Holy Humanitarians: American Evangelicals and Global Aid

Holy Humanitarians

AMERICAN EVANGELICALS AND GLOBAL AID

Heather D. Curtis

Cambridge, Massachusetts • London, England   2018

Copyright © 2018 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Jacket design: Annamarie McMahon Why

978-0-674-73736-5 (alk. paper)

978-0-674-98588-9 (EPUB)

978-0-674-98589-6 (MOBI)

978-0-674-98590-2 (PDF)

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Names: Curtis, Heather D., author.

Title: Holy humanitarians : American evangelicals and global aid / Heather D. Curtis.

Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017042044 | ISBN 9780674737365 (alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Christian Herald (Firm) | Christian herald. | Humanitarian assistance, American—History—20th century. | Evangelicalism—United States—History—20th century. | Christianity in mass media—History—20th century.

Classification: LCC BR525 .C86 2018 | DDC 361.7 / 50973—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017042044

For David D. Hall

teacher, mentor, friend, fellow pilgrim

and for my parents

CONTENTS

Introduction

1   A Religious Paper Thoroughly Humanitarian

2   Cosmopolitan Compassion

3   We Are Fighting for Philanthropy

4   Almoner of the World

5   The Limits of Evangelical Benevolence

6   To Safeguard Christian America

7   A Shifting Landscape

Epilogue

Abbreviations

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

INTRODUCTION

On a steamy summer day in July 1866, fourteen-year-old Louis Klopsch stood in the middle of the Beaver Street cigar shop in Lower Manhattan, his body covered with blood and drenched in sweat. Just after he had opened the store for business, an excited Klopsch told his employer, four men had tried to steal a large quantity of cigars. Not the kind of chap to let such a proceeding go on without a protest, the boy attacked the would-be robbers with a piece of broken glass, and a desperate fight ensued. Eventually, he succeeded in driving the thieves out. Although the store was a mess, Klopsch was unharmed, and his grateful employer offered him the handsome sum of twenty-five dollars as a reward for his heroism.¹

Several days later, the burglars were back—this time in greater force. Undaunted, the courageous Klopsch grabbed a crowbar and beat the six intruders until he had broken the skulls of two men and chased them all off. Now the shopkeeper became alarmed—perhaps these criminals intended personal violence against him. He called the police. When the investigators searched the premises, they discovered a suspicious sac containing traces of blood hidden in the water closet. Putting this piece of evidence together with their doubts about Klopsch’s story, the police questioned the boy again. Realizing that he had been caught, the young man confessed to having gone to a butcher’s shop, filled a bladder with blood, and, returning to the store, scattered it about the floor and walls.²

The tales of the attempted robberies were entirely false. Klopsch was arrested on a charge of malicious mischief and after a brief incarceration was released into the care of his physician father, who blamed his son’s exploits on drinking too much strong coffee and reading newspapers that filled his mind with imaginings. He thinks to be something large, the elder Klopsch lamented, like the characters he encountered in the liar books that an irresponsible aunt had given him to read.³

Despite his prodigal adolescence, which included several more run-ins with the law culminating in a two-year term in Sing Sing State Prison for forgery and insurance fraud, Louis Klopsch did become something large.⁴ By the time of his death in 1910, Klopsch was hailed as one of the historic figures in the annals of civilization; a friend of all humanity whose genius in the organization of benevolences made him the greatest inspirational force in the Christian homes of America and a blessing to mankind. As a pioneer in pictorial journalism and proprietor of the New York–based weekly newspaper the Christian Herald from 1890 onward, Klopsch took advantage of new printing and photographic technologies to publicize humanitarian crises at home and abroad. By deftly combining vivid images and graphic narratives of suffering near and far with appeals to biblical injunctions about almsgiving and to deep-seated millennial expectations about the United States’ role as a redeemer nation, Klopsch induced readers to open their hearts … hands … purses … and granaries to feed the hungry, to send or carry aid to the sick, and to spread the Gospel message everywhere.⁵

