By Dan O'Sullivan
Earthquakes in Haiti and Nepal. Civil war and hunger in South
Sudan. The mass exodus of Syrian refugees. Recent crises like these
have inspired huge humanitarian responses from around the world.
While such efforts are seemingly benevolent, they do raise some
thought-provoking questions. What are the religious, political and
economic motivations behind international relief campaigns? And what
troubling assumptions about the "less fortunate" sometimes lie just
beneath the surface?
These and a host of related issues came to light at the turn of the
20th century, a period in which many U.S.-based charities began
engaging in international outreach. At the center of it all was the
Christian Herald, the world's most prominent religious newspaper
from 1890 to 1910.
Heather Curtis, an associate professor in the Department of
Religion, tackles the Herald's far-reaching impact and complex
legacy in her new book,
Holy Humanitarians: American Evangelicals and Global Aid.
"I decided to use the Herald to tell a much larger story about
evangelical, global humanitarianism as well as domestic charity,"
she said. "In its heyday, the Herald was sending money to
missionaries all over the world and throughout the United States.
They supported schools for freed slaves in the South that were
founded by African American ministers. My book offers a window into
this large and unruly area of charity at home and abroad."
'I Wonder What That Is'
In researching her first book,
Faith in the Great Physician:
Suffering and Divine Healing in American Culture, 1860-1900 (2007),
Curtis read about U.S. missionaries who traveled to famine-stricken
India in the late 19th century.
Their stories stuck with her. Several years later, while reviewing
papers at Yale University's Day Missions Library, she came across a
reference to a Chinese orphanage that had been founded in the early
1900s.
"This orphanage had connections to something called the Christian
Herald, and I thought, 'I wonder what that is,'" she recalled. "I
did a little poking around and stumbled across the organization I
ultimately wrote about, the Christian Herald Association."
Still active today, the Christian Herald Association operates The
Bowery Mission and several related charities that serve homeless,
hungry and poor New Yorkers. Curtis contacted the Association in the
hopes of learning more about the orphanage in China. She was invited
to visit the headquarters, where she discovered a full run of Herald
newspapers dating back to the late 1870s.
After the Herald was purchased by evangelical
philanthropist/entrepreneur Louis Klopsch in 1890, it became a vocal
advocate for alleviating poverty and suffering domestically and
internationally. By the time of Klopsch's death in 1910, the
newspaper had moved American Protestants to contribute millions of
dollars to faith-based relief efforts.
A Compelling Pair
Klopsch was a prodigal youth who ended up in prison, where he had a
religious conversion. Following his release, he entered the
publishing world and was responsible for a number of technical
innovations in the industry. His partner at the Herald was the
Reverend Thomas de Witt Talmage, perhaps the best-known minister of
his day.
Curtis said that categorizing Klopsch and Talmage as heroes or
villains would be far too simplistic.
"They did tremendous good, but whether intentionally or not, their
charities at times carried unintended consequences," she noted.
"Ultimately, I wanted to ask what we can learn about their efforts
to try to do good, and how that might encourage us to reflect on how
our own efforts to help others are motivated by business
calculations, personal ambitions, religious convictions, moral
concerns and more."
Accordingly, Curtis believes her book has relevant lessons for
today's world. "I've always wanted my historical work to stimulate
conversations about contemporary ethical problems and help shed
light on how we got here," she said. "What can we learn from the
debates that an earlier generation had about charity?"