Public Religion and the Urban Environment: Constructing a River Town 9781472549204

Citation preview

Acknowledgments

As with any large project, a number of different people and institutions helped to support this book, without whom it could not have been written. The Chester Fritz Library at the University of North Dakota, and especially their Elwyn B. Robinson Department of Special Collections, was an invaluable resource, and many of the materials discussed in these pages (especially in Chapters 4 and 5) were found in their archives. The Northwest Minnesota Historical Center, located in the Livingston Lord Library at Minnesota State University, Moorhead, provided additional archival materials, and the Alcuin and Clemens Libraries at the College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University in central Minnesota were continually helpful, especially through the inter-library loan department at the Alcuin library. Daniel Pederson, a church musician who composed “Keep the Faith,” generously granted permission for the song to be reprinted in Chapter 4 and also provided helpful feedback. Ashley A. Ver Burg, as part of a class on GIS mapping at St. John’s University, provided the base used for the map of the upper Midwest in Chapter 3. The people who agreed to be interviewed for this project, in both Grand Forks and Fargo, were enormously helpful, thoughtful, and inspirational. Laurel Kearns, Catherine Keller, and Terry Todd were supportive throughout this project, and provided very helpful feedback and reflections which have helped to make this project what it is. Otto Maduro and Traci West both introduced me to ideas and schools of thought that have greatly influenced this book, and Art Pressley gave very helpful feedback in its early stages. A portion of Chapter 2 was previously published as a chapter in the edited volume Inherited Land: The Changing Grounds of Religion and Ecology (Bohannon 2011); many thanks to Kevin O’Brien and Whitney Bauman for their comments on earlier drafts of that chapter, and their companionship over the years it took to finish this project. Travel from my home in central Minnesota to Grand Forks was funded in part by the Edwards-Mercer Prize of the Graduate Division of Religion at



Acknowledgments

vii

Drew University. Travel to New Jersey was most often hosted by Brent Bates and Jennifer Thweatt-Bates, and their hospitality and friendship made working on this project much more pleasant. My family has been blessed with a wonderful childcare provider, Sharon Ostendorf, without whom many of these pages could not have been written, this book would likely not have been finished, and much sanity would have been lost. Finally, and not at all least, my partner, Anna Mercedes, was a source of unbounding patience, support, and (as a theologian herself) critical insight. I consider myself quite unusually lucky to live with such an incredible person. Our daughters Sylva and Norah also provided endless amounts of joy to our home, and unknowingly helped to keep me grounded in the midst of the chaos, even while adding a little chaos of their own.

viii

Chapter 1

Urban Nature, Disaster, and Religion

The farms and prairie along the border of North Dakota and Minnesota provide a landscape that is either oppressively flat or breathtakingly open, depending on one’s perspective. The roads are straight, and trees only appear as narrow windbreaks protecting farms and as tight pockets of growth surrounding the occasional farmhouse. In the midst of this thinly populated landscape lies Grand Forks, an urban outpost which, like Fargo to the south and Winnipeg to the north, sits along the serpentine lines of the Red River of the North. In the springtime of particularly wet years, this river overflows its curving lines and spreads for miles through the surrounding countryside, turning farmland into a vast lake and threatening the small cities and towns along the river, including Grand Forks. This is what happened in the spring of 1997, when water from quickly melting snow spilled over the city’s dike system, inundating the urban landscape with the city’s largest recorded flood, destroying neighborhoods near the river and causing an electrical fire which burned several prominent downtown buildings. In the years following the flood, however, Grand Forks has largely been rebuilt: downtown buildings have been restored and replaced, and several neighbor­ hoods were abandoned along the river as the city created a large park within a newly enlarged dike system. The 1997 flood, along with the rebuilding that came after it, forms a case study for this book, which looks at how people understand the relationship between cities and their environments, and the role that religious language plays in making sense of that relationship in the public sphere. Based on responses to the flood, it shows that religious factors have indeed influenced how the relationship between nature and the city is perceived in the United States and, more specifically and more crucially, that religious narratives and images helped to reinforce a basic disposition toward the city and its environment, which in turn both influenced how the city itself was rebuilt and helped to justify the urban control of nature.

2

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

“Nature” and the “city” have most often functioned as opposites within Western culture, a dichotomy that has been reinforced (and sometimes challenged) by religious images, particularly from Christianity. Cities and natural environments, however, are both connected and continually affected by each other – urban centers are dependent on the resources provided by their hinterlands, and cities in turn affect the ecosystems to which they belong through things such as agricultural development, mining, and pollution. Grand Forks, for instance, is a river town that was originally built to take advantage of the Red River for transportation. While this utilitarian function quickly subsided, Grand Forks is still (like every city) dependent upon a global network of food and “natural” resources, and more locally relies upon agricultural commodities such as grain and sugar beets. Such connections become quite overt in natural disasters, which, by necessity, involve a dramatic rupture of nonhuman nature into human spaces where they are not welcome; muddy river water flows through the streets and living rooms. The possibility of controlling nature, in other words, is put into question. As discussed later in this chapter, disasters do at least two other things. First, they disrupt the narratives people use to make sense of the world; often, because it is a primary way of constructing meaning out of life, religious language thus becomes prominent during and after disasters. Labeling a disaster an “act of God” is one stereotypical example of this. Second, disasters also create an environment which exaggerates existing social conditions and human-natural relationships, making them easier to discern.1 People often do not have reason to reflect actively on the relationship between their city streets and the river; when the river has overtaken those streets, however, that relationship becomes paramount in people’s minds. Because of these things, urban natural disasters provide spaces in which religiously informed assumptions about the urban environment are most visible. The particular case of the 1997 flood in Grand Forks, along with the city’s subsequent redevelopment, provides an especially enlightening case study of how the urban environment is perceived: because (as will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 3) it was an urban natural disaster, most public responses consistently blamed the flood on nature; and while the flood destroyed much of the downtown and surrounding neighborhoods, the city has largely been rebuilt in ways that intentionally take into account the river which flows through it. While the bulk of this book is thus comprised of an analysis of Grand Forks during and after the 1997 flood, the concern that motivates the project is in fact much broader. That is, the disaster in Grand Forks is



Urban Nature, Disaster, and Religion

3

important because it can tell us something about US cities in general. The primary undertaking of this project is thus not to form a history or analysis of the flood, which other books have already done quite successfully (e.g., Porter 2001; Fothergill 2004), nor is it to learn lessons about disasters and effective disaster recovery, which is a much more common way of studying disasters. Rather, it is to learn something about religion, cities and nature. This book also is about “public religion,” as the title suggests, not in the more common sense of looking at the public influence of religious institutions and practioners (e.g., Casanova 1994), but in the sense that it is concerned with religious ideas and narratives as they exist in the public sphere. The underlying questions are: first, what are some of the dominant (religious) perceptions of the city and nature in this strand of American culture? And, second, how do these images relate to the actual built infrastructures of cities, and Grand Forks in particular?

Cities and Nature Western perceptions of the city – such as the city as ordered and civilized, or as a den of temptation and violence – emerge out of a history that is laced with religious, and, most often, Christian, influences. Richard Sennett, for instance, in The Conscience of the Eye (1990), finds several religious roots in the urban design of Western Europe and the US since at least St Augustine. In the case of medieval Europe, he contends that the “secular” spaces outside of large churches were “jumbled together” with streets that were “twisted and inefficient,” while the sacred space of the church was ordered and rational (12). Puritan colonies in Massachusetts strove to build a “city upon a hill,” often more as a moral platitude than a planning regime, but their instrumentalist and efficient view of the world also helped to develop the modern urban grid. And in more modern times, the French architect and urban planner Le Corbusier saw in the clean and straight lines of modernist design a faith in “structural perfection,” comparing the skyscrapers of New York to medieval cathedrals (169). European and American religious history is full of other urban images as well. Augustine, for instance, wrote of Christians as belonging to the “city of God,” though that city was heavenly, not earthly (Brown 2000), the Christian Bible ends with the creation of a heavenly New Jerusalem, and in the nineteenthcentury US the city was often portrayed as a haven of sin and corruption.2 Concepts of “nature” also have a long and parallel religious tradition in the West. Nature has been seen in a variety of ways – as a book or a revelation

4

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

through which to encounter God; as a sacred part of God’s creation; as a gift from God to be managed wisely, stewarded or taken care of; as a resource for human uses; and as something dangerous and in need of civilization and domestication. In many cases these perceptions of the environment are rooted in images that arise out of Christianity; at other times, they are informed by religious impulses outside of any particular religious institution, such as using nature as a moral guide or fearing Mother Nature.3 When we talk about nature or the city, we are talking about both ideas as well as material worlds. That is, we inherit and shape narratives or concepts that symbolically construct how we perceive nature or the city, but cities and their environments are also material worlds that affect how we interact with one another and think about urban or natural environments. Both of these levels are important, as the city and nature are closely related to each other, not only materially, but also symbolically. Our ideas about cities and nature are often pitted against one another – for example, cities are civilized, whereas nature is wild – but cities are also physical incorporations of nature, transformations of “first natures”4 into a built environment of streets, build­ ings and parks. The later chapters of this book, which focus on Grand Forks, for instance, will thus focus not only on how people described their city, but also on the physical infrastructure of the city itself, along with its river. Such physical incorporations are not simply benign, however: a significant dynamic between cities and nature is the control of nature, especially through urban development. In the city, nature is civilized; it shifts from wild prairie to parks and asphalt, from forests into lumber. This controlling or civilizing of nature can take on multiple faces, and has been justified by multiple forms of rhetoric, including religious rhetoric. During the 1997 flood in Grand Forks, the urban-nature relationship was often portrayed as a battle of the city (with God in its side) versus nature, or of order versus chaos. Within months of the waters receding, nature became more commonly viewed as both a force whose power needs to be controlled, as well as a recreational space that complements the downtown being rebuilt. In a city where the control of the Red River is of paramount concern, this included building a dike system to contain the river, restoring ecosystems and constructing parkland, and maintaining potable water. Grand Forks is a river town not only because it is built alongside a river whose banks are full of parks, playgrounds, and fishing holes, but also because the city’s existence is dependent upon confining and controlling the river. While not always so obvious as an elaborate dike system, efforts to control our environments lie at the root of urban planning for any town or city; indeed, controlling nature is at the root of all human development, from



Urban Nature, Disaster, and Religion

5

cooking food to building a home to protecting a place from catastrophic disaster. The implications of controlling nature thus lie at the root of this book, as not only are cities dependent on controlling their natural environments, but (as is evident in a disaster) those efforts at control also – somewhat ironically – make cities more vulnerable to widespread destruction. Both the struggle and failure to contain the flood in 1997 and the efforts simultaneously to rebuild the city and to protect it from future disasters are, at their roots, unambiguous efforts to control nature. Together, these twin efforts, which were both strongly supported by religious imagery, point to deep ambiguities concerning the environmental sustainability of controlling our environments. They also, however, call into question the common environmentalist assumption that controlling nature is necessarily destructive and unsustainable.

Methodology These pages were written in central Minnesota, a couple of hours away from the Red River Valley. The house where I wrote many of these chapters sits a block from Red River Avenue, named after the nineteenth-century trade route that once followed the Red River on its way from Winnipeg, through Grand Forks and Fargo, and which then cut across central Minnesota on its way to Minneapolis and St Paul. I was drawn to study Grand Forks, and the devastating flood it experienced in  1997 as the Red River overflowed its banks, through meeting several people from the area. My original research intentions were much broader – previous research on religious constructions of “nature” and nature’s perceived opposite, humanity, led me to suspect that there is also something religious about how we understand the relationship between nature and that most human of spaces, the city. I set about searching for a way to ask whether that was so through the investigation of specific cases, and, if so, how. Reactions to the Grand Forks flood became an ideal case study for two reasons. First, the flood was an instance where there was a clear conflict between a city and its environment; it thus seemed reasonable that in such a context people would be talking about how the two should relate. Second, I suspected that religious language would most likely surface during such a disaster, when people, whether or not they consider themselves as being particularly religious, are searching for a way to find meaning in a world that has collapsed around them. I took an initial trip to Grand Forks in May 2008 to see the city and to determine if the archived resources at the University of North Dakota

6

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

(UND) were extensive enough for a chapter case study within a larger project on cities, nature, and religion through the lens of disasters. The UND archives are indeed quite impressive, but what captivated (and continues to captivate) me, and convinced me to make Grand Forks the focus of what has become this book, was how the city had recovered in the eleven years that had passed since the flood. Not only had the downtown managed to rebuild itself with some success, providing the urban basics of spaces for working, eating, and living, but the city also built an enormous greenway – essentially a long, narrow park – that travels the entire length of the Red River through town, totaling over 2000 acres. Within a ten-minute walk of downtown, for instance, one can go camping (legally), go fishing, ride a bike or ski along a trail, or walk in a meditative labyrinth. The interplays between urban and natural spaces rise to the surface in a uniquely transparent way in such a place, as Chapters 3, 4, and 5 will describe in more detail. As these chapters will also demonstrate, these developments are evidence of a great deal of concerted thought on how the city should relate to its environment, simultaneously celebrating the river while also remaining consistent with a logic found during the flood that argued for controlling nature and “keeping faith” in the city and its rebuilding. Grand Forks, I am convinced, is a particularly instructive case study because not only was ample religious language present in responses to the flood, but the city was later rebuilt to take more fully into account its river. This allows us to ask both how the city’s relationship to its environment was perceived during and after the flood, as well as how that relationship was navigated during the rebuilding of the city and the river’s dike system. As a way of uncovering the changing perceptions of the urban environment in the aftermath of the Grand Forks floods and the role of religion in shaping or reinforcing those perceptions, this book primarily relies upon content analysis of documents from a variety of sources, including publications by Christian organizations as well as sources, such as newspapers, not formally affiliated with any religious tradition. Unlike more common approaches to religion and disasters, such as Brand’s (1999) work on the therapeutic role of religious rhetoric in sermons during the aftermath of the Grand Forks flood, this book not only evaluates responses from religious institutions (such as churches and denominational relief agencies), but also from the broader public, with the hope of ascertaining how religious imagery related to how the flood and rebuilding were perceived on a broad scale. From the summer of 2008 through the summer of 2010, primary data was collected from library archives,5 databases, and by directly contacting



Urban Nature, Disaster, and Religion

7

organizations and denominational archives. This data was derived from several types of sources. Religious media were surveyed, including print publications and websites of religious organizations and denominations, as well as national Christian magazines, such as the Christian Century and Sojourners. The majority of this material was derived from groups with a large population in the area and who were actively involved in relief efforts (i.e., Lutherans, United Methodists, and Roman Catholics). Because national coverage of the flood was relatively contained to the first few months following the flood, coverage at this level was relatively low. All religious media catalogued in the American Theological Library Association (ATLA) Religion Database were searched, using relevant keywords. Popular, nonreligious media were also surveyed, including magazines, national and local newspapers,6 popular books and children’s books, photo essays, and documentaries. Additional articles found in library archives or during other research were also reviewed. Again, because flood coverage was largely limited to the first few months after the disaster and because of the limited amount of coverage Grand Forks generally receives in the national media, a largely comprehensive review of this material was possible. Several resources were available outside of the media and religious organizations. The North Dakota Museum of Art, which is located in Grand Forks on the campus of the University of North Dakota, directed an extensive oral history project, headed by Eliot Glassheim, a city council member who at the time also worked at the North Dakota Museum of Art, and Kimberly Porter, an historian at the university. This project resulted in several books (Hylden and Rueter 1998; Glassheim 1999; Porter 2001; Glassheim 2002). Separate oral histories were also conducted specific to East Grand Forks (Quam 1999) and the University of North Dakota (Orvik and Larson 1998). Because of the noncommercial nature of these projects, they were particularly valuable for my research, as they captured narratives about the flood that were recorded close to the time of the events (in contrast to interviews I conducted, described below) and were relatively independent of the media. Along with these oral histories, a selection of personal letters, children’s drawings, and personal miscellanea, primarily found in the archives at the University of North Dakota, were reviewed. Numerous government records (such as city council minutes) and documents from rebuilding organizations were also reviewed. These included organizations and commissions involved in the Grand Forks Greenway development (such as the Grand Forks Greenway Alliance) and down­ town redevelopment (such as the Downtown Development Commission for the city of Grand Forks), along with proposals and recommendations

8

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

from ­outside planning consultants (such as the Urban Land Institute). Flood memorials, erected by local government, were also visited and ­photographed. Finally, I conducted a small number of personal interviews with people involved in some aspect of the rebuilding efforts. Because over a decade had passed since the flood, interviews were not conducted as a form of primary research, but were intended to solidify my understanding of the city and help interpret the archived materials I reviewed. Eight interviews were conducted with local pastors and church leaders, community members, and local government officials (such as city council members) who were involved in the rebuilding process, including people from both sides of the river. Interviews were between one and three hours in length, and were conducted in 2009 and 2010 in Grand Forks and Fargo. All of these materials were analyzed using qualitative content analysis, beginning by asking how the “city” and “nature” are depicted in the materials surveyed, paying particular attention to relationships between the two.7 The collection and analysis was conducted over several rounds; that is, materials from a variety of religious organizations at the time of the flood were collected first and then analyzed. The preliminary results from this effort then effected how later materials were reviewed. Data was considered “religious” if it carried overt theological language, referenced faith or religious organizations or objects (such as churches or bibles), contained language that used traditional religious metaphors but without any clear attempt to convey a religious message (such as describing relief workers as “angels”), or clear references to an ultimate source that is beyond humanity (including some references to nature). Chapter 2 provides a more complex discussion of how I defined “religious” in the scope of this project. Because of the religious landscape of Grand Forks, the data was overwhelmingly – though not exclusively – Christian. Collecting data from a multiplicity of sources allowed for a more nuanced discussion of public perceptions. Because the majority of data was found in databases and archives, this method additionally was largely unobtrusive (see Berger 1998), as compared with other methods such as surveys or participant observation. Such data is nevertheless limited by the fact that it was collected for other purposes, and it was not always possible to collect it systematically. Furthermore, it also was not without bias; within the media and local government, for instance, there was pressure to report positively on flood responses and the rebuilding effort, thus leading to complaints that problems during the recovery period were minimally reported (Rakow et al. 2003: 41). Interviews with major players involved in rebuilding efforts



Urban Nature, Disaster, and Religion

9

helped to mediate potential gaps in the collected data, and the review of oral histories provided a counterweight to the perspectives of the media and government. The results from this primary data organize Chapters 4 and 5. It is important to recognize, then, that while many of the narratives contained in the following chapters come from sources holding a relatively large amount of political and/or social weight, such as the media or local government, I am in no way claiming that this is the story (or stories) of the flood. Even though they are often skewed and inaccurate (or, perhaps, especially insofar as they are skewed and inaccurate), dominant stories are important because they are indeed dominant – that is, they have an effect over a large population and create or reinforce master narratives for how people make sense of the world. Katherine Fry, who has written on media responses to the 1993 Midwestern floods (2003), has thus argued that the mass media powerfully shapes our perceptions of place and nature.8 That other, sometimes subversive, narratives (such as found in oral histories) exist as partially against such master narratives not only demonstrates the arbitrariness of the stories told by those in power, but also that such dominant narratives do indeed have widespread social influence.

