As host to the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, Tennessee has an obvious history of conflict over religion and education. By examining white Tennessee Baptists and Methodists in the half-century leading up to the showdown in Dayton, this dissertation argues that Tennessee's 1925 anti-evolution law and the resulting Scopes trial were less about the truth or falsehood of evolution and more about the important question of the place of parents, churches, and religious belief in New South public education. Furthermore, this investigation of religious attitudes about public schools---the laboratories in which many different forces hoped to shape the future of society---reveals a systematic southern evangelical interest in earthly social relations rarely recognized by previous scholars. From an early opposition to state funded public education as necessarily "godless," Tennessee evangelicals gradually acquiesced, assuming that the schools would reflect the values of their predominantly Protestant local communities. Further, they believed that the home, Sunday school, and denominational college would provide any additional moral leavening necessary for their vision of a religious New South. But as Progressive era school reforms increasingly removed control of education from the hands of parents, local school boards, and church communities---all of whom would presumably guarantee a role for religion---evangelicals feared they would lose the schools and the rising generation. Further trepidation over the supposed secularization of higher education---symbolized most poignantly for Tennessee evangelicals in the separation of Vanderbilt University from the southern Methodist church---led many evangelical leaders to advocate a more explicit respect for Christianity in the public schools. The logical extension of this changed attitude appears most clearly in the first decades of the twentieth century with the 1915 enactment of a state-wide law requiring the Bible to be read every morning in the schools and the more infamous Butler law of 1925 that criminalized the teaching of evolution. Symbolic conceptions of the South as a distinctively religious society led many Tennessee evangelicals to break taboos about mixing religion and politics and support the Butler anti-evolution bill.

The intention of this thesis is to make a contribution to the understanding of the eighteenth-century Church of England within the community in which it existed. Recognising the enormous variation that existed within the Church during the period, this study provides a close comparison of two archdeaconries, (something which is rarely undertaken in the historiography of the Church), both of which have never received attention from historians. In order to study the Church in these regions, the archdeaconries of Buckingham and Gloucester, detailed consideration is given to the role and activities of the parochial clergy in each archdeaconry. By concentrating upon the community, and the clergy's place within it, this thesis is able to provide a detailed picture of the social, political and economic integration of the clergy within these two specific regions, as well as their pastoral work and family life, the latter much neglected by historians. It devotes much attention to the property of the clergy, as a means of locating the clergy within local communities, and because of the great effect their property and income had upon other spheres of their everyday life. In doing this, this thesis demonstrates the diversity of experience of clergy within each archdeaconry, but it also shows some overall trends which marked the experience of parochial clergy in the period. It argues that the eighteenth-century clergyman was immersed in almost every aspect of community life, and although conscious of his distinctiveness as a parson, such integration represented a fusion of the ecclesiastical and secular, the incumbent's pragmatic response to the circumstances of the community of which he was a part.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Notre Dame, 2006. / Thesis directed by John T. McGreevy for the Department of History. "July 2006." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 325-362).

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Master of Arts / Department of History / Robert D. Linder / As the United States descended into war in 1861, the religious leaders of the nation were among the foremost advocates and recruiters for both the Confederate and Union forces. They exercised enormous influence over the laity, and used their sermons and periodicals to justify, promote, and condone the brutal fratricide. Although many historians have focused on the promoters of war, they have almost completely ignored the Disciples of Christ, a loosely organized religious movement based on anti-sectarianism and primitive Christianity, who used their pulpits and periodicals as a platform for peace. This study attempts to merge the remarkable story of the Disciples peace message into a narrative of the Civil War. Their plea for nonviolence was not an isolated event, but a component of a committed, biblically-based response to the outbreak of war from many of the most prominent leaders of the movement. Immersed in the patriotic calls for war, their stance was extremely unpopular and even viewed as traitorous in their communities and congregations. This study adds to the current Disciples historiography, which states that the issue of slavery and the Civil War divided the movement North and South, by arguing that the peace message professed by its major leaders divided the movement also within the sections. In fact, by the outbreak of war, the visceral debates that occurred among the Disciples leadership did not center on the issue of slavery, constitutionality of secession, or even which belligerent was in the right. The chief point of contention was whether a Christian, based on New Testament precepts, could participate in war. The nonviolent leaders thought that their peace message derived from the New Testament would be the one thing that would preserve unity in the brethren. In reality, it became the primary source of division.

