Religion and the Great Depression: Part III

Lodged firmly in the American psyche and a bedrock part of American and personal family histories, is the Great Depression. Beginning with the stock market crash in October of 1929 - the market losing 50% of its value in weeks - and lasting more than a decade, it was the worst calamity to hit the United States since the Civil War. At its worst one out of every four workers was unemployed. Farms went under with their former inhabitants leaving their homes seeking shelter, food, and work; poverty and want were everywhere. The emotional toll on millions was severe. Americans and America was traumatized and transformed.

For us the question is, in what ways did religion – one of the greatest and most ubiquitous forces in American history – react to the Great Depression? Understanding this will help us comprehend religion’s role in the American project, equipping us to be perpetuate and perfect it more successfully into the 21st century.

As part of our multi-episode series about religion in the Great Depression, Dr. Lisa Tait, Dr. Ben Park, and Dr. Matt Bowman are here to tell the story of how The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints responded to and was changed by the Great Depression.

Dr. Lisa Olsen Tait works in the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and is a historian and writer specializing in women’s history. Dr. Tait received a PhD in American Literature and Women’s Studies at the University of Houston. Her dissertation and several subsequent publications are on Latter-day Saint women’s response to the gendered and generational crises of the 1890s. Dr. Tait’s long-term project is a biography of Susa Young Gates, one of Brigham Young’s daughters.

Dr. Benjamin Park is an associate professor of history at Same Houston State University where he studies the intersections between religion, culture, and politics in America, mostly during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and often within a broader Atlantic context. He received a PhD in history from the University of Cambridge. He has written several books including American Nationalisms: Conceiving Union in the Age of Revolutions, 1783-1833, Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier, and American Zion: A New History of Mormonism. Dr. Park currently serves as an associate editor of Mormon Studies Review.

Dr. Matthew Bowman is the Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies, with a joint appointment in history and religion, at Claremont Graduate University. He received a PhD in American History from Georgetown University. Dr. Bowman is a specialist in American religious history, with particular interests in Mormonism, new religious movements, and the development of the concept of “religion” in the United States. He is the author or co-editor of The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith, Women and Mormonism: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, and Christian: The Politics of a Word in America. Dr. Bowman is currently serving as co-editor of the University of Illinois Press series Introductions to Mormon Thought.