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Other documents randomly have
different content
came the day of the “American Titian,” Allston, whose Biblical
pictures were greatly praised for their brilliant colouring.
Hitherto artists had gone to England to study or, indeed, sometimes
to Italy. In the second third of the century they went to Düsseldorf;
they painted American landscapes, American popular life, and
historical pictures of American heroes, all in German fashion. They
delighted in genre studies in the Düsseldorf manner, and painted the
Hudson River all bathed in German moonlight. While the popular
school was still painting the world in blackish brown, the artistic
secession began at about the time of the Civil War. Then artists
began to go to Paris and Munich, and American painting developed
more freely. It was a time of earnest, profound, and independent
study such as had so far never been. The artist learned to draw,
learned to see values, and, in the end, to be natural. The number of
artists now began to increase, and to-day Americans produce
thousands of pictures each year, and one who sees the European
exhibitions in summer and the American in winter does not feel that
the latter are on a much lower level.
Since Allston’s time the leaders in landscape have been Cole,
Bierstadt, Kensett, and Gifford; in genre, Leslie, Woodville, and
particularly Mount; in historical painting, Lentze and White; and in
portraiture, Inman and Elliott. The first who preached the new
doctrine of individuality and colour was Hunt, and in the early
seventies the new school just graduated from Paris and Munich was
bravely at work. There are many well-known names in the last thirty
years, and it is a matter rather of individual choice what pictures one
prefers of all the large number. Yet no one would omit George
Inness from the list, since he has seen American landscapes more
individually than any one else. Besides his pictures every one knows
the marines of Winslow Homer, the street scenes of Childe Hassam,
the heads of Eaton, the autumn forests of Enneking, the apple trees
in spring-time of Appleton Brown, the delicate landscapes of Weir
and Tryon, the wall pictures of Abbey, Cox, and Low, Gaugengigl’s
little figure paintings, Vedder’s ambitious symbolism, the brilliant
portraits of Cecilia Beaux and Chase, the women’s heads of Tarbell,
the ideal figures of Abbot Thayer, and the works of a hundred other
American artists, not to mention those who are really more familiar
in London, Paris, and Munich than in America itself.
Besides the oil pictures, there are excellent water-colours, pastelles,
and etchings; and, perhaps most characteristic of all, there is the
stained glass of La Farge, Lathrop, the late Mrs. Whitman, Goodhue,
and others. The workers in pen-and-ink are highly accomplished, of
whom the best known is Gibson, whose American women are not
only artistic, but have been socially influential on American ideals
and manners. His sketches for Life have been themselves models for
real life. Nor should we forget Pennell, the master of atmosphere in
pen-and-ink.
Sculpture has developed more slowly. It presupposes a higher
understanding of art than does painting; and, besides that, the
prudishness of the Puritan has affected it adversely. When John
Brazee, the first American amateur sculptor, in the early part of the
nineteenth century, asked advice of the president of the New York
Academy of Arts, he was told that he would better wait a hundred
years before practicing sculpture in America. The speech admirably
showed the general lack of interest in plastic art. But the impetuous
pressure toward self-perfection existing in the nation shortened the
century into decades; people began to journey through Italy. The
pioneers of sculpture were Greenough, Powers, Crawford, and
Palmer, and their statues are still valued for their historical interest.
The theatrical genre groups of John Rogers became very popular;
and Randolph Rogers, who created the Columbus bronze doors of
the Capitol, was really an artist. Then came Storey, Ball, Rinehart,
Hosmer, Mead, and many others with works of greater maturity.
Squares and public buildings were filled with monuments and busts
which, to be sure, were generally more interesting politically than
artistically, and which to-day wait patiently for a charitable
earthquake. And yet they show how the taste for plastic art has
slowly worked upward.
More recent movements, which are connected with the names of
Ward, Warner, Partridge, French, MacMonnies, and St. Gaudens,
have already left many beautiful examples of sculpture. Cities are
jealously watchful now that only real works of art shall be erected,
and that monuments which are to be seen by millions of people shall
be really characteristic examples of good art. More than anything
else, sculpture has at length come into a closer sympathy with
architecture than perhaps it has in any other country. The admirable
sculptural decorations of the Chicago World’s Fair, the effective
Dewey Triumphal Arch and the permanent plastic decorations of the
Congressional Library, the more restrained and distinguished
decorations of the Court of Appeals in New York City, and of many
similar buildings show clearly that American sculpture has ended its
period of immaturity. Such a work as St. Gaudens’s Shaw Memorial
in Boston is among the most beautiful examples of modern
sculpture; and it is thoroughly American, not only because the negro
regiment marches behind the mounted colonel, but because the
American subject is handled in the American spirit. These men are
depicted with striking vigour, and the young hero riding to his death
is conceived with Puritan sobriety. Vigorous and mature is the
American, in plastic art as well as in poetry.
The development of architecture has been a very different one. A
people must be housed, and cannot stay out of doors until it has
learned what is beautiful in architecture. People could wait for
poetry, music, and painting while they were busy in keeping off the
Indians and felling the forests; but they had to have houses at once.
And since at that time they had no independent interests in art, they
imitated forms with which they had been familiar, and everywhere
perpetuated the architectural ideas of their mother country. But the
builder is at a disadvantage beside the painter, the singer, and the
poet, in that when he imitates he cannot even do that as he will, but
is bound down by climate, by social requirements, and especially by
his building material. And when he is placed in new surroundings, he
is forced to strike out for himself.
Although the American colonist remained under the influence of
English architecture, his environment forced him in the first place to
build his house of wood instead of stone as in England, and in wood
he could not so easily copy the pattern. It had to be a new variation
of the older art. And so architecture, although it more slavishly
followed the mother country than any other art, was the earliest to
strike out in some respects on an independent course. It borrowed
its forms, but originated their applications; and while it slowly
adopted new ideas of style and became gradually free of European
styles, it became free even earlier in their technical application,
owing to the new American conditions. More than any other feature
of her civilization, American architecture reveals the entire history of
the people from the days when the Puritans lived in little wooden
villages to the present era of the sky-scraper of the large cities; and
in this growth more than in that of any other art the whole country
participates, and specially the West, with its tremendous energy,
which is awkward with the violin-bow and the crayon but is well
versed in piling stone on stone.
