Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2014 June 16

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June 16

Industrial Edens

I'm confused by the title of this book, The Company Town: The Industrial Edens and Satanic Mills That Shaped the American Economy. I understand the "Satanic Mills" part, but what about the "Industrial Edens"? It looks like a quote from somewhere, but I couldn't find anything that looked like a likely source, and it seemed unlikely that the author was simply making an allusion to the garden of Eden in this context. Nyttend (talk) 01:57, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Why not ? Some employers actually tried to make a good life for their employees in a company town. Henry Ford was one example of this, although we might find the way he forced his version of morality on others to be a bit distasteful today. Perhaps "Garden of Eden" is a bit of an exaggeration, but then so is "Satanic". StuRat (talk) 05:11, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Catchier title than "Industrial Homes and Factories". It's a good-old-days kind of thing. As Dogbert once said, the old model was the Christian model (hence Eden being a good metaphor) in which you devote your lifelong loyalty to a firm, and you retire with a nice pension. The new model is the Hindu model, in which your job gets killed off and you reincarnate elsewhere. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:00, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

The term was in use at least as early as 1850 - here. Ghmyrtle (talk) 07:54, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

It's an idea that dates back to New Lanark and was developed in managed new towns such as Port Sunlight and utopian fiction such as News from Nowhere. Paul B (talk) 13:53, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

@Paul Barlow: - The concept "industrial eden" describes or that combination of words or both? --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  15:37, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

I looked without much luck, frankly, but did find that there is a year-long celebration of a now gone 19th century mill village in Stoneham, Massachusetts with the name "Industrial Eden." Not saying this is where it came from, but possibly of interest to someone in the area to get to know one [likely early?] example. --— Rhododendrites ^talk |  15:40, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

It depends what you are looking for. If you are looking for the earliest use of the phrase "industrial Eden", then I suspect you won't find a "canonical" source, in poetry or other literature, comparable to Blake's Milton. I don't think it's a quotation. It's just a phrase meaning "an ideal society created though industry", which might mean the tradition of creating ideal working towns of the kind I was referring to, or the broader ideological view that modern industry will lead us to a perfect, or at least better world. e.g.: "Mayakovski believed that Bolshevism, with its indomitable will and energy, was the force that could mechanize rural, sprawling Russia into an industrial Eden, and in poem after poem--the "Story of Kusnetskstroi and the People of Kusnetsk" (1929), the "March of the Shock-Worker Brigades" (1930), the "March of the Twentyfive Thousand" (1930), and many others--Mayakovski extols the efforts toward industrialization." (Vyacheslav Zavalishin, Early Soviet Writers, 1958) or "To focus solely on the political ramifications of [Henry] Clay’s American System, however, would also be to overlook the realization of Clay’s (and ultimately McKinley’s) dream of an Industrial Eden. It was a system where tariffs were focused to help new industries, and the revenues were used to build roads and canals." (Quentin Jr. Skrabec, William McKinley, Apostle of Protectionism 2008). It's just a phrase that's been used by several authors. Paul B (talk) 15:56, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

I was basically looking for any famous source using the phrase "Industrial Edens". I'd run a Google search and found nothing substantial, and being rather sleepy at the time, I failed to consider that "Industrial Eden" might also be a useful search. It helps to see that the phrase has been used repeatedly; thank you to everyone. Nyttend (talk) 16:53, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

One other element to consider is the very very large difference between a New Eden and a New Jerusalem. In 19th century Socialist mythology, heavily influenced as it was by European and European colonial christianity, Eden was viewed as a place without the possibility of sin. One 19th century dream of socialism was to remake man as incapable of wronging his brother through the development of a full society. (Yes I am aware of the gendering.) Contrast with New Jerusalem which would conceive of the worthiness of the nation in terms of their sins to build and maintain a Jerusalem. Fifelfoo (talk) 01:59, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Can you explain why I should consider this? I was only trying to find a source that used the phrase, not a postmodern critique of the period. Nyttend (talk) 12:01, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

How did Europeans manage to convert many people to Christianity in pre-modern times?