With Klopsch at the helm, the Christian Herald became the most widely read religious newspaper in the world and a chosen channel of individual and collective benevolence for the Lord’s people of all denominations, raising millions of dollars for the suffering and needy of every land through a relentless succession of relief campaigns. For his work as an almoner of nations in distress, Klopsch was awarded the Kaisar-i-Hind Medal of the first class by King Edward of England in 1904 and was decorated in 1907 by Emperor Meiji of Japan with the Order of the Rising Sun. His biographer called Klopsch’s life story a Romance of a Modern Knight of Mercy and predicted it would inspire future generations of good Samaritans: The voice that is silent yet speaks as with a thousand tongues through the good works that go on.⁶

AN ALTERNATIVE ACCOUNT OF AMERICAN HUMANITARIANISM

A century after Klopsch’s admirers prophesied that he started some streams of work and influence that will flow on and on forever, I stood in the middle of the Bowery Mission on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, my body covered with city grime and drenched in sweat. It was a steamy summer day in July 2011, and I was helping serve dinner to two hundred or so homeless New Yorkers participating in the Mission’s residential recovery programs. With my hair tucked in a net and my plastic-covered hands struggling to hold the slippery utensils sliding between my perspiring fingers, I clumsily dished up mashed potatoes, baked chicken, and green beans for the hungry women and men who came through the line. Most were patient with my fumbling, and a few came back for seconds. After all had been served, I followed the crowd from the dining hall into the chapel, where the nightly worship service was about to begin. Settling myself into a pew toward the back of the building while the praise band started to play, I looked up. Prominently placed above the pulpit hung a plaque commemorating Louis Klopsch’s role as president and patron of the Bowery Mission from April 1895 until his death in 1910: IN LOVING TRIBUTE TO LOUIS KLOPSCH … A TRUE SERVANT OF GOD AND HUMANITY. HIS WORKS DO FOLLOW HIM.⁷

From the time of Klopsch’s passing to the present, the Bowery Mission’s ministry to homeless and hungry New Yorkers has provided men, women, and children caught in the cycles of poverty, hopelessness and dependencies of many kinds, with free meals three times a day, as well as shelter, clothing, and medical care. Klopsch’s legacy lives on in this faith-based organization, which strives to see lives transformed to hope, joy, lasting productivity and eternal life through the power of Jesus Christ. Although Mission staff consistently refer to Jesus and his teachings as part of their work, they offer services to anyone in need, regardless of recipients’ beliefs, and they accept volunteer help and donations from people of all different faiths, or no faith at all. Through their expansive outreach programs, the Bowery Mission’s leaders have made their enterprise one of the most well-known charitable ventures in and beyond New York City and built a broad base of financial support from individual donors, philanthropic foundations, corporate sponsors, and several government agencies.⁸

Although the Bowery Mission has become a prominent fixture on the nonprofit landscape, the origins of this renowned organization and its connections to a much larger history of humanitarianism remain relatively unknown. Despite his extraordinary contributions to the fields of domestic charity and foreign aid, Louis Klopsch has been mostly overlooked by scholars and subsequent generations of philanthropists. Several studies do mention the Christian Herald’s involvement in international disaster assistance campaigns at the turn of the twentieth century, but few historians have recognized the newspaper as a major force in shaping the humanitarian sentiments and habits of the American public during a period of increasing globalization and U.S. expansionism.⁹

In part, this omission results from the fact that the relief and development work of rival aid agencies such as the American Red Cross (ARC) and large philanthropic institutions like the Rockefeller Foundation eventually overshadowed the Christian Herald’s endeavors. The vast archives of these competing organizations and their leading lights—celebrated figures such as Clara Barton, Frederick Taylor Gates, and John D. Rockefeller—have provided scholars with abundant materials for charting their participation in the development of American humanitarianism.¹⁰ Meanwhile, other than copies of the newspaper itself, some laudatory biographies of Klopsch and his associates, and a few accounts scattered in government documents or other periodicals, records of the Christian Herald’s remarkably effective efforts to engage American Protestants in massive international relief campaigns and a wide array of domestic charities have not survived.

