“Co-Agent of the Millennium”: City Planning and Christian Eschatology in the North American City, 1890–1920

Abstract

Urban geography has overlooked the influence of eschatology in the conception and production of modern cities. City planning at the turn of the twentieth century imbibed at the plentiful well of liberal evangelical theology and its belief in a postmillennial advent of the “Kingdom of God on Earth.” Foretold in scripture, this “kingdom” was in fact a heavenly city brought down to earth, a divine corollary to social progress and scientific ingenuity. Unsurprisingly, postmillennialism informed much of the progressivism of reformers and city planners, city planning a social gospel in its own right and best qualified to reconcile the geography of the city with the moral, physical, and spiritual life of city people. Thus, what we call professional postmillennialism and attribute to the efforts of city planners waxed secular: Professional planners produced not the hoped-for “New Jerusalem” but the much maligned twentieth-century city. To demonstrate our thesis we investigate two foundational city planners: Charles Zueblin and John Nolen, the former a respected planning theorist and the latter a prolific and celebrated practitioner, and disclose both as discursively postmillennial.

La geografía urbana ha pasado por alto la influencia de la escatología en la concepción y edificación de las ciudades modernas. La planificación de la ciudad a la vuelta del siglo XX bebió en el pozo rebosante de la teología evangélica liberal y su creencia en el advenimiento posmilenio del “Reino de Dios en la Tierra”. Pronosticado en las escrituras, este “reino” era en efecto una ciudad celestial traida hasta la tierra, un corolario divino de progreso social e ingeniosidad científica. No es de sorprenderse, pues, que el posmilenialismo informara mucho del progresivismo de reformadores y planificadores urbanos, la planificación de la ciudad tomada como evangelio social por derecho propio y lo mejor calificado para reconciliar la geografía de la ciudad con la vida moral, física yespiritual de la gente de ciudad. Entonces, lo que denominamos posmilenialismo profesional y atribuimos a los esfuerzos de los planificadores de la ciudad, se secularizó: Los planificadores profesionales produjeron no la tan anhelada “Nueva Jerusalén” sino la muy maligna ciudad del siglo XX. Para demostrar nuestra tesis, investigamos dos planificadores urbanos fundacionales: Charles Zueblin y John Nolen, el primero un respetable teórico de la planificación y el segundo un prolífico y celebrado practicante, y los revelamos a ambos como discursivamente posmilenialistas.

Key Words:

• city planning
• eschatology
• liberalism
• New Jerusalem
• postmillennialism

关键词:

• 城市规划
• 末世论
• 自由主义
• 新耶路撒冷
• 千禧年后论

Palabras clave:

• planificación de ciudades
• escatología
• liberalismo
• Nueva Jerusalén
• posmilenialismo

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Jody Beck, Rob Freestone, Peter Goheen, and especially John Pipkin for their comments and enthusiasm on and for earlier manifestations of this article and to the anonymous reviewers who urged us to pedal faster. We wish also to laud Audrey Kobayashi's stalwart professionalism and kindly encouragement, which piloted the article to its present iteration. Finally, we acknowledge the funding assistance of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Notes

1. Eschatology is the theological consideration of death, judgment, the end of the world, millennialism, the resurrection of the dead, heaven and hell, and the final destiny of the human soul.

2. British Israelism is a persistent and controversial historical assertion that the populations of Western Europe are direct descendants of the lost ten tribes of Israel, and the British royal family the lineal progeny of King David. Brothers's A Revealed Knowledge of the Prophecies and Times (1797), was the first to elucidate the idea. Its most popular expression is Hubert Parry's 1916 Anglican hymn, “Jerusalem,” a choral setting of William Blake's poem of the same title, whose first stanza reads: “And did those feet in ancient time/Walk upon England's mountains green? And was the holy Lamb of God/On England's pleasant pastures seen? And did the Countenance Divine/Shine forth upon our clouded hills?/And was Jerusalem builded here/Among those dark Satanic mills?”

3. Other cities include Akron, Ohio; Bridgeport, Connecticut; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Durham, North Carolina; Erie, Pennsylvania; Everett, Massachusetts; Flint, Michigan; Kenosha, Wisconsin; Keokuk, Iowa; La Crosse, Wisconsin; Little Rock, Arkansas; Madison, Wisconsin; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Montclair, New Jersey; New London, Connecticut; Niagara Falls, New York; Passaic, New Jersey; Reading, Pennsylvania; Roanoke, Virginia; Sacramento, California; Saint Paul, Minnesota; Schenectady, New York; Scranton, Pennsylvania; Walpole, Massachusetts; and Waterbury, Connecticut (Ford and Warner 1917).

4. Folder 28: Greeting Cards, Box 69, John Nolen Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.

5. Miscellaneous: Catalogue of Books, Library of John Nolan, Box 1, John Nolen Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.

6. The University of Pennsylvania Record: 1892–1898 of the Class of '93. 1898, Box 44 (from annex), John Nolen Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.

7. See Catalogue of Books, Library of John Nolen, Box 1, John Nolen Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.

8. Scrapbook in Box 41, John Nolen Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.

9. Catalogue of Books, Library of John Nolen, Box 1, John Nolen Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Nolen ordered three books by Veblen on 9 October, 1919: The Higher Learning in America, The Theory of the Leisure Class, and The Instinct of Workmanship (Box 8, John Nolen Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY).

10. We are indebted to Jody Beck for identifying the source of the Drummond quotation in the Madison plan as The City Without a Church.