| This dissertation illustrates the important and persistent role that religion played in the social, political, and spiritual lives of urban workers in a twentieth century industrial metropolis. It focuses on Catholics, African-American Protestants, and southern-born white evangelicals in Detroit, and covers three major chronological periods: 1910-1929, 1930-1956, and 1957-1969. In each period, Detroit's working classes constructed a "religious consciousness"---or, a distinct cosmological worldview developed in relation to other social groups and classes, and responding to specific and contingent contexts. During the first period, Catholic and African American migrants constructed a "working class" religious consciousness. This culture was characterized by several common idioms: emotional expressivity; a pragmatic and individualistic relationship with supernatural patrons; persistent beliefs in miraculous healing, traditional cures, and folk curses; complex and ambiguous relationships with clergy, ranging from the authoritarian, to the quietly resentful, to the openly antagonistic; and a seemingly easy ability to incorporate the secular diversions of an emergent mass culture into a world of the "sacred." During the second period, Catholic, African-American, and southern-born white evangelical workers made a "class conscious" religious consciousness, or, a religious culture that actively promoted the broader socio-political agenda of the New Deal and the United Auto Workers, while also celebrating the class identity of religiously-oriented workers. Between the late 1930s and the 1950s, "working class," "class conscious," and secular working-class cultures coexisted in competitive, but creative, tension. Finally, in the last period, race emerged as a vastly more powerful ideology than class---and consequently, working class religions were remade as "race-", rather than "class-conscious." Throughout all these periods, workers revealed the tremendously protean, malleable, and adaptable nature of religion itself. This dissertation weaves together a social history of Detroit's working classes with a cultural history of religious creation and recreation, demonstrating in the process that religion played a vital role in the lives of a major segment of the twentieth century working class. |
