The 'message of the higher criticism': The Bible renaissance and popular education in America, 1880-1925

The dissertation treats the popularization of biblical higher criticism in Victorian America as a religious movement that converged with the rise of Bible-centered agencies of popular education. Higher criticism played the role of iconoclast in awakening churches from the purported threats of militant skepticism and the exodus of educated members. Although Americans generally disregarded "rationalistic" scholarship from the Continent, some of America's leading clerics and a generation of crusading biblical scholars sought to democratize the results of modern Bible study through agencies of popular education in order to "save" the Bible in an era that increasingly questioned whether the Bible had any authoritative word for the leading moral issues of the time.; The higher criticism offered a new understanding of the Bible as the evolution of Israel's religion, that reached its high watermark in the preaching of the ethical prophets and Jesus. Developmentalism provided a fresh apologetic for Bible study, for it undercut the wooden literalism of such free thinkers as Robert Ingersoll.; The inclusion of modern, historical approaches to the Bible changed the nature of its study in agencies of popular education as the evangelistic motive was replaced by the need for a Bible to address the social crisis. It also helped change their religious outlook. Ironically, many of the agencies that emphasized Bible study largely abandoned the project of purporting the evolutionary view. In fact, the crusade for the "new Bible" among laity created the very movement of modern religious education that eventually relegated the use of the Bible to secondary status.; The dissertation treats the crusade to win the "plain man" for the new Bible in light of its early struggles and successes (1880-1900), its heyday after sweeping the academy (1900-1910) and the virtual abandonment of the project after 1925. Conclusions are drawn from the following case studies: the American Institute of Sacred Literature, Chautauqua, The Biblical World, the YMCA and the Sunday School.