Why Natural Disasters? Unlike most literature on natural disasters, and as I explained above, the main focus of this book is not on understanding the social dynamics of the disaster itself, or on analyzing the effectiveness of recovery efforts. It is, rather, on how the city and its relationship to the environment were religiously influenced or envisioned, using the disaster in Grand Forks, and the city’s rebuilding afterward, as an avenue for exploring the urban-natural relationship. Natural disasters are uniquely instructive sites for such questions. To begin with, natural disasters require some kind of human-nature interaction; implicit in the idea of a “disaster” is some kind of harm done to humans. A seasonal flood in an uninhabited area is not seen as disastrous, for instance, but simply part of how a particular ecosystem works. Religion enters the equation in part because natural disasters have a long history of being blamed on God, or seen as a punishment from God as a result of human sins or shortcomings. This tendency has shifted in the last century, however. Whereas in the eighteenth and nineteenth century in the US, for instance, natural disasters were seen as moral indictments from God

10

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

(Rozario 2007), this is only the case for a minority of people in the US today. In Acts of God: The unnatural history of natural disaster in America (2000), Ted Steinberg comments that “many no doubt see natural disasters as simple acts of nature, a view that reflects the increasing secularization of twentieth-century American society” (xxii).9 This secularization and “trend toward demoralization” was “given a boost” by the increasing role of the state and federal government in underwriting the risks involved in developing and living in risk-prone areas (ibid.). In other words, disasters ceased to be “acts of God” over which people had no control, and the resulting belief that humans can have control over their environments encouraged people to live in places more vulnerable to disaster. In the wellknown case of New Orleans, for instance, much of the Mississippi River’s wetlands were drained and levees were erected alongside the river, greatly exacerbating the potential for catastrophic flooding (Kelman 2006). This shift away from divine responsibility has not caused such language to be completely abandoned, however, but rather it has shifted in meaning, as Steinberg further elaborates: It is also clear . . . the demoralization of calamity has resulted in a new set of rhetorical opportunities for those in power. Once, the idea of invoking God in response to calamity was a strategy for eliciting moral responsibility. In the twentieth century, however, calling out God’s name amounted to abdication of moral reason. With the religiously inclined less disposed than ever to take acts of God seriously, the opportunity has arisen over the last century for some public officials to employ God-fearing language as a way—thinly veiled though it may be—of denying their own culpability for calamity. (2000: xxii–xxiii, emphasis added) Steinberg cites the work of sociologist Kai Erikson, whose influential work on natural disasters noted how officials of a mining company in West Virginia tried to skirt responsibility after a dam they improperly built collapsed and flooded towns downstream with mining slag. After the dam burst, an official of the mining company told a reporter that the dam was “incapable of holding the water God poured into it” (Erikson 1976: 178) – a rather irritating response in the ears of residents, as God did not build the dam or fill the reservoir with slag. In a more recent instance, Rick Perry and Tom Cole, the governor of Texas and a congressman from Oklahoma, respectively, responded to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico by arguing that the explosion which began the spill was an act of God. Perry, for instance, remarked that the spill might be “just an act of God that



Urban Nature, Disaster, and Religion

11

occurred . . . From time to time there are going to be things that occur that are acts of God that cannot be prevented” (Sherman 2010; see also Milbank 2010). Perry’s remarks were directed to the US Chamber of Commerce as a warning about the economic consequences of halting off-shore drilling. The legal designation of a disaster as an “act of God” is thus not simply a quaint remnant of a society where religious language was more prevalent, but is also a way for those with material interests in developing or using high-risk land to lay the blame outside of their own actions (whether it be developers, business and industry, farmers, or the Army Corps of Engineers) and onto something that cannot be controlled. Importantly, Steinberg sees both blaming God and blaming nature as ways of skirting responsibility (e.g., 2000: 60–1). Thus, while we hear fewer people speaking of “acts of God,” we nonetheless continue to speak of nature acting as something outside of human control. Ari Kelman (2006) for instance, has written on the aftermath of the 1927 flooding of the Mississippi near New Orleans, in which the levee was destroyed outside of the city so as to save New Orleans itself. In this instance, referring to the event as either a natural disaster or an act of God abdicated the responsibility held by the Army Corps of Engineers (who built the levee) and state and local officials. As later chapters will make evident, Steinberg’s critique partially coalesces with responses to the Grand Forks flood. Like most cities in the US, Grand Forks was definitely guilty of poor land development practices, including building neighborhoods on low-lying land near the river. So in this basic sense – Grand Forks would not have flooded had people not built a city and named it Grand Forks – the blame placed on nature (and less commonly, God) misdirects our attention from poor development choices, as pointed to by Steinberg’s work. Stopping with this observation, however, carries the risk of too quickly taking away power from the natural world, hubristically (and ironically) assuming that humanity can always control natural environments, or at least live harmoniously within them.10 As Chapters 4 and 5 will demonstrate, the ultimate unpredictability of nature will be a major theme in reactions to the flooding of Grand Forks. This leads to an irresolvable tension: human developments (such as cities) are based on and require the control of some part of nonhuman nature (a theme explored further in Chapters 5 and 6), and even the most modest and most ecologically responsible development (however one might define that) is still at some risk from the nonhuman world, whether it be through flood, fires, diseases, drought, or any number of other nature disasters.

12

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

Thus, directing blame for disaster on human irresponsibility, greed or ineptitude, while often quite appropriate, might itself mark an inability to admit that humans can be overwhelmed by natural forces, and that it is sometimes beyond human ability to prevent things such as natural disasters. Nature is powerful (also a theme developed in Chapter 5), and blaming events on the nonhuman world is not always only an attempt to divert responsibility away from culpable humans. Conrad Smith thus observes, based on research into media responses to several disasters, that “mismanagement is a more reassuring explanation in a society that assumes it can control its physical environment through the application of technology” (1992: 145). In Grand Forks, then, one might read flood responses that blame the disaster on nature as counter-narratives to the hubristic assumption that modern societies can control their environments. Nonetheless, Steinberg’s focus on human culpability also makes a helpful implication, which provides another reason for studying natural disasters: disasters exaggerate social conditions.11 Several researchers have found this to be the case in Grand Forks, as discussed in Chapter 3. Alice Fothergill contends that disaster research helps illuminate social relations beyond times of disaster by making them easier to see. In her study on class and gender in the Grand Forks flood, she remarks that: women’s lives can be understood by studying a collective stress event, such as a flood, which disrupts the social order and allows us to see their experiences and perspectives more clearly. Thus, examining the nature of women’s lives in a disaster, when taken-for-granted and unquestioned arrangements are disrupted, provides an opportunity to learn how women construct and make sense of their everyday lives in both crisis and noncrisis periods. (Fothergill 2004: 27) The circumstances of a natural disaster thus allow pre-existing social relations to come to the foreground. If we extend our understanding of social relations to include not only human-human encounters, but also human-natural interactions, as “actor network” theorists such as Bruno Latour (2005) would argue, we can extend Fothergill’s observation to claim that disasters allow for the relationships between people and their environments to become more visible. Two caveats are in order before proceeding. First, in Fothergill’s work, quoted above, she is not claiming that the disaster created gender and class distinctions, but merely that such events create an environment wherein a  researcher can more readily see them. These pages likewise do not



Urban Nature, Disaster, and Religion

13

s­ implistically claim that the 1997 flood singularly created perceptions of the  city and the environment which then influenced how the city was rebuilt, but rather that the flood made visible conceptions that were influential both before and after the flood. Second, and in some tension with the first point, Fothergill demonstrates that while many of the women she interviewed experienced “role and identity continuity” – that is, the social role and norms that existed before the flood continued or were heightened – others also experienced “role and identity shifts” (Fothergill 2004: 211). The flood thus not only exaggerated existing social divisions (e.g., some mothers of young children experienced an increase in childcare responsibilities), but in some cases disrupted them (e.g., women trained to be passive and “North Dakota nice” had to become assertive). We might then presume that while many perceptions of the urban environment already existed before the 1997, the flood itself created enough of a rupture to allow for new ideas to emerge. This is perhaps most tangibly evident in the ways that city officials, as discussed in Chapters 3 and 5, created a new vision for how to integrate the river with downtown development. We might explain disasters as instances of “theodicy,” in the sociological sense meant by Max Weber and Peter Berger. For theologians, the term specifically refers to questioning the justice or righteousness of God in the face of some form of evil. Brought into a sociological rubric as developed by Weber, the term more broadly refers to the breakdown, in the face of some crisis or tragedy, of how a society explains itself though a universe of symbols, so that a crisis of legitimation follows. For instance, counter to standard Christian interpretations, in Weber’s rubric the prophets of ancient Israel were only concerned about social reform insofar as it answered a question of theodicy and explained God’s wrath in the face of destruction by the Assyrians and Babylonians (Weber 1978: 443; 1952: 297–321).12 Weber’s depiction of theodicy has strongly influenced later sociologists, such as Peter Berger (1967), for whom social theodicies serve a primary role in the construction and legitimation of the “sacred canopy” of symbolic universes.13 The importance of stemming chaos and creating order is present in the work of Clifford Geertz (1973) as well, though he does not specifically use the language of theodicy. Disasters thus do not simply interrupt and exaggerate social relations along class and gender lines; they also disrupt our ways of making sense of reality as a whole. The urban historian Carl Smith, writing on a series of disasters in nineteenth-century Chicago, notes that the catastrophes that the city experienced were not only physical but social and psychological

14

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

too. “We should be aware,” he writes, “that the occurrences that people consider most disruptive are those which seem to offer the greatest challenge to their ideas of order” (1995: 6). Religious language (whether tied to a religious institution or not) becomes a key tool for making sense out of such chaos, or what Berger (1967), following Émile Durkheim, calls “anomic phenomena.” Finally, when we talk about natural disasters, we are not just talking about crises within a symbolic universe, but physical crises that threaten people’s lives. The philosopher Gaston Bachelard, while writing on a theory of space, observes that a house finds a distinctively full meaning in the context of storms. “Faced with the bestial hostility of the storm and the hurricane,” he writes, the house becomes “an instrument with which to confront the cosmos” (1964: 46). The house is constructed as a barrier from rain and wind, and its successful ability to keep out the elements makes it a home, a space imbued with meaning and significance. We might extend Bachelard’s observation to cities and towns; the struggle to keep a city dry from flooding waters is both a material concern as well as an existential one. Human order is symbolized in the urban grid, and threatened by the chaos of encroaching waters. There is, then, no full distinction between the built environment and our ideas about it; they mutually reinforce one another. As one disaster scholar writes, “disasters come to existence in both the material and the social worlds and, perhaps, in some hybrid space between them” (Oliver-Smith 2002: 24). By threatening the existence of the material city, disasters also threaten our ideas about what cities are and how we should build them in the future. Urban disasters thus also form a space where specifically religious ideas are most readily visible, and where religious constructions of the urban-natural relationship are most easily discernable.

Why Religion? While staying at a bed-and-breakfast in Grand Forks in  2008, somebody asked me what had brought me to town. I told him about my research, and that I was looking at the rebuilding of the city after the 1997 flood. I then mentioned my specialization was actually in religion, and that I knew this was not an obviously religious topic. Without a pause, however, his reply was concise: “Well, for those of us who lived through it, it definitely was religious.”14 He then quickly changed the subject. Much has been written on religion and natural disasters, of course, and it should come as no surprise that a disaster was experienced by someone as



Urban Nature, Disaster, and Religion

15

a “religious” event. There has been at least one study, for instance, on the role of religion in coping with the trauma of the Grand Forks flood (Brand 1999), and Alice Fothergill (2004) has also noticed the therapeutic role that religion played among women recovering from the flood. As stated earlier, however, this book is only partially about a disaster, and when we take disasters out of the equation, research on both cities and the environment – what I in shorthand refer to as the “urban environment” – have only rarely considered religious factors. As discussed toward the end of this chapter, a small handful of books have been published in Europe on theology and the urban environment (Gorringe 2002 and 2011; Kjellberg 2000), but my research has uncovered no book-length studies from elsewhere within the humanities or social sciences. Furthermore, with the exception of Mormons in the Western US (Reps 1965: 466ff; Johnson 2010), and, to a lesser degree, Puritans in colonial New England (Oldfield 2000), religious institutions have not been overtly influential in the development of urban planning in the US. This leads us to a question: what is gained by studying religious perceptions of the urban environment? Urban development is a reflection of the ways in which people encounter, structure, or make sense of the world. Richard Sennett, for instance, shows how perceptions of the human body have influenced urban architecture and planning (1994), as well as how the privileging of interior, private life has influenced the design of European and American cities so as to keep out the stranger and the unexpected (1990). Sennett even connects this latter idea to Christianity, for instance, by arguing that the urban grid that became popular in nineteenth-century American is a child of a Protestant desire to seek order and “neutralize the environment” (1990: 48), and by claiming medieval European cities were designed so as to contrast the rather disordered and inefficient layout of streets with highly ordered and structurally efficient Gothic churches. Pierre Bourdieu makes a similar, if narrower, argument when he observes that our social relations are mimicked in the worlds we physically construct around ourselves. Furthermore, for Bourdieu there is a constantly revolving relationship between, on the one hand, our ideas about and dispositions toward the world, and, on the other hand, the “world of objects” that we make. The material world both reflects and reinforces our ideas about those objects and one another. Bourdieu uses the example of a home, in which (among other things) gender differences and expectations are built into the form of the house (e.g., women’s spaces and men’s spaces for particular gendered tasks). The home is thus simultaneously a product of ideas about gender, and reinforces those same

16

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

ideas by physically encouraging people to continually re-enact them (Bourdieu 1991: 90–2). As Kim Dovey, an architect and urban theorist, has noted, Bourdieu’s concept of “home” is tied to his notion of habitus, or the set of nonconscious15 assumptions and predispositions which we share with others and which frame how we view the world. Bourdieu actually borrowed the word from architecture, which he discovered while translating a work by Erwin Panofsky, an art critic (Dovey 2005, 284–5). The interplay between social relations and physical space is not only limited to the home, but applies to the entire built environment. Dovey describes this as a “complicity” between “architecture and the social world” in which architecture, both as buildings and as towns or cities, “frames” our worlds (2005, 291; see also Dovey 2008).16 To return to the question of religion (which for Bourdieu was often a major source for constructing one’s habitus), by studying religious perceptions of the urban environment we allow ourselves a window into two of the primary ways in which people makes sense out of the world – by religious meaning-making and by materially building up the world around us.

