The Theocrat (Zion City [i.e. Zion], Ill.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
396 issues from 1914 to 1949, published in Zion, Illinois, digitised for Chronicling America.
Zion City was a utopian religious community founded in July 1901 by John Alexander Dowie, an evangelical minister and pioneer of Pentecostalism in the United States. Dowie emigrated from Australia in 1888, and eventually settled in Chicago where, in 1893, he established a ministry near the World’s Columbian Exposition. Central to Dowie’s ministry was the practice of faith healing, and it proved enormously popular. He soon formed a publishing company to issue his sizable output of periodicals, books, and pamphlets. In 1896 he began planning a utopian religious community, to be named Zion City, which would serve as a refuge from the many social problems troubling American cities at the time, the same problems attracting the attention of contemporary Progressive Era reformers. Whereas most progressive reformers viewed these problems as evidence of social, economic, and political disfunction, Dowie saw them as evidence of religious and moral decay. He believed that only complete subordination to religious authority could solve the problems of modernity, and Zion City was planned as a theocracy, which is why its first newspaper was named the Zion City Theocrat.
The Theocrat was actually the creation of Dowie’s successor, Wilbur Glenn Voliva, who replaced Dowie as the church’s leader after Dowie became embroiled in a massive scandal over his mismanagement of Zion City finances. Despite Dowie’s disgrace, the town continued to be governed by his religious program, with faith…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Zion, Illinois, United States
- Language
- English
- Collection
- Chronicling America
- Licence or status
- None stated by the archive
- Rights
- The Library of Congress believes that the newspapers in Chronicling America are in the public domain or have no known copyright restrictions. Newspapers published in the United States more than 95 years ago are in the public domain in their entirety.
- Credit
- Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities
- Who can read it
- Teens profiles and older (placed by Invisible Network from what the archive says; archives give no ratings)
- Archive
- Library of Congress