This paucity of sources makes chronicling the Christian Herald’s seminal role in the expansion of American benevolence challenging. Recovering this history, however, provides a corrective to scholarly narratives that stress the increasing secularization of philanthropy during the Progressive Era. According to many studies, the rising influence of scientific authority and emphasis on professional expertise resulted in the decline of traditional modes of religious charity around the turn of the twentieth century. Some historians have argued that with the establishment of corporate foundations, the growth of the welfare state, and the development of the humanitarian aid industry in subsequent decades, alleviating suffering became the province of wealthy donors, government officials, and trained social workers rather than the responsibility of local congregations, benevolent organizations, or Christian missionaries. Other scholars point to the United States’ becoming more religiously heterogeneous, allowing secular relief and development agencies to gain an advantage over sectarian charities and eventually to dominate the fields of domestic philanthropy and foreign aid.¹¹

By telling the forgotten story of the Bowery Mission’s benefactor and his efforts to assuage affliction both at home and abroad, this book offers an alternative account of American humanitarianism. Examining the benevolent enterprises of Louis Klopsch and his colleagues illumines the unfamiliar but fascinating figures who fostered a tremendously popular faith-based movement with an enduring influence on the practice of philanthropy. Although the Christian Herald’s relief campaigns may have been eclipsed by enormous charitable foundations, professionalized social work, and state-sponsored aid programs, the newspaper’s grassroots, volunteer, and unapologetically evangelical approach to relieving suffering has remained compelling for a considerable portion of the American population to the present day.

Studying the role of popular religious media in shaping the development of humanitarianism highlights how and why ordinary people have engaged in efforts to aid the afflicted. Because so many scholars have focused on the work of corporate charities or government agencies in providing assistance for those in need, histories of American philanthropy have typically emphasized the contributions of business tycoons, social elites, and political officials in founding prominent institutions—leaders such as Andrew Carnegie with his various foundations for the advancement of education, Jane Addams with her settlement work at Hull House, and Herbert Hoover with his missions to aid starving Europeans after World War I through the American Relief Administration. Some accounts have analyzed the intellectual influences of social gospel theorists such as Walter Rauschenbusch or economic philosophers like Richard Ely. This book brings into view a different cast of characters. Tracing Louis Klopsch’s transformation from duplicitous convict to captain of philanthropy and proprietor of the world’s premier religious newspaper shows how an entrepreneurial publisher, his enterprising partners, and a diverse community of readers from all across the United States and every walk of life participated in the making of humanitarianism during a transitional period in American history.¹²

As the account of Klopsch’s youthful escapades suggests, his spectacular success in arousing sympathy for the poor, the downtrodden, and the distressed is anything but a straightforward saga of heroic self-sacrifice for the sake of suffering others. Like many tales of benevolent campaigns on behalf of those less fortunate, this history exposes how instances of exceptional generosity have been bound up with personal self-interest and broader political agendas; how charitable engagement has been shaped by a mix of sincere religious convictions, shrewd business calculations, and complex cultural presumptions; how even the best intentions often produce tragic outcomes; and how the practice of philanthropy has always involved the exercise of privilege, prejudice, and power.¹³

A VEHICLE OF EVANGELICAL BENEVOLENCE

Klopsch’s journey from ignominy to global influence began in earnest after his release from prison in 1877, when he returned to Manhattan and began to seek new outlets for his very active brain in the printing and publishing business. In the following years, he found a solid footing in the industry.¹⁴ By the summer of 1884, he was back at Sing Sing—this time as a convert to evangelical Christianity and a leader of the children’s assemblies at the Methodist camp meeting that gathered in a grove not far from the penitentiary. Putting his lively imagination to work, Klopsch proved very popular with the young people, who delighted to hear him tell his interesting stories.¹⁵

Through his evangelical activities, Klopsch came into contact with the philanthropic labors of the Reverend Stephen Merritt, pastor of the Jane Street Methodist Church in New York City. In 1886, Klopsch married Merritt’s daughter, Mary—a sympathetic partner who shared his enjoyment of children (they had four) and supported his growing enthusiasm for combining religious journalism with Christian charity. Around this time, Klopsch also formed a partnership with the well-known preacher Thomas De Witt Talmage, editor of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Sunday Magazine and pastor of the undenominational Brooklyn Tabernacle—the largest church in the United States, with a seating capacity of five thousand, an even more extensive membership, and a national reputation.¹⁶

