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1. Tents, Autos, Gospel Grenades: Evangelistic Organizations
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>> 27 1 Tents, Autos, Gospel Grenades Evangelistic Organizations At the appointed hour, on a sultry, mid-July afternoon, the highly decorated , customized Model T autovan, nicknamed “Rome’s Chariot,” arrived on the corner of Washington Street and Chestnut Hill Avenue in Brighton, Massachusetts. In the autovan rode Martha Moore Avery and David Goldstein, the featured lecturers for the meeting to be held that evening sponsored by the Catholic Truth Guild. The Model T had been modified to hold evangelistic meetings from within its doors. It housed a moveable platform, complete with a stand-up rostrum known as the “perambulating pulpit” that folded out at a forty-five-degree angle from the front of the car. Its four seats could also be removed or stacked on top of one another to form a table, and ample storage compartments carried large quantities of Catholic literature. Designed as an eye-catching spectacle, the autovan generated a crowd simply by driving into town. Its decorations blended American patriotism and Roman Catholic devotion. On one side, it sported a sentence 28 > 29 regularly to hold meetings on street corners and rural crossroads. Still another arrangement took shape in the Evangelistic Department of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). This department within a national organization, headed and staffed by women, depended upon the work of thousands of WCTU evangelists across the country who reported to superintendents at the state, district, county, and local levels. One might conjecture that these organizations provided untold opportunities for women’s involvement and leadership, but the evidence appears mixed. In the multicity-based AFM, some women did participate in local evangelistic meetings, but as it developed into a denomination, as we will see in the next chapter, no woman broke into the top echelon of leadership . Much more beneficial for women at all levels was the WCTU Evangelistic Department, which enlisted a host of women evangelists to plan and lead meetings in keeping with its mission statement: “To enlist more women who shall preach the Gospel, and to train the workers.”6 According to Frances Willard, WCTU president, this department registered “an aggregate of several thousands of women who are regularly studying and expounding God’s Word to the multitude.”7 For the evangelistic organizations that galvanized around a woman as the principal evangelist, prospects for other women to gain a foothold in management or to earn the spotlight as the featured speaker did not materialize. Women fared better in Billy Sunday’s multimillion dollar evangelistic organization, the largest in the Progressive Era. Along with countless women volunteers, more than a dozen women worked full-time for the organization, including its astute business manager, Helen Sunday. Evangelistic Meetings “Catholic Truth Guild” Through the day and night Be it dark or bright The horizon we do scan For a loving view of the guild so true For woman, child, or man Are filled with glee whene’er we see 30 > 31 after considering several religious and secular ideologies, most notably Socialism. Goldstein, who was mentored by Avery, converted to Catholicism shortly after she did, and together they founded the CTG to acquaint the American populace with the Truth of Catholicism. They proposed, through the CTG, the lofty goal of making America Catholic : “Now that America is gradually slipping from its oldtime prejudice against, and people are getting curious to find out all about the Church which they recognize is the Church after all it would seem as if a magnificent effort should be made to bring the light to those in darkness , and who have no means of finding that light except by the efforts of zealous Catholics. . . . We have our opportunity. Let us not shirk it. The whole country is thinking and thinking hard as to what Catholicity means. . . . The time seems to be ripe. Let us hope that God will send the right assistance to make america catholic.”10 During its first summer of operation in 1917, the CTG sponsored eighty meetings in ninety days. As it grew in recognition and popularity, its summer schedule increased to one hundred fifty meetings held in Boston and its suburbs as well as towns throughout New England, like Marblehead, Massachusetts, and Somerville, New York. Given their proclivity to capture the intellect, Avery and Goldstein designed the CTG meeting around a lecture. They always delivered a prepared speech on a Catholic topic, such as the Catholic perspective on a doctrinal question (the divinity of Christ, sacraments, origin of the Bible), or the Catholic...