The Beauty of the Lilies: Femininity, Innocence, and the Sweet Gospel of Uldine Utley

2005 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristin Kobes Du Mez
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
American Protestantism ◽  
The Press ◽  
Conservative Protestantism ◽  
Biblical Literalism ◽  
Blue Eyes ◽  
Feminine Persona ◽  
Twentieth Century America

AbstractIn the 1920s, a child evangelist by the name of Uldine Utley toured the United States, attracting large crowds and captivating the press. She enjoyed the support of ministers from a wide variety of denominations, though her most ardent proponent was the famous fundamentalist preacher John Roach Straton. In many ways, Utley's success seems to counter existing narratives of early-twentieth-century religious history. Her revivalist ministry developed in an era that saw the decline of revivalism, and she rose to prominence during the height of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy. Claiming to adhere to biblical “literalism,” she nonetheless affirmed the appropriateness of female preaching. And, in the wake of efforts to masculinize American Protestantism and rediscover a “muscular” Christianity, Utley was known and celebrated for her femininity and beauty.Utley's femininity was, in fact, central to her appeal. She preached a “sweet and kindly gospel” and fashioned an elaborate feminine persona. Her diminutive size, her blond hair and blue eyes, and her white attire seemed to give her an “angelic” appearance, and her persistent association with flowers, both allegorical and real, further contributed to her aura of femininity. In the context of shifting gender arrangements and changing constructions of sexuality and morality in early-twentieth-century America, Utley's femininity and innocence provided a soothing alternative to the uncertain times. But the model of femininity Utley displayed was fraught with ambivalence and proved difficult to maintain as she matured from child to young woman. In addition to illuminating a frequently overlooked strand of conservative Protestantism during this time, attention to Utley's life and ministry also reveals a powerful yet ambivalent script that remains available to modern Protestant women to this day.

The Battery and the Windmill: Two Models of Protestant Devotionalism in Early-Twentieth-Century America

1996 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Ostrander
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Know How ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
American Protestantism ◽  
Daily Prayer ◽  
Christian Century ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Twentieth Century America

In 1912, Andrew Murray, an influential spokesperson for the Keswick theology prevalent in American fundamentalism, decried the sorry state of spirituality among modern Christians. How many there are, he exclaimed, who “say that they have no time and that the heart desire for prayer is lacking; they do not know how to spend half an hour with God! … Day after day, month after month passes, and there is no time to spend one hour with God.” Closing his jeremiad, Murray exclaimed, “How many there are who take only five minutes for prayer!” A few years later, Herbert Willett and Charles Clayton Morrison, editors of The Christian Century, the voice of the emerging liberal movement in American Protestantism, published a daily devotional guide entitled The Daily Altar. Its purpose was to provide Christians with “a few moments of quiet and reflection” in the midst of “short and crowded days” in order to maintain a daily prayer life. To be precise, devotions in The Daily Altar took one and a half minutes to complete.

Delivering the Vote: The Political Effect of Free Mail Delivery in Early Twentieth Century America

2016 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
pp. 769-802
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Ruth Perlman ◽  
Steven Sprick Schuster
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
United States Department ◽  
Information Flows ◽  
Department Of Agriculture ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Effect ◽  
Twentieth Century America

The rollout of Rural Free Delivery (RFD) in the early twentieth century dramatically increased the frequency with which rural voters received information. This article examines the effect of RFD on voters' and Representatives' behavior using a panel dataset and instrumental variables. Communities receiving more routes spread their votes to more parties; there is no evidence it changed turnout. RFD shifted positions taken by Representatives in line with rural constituents, including increased support for pro-temperance and anti-immigration policies. These results appear only in counties with newspapers, supporting the hypothesis that information flows play a crucial role in the political process.“As the whole world has been drawn closer together by the inventions and uses of steam and electricity, so farmers may be drawn closer together by the universal practice of free delivery.”—Matthew Williams of Verndale, Minnesota as quoted in the 1900 Yearbook of the United States Department of Agriculture

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melinda Powers
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Greek Drama ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
Twentieth Century America

The Introduction begins by providing a brief overview of the reception of Greek drama by under-represented communities in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century America. After situating the book’s topic within this historical timeline, it proceeds to explain the development of the project, the focus on live theatre, the choice of productions, and the reasons for them. It defines terms, provides disclaimers, explains the methodology used, clarifies the topic, situates it within its historical moment, summarizes each of the chapters, describes the development of the ‘democratic turn’ in Greek drama, and finally speculates on the reasons for the appeal of Greek drama to artists working with under-represented communities.

