Chautauqua

Chautauqua refers most often to the Chautauqua Institution, a village of learning begun on Lake Chautauqua, in western New York State, in 1874. The institution was founded by John Heyl Vincent, a Methodist minister, and Lewis Miller, an industrialist, as a 2-week retreat and summer school for Sunday School teachers in the Methodist church. This summer school was intended to parallel the normal school experience for teachers. The term Chautauqua can also be used in reference to the independent Chautauquas, affiliated with the Chautauqua Institution, which offered similar academic and entertainment programs for those who could not attend the institution. In addition, there were the circuit, or tent, Chautauquas that traveled to provide programming to rural America. Finally, the name Chautauqua can be used to refer to a magazine, The Chautauquan (1880–1914), which provided a means of continuing communication throughout the year when the summer school was done.

In its first session, Chautauqua attracted some 4,000 participants, who each paid a meager fee. Notables who attended the Chautauqua Institution when it was in its heyday were the inimitable Jane Addams, founder of Hull-House, a settlement house in Chicago for the poor; William James, distinguished psychologist and writer; Rudyard Kipling, writer and poet; as well as noted suffragettes Susan B. Anthony and Julia Ward Howe. Even into the 21st century, Chautauqua continues as a meeting place and speaking venue for authors on topics such as religion and public life.

In the early 20th century, Chautauqua became a meeting place and shorthand for the social gospel movement that united those with religious and social justice leanings. The social gospel movement, strong in public life during this time, was a belief that to be a Christian meant to be involved with improving the social order through speaking, acting, and preaching. Religion and justice went hand in hand for social gospel advocates, who were undoubtedly influenced by Marxist ideas and who embraced the social gospel as a way of combining their religious heritage with a renewed world order.

Begun as a Sunday School initiative, Chautauqua drew numerous people to give speeches, worship, and enjoy the pleasures of Lake Chautauqua and gentrified country living. The idealized perspective of American life drew its share of critics, who saw in Chautauqua an appeal to the middle class and a perpetuation of idealized and romantic notions of summers on the lake. Chautauqua's library, speaking venues, groomed gardens, and rows of neat, wooden houses with verandas contributed to this caricature and critique. Its strict laws against smoking and drinking helped reinforce its image as a euphoric retreat from real America. Critics of Chautauqua point out that for all its promotion of social movements, it managed to evade the larger questions of race and class, and it remained isolated in many ways from people it could well have helped. It would be difficult, for [Page 303]instance, to ignore the homogenous groupings and the largely Christian emphasis of the institution, which continue, by and large, to the 21st century. As well, Chautauqua, for all its social gospel connections, was largely concerned with promoting liberalism, the cultivation of class, education, and the arts.

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