In colonial days, English renaissance architecture was imitated in
wood, a material which necessitated slender columns and called for
finer detail and more graceful lines than were possible in stone. One
sees to-day, especially in the New England States, many such
buildings quite unaltered; and the better of these in Salem,
Cambridge, and Newport are, in spite of their lightness, substantial
and distinguished as no European would think possible in so ordinary
a material as wood. Large, beautiful halls, with broad, open
staircases and broad balusters, greet the visitor; large fireplaces,
with handsomely carved chimney-pieces, high wainscotings on the
walls and beautiful beams across the ceilings. The more modest
houses show the same thing on a smaller scale. There was this one
style through the whole town, and its rules were regarded as
canonical. In certain parts of the country there were inconspicuous
traces of Spanish, French, and Dutch influence, which survive to-day
in many places, especially in the South, and contribute to the
picturesqueness of the architectural whole.
After the Revolutionary period, people wished to break with English
traditions, and the immigration from many different countries
brought a great variety of architectural stimulation. A time of general
imitation had arrived, for in architecture also the country was to
grow from the provincial to the national through a cosmopolitan
stage. At the end of the eighteenth century, architecture was chiefly
influenced by the classic Greek. Farmhouses masqueraded as big
temples, and the thoughtless application of this form became so
monotonous that it was not continued very long in private houses.
Then the Capitol at Washington was begun by Latrobe and finished
by the more competent Bulfinch, and it became the model for almost
all state capitols of the Union. Bulfinch himself designed the famous
State House of Massachusetts, but it was the Puritan spirit of Boston
which selected the austere Greek temple to typify the public spirit.
The entire century, in spite of many variations, stood under this
influence, and until recently nobody has ventured to put up a civil
structure in a freer, more picturesque style.
Many of these single state capitols built during the century, such as
the old one at Albany, are admirable; while the post-offices, custom-
houses, and other buildings dedicated to federal uses have been put
up until recently cheaply and without thought. Lately, however, the
architect has been given freer play. Meanwhile taste had wandered
from the classic era to the Middle Ages, and the English Gothic had
come to be popular. The romantic took the place of the classic, and
the buildings were made picturesque. The effect of this was most
happy on church edifices, and about the middle of the century
Richard Upjohn, “the father of American architecture,” built a
number of famous churches in the Gothic style.
But in secular edifices this spirit went wholly to architectural
lawlessness. People were too little trained to preserve a discipline of
style along with the freedom of the picturesque. And even more
unfortunate than the lack of training of the architect, who committed
improprieties because uncertain in his judgment, there was the
tastelessness of the parvenu patron, and this particularly in the
West. Then came the time of unrest and vulgar splurge, when in a
single residential street palaces from all parts of the world were
cheaply copied, and just as in Europe forgotten styles were
superficially reproduced. The Queen Anne style became fashionable;
and then native colonial and Dutch motives were revived.
This period is now long past. The last twenty-five years in the East
and the last ten years in the West have seen this tasteless, hap-
hazard, and ignorant experimenting with different styles give place
to building which is thoughtful, independent, and generally beautiful;
though, of course, much that is ugly has continued to be built.
Architecture itself has developed a careful school, and the public has
been trained by the architects. Of course, many regrettable buildings
survive from former periods, so that the general impression to-day is
often very confused; but the newer streets in the residential, as well
as the business, portions of cities and towns display the fitting
homes and office buildings of a wealthy, independent, and art-loving
people. In comparison with Europe, a negative feature may be
remarked; namely, the notable absence of rococo tendencies. It is
sometimes found in interior decorations, but never on exteriors.
The positive features which especially strike the European are the
prevalence of Romanesque and of the sky-scrapers. The round arch
of the Romans comes more immediately from southern France; but
since its introduction to America, notably by the architectural genius
Richardson, the round arch has become far more popular than in
Europe, and has given rise to a characteristic American style, which
is represented to-day in hundreds of substantial buildings all over
the country. There is something heavy, rigid, and at the same time
energetic, in these great arches resting on short massive columns, in
the great, pointed, round towers, in the heavy balconies and the low
arcades. The primitive force of America has found its artistic
expression here, and the ease with which the new style has adapted
itself to castle-like residences, banks, museums, and business
houses, and the quickness with which it has been adopted, in the
old streets of Boston as in the newer ones of Chicago and
Minneapolis, all show clearly that it is a really living style, and not
merely an architectural whim.
The Romanesque style grew from an artistic idea, while the sky-
scraper has developed through economic exigencies. New York is an
island, wherefore the stage of her great business life cannot be
extended, and every inch has had to be most advantageously
employed. It was necessary to build higher than commercial
structures have ever been carried in Europe. At first these buildings
were twenty stories high, but now they are even thirty. To rest such
colossal structures on stone walls would have necessitated making
the walls of the lower stories so thick as to take up all the most
desirable room, and stone was therefore replaced by steel. The
entire structure is simply a steel framework, lightly cased in stone.
Herewith arose quite new architectural problems. The subdivision of
the twenty-story façade was a much simpler problem than the
disposal of the interior space, where perhaps twenty elevators have
to be speeding up and down, and ten thousand men going in and
out each day. The problem has been admirably solved. The absolute
adaptation of the building to its requirements, and its execution in
the most appropriate material—namely, steel and marble—the
shaping of the rooms to the required ends, and the carrying out of
every detail in a thoroughly artistic spirit make a visit to the best
office buildings of New York an æsthetic delight. And since very
many of these are now built side of one another, they give the sky-
line of the city a strength and significance which strike every one
who is mature enough to find beauty in that to which he is not
accustomed. When the problem had once been solved, it was
natural for other industrial cities to imitate New York, and the sky-
scraper is now planted all over the West.