Structure and Summary The rest of this book proceeds in two disproportionate sections. As the first, and much shorter, section, Chapter 2 looks at the intersection of religion, the city, and the environment in existing scholarship within religious studies, sociology and environmental theory. A large body of literature has emerged over the last century on the influence of religious factors on how nonhuman nature is both perceived and treated in the West. Additionally, cities are also critical for thinking about nonhuman nature for at least three reasons: cities are some of the most environmentally influential and destructive places, cities are built of natural materials (even if only at the molecular level), and cities have often been perceived as the definitional opposite of nature. However, within most of the scholarship that takes the city seriously as an environment or as part of nature, religion has been largely ignored. The bulk of Chapter 2 is thus spent reviewing three existing disciplinary ­intersections – religion and ecology, religion and cities, and cities and nature – and arguing that in order to understand how the relationship between cities and their environments have been perceived, we need to know something about the religious factors that influence our perceptions.



Urban Nature, Disaster, and Religion

17

This forms the basis for the second and larger portion of the book, which looks at the 1997 flood in Grand Forks and the city’s subsequent rebuilding. These chapters take the basic argument of Chapter 2 – that our perceptions of the urban environment have been influenced by religious factors – and ask how this plays out in a particular urban context. Chapter 3 is especially for readers unfamiliar with Grand Forks, and provides an overview of the area’s cultural and geographical history. As such, it also functions as a background for the following chapters. Chapters 4 and 5, which should be read together, then look at the ways nature and the city were perceived during the 1997 flood and the rebuilding that has occurred since then. These chapters are based on qualitative research conducted on flood responses. Chapter 4, which is predominantly about the period surrounding the flood itself, begins with drawing out how God and nature were seen as active agents during the flood and recovery efforts. The chapter then looks at battle imagery, one of the most common themes found during this research, and two sub-themes that emerge out of it – a struggle between chaos and order, and calls for having faith in the city. Chapter 5 continues into the rebuilding process itself, and revolves around two motifs: controlling nature and nature as recreation. Finally, Chapter 6 concludes by returning to the question of how religion, nature and the city interconnect. It first charts out the ways in which religious impulses are present in the images and narratives explored in the flood responses; it then goes on to ask how scholarship in religion, nature, and the city might be better integrated. The chapter, and this book, then ends with a recurring theme throughout this project – the control of nature – and challenges how current environmental scholarship frames questions regarding the human control of the nonhuman world. When should we try (or not try) to control nature – or is such a question skewed from the beginning?

18

Chapter 2

Religious Meaning-Making and the Urban Environment

In popular uses of the word “environment” or “nature” – “saving the environment,” for instance – one can generally assume that the environment being discussed is something away from where we live. These words encompass places such as the forests, oceans, and the wilderness, and generally do not refer to things such as a living room or sidewalk. Such limitations are ultimately arbitrary, though, and confine the scope of what counts as an environmental issue. William Cronon (1996), for instance, has somewhat famously (or infamously) critiqued the environmental movement’s concern over saving the wilderness, arguing that its focus on the preservation of remote and “untouched” nature has often accompanied a lack of environmental concern over the environments we actually live in – and an increasing majority of people across the globe, and certainly the overwhelming majority of academics, live in or near cities. For most people, a primary encounter with the nonhuman world thus comes from interactions with and within cities and town. Cities are material worlds, they are environments; but our homes, streets, and workplaces are decidedly not natural environments or parts of “nature” (at least not according to how those words are usually meant). Cities are human artifacts; they are, we tell ourselves, the opposite of natural. As a basis for the study on Grand Forks and its flood, on which late chapters focus, I begin this chapter by briefly investigating three broad and contested categories – religion, city, and nature. The purpose of the first half of this chapter is both to explain briefly some of the arguments about how these terms are used, and to provide my own working assumptions about how the terms are being used in these pages. This is not just a semantic exercise. How one defines – or critiques – the word “nature,” for instance, can have an effect on how one thinks about the ethics of controlling nature. The second half of the chapter will then survey how contemporary scholarship draws connections between these concepts, and will look at the

20

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

three disciplinary intersections that currently exist in the academy: scholarship on cities and the environment, on cities and religion, and on religion and the environment. I then argue that while a substantive hole exists in this literature (namely, that relatively little scholarship to date that has considered all three of these terms in tandem, especially within sociology and history), such work nonetheless implies that there is something religious about how the city’s relationship to the environment is perceived in the contemporary US. This connection between cities and environments is particularly crucial for work on religion and the environment, as it greatly expands what counts as an environment and what lies within the sphere of concern for religious environmental scholarship. More specific to this project, it also means that one can only make sense of how the city or the environment was perceived during and after the Grand Forks flood when these two concepts are considered together, as materially connected and conceptually related constructions.

Key Terms: Religion, Environment, City Religion and Religious Meaning-Making “Religion” is a notoriously contested term, and definitions of religion have a tendency to both exclude certain phenomenon as well as to twist other phenomenon into looking like a particular normative description of “religion.”1 As Jonathan Z. Smith argues, however, scholars of religion nonetheless need definitions of “religion,” not to provide a final proclamation on what counts as religious in all contexts, but to gain a “horizon” for one’s research (Smith 2004). The research focus of this book is on the presence of religious images and concepts across a broad range of a society, and much less on institutional forms of religion or religious practice – though in the case studies presented in later chapters, very often images with a great deal of social currency derive from Christianity. To study the presence of religious images, I am first assuming that such images are a significant part of how people make sense of their worlds. In The Sacred Canopy (1967), for instance, Peter Berger writes that “religion is the human enterprise by which a sacred cosmos is established.” It is, in other words, an organized effort at ordering reality around those things that are sacred, or things that are “endowed with a stability deriving from more powerful sources than the historical efforts of human beings” (Berger 1967, 25). The main function of this religious enterprise, for Berger, is to legitimate the social order through a sphere that is more powerful than



Religious Meaning-Making and the Urban Environment

21

humanity. All institutions require legitimation, Berger notes, but religious institutions are somewhat unique in that they ground their legitimations in constructions of “reality” itself (1967, 36).2 As implied in this definition, Berger is taking a basically Durkheimian approach by looking at religion’s role in maintaining social stability – religion reflects how a society orders the world, as well as functions to legitimate that social order, by rooting it in a foundation beyond humanity – and it is in times of instability (which can certainly be caused by things such as natural disasters) that religion’s role becomes most critical. As discussed in the previous chapter and of particular importance for later chapters on responses to disaster, a primary role of religion is to provide order to a society that is in disorder. Thus, for Berger, religion is not just the means by which society creates a “sacred cosmos,” but, more specifically, a “sacred cosmos that will be capable of maintaining itself in the ever-present face of chaos” (1967, 51). Other sociologists and anthropologists have also primarily viewed religion as a system by which people make sense of the world. Robert Bellah, for instance, has defined religion as “a set of symbolic forms and acts which relate man to the ultimate conditions of his existence” (Bellah 1964: 359). Bellah’s concern was for developing a broad schema to understand religious evolution, which has often been critiqued; however, this definition also allowed him to look not only at institutional forms of religion, such as Christian churches, but also American “civil religion” (1967), which he proposed as the shared religious worldview, arising out of Christianity (Catholic and Protestant) and Judaism, that the overwhelming majority of people across the country shared. Bellah’s definition is distinct from Berger’s in significant ways: Bellah is concerned with things related to humanity’s “ultimate condition,” whereas Berger is looking for ways in which humans ground their social structures in something perceived to be solid and immutable. Yet both Bellah and Berger see religion as something that permeates a society through a set of meaning-making symbols. Like both of these theorists, Clifford Geertz envisions religion as a “cultural system,” providing a general framework for making meaning out of existence. In a much more precise definition, Geertz famously argues that “a religion is (1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish a powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men [and women] by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic” (Geertz 1973: 90). There are multiple similarities here with the work of Berger in particular; religion is first a set of symbols that make sense of the world, but it also provides

22

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

“order” for life, and it motivates people to do things. Berger is less likely to speak of motivation and more likely to speak of legitimating social relations, but there is nonetheless an overlapping point: religion both reflects how people act and provides framework for future action, and it does both of these things within a system that orders life.3 Bellah, quoted above, is perhaps most succinct on this point, in seeing religion as both “symbolic forms and acts.” For all three of these theorists, then, the structure of religious symbols themselves are not the point; these symbols matter insofar as they coexist with a set of practices and social structures. Contemporary scholars such as Robert Orsi (2005) would extend this argument further, and claim that religion is not primarily about concepts or ideas or dispositions, but about “making the invisible visible, of concretizing the order of the universe, the nature of human life and its destiny” (73). Others (e.g., Ammerman 2007) have made a similar shift to “lived religion,” or studying religion as it is actually practised; this approach has been especially popular among some scholars in religion and ecology (e.g., Gould 2005; Peterson 2009; see also Campbell 2011). In a much more recent essay, Kelly Besecke does not address religious practices but does offer one way to envision how religious symbols and images permeate a society. Unlike Jose Casanova (1994) and others who talk about public religion in terms of religious institutions and influence on the “public” sphere (namely, politics and economics), Besecke argues that because people are always communicating with one another, religious meaning-making often occurs publicly, outside of religious institutions or formal public spheres. Thus, for instance, she argues that the growth in popular religious books at chain bookstores is not a sign of the individualization of religion, whereby we can now each choose our own religion as we best see fit. Nor is it simply the result of the commercialization and globalization of religion. It is also, Besecke argues, an indication of a public conversation around transcendent meaning, mediated through not only the reading and writing of books, but with the formal and informal discussions of them among friends and colleagues. Religion for Besecke, then, is a “societal conversation about transcendent meanings” (2005, 181). For this project, the helpful piece in Besecke’s argument is the notion that religion is a “societal conversation” in that it is public but not necessarily tied to religious institutions in any way. Besecke thus largely agrees with Thomas Luckmann’s earlier description of “invisible religion,” (1967) with the significant exception that what Luckmann perceived as private religion, and thus largely socially irrelevant and “invisible” religion, Besecke argues is indeed public religion which is



Religious Meaning-Making and the Urban Environment

23

simply communicated along lines that are not bound to either religious institutions or formal public forums. Within the rubric of this project, I am interested in “societal conservations” insofar as they provide images, concepts, and perceptions of things that relate to how we make sense of our environments. For this study, my working understanding of religion falls somewhere between the definitions mentioned above. For the purpose of this project, things are religious insofar as they are shared images, concepts, and perceptions that make sense out of reality by pointing to an ultimate source and orienting people’s dispositions toward and interactions with the world. The first emphasis here is on the shared, or public, nature of the religious. While Besecke is explicitly making an argument about public religion, Berger, Bellah, and Geertz are all likewise arguing that religion is something that permeates a society. Thus in the study of Grand Forks that organizes later chapters, I look at religious images as they appear in various forms of public communication, from church bulletins to newspapers to published oral histories. My concern is not exclusively with responses from religious institutions (in the case of Grand Forks, primarily Christian churches or church organizations), but more broadly with forms of public communication as they seek to make sense of a rapidly changing context. However, and as I have already stated, the religious institutions in Grand Forks are overwhelmingly Christian, as are the adherents, and thus the culture. Therefore religious references, even when not coming from institutions, are overwhelmingly Christian in imagery and sentiment. Thus, when I use the term “religious” in later chapters, I am often referring to ideas that are primarily Christian in either their orientation or their history, simply due to the history and demographics of the area. It is not my intention, however, to collapse the terms “religious” and “Christian,” or for things to count as religious only insofar as they are Christian, as some nature imagery (in particular) also is religious in that points to an ultimate source.4 Every instance of public meaning-making is not necessarily religious, of course, but only those things which point to something ultimate. I use the word “ultimate” here instead of transcendent because the natural world can be viewed as a source of ultimate reality (as Nature, and not nature) or as a source of the “sacred” in a manner that is more analogous to reflection on more traditional notions of “god” than to scientific argumentation.5 And yet nature (capitalized or otherwise) is not generally considered to be “transcendent.” In other words, rather than seeing the sacred as inherently about the transcendent, like Berger, I see it as that which derives its power from being viewed as outside human history.

24

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

This use of the “ultimate” is slightly different from that of Paul Tillich, whose definition of religion as “being grasped by an ultimate concern” (Tillich 1963, 4) has been highly influential in both religious studies and theology. Like Tillich, my concern is primarily existential – how do we make sense out of lived reality? But by labeling things as religious insofar as they point to an “ultimate” source, my goal is not to simply point to beliefs or attitudes which people hold “with unconditional seriousness,” as Tillich argues. Under Tillich’s rubric, most everyone has some form of religious conviction, as “even the cynic takes his cynicism with ultimate seriousness, not to speak of others, who may be naturalists, materialists, Communists, or whatever” (Tillich, interviewed in Brown 1965, 8). Robert Bellah also talks of religion and the “ultimate,” and likewise argues that religious practices or beliefs involve more than just those things found in institutional structures (such as churches). For Bellah, as mentioned above, “religious symbolization is concerned with imaging the ultimate conditions of existence” (1964, 362). Unlike Tillich, however, Bellah’s main concern here is on the ways that the “ultimate conditions of existence” are codified into changing sets of symbols. My own aim is slightly narrower than that of Bellah or Tillich, however – and perhaps more in line in Berger – in that I am concerned with the “ultimate” foundations of beliefs and practices that are perceived to be fully beyond human influence. Finally, like the definitions of religion provided by Berger, Geertz, and Bellah, for the sake of this project religious images, concepts, and perceptions are worth studying insofar as they might possibly orient people in their dispositions toward and interactions with the social and ecological world. This contention is most like Geertz’s understanding of religious symbols creating “moods and motivations” within people. I use the word “orient,” however, so as to include a wider array of human stances toward the world that might not always include strong emotions. For instance, and as discussed below, Christianity has often contributed to the perception that “nature” and the “city” are separate spheres; one can imagine, however, that many people who hold such a distinction would not always experience it as moods or motivations that are “powerful and pervasive,” and yet they nevertheless orient how people act in the world. My working definition – the religious as sets of shared images, concepts, and perceptions that make sense out of reality by pointing to an ultimate source and orienting people’s dispositions toward and interactions with the world – is a limiting conception of religion meant only for this research project. That is, for instance, I do not mean to suggest that all religions, or all that which might be religious, must be defined as those things which



Religious Meaning-Making and the Urban Environment

25

point to an ultimate reality (e.g., “God” or “mother nature”), and yet I believe this definition overlaps with themes common enough in other definitions, such as those described here, that this limiting description is not overly idiosyncratic. Such a limitation is helpful because I am particularly concerned about the influence of two sources of “religious” authority – the Christian tradition, but also “nature” – both of which have been influential in the history of the US and our understandings of the environment in this country, and both of which, as we will see in later chapters, were appealed to in reactions to the flood in Grand Forks. Nature, Ecology, Environment As I began this chapter by noting, and as many scholars have also observed (e.g., Latour 2004; Morton 2007), the term “nature” assumes an inherent opposition to society. For something to be labeled as natural implies a lack of human intervention. Neil Evernden, among others, has noted that in the West nature has also been understood as either “the real” and thus a source of authority (as in Medieval natural theology, or much of modern environmentalism), or as anything that is not human. These two ideas reinforce each other; the more nature is removed from humanity, the more it can be the source of ultimate, objective authority (Evernden 1992, 18–28), as discussed above. There is an overlap here between Evernden’s construct and Berger’s notion of religion – in the former, nature gains more “authority” the further it is externalized from humanity, while in the latter the “sacred” is understood residing in those things external to human history. Following Kate Soper (1995), a further distinction could be made in Evernden’s second category of nature as that which is not human: nature has been placed in dichotomy both to the “artificial” (or technology, a category particularly pertinent to cities) as well as to humanity or human culture. One can speak of “human nature” as well, of course, referring to things that are believed to be essential to being human; public debates on human sexuality often revolve around what is “natural,” for instance. Yet even here an opposition remains between those things that are inherent, or even genetic, and thus lie outside of the realm of human reason and volition – things that are perceived as part of our “animal” nature – and those things (such as reason) which are distinctively human and intentional. To speak of ecology, on the other hand, connotes a different conglomeration of meanings. Ecology, which originates from the Greek oikos (house), was coined in the nineteenth century by Ernst Haeckel to

26

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

refer to the science of organisms dwelling in their environment. It was later picked up by environmentalists (including religious environmentalists) to refer to a holistic worldview, which argues that ecology provides a model in which all things are interconnected and interdependent, and in which all members benefit and thrive within their natural limits (e.g., Swimme and Berry 1992). Ironically, this understanding of ecology among many religious environmentalists and eco-theologians is a distortion of the current scientific meaning, which incorporates less holistic dimensions in ecosystems such as competition and predation. As Lisa Sideris remarks, “closer scrutiny of this model suggests that it has little to do with nature as we know it” (2006, 451). Most ecosystems do not function to the benefit of all their inhabitants, for instance, “because in nature the needs and desires of each and every individual are rarely if ever met simultaneously. Nature’s interdependence is constructed from strands of conflict, and organisms often relate to one another in and through competition for resources” (ibid). In some academic contexts the use of the word “ecology” went in a different direction and carries a political connotation. “Political ecology,” especially in Europe, is a form of engaged, environmental scholarship, playing off of the Marxist term “political economy.” Likewise, “social ecology,” as pioneered by Murray Bookchin (2007), argues that ecological problems are rooted in social problems. The term “environment,” however, can refer to something broader than either “ecology” or “nature.” Like speaking of nature, when we speak of saving or cleaning up the environment, we are making a distinction between the environment and ourselves. We are in our environment, but we ourselves are not our environment. Speaking of the “environment” is thus often seen as anthropocentric; we are always at the center of the discussion and removed from the environments around us. The word “environment” nonetheless linguistically (and ironically) bridges the natural, the human, and the built. One can talk of social environments, natural environments, and built environments in ways that are (at least in their common intention) wholly distinct from one another. The term “environment” has been most notably contested in the environmental justice movement, where activists and scholars have argued that the environment is not the world of forests, oceans, and wilderness, or a nature distinct from humanity. It is, instead, a place “where we live, work, and play,” a phrase first used by Dana Alston in her address to First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, in 1991, and frequently repeated since then. The environment, remarked Alston, “affords us the platform to address the critical issues of our time: questions of militarism



