Finding Religious Content in the Social Work of Jane Addams

For this week’s blog we have been prompted to analyze the religious content of the social work instituted by Jane Addams.  Although it is difficult to directly connect religious meaning with social action, I intend to show that the work of Jane Adams was profoundly influenced by her Quaker upbringing and the conceptual framework which it instilled upon her.  Much of the first chapter in Jane Addam’s book, Twenty Years at Hull House, focuses on her admiration for her father, John H. Addams.  Passages like, “My great veneration and pride in my father manifested itself in curious ways. On several Sundays, doubtless occurring in two or three different years, the Union Sunday School of the village was visited by strangers...I imagined that the strangers were filled with admiration for this dignified person, and I prayed with all my heart that...[I] would never be pointed out to these visitors as the daughter of this fine man” (7) make it clear that Jane Addams idolizes her father and the way that he lives his life.  

 

The difficulty of finding religious content in the social work performed by Jane Addams is that the work itself was not presented as a religious project.  The primary goal of the Hull House was to save and improve mortal human lives, not souls, and Jane Addams does not seem to focus on conveying a religious message to the people that she is helping.  I found this slightly strange, but I did a little bit of extra research and found that many of the ideas and ideals that Jane Addams preached were actually against the social norms of her time, including cultural feminism, women’s suffrage, and social pragmatism.  Given her unorthodox views for the time, it makes sense that Addams would have established an institution that was not directly affiliated with the church, but this certainly doesn’t mean that her actions and beliefs were not influenced by religious teachings, consciously or not.

 

Many of the Quaker teachings that Jane Addams reflects fondly upon in Twenty Years at Hull House are apparent in the social work that she instigated.  I think the most striking example of this is the almost fable-like story that Jane Addams recounts when she is thinking about her interactions with her father.  Jane Addams writes that she had recently received a beautiful article of clothing and she wanted to wear it to church, but her father suggested that she wear a more plain cloak.  His reasoning behind this was that a fancy cloak might make other girls feel bad, and this is a wonderful encapsulation of the Quaker ideal of a community of equals.  It is readily apparent that Jane Addams was trying to improve the living conditions for individuals who were from less privileged backgrounds.  Although Jane Addams did not portray her social work as religious, I think that many of the social ideals of equality and philanthropic leanings of Addam’s were directly due to the religious influence on her childhood.  This may not be blatantly religious in nature, but if we are to assume that religions are simply systems of symbols, what better symbol than an esoteric set of thoughts or values?  Religions act on individuals in ways that create conceptual frameworks through which we view the world, and although I am not an explicitly religious person, I recognize that my upbringing instilled certain religious ideals on my thought processes.  With this in mind, I would argue that the work of Jane Addam’s certainly bears the mark of a Quaker’s religious mind set, and because of this it has religious content.