relief Amidst Secular Changes

00:22:07 - and so market share goes down, right? That's one, issue. But even prior to that, there are a series of things. So the American red, so there's fractures with American presentism that I just described. there's the growth of the US state. So the, the federal government does begin to create at, in partnership with the Red Cross Act, actually a federal structure for overseas disaster relief.
00:22:36 - and into, and by World War I, the Red Cross is really a quasi-governmental agency. and in part it wins out because it does have a much more secular message, right? There's, it's not sort of wetting its message with this very explicitly biblical, campaign. By the 1930s, we have the expansion of the welfare state. So there's, you know, that in the US there's infrastructure being put in place to care for people
00:23:05 - There is a safety net where there wasn't in the 1880s and nineties. We also have the professionalization of social work. So social work, and, you know, philanthropy becomes its own aid. They're the creation of, you know, professional schools. You can become trained as a social worker. And that wasn't the case in the eighties and nineties. and then finally you've got the rise of these massive family foundations, the Carnegies and the Rockefellers, right? Really eclipse and diminish the Christian Herald stature
00:23:37 - So, and that's a point it might be worth dwelling on a little bit. I've talked about sort of this sense that, Talmage and CLOs had that you have to aid anyone who needs help, right? And they did both. I mean, they were really about emergency relief. and at the same time they did lobby for broader structural solutions as well, but they start to get really critiqued. So one of the signature, the surviving entity
00:24:07 - Bowery mission in New York City. that, enterprise, as long as, as well as other sort of soup kitchens in New York, came under blistering attack in the early 20th century by proponents of what was called scientific charity. So one of the leaders of that movement was the industrial magnate, Andrew Carnegie, right? And Carnegie, in his view, if wealth came to the worthy, like if you worked hard, if you saved responsibly, if you lived a virtuous life,
00:24:42 - Therefore, if you were poor, that meant that you were lazy, irresponsible and engaging in some kind of immoral, maybe usually drunken behavior. I mean, maybe there were some times where, you know, there was some kind of misfortune, but by, and by, like, that was the equation. So the job of philanthropists was to work scientifically. That was the term, to figure out who deserved help. Like the deserving poor, maybe those who were trying

Charity vs. Self-Reliance in Philanthropy

00:25:13 - or maybe they had a misfortune, and the derelicts who lived off free handouts, right? And so we still have this in our culture, right? There's still debates about who really deserves help. So Carnegie and his, allies in the San Scientific Charity movement said, if you're gonna run a soup kitchen like the Barry Mission, you're just perpetuating the problem. Like you are, enabling people to live off the doll. And instead you should, sort of go out
00:25:43 - and you figure out not give aid to anybody who doesn't really work for it and deserve it. And you should establish institutions to help people sort of work their way up. So libraries, we've got the Carnegie Library in New York, right? We've got, educational institutions, art galleries, public parks. So it was sort of, you give people the tools to learn how to help themselves. So as this kind of idea gains authority, ction Talmage are basically acknowledge like, okay,
00:26:15 - that maybe could help us improve efficiency in philanthropy, but they really repudiated the claim that charity led to delinquency. And I think this has to do in part with, sort of being, again, like closer to the ground, and involved in this charitable work. So rather than blaming the needy or unemployed for their situation, K and Talmage both, like, especially in around the eight later 1890s turn of the 20th century,
00:26:48 - to the root of the problem. And what would we call today? They didn't use this language, but we would say they started to recognize the structural elements of inequality, right? And to, and they did say, I mean, they were always, they would never say this directly about Carnegie. They did feature him, you know, in their newspaper as a, you know, philanthropist. But they did say things like, if, if anybody was to be accounta held accountable for suffering,
00:27:18 - who weren't paying a fair wage, who were inflating prices, who were amassing colossal fortunes on the backs of their workers, extracting resources from colonized peoples. So they said, you know, in, again, in somewhat of a diplomatic way, most of the time, that instead of building libraries, I mean, well, colleges, libraries, all that's great, but what really need to happen is that Carnegie should offer higher salaries, explain,
00:27:50 - to ensure fair labor and housing conditions. and one of their, in the 19 early 20th century, actually, so the early 19 hundreds, one of their, featured authors was a minister named Charles Sheldon. Charles Sheldon is famous today for the acronym what ww JD what would Jesus do? and he published a serial novel in the pages