American architecture of to-day is happily situated, because the
population is rapidly growing, is extraordinarily wealthy, and
seriously fond of art. An architect who has to be economical, must
make beauty secondary to utility. In the western part of the country,
considerable economy is often exercised and mostly in the very
worst way. The pretentious appearance of the building is preserved,
but the construction is made cheap; the exterior is made of stucco
instead of stone, and the interior finish is not carved, but pressed.
This may not, after all, be so much for the sake of economy, as by
reason of a deficient æsthetic sense. People who would not think of
preferring a chromo-lithograph to an oil-painting do not as yet feel a
similar distinction between architectural materials. For the most part,
however, the buildings now erected are rich and substantial. The
large public and semi-public buildings, court-houses and universities,
state capitols and city halls, libraries and museums are generally
brilliant examples of architecture. The same is true of the buildings
for industrial corporation, offices, banks, hotels, life-insurance
companies, stock-exchanges, counting-houses, railway stations,
theatres and clubs, all of which, by their restrained beauty, inspire
confidence and attract the eye. These are companies with such large
capital that they never think of exercising economy on their
buildings. The architect can do quite as he likes. New York has a
dozen large hotels, each one of which is, perhaps, more splendid in
marble and other stones than any hotel in Europe; and while
Chicago, Boston, and other cities have fewer such hotels, they have
equally handsome ones.
The fabulously rapid and still relatively late growth of handsome
public buildings in the last decade is interesting from still another
point of view. It reveals a trait in the American public mind which we
have repeatedly contrasted with the thought of Europe. American
ambitions have grown out of the desire for self-perfection. The
American’s own person must be scrupulously, neatly, and carefully
dressed, his own house must be beautiful; and only when the whole
nation, as it were, has satisfied the needs of the individual can
æsthetic feeling go out to the community as a whole—from the
individual persons to the city, from the private house to the public
building. It has been exactly the opposite on the European
Continent. The ideal individual was later than the ideal community.
Splendid public buildings were first put up in Europe, while people
resided in ugly and uninviting houses.
There was a period in which the American did not mind stepping
from his daily bath, and going from his sumptuous home
immaculately attired to a railway station or court-house which was
screamingly hideous and reeking with dirt. And similarly there was a
time in which the Germans and the French moved in and out of the
wonderful architectural monuments of their past in dirty clothing,
and perhaps without having bathed for many days. In Germany the
public building has influenced the individual, and eventually worked
toward beautifying his house. In America the individual and the
private house have only very slowly spread their æsthetic ideals
through the public buildings. The final results in both countries must
be the same. There is exactly the same contrast in the ethical field;
whereas in Germany and France public morals have spread into
private life, in America individual morals have spread into public life.
As soon as the transition has commenced it proceeds rapidly.
In Germany few private houses are now built without a bathroom,
and in America few public buildings without consideration for what is
beautiful. The great change in railway stations indicates the rapidity
of the movement. Even ten years ago there were huge car-sheds in
the cities, and little huts in country districts, which so completely
lacked any pretensions to beauty that æsthetic criticism was simply
out of place. Now, on the contrary, most of the large cities have
palatial stations, of which some are among the most beautiful in the
world, and many railway companies have built attractive little
stations all along their lines. As soon as such a state of things has
come about, a reciprocal influence takes place between the
individual and the communal desire for perfection, and the æsthetic
level of the nation rises daily. So, too, the different arts stimulate
one another. The architect plans his work from year to year more
with the painter and sculptor in mind, so that the erection of new
buildings and the growth and wealth of the people benefit not
merely architecture, but the other arts as well.
Still other factors are doing their part to elevate the artistic life of the
United States. And here particularly works the improved organization
of the artistic professions. In former times, the true artist had to
prefer Europe to his native home, because in his home he found no
congenial spirits; this is now wholly changed. There is still the
complaint that the American cities are even now no Kunststädte;
and, compared with Munich or with Paris, this is still true. But New
York is no more and no less a Kunststädte than is Berlin. In all the
large cities of America the connoisseurs and patrons of art have
organized themselves in clubs, and the national organizations of
architects, painters, and sculptors, have become influential factors in
public life; and the large art schools with well-known teachers and
the studios of private masters have become great centres for artistic
endeavour. A general historical study of architecture has even been
introduced in universities, and already the erection of a national
academy of art is so actively discussed that it will probably be very
soon realized. Certainly every American artist will continue to visit
Europe, as every German artist visits Italy; but all the conditions are
now ripe in America for developing native talent on native soil.
The artistic education of the public is not less important nor far
behind the professional education of the artist. We have discussed
the general appreciation of architecture, and the same public
education is quietly going on in the art museums. Of course, the
public art galleries of America are necessarily far behind those of
Europe, since the art treasures of the world were for the most part
distributed when America began to collect. And yet it is surprising
what treasures have been secured, and in some branches of modern
painting and industrial art the American collections are not to be
surpassed. Thus the Japanese collection of pottery in Boston has
nowhere its equal, and the Metropolitan Museum in New York leads
the world in several respects. Modern German art is unfortunately ill
represented, but modern French admirably. Here is a large field open
for a proper German ambition; German art needs to be recognized
much more throughout the country. It must show that American
distrust is absolutely unjustified, that it has made greater artistic
advances than any other nation, and that German pictures are quite
worthy of a large place in the collections.
