This monograph on Boston's urban evangelicals is an important addition to existing scholarship on the city's religious life in the last half of the nineteenth century. Much is known of Catholic and mainstream Protestant (Congregational and Episcopal) Boston during these years, but until Hartley's study, the contributions of holiness Methodists, Salvationists, and Baptists—what Hartley labels “upstart evangelicals” (for many were recent immigrants and rural migrants of lower socio-economic standing than more established Protestants)—have been largely neglected. As typified the shifting urban landscape across America in this period, Boston experienced its own economic, political, ethnic, and religious reconfiguration. Hartley uses the apt metaphor of “crossroads” to characterize evangelical religion, for in the half century (1860–1910) of revivals and social reform evangelical interests and institutional formation intersected, diverged, and fragmented.
Holiness Methodists were at the gravitational center of Boston's evangelical movement, with Baptists and Salvationists close at hand. Convinced that entire sanctification was not merely personal but had social ramifications, Methodists preached salvation while engaging in numerous social reform efforts, beginning in the city's blighted North End and subsequently moving to areas of the city in greatest need. Hartley highlights the contributions of several individuals who advanced the evangelical cause through activism, preaching, writing and institution building: the colorful Independent Methodist Henry Morgan, known as the “Poor Man's Preacher,” author of Boston-based novels and exposés, founder of the Boston Union Mission Society, advocate for labor and women's rights, virulent critic of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and endower of what became Goodwill Industries; Daniel Steele, one of the intellectual leaders of the holiness movement, professor of theology at newly founded Boston University (1869), author of the best-selling Love Enthroned: Essays on Evangelical Perfection (1875), and theological activist who inspired the creation of religious social welfare organizations such as the Home for Little Wanderers; and Eben Tourjée, whose service to the poor and prostitutes and advocacy of labor reform is overlooked by his legacy as founder of the New England Conservatory of Music. As for Baptists, a presence in Boston since the colonial era, A. J. Gordon was their luminous figure. He collaborated with Methodists, defended Charles Cullis's faith-healing movement, championed inner-city and foreign missions, and, as the emphases between between social reformers and revivalists diverged toward the end of the nineteenth century, sided with evangelistic efforts over against the socially-driven institutional church movement.
Hartley attends not only to the evangelistic and reform contributions of talented and pragmatically-driven individuals, but examines also the involvement of upstart evangelicals in Boston politics. As the city's population swelled to become America's most Catholic city (41.3% by 1890), evangelicals revived the anti-Catholic nativism of the antebellum era. Evangelicals fought the growing Irish Catholic political presence (the first Irish mayor was elected in 1884), and in the late 1890s, a coalition of evangelical women and clergy sought to retain Protestant control of the public school system. Despite their anti-Catholicism, evangelical reformers such as Morgan and Edward Rogers found common cause with Catholics in their support for the labor movement—at least until the Chicago Haymarket tragedy of 1886 turned evangelicals away from the movement's radicalism.
Hartley dedicates a chapter to the many women who led and played key roles in Boston's evangelical organizations. Methodist women founded the Women's Foreign Missionary Society in 1869, which by 1910 had become the largest and most influential women's missionary society in the country. The Salvation Army, led by Captain Annie Shirley, arrived in Boston in 1884, and aggressively pursued social reform and evangelism. The Salvationists broke down racial and gender barriers by welcoming African Americans and women into their ranks. Having first-hand experience of prejudice and discrimination, they eschewed the anti-Catholicism of other evangelicals. Given their shared theology, Methodists and Salvationists cooperated extensively. Methodists were the most prominent supporters of the Army, while the Army inspired Boston University School of Theology students to renew their fervor for urban missions. One of the university's own, Samuel Logan Brengle, became the Army's leading holiness theologian and evangelist. Methodists also were at the forefront of the deaconess movement. Patterned after the German Lutheran model, the New England Deaconess Home and Training School offered instruction in biblical studies, nursing, and visitation. Deaconesses put their skills to use in a variety of urban ministries, especially in tenement slums and settlement houses.
By the 1890s the evangelical intersection of social reform and revival began to diverge and fragment. Although Methodists generally pursued a middle ground over such contentious issues as higher criticism, other religions, the Social Gospel, and the instantaneous experience of sanctification, subtle and not-so-subtle shifts became apparent. One cannot read the later fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the 1920s into these developments, for Methodists and other evangelicals were often sympathetic to opponents on both sides. As well, Methodist involvement in the subsequent controversy was peripheral. Nevertheless, by the early twentieth century, Boston's upstart evangelicals had become a less cohesive group. Baptist evangelicals placed increasing emphasis on evangelistic efforts, whereas Methodists placed greater emphasis on social welfare programs. The passing of a generation, new theological ideas, the declining influence of the holiness movement as a unifying force, and the movement of Methodists into the middle and upper-middle class contributed to this fragmentation.
There is much to appreciate from this study which has garnered two awards from Methodist societies. The result of Hartley's focus on the previously neglected contributions of holiness Methodists and Salvationists enriches our understanding of Boston's nineteenth-century urban religious landscape. The upstart evangelicals’ commitment, energy, and passion dedicated to alleviating the suffering of “the least of these” are on full display. Unlike today's conservative Protestants, these evangelicals were a sometimes radical lot, siding with labor, collaborating with religious liberals, pursuing aggressively urban ministries, even embracing various forms of socialism (Edward Bellamy's utopian novel, Looking Backward, had a following).
Overall, Hartley's focus is less on revivalism (despite beginning and ending the book with chapters on revival) than social reform, less on the intricacies of theology than on the fruits of a sanctified life, less on gender contestation than the concrete contributions of women. Whatever is lacking, however, Hartley counterbalances by attention to the personal and institutional efforts of evangelicals with a social conscience.