Religious Meaning-Making and the Urban Environment

27

and defense policy; religious freedom; cultural survival; energy and sustainable development; the future of our cities; transportation; housing; land and sovereignty rights; self-determination; and employment” (United Church of Christ 1992, 103; see also Novotny 2000). For Alston and many other environmental justice practitioners, the environment is thus an allencompassing but unapologetically human-centered concept and political arena. For all three of these terms – ecology, nature, and environment – it is important to recognize that they are socially produced. That is, they lump together the nonhuman world in differing ways, for particular purposes, and are historically and culturally contingent. Bruno Latour (2004) observes that the term “nature” serves to organize reality, and that it is not an inevitable category; the whole of material existence could be thought of otherwise. The same could be said for “ecology,” “environment,” or even “humanity.” These concepts are ways of categorizing reality that are helpful in some contexts and deceptive in others. In other words, we encounter the nonhuman, “natural” world through the images, symbolic understandings, language associations, and stories we tell about it. For instance, the flat prairies of the Midwest can be seen as a vanishing wilderness in need of saving or restoring, as the home for hardworking farming communities that provide the nation’s food, as vast stretches of “empty” fly-over country, as a sea full of amber waves of grain, or as a “Manhattan of corn,” as Micheal Pollan described the cornfields of Iowa (2006, 37–8). Importantly, for almost all of these stories, what makes the prairies “natural,” as well as the farms that have replaced most of them, is their relative lack of human intervention in comparison to more urban places. Throughout this project, the terms “nature” and “environment” are both used, as contextually appropriate, with the intent of pointing to two aspects of the nonhuman world: the degree to which it is mediated through the stories we tell about it (“nature”), and the degree to which we live in “environments” both built and natural. Two implications of this are important. First, conceptions of nature work to the benefit of some at the expense of others. A number of scholars, for instance, have observed how the early American conservation movement worked in the interest of middle- and upper-class white males and against (or in ignorance of) the concerns of Native Americans and racial minorities (Taylor 2002). On a more local level, in river cities that have constructed extensive levee systems to protect urban areas from flooding – such as in Grand Forks – the surrounding rural countryside becomes more vulnerable

28

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

to flooding as floodwaters are displaced into agricultural land. If we take a broader view, we might further claim that our constructions of nature work to the benefit of some environments at the expense of others. As Bruno Latour (2004) has argued, how we “collect” the nonhuman world into categories has great political import. Labeling a particular part of the nonhuman world as “nature,” or labeling it as a specific kind of nature (wild nature, human nature), is a political move.6 Viewing the farmland of the eastern Dakotas, for instance, as the home of hardworking farming communities would yield ethical concerns about both people and the land that are different from those who see the Dakotas as relatively unpopulated and undeveloped “flyover country,” and both of these perspectives would be different from those who view the land as lost or destroyed prairie. Second, our images and stories about nature are not static. They shift and change over time, just as the rest of a society shifts and changes. They also shift across a society – for example, rural farmers experience and understand their environment differently from the urban shopkeepers who sell their produce. As briefly discussed above, such shifting images have perhaps been most dramatically demonstrated by environmental justice advocates, who argue that the “environment” is not the nonhuman natural world but, rather, where “we live, work, and play” (Novotny 2000). Cities Just as there is no stable, unmoving perception of what counts as nature, either across time or across a population, there is no static image of what constitutes the “city,” which is indeed where many of us now live, work, and play. In a posthumously published essay on the historical development of the city, Max Weber notes that among the many definitions of the “city” he reviewed, the only common ground is a largely useless observation: “the city is a relatively closed settlement, and not simply a collection of a number of separate dwellings.” Weber then goes on to argue that city’s role as a “market center” is its defining role (Weber 1921/1978, 1212–13). Georg Simmel, a contemporary of Weber, likewise understood the city primarily as an economic center (e.g., Simmel 1903/1971). In the early twentieth century, the American sociologist Robert Park, a student of Simmel, held a broader definition which maintained that the city is not just the result of economic processes, but a cultural product of what he and his colleagues called “human ecology.” For Park and others in the Chicago school of sociology, the study of human ecology was based on the idea that human societies function analogously to ecosystems (and thus it



Religious Meaning-Making and the Urban Environment

29

was not concerned with the study of human interactions with their natural ecosystems). Urban ecosystems are composed of “a state of mind, a body of customs and traditions, and of organized attitudes and sentiments that inhere in these customs and are transmitted with this tradition” (Park 1915, 1). The emphasis for Park is on the unique forms of social interactions – the “state of mind” – that the city is able to cultivate.7 Lewis Mumford, an urban historian and philosopher who worked in the mid-twentieth century, placed much more emphasis on the built form of cities, and emphasized technology and urban planning. As discussed in the next section, he saw cities as “a product of the earth.” The defining characteristic of the city, however, was not its earthiness (for agriculture is also from the earth) nor its role as an economic center, as Weber and others had argued (for some nomadic societies have had large markets that are temporary and mobile). “The mark of the city,” he writes, “is its purposive social complexity” (1938: 6). What demarcates the city from a rural village, in his view, is a critical mass of social diversity and communication that draws in the surrounding region and creates a level of “drama” which is not otherwise possible. “Without the social drama that comes into existence through the focusing and intensification of group activity,” he writes, “there is not a single function performed in the city that could not be performed – and has not in fact been performed – in the open country” (480). What matters is thus not size or wealth, but how the city functions as a central node within its surrounding context. What feels like a city in  Alaska or North Dakota is thus substantially different from what feels like a city in New York or California. In contemporary urban theory, viewing the city through the lens of economics is nonetheless the dominant framework, though this encompasses a multiplicity of methodologies. David Harvey (1989; 1996), for instance, uses a Marxist framework to view the city as a facet of globally “uneven geographic development” through the growth and concentration of capitalism and social conflict. Saskia Sassen (2001) takes a different approach. In one of the most influential books in urban studies, The Global City, she argues that a new “global city” emerged in the late twentieth century, in which global economic power and infrastructure was centralized in a handful of cities. New York, Tokyo, London, Frankfurt, and Paris are her primary examples, in which she sees concentrations of economic power that are unique in the history of urban development. Cities, however, are not just defined by their economic role, but are also heavily racialized and segregated, and both of these factors have greatly influenced how cities are perceived within the US. The city has thus

30

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

consistently been the focus of ethnic and racial fears and racial segregation, reflected both in popular culture (Zecker 2008) and in urban planning (Wilson and Taub 2006). For many marginalized groups, the city has also been a place of escape and freedom; in African-American literature, for instance, it has been imagined as both a place of liberation and as home (Scruggs 1993; Hakutani and Butler 1995). While these approaches are divergent, and sometimes incompatible, ways of conceptualizing the city, they all share a key characteristic: the city is a social space. Cities are quintessential human spaces, onto which are projected both the fears and idealizations of society. The “city,” as an idea, encapsulates our hopes of glamor and wealth, of progress and neighborliness, as well as violence, racial fear, poverty, and corruption. All of this literature has also been speaking of the city as something large and industrial (or postindustrial). When we look at a place such as Grand Forks, however, this does not quite fit and a question emerges: in what way is Grand Forks a city? Does the concept of “city” hold in the same way for New York City, with a population of over 8 million, as it does to Grand Forks, with a population of 60,000? Georg Simmel, for instance, contrasts the “narrowness” of a small town that limits a person’s possibilities with the “freedom of movement” that can be found in the relative anonymity of the city (1903/1971, 332–3), but cities the size of Grand Forks fall somewhere in between that dichotomy. From the perspective of Manhattan, where the entire population of the Grand Forks area could fit within in a few blocks, Grand Forks is likely to be more associated with farm-life and an agrarian vision of the Midwest than it is to be seen as an urban center. In working on the project, for instance, when I talk to people from one of “the coasts” (as the East and West coasts are often thought of in the upper Midwest) they most often have no clear idea where to place Grand Forks on a map. And while this evidence is anecdotal, Grand Forks is both part of “fly-over” country and it is small for a city – and small cities, with their quick access to the countryside, have themselves been held in contrast to sprawling, polluted metropolises as sites of sentimental nostalgia free from the dangers of larger cities (Miles 2006). With this comparison, it quickly becomes clear that while speaking of “the city” is helpful, it also tends to erase difference. Jennifer Robinson (2002; 2005; 2006) has forcefully argued that the focus on “global” cities in urban studies, for instance (e.g., Sassen 2001) has caused us to ignore the majority of cities that are “ordinary,” especially in the global South – that is, cities that are relatively unimportant for the global economy. David Bell



Religious Meaning-Making and the Urban Environment

31

and Mark Jayne likewise write that “the discourse of cities . . . have tended to follow the logic that cities should be big things, either amazing or terrifying in their bigness, but big nonetheless.” Small cities are an “embarrassment,” being “neither one thing (rural) nor the other (properly urban)” (2006, 5). Smaller cities such as Grand Forks, however, might also be more representative than Manhattan of certain common aspects of urban development in the US – it has a small, struggling downtown that has economically been replaced by sprawling suburban malls, and it forms a regional economic center that is largely ignored by larger cities, and functions partially as a satellite for larger metropolitan areas (in the case of Grand Forks, the Twin Cities and Winnipeg). As a solution, Robinson proposes the study of “ordinary cities,” which are “unique assemblages of wider processes” (e.g., globalization happens, but happens differently) and “exist within a world of interactions and flows” (2006: 109). This conception overlaps somewhat with the “purposive social complexity” emphasized by Lewis Mumford, discussed earlier, but it resists viewing that complexity as something kept within individual cities, and instead sees cities as central nodes within webs of complex interactions. On the occasions when scholars have looked at smaller, more ordinary cities, they tend to look only at those characteristics which fit into the global city paradigm – to look at, for instance, how globalization has re-shaped the urban landscape in the global South – and to ignore all other factors (Robinson 2002). Yet because of their relative isolation from global economic centers, factors beyond globalization might be equally or more important to understanding the fabric of any particular small city. Much like the term “nature,” then, which numerous scholars have critiqued for being normative and exclusionary, but which nevertheless has an explanatory power, speaking of the “city” can be simultaneously explanatory and deceptive. Differences between cities also spread beyond size. As Bell and Jayne note, there is no one “small city” model which fits all small cities: when studying actual places (as opposed to the idea of the city in a culture), we are able to study cities, not “the city” (2006, 11).8 The dynamics of Grand Forks, for instance, are significantly different from cities such as Flint, MI or Youngstown, OH, which are experiencing severe economic decline; they are likewise unlike cities such as Charlestown, SC, dominated by tourism and a myth of white, Southern heritage; nor are they like Juneau, AK, which is defined by its creation as a geographically remote capital city. What then makes Grand Forks a city? For the purposes of this project, there are two defining characteristics shared by all cities. First, the city is a

32

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

concentration in the networks of moving/flowing commodities, people and their byproducts. As mentioned above, Lewis Mumford, in his understanding of urban social complexity, moved toward this idea, and more recent scholarship has developed it further. Bruce Braun (2005), for instance, comments that “once the myriad things that circulate through its streets, plazas, offices and homes are brought out of hiding it becomes clear that urbanization occurs in and through a vast network of relationships, and within complex flows of energy and matter, as well as capital, commodities, people and ideas” (637). While the amount of things flowing through cities, or the size of the regional network of flows in which a city is dominant, varies dramatically – New York is the center of a much larger region than Grand Forks – they nevertheless are all understood as “the” city for people living within their reach. Furthermore, beyond their economic impact or ethnic diversity, small and large cities form a social hub for their region (Bell and Jayne 2006, 6–7). Second, and more importantly, the city has also been understood as a thoroughly human space, and thus implicitly as a nonnatural space. Cities are not just perceived in terms of economics, race, and sprawl, but also in terms of (non-)nature. To be urban, as it is commonly understood, is to be not rural, and to be in nature is to be outside of the city.

Cities and Environments Despite this definitional opposition, or perhaps because of it, a large amount of both activism and academic scholarship has emerged at the intersection of cities and nonhuman nature. A substantial body of literature in this area has sought to make urban life more amenable to nature, and questions the ecological impact and sustainability of cities (e.g., Kellert 2005). Such literature usually posits certain urban planning strategies (such as walkable communities, mass transit, or urban agriculture) as the path toward a more sustainable future. As Matthew Gandy (2002) has pointed out, however, much of this literature is ill-equipped to explain “the social production of nature” and the city, along with the veins of social power that produce urban space. That is, designs for “green cities” fail to ask how we got the oppositional categories of “city” and “nature” to begin with, and in whose interest those categories are maintained. Raymond Williams’s study of the city and the countryside (1973) forms the backbone of much of the recent and more critical scholarship on nature and the city within the humanities. Williams traces how rural and urban



Religious Meaning-Making and the Urban Environment

33

ideals were pitted against each other in British literature, looking primarily at the seventeenth to the twentieth century. A frequent motif among the plurality of shifting images, for instance, is the portrayal of the city as corrupt and the rural hinterlands as innocent, or the city as ripe with possibility and the small town as confining and restrictive. Writing from a Marxist perspective, Williams argues that images of the city and the country arise out of changing economic conditions, and specifically out of the growth of modern capitalism in Britain during the time period his work covers. While a division between the city and the country has existed in many noncapitalist societies, for modern Britian (and, implicitly, the entire industrialized West) the urban/rural division is “the critical culmination of the division and specialization of labor which, though it did not begin with capitalism, was developed under it to an extraordinary and transforming degree” (Williams 1973, 304).9 The dynamic between the city and the countryside, then, is characterized by a relationship of power. In a more classical example, Williams briefly quotes the Roman poet Juvenal, for instance, who described the countryside surrounding ancient Rome as bucolic and innocent. In this portrayal, Williams observes, however, that “what is idealized is not the rural economy, past or present, but a purchased freehold house in the country, or a ‘charming coastal retreat,’ or even a ‘barren offshore island.’ This is not a rural but a suburban or dormitory dream” (Williams 1973, 47). The country is seen only in terms of its utility for the urban dwellers. Williams is not contrasting the city with nature per se, however, but rather with rural communities; his focus is on small towns and farms, and not forests and mountains. Others have paid more specific attention to the contrast between urban places and wild “nature” or the wilderness. John Rennie Short (1991), for instance, expands Williams’s query to include “myths” about the wilderness, the rural countryside, and the city, looking particularly at how these have been constructed in Britain, the US, and Australia. He argues that these myths help to form “national environmental ideologies;” that is, ideologies that help to solidify our understandings of the state through how we perceive our environments. In the US, for example, nineteenth-century images of the frontier, Jeffersonian images of virtuous farmers, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century perceptions of the city as dangerous and violent have all shaped and been shaped by our understanding of the role and definition of the state (Short 1991). James Machor, however, argues that ideas about the countryside and the city have often been joined together, and that something is lost by only studying rural/natural or urban images in opposition to one another.10

34

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

He proposes that the idea of a “pastoral city” has been particularly influential in the US, as an “alternate ‘middle’ realm in which the city blends ­harmoniously with the countryside or contains within its own boundaries urbanity, complexity, and sophistication combined with the physical or social attributes of simple rusticity” (1987, 14). This fulfills, in Machor’s view, a basic human desire to both connect with “nature” while also participating in community and urban life. Machor finds the “pastoral city” myth in Christian images of the New Jerusalem as well as the Puritan’s “city on a hill,” both discussed at the end of this chapter. In the nineteenth century along the east coast, for instance, there emerged an idea of the “garden in the city,” or a desire to reform increasingly industrialized cities so as to reincorporate nature. Such aspirations led to the creation of numerous urban parks, including Central Park in New York and Piedmont Park in Atlanta, as well as to the development of low-density suburban development. This desire to integrate a domesticated nature into the city was also deeply present in the extensive park system created along the Red River during the rebuilding of Grand Forks, as will be seen in the following chapters. The “garden in the city” image also influenced urban planning more directly, particularly in the idea of a “garden city.” Standish Meacham, in his history of the garden city movement in England before World War One, argues that the growth of garden cities (precursors to today’s suburbs) were concerned both with inscribing a proper Englishness to new towns, as well as hearkening back to a “paradise” that had been lost: planners of garden cities “construct[ed] a green and pleasant heaven to replace an ugly and unhealthy urban hell” (Meacham 1999, 1). Early American suburbs in the US in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were part of this same movement, in towns such as the aptly named Garden City, NY and Radburn, NJ. As Machor notes, the desire to integrate the garden into the city also (and more destructively) brought about the “urban renewal” movement of the midtwentieth century, which demolished dense urban neighborhoods and replaced them with monolithic apartment buildings spaced apart from one another. The intent of these developments was to rid areas of urban blight by creating access to sunlight and numerous parks to urban dwellers. More recently, New Urbanist planning has partially been an attempt to resurrect the original garden city model, and is a growing movement in the US (Stephenson 2002; Gillette 2010); as discussed in the next chapter, New Urbanism also played a role in the reconstruction of downtown Grand Forks after 1997. While New Urbanist design focuses on denser, pedestrian-oriented,