There are many extraordinary private collections which were
gathered during the cosmopolitan period that the nation has gone
through. Just as foreign architecture was imitated, so the treasures
of foreign countries in art and decoration were secured at any price;
and owing to the great wealth, the most valuable things were
bought, often without intelligent appreciation, but never without a
stimulating effect. One is often surprised to find famous European
paintings in private houses, often in remote Western cities; and the
fact that for many years Americans have been the best patrons of
art in the markets of the world, could not have been without its
results. At the height of this collecting period American art itself
probably suffered: a moderately good French picture was preferred
to a better American picture; but all these treasures have indirectly
benefited native art, and still do benefit it, so much that the better
artists of the country are much opposed to the absurd protective
tariff that is laid on foreign works of art. The Italian palace of Mrs.
Gardner in Boston contains the most superb private collection; but
just here one sees that the cosmopolitan period of collection and
imitation is, after all, merely an episode in the history of American
art. An Italian palace has no organic place in New England, although
the artistic merits of the Gardner collection are perhaps nowhere
surpassed.
The temporary exhibitions which are just now much in fashion have,
perhaps, more influence than the permanent museums. Every large
city has its annual exhibitions, and in the artistic centres, one special
collection comes after another. And the strongest general stimulation
has emanated from the great expositions. When the nation visited
Philadelphia in 1876, the American artistic sense was just waking up,
and the impetus there started was of decisive significance. It is said
that the taste for colour in household decoration and fittings, for
handsome carpets and draperies, came into the country at that time.
When Chicago built its Court of Honour in 1893, which was more
beautiful than what Paris could do seven years later, the country
became for the first time aware that American art could stand on its
own feet, and this æsthetic self-consciousness has stimulated
endeavour through the entire nation. In Chicago, for the first time,
the connection between architecture and sculpture came properly to
be appreciated; and, more than all else, the art of the whole world
was then brought into the American West, and that which previously
had been familiar only to the artistic section between Boston and
Washington was offered to the masses in Illinois, Michigan, Ohio,
and Missouri. Chicago has remained since that time one of the
centres of American architecture, and the æsthetic level of the entire
West was raised, although it is still below that of the Eastern States.
And once more, after a very short pause, St. Louis is ambitious
enough to try the bold experiment which New York and Boston, like
Berlin and Munich, have always avoided. The World’s Fair at St. Louis
will surely give new impetus to American art, and especially to the
artistic endeavour of the Western States.
If a feeling for art is really to pervade the people, the influence must
not begin when persons are old enough to visit a world’s fair, but
rather in childhood. The instruction in drawing, or rather in art, since
drawing is only one of the branches, must undertake the æsthetic
education of the youth in school. It cannot be denied that America
has more need of such æsthetic training of children than Germany.
The Anglo-Saxon love of sport leads the youth almost solely to the
bodily games which stimulate the fancy much less than the German
games of children, and other influences are also lacking to direct the
children’s emotional life in the road of æsthetic pleasure. On the
other hand, it must be admitted that the problem has been well
solved in America. The American art training in school, say on the
Prang system, which more than 20,000 teachers are using in class
instruction, is a true development of the natural sense of beauty.
The child learns to observe, learns technique, learns the value of
lines and colours, and learns, more than all, to create beauty. In
place of merely copying he divides and fills a given space
harmoniously, and so little by little goes on to make small works of
art. Generations which have enjoyed such influences must look on
their environment with new eyes, and even in the poorest
surroundings instinctively transform what they have, in the interests
of beauty.
Corresponding to these popular stimulations of the sense of beauty
is the wish to decorate the surroundings of daily life, most of all the
interior; even in more modest circles to make them bright, pleasing,
and livable, whereas they have too long been bare and meaningless.
The arts and crafts have taken great steps forward, have gotten the
services of true artists, and accomplished wonderful results. The
glittering glasses of Tiffany and many other things from his world-
famous studios are unsurpassed. There are also the wonderfully
attractive silver objects of Gorham, the clay vases of the Rockwood
Pottery, objects in cut-glass and pearl, furniture in Old English and
Colonial designs, and much else of a similar nature. And for the
artistic sense it is more significant and important that at last even
the cheap fabrics manufactured for the large masses reveal more
and more an appreciation of beauty. Even the cheap furniture and
ornaments have to-day considerable character; and no less
characteristic is the general demand, which is much greater than
that of Europe, for Oriental rugs. The extravagant display of flowers
in the large cities, the splendid parks and park-ways such as
surround Boston, the beautification of landscapes which Charles Eliot
has so admirably effected, and in social life the increasing fondness
for coloured and æsthetic symbols, such as the gay academic
costumes, the beautiful typography and book-bindings, and a
thousand other things of the same sort, indicate a fresh, vigorous,
and intense appreciation of beauty.
While such a sense for visible beauty has been developed by the
wealth and the artistic instruction of the country, one special
condition more has affected not only the fine arts but also poetry
and literature. This is the development of the national feeling, which
more than anything else has stimulated literary and artistic life. The
American feels that he has entered the exclusive circle of world
powers, and must like the best of them realize and express his own
nature. He is conscious of a mission, and the national feeling is
unified much less by a common past than by a common ideal for the
future. His national feeling is not sentimental, but aggressive; the
American knows that his goal is to become typically American. All
this gives him the courage to be individual, to have his own points of
view, and since he has now studied history and mastered technique,
this means no longer to be odd and freakish, but to be truly original
and creative. He is now for the first time thoroughly aware what a
wealth of artistic problems is offered by his own continent, by his
history, by his surroundings, and by his social conditions. And just as
American science has been most successful in developing the
history, geography, geology, zoölogy, and anthropology of the
American Continent, so now his new art and literature are looking
about for American material.
His hopes are high; he sees indications of a new art approaching
which will excite the admiration of the world. He feels that the great
writer is not far off who will express the New World in the great
American novel. Who shall say that these hopes may not be realized
to-morrow? For it is certain that he enjoys an unusual combination
of favourable conditions for developing a world force. Here are a
people thoroughly educated in the appreciation of literature and art
—a people in the hey-day of success, with their national feeling
growing, and having, by reason of their economic prosperity, the
amplest means for encouraging art; a people who find in their own
country untold treasures of artistic and literary problems, and who in
the structure of their government and customs favour talent
wherever it is found; a people who have learned much in
cosmopolitan studies and to-day have mastered every technique,
who have absorbed the temperament and ambitions of the most
diverse races and yet developed their own consistent, national
consciousness, in which indomitable will, fertile invention, Puritan
morals, and irrepressible humour form a combination that has never
before been known. The times seem ripe for something great.