Like Klopsch, Talmage exhibited a proclivity for sensationalism that got him in trouble with authorities. Back in 1879, while Klopsch was trying to establish himself as a respectable businessman, Talmage was put on trial by fellow clergyman who accused him of dishonesty, deception, and improper methods of preaching which tend to bring religion into contempt. Undaunted, Talmage defended himself with aplomb. When I am called a sensationalist, I take it as a compliment, he declared. God helping me, I will make it more true. When Klopsch, who also did not object to being called sensational, came into contact with Talmage during the 1880s, he recognized a kindred spirit. The two men struck up a warm friendship and eventually became close collaborators in a campaign to expand how American Christians imagined humanity and extended charity to the afflicted in the United States and around the world.¹⁷

During a trip to Europe and the Holy Land in 1899, Klopsch and Talmage solidified plans to purchase and produce the American edition of the Christian Herald—a popular British weekly newspaper founded in 1876 by the Reverend Michael Baxter, a preacher and philanthropist with many connections to the transatlantic evangelical community. In 1878, Baxter had sent an agent to the United States to begin publication of a New York version of the periodical. By the time Talmage and Klopsch approached Baxter about acquiring the Christian Herald, the American paper had achieved a respectable circulation of approximately thirty thousand. It had much in it of value, the partners believed, but if it could be dedicated more especially to readers of the United States, its usefulness would become greater. When they returned to New York in early 1890 after successfully negotiating with Baxter, Klopsch and Talmage embarked on their new venture with verve.¹⁸

Thomas De Witt Talmage and Louis Klopsch. From the Christian Herald, December 4, 1895, 811. Courtesy of the Christian Herald Association, New York.

From the outset, Klopsch and Talmage had two leading purposes in view for their project. First, they strove to make the Christian Herald the most successful religious paper in the world by creating a cohesive community of readers bound together by broad evangelical sentiment. Second, they planned to accomplish "many good works through the agency of the Christian Herald, with the hope that their publication would become a medium of American bounty to the needy" around the globe. Within several years, the partners made impressive progress toward these interrelated goals. Circulation increased exponentially during the first decade of their leadership. By the turn of the twentieth century, the newspaper had almost a quarter million subscribers—nearly double the amount of its closest competitor among religious periodicals (the Sunday School Times had approximately 140,000). It was on par with or well in excess of other literary and illustrated weeklies, including Collier’s (circulation 263,131), Leslie’s Illustrated (70,300), and Harper’s (whose subscription base totaled somewhere between 40,000 and 75,000).¹⁹

The Christian Herald’s readers came from all across the United States as well as from other nations and included members of large, historic churches such as the Baptists, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Methodists, and Presbyterians, as well as participants in nondenominational organizations such as the American Sunday School Union, the Christian and Missionary Alliance (CMA), Christian Endeavor, and the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). The newspaper’s international scope and expansive reach among a wide range of American Protestants made the publication unique among religious periodicals during the late nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century, when its circulation reached a peak of nearly half a million subscribers.²⁰ "The establishment of the Christian Herald marked the beginning of a new epoch in the history of religious journalism in America, Klopsch later reflected. It was something new to have a journal so broadly evangelical as to commend itself to all Christian denominations, as well as to those outside the denominational pale; which knew no sect or creed antagonisms, but treated all alike on the generous plane of Christian brotherhood."²¹

By adopting this innovative, ecumenical editorial policy, Klopsch and Talmage hoped not only to expand the Christian Herald’s circulation but also to bolster American evangelical solidarity amid growing discord. Throughout most of the nineteenth century, evangelicalism had generally referred to a loose, transatlantic alliance of Protestant believers who prioritized conversion, warmhearted piety, revivalism, and the reform of society. Within the United States, participants in this powerful tradition claimed responsibility for ensuring the success and stability of American political institutions, economic order, social relations, and spiritual health. Through revival campaigns, media productions, and charitable enterprises, the evangelical united front worked to shape every aspect of American life.²²

By the 1890s, however, new trends in theology, biblical criticism, evolutionary science, sociology, and psychology were creating fissures in this broad-based coalition. Many evangelicals feared that increasing dissension would undermine their cultural authority and the United States’ identity as a Christian nation. Concerns about rising immigration, deteriorating race relations, escalating labor unrest, the expansion of imperialism, and other unsettling issues exacerbated these worries. Within this context, Klopsch and Talmage proclaimed that their newspaper would refuse to publish articles on controversial doctrinal subjects or divisive political topics. Instead, the Christian Herald would embrace the widest catholicity and seek to promote spiritual cohesion among its constituents. Through the instrumentality of an undenominational journal, one contemporary observed, Klopsch and Talmage aimed to gather together the scattered fragments … and bind them in a great, united, happy family circle of Christian believers.²³

