Fundamentalism and American urban culture: Community and religious identity in Dwight L. Moody's Chicago, 1864--1914 (Illinois)

This dissertation locates the rise of urban fundamentalism in nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century America. As a cathedral of fundamentalism with world-wide influence, the Moody Church shaped fundamentalism in areas of church organization, sacred practice, cultural and religious identity, and fostered sub-cultural boundaries necessary for Protestant fundamentalism to thrive within urban America. By de-centering Dwight L. Moody, this treatment of the Moody community examines its growth from that of a small mission church to a cathedral community which included a training institute, church, and large Sunday school. Its religious space within a secular and cosmopolitan community was shaped by choices of location, interior design, and exterior space—all contributing to a public image that endorsed modern consumer culture and at times was seen as counter-cultural. The Moody Church distinguished itself from other denominational groups to become independent, revivalist centered, and with a variety of programs that reached a broad ethnic and class cross section of Chicago. It related and reacted to other groups and individuals who were vying for ascendancy within the larger political, social, and cosmopolitan landscape during the Progressive Era. These included individuals such as Jane Addams, Frances Willard, Graham Taylor, industrialists, and labor leaders; organizations such as the YMCA, the City Club of Chicago and the Chicago Woman's Club; academics at the University of Chicago and various settlements including Hull-House. The Moody community's world-wide influence coincided with their leadership within such transnational groups as Keswick Holiness Conferences, the Bible Prophecy Movement, and the Student Volunteer Mission Movement during a period when the United States extended its imperialistic claims abroad. Both the rhetoric of racialized imperialism and anti-modernism were enmeshed with an urgent calling to share the Gospel with the unchurched masses as Moody leaders R. A. Torrey launched his world-wide revival in 1901 and A. C. Dixon edited in 1910 The Fundamentals. These seminal leaders and events solidified the Moody community's fundamentalist religious identity and established it as a cathedral of fundamentalism and as a seminal institution in the history of the nondenominational church and the eventual rise of neo-evangelicalism in America.