 CHAPTER TWENTY
Religion

T he individualistic conception of life and the religious conceptions

of the world favour each other. The more that an individual’s
religious temperament sees this earthly life merely as a preparation
for the heavenly, the more he puts all his efforts into the
development of his individual personality. General concepts,
civilizations, and political powers cannot, as such, enter the gates of
heaven; and the perfection of the individual soul is the only thing
which makes for eternal salvation. On the other hand, the more
deeply individualism and the desire for self-perfection have taken
hold on a person, so much the deeper is his conviction that the short
shrift before death is not the whole meaning of human existence,
and that his craving for personal development hints at an existence
beyond this world. Through such individualism, it is true, religion is
in a sense narrowed; the idea of immortality is unduly emphasized.
Yet the whole life of an individualistic nation is necessarily religious.
The entire American people are in fact profoundly religious, and
have been from the day when the Pilgrim Fathers landed, down to
the present moment.
On the other hand, individualism cannot decide whether we ought to
look on God with fear or with joy, to conceive Him as revengeful or
benevolent, to think human nature sinful or good. The two most
independent American thinkers of the eighteenth century, Jonathan
Edwards and Benjamin Franklin, represent here the two extremes.
The men who have made American history and culture took in early
times the point of view of Edwards, but take to-day rather that of
Franklin.
Can it be said that America is really religious to-day? From first
impressions, a European may judge the opposite; first and most of
all, he observes that the government does not concern itself with the
church. Article VI of the Constitution expressly forbids the filling of
any office or any political position of honour in the United States
being made dependent on religion, and the first amendment adds
that Congress may never pass a law aiming to establish any official
religion or to hinder religious freedom. This provision of the
Constitution is closely followed in the Constitutions of the several
states. The government has nothing to do with the church; that is,
the church lacks the powerful support of the state which it receives
in all monarchical countries; and in fact the state interprets this
neutrality prescribed by the Constitution so rigorously that, for
example, statistics of religious adherence for the last great census
were obtained from the church organizations, because the state has
not the right to inquire into the religious faith of citizens.
Ecclesiastics pass no state examinations to show their fitness to
preach; millions of people belong to no church organization; the
lower masses are not reached by any church, and the public schools
have no religious instruction. It might thus appear as if the whole
country were as indifferent to religion as European humourists have
declared it to be, in saying that the Almighty Dollar is the American’s
only god.
On looking more closely, one finds very soon that the opposite is the
case. Although it is true that the state is not concerned with religion,
yet this provision of the Constitution in no wise signifies any wish to
encourage religious indifference. The states which united to form the
Federation were profoundly religious; both Protestants and Catholics
had come to the New World to find religious freedom, had made
great renunciations to live in their faith untroubled by the
persecutions of the Old World, and every sect of Europe had
adherents on this side of the ocean. Not a few of the states were, in
their general temperament, actually theocratic. Not only in Puritan
New England had the church all the power in her hands, but in the
colony of Virginia, the seat of the English High-Churchmen, it was
originally the law that one who remained twice away from church
was flogged, and on the third time punished with death. When
America broke away from England, almost every state had its special
and pronounced religious complexion. The majority of the population
in the separate colonies had generally forced their religion on the
whole community, and religious interests were everywhere in the
foreground.
Although, finally, Jefferson’s proposition constitutionally to separate
church and state was accepted, this move is not to be interpreted as
indifference, but rather as a wish to avoid religious conflicts. In view
of such pronounced differences as those between Puritans, Quakers,
High-Churchmen, Catholics, etc., the establishment of any church as
a state institution would have required a subordination of the other
sects which would have been felt as suppression. The separation of
the church from the state simply meant freedom for every sect.
Then, too, not all the separate states followed the federal precedent;
the New England States especially favoured, by their taxation laws,
the Calvinistic faith until the beginning of the nineteenth century;
and Massachusetts was the last to introduce complete religious
neutrality, as lately as 1833. In the Southern States, the relations
between church and state were more easily severed; and in the
Middle States, even during colonial times, there was general religious
freedom.
Whether or not the separation was rapid or slow, or whether it took
place under the passive submission, or through the active efforts of
the clergy, the churches everywhere soon became the warmest
supporter of this new condition of things. All the clergy found that in
this way the interests of religion were best preserved. The state
does nothing to-day for the churches except by way of laws in single
states against blasphemy and the disturbance of religious worship,
and by the recognition, but not the requirement, of church marriage.
There are also remnants of the connection in the recognized duty of
the President to appoint the annual day of Thanksgiving, and in
cases of signal danger to appoint days of fasting and prayer, and one
more remnant in the fact that the legislatures are opened by daily
prayer. Otherwise, the state and church move in separate
dimensions of space, as it were, and there is no attempt to change
this condition.
It was, therefore, no case of an orthodox minority being forced to
content itself with an unchurchly state; but neither party nor sect
nor state had the slightest wish to see church and state united. The
appreciation of this mutual independence is so great that public
opinion turns at once against any church which tries to exert a
political influence, whether by supporting a certain political body in
local elections or by trying to obtain public moneys for its
educational institutions and hospitals. When, for instance, the
principal anti-Catholic organization, the so-called American Protective
Association, became regrettably wide-spread, it got its strength, not
from any Protestant ecclesiastical opposition, but only from the
political antipathy against that church which seemed the most
inclined to introduce such un-American side influences in party
politics. Every one felt that a great American principle was there at
stake.