One of the most powerful strategies for fostering harmony among an increasingly fractious evangelical community, Klopsch and Talmage argued, was to engage people of diverse theological perspectives and social backgrounds in a common enterprise of serving others. Participating in cooperative efforts to aid the afflicted, they believed, would enable individuals to set aside doctrinal differences, denominational preferences, regional disputes, social prejudices, class antagonisms, and cultural disagreements. By joining together to uplift the downtrodden, American evangelicals would also help ensure the ongoing stability of the nation’s political institutions, economic achievements, social values, and international reputation.

With these broader aims in mind, Klopsch and Talmage endeavored to make the Christian Herald a vehicle of evangelical benevolence. Shortly after acquiring the newspaper, they started to solicit their subscribers’ support for a wide range of charitable enterprises. Drawing on their shared passion for drama and spectacle, the partners barraged readers with reports of humanitarian crises around the globe as well as on American soil. Soon, they moved beyond merely chronicling catastrophes to actively spearheading relief efforts by collecting contributions and taking a direct role in distributing aid. In the spring of 1892, the Christian Herald publicized its first official campaign to alleviate affliction: a food fund for famished peasants in Russia. Over the next several years, Talmage and Klopsch organized many more efforts to ease suffering of all sorts. During the winter of 1894, they encouraged readers to help families in New York City made destitute in the recent economic downturn. The following year, they solicited assistance for Armenians displaced by political violence in the Ottoman Empire. Next, they partnered with the federal government to rescue Cubans from starvation. From 1897 through the turn of the century and beyond, they engaged in massive fund-raising efforts to provide for victims of famine, earthquake, warfare, and flood in India, China, Scandinavia, Macedonia, Japan, Italy, and Mexico. At the same time, they offered ongoing support for ministries to the poor and downtrodden throughout the United States. By the time Klopsch died in 1910, the Christian Herald’s subscribers had donated over $3.3 million (equivalent to approximately $82.4 million in 2017) to domestic and international humanitarian causes.²⁴ Only the ARC, which became a quasi-governmental entity in 1900 and was subsidized after 1905 by congressional appropriations, rivaled the Christian Herald’s achievements as a relief agency during this period. No other grassroots charitable organization—religious or secular—came remotely close.²⁵

In their efforts to establish the Christian Herald as the nation’s foremost provider of humanitarian aid at home and abroad, Klopsch and Talmage enlisted the support of political leaders, influential businessmen, missionary agencies, and reform organizations. From the outset, they sought endorsements from ambassadors, secretaries of state, senators, congressmen, governors, and presidents. Talmage boasted that he counted Grover Cleveland and William McKinley as good friends, and Klopsch never failed to publicize commendations of the Christian Herald’s benevolent work from Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft, and other high-ranking officials. The partners also proved adept at cultivating relationships with prominent figures in other nations. When they traveled to Russia in conjunction with the Christian Herald’s first international humanitarian campaign for famine relief, for example, the two men were honored by the imperial family. Later they would interact with diplomats, heads of state, and royals from Great Britain, China, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Japan, Norway, and Sweden.²⁶

Soliciting support for their aid efforts from powerful businessmen such as department store magnate John Wanamaker and bankers at Drexel, Morgan & Co. was also a priority for Klopsch and Talmage. At the same time, they insisted that almsgiving was not only the pursuit of a privileged elite but a popular practice in which every evangelical—no matter how humble—ought to participate. For this reason, the partners sought to join forces with missionary agencies and benevolent organizations striving to lessen suffering through outreach and reform. During their time at the helm of the Christian Herald, Klopsch and Talmage worked closely with well-known religious leaders, including James Barton, who served as the foreign secretary of the American Board of Commissioners on Foreign Missions (ABCFM); Frances Willard, president of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU); and William Booth, founder and first general of the Salvation Army.²⁷

