and William James. Emerson, and transcendentalism more broadly, ‘‘insists, first, that the well-being of the individual—of all the individuals—is the basic purpose and ultimate justification for all social organizations and second that autonomous individuals cannot exist apart from others.’’ By making the individual and his or her soul central to the modern project, transcendentalism offers an alternative to ‘‘utilitarian liberalism,’’ on the one hand, and to ‘‘leader worship’’ and ‘‘collectivism,’’ on the other. ‘‘It is the ambition, if it has not yet been the fate,’’ writes one of Emerson’s most notable biographers, ‘‘of transcendentalism to provide a soul for modern liberalism and thereby to enlarge the possibilities of modern life.’’ This idea constitutes ‘‘the central truth of religious—not secular—humanism, the idea that is also the foundation of democratic individualism.’’ Certainly, as we shall see, it was Muste’s ‘‘central truth,’’ providing form to the many twists and turns of his long public career.48
Muste’s rhetorical facility was not only fostered by public school, but also by the church, which was at the center of the family’s cultural life.49 When his family entered the church on Sunday mornings, Muste felt as though he had ‘‘entered another world, the ‘real’ world . . . ‘to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.’ ’’50 Years of Sunday school taught him to sermonize and, at age eleven, he gave his first sermon on the meaning of Christmas; the following year he discoursed on ‘‘Jesus, as Prophet, Priest and King.’’ There was never a moment of doubt that he was destined for the ministry. In fact, there was no real choice in the matter; as the eldest son, his family and community expected that he would honor them by becoming a minister. But Muste’s sense of destiny for the ministry also reflected his religious sensibility. At the age of thirteen, he had a mystical experience in which he was overcome by a sense of wonder and divine presence. ‘‘Suddenly,’’ Muste recalled of this moment, ‘‘the world took on a new brightness and beauty; the words, ‘Christ is risen indeed,’ spoke themselves in me; and from that day God was real to me.’’ Soon thereafter, he received confirmation, whereas most were not confirmed until age eighteen. In later years, he would come to see his youthful mysticism as a nascent expression of pacifism.51
Having displayed his oratorical talents and religious sophistication, Muste was given a scholarship to attend the preparatory academy attached to Hope College, an RCA denominational college located in Holland, a small, largely Dutch community about twenty-five miles west of Grand Rapids. Hope offered Muste a safe, nurturing environment for the maturation of his intellect and his spirit, while also providing him with experiences and opportunities that drew him outward, away from the known into the unknown.52
Hope offered a classical liberal education that was largely isolated from the new intellectual climate of biblical criticism and Darwinian biology. But by the turn of the century, outside currents had begun to creep in. The college created a department of physics and chemistry and a department of biological science, and the library began to accumulate a small collection of science books. Although secondary students were not allowed to read the heretical texts, Muste had access to them because of his job in the library. He also learned a new ‘‘point of view’’ from the new professor of biology Samuel O. Mast, the first and only faculty member ‘‘who was a scientist in the modern sense of the term,’’ a vocation that created some tension between him and the college administration. He forced his students, Muste among them, to perform dissections rather than read about them.53
Involvement in extracurricular activities such as the YMCA and intercollegiate athletics also exposed Muste to the outside world. When Muste first arrived at Hope, ‘‘we didn’t have any intercollegiate athletics at that point. That was considered rather unorthodox and rather wild.’’ By the time he entered his freshman year, however, the college had grudgingly admitted that physical exercise, when not taken too far, could promote ‘‘Christian character.’’54 The idea that new, muscular bodies of Christians would be better equipped to spread the gospel had already made deep inroads into mainline Protestantism, and at the turn of the century had just begun to penetrate conservative churches such as the RCA, due largely to the efforts of the YMCA. Muscular Christianity was the religious counterpart of the redefinition of American manliness associated with Theodore Roosevelt’s cult of the strenuous life. While the old model ‘‘stressed stoicism, gentility, and self-denial,’’ the new, Progressive model of American manhood stressed action and aggression, attributes intimately connected to Social Darwinist notions of civilization, progress, and race.55
Hope students, including Muste, heartily assented to these ideas. He was an active member of the campus chapter of the YMCA, helped lead the campaign for intercollegiate athletics at Hope, and, later, led the college to two state basketball championships as captain of the Flying Dutchmen.56 He also served on the editorial board of the student newspaper, the Anchor, which was suffused with the language of muscular Christianity. As one 1905 editorial, probably written by Muste, put it, ‘‘In a college such as ours where so many profess to be Christians one is apt to lose sight of the serious, strenuous side of Christianity, because there is not the incessant conflict with sin that is forced upon one when in the presence of the positive evil in the world of active life.’’57 His 1903 oratory on the Polish king John Sobieski, which won the Michigan state championship, similarly reveals a preoccupation with establishing the criteria for Christian manhood: ‘‘By what standard shall we determine a man’s greatness?’’ He concludes that what made Sobieski ‘‘the Lincoln of Poland’’ was not just his use of force, but his principled stand for ‘‘civilization’’ and Christianity against the ‘‘barbarism’’ of the Turks.58
These treatises provide us with a glimpse of the teenage Muste’s world-view. He appears fixated on the question of how to be both manly and Christian. Over and over again, he argues that the man of words can be a hero so long as he exhibits character traits like courage, sincerity, and a willingness to take action and struggle. Like his heroes John Sobieski and Abraham Lincoln, he pines for an ‘‘important mission’’ that will inspire him ‘‘to conquer and to die on humanity’s behalf.’’59 These gendered concerns have a weighty quality to them; his writing is heavy with the nineteenth-century style in which Greek mythology and history, scripture, Victorian sentimentalism, and notions of Western progress and civilization blend together in ways that appear self-important to twenty-first-century eyes. Still, a softer side to Muste occasionally makes an appearance, like an Emersonian ode to nature’s beauty and another on the importance of honoring poets, not just warriors and statesmen.60
FIGURE 1. A. J. Muste (holding ball) as captain of the Flying Dutchman basketball team. 1904–5. (Joint Archives of Holland)
FIGURE 2. A portrait of the Muste family a year before Martin Jr.’s death from bronchitis. Front row, left to right: Martin Muste, Martin Jr., and Adriana Muste. Back row, left to right: Cornelia, A. J., Nellie, Cornelius, and Minnie. Circa 1906. (Marian Johnson)
Meanwhile, back at home, life continued as usual. The Mustes attended the same church and lived in the same neighborhood, Martin continued to work in the furniture industry, and Adriana continued to keep house and raise children, including a third son, Martin Jr., who was born in 1902 (and who would die of bronchitis in 1907, when he was four years old).61 Martin and Adriana were proud of their eldest son; after all, ‘‘the height of a parent’s ambition in that environment [was] that the older son should get an education,’’ especially if he planned to enter the ministry. But they expressed this pride with characteristic modesty and ‘‘matter-of-factness.’’62 According to friends, family, and acquaintances, Muste shared his parents’ humble and unassuming character, which seems to contradict the confident