How did they do it? How long did it take? I mean, I once attended a club/lecture series on Scandinavian manuscripts, and Christianity was mentioned only in the context of legal documents, secular documents, and a bit of background of Christian history in the Scandinavian countries was mentioned. The instructor said that in one generation, everyone was Christian. Is this true that every one in those countries became Christian (converted from some sort of paganism) in just one generation? What about people from other continents? This question may be also written as: "How did Christianity spread across Europe and beyond?" 140.254.226.243 (talk) 20:43, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

For Scandinavia specifically, see our article Christianization of Scandinavia which says; "Although the Scandinavians became nominally Christian, it took considerably longer for actual Christian beliefs to establish themselves among the people... Archaeological excavations of burial sites on the island of Lovön near modern-day Stockholm have shown that the actual Christianization of the people was very slow and took at least 150–200 years". Alansplodge (talk) 21:25, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Note that the article cited above as well as our article on Christianization in general both come with warnings that they have multiple issues and need additional verification.--Dreamahighway (talk) 21:27, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, however some work has been done to remedy this and the piece that I quoted is referenced to a 2004 book on the subject (in Swedish). Alansplodge (talk) 21:34, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

For augments sake, lets leave out the religious bit for the moment. The 'church' back then meant a group of learned people. They brought an new agricultural calendar and a way of doing things that was better than the practices that were hither to practised. It was a no-brainer to adopt these better ways. Today, this role has been taken over by scientists and technologists. For example: In one generation we have embraced the World Wide Web etc,. Therefore, the ancients did not have to actively 'convert'. Rather, all they had to do was show a better way. People rapidly adopt any behavior that they find beneficial. Don't let the word 'belief' (which means accepting something with out proof) lead you astray. These new ideas brought tangible benefits. --Aspro (talk) 21:56, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict × 3)To the best of my knowledge, it was a mix of religious pragmatism (if praying to Odin doesn't work, why not try that Jesus guy?), and the pagan religious authorities converting. The religious authorities were regarded as the descendants of the Aesir, and so lesser gods in their own right. Their conversion to Christianity would have been followed by a lot of their subjects converting. It's like if the Dalai Lama converted to Islam or the second comin of Christ announced that He'd gotten into Wicca. Ok, the latter case would probably get Him shot by a fundamentalist claiming He was really the Antichrist, but you get the point. Such conversions presented similar theological problems as the head leader and object of worship in the Roman Imperial cult converting to Christianity or even persecuting anyone who might try to worship him. There's a separation of Church and State now, but then? King converts, everyone else is likely to follow.

And, not to brag about my religion (since something like this claim applies to similarly popular world religions), nor to perpetuate the old myth that religious thinking is a progression from animism to polytheism to monotheism (and then assumably to deism or atheism), but Christianity (and Islam and Buddhism) lucked into tapping into a general change in thinking in the areas where it thrived. That Rome lumped most of the gods into Sol Invictus might indicate that a shared centralization and concentration of divinity (whether it's monotheism, henotheism, or the "totally not pantheism" of Mahayana Buddhism) have a positive relationship with larger but more unified culture groups (feeding into and off of that unity). Ian.thomson (talk) 21:57, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Being a bit picky, but separation of church and state is a bit of an American thing; the Church of Denmark, the Church of Norway, the Church of Iceland and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland are all state churches. The Church of Sweden was disestablished in 2000, according to our article. Alansplodge (talk) 22:30, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

I think in late Roman and early post-Roman times Christianity benefited from its association with the Roman Empire, which was seen by a lot of so-called "barbarians" as a civilisation to admire and emulate, and also with literacy, a valuable new technology that peoples who lacked it were keen to acquire. --Nicknack009 (talk) 22:17, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Although in the case of the Scandinavians, contact with the Christians that they had conquered seems to have been the main force behind it. See Harald Bluetooth, Rollo, Guthrum and of course Saint Olaf, all of whom turned to Christianity while in occupied territory; cynics might say for political purposes. Alansplodge (talk) 22:30, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

