289 - The Christian Home in Victorian America, 1840-1900

The Christian Home in Victorian America, 1840-1900
By Colleen McDannell
Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1986. 193 pp. $25.00.

This book is the first volume in a new and promising series, "Religion in North America," edited by Catherine L. Albanese and Stephen J. Stein and published by Indiana University Press. It is a worthy book to launch the effort that will publish new ways of looking at religion in American culture, as well as older methods of interpreting American religious life.

McDannell's work is clearly a novel approach, for it explores the nature of Protestant and Catholic homes during the Victorian era. McDannell not only investigates religious practices but also the physical space of the home itself. She finds that Protestants emphasized family worship, Bible reading, prayers, and hymns, while Catholics relied upon iconic methods to inculcate piety-Sacred Heart pictures, candles, crucifixes. Both Protestants and Catholics saw the family as critical to the transmission of faith, even though they sharply attacked each others' views.

A study of this type reveals why the feminist movement of the twentieth century found the Victorian family an obstacle to women's rights. At the same time, by the late twentieth century, the family had changed dramatically, posing grave problems for both the church and society. This book is a reminder of a world that was lost.

John M. Mulder
Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary
Louisville, KY