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There has been a great deal of research into Victorian religious ideas and organisations carried out in recent years. However, the research tends to focus on areas in which evidence is most manageable - that is, on denominations and sects which have a relatively limited and well-defined membership, or, if the Church of Ireland is concerned, on the activities of the professional full-time representatives of the Church, the clergy. In choosing to study the role of the laity in the Church of England, I have attempted to extend the circle of research a little further from the centre towards which it ordinarily tends to contract. [continued in text ...]

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / Robert D. Linder / George Müller of Bristol (1805-1898) was widely celebrated in the nineteenth century as the founder of the Ashley Down Orphan Homes in Bristol, England. He was a German immigrant to Great Britain who was at the vanguard of evangelical philanthropic care of children. The object of his charitable work, orphans, influenced the establishment of Christian orphanages in Great Britain, North America, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe. However, what brought Müller widespread public acclaim was his assertion that he supported his orphan homes solely by relying on faith and prayer. According to Müller, he prayed to God for the material needs of the orphans and he believed, in faith, that those needs were supplied by God, without resort to direct solicitation, through donations given to him. He employed his method as a means to strengthen the faith of his fellow Christians and published an ongoing chronicle of his answered prayers that served as evidence. Müller’s method of financial support brought him to the forefront of public debate in the nineteenth century about the efficacy of prayer and the supernatural claims of Christianity. His use of prayer to provide for the orphans made his name a “household word the world round.” This dissertation is a study of Müller’s influence on evangelicals that analyzes Müller’s enduring legacy as a hero of the faith among evangelicals around the world. For evangelicals Müller was an exemplary Christian—a Protestant saint—who embodied a simple but pure form of biblical piety. To explore his influence from the nineteenth century through the twentieth century, this study, as a social biography, investigates how evangelicals remember individuals and how that memory, in this case Müller, influenced the practice of prayer in evangelical piety. The dissertation affirms a link between evangelicals and eighteenth-century German Pietism, while also showing that evangelicals used publications to celebrate and to informally canonize individuals esteemed for their piety. The dissertation, ultimately, is concerned with how evangelicals identified heroes of the faith and why these heroes were and are widely used as models for edification and for emulation in everyday life.

Master of Arts / Department of History / Robert D. Linder / After years of selecting, editing, omitting, reducing and correcting what would become printed as over fourteen thousand pages of devotional literature for a young Methodist movement in the wake of the English Evangelical Revival, John Wesley pronounced his A Christian library: consisting of extracts from, and abridgments of, the choicest Pieces of practical divinity which have been published in the English tongue in fifty volumes (1749-1755) an underappreciated treasure and an overtaxing expenditure. Taking their lead from Wesley’s comments, scholars and historians of Wesley studies and Methodism have neglected to take a closer look at the ways the library may have been successful. This study argues that despite being initially a marketing disappointment and an expensive liability, John Wesley’s Christian library was influential in helping to shape the spiritual lives of “serious readers” within Methodism, particularly from 1752-1778. In the preface to the Christian library, Wesley revealed his standard for measuring the influence of the Library. However, despite offering a premature and partial assessment of the library in his journal entry at the end of 1752, providing some public responses to criticisms of the library in 1760 and again in the early 1770s, and writing some personal letters that recommended the library to others in the 1780s, Wesley did not publish an evaluation of what he believed the Christian library had accomplished during his life. Thus, based on the collaborative evidence gathered from the personal accounts of early Methodist preachers and the final address of Francis Asbury to American Methodists, this study makes the case that Wesley’s Christian library had a substantial positive influence on Methodism.