@ Alansplodge. Your first post is a very fair point so I think it deserves answering. Back then, the main beneficiaries were those ruling families that already held power. The ordinary person had to give lip-service to his Lord (adopt the religion of your prince as it sometime said). Those things that brought tangible benefits were easily and quickly adopted but the religious bits that required belief may have well taken generations to adopt. Even today Christmas is not really a Christian festival. Rather it was adopted by the 'Church' because it was a northern European practice that fixed the start of the year instead of the Luna calender which did not. And it it suited the climate. Thus, it contains much pagan symbolism. So the US, what with its Thanks Giving and Christmas etc is still not fully converted in some senses. Much of the US lays too far north for the original agricultural calendar to be applicable and useful.--Aspro (talk) 22:36, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Well, the paganism or otherwise of Christian festivals is hotly debated. It might be more relevant to look at Beowulf, and epic poem set in Scandinavia but written in Old English, which contains an intriguing mix of Christian and pagan references, reflecting a society in flux between the two. Alansplodge (talk) 22:48, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Sometimes groups of people converted because the Romans had already done so, and if the Romans did it, that was good enough for them. (Although they may have then latched on to something that was ultimately declared heretical, like Arianism.) And sometimes, it was because they would otherwise be put to the sword, the whole lot of them. Adam Bishop (talk) 23:56, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

I don't think we should forget that there were some cruel pagan practices in some places, human sacrifice and such; if people were enduring hard rituals in the name of traditional gods and suddenly the Christians come in and thumb their noses at all the gods, they might feel it was a liberation. The intensity of feeling that it evokes to see some of the ancient artifacts -- a greenstone coffer with the skull of an infant sacrificed to Tlaloc, still with the obsidian knives in its eyes, the printing press that ended cannibalism in Fiji -- it is enough to shake the faith of even someone identifying as staunchly anti-Christian. Wnt (talk) 05:17, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

• "How did Christianity spread across Europe and beyond"? Answer: the threat of death. Christianity of the very early era used the threat and the actual execution of a death penalty for those that refused to convert. Many early pagans and Jews were simply murdered to show that Christianity was the dominant faith. This is also how the early church kept control. There are many other ways that the faith was spread, but the "lip service" section below is generally what happens when you tell a people they must convert. They will say they have and continue to believe what they believe. But they also used many different forms of tactics such as pretending to have the bones of Christ or a saint to attract new followers as well as financial gain. But , of course another way Christianity spread was just word of mouth. To those who have little, the promise of heavenly treasure and everlasting forgiveness for sins that all men commit can be very enticing.--Mark Miller (talk) 05:32, 18 June 2014 (UTC)
  • To my mind, the most general answer of how the Roman Catholic Church achieved so many conversions across various continents squares with your answer. Namely, superior weaponry. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:23, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Gee, and I thought gunpowder was brought to Europe by the Mongols, who I don't recall reading about as great believers. Seriously, it is very clear that many conversions by force took place as leaders expected a populace to follow their fancy of the moment, no matter what religion they converted to or from. But the very idea that forced conversion was wrong, against conscience, and that divine authority could be at odds with temporal authority, was spread in large part by Christians. Too many of their predecessors and rivals demanded literal worship of rulers as gods in their own right. Wnt (talk) 16:46, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

When you say "the very early era", when do you mean? Because in Christianity's earliest times, it was definitely the Christians, by and large, who were being put to death. The ability to execute people for not agreeing with you reflects a degree of political power than Christianity did not originally possess. Clarification would be helpful here. (Also, stop and think why no Christian would claim to have 'the bones of Christ'.) AlexTiefling (talk) 09:27, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Mark Miller -- Your "answer" is unfortunately significantly factually inaccurate and grossly oversimplified. Before 325 A.D., Christians in the Roman empire had no ability or authority to physically force anybody to do anything, and certainly had no backing from the Roman government (which was actively hostile during some periods, and at best passively disapproving during others). Yet the best estimates are that at least 10% of the population of the Roman empire was already Christian by the early 4th century A.D. (and a much higher percentage in many cities). At that time, Christianity most strongly appealed to the urban lower classes, not soldiers or ruling officials (soldiers tended to go for Mithraism). There was not much active persecution of pagans until near the end of the 4th century, by which time probably the majority of the population of the empire was already Christian. As for the conversion of peoples in Europe outside the Roman empire, most of the time if any force or violence was used, it was by the local monarch against his own subjects who were recalcitrant. Only in a relatively few situations (such as the Carolingian conquest of Saxony and the Baltic "crusades") was the issue of Christian conversion connected with foreign invasions... AnonMoos (talk) 15:16, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. The conversion of the warlike Anglo-Saxons was achieved by a succession of ascetic priests armed only with Bibles; see Augustine of Canterbury, Aidan of Lindisfarne, Cuthbert, Cedd, Chad of Mercia and Felix of Dunwich. Scandinavia (which was specifically asked about in the original question) was converted by a combination of political opportunism by warlords and by the patient work of inoffensive missionaries like Willibrord and Ansgar. Alansplodge (talk) 17:31, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Paying lip service before converting?