Religious Meaning-Making and the Urban Environment

35

and  mixed-use urban development (in contrast to the stereotypical, car-dependant suburbs that segregate residential, commercial, and industrial areas), New Urbanism, at least in its ideal form, also integrates large areas of “natural” parks, and developments often include ecological restoration projects. The result often ends up looking like the older railroad suburbs – small, relatively dense satellite towns built as bedroom communities for middle- and upperclass commuters – of the garden city era. Within New Urbanism, then, there are two ideals working simultaneously: living in an urban environment, and living in a natural environment. It is nonetheless worth noting that a separation between the two remains; that is, town squares are viewed as urban space, and parks are viewed as natural space. This leads us to a different and growing body of scholarship, coming particularly from the fields of cultural geography and environmental history, which is concerned both with the mythologies behind cities as well as the physical construction of urban environments. In a list of characteristics of the city, Lewis Mumford observed that “cities are a product of the earth. . . . What the shepherd, the woodsman, and the miner know, becomes transformed and ‘etherealized’ through the city into durable elements in the human heritage” (1938, 3). Mumford views of the city as both an artifact of the earth – he later observes, for instance, that “the city is a fact of nature, like a cave, a run of mackerel or an ant-heap” (5) – as well as a product of human society. As stated earlier in this chapter, the critical aspect of the city for Mumford lies in its social complexity. This complexity does not confine itself to human social forms, however, but the city “represents the maximum possibility of humanizing the natural environment and of naturalizing the human heritage: it gives a cultural shape to the first, and it externalizes, in permanent collective forms, the second” (6). Cities, in other words, represent the apex (or perhaps low point) of humanity’s ability to transform the nonhuman world into human artifacts. While Mumford’s attention was largely spent on other aspects of the city, more recent scholarship has paid significant attention to this basic insight. In one of the more influential works in the US, Nature’s Metropolis, William Cronon (1991) has written an environmental history of the birth and growth of Chicago in the nineteenth century. Chicago, Cronon demonstrates, became urban at the same time its hinterlands became rural; that is, they both developed in a mutually dependant relationship based on transforming nature into commodities such as grain, lumber, and meat. According to Cronon’s work, one cannot understand the history of Chicago without understanding the history of deforestation in Wisconsin, for

36

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

instance – and, by implication, one cannot understand Wisconsin’s forests and farmland today without taking account of Chicago. David Harvey (1996) likewise argues that all environments have been influenced by humans, as well as any other creature that exists within an ecosystem; animals do not evolve in response to their environments, for instance, but along with their environments. That is, environments and their inhabitants are dynamic systems, co-evolving in response to each other. By this logic, he boldly claims that “there is nothing unnatural about New York City,” as it is an environment that has evolved along with its human occupants. To deny this argument, Harvey claims, “makes no more sense than trying to study pollination without bees” (1996, 186). Several works have followed Cronon and Harvey’s lead, such as environmental histories of New York (Gandy 2003) and New Orleans (Colten 2005). Both of these works argue against the broader cultural assumption of the urban as the antithesis of the natural, and instead show how cities and their natural environments reshape each other. Craig Colten’s An Unnatural Metropolis (2005), for instance, traces the way in which the city of New Orleans is founded upon, and its continued existence is dependent upon, radical transformations of the surrounding watershed of the Mississippi River. Matthew Gandy goes further and argues that cities are neither human nor natural, but instead are “cyborgs,” following the work of Donna Haraway (1991). “Urban infrastructures,” he writes, “can be conceptualized as a vast life support system . . . The cyborg metaphor reveals the interaction between social and biophysical processes that produce urban space and sustain the possibilities for everyday life in the modern city” (Gandy 2003, 9; see also Gandy 2006a). With this image, he hopes to convey a space that is neither purely human nor natural, but instead is the result of a dialectical and metabolic process (in a Marxist sense)11 of interactions between humans and nonhumans. Others, such as Erik Swyngedouw (2004; see also Heynen et  al., 2006) also describe cities as “metabolizations” of nature – the city is the co-product of human labor and the earth, with human labor refashioning nature into a commodity. According to Swyngedouw (2006), this allows for rich descriptions of human power struggles, as well as continual movement and change. As discussed in Chapter 5 because of its relevance to Grand Forks, for both Swyngedouw and Maria Kaika (2005) the control and domestication of urban water systems serves as a primary example of the city as a metabolization of nature. The point for these scholars, then, is not simply to notice that the city is full of nonhuman nature, but that by uncovering the prevalence of metabolized or commodified nature in the city, we are



Religious Meaning-Making and the Urban Environment

37

more able to track the flow of capital from the countryside and through urban centers. Bruce Braun, however, argues that these new images of the city, while helpful, nonetheless maintain a perception of cities as coherent and relatively independent units. He writes: What is unique about urban natures is not that they are ‘metabolized.’ In some way all of nature is. Rather, it is that the networks that comprise urban natures are at once more dense, and more extended, than nonurban networks. The term ‘cyborg’ may be part of the problem: for all its value in dissolving the nature-culture dichotomy, it remains closely tied to the figure of the organism (cyb-org), which, in western thought, has long been viewed as singular, bounded and coherent. Cyborgs help us think about hybridity; they are far less helpful for thinking about space and scale (2005, 642; emphasis in original).12 Interestingly, Gandy (2003), in his model of a cyborg city, specifically argues against what he calls the “space of flows” model of urban analysis, claiming that it fails to differentiate fully between different flows of movement, and specifically cannot deal adequately with the flow of capital.13 This literature is helpful at drawing out the connections between cities and their environments, but it nonetheless leaves room for further exploration. While the work discussed above is often illuminating in seeing nature as something to which humanity belongs (as opposed to seeing nature as a passive object), it nonetheless tends to assume that the nonhuman world is relatively docile and malleable. The focus, in other words, is on how humanity has altered or damaged or metabolized their natural environment while also being thoroughly connected to it, and less on the constrictions placed on humanity by the nonhuman world or the opportunities afforded human communities through “natural” features like navigable rivers. In an example relevant to our later case study, in descriptions of urban water systems by Swyngedouw (2004), the focus is on the social politics of clean water and networked infrastructures of domesticated water. While they both helpfully use water systems to depict cities as social-natural hybrids, their depiction of nature (as water) is nonetheless relatively passive and malleable. As we might learn from the numerous floods in recent years within the Red River Valley, as well as Hurricane Katrina’s impact on New Orleans, the flow of water cannot always be contained and controlled, and is not always amenable to human flourishing. This latter constriction placed on humanity is critical for

38

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

understanding cities in the context of a natural disaster, where the limiting power of nature becomes a primary and very tangible issue. Mike Davis’s work (e.g., 1998) has shown, for instance, how Los Angeles has been developed in alternating fear, protest against, and ignorance of a multiplicity of natural disasters that can befall it. Other forms of natural agency (or at least natural noncooperation) abound. For instance, adaptations by animals to city life, such as urban incursions by coyotes or hawks nesting in New York’s Central Park, along with the distinctive relations between humans and animals in urban life (e.g., in zoos) are rarely considered (Wolch 2002). There is thus disagreement among some scholars as to which metaphors can more adequately describe the hybridity of cities, the power structures invested in them, and the movement of “nature” in and through cities, and many of these conceptions fail to adequately take the power of nature into full account. They nonetheless all portray the city not simply as a human construct, but as a thoroughly enmeshed blend of human and nonhuman/natural activity. According to Gandy, for instance, the cyborg image “blurs” the line between the city and nature by using “forms of integration between the body, technology and social practices. Viewed in this way the city is both a tangible entity but also a relational construct so that we cannot disentangle the one from the other” (2005: 41). In Cronon’s more economic analysis (1991), Chicago is described as a regional center of capital intimately linked with the rural hinterlands through agriculture and the timber industry. Within the wider literature on the city and the environment, there are two additional points of coalescence. To begin with, this blending of the urban and the natural is in opposition to much more common strands in Western culture, which have bifurcated nature and city from each other such that they are definitional opposites. Thus, to speak of the city, in much common discourse, is implicitly to not talk about nature. Furthermore, definitions of the city, symbolically separated from nature, tend to work in the favor of certain social groups to the detriment of others; in Raymond Williams’s (1973) early work, for instance, the point was not simply to show how the city has been contrasted with the countryside, but also to demonstrate how the modern urban/rural divide was the result of capitalism and the concentration of wealth into large urban centers. Second, while much of the literature on the city and the environment is concerned with cultural perceptions of the environment and nature, it largely has failed to take religious frameworks and motivations seriously as a source for creating and maintaining these perceptions.



Religious Meaning-Making and the Urban Environment

39

Religions and Cities There is nonetheless a vibrant body of literature concerned with religion and the city, more broadly, in the US. Most of this work has followed the Chicago school of sociology and primarily focused on the distinctive characteristics of religion in an urban context,14 such as pluralism or immigration (e.g. Orsi 1999). Some of this work, such as Nancy Eiesland’s (2000) investigation of the affects of suburban growth on religious practice, even encompasses a notion of “urban ecology,” as coined by Robert Park in the 1920s (Park 1926; Gaziano 1996). As discussed earlier, however, this research uses ecology in a purely analogical sense, and simply means to convey that urban social networks function with a multi-layered complexity akin to that found in more natural ecosystems. When literature on religion and the city has stepped back to ask how the “city” has been constructed as a symbol or idea in the US, it has largely done so from a historical perceptive. Early colonists in New England famously used the metaphor of a “city on a hill,” referring back to a parable of Jesus, to describe the new Puritan society they wished to establish, for instance. Images of a “new Jerusalem” have likewise appeared throughout Christian history – though both of these images have most often been used to describe an ideal morality (much like Augustine’s “city of God”),15 and less as a prescription for the built environment. Stepping back even further, there is no programmatic treatment of the city within either the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament. Christopher Seitz, an evangelical biblical scholar, nonetheless argues that the city is central throughout the Bible. “The city” in the Christian Bible, he writes, “holds far greater prospect for manifesting the presence of God than the country” (Seitz 1997, 11). Moreover, while the Bible is primarily concerned with Jerusalem/Zion, Seitz contends that “Pentecost witnesses to a transfer of God’s Sprit from Zion to Jesus, and from Jerusalem to all cities, leaving Rome a mere stage on the journey to all other cities, including the grand metropolis of New York” (13). William Brown and John Carroll likewise argue that despite popular perceptions of the Bible as primarily using pastoral or agricultural images, “According to scripture, the city constitutes a central context for faith and practice” (2000, 4). Like Seitz, they also see a multiplicity of urban images in the Bible (e.g., both Sodom and Jerusalem). The New Jerusalem is undoubtedly one of the most historically significant Christian biblical images. The New Jerusalem made its way into Western consciousness through early Christian literature, and especially the biblical

40

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

book of Revelation, which itself was reinterpreting a much older focus on the theological importance of the city of Jerusalem in ancient Judaism. In Revelation, the New Jerusalem is pitted against Babylon in an apocalyptic story of cosmic good versus evil, of Satan and his forces against the heavenly minions in a final battle that destroys the earth as we know it (Rossing 1999; Rossing 2000). As numerous scholars point out, however, the key to this apocalyptic vision comes after the destruction, in the prophet’s description of a new heaven and a New Jerusalem (e.g., Keller 1996). This new Jerusalem – the emblem of God’s new creation, a new Eden that will not suffer a second Fall but remain a utopia – is both profoundly lush and profoundly ordered.16 To use an anachronism, it is the garden city, perfectly built. In a long-standing biblical theme, and one which theologian Catherine Keller (1996) has provided a rich critique, the chaos of wild nature has finally been destroyed – so much so that the sun is no longer needed and the darkness of night ceases to exist – leaving in its wake a perfectly tame and nourishing garden. And so the Christian Bible ends with a vision of an urban world encompassing a perfectly domesticated nature. This image has continued to maintain its currency in the millennia since it was written. Hope of building a New Jerusalem influenced the architecture of the Middle Ages, for instance (Meyer 2003). In western literature, Jamie Scott and Paul Simpson-Housley have documented how this image influenced how urban life was understood. “Urban realities,” they argue, “are located over against the assumed innocence of an Eden now lost, but somehow promised again in a New Jerusalem, which itself may only be understood in a contrast of a sinful Babylon” (Scott and Simpson-Housely 1994: 331). In passing, they note that this has implications for how nature is perceived as well: “Because those who dwell in the city dwell in alienation from God, they dwell in alienation from nature, from others, and from themselves” (ibid., 332).17 The New Jerusalem is not just a literary motif, however. In early European immigration to the Canadian prairies during the nineteenth century,18 for instance, settlers often carried an image of themselves as creating a New Jerusalem. This area has never been densely settled, of course, and the applicability of such imagery was quite broad – it simply referred to the establishment of God’s people in the wilderness, and included any form of settlement, including homesteads, farms, and small towns (Smillie 1983). Tristam Hunt (2005) has also documented the rise of visions of the city as a “new Jerusalem” emergent in Victorian England, which emerged in contrast to the industrial blight of many nineteenth-century cities. It functioned as a precursor to the “garden cities” of the late nineteenth



Religious Meaning-Making and the Urban Environment

41

century, both in England and the US, which itself (as described above) was a step in the development of the contemporary American suburb. In fact, Ebenezer Howard (1902/1965), who is generally credited with beginning the garden city movement at the turn of the century, explicitly thought of his project in religious terms and was influenced by American spiritualism (Buder 1990). People needed the social vibrancy of urban life, Howard believed, but also needed the spiritual connection to the land that can only come through life in the country. After reading William Blake’s poem “Jerusalem,” Howard came upon “the idea that his Garden City would be the new Jerusalem, a place of spiritual regeneration situated in England’s beautiful countryside” (Cross 1997, 32; see also Meacham 1999). Howard, for instance, begins the first chapter of his Garden Cities for To-Morrow by quoting Blake: I will not cease from mental strife, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem In England’s green and pleasant land. (cited in Howard 1902/1965, 50). Howard’s vision of the Garden City was not just informed by such theological ideals, but by the utopian movements of the nineteenth century in England and the US, as well as Christian socialism (Hardy 2009). A generation later, Le Corbusier’s modernist re-visioning of the Garden City was likewise influenced by the unorthodox Catholic theologian Teilhard de Chardin (Samuel 1999; Sheldrake 2009). The American city, particularly in colonial New England, has also been portrayed or imagined as a “city on a hill.” This image was usually treated metaphorically as a moral hope – for example, New England was meant to be an example of a Christian nation to the rest of the world.19 It did, however, also influence the design of actual towns and cities in the colonies. As one historian notes, “the layout of [Massachusetts Bay’s] towns, centered as they were around the church, the school, and the meeting house, was calculated to remind Puritans of their special responsibility” (Oldfield 2000, 301). It might be noted, however, that this religious influence seems to have only covered the siting of religious and civic structures. That is, churches and meetinghouses in towns were placed on the commons, but there was no overtly religious logic to the layout of streets, the design of buildings, or other basic urban planning decisions (Reps 1965).20 The “city on a hill” metaphor originated with John Winthrop’s famous sermon in 1630 for the new Puritan settlement in Massachusetts. As Machor notes, however, for

42

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

Winthrop this was not simply a moral, or even an urban, exhortation, and its significance also goes beyond the placement of churches on the town commons. Winthrop held “an underlying urban-pastoral geography” (51) which thought of the town and the surrounding farmland as a singular entity, together in contrast against the wilderness. In fact, the Puritans were the first to develop the idea of a “township,” a political entity that includes both town and countryside. Nature was only allowed into the town or city so long as it was controlled, however; as discussed briefly in the next section, Puritans often held an explicitly antagonistic view to wilder forms of nature. Other European colonists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, along with the Puritans, also sought a New Jerusalem that would bring together the garden and the city, creating a “theography for the New World” (1987, 46). Cotton and Increase Mather held that when Jesus returned, for instance, he would literally rebuild the New Jerusalem as a city on the earth, and locate it in the Americas (Machor 1987, 57–8). Religious perceptions of the city have not always been idealist, of course, especially in the United States. Thomas Jefferson, for instance, is widely known to have exalted the virtues of farming communities and disdained cities as places of moral degeneracy (Albanese 1990). Cities have also frequently been construed as “Babylon,” the enemy of the New Jerusalem, or simply as dens of sin and perversion (e.g., Thistlewaite 1994). For instance, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, evangelical Christians often portrayed the city as a haven of lust and sin. New York was cast as “a jungle where normal constraints did not hold and boundaries were wantonly transgressed” (Todd 1993), and as the “New Babylon,” though (unlike the biblical Apocalypse) with the possibility of redemption (Todd 2002). Industrial cities of the nineteenth century, especially in Europe, were also frequently described as satanic, hellish, evil places (Pike 2007), but for different reasons: their moral laxity was less a concern than the combined effects of concentrated poverty, oppressive working conditions, and extreme environmental pollution. This provided some of the impetus for socialist revolutions, such as seen in Friedrich Engels’s (1845/1978) compelling description of Manchester’s profound pollution and poverty,21 and other social critiques; Alexis de Tocqueville, for instance, described the river Mersey in Manchester as “the Styx of this new Hades” (Pike 2007, 76). However, the industrial city also formed another backdrop for sanitized, utopic visions of the city that developed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Hunt 2005), such as promoted by Ebenezer Howard in his quest to build a “new Jerusalem” in England. It is important to note that we do undoubtedly have a connection between religious imagery, the city,