Socialism’s Vision and Humanitarian Struggles

00:28:20 - And he basically argued for what a sort of a program of, pri of making, you know, private, like common goods, common ownership of public utilities, that sort of thing, redistributing wealth, like it really was a, a socialistic vision of the future. And that's partly what Talmage were behind as well. So a really different, but, but in the end, like that, just that vision as we know in the United States, does not win out.
00:28:53 - and eventually they, they just can't compete with the massive fortunes that are put together and the family foundations that are set up to preserve that generational wealth. And they, they just can't compete in the marketplace either of sort of religious newspapers or of philanthropic foundations. And so they, they sort of pull back, they start focusing the paper. I mean, KLO dies, Talmage died earlier. So by like the time of World War One,
00:29:25 - refocus the paper on more religious themes, and they're gonna kind of divest themselves of most of its charitable enterprise, with the exception of the Bowery Mission. And the, it's called, it was called Mont Lawn Children's Camp. And it exists today still in some children's programs that the Barry Mission runs. they kept on publishing the paper until about the 1990s, and then they closed it down. And now the, it really, if you go online looking for the Christian Herald Association,
00:29:55 - and, they're still going strong. Yeah. So I think there's, the book has a lot to teach us about the topics of humanitarianism, and I talk about this, mostly in the epilogue. So I mean, I'll I'll say kind of in two, two things. One is, although, you know, nobody's heard of the Christian Herald today, right? I mean, unless you've read my book, maybe unless you've been to the Bar Mission, everybody's heard of the Rockefeller Foundation, Carnegie the American Red Cross, and yet I really do believe
00:30:27 - left a lasting mark. I think, the cover that I showed before with the United States as this kind of savior alman or of all nations affected the way humanitarian relief happened even for the Red Cross. So in the book, I have an image of the Red Cross in, in World War i's very similar sort of presenting the United States, having this divinely ordained responsibility to rescue the afflicted and the United States throughout the 20th
00:30:59 - interventions, you know, often staged as war, right? As well, just like it was in the Philippines. And, you know, if we were to catalog a lot, those, like many of those relief efforts have saved lives. there's also been critics of those aid agents, agencies, and efforts. So my own colleague at Tufts, Alex Deval and others have talked about how disaster remediation and development activities have often fueled corruption

Ethics of Charity and Media Representation

00:31:31 - bolstered authoritarian regimes. So there's that, to think about. There's also the use of images. I mean, the Christian Herald really was, I do make a case that they're really the pioneer of using what gets called, you know, famine porn, really just these images of people in pain and aid agencies have relied on those kind kinds of images up to the present. I mean, I think, we can think about, you know,
00:32:01 - people coming from Mexico into the US and their shock value, right? And so there too, I think ethicists really warn about the implications of that, those kind of images. They're effective, but they reinforce inequalities between privileged donors and relief recipients and sort of reproduce the structural, nature of that that requires us to have charity in the first place. So there's that to think about we with thinking about the Christian Herald, what can we
00:32:32 - that the Christian Herald had? And what are the blind spots that we still have? So I think I chose that image for the cover because it's easy to judge that era, right? And say, look at how, you know, paternalistic they were. But we also can see that, you know, the ongoing legacy of that, I think in our own relief efforts today. On the other hand, I think the newspaper's arguments for extending compassion beyond national borders
00:33:03 - So I've already alluded to debates we have today in the US and really around the world about poverty assistance, immigration, global inequality, how do we create a justice society? so some of the questions I talked about with my friends that I made at the Christian Herald is, does charity create dependency? who gets to help from philanthropist, which disaster makes the news? We have this right now. I mean, what's happening in in Ethiopia, right?
00:33:36 - and things that are getting coverage, things that don't, is what do we do about i meeting emergency needs versus trying to invest in efforts to alleviate structural inequality? how should a, an organization like the Barry mission today, like should they be trying to do both or should they concentrate on one? how can we encourage empathy for people who are suffering without reinforcing these inequalities, social disparities, racial discrimination,
00:34:07 - So I think my hope is that in reading this book, people who are in trying to make the world a better place will recognize some of the things that get, that, you know, that can get involved when you start asking those questions. and maybe there's something in what, what the collapse and Talmage were saying that we might, learn from. So I, I wonder if clap to claim that true Christianity must, he said is can't be limited to our own tribe,

Reclaiming Charity in Contemporary Evangelicalism

00:34:37 - That has to be, it shouldn't matter. You should be able to give to anyone, in the us How do we, you know, is that something that would resonate with contemporary evangelicals who are so concerned about the border, about preserving a white America, and here's one of their forebearers, WWJD, you know, people wear this on their wristbands, was promoting Christian socialism. Like, is there something there that could be reclaimed by religious traditions that seemed to really be moving
00:35:08 - you know, are there some folks out there that want to recapture Klaus's vision that sort of the gospel of charity trumps the gospel of wealth, Carnegie's vision. So, that's kind of what I hope, you know, when people read the book, they might come with those kinds of questions and really be self-reflective and see if there are things to learn, sort of cautionary tales that we can take away from the Christian Herald, but also, maybe some truths that would help reshape,
00:35:39 - and disaster are carried out in, in the moment today.

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