This question is related to the previous question regarding conversion. I am just wondering if it's possible, in modern-day America, to pay lip service to a church for its social benefits and then allow your children to be baptized in the church and send them to Sunday schools, so they may be believing Christians, even though you may not be. I mean, an immigrant who may come from a foreign country that is not predominately Christian may be sort of socially isolated. Would churches accept you, even if you don't personally believe but promise to raise your children Christian? 65.24.105.132 (talk) 00:50, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

It's certainly possible. Here in the UK, the prevalence and reputed good quality of church schools (mostly Anglican, some Catholic) leads some parents to go through the motions of attendance in order to get first preference when trying to secure their children a place at such a school. Anecdotally, exposure to a form of Christianity promoted by non-specialists and aimed at primary-school children seems to be quite good at preventing the children from becoming actively Christian, but the pattern you describe is certainly possible in theory. This behaviour tends to be practised mainly by long-term resident families, though, rather than immigrants - many immigrants to the UK are much more devoutly Christian than the resident population. AlexTiefling (talk) 09:21, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

It may be different in America, because America has separation of church and state since its independence. So, attending church is, for the most part, a recreational and voluntary activity. Churches are ubiquitous and provide an unique social role, such as volunteering opportunities, community service, and a peer-group social network that may help each other through life's troubles. Of course, all of these things are centered around the Christian god, but the main purpose for these things is to help people grow spiritually, socially, emotionally, and physically. In places where non-religious or non-Christian places are sparse or just very far away, churches may provide a social life and personal identity. 65.24.105.132 (talk) 12:31, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

• Is this a common problem in Dublin Ohio? While many Catholic schools do offer scholarships, are you wondering if you could educate your own kids without a means test by a big show of genuflecting, and taking communion twice? A more specific example of your intensions might help. μηδείς (talk) 17:57, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

I have no idea what you are talking about. I am not sure what "common problem" is here. All I did in my previous post was wonder about the means of converting to Christianity for its perceived social benefits. I am mostly brought up in the United States, so I am more acquainted with the culture than my parents are. If my parents had any devotional side, then we would probably celebrate Easter or Lent or Hanukkah or Ramadan or Passover. But instead, they are completely nonreligious and atheist, and the only holidays we observe are Chinese New Year and maybe the American national holidays, including Christmas (as a cultural gift-giving, jolly tradition). This may be original research, but I observe that many people who are Christians are so, because their parents are such. Often, it seems that many people enter christendom through three routes: (1) by birth, (2) by marriage, and (3) by friendships. "By birth" means people who are born into Christian families and are baptized at birth and confirmed during their teen years. "By marriage" means people who convert to a Christian denomination because their spouse is affiliated with that denomination, and they want to raise the children together in that religion. "By friendships" means people convert, because they want to be with their friends who just happen to be Christians. I don't have any of those three reasons to convert, and I am mostly interested in Christianity from an academic sociological or anthropological perspective. I don't think my interests match those of Christians. Recently, though, I have decided to specialize in Lutheranism, so that I may become an expert in the subject. I am not sure if a pastor would accept a person based on a primarily academic obsession with Lutheran history and theology. Maybe they would overlook the non-belief component. 65.24.105.132 (talk) 00:42, 19 June 2014 (UTC)