By fostering such an expansive network of influential contacts, Klopsch and Talmage aimed to give the Christian Herald the highest imaginable prestige, and put it upon a pinnacle of popularity as an organ of widespread humanitarianism such as no other publication in the world has ever before enjoyed. Their extraordinary success showcases the vital part they and their many collaborators played in inspiring American Protestants from diverse backgrounds to extend compassion across national borders, racial and ethnic barriers, and religious boundaries. Through their energetic outreach and inventive methods, these evangelicals created a novel and extremely influential channel for the exercise of faith-based benevolence within and well beyond the United States.²⁸

DEBATES IN EVANGELICAL CHARITY

By analyzing the strategies Klopsch and Talmage employed to arouse sympathy, raise money, and provide relief for suffering people around the world, this book offers a fuller account of how evangelical media and its consumers contributed to the development of American humanitarianism. Exploring the Christian Herald’s efforts to alleviate affliction also brings into focus the various social forces, cultural norms, theological motivations, and political dynamics that shaped—and limited—the meanings and methods of evangelical charity during a pivotal period in the history of philanthropy.

When Klopsch first acquired the newspaper in 1890, for example, concerns about poverty and vice in urban settings were proliferating as income inequality spiraled, violent conflicts between capital and labor became more frequent, and revolutionary movements such as communism and anarchism gained popularity. Anxieties about the widening gap between rich and poor continued to escalate in the aftermath of the devastating financial downturn of 1893. As unemployment and privation reached unprecedented levels, evangelicals engaged in heated disputes with social Darwinists and proponents of scientific philanthropy about the causes of the social crisis and the proper conduct of charity. Were the poor responsible for their plight, or were broader structural conditions to blame? Would indiscriminate almsgiving encourage pauperism rather than inculcating moral virtues such as industriousness and sobriety? Did the destitute have to be worthy to receive aid? If so, what criteria determined who was deserving?

Debates about how to contend with poverty and unemployment in the United States also affected how Christian Herald readers viewed their responsibility to assist sufferers in other regions of the world. With increasing globalization, American evangelicals were encountering people of diverse political, ethnic, and religious affiliations more regularly than in any previous period. For visionaries like Klopsch and Talmage, these interactions presaged the dawning of a new, divinely ordained age of international unity. By aiding the afflicted of every nation, they contended, participants in the Christian Herald’s relief campaigns would help foster solidarity among God’s children all around the world and in so doing help usher in Christ’s kingdom of universal peace and goodwill.²⁹

Although most American evangelicals agreed that alleviating distress was a scriptural duty, they often argued over whom, when, and how to help. Should assisting Muslim survivors of a catastrophic earthquake in Constantinople take precedence over rescuing Armenians from the Christian-hating Mohammedans who were slaughtering them? At what point did the United States have an obligation to act as the Good Samaritan toward neighboring Cubans suffering under Spanish rule? Was it right for evangelical philanthropists to support military intervention as a mode of humanitarian action, or was feeding the hungry and clothing the naked the only appropriate expression of Jesus’s compassion?³⁰

These controversies over how best to aid the poor and oppressed in distant lands reflected deeper disagreements about the United States’ global mission. While some evangelicals celebrated American expansionism as a God-given opportunity to extend freedom, democracy, prosperity, and Christian civilization around the world, others worried that imperialism undermined the gospel message of harmony and equality among people of every tribe and tongue. Still others questioned whether the United States was really qualified to liberate or uplift the downtrodden in other nations when so many within its own borders were subject to political exclusion, economic exploitation, and racial violence.

The Christian Herald’s efforts to engage readers in campaigns to relieve suffering at home and abroad reveal how assumptions about race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, civilization and citizenship, national identity, international politics, and religious belonging influenced evangelical charity during this crucial phase of American history. By examining how Klopsch and Talmage wrestled with the dilemmas and tensions that accompanied their attempts to care for strangers in distress, this book aims to put contemporary debates about faith-based humanitarianism in broader historical perspective.

