Unitarian minister Charles Fletcher Dole is no longer a well-known name, even among scholars of American religion. At the start of the twentieth century, he was a respected advocate for liberal Christianity and a leader of organizations involved in addressing several important social causes. Historian Paul T. Burlin’s Charles Fletcher Dole, Liberal Theology, and Reform is an extensively researched biography focused on Dole’s religious writing, intellectual life, and social activism. Burlin uses Dole’s life and work to illuminate broader trends during Dole’s lifetime, which stretched from 1845 to 1927. The study puts Dole’s views into the context of liberal religious thought and social reform during that period, which means the book will be helpful to a broader audience beyond those people who might be interested in Dole’s career.
Dole was an optimistic and reform-minded minister who spent most of his career at a well-to-do congregation in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood in Boston. Dole described himself as a progressive and was theologically and politically aligned with the left wing among Unitarian clergy, but his views were not consistently radical. Burlin observes that Dole had conservative views on issues such as economics, and thus, “no label simply fits him” (p. 273). Dole’s hostility towards socialism and belief that private philanthropy could deal with labor issues and industrial crises differ from the views of his contemporary, the Social Gospel advocate Walter Rauschenbusch. When it came to his religious views, Dole was fully committed to liberal theology, believing historical criticism should revolutionize understanding of the Bible and rejecting a God who was a being. Nevertheless, he tenaciously resolved to retain the label of “Christian,” an adherence to tradition that many of his Unitarian co-religionists and liberal religious colleagues rejected.
This biography of Dole is useful as a portrait of someone who might be considered a moderate on the religious left, both in terms of his politics and theology. Studies of figures with these kinds of views are surprisingly uncommon. Much of the scholarship on American religion in this period focuses on figures with extreme theological or social views rather than those who, like Dole, were positioned between more radical voices on the left and right.
The beginning of the book, composed of three of the book’s nine chapters, addresses the historical background of religion in the northeastern United States before Dole’s birth in 1845, the religious views of Dole’s relatives, and Dole’s education. Dole’s father had been educated at Bangor Theological Seminary and was part of a far more theologically orthodox Congregationalist tradition, though he died when his son was only 10. As a young man Dole ended up attending Harvard and Andover Theological Seminary, where he discovered the emerging literature on historical criticism and began to grapple with how evolutionary science challenged traditional understandings of religion. Burlin does an admirable job in these sections of showing the intellectual journey that led the son of a faithful Congregationalist minister into the Unitarian ministry, a group the Congregationalists regarded as heretical schismatics.
The next chapter describes Dole’s pastorates: a short stint in a Congregationalist church in Portland, Maine, and his long career as a minister at the Unitarian First Congregationalist Society of Jamaica Plain. Two chapters address Dole’s theological views, situating them within the context of Dole’s liberal Protestant contemporaries and newly emerging understandings of science. The final three chapters focus on Dole’s commitment to the Social Gospel and its manifestations.
The first of these chapters on the Social Gospel highlights Dole’s views on citizenship and politics, the second focuses on his activism regarding temperance, gender, and race, while the final chapter is about his opposition to war and imperialism. Because Dole saw religion as intertwined with reform commitments, these chapters are vital to understanding his career.
One of the most illuminating sections of the book addresses Dole’s views on race. He supported Booker T. Washington and served as a trustee of the Tuskegee Institute. Dole espoused industrial education for both Blacks and poor whites in the South. W.E.B. Du Bois and Dole publicly clashed, with Du Bois accusing the white minister of causing harm by adhering to a naively optimistic and conciliatory approach to race relations. Dole, in turn, accused Du Bois of stoking division against erstwhile allies. Burlin does an excellent job of explaining the intricacies of these debates.
The discussion of Dole’s opposition to imperialism and war is particularly noteworthy in light of Dole’s family connections. Dole served as Vice President of the Anti-Imperialist League and denounced the United States for failing to allow the Philippines to govern itself. Yet his anti-imperialism was complicated by the fact that his uncle had been a missionary in Hawaii and his cousin, Sanford B. Dole, overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy and later served as the President of the short-lived Republic of Hawaii and later its territorial governor after arranging for the island’s annexation by the United States. Charles Dole’s son, James, moved to Hawaii at the invitation of his uncle, where he founded the Hawaii Pineapple Company, the predecessor of the Dole Food Company. Charles Dole’s anti-imperialism was in tension with his affection for his cousin and his family’s intimate involvement in the colonization of Hawaii.
Burlin acknowledges the limitations of Dole’s visions for social reform but expresses a cautious admiration for the minister’s accomplishments. Through his consideration of Dole, the book implicitly is an evaluation and a defense of liberal religion at the turn of the twentieth century, which was often naively optimistic in its faith progress but was dedicated to addressing pressing theological and social problems. Audiences interested in liberal theology, social reform, or Protestantism in the early twentieth century will benefit from this book.
