In Holy Humanitarians, Heather Curtis tells the story of the Christian Herald, an evangelical newspaper at the turn of the twentieth century. Although largely forgotten today, its 250,000 subscribers made it one of America's largest newspapers. Curtis shows how the Christian Herald and its colorful editors, Louis Klopsch and Thomas De Witt Talmage, sought to shape U.S. identity, humanitarianism, and diplomacy through evangelical charity while being shaped in turn by the politics, economics, and culture of the time.

Curtis’ sophisticated yet lively rendering makes multiple scholarly contributions. The most obvious is that it restores the Christian Herald to its rightful place in history. In doing so, it opens the door much wider to understanding religion's role in statecraft at that time. A primary subplot in this narrative is the fight for the soul of U.S. philanthropy between the editors of the Christian Herald and American Red Cross founder Clara Barton. It is a fascinating drama and one of the major contributions of the book. Curtis’ study also helps to extend by half a century the typical timeline employed by literature on faith-based aid organizations: most scholars’ narratives begin in the post-Bretton Woods era. Curtis shows how Klopsch and Talmage had to navigate puzzles that still confront international aid workers today, and how their innovations, perhaps unknowingly, are currently utilized by leading organizations like World Vision. Finally, Holy Humanitarians provides us with a glimpse of evangelical culture in the time just before the Fundamentalist/Modernist split. Although Curtis foreshadows the coming culture wars near the end of the book, this is mostly a window into a less riven religious environment where evangelical leaders helped to serve as the country's moral conscience in matters of human suffering.

The book's primary actors, Klopsch and Talmage, were colorful and cosmopolitan. Early in life, Klopsch was incarcerated for theft and damaging property. Talmage, a pastor, was put on trial by his peers for being dishonest and deceptive. But the charismatic figures found their ways to successful careers in New York City. Klopsch went into the publishing business; Talmage pastored the Brooklyn Tabernacle, the largest church in the United States. Curtis explores the tensions inherent in their deep faith commitments and big personalities: Klopsch and Talmage were at once idealists and practical men of action, they were statesmen and religious populists, they were Christian publishers and, some argued, sensationalists. Curtis uses the Conclusion to reflect on, but not resolve, the editors’ ambiguities. Her treatment preserves all their traits, both flawed and admirable.

When Klopsch and Talmage purchased the Christian Herald in 1890, they wanted to project messages that could unite Christians across denominations. They thus promoted a particular kind of evangelicalism that featured a religious commitment to the poor. Talmage once summed up his theology in one word: help. The editors believed in a Christian America that could alleviate suffering and play a special role in ushering in the millennial kingdom. Such pro-America sentiment was coupled with globalism; the newspaper promoted “a universal brotherhood” and strove for “the betterment of humanity.” In this vein Klopsch and Talmage supported open immigration policies and criticized the USA for its poor treatment of Chinese immigrants. Talmage even supported interracial marriage, claiming it was a key to strengthening the nation. Economically, the editors believed laissez-faire capitalism created suffering among the laboring classes and thus promoted legislation to ensure fair wages. Religiously, Klopsch and Talmage were classically evangelical in their desire to share the gospel of Jesus around the world. That did not stop them from writing that all religions were allies because they encouraged kindness and charity. Such perspectives ebbed and flowed over the editors’ tenure, and Curtis notes that their messaging was sometimes inconsistent. Nevertheless, their bricolage of beliefs helped to create the newspaper's upbeat and adventurous tone.

The editors also wanted to use the Christian Herald as a vehicle of benevolence. Curtis organizes much of her book around the Christian Herald's fundraising campaigns, which collected $3.3 million (equivalent to $82.4 million in 2017) from 1892 to 1910, far outstripping all other grassroots charities of that era. Campaigns emerged when Klopsch and Talmage responded to national or world events – natural disasters (Russia, India, China, Constantinople), political or military crises (Armenia, Cuba, the Philippines, China), financial crises (New York City), or children in need (India, China, NY, the southeastern United States, Native American reservations). Curtis also pays attention to issues to which the editors did not respond, the most prominent of which were the domestic lynchings and racial tensions of the Jim Crow era. The Christian Herald tended to take on projects that, at least initially, could frame a united Christian America as a champion of God's work in the world. Some humanitarian crises were more difficult to cast in this light than others.

Curtis portrays the epic failures and the remarkable successes such campaigns engendered. In Turkey, for example, the editors confronted the political complexities of aid distribution and implementation. Their initial efforts to help Muslim earthquake victims were disrupted by the outbreak of the Ottoman/Armenian conflict and the slaughter of over 10,000 Christian Armenians. When anti-Muslim sentiment surged among the Christian Herald's support base, the editors shifted their aid to the Armenians. This angered Turkey's government, which ultimately forced them out of the country. Elsewhere, the Christian Herald more deftly navigated humanitarian aid's potential to create dependency. Klopsch and Talmage recognized that in some cases, such as the “undeserving poor” in New York City, aid was necessary regardless of the risk and were far more merciful than the social Darwinists of the time. In others, such as in India, their charity often went to empowering job creation initiatives. The Christian Herald also learned how to use local partners in hard to reach areas instead of shipping in American personnel. They empowered leaders that already had effective programs, such as Booker T. Washington in AL and Pandita Ramabai in India. Their pragmatic instincts and ability to work across cultures helped them reduce suffering in real and measurable ways.

Through her analysis of the Christian Herald, Curtis creates a window into a time period that looks much like our own, with its vast inequalities and struggles between liberalism and mercantilism. Her insights into religion's place in this context, for better and for worse, have lessons for our own time. The book is a remarkable achievement.