Religious Meaning-Making and the Urban Environment

43

and the environment here; religious images describe a level of pollution and urban degradation that undoubtedly seemed otherworldly to many who witnessed it, and also promote an idealized version of a sanitized city in the garden. Cities are not viewed as only heavenly or hellish to the exclusion of the other, however. Maria Kaika, in her work on the urban domestication of water, argues that the city is both heaven and hell. The city is a place “where it is up to human beings to choose between struggling for emancipation and freedom, or falling under the spell of heavenly dreams” (2005, 50). The controlled and domesticated water of indoor plumbing creates one avenue for such tension, as it brings about the possibility of domestic bliss in “the heavenly space of home” while also creating the potential for it to be undermined at moments of crisis. Beyond religiously idealized and demonized images of the city, the relationship between the city and religion has often also been described in the inverse, especially in the twentieth century. That is, the modern city is often construed as a specifically nonreligious, secular space; according to Hugh McLeod (1998), this dichotomy between a pious countryside and irreligious cities only emerged in the late eighteenth century in Europe and the US. Like the contrasting images of cities and nature discussed earlier, (ir)religious images of the city go together with presumptions that the rural countryside (and its religion) is something much more pure, or at least much more authentically or traditionally religious. In a reflection on contemporary rural churches in the US, for instance, Mary Jo Neitz, has observed that: Due to their spatial location, close to nature, and perhaps far from urban areas, rural churches can be seen as carriers of something purer and closer to God than what . . . can be found in the symbolically, if not actually, struggling urban churches, or the trendy but potentially vacuous suburban churches, both of which must compete with the many attractions of urban life. (Neitz 2005, 243) This secular-urban conflation is often made through turning the city into a symbol for progress in modern society. In debates over the “secular city” following Harvey Cox’s work (Cox 1966, 1984), for instance, the focus is not on the city per se, but on American society. In the early twentieth century, the city itself was also re-imagined as the new sacred space for modern humanity – as mentioned in the first chapter; for instance, the highly influential French architect Le Corbusier referred to the growing Manhattan skyline as full of

44

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

“new white cathedrals” (Sheldrake 2009, 161). The libertarian novelist Ayn Rand, in The Fountainhead, likewise has one of her modernist heroes remark that “I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York’s skyline . . . The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need?” (1943, 446). This is an extension of the nature versus human dichotomy discussed above – as the city is the apex of what counts as “human,” and what is seen as the direction of society (in this case, secularization) is by default the urban future as well. In a particularly evocative argument, Richard Sennett, in The conscience of the eye: The design and social life of cities (1990), provides an altogether different approach to viewing religion’s influence on the city. Sennett uses an essentially Weberian rubric to argue that basic attitudes toward the world, largely inherited from different forms of Christianity, have greatly influenced urban design in Europe and the US. He is particularly concerned with how cities have been built to ensure privacy and interiority – creating, in the twentieth century, what he calls “neutral” cities – which he sees as rooted in Christian traditions. In a prominent example, and one clearly indebted to Weber, Sennett argues that the puritanical disavowal of the material world and its pleasures have ultimately resulted in the desire for the clean, pure, and hyper-simplistic spaces of modern design. “The modern urbanist,” he writes, “is in the grip of a Protestant ethic of space” (1990, 42); that is, the control of the natural world holds theological roots in a Puritan theology, which later manifests in the modernist desire for straight lines, flat colors, and lack of extraneous ornamentation. In the conclusion to this present book, I argue that something similar to Sennett’s observation can be seen in Grand Forks, where basic dispositions to the urban environment can be found that were grounded in religious motivations, and which correlate to planning decisions made after the flood. On its margins, this literature gives some indications of more direct ways that religious concepts have affected perceptions of both cities and nature, particularly through images such as the “city on a hill,” the New Jerusalem, and the hell of the industrialized city. We are nonetheless left with accounts that say relatively little directly about the environment and contemporary cities in the US. Theologians have not been so reticent, as is discussed in the final section below, but theirs is a different project – they are calling for renewed theological visions that help shape the future, rather than analytically describing how religious visions have shaped and continue to shape contemporary cities. There is a wide and interdisciplinary body of literature on the religion and the environment, however, that has (often unintended) implications for how we understand today’s cities.



Religious Meaning-Making and the Urban Environment

45

Religions and Environments Over the past five decades, a substantial body of literature has surveyed the variety of religious perceptions of “nature” in the US.22 Within such scholarship, it has become a common assumption that Christianity in particular has been a primary force in influencing the stories we tell about nature, for good or ill. Contemporary debates were started by work from Christian theologians in the 1960s and 1970s (e.g., Cobb 1972), and by a short essay from Lynn White in Science (1967), which argued that Christianity was largely responsible for the environmental crisis. For instance, while Puritans were the first to develop a form of government (the township) which integrated towns with their immediate surrounding farmland, as discussed earlier, and many Puritans also believed that they could have an intimate encounter with their God through relishing the beauty of the created world (Lane 2000), they nevertheless held an “ambiguous” relationship to the nonhuman world that was openly hostile to undeveloped wilderness. For Puritans, “the best wild country was subdued wild country” (Albanese 1990, 40).23 This antagonism to the wilder parts of nature was, for White, indicative of a much larger and destructively influential tradition within Christianity. Responses to this perceived antienvironmental strain within Christianity have been increasingly varied, including more in-depth appraisals of Christianity’s ecological prospects (along with those of other religions); new, earth-centered theological constructions; and environmental histories of Christian narratives about nature (e.g., Santmire 1985; Merchant 2003; Wallace 2005).24 In agreement with White, however, many scholars on religion and the environment within both theology and religious studies argue that a vital part of the answer to the current environmental crisis lies within a renewed vision of Christianity that respects creation. Contemporary scholarship in religion and ecology is sometimes divided between two exaggerated poles – one that analyzes environmental and religious practices as they are actually “lived,” the other which analyzes theological traditions and convictions (Jenkins 2009; Berry 2011). This latter approach has certainly been more widespread. Theologians and scholars from a variety of faiths have sifted through their various traditions in search of beliefs and practices that might lead their communities into a more sustainable future; the ten-volume series on “World Religions and Ecology,” published by the Forum for Religion and Ecology (Tucker and Grim, 1997–2004), is the most prominent and exhaustive example of this work. Others make a different, though not inherently incompatible

46

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

approach, by looking at particular, “lived” religious practices. For instance, Rebecca Gould (2005), whose work is discussed below, has looked at the religious and spiritual dimensions of the modern homesteading movement. And yet other work spans this dichotomy (e.g., Kearns 1996) and looks at how theological concepts (such as stewardship) are played out by religious practitioners. What concerns me here is not the differences between these two camps, but the fact that among them lies a shared conviction: there is something religious about how many people in the United States understand and interact with “nature.” Equally important, however, is that only in rare instances (e.g., Vito Fumagalli’s [1994] work on medieval European cities) does sociological or historical scholarship on religion and the environment deal substantively with notions of the city. That is not to say, however, that this literature holds no relevance to more urban questions. Central to White’s argument was the assertion that Christianity inscribed the notion of human dominion over nature in the West – an attitude which, as later chapters will make evident, is highly visible in projects such as efforts to keep urban rivers from flooding. As understood in dominant strands of Christianity, “God planned all of [creation] explicitly for man’s benefit and rule: no item in the physical creation had any purpose save to serve man’s purposes,” White argues. The result is that Christianity, “the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen  .  .  .  not only established a dualism of man and nature but also insisted that it is God’s will that man exploit nature for his proper ends” (White 1967: 1205). Stated differently, White is arguing that Christianity was a primary force in legitimating the belief that nature is meant to be not only controlled but exploited by humanity. White’s thesis has been largely rebutted (see Whitney 2006), particularly for overstating the argument and making the twin claims that Christianity is primarily responsible for the environmental crisis (as opposed to being one of many causes or a part of a larger social complex) and that Christianity has been overwhelmingly antienvironmental. Nonetheless, there has been agreement among many scholars in religion and ecology that a powerful strand of Christianity has indeed held humanity as separate from nature and encouraged the control of nature. Critiques of this separation have run through a variety of specializations, from philosophy (Mazis 2007) and environmental ethics (Peterson 2001) to much of Christian theology (Ruether 1993) and deep ecology (Barnhill and Gottlieb 2001).



Religious Meaning-Making and the Urban Environment

47

This critique is particularly strong in much of eco-feminism. In one of the more important and early eco-feminist works, Carolyn Merchant (1989) traces how nature became perceived as mute, “dead” matter during Europe’s scientific revolution. This mechanistic view of the world, according to Merchant, replaced an earlier medieval perception of the world as nurturing, feminine, and organic. In making this argument, Merchant demonstrates that dominant strands of Christianity were among the most significant influences in this transition, which allowed for nature to be controlled and used at will as technology developed. Christianity, in other words, was a force in legitimating the authority of a particular kind of scientific knowledge that allowed for the “accelerating exploitation of both humans and natural resources in the name of culture and progress” (1989: xxii). By implication, modern techniques for controlling nature – such as diking up rivers and building cities in their floodplains – are the grandchildren of these earlier developments. In the following chapters, an antagonistic view toward nature will indeed be evident in flood responses, which might be expected in the context of a natural disaster. Yet this by no means tells the whole story of how nature is perceived, either in Grand Forks or in the centuries that have passed since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. For instance, in a survey of the history Christian theology, Paul Santmire (1985) has argued that Christianity has an “ambiguous” legacy in terms of its treatment of ­nonhuman nature, at least within dominant strands of theology. While domineering and antagonistic strands have existed and continue to exist, Santmire also identifies an “ecological motif ” in traditional Christian theology that “is predicated on a vision of the human spirit’s rootedness in the world of nature and on the desire of self-consciously embodied selves to celebrate God’s presence in, with, and under the whole biophysical order” (Santmire 1985, 9). Just within the scope of traditional Christianity, in other words, the nonhuman world has been held up as both something to be controlled and dominated, as well as something to be revered and celebrated. In the context of the Grand Forks flood, where the public discourse prominently includes Christian language, nature (and particularly the Red River) is likewise perceived simultaneously as a menace that needs to be controlled as well as a beautiful natural asset that should be protected and enjoyed. Scholarship on religion and the environment has not been confined to Christianity, however, or even to major “world” religions. As my discussion of what counts as religion briefly mentions at the beginning of this chapter,

48

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

nature itself has also been used as a religious and moral authority both within traditional institutionalized forms of religion, as in Christian natural theology (Cobb 2007; McGrath 2008), but also outside of any particular religious structure. There are at least two different ways scholars have thought of how nature can act as a religious and moral guide. On the one hand, several scholars have argued that environmentalism itself should be considered a religion. Roger Gottlieb, for instance, has used a functionalist understanding of religion to claim that “the essential elements of religion have been present – even at times dominant – in environmentalism” (Gottlieb 2006, 148, emphasis in original). For Gottlieb, this means that environmentalism for many activists “begins with religious emotions and connects them to an articulated set of beliefs about our place in the world” (160), which then help to instigate certain ways of acting in the world. Environmentalism can be a religion, then, because it functions similarly to a religion.25 Outside of a functionalist perspective, other scholars have argued that some environmental practices and beliefs can be understood as religious because they hold nature to be sacred in a broad sense.26 Bron Taylor, for instance, argues for the existence of “nature religion” as an “umbrella term to mean religious perceptions and practices that are characterized by a reverence for nature and that consider its destruction a desecrating act” (Taylor 2010,  5). For Taylor, such religious or spiritual practices include a broad range of environmental activities, from surfing to political activism. The term “nature religion” is more commonly associated with the work of Catherine Albanese, and especially her Nature Religion in America (1990), for whom the concept pointed to a wider array of beliefs and practices. For Albanese, nature religion is “the cluster of beliefs, behaviors, and values” that revolve around the concept of nature as a “symbolic center” (1990, 8). In one example in the early US, nature formed a basis for moral authority among the nation’s early political leaders; in the Declaration for Independence, for instance, Thomas Jefferson grounded his argument in the “laws of nature” and “human nature,” and in doing so “offered a brief for nature as an ideal and metaphysical principle” (1990, 63–4). In a more contemporary example, Albanese likewise sees nature functioning as a moral and spiritual guide in the New Age movement of the late twentieth century. As in the definitions of religion offered by Berger, Bellah, and Geertz, discussed earlier in this chapter, for Albanese it is important that nature religion not just be confined to beliefs about nature (what she would call “nature theology”), but must also include practices as well; viewing nature



Religious Meaning-Making and the Urban Environment

49

as a moral guide, after all, implies that there are practical implications. “Let it be clear,” she writes, ‘that any American historical survey must move beyond beliefs regarding nature, however reverent and profound. The rubric must encompass cultural practice that is intimately connected with belief both in condensed symbolic settings (i.e., in ritual and devotional situations) and in more broad-gauged and general ones (i.e., in everyday behaviors that act out ethical stances and convictions)’ (Albanese 2002, 3). For Albanese, what matters is the central role of nature in forming a set of beliefs as well as practices. The explicit use of more traditional religious language in forming those beliefs (such as describing nature as sacred) is not absolutely necessary, even though it frequently occurs. While their orientations are somewhat different, both Taylor and Albanese share a conviction that nonhuman nature acts, for some, as a religious and moral guide. It is this basic insight that is particularly important for this current project, as one of the questions that arises during this disaster is not only how Christian ideas were used to make sense out of reality amid a crisis, but also how nature served as a guide for making meaning out of the flood. As described earlier in my definition of religion, however, it is not simply beliefs about nature that are pertinent here, along with the practices that might accompany them, but, more broadly, images, concepts, and perceptions of nature. For instance, in the final days of dike reinforcement before Grand Forks flooded, I found very few statements of belief about what nature is (e.g., nature is violent, or nature is destructive) but many instances of people placing themselves within stories about nature (e.g., fighting the river) that imply certain ways of acting.

Religions, Cities, and the Environment: A Synthesis In light of the literature reviewed in this chapter thus far, it would appear that a curious hole persists in the scholarship: an entire sub-discipline has emerged to study religion and the environment, another group of scholars question religious perceptions of the city, and a separate school analyzes the environment and the city. In terms of the contemporary United States, however, little has been written linking the three. To summarize in another way, I am making three broad assertions which themselves are not particularly controversial: 1) the religious sphere

50

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

significantly influences how we humans understand and interact with the nonhuman world; 2) the religious sphere also significantly influences the social fabric of contemporary US cities; and 3) while “nature” and the “city” are most often constructed as antithetical to each other, such distinctions are in fact difficult to maintain. I suggest that two conclusions are thus in order. First, in order to understand the city from an environmental perspective, we need to understand religious perspectives on both the urban and the natural. That is, insofar as religion and ecology scholars have been correct in viewing religion as a key variable in shaping our interaction with the environment, it is also a critical point in understanding the city as the antithesis to untamed nature. Second, in order to understand religious perceptions of and interactions with nature, we need to understand how we perceive and interact with cities. I am not arguing that all scholars in religion and nature need to become experts in urban theory or urban planning, but rather that the city, both as a concept and as a physical entity, must nonetheless be rigorously examined by religion and nature scholars as a component of the environments, ecologies, and natures that we study. In the case of Grand Forks, for instance, the following chapters demonstrate that one cannot make sense of the how nature or the environment was perceived without also taking into account the city’s interactions with its river and the perceptions people simultaneously held of their city. Toward the beginning of this chapter, I discussed a number of definitions for the word “religion,” and described how I count things as religious within the data surveyed in the following chapters – namely, things are religious insofar as they are shared images, concepts, or perceptions that make sense out of reality by pointing to an ultimate source and orienting people’s dispositions toward and interactions with the world. Beyond the methodological argument here, one advantage of this understanding is that it can incorporate the wide scope of literature that exists both on religion and the environment, as well as religion and cities. It can include, for instance, studies of institutional religion along with stories about nature that view the nonhuman world as an ultimate source for guiding action. This definition of religion also highlights religious things that are specifically meaning-making; in contrast to much of the literature on religion and cities, for instance, which often looks at religion as a social institution, these chapters are more in line with the scholarship discussed above, which instead asks how cities have been envisioned – specifically, how Grand Forks was envisioned – and how those visions manifest themselves in the ways cities work.