A Century of America on Chinese Screens

2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 305-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhiwei Xiao
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Print Media ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sharp Contrast ◽  
American People ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chinese Films ◽  
New Millennium

AbstractNo serious study has been published on how Chinese filmmakers have portrayed the United States and the American people over the last century. The number of such films is not large. That fact stands in sharp contrast not only to the number of "China pictures" produced in the United States, which is not surprising, but also in contrast to the major role played by Chinese print media. This essay surveys the history of Chinese cinematic images of America from the early twentieth century to the new millennium and notes the shifts from mostly positive portrayal in the pre-1949 Chinese films, to universal condemnation during the Mao years and to a more nuanced, complex, and multi-colored presentation of the last few decades.

American Legal Thought in Transatlantic Context, 1870-1914

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Rabban
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
First Generation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Historical School ◽  
Legal Thought ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Sociological Jurisprudence

Most American legal scholars have described their nineteenth-century predecessors as deductive formalists. In my recent book, Law’s History : American Legal Thought and the Transatlantic Turn to History, I demonstrate instead that the first generation of professional legal scholars in the United States, who wrote during the last three decades of the nineteenth century, viewed law as a historically based inductive science. They constituted a distinctive historical school of American jurisprudence that was superseded by the development of sociological jurisprudence in the early twentieth century. This article focuses on the transatlantic context, involving connections between European and American scholars, in which the historical school of American jurisprudence emerged, flourished, and eventually declined.

scholarly journals PLAYING ON UNCLE SAM'S TEAM: AMERICAN CHILDHOODS DURING WORLD WAR I

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 677-690 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mischa Honeck
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Young People ◽  
World War I ◽  
Children And Adolescents ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Childhood And Youth ◽  
Constructions Of Childhood

If World War I has interested historians of the United States considerably less than other major wars, it is also true that children rank among the most neglected actors in the literature that exists on the topic. This essay challenges this limited understanding of the roles children and adolescents played in this transformative period by highlighting their importance in three different realms. It shows how childhood emerged as a contested resource in prewar debates over militarist versus pacifist education; examines the affective power of images of children—American as well as foreign—in U.S. wartime propaganda; and maps various social arenas in which the young engaged with the war on their own account. While constructions of childhood and youth as universally valid physical and developmental categories gained greater currency in the early twentieth century, investigations of young people in wartime reveal how much the realities of childhood and youth differed according to gender, class, race, region, and age.

Global Visions and Patriotic Sentiments: The Rise and Fall of Ecumenical Reputations, 1890–1922

2012 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 236-247
Author(s):  
Stuart Mews
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Foreign Missions ◽  
Ecumenical Movement ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Press ◽  
Modern Form

Two names stand out in the wealth of young talent which forged the networks which came together in what has come to be called the ecumenical movement, John R. Mott (1865–1955) and his contemporary Nathan Söderblom (1866–1931). For his fellow American Robert Schneider, Mott was ‘undoubtedly the most famous Protestant ecumenist of the early twentieth century’. To his fellow Swede Bengt Sundkler, Söderblom provided the spark of innovation in 1919–20 which was ‘the beginnings in embryo of what later became the ecumenical movement in its modern form’. The purpose of this paper is to consider their contributions in the period from 1890 to 1922, and the overlap and divergences of their roles in the movements contributing to ecumenical thinking and action. Amongst those disparate though sometimes overlapping strands were the concerns of foreign missions, students and peace. A subsidiary theme is that of mischief-making, sometimes out of ignorance, sometimes by design of the press.

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