Chautauqua's First Assembly Wedded Christianity and Culture
John Hyle Vincent (shown) worked with Lewis Miller to bring about the first Chautauqua Assembly.
LEWIS MILLER was a successful manufacturer and Methodist Sunday school superintendent who had incorporated the latest scientific ideas into his Sunday school curriculum. John Hyle Vincent was a Methodist preacher, later bishop, and editor of a Sunday school magazine. Together, they set out to reform the Sunday school of their day.
The two men agreed that what Sunday school teachers needed was an intensive summer program to inspire and train them. "The basis of the Chautauqua work was in the line of normal training, with the purpose of improving the methods of biblical instruction in the Sunday school and the family," wrote Vincent. (“Normal training” was the nineteenth-century term for training in educational methods; all over the U.S., schools of teacher training were founded as “normal schools.”) Having found an ideal location at a camp ground at Lake Chautauqua in upstate New York, Miller and Vincent opened their institute on this day, 4 August 1874. Vincent noted later that the first meeting opened with words from the Bible. “Thus the first vocal utterance at Chautauqua was divine.”
The first year’s session ran two weeks and included lectures, lessons, sermons, devotional meetings, conferences, and teaching demonstrations, accompanied by simple recreations such as fireworks, concerts, and comedy routines.
Vincent described the purpose of this mix, saying: “The theory of Chautauqua is that life is one, and that religion belongs everywhere. Our people, young and old, should consider educational advantages as so many religious opportunities. Every day should be sacred. The schoolhouse should be God’s house. There should be no break between Sabbaths. The cable of divine motive should stretch through seven days, touching with its sanctifying power every hour of every day.”
In 1875, the organizers of the original Chautauqua added scientific demonstrations to their routine. That same year, Mary Lathbury wrote her beloved hymn “Break Thou the Bread of Life” while at the camp.
The Chautauqua model caught on with Americans. By 1912 about one thousand Chautauquas were held across the United States each year. Some resembled county fairs more than the Christian educational institution that was their namesake. Others were scarcely more than camp meetings. Still others offered secular lectures and political speeches. Over the years, the secular component became more dominant at the original camp and, as opportunities for similar education grew more common, Chautauquas declined throughout the United States.
—Dan Graves
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Learn more about the appeal of the Chautauqua movement in "A cathedral, a retreat, a challenge" in Christian History #119 The Wonder of Creation
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