Thus the legal status of the churches is that of a large private
corporation, and nobody is required to connect himself with any
church. Special ecclesiastical legislation is, therefore, superfluous;
every church may organize, appoint officers, and regulate its
property matters and disciplinary questions as it likes, and any
disputed points are settled by civil law, as in the case of all
corporations. Just as with business companies, a certain sort of
collective responsibility is required; but the competition between
churches, as between industrial corporations, is unhampered, and
the relation of the individual to his church is that of ordinary
contract. One hundred and forty-eight different sects appeal to-day
for public favour. To the European this sounds at first like
secularization, like a lowering of the church to the level of a stock
company—like profanation. And still no Catholic bishop nor Orthodox
minister would wish it different. Now how does this come about?
In the first place individualism has even here victoriously carried
through its desire for self-determination. Nobody is bound to belong
to any congregation, and one who belongs is therefore willing to
submit himself to its organization, to subscribe to its by-laws, and to
support its expenditures. Nobody pays public taxes for any church,
nor is under ecclesiastical authority which he does not freely
recognize. The church is, therefore, essentially relieved of any
suspicion of interfering with individual freedom. The individual
himself is for the same reason not only free to adopt or to reject
religion, but also to express his personal views in any form or creed
whatsoever. Only where the church exercises no authority on
thought or conscience can it be supported by the spirit of self-
determination. Thus, the Mennonite Church has already developed
twelve sects, the Baptist thirteen, the Methodist seventeen, and all
of these are equally countenanced. At the same time the reproach
can never be made that the church owes its success to the
assistance of the state: what it does is by its own might; and so its
success is thoroughly intrinsic and genuine, its zeal is quickened, and
its whole activities kept apart from the world of political strife and
directed toward ideals.
The church which is not supported by any written laws of the state is
not, for that reason, dependent alone on the religious ideals of its
adherents, but also on the unwritten law of the social community.
The less the authority of the state, the more the society as a whole
realizes its duties; and while society remains indifferent as long as
religion is enforced by external means, it becomes energetic as soon
as it feels itself responsible for the general religious situation. The
church has had no greater fortune than in having religion made
independent of the state and made the affair of society at large.
Here an obligation could be developed, which is perhaps more firm
and energetic than that of the state, but which is nevertheless not
felt as an interference, firstly, because the political individual is
untouched, and secondly, because the allegiance to a certain social
class is not predetermined, but becomes the goal and the
honourable achievement of the individual. Of course, even the social
obligation would not have developed had there not been a deep
religious consciousness living in the people; but such individual piety
has been able to take much deeper root in a soil socially so
favourable. A religiously inclined population, which has made
churchliness a social and not a political obligation, affords the
American church the most favourable condition for its success that
could be imagined.
One may see even from the grouping of sects, how much the church
is supported by society. If anywhere democracy seems natural, it
should be in the eyes of God; and yet, if Americans show anywhere
social demarcations, it is in the province of religion. This is true, not
only of different churches where the expense of membership is so
unequal that in large cities rich and poor are farther apart on
Sundays than on week-days, but it is true of the sects themselves.
Methodists and Episcopalians or Baptists and Unitarians form in
general utterly different social groups, and one of these sects is
socially predominant in one section of the country, another in
another. But just because religious differences are so closely related
to the differences existing in the social world, the relations between
the sects are thoroughly friendly. Each has its natural sphere.
It is certain that the large number of sects are helpful in this
direction, since they make the distinction between related faiths
extremely small, sometimes even unintelligible to all except the
theological epicure; and, indeed, they often rest on purely local or
ancestral distinctions. Thus the German Reformed and the Dutch
Reformed churches are called two sects, and even the African
Methodist Episcopalians and the Coloured Methodist Episcopalians
wish to be distinguished from each other as from the other negro
sects. Where large parties oppose each other, a war for principles
can break out; but where the religions merge into one another
through many small gradations, the consciousness of difference is
less likely to be joined to any feeling of opposition. The real
opponent of churches is the common enemy, the atheist, although
the more straitlaced congregations are not quite sure that the
Unitarians, who are most nearly comparable to members of the
German Protestantenverein, are not best classed with the atheists.
And, lastly, envy and jealousy do not belong to the American
optimistic temperament, which does not grudge another his success.
Thus everything works together to make the churches get on
peacefully with one another. The religion of the country stretches
from one end to the other, like a brilliant and many-hued rainbow.
The commingling of church and society is shown everywhere. The
church is popular, religious worship is observed in the home, the
minister is esteemed, divine worship is well attended, the work of
the church is generously supported, and the cause of religion is
favoured by the social community. These outlines may now be filled
in by a few details. The American grows up with a knowledge of the
Bible. The church, Sabbath-school, and the home influences work
together; a true piety rules in every farm-house, and whosoever
supposes this to be in anywise hypocrisy has no notion of the actual
conditions. In many city homes of artisans the occupants do not
know the Bible and do not wish to know it; but they are in nowise
hypocritical, and in the country at large religion is so firmly rooted
that people are much more likely to make sham pretences of general
enlightenment than of religious belief. Thus, it is mostly a matter of
course that festivals, banquets, and other meetings which in
Germany would not call for any religious demonstration whatsoever,
are opened and closed by prayer. Religious discussions are carried
on with animation in every class of society, and one who travels
about through the country finds that business and religion are the
two great topics of conversation, while after them come politics. It is
only among individuals who are so religiously disposed, that such
vagaries of the supernatural consciousness, as spiritualism, healing
by prayer, etc., could excite so much interest. But also normal
religious questions interest an incomparably large circle of people;
nine hundred ecclesiastical newspapers and magazines are regularly
published and circulated by the millions.
We have said, furthermore, that divine service is well attended, and
that clergymen are highly esteemed. In the non-political life,
especially in the East, the great preachers are among the most
influential people of the day. The most brilliant ecclesiastic of recent
decades was, by common consent, Phillips Brooks, by whose speech
and personality every one was attracted and ennobled; and it has
often been said that at his death, a few years ago, the country
mourned as never before since the death of Lincoln. No one equal to
him has appeared since, but there are many ministers whose ethical
influence must be accounted among the great factors of public life;
and this is true, not only of the Protestant ministers, but also of
several Catholic ecclesiastics.
