Making Group Homes Work
In twenty-first-century America, orphanages might seem like relics of the past. Because research in human attachment has taught us that children need close and lasting human connections, when those with Read more…
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Catholic Charities
The president of Catholic University in Washington, D.C., invited Catholic clergy and laity to gather on his campus in 1910 to launch Catholic Charities. Local parishes had been doing charitable Read more…
Getting the Word Out
In 1898, two traveling businessmen found themselves sharing a room in an overbooked Wisconsin hotel. On discovering that they were both Christians, they studied the Bible together and knelt in Read more…
Goodwill Industries
Edgar Helms was a Cornell grad and ordained Methodist minister hunkered down in a South Boston outpost in 1902 fighting some of the city’s worst poverty. His building was collapsing, Read more…
Andrew Carnegie, Organ Donor
By the beginning of the twentieth century the organ had become an important animator of worship in American churches. Andrew Carnegie turned up the volume by donating nearly 7,700 organs Read more…
A Cookbook Helps Americanize Jews
While working as a truant officer in Milwaukee in the 1890s, Lizzie Kander discovered that the home conditions of Russian immigrant families were “deplorable…threatening the moral and physical health of Read more…
Cathedral of St. John the Divine
Wall Street banker J. P. Morgan was a devoted Episcopalian. He was an officer of his local church. He served on a national committee charged with revising the Book of Read more…
Katharine Drexel Devotes Her Fortune to Indians and Blacks
Katharine Drexel was born in 1858 into one of America’s wealthiest families—the namesake founders of Drexel University and the Drexel Burnham Lambert investment firm. Her parents were of French Catholic Read more…
Nettie McCormick Bolsters Religious Schools
Cyrus McCormick, the inventor of important farm machinery, was a generous religious philanthropist, giving away at least $550,000 in the second half of the nineteenth century to religious organizations—mostly the Read more…
Jacob Schiff’s Philanthropy
Jacob Schiff was born in Germany in 1847, the son of a prominent rabbinical family. Over the objections of his father, he traveled to New York City in 1865 to Read more…
Salvation Army Marches to America
Methodist minister William Booth and his wife, Catherine, founded the Salvation Army in London in 1865 to help prostitutes, drunks and drug addicts, and the poor—using his “three S’s” approach: Read more…
Seventh-day Adventists Create Health Food
During the nineteenth century there was much experimentation in the U.S. at combining religious observance with new dietary practices. Seventh-day Adventism had a significant effect in this area through its Read more…
Spiritual Growth On Chautauqua Lake
The Chautauqua Institution is a quintessentially American organization where citizens have been trooping for a century and a half to fire their spirits and refine their souls. Founded in 1874 Read more…
Temperance Movement
The anti-alcohol movement, which was rooted in America’s Protestant churches, powered by philanthropy and female volunteers, and ultimately a powerful political force, was an organic response to a real problem. Read more…
Baptist Colleges Bolstered by Rockefeller
From childhood, John Rockefeller was a devout Baptist. Even before he made his fortune with Standard Oil he consistently tithed 10 percent of his income to religious causes. Starting around Read more…
United States Christian Commission in the Civil War
The carnage at the First Battle of Bull Run (just a preview of the destruction to come in our Civil War) stirred the hearts of many Americans. Among those summoned Read more…
Judah Touro, Friend to Religion
New England merchant Judah Touro set up shop in New Orleans in 1801, and he profited handsomely from the growth of the Crescent City and eventual addition of Louisiana to Read more…
Jewish Community Centers
In 1854, the first Hebrew Young Men’s Literary Association opened its doors in Baltimore to serve Jewish immigrants. Other branches soon opened in additional cities, serving as libraries, cultural centers, Read more…
New York Children’s Aid Society
With the massive influx of poor immigrants to New York in the mid-nineteenth century came an unprecedented number of homeless and orphaned children in need of care. Unsatisfied with the Read more…
YMCA Comes to America
In the late 1840s, Thomas Sullivan had retired after a long career as a sea captain, but he continued to sail as a marine missionary. While in London, he admired Read more…