Religious Meaning-Making and the Urban Environment

51

Like “religion,” terms such as “nature,” “environment,” “ecology,” and “city” are the subject of much debate. What exactly constitutes a city? What are the assumptions behind words such as “environment” or “nature?” Within this project, the terms “environment” and “nature” both point to helpful ways of thinking about the nonhuman world. “Environment” carries a fluidity which can refer to both human and nonhuman spaces – I thus tend to speak of the urban environment in this project, as it can simultaneously refer to both human and nonhuman spheres. The term “nature,” at least within academic discourse, points to a constructed sphere of things which are believed to be beyond human influence, and as such is also understood as the definitional opposite of humanity. The many different ways of describing what constitutes a city all tend to be in agreement that cities are human spaces, and are thus distinctly nonnatural. Consequently, as described above, there have emerged two different, yet complementary, approaches to studying cities and nature that are relevant for these pages. One approach looks at the various conflicting ways in which cities and nature have been constructed alongside of each other (e.g., Williams 1973, Short 1991), while another center of scholarship has emerged, especially within geography, which brings to light the innumerable connections between cities and their surrounding “natural” environments (e.g., Cronon 1991, Gandy 2002). The following chapters are in dialogue with both of these approaches. A bulk of this project, as has already been described, focuses on the role of religious language in constructing ideas about cities and nature. But the 1997 flood and Grand Forks’s subsequent rebuilding were not just stories, and so – especially in Chapter 5 – the ways in which city officials physically re-constructed the city and the river’s banks is a provocative demonstration of the hybrid/cyborg nature of cities. As has been described in this chapter, however, the urban, the natural, and the religious have not simultaneously caught the attention of many scholars thus far. Nevertheless, there have been a handful of attempts at integrating these three areas which are worth exploring before turning our attention to Grand Forks. Perhaps the most physically intensive has been Paolo Soleri’s Arcosanti, a small city he began in the Arizona desert in the 1960s and which is still being developed.27 Inspired in part by Teilhard de Chardin’s evolutionary cosmology,28 Soleri and his followers are striving to make Arcosanti a thoroughly sustainable re-visioning of what cities might be; Soleri’s design imagines the city as an organic cell, in which the human inhabitants are but one part, together building something cohesive. His writing is often spiritual

52

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

or theological (e.g., Soleri 1981), in the style of de Chardin, and he argues that not only are ecological cities the only possible future for continued life on our planet, but cities also fit into a pattern found throughout the cosmos. His work attracted particular attention from John Cobb (1975), who sees in Soleri’s “arcologies” – his term for combining architecture and ecology – a new possibility for building the Christian “City of God.” At least two European Christian eco-theologians, British theologian Tim Gorringe (2002) and Finnish theologian Seppo Kjellberg (2000), have also given book-length attention to cities.29 They have taken what they see as the core tenets of eco-theology (and, in Gorringe’s case, social justice) to argue for new ways of understanding and building cities today. Kjellberg uses a “cosmocentric and holistic” understanding of eco-theology to make a theological and ethical argument for how cities should be planned, using as a case study his home city of Tampere, Finland. Gorringe works with a different theological method, using what he calls a Trinitarian reading of the built environment to argue that “the problems associated with the built environment are not primarily technical but spiritual, that is to say, they are fundamentally a question of values, of our understanding of the whole human project” (2002: 242).30 The issues raised by this theological work have yet to fully infiltrate the larger sphere of religion and ecology scholarship in the US, however. More importantly, while Gorringe and Kjellberg’s works point to renewed eco-theological visions of the city, it is outside the scope of their projects to ask exactly what role Christian or other religious influences already have played on how cities and urban environments are perceived. In all three of these instances, however, there still lies a basic antagonism between cities as we know or perceive them, and a “nature” that is out there and to which urban life must either more adequately respond or be integrated. When Seppo Kjellberg, for instance, looks at the place of “nature in the city,” he looks at things such as open space, green corridors, biodiversity, and “flora and fauna that exist alongside humans in the urban surroundings” (2000, 109). The goal, in other words, is to make cities more like nature, with the “natural” held up as the moral/ ethical standard – this is, it should be noticed, an example of the “green city” approach that Matthew Gandy (2003) critiques as reifying the divide between cities and nature. Gorringe, on the other hand, is more systematic about understanding humans as parts of their ecosystems, and yet he argues that large cities should not be understood as fully natural, as they have enormous capacity to destroy their environments (2002, 230). ­Gorringe is specifically arguing with David Harvey, who, as mentioned



Religious Meaning-Making and the Urban Environment

53

above, maintains that “there is nothing unnatural about New York City” (1996, 186). In a more recent work, Sallie McFague makes a similar argument. In a short chapter on “urban ecotheology,” she argues that while she is “appreciative of the hybrid, second nature of cities,” a focus on this “allows for and in fact encourages us to forget first nature as the source of our being . . . If we think of the city as absorbing or replacing nature, I fear that nature’s intrinsic value as well as its finite limits will be hidden from our view” (2008: 125). While McFague is correct in arguing for the value of “first nature,” her argument (along with that of Gorringe) nonetheless mistakenly claims that a concern for hybridity is ultimately antithetical to a concern for nonhumanized, or at least less-humanized, nature. It is, rather, an awareness of the connections between nature and cities that allows one to see their effects on each other. For several scholars, described below, respecting the city as an environment illuminates scholarship without denigrating nonurban, wilder environments. Karen McCarthy Brown (1999) implicitly understands the city as an environment, for instance, when she argues that the practice of Haitian Vodou “stretches and strains” significantly among immigrants to New York City. A primary cause of this strain, Brown states, is the “ecological dissonance” experienced as practitioners move from Haiti to New York. Brown’s analysis is helpful in part because, even though she does not depict the city as an urban/natural cyborg or as a metabolization of nature, as scholars such as Gandy and Sywngedouw argue, she nevertheless takes the city seriously as an environment in the context of religious practices that express a “longing for contact with the earth.” Even though Brown treats the city as a thoroughly unnatural environment, it is nonetheless an environment that reshapes religious practice – a three-day celebration of the yam harvest changes in meaning and significance, for instance, as yams shift from being a local and inexpensive product, often grown by the celebrants (as it is in Haiti), to an expensive and imported food in Brooklyn. In her theological exploration of apocalyptic thought mentioned earlier in this chapter, Catherine Keller briefly gives another route for incorporating the city into an exploration of ecological theology. In a section dissect­ ing  the image of a “New Jerusalem” in the Christian tradition, Keller observes that the eschatological and utopic city is envisioned as a thoroughly managed, controlled and un-wild nature, coupled with the destruction of the current earth. It is a “neo-classical park,” in which “the point is . . . that nature did not do this” (Keller 1996: 140). Hesitancy, fear, and antagonism

54

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

toward “nature” within the Christian tradition is part of a larger logic that, among other things, pits the city – the symbol of civilization, of fully controlled and commodified nature – against (wild) nature. Like Machor’s description of the urban pastoral, this description of the New Jerusalem portrays the city as an incorporation of nature and not as the antithesis to it, while also recognizing that such a civilized nature is distinct from that which is wilder and more chaotic. The fear of nature is a strong theme in the work of Vito Fumagalli, who has written on urban development in medieval Europe (Fumagalli 1994). Fumagalli, an Italian historian whose work has not been widely translated into English, offers a fascinating depiction of how perceptions of the natural world in Europe shifted with the advent of urbanization. He argues that as cities grew, people gradually became separated from the untamed wilderness and the natural world increasingly became something to be feared. That fear was then extended to things associated with nature and physicality, such as “pagan” fertility rites or the human body. Christian theologies in Western Europe both emerged from and reinforced an increasingly urban culture fearful of wild nature. Integrations of the city into what counts as the environment, such as in these examples, however, have not found a wide audience in religion and ecology scholarship. Brown has not moved within the confines of this disciplinary intersection, and the urban implications of Keller’s work have not been widely discussed – and indeed they are both extracted from larger arguments. Fumagalli’s work has likewise not received a wide audience in the US. Nonetheless, to distill their insights to the simplest level, they teach us that there can be valuable insights for religious scholarship in discerning the ways in which cities and environments interact. Furthermore, Keller and Fumagalli’s work support the basic argument of this chapter: that our perceptions of the urban environment have been shaped by religious influences. We can say more than that, however. Returning to ideas discussed earlier in the chapter, we can argue that the city itself  is an environment, made up of and networked with other more “natural” environments. Cities have ecologies, not just in the analogical sense meant by descendants of the Chicago school, but in keeping with ecology as a natural science. Cities are made from “natural” resources, they have massive impacts on local ecosystems and they are, in turn, directly influenced by those same ecosystems; there is even evidence that cities are causing micro-evolution among some of their nonhuman inhabitants, such as ants and mice (Zimmer 2011). This is not to say that all environments are the same – a



Religious Meaning-Making and the Urban Environment

55

small patch of prairies in the Dakotas is a very different environment from downtown Grand Forks, and both are different from the sprawl of New York City or Los Angeles – but cities are nonetheless ecological environments. Two examples from recent academic work demonstrate how this perspective can provide a critical lens. In Rebecca Kneale Gould’s work on the modern homesteading movement as a form of “lived religion” (2005), readers are presented with practitioners of “back to nature” spiritualities that most often assume a place that has been left – usually the city. It is important to note that the homesteaders that Gould describes are not reactionary against the built environment itself; the most well known of her subjects – Helen and Scott Nearing and John Burroughs – spent a substantial amount of energy creating their homesteads (such as Burrough’s Slabsides), but everything about these places, from the stone walls to their unfinished wooden desks, emphasized that they were nonurban spaces. When I first gave a thorough reading of Gould’s book, it was with a class of undergraduate environmental studies majors at a rural university surrounded by farmland, where at least half of the students grew up in farming communities and one was a farmer. The students’ reactions to Gould’s subject were interesting: those from farming communities all felt, and some quite vociferously, that the farmers they knew would have a very different perspective on nature and what it means to farm. Most were third-, fourth-, or fifth-generation farmers, and many of their families (at least in my students’ perspectives) experienced farming as an obligation and economic necessity, some felt trapped, and held few if any of the spiritual or moral concerns of the homesteaders that Gould lived among. These students’ reactions demonstrate, and Gould herself notes, that the homesteaders’ perception of nature is dependent on, among other things, an exodus from the city. Just as Thoreau left Concord for his experiment in Walden Pond, many homesteaders are ex-urbanites seeking an alternative to the vices (moral, environmental, or both) of the city. John Burroughs, for instance, held the curious position that cities emerged to teach humans how to interact with one another and the environment; after learning their lessons in the city, “God promoted him to life in the country” (quoted in Gould 2005: 135). In environmental literature more broadly, it is assumed that caring for nature/environment/creation is about something outside the city. This is a central (and helpful) assumption in Kimberly Smith’s recent book (2007) on African-American environmental thought, for example. Smith takes a standard question of environmental scholarship – how does a certain community understand or relate to “nature” – and applies it to a demographic

56

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

(African-Americans) that modern popular culture has stereotypically seen as urban and environmentalists have largely ignored. To do this, Smith spends significant time discussing the lingering effects of an agricultural society (both slave and free) on urbanized AfricanAmerican culture in the twentieth century, and assumes that there is no meaningful encounter with nature in the city – work, for instance, shifts from agricultural to industrial labor. This forms an interesting problematic, and certainly perceptions of nature shifted as communities moved from an agricultural environment to an urban one. Smith’s narrative masks, however, continuity between the urban and natural/agricultural material environments. The environmental differences between, for instance, working a small garden as a slave in a rural community, and working in a factory in New York or Chicago, are rather obvious; but they are both environments, and in more than simply the broadest meaning of the term. The “nature” encountered is controlled in both instances, though they differ in their separation from things wild and their ability to have some level of agency. Despite this critical insight, the human and the urban are nonetheless definitional opposites of the natural in common speech, and their definitions depend upon the contrast to each other, as discussed earlier. The human and the urban are thus also constructed alongside the natural; for instance, in reactions to the flood in Grand Forks, discussed in later chapters, the natural world is constructed as chaotic, whereas human spaces are orderly, at least insofar as they successfully keep out nature. A wide body of literature has seen this basic dichotomy between humans and nature as growing, at least partially, out of religious influences (e.g., Peterson 2001). If cities are quintessentially human spaces, as is also argued earlier in this chapter, then it can also be argued that our ideas about the urban environment have been influenced by religious factors. What is important, however, is how the urban environment has been perceived. As much scholarship on religion and the environment has demonstrated since at least the work of Lynn White, humans have often been portrayed as having dominion over nonhuman nature – a portrayal supported by some dominant strands of Christianity. Cities represent one kind of apex of that dominion and control.

Chapter 3

Urban Development in the Red River Valley

Grand Forks, North Dakota, is a river town, a small city built along both sides of the Red River of the North, where it joins with the smaller Red Lake River in the former bed of a glacial lake. The city’s history is one of struggling with its environment, both with the vicissitudes of the river as well as the harsh extremes of its climate. White settlers founded the city in order to take advantage of trade upon the river; while that trade was quickly supplanted by the railroad, the cities of Grand Forks and, across the river, East Grand Forks continued to grow along the river banks. The river within those banks is usually a slow, muddy and relatively shallow stream, but its normal calm masks a potential to overflow and spread for miles across the countryside in the spring, as temperatures rise above freezing and the winter’s snow finally has a chance to melt. This is what happened in 1997 when, in the largest flood since European settlement, the city’s dike system failed and the murky waters of the Red River submerged much of the city, destroying several neighborhoods and sparking an electrical fire that burned part of the historic downtown. The river that defines Grand Forks and gave the city its origins thus also, as with many river cities, carries the potential of destroying it. The remainder of this book looks at this tension between Grand Forks and its environment during the 1997 flood and the city’s subsequent rebuilding, a time when the relationship between the two was especially volatile but also, perhaps, particularly creative. These chapters are based on the previous chapter’s argument – that our perceptions of the urban environment have been influenced by religious factors – but go beyond it to ask what such religious influences might look like in a particular place. As every city is unique, this chapter briefly surveys the history of Grand Forks and the Red River Valley, with an eye on issues relevant to the 1997 flood. It then describes what happened during the flood itself, along with some of the key developments in the decade that followed as the city rebuilt itself and reconfigured its relationship to the river winding through it.

58

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

This history is not intended to be exhaustive, but centers upon the religious makeup of the area and those things that influenced the flood and subsequent recovery, such as regional demographics and flood mitigation systems. Responses to the flood and rebuilding are then surveyed in Chapters 4 and 5.

A History and Cultural Geography of Grand Forks and the Red River Grand Forks sits on the western banks of the Red River of the North (see Figure 3.1), named as such to distinguish it from other Red Rivers in the

Figure 3.1  Map of Grand Forks, the Red River of the North, and the surrounding region. Source: Ashley A. Ver Burg and author.



