Twenty Years at Hull House

In reading the text by Jane Addams, I find that there is indeed a religious content in the nature of the humanitarian work done by the volunteers at Hull House. In my opinion, the issue is not whether Addams was religiously motivated, because the social work seems to take the place of religion. For instance, although there is no deity or worship involved in the social work, the act of striving to help people, in itself gives the volunteers a sense of meaning and purpose such as a religion would provide. In a sense, it is a structure or framework in which they can make sense of the world, and provides an object - relieving the suffering of others - that, to them, is an end in itself. Whereas in religion, the object of life is often to prepare for the afterlife, which is the end for which a believer strives, in Jane Addams's humanitarian work, the work is the end: "for many people without church affiliations the vague humanitarianism the Settlement represented was the nearest approach they could find to an expression of their religious sentiments" (p.152). In this sense, it resembles a sort of secular religion (having no afterlife), in which the workers strive to make earth a more 'heavenly' place: "this dream that men shall cease to waste strength in competition and shall come to pool their powers of production is coming to pass all over the face of the earth" (p. 142). From reading Addams's own words, you get the sense that she holds the humanitarian ideals for which she strives, such as equality and democracy, on a higher, almost religious plane. In fact, she even once refers to Hull House as "a Cathedral of Humanity" (p. 149). It also seems to me that Addams strives to be as 'God-like' as possible, in that she strives to love all men equally and actively carry out that ethic: "the things that make men alike are finer and better than the things that keep them apart, and these basic likenesses, if they are properly accentuated, easily transcend the less essential differences of race, language, creed, and tradition" (p. 111-12). Ultimately, I think that the work done at the Hull House was religious in nature, not because it was done in the name of God, but because the ideals were held by the social workers as universal truths, in which they put their faith to make a better earth.