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Fighting Modern Evils That Destroy Our Homes

Fighting Modern Evils That Destroy Our Homes was a book published in 1913 by Fred S. Miller that sought to explain the “evils” that destroyed families.

The book mostly covers the topics of marriage and divorce, arguing in favor of marriage and against divorce by using ideas justified in religion.Through its critique on divorce, Fighting Modern Evils presents the effects of religion on gender roles.

The book was written in the midst of the Progressive Era when divorce was becoming more acceptable and common. Already a decade after this book was published, Christian leaders were starting to reluctantly accept the reality of divorce.¹ Although many Christians still held on to the reactionary belief that “divorce, even when allowed by the church, must be looked upon as a tragic and humiliating failure.”² Books like this supplied arguments for the reactionary force against the emerging reality of the new nature of marriage in the early twentieth century. Religious justification was used by such books to scare individuals away from divorce; Fighting Modern Evils characterizes divorce as an “evil spectre.”³ Divorce became commonly characterized as evil by popular press and in religious and legal circles.⁴

 

 

_{1 Celello, 26.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid, 82.
4 Ibid, 21.}