The same is true in the more modest communities. The influence of
the preacher is more profound in small communities of America than
it is in Germany. But it is weakened at once if the representative of
the church descends to politics. He is welcomed as an appropriate
fellow-worker only in questions that border both on politics and on
morals—as, for instance, the temperance question. The high position
of the clergy is interestingly shown from the fact that the profession
is very often recruited from the best classes of society. Owing to the
American effort to obliterate social differentiation as much as
possible, it is difficult to make sure of the facts of the situation; but
it seems pretty certain that the men who study for the ministry,
especially in the Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Congregational, and
Unitarian churches, are better born than the men who become
school teachers and physicians.
The preacher steps into the pulpit and faces his hearers in a way
which is typically American. Of course, it is impossible to reduce the
ministerial bearing in the 194,000 churches of the country to a single
formula; but one thing may always be noted, by the European, in
contrast to what he has seen at home—the obvious reference of the
sermon to the worldly interests of the congregation. Its outer form
already shows this; the similes and metaphors are borrowed from
ordinary and even vulgar life, the applications are often trivial, but
forcible and striking, and even anecdotes are introduced and given
in colloquial form. More than that, the topic itself is chosen so as to
concern personally nearly every one sitting in the pews; the latest
vexation or disappointment, the cherished hope, or the duty lying
nearest to the individual forms the starting-point of the sermon, and
the words of the Bible are brought home to the needs of the hearers
like an expected guest. The preacher does not try to lure the soul
away from daily life, but he tries to bring something higher into that
life and there to make it living; and if he is the right sort of a
preacher, this never works as a cheapening of what is divine, but as
an exaltation of what is human.
Doubtless it is just on this account that the church is so popular and
the services so well attended. To be sure, frequently the minister is a
sensational pulpit elocutionist, who exploits the latest scandal or the
newest question of the day in order to interest the public and attract
the curious to church. Often the worldly quality of the sermon tends
to another form of depreciation. The sermon becomes a lecture in
general culture, a scientific dissertation, or an educational exercise.
Of course, the abandonment of the strictly religious form of sermon
brings many temptations to all except the best preachers; yet, in
general, the American sermon is unusually powerful.
The popularity of the church does not depend only on the
applicability of the sermon, but in part on social factors which are
not nearly so strong in any part of Europe. If the congregation
desires to bring the general public to church, it will gain its end most
surely by offering attractions of a religiously indifferent nature.
These attractions may indirectly assist the moral work of the church,
although their immediate motive is to stimulate church-going. The
man who goes to church merely in order to hear the excellent music
has necessarily to listen to the sermon; and one who joins the
church for the sake of its secular advantages is at least in that way
detained from the frivolous enjoyments of irreligious circles. Thus,
the church has gradually become a social centre with functions
which are as unknown in Germany as the “parlours” which belong to
every church in America. The means of social attraction must
naturally be adapted to the character of the congregation; the
picnics which are popular in the small towns, with their raffles and
social games, their lemonade and cake, would not be appropriate to
the wealthy churches on Fifth Avenue. In the large cities, æsthetic
attractions must be substituted—splendid windows, soft carpets, fine
music, elegant costumes, and fashionable bazars for charity’s sake.
But the social enjoyment consists not solely in what goes on within
the walls of the church, but specially in the small cities and rural
districts the church is the mediator of almost all social intercourse. A
person who moves to a new part of the town or to an entirely new
village, allies himself to some congregation if he is of the middle
classes, in order to form social connections; and this is the more
natural since, in the religious as in the social life of America, the
women are the most active part of the family. Even the Young Men’s
Christian Associations and similar social organizations under church
auspices play an important rôle utterly unlike anything in Europe. In
Germany such organizations are popularly accounted flabby, and
their very name has a stale flavour. In America they are the centres
of social activity, even in large cities, and have an extraordinary
influence on the hundreds of thousands of members who meet
together in the splendid club buildings, and who are as much
interested in sport and education as in religion.
How fully the church dominates social life may be seen in the
prevalent custom of church weddings. The state does not make a
civil wedding obligatory. As soon as the local civil board has officially
licensed the married couple, the wedding may legally be performed
either by a civil officer or by a minister; yet it is a matter of course
with the great majority of the population that the rings shall be
exchanged before the altar. An avowed atheist is not received in any
social circles above that of the ordinary saloon, and while a politician
need not fear that his particular religion will prevent his being
supported by the members of other churches, he has no prospects
for election to any office if he should be found an actual materialist.
When Ingersoll, who was the great confessed atheist of the country,
travelled from city to city for many years preaching somewhat
grotesquely and with the looseness of a political agitator, the
arguments of David Friedrich Strauss, in return for an admission
price, he found everywhere large audiences for his striking oratory,
but very few believers among all the curious listeners.
The man who is convinced that this mechanical interaction of
material forces is the whole reality of the world, and who therefore
in his soul recognizes no connection between his will and a moral or
spiritual power—in short, the man who does not believe something,
no matter whether he has learned it from the church or from
philosophy—is regarded by the typical American as a curious sort of
person and of an inferior type; the American does not quite
understand what such a man means by his life. By picturing to one’s
self the history of America as the history of a people descended from
those who have been religiously persecuted, and who have made a
home for such as are persecuted, ever since the days when the
“Mayflower” landed with the Puritans down to these days when the
Jews are flocking over the ocean from Russia and the Armenians
from Turkey, and by picturing how this people have had to open up
and master the country by hard fighting and hard work, and how
they were therefore constrained to a rigid sense of duty, a serious
conception of life, and an existence almost devoid of pleasure, and
how now all historical and social traditions and all educational
influences strengthen the belief in God and the striving for the soul’s
salvation—one sees that it cannot be otherwise, and that the moral
certainty of the nation cannot be shaken by so-called arguments.
