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M

ILLENNIALISM AND

S

OCIALISM

: E

UGENE

V. D

EBS AND

A

MERICA

'

S

P

UBLIC

P

ROTESTANTISM

| C

HRISTOPHER

C

ANTWELL

Christopher Cantwell is a senior history major and economics minor, and former religious studies minor.

This paper was a project for the Religion in America course.  In this work, Cantwell applies the thesis

of Catherine Albanese (in her standard text:  America: Religion and Religions) that a number of charac 

teristics constituting a "public Protestantism" serve a unifying religious function for all Americans.

Cantwell traces these very American traits in the life and work of Eugene Debs, the Socialist labor move 

ment leader labeled "un American" by his contemporary opponents.  The point and result for both

Catherine Albanese and Chris is an awareness of the larger underlying patterns that often reveal appar 

ently conflicting groups to be nevertheless, kin.

Steve Spina

Lecturer in Religious Studies

Millennialism and Socialism: Eugene V. Debs and America's Public Protestantism    Christopher Cantwell

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