As I worked on this project, I had the privilege of interacting with many people engaged in serving others through the Christian Herald Association as well as through evangelical charities such as Bread for the Hungry, the Salvation Army, and World Vision. Colleagues at these organizations attested that many of the theological, social, and political conundrums that perplexed their predecessors in the fields of domestic philanthropy and foreign aid remain vexing and unresolved. Ongoing deliberations about welfare and immigration policies, best practices in poverty relief, the ethics of international aid, the propriety of faith-based diplomacy, and the enduring entanglement of humanitarian intervention with American imperialism continue to make assuaging affliction a complex, contentious, and challenging process. The story of the Christian Herald’s charitable campaigns provides a wider frame for reflecting on these current difficulties and disagreements. By recounting this history, Holy Humanitarians invites us to consider how racial prejudices and gender biases, nationalist ambitions and capitalist aspirations, class discriminations, and religious antipathies have influenced efforts to extend Christ’s compassion from Klopsch’s time to our own day.

1

A RELIGIOUS PAPER THOROUGHLY HUMANITARIAN

My entire theology has condensed into one word, and that a word of four letters, and that word is ‘help,’ the Reverend Thomas De Witt Talmage told his parishioners one frigid Sunday morning in January 1879. How shall I help the people? In an era of intensifying urbanization, ongoing instability in world financial markets, escalating immigration, expanding unemployment, labor unrest, rampant poverty, and rapid globalization, his was a pressing question for American evangelicals. Since accepting a call to the Brooklyn Tabernacle ten years earlier, Talmage had been experimenting with ways of applying the Bible to the problems of contemporary society through passionate (some said sensational) sermons, public lectures, and forays into journalism. These efforts earned him fierce detractors who dismissed him as a mountebank or a buffoon and tried to have him defrocked. Yet Talmage’s fervent attempts to reach the masses and to offer help for all who were finding life a tremendous struggle won praise from fellow evangelicals seeking to alleviate affliction at home and abroad amid the turmoil of the Gilded Age.¹

For admirers such as the former felon and aspiring publisher Louis Klopsch, Talmage’s determination to address the hunger and suffering and want and wretchedness that plagued the modern world proved particularly inspiring. Talmage’s call for sympathy with the downtrodden especially appealed to a young man who had been forced to quit school at an early age to help support his struggling immigrant family. When Klopsch’s escapades landed him in prison, he came face-to-face with men for whom crime had seemed the only means of providing food for their wives and children. These experiences shaped Klopsch’s perspective on affliction in profound ways, drawing him to Talmage and causing him to question the popular notion that the poor were to blame for their plight.²

Throughout the nineteenth century, many Protestants insisted that indigence was the product of indolence, intemperance, or iniquity. Wealth came to the worthy who worked hard, stewarded resources wisely, and lived virtuously. Although mishaps might sometimes cause unmerited hardship (especially for widows and orphans), most often the destitute were responsible for their distress.³

By the time Klopsch found his way to the Brooklyn Tabernacle after his release from jail, some evangelicals had begun to challenge these assumptions. The scale and severity of the social crises Americans confronted in the decades following the Civil War prompted a number of Protestant leaders to recognize the role of structural conditions in the production of poverty. A financial panic in 1873 provoked a devastating economic depression throughout the United States, resulting in unprecedented unemployment, heightened tensions between employers and workers, and a massive railroad strike in 1877. That same year, federal troops withdrew from the Southern states, leaving African Americans vulnerable to increasing violence and discrimination. Meanwhile, financial and social hardships overseas fueled massive migrations to the United States, crowding American cities and pressuring labor markets and neighborhood infrastructure.

Although the nation’s economy improved after 1879, conflicts between capital and labor continued—coming to an explosive head in the Haymarket Affair of 1886. This incident exacerbated concerns about the rise of socialist, communist, and anarchist movements in Europe and on American soil, aggravating fears of revolution but also undermining confidence in the fundamental tenets of laissez-faire capitalism. Within this tumultuous context, evangelical leaders like Talmage began to acknowledge that inequality and indigence were not simply the result of individual moral failings but the products of broader social forces. Rather than condemning the poor, Talmage insisted, Christians ought to empathize with those whose misfortunes and evil surroundings contributed to their distress, dissipation, or even delinquency.⁴