It is true, of course, that one hears on all sides complaints against
the increasing ungodliness; and it is not to be denied that the
proletariat of the large cities is for the most part outside of the
church. The population which owns no church allegiance is
estimated at five millions, but among these there is a relatively large
fraction of indifferent persons, who are too lazy to go to church; a
free-thinking animosity to religion is uncommon. The American who
feels that his church no longer corresponds to his own belief has an
ample opportunity to choose among all the many sects one which is
just adapted to himself. He will leave his own church in order to join
some other straightway; but even if he leaves church attendance in
future to his wife and daughters, or if he with his whole family
leaves the congregation, this generally means that he can serve God
without a minister. Real irreligion does not fit his character; and any
doubt which science may perhaps occasion in him ends, not by
shaking his religion, but by making it more liberal. This process of
increasing freedom from dogma and of intellectualization of the
church goes on steadily in the upper classes of society. The
development of the Unitarian Church out of Orthodox Calvinism has
been most influential on the intellectual life of the nation, but its
fundamental religious tone has not been lessened thereby.
To be churchly means not only to comply with the ordinances of the
church, but to contribute to the funds of the church and to give
one’s labour. And since the state does not impose any taxes in the
interests of the church, material support is wholly dependent on the
good will of the community. In fact, lay activity is everywhere
helpful. Of this the Sunday-schools are typical, which are visited by
eight million children, and supported everywhere by the willing
labour of unpaid teachers. The known property belonging to
churches is estimated at seven hundred million dollars, and the
rental of seats brings them handsome incomes. More than this, all
church property is exempt from taxation.
Nevertheless, so many ecclesiastical needs remain unsatisfied that a
great deal of money has to be raised by mite-boxes, official
subscriptions, and bequests, in order for the churches to meet their
expenses; and they seldom beg in vain. Members of the
congregations carry on their shoulders the missions among the
irreligious population in large cities and the heathen of foreign lands,
the expense of church buildings, and of schools and hospitals
belonging to the sect, and the salaries of ministers. The theological
faculties are likewise church institutions, whether they are formally
connected with universities or not. There are to-day 154 such
seminaries, and this number has for some time remained almost
unchanged. In 1870 there were only 80, but there were 142 in 1880,
and 145 in 1890. It appears from the statistics that, of the present
154, only 21 have more than a hundred students, while twelve have
less than ten students. The total number of students was 8,009, and
of teachers 994. The property of these theological seminaries
amounts to thirty-four million dollars, and more than a million was
given them during the last year.
The pedagogical function of the church is not limited to the Sunday-
school for children and the seminaries for ministers; but in these two
branches it has a monopoly, while in all other fields, from the
elementary school to the university, it competes with secular
institutions, or more exactly, it complements their work. We have
already shown how important a rôle private initiative plays in the
educational life of the United States, and it is only natural that such
private institutions should be welcomed by a part of the public when
they bear the sanction of one or another religious faith. There are
grammar schools, high schools, colleges, and universities of the
most diverse sects to meet this need; and their relation to religion
itself is equally diverse, and ranges from a very close to a very loose
one. Boston College, for instance, is an excellent Catholic institution
consisting of a high school and college under the instruction of
Jesuits, in which the education is at every moment strongly
sectarian. The university of Chicago, on the other hand, is nominally
a Baptist institution: yet nobody asks whether a professor who is to
be appointed is a Baptist; no student is conscious of its Baptist
character, and no lectures give any indication thereof. Its Baptist
quality is limited to the statute that the president of the university
and two-thirds of the board of overseers must be Baptists, as was
the founder of the institution.
While among the larger universities, Harvard, Columbia, Johns
Hopkins, Princeton, Cornell, and all state universities, are officially
independent of any sect, Yale is, for instance, said to be
Congregational, although neither teachers nor students trouble
themselves with the question. The smaller colleges have a much
more truly sectarian character; and there is no doubt that this is
approved by large circles, especially in the Middle and Western
States. The sectarian colleges outnumber the non-sectarian; and, to
take a random example, we may note that in the state of Michigan
the State University at Ann Arbor is independent of sect, while
Adrian College is Methodist, Albion College Episcopalian, Alma
College Presbyterian, Detroit College Catholic, Hilledale College
Baptist, Hope College Reformed, and Olivet College is
Congregational. This inclination, especially noticeable in country
districts, to a religious education however so slightly coloured, shows
how deeply religion pervades the whole people.
To follow the separate religions and their diverse religious offshoots
cannot be our purpose; we must be content with a few superficial
outlines. There is no really new religious thought to record; an
American religion has, so far, not appeared. The history of the
church in the New World has only to report how European religions
have grown under new conditions. The apparently new associations
are only unimportant variations. Some enthusiasts have appeared
from time to time to preach a new religion with original distortions of
the moral or social sense, but they have expressed no moral
yearning of the time, and have remained without any deep
influence. This rests in good part on the conservative nature of
Americans. They snatch enthusiastically at the newest improvements
and the most modern reform, but it must be a reform and not a
revolution. The historical continuity must be preserved. The
Mormons, the Spiritualists, and the adherents of Christian Science
might, with some propriety, be called pure American sects; but
although all three of these excite much public curiosity, they have no
importance among those religions which are making the civilization
of the present moment.
The religions of the United States which have the most
communicants are the Methodist, Baptist, and Roman Catholic. The
religions, however, which have had the most important influence on
culture are the Congregational, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and
Unitarian. Besides these, there are the Lutheran, the Reformed, and
the Jewish churches; all the other denominations are small and
uninfluential. The churches which we have named can be more or
less distinguished by their locality, although they are represented in
almost every state. The Congregationalists and Unitarians are
specially numerous in the New England States, the Episcopalians and
Presbyterians in New York and Pennsylvania, while the Methodists
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