Date on Master's Thesis/Doctoral Dissertation

5-2011

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Degree Name

M.A.

Department

History

Committee Chair

K'Meyer, Tracy Elaine

Author's Keywords

Cadman; S. Parkes; United States--History; Radio; Religious broadcasting; Liberal Protestantism; Religion--Ecumenism

Subject

Cadman, S. Parkes (Samuel Parkes), 1864-1936; Radio in religion--United States--History; Religious broadcasting--Christianity--History; Religious broadcasting--United States--History; Christianity--United States--20th century

Abstract

S. Parkes Cadman (1864-1936), a Christian minister at Central Congregational Church in Brooklyn, New York from 1901 to 1936, was a popular religious figure in interwar America. From 1924 to 1928, Cadman served as president of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America. Through his utilization of mass media, Cadman became a religious celebrity in the 1920s. This study analyzes the oratory and written work Cadman produced between 1920 and 1936 and argues that Cadman believed that religious imagination, if properly reached and guided by a Christian minister, would enable the progression of Christian ecumenism. In a time of Protestant division, Cadman expressed his views on imagination and ecumenism over radio station WEAF, New York from 1923 to 1936 and in several seminal books, including Ambassadors of God (1920), Imagination and Religion (1926), Answers to Everyday Questions (1930), and Imagination (1930).

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