For Klopsch, an ex-convict with scant education and few social advantages trying to make good in a volatile economic environment, Talmage’s gospel was good news. Klopsch was attracted to the Brooklyn Tabernacle for obvious reasons. In the 1880s, he became actively involved as a Sunday school teacher and a trustee. During this period, he also worked to cultivate both a personal and professional relationship with his popular pastor. After achieving some success in the publishing world, Klopsch approached Talmage in 1885 with a proposition to syndicate the minister’s weekly sermons to several hundred newspapers. Eager to expand his audience (and also to supplement his income), Talmage agreed to the plan of a world-wide pulpit. Within several years, his messages of sympathetic service to the poor were being printed in over three thousand periodicals and reportedly reaching twenty million readers in the United States and other English-speaking countries, as well as being translated into several foreign languages.⁵

Emboldened by this achievement, Klopsch began to consider ways that he and Talmage could capitalize on their partnership and exercise an even greater influence on evangelical conceptions and practices of philanthropy. By the time the two friends departed for the Holy Land in October 1889, Klopsch had devised a plan. Rather than solely reprinting Talmage’s sermons in other newspapers, he and his pastor would produce their own periodical. Convinced that popular media could play a crucial part in educating American evangelicals about the plight of suffering people in their own neighborhoods and around the world, Klopsch arranged to purchase the Christian Herald and persuaded Talmage to serve as editor.⁶

In the several years following their acquisition of the Christian Herald, these two entrepreneurial publicists cultivated common perspectives on poverty as well as shared habits of relieving affliction. Confident in the coming kingdom of God, the partners enthusiastically embraced modern journalism’s innovative technologies and sensational tactics to advance Jesus’s reign of righteousness, justice, and charity within and beyond the United States. How shall I help the people? Talmage asked in 1879. From 1890 onward, he and Klopsch would work out a variety of answers to this question in the columns of the Christian Herald.⁷

Beginning with a spring 1892 campaign to feed starving Russian peasants, Klopsch and Talmage strove to make their publication an instrument by which … God’s people all over the country could work out their plans for the betterment of humanity. During this initial foray into foreign aid, they developed fund-raising techniques, established operational procedures, and articulated theological motivations to guide future relief efforts and to distinguish the Christian Herald’s humanitarian enterprises from other philanthropic endeavors. By presenting their approach as exceptionally reliable and explicitly religious, Klopsch and Talmage worked to establish the Christian Herald as a major force in American aid abroad at a time when the United States was playing a more prominent role in world affairs.⁸

Encouraged by their ability to cultivate compassion for overseas sufferers, Klopsch and Talmage turned their energies to escalating concerns about the plight of the poor and working classes at home. As debate intensified about how to solve the social crisis, these evangelicals encouraged readers to support a variety of legislative measures, reform movements, and religious enterprises designed to mitigate the adverse effects of laissez-faire capitalism among the nation’s most vulnerable populations. When an economic downturn in the autumn of 1893 resulted in widespread unemployment, the Christian Herald announced the opening of a food fund to help the hungry and homeless in New York City.

Although this relief campaign was a great success, the newspaper’s coverage of the financial crisis exposed ongoing disagreements among American Protestants about the causes of poverty and the proper conduct of charity. When proponents of scientific philanthropy criticized the Christian Herald’s efforts to assuage suffering, Klopsch and Talmage insisted that no one was beyond redemption. Uplifting the downtrodden, they contended, was a religious duty that blessed the afflicted but also united evangelical benefactors at a time when this community was increasingly challenged by doctrinal controversy, social diversity, and regional discord. Through its humanitarian mission, these publicists proclaimed, the Christian Herald not only would bind up the wounds of the brokenhearted struggling to survive amid the profound dislocations of modern life, but also would help heal the divisions that threatened to undermine evangelical unity in this fractious era.

A NEW MEDIUM FOR EVANGELICAL AID

Klopsch and Talmage chose an auspicious time to experiment with evangelical media as a means of influencing perceptions of poverty and practices of philanthropy. In the months leading up to their acquisition of the Christian Herald, a terrible disaster highlighted the role popular publications could play in stimulating concern for those who were suffering. On May 31, 1889, the South Fork Dam on the Little Conemaugh River failed, unleashing a torrent of water on Johnstown, Pennsylvania. At least 2,200 people were killed in the flood and the ensuing fires, which engulfed the small frame tenement houses by the river that were home to the employees of Cambria Iron and Steel Company and their families. The