Tag Archives: Immigration
What Bethel Students in 2014 Thought about Bethel in 1914
On Monday we’ll be flying to London to begin our three-week travel course on the history of World War I. So don’t expect much from me here at this blog. (Not that I’ve exactly been prolific of late!) But before we go, I thought I’d share some thoughts from the students on our trip: As a pre-trip assignment, I […]
A College’s Denomination: An Exercise in Contrasts (Part 2)
Several weeks ago, I teased a series I planned to write on the Baptist General Conference during the Vietnam years. On Wednesday, I introduced that series. Today’s post was intended as the first of the three parts, but after a few hours of work on that post, I realised that there were too many background problems to […]
“Are You Loyal?”: Bethel as an Immigrant School in 1917-18
Because of their widespread pro-German sentiments at the beginning of the European conflict and outspoken support for American neutrality, up to April 1917, the Swedes and other Scandinavians in the United States faced a highly uncomfortable situation, causing many to overreact—or to keep quiet. – H. Arnold Barton, A Folk Divided, p. 248 Both responses — overreact […]
“A Folk Divided”: Swedish-Americans and WWI
The Swedes have always been considered desirable additions to American citizenry, perhaps for the reason that they leave a less noticeable trace in the fabric of our society than any other non-English-speaking stock. Their spirit, if not their costume and language, is American before they bid farewell to their friends at home. While their love […]
Where Did Early 20th Century Bethel Students Come From?
Next week I’ll have lots more to say about how the people of Bethel and other Swedish-Americans experienced World War I, in light of the “100 percent American” nativism of that time. But while I was working on those posts, it occurred me that I could pretty easily visualize just how much of an immigrant […]
“100 Percentism”: Nativism in WWI America
There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism…. The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or […]
War and Americanization at Immigrant Schools: Bethel and Calvin
Not long after the United States entered the First World War, Bethel Academy graduated its class of 1917, fifteen strong. It had been sixty-five years since Swedish Baptist immigrants founded their first American congregation, yet still one in three of the school’s graduates were natives of Sweden or Norway, and almost all the rest had Scandinavian surnames. That last […]
Bethel at War 1914 - 2014 