Faith in Crisis: Boston Congregationalists and the Great Depression

In October 1929, the stock market crash triggered the worst depression in US history. Across Boston, members of multiple faith communities looked to religion to help them weather the crisis. Believers drew on the spiritual, social and material resources available to them as members of religious communities; and faith leaders used denominational newspapers to advocate for the needy.

In this hybrid lunch and learn presentation, CLA Research Fellow Dr. Evelyn Sterne will explore their stories, with a special focus on Congregationalists and the research she has conducted at the Congregational Library & Archives.

SPEAKER BIO

Dr. Evelyn Sterne is a Professor of History and Director of the Center for the Humanities at the University of Rhode Island, where she specializes in the history of religion and immigration in the late nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States. She is the author of Ballots and Bibles: Ethnic Politics and the Catholic Church in Providence, and The House of David: Salvation, Scandal, and Survival in a Modern American Commune. She is currently working on a book about religion in Boston during the Great Depression.

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