Urban Development in the Red River Valley

59

US and elsewhere, and looks across to East Grand Forks on the Minnesota side of the river. The Red River is a geographic oddity for the United States, flowing almost directly north. It begins its journey at the confluence of two rivers in Wahpeton, ND, flows past Fargo, and continues 80 miles up to Grand Forks, where it joins with the smaller Red Lake River. It then moves into Canada through Winnipeg, before emptying into Lake Winnipeg, the Hudson Bay via the Nelson River, and finally into the Arctic and North Atlantic Oceans. Two geographical features distinguish the area: it is remarkably cold, and it is remarkably flat. Both are related to the geological history of the river. The area’s flatness derives from a glacial lake, Lake Agassiz, which retreated roughly 10,000 years ago. The “valley” of the Red River actually results from this former lake; the river itself has only carved a small, winding channel through the middle of the ancient lakebed. The periodic growth and retreat of the glacial water resulted in an immensely flat plain, stretching along the entire border of North Dakota and Minnesota, and into southern Manitoba. Residents claim (quite believably) the Red River Valley to be the flattest place on earth; the river drops less than a foot per mile between Grand Forks and Fargo. While the glaciers and their water have long since retreated, the valley continues to allow cold air to be drawn down over the Canadian plains from the Arctic, making winters in the area the coldest on the continent at that latitude.1 Beyond being a historical or geographical curiosity – in its prime, Lake Agassiz was the largest inland lake in North America – the ancient lake has also left a mark on the popular imagination of the valley’s current residents. There is a Lake Agassiz Elementary School in Grand Forks, for instance; an Agassiz National Wildlife Refuge nearby in northwestern Minnesota; and a book commemorating the University of North Dakota’s efforts against the 1997 flood is titled The Return of Lake Agassiz (Orvik and Larson 1998). The former lakebed is also directly relevant to the area’s history of flooding; it partially refills in flood years, and its immense flatness allows shallow water to stretch for miles. Before European settlement, the Red River Valley consisted largely of prairie, with trees only present along the riverbanks and in some places along Lake Agassiz’s former shoreline, where small ridges still mark the location of ancient beaches.2 Today, the valley itself has been almost completely transformed into farmland and towns, including many of the wetlands and marshes along the riverbanks. Prairie exists only in small pockets of protected lands (Chapman et al. 1998). Several Native American peoples lived in the valley before Europeans arrived, and there is still a larger Native population in the area as compared

60

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

to most of the US; in the area around Grand Forks this included the Dakota and, later, the Ojibwe. Along with the Métis, these groups together make up the largest minority population in Grand Forks today (2.8 per cent in the 2000 census). The first European settlements in the Red River Valley were fur-trading posts north of Grand Forks, most notably in Winnipeg, Manitoba (then called Fort Garry) in the nineteenth century. Unlike the rest of the Upper Midwest, the northeastern corner of North Dakota, of which Grand Forks is the principal city, was first settled by European traders who spread south from Manitoba. Immigration directly from Europe and from within the US came slightly later. Early French Canadian, Scottish, Orkney, and English traders did violence to both the natural environment (decimating the river otter population in particular) and the indigenous population. Because their settlements were quite remote and focused largely on fur-trading, they were also over overwhelmingly male. Many of the men married local, Native American women (including Ojibwe, Cree, and Assiniboine), and their descendants became a distinct ethnic group, known as Métis (see Robinson 1966: 67ff).3 By the mid-nineteenth century, the Métis were the dominant ethnic group in the valley. For instance, in 1870 (the year Grand Forks was founded), the census of nearby Manitoba “showed a population of nearly 12,000,” which included “558 Indians, 5,757 métis, 4,083 English half-breeds, and 1,565 whites” (Robinson 1966: 119). This hybrid understanding of ethnicity contrasted with the increasingly hostile relationships that came in the late nineteenth century.4 The fur-trading enterprise collapsed in the mid-nineteenth century, due to the over-killing of animal populations (including buffalo, which the métis hunted) and the Indian Wars. The forts established throughout the region as trading posts were sold to the military. All commerce did not cease, however, and the valley became the first part of North Dakota populated by European immigrants in the 1870s: agriculture moved into the area as “open” land became scarce in Minnesota, and the Red River became the major trade route between Fort Garry (now Winnipeg) and St Paul, using steamboats and oxcarts. Along this trading route, in the nineteenth century, trappers had a temporary trading post at the point where the Red Lake River flows into the larger Red River, naming it Les Grandes Fourches. In the winter of 1870–1, the same time that the railroads entered the region, a steamboat found itself trapped as the Red River froze, forcing the crew to spend the winter in the area. In the following spring, the boat’s captain established a permanent



Urban Development in the Red River Valley

61

settlement there, and simply translated its French name into English: Grand Forks. Fargo was established the next year, and in 1875, the first town lots of Grand Forks were platted out (Robinson 1966). The entrance of railroads also shifted the geographic pull of the area, making the southern valley of the Red River into “a hinterland of St. Paul and Minneapolis” (Robinson 1966: 108). In its first decade Grand Forks existed as a small, male-dominated trading post.5 This changed as growing numbers of immigrant families, primarily from Scandinavia, began to make permanent homes in the area. The 1880s brought an enormous population boom to North Dakota. The state grew over 1,000 per cent in 12 years: in 1878, the population was roughly 16,000, while in 1890, a year after gaining statehood, it had risen to 191,000. This was caused by at least four factors occurring in the US as a whole: rapid industrialization, the largest wave of immigration the country has ever seen,6 the most significant construction of railroads in the country’s history, and improvements in flour-milling technologies (Grand Forks continues to be a center for grain milling) (Robinson 1966). The boom for North Dakota would prove to be short-lived, however. While Fargo and Grand Forks continue to grow slowly, the rest of the state has been slowly losing its population since the Great Depression.7 Elwyn Robinson, who wrote the authoritative history of the state (no other state history has been written since), argues that North Dakota “had too much of too many things too soon” (1966, 135). Grand Forks itself quickly developed. The first permanent bridge over the Red River was built in 1879, linking it to the rest of the country. The University of North Dakota, which continues to be the city’s largest employer, enrolled its first class of students in 1884. By 1890, the city had almost 5,000 residents (Tweton 2005, 24), and almost half of Grand Forks (48 per cent) was Catholic (McNamee 1988, 51). However, by the early twentieth century, the largest ethnic group in Grand Forks was Norwegian and Lutheran, due to immigration from neighboring states, beginning in  1872, and later immigration from Norway itself. Norwegians were numerically followed by Germans, who were often Catholic; German-Russians; English, Scottish, and Irish from both the US and Canada; and Swedes.8 Due largely to this immigration, by this time Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists had all established a large number of congregations, and their collective population was roughly equal to the Lutheran presence (Robinson 1966, 291–4).9 Like New England’s Puritans before them, at least some immigrants to the area saw their migration as a response to a calling from God. For instance, one early Norwegian pastor,

62

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

while still in Norway, remarked that “God gave to the people of Moses the fertile Valley of Canaan. To us sons of Norway, He has given the greater, more fertile Valley of the Red River of the North” (Kelsey 1951, 223). Catholics and Lutherans dominated the state through the twentieth century, most often in churches overwhelmingly populated by either Germans or Norwegians, respectively. In 1916, for instance, 76 per cent of the church-attending population was either Lutheran or Catholic (Robinson 1966: 538). More often than not, in these early years services were held in the immigrants’ native language, though this practice was largely abandoned by the mid-twentieth century. The large presence of Scandinavian Lutherans, however, while numerically not much larger than the Catholic population, would come to hold a dominant spot in the region’s ethnic self-understanding and mythology.

Current Social Composition of Grand Forks Grand Forks today is a small city, with roughly 60,000 people living in either Grand Forks, ND or East Grand Forks, MN.10 While it is an agricultural center, including grain milling and sugar processing, its economy is rather diverse – it is a regional health care center; the University has attracted numerous industries, including airplane and windmill manufacturers; and a large Air Force base is located roughly 15 miles west of the city limits. Like many Midwestern cities (Wuthnow 2011), in the final decades of the twentieth century the economic center of Grand Forks shifted from downtown to newly built suburbs centered upon a shopping mall. Because of the Air Force Base and the University, a portion of Grand Forks’s population is also relatively transient. It is telling, for instance, that the only published book-length memoir of the 1997 flood (Varley 2005) was written by someone pursuing a PhD in English when the flood hit, and who no longer lives in the area. Racially, both North Dakota and Grand Forks are significantly less diverse than the rest of the country and are overwhelmingly white.11 Like most urban centers throughout the country, however, the city of Grand Forks is notably more diverse than its surrounding region. In the nineteenth century, Europeans immigrants tended to settle in pockets; in rural areas, which comprise most of the state, there were towns comprised almost entirely of one ethnic group, such as German Catholics, Norwegian Lutherans, or Russian Orthodox. By the late nineteenth century, most Native Americans had been segregated into reservations. These trends continue to hold true



Urban Development in the Red River Valley

63

today, as most small towns have not attracted new residents since that time. Cities such as Grand Forks and Fargo, however, were relatively diverse in that they held large communities of different European nationalities, and as small towns have dwindled in the past century, these cities have often become home to the multiple ethnicities the towns represented.12 While today the neighborhoods of Grand Forks are relatively integrated – there is no Norwegian or German side of town – the religious landscape still witnesses a diversity of European ethnicities. The religious demographics of Grand Forks today, in rough continuity with those of a century ago, show Lutherans as the most prominent part the landscape (specifically Norwegian Lutherans, which locally make up the majority of congregations belonging to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America [ELCA] in the area). Interestingly, however, despite the fact that Lutherans are culturally perceived as the overwhelmingly dominant religious group in the area, there is in fact a significant religious diversity that often gets overlooked in popular culture. The fictional town of Lake Wobegon in Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion is a striking example of the exaggeration of Lutheran culture in the Upper Midwest. Keillor based Lake Wobegon on his time living in Freeport, MN, which is located between Fargo and Minneapolis, and it revolves around a myth of the Lutheran Midwest. Freeport, however, as well as the towns surrounding it, is overwhelmingly Catholic, with very little Lutheran presence; when Keillor created Lake Wobegon, he intentionally skewed the religious landscape: in a reflection on developing his idea of the town, he comments that “to the German Catholics I added, for dramatic interest, an equal number of Norwegian Lutherans. These don’t exist in Stearns county but I bussed them in” (Keillor 2001: 13). The demographics of Grand Forks are different from those of Lake Wobegon (real or imagined), but the popular imagination still over-emphasizes the Lutheran Church. In 2000, Lutherans comprised just under a third of the populations of Grand Forks (ND) and Polk (MN) counties,13 but roughly a fifth belonged to other Protestant denominations (with Methodists leading) and another fifth were Roman Catholic.14 In terms of how the flood was perceived, the region’s assumed Scandinavian heritage functioned as an explanation for how people reacted to the flood. As will be seen in the beginning of the next chapter, the construction of ethnicity, for at least some, thus influenced how people understood their relationship to the natural environment. Claiming to be “full-blooded Norwegian” (Lopez 1997, 53), for instance, suffices as an adequate account for how one can handle living through the area’s difficult winters.

64

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

The 1997 Red River Flood Every spring, the river levels rise on the Red River, with varying levels of intensity. Three geographical factors account for the flooding. First, the area’s cold winters can cause snow to accumulate over the course of several months without melting; thus snow that falls in late November might not have a chance to melt until March, as was the case in 1997. If the winter is preceded by a wet autumn, as (again) it was in 1997, this earlier moisture also freezes in the ground – which means that the spring’s snowmelt cannot be absorbed into the saturated and partially frozen soil. Second, the region’s flat landscape allows a relatively small level of flood water to cover vast swaths of land. When the Red River breaks its banks, a flood of only a few feet of water can stretch for miles across before reaching land high enough to contain it. Finally, the southern regions of the valley, south of Fargo, thaw days or weeks before the northern parts of the valley along the Canadian border and into Manitoba. Because the river flows north, this causes ice-jams as snowmelt in the south flows north into a stillfrozen river and landscape, and has nowhere to go. Until the mid-twentieth century, there were no permanent forms of protection against floods in the area. In the early decades of urban development along the Red River, floods were simply accepted as a part of life, and in the early twentieth century, droughts were a problem as well – in the 1930s, record droughts actually caused the Red River to completely dry out for months at a time. As part of a trend in both Canada and the US, permanent flood protection began in the years following the 1950 flood, which devastated Winnipeg, 150 miles to the north of Grand Forks. In the 1960s, the Canadian government built an enormous floodway, which diverts water from the Red River after it reaches high enough levels and brings it downstream to the other side of the city, as well as a series of dikes surrounding the city (Passfield 2001–2). This system proved capable of controlling the 1997 flood, as did Fargo’s dikes. Grand Forks, however, did not have the resources to build as robust a system because of its small size.15 The unusually snowy winter of 1997 carried just over 100 inches of snow to Grand Forks; 37.2 inches is the average for the city, where the winters are quite cold but dry. When the spring thaw finally came in April, the Red River overflowed its banks into the surrounding flat landscape. The ensuing flood, slowly moving northward, created a vast plain of water, several feet high and miles wide, or what a New York Times columnist described as “an inland sea nearly one-quarter the size of Lake Superior” (Goldberg 1997b). The river expanded to an average width of 7 to 10 miles during the height



Urban Development in the Red River Valley

65

of the flood (Paulus et  al. 2008), and in Pembina, along the Canadian border, the river was 20 miles wide at its crest (Goldberg 1997a). The Red River reaches flood stage at 28 feet in Grand Forks,16 and the National Weather Service originally estimated that the flood would crest at 49 feet, tying the century’s highest recorded flood. Residents spent weeks reinforcing and heightening the dikes to meet these estimates, and then reinforced them again as the National Weather Service began to increase its forecasts in the final days of the flood. However, the dikes began to be overwhelmed on Friday, 18 April, as the river rose above 52 feet, and residents were forced to evacuate.17 It would crest on Monday, 21 April, at 54.35 feet, more than 4 feet above the previous record (see Table 3.1). The river stayed above 50 feet for more than a week, and above flood stage for over a month, having crested at 26 feet above the official flood stage. The damage from the flood was extensive. Only houses on the far western edge of town (and farthest from the river) remained entirely above water, and the overwhelming majority of homes at least had damage in their basements. In East Grand Forks, which had about 9,000 residents at that time, every home except for 5 or 7 (reports vary) was damaged, and the neighborhoods closest to downtown had water above the first floor (see Figure 3.2). Downtown Grand Forks met severe damage not only from water, but also from a massive fire which burned through several historic buildings and the offices of the Grand Forks Herald, the local newspaper; fire trucks could not reach the burning buildings because of the flood waters. At the flood’s height, approximately 1.7 million acres of land stood underwater. Table 3.1  Ten Highest Crests of the Red River of the North at Grand Forks

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Height (ft.)

Date

54.35 50.20 49.87 49.34 48.81 48.00 47.93 47.41 46.00 45.93 45.73

1997 (April 22) 1897 (April 10) 2011 (April 14) 2009 (April 1) 1979 (April 26) 1882 (April 18) 2006 (April 6) 2006 (April 16) 2010 (March 20) 1996 (April 21) 1978 (April 11)

Source: National Weather Service, http://water.weather.gov/ ahps2/crests.php?wfo=fgf&gage=egfm5

66

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

Figure 3.2  East Grand Forks, MN, during the 1997 flood. Source: FEMA/Dave Saville

Remarkably, according to the official statistics no lives were lost in the flood, although these numbers fail to account for later deaths due to physical or psychological stress. Two of the people I interviewed, for instance, personally knew of elderly residents whom they believed died from of the stress of losing their homes. Similarly, in one oral history a person stated that, “They say no one died. But, this was no deathless flood. There have been lots of older people dying. They are dying because of the stress and the strain. I think there are still people dying because of the flood” (Quam 1999, 191). Many homes near the river were knocked off of their foundations; because the city was originally built along the river and then spread outward, this included many homes and businesses in or near downtown. Several neighborhoods were completely destroyed and never rebuilt, including the Sherlock Park neighborhood immediately northwest of downtown East Grand Forks, and the Lincoln Park neighborhood in Grand Forks. As discussed below, these two neighborhoods are now public parks. Interestingly, environmental health problems were minimal, at least according to initial reports (Collins 1997), perhaps because there is relatively little heavy industry in the Grand Forks area. The main environmental problems following the flood were mold (which was persistent throughout



Urban Development in the Red River Valley

67

the city) and, in several hundred homes, contamination from fuel tanks that leaked during the flood. The 1997 flood was nonetheless a profoundly disruptive event, permanently changing the landscape of the city and its river. And yet, despite the scope of the 1997 flood in Grand Forks, it is obviously not the most significant natural disaster in US history, or even recent history. The Grand Forks flood is nonetheless instructive for questioning how the relationship between cities and their environments are perceived in the US for several reasons. First, it was an urban disaster. Unlike, for instance, the 1993 Mississippi River floods that affected the Midwest, in which the media focused on the devastation of rural farmland (Fry 2003), the central perception of the flood was of a flooded and burnt city. I use the word “perception” here intentionally, because the flood not only also affected rural communities and farmland, but the responses to the flood from many relief agencies privileged the city over rural farming communities.18 Second, the flood was consistently blamed on “nature” in the public discourse. In the less frequent instances where institutions are blamed, the National Weather Service (NWS) is most frequently the culprit (Pielke 1999; Morss and Wahl 2007).19 While these criticisms were not the most dominant responses to the flood, they are interesting when placed in contrast to popular perceptions of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina or Port au Prince after the 2010 earthquake. In these latter instances, social problems such as systemic racism or entrenched poverty were often (and correctly) seen to have greatly exacerbated the situation; while nature is still blamed, social problems became a major focus of media coverage. In Grand Forks, however, the flood was much more frequently blamed on nature or the river itself. As stated above, in a few instances the damage from the flood was seen as being caused by inadequate weather predictions from the NWS; some saw these poor forecasts as causing insufficient preparation before the flood. More specifically, temporary dikes could have been built to a higher level if earlier flood predictions would have accurately forecast the crest of the flood. Many other people recorded in the media and oral histories, however, felt that it would not have been possible to build temporary dikes to an adequate height. Even for those people who blamed the NWS, then, the primary cause of the flood was not any social ill, but inaccurately predicting and controlling nature.20 It is worth noting, however, that this is only true of the flood itself, and not of the recovery process; many individuals held a resentment and anger toward the city, the Army Corps of Engineers,21 and others for how rebuilding was handled after the flood (Rakow et al. 2003).

68

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

Finally, Grand Forks has been substantially (if differently) rebuilt since the 1997 flood. Not only has the built infrastructure been repaired, rebuilt or replaced, but the population itself has recovered, at least numerically as a region. According to estimates by the US Census Bureau, by 2010 the population of Grand Forks, ND, had rebounded back to its 1997 levels, though East Grand Forks, MN was still slightly under its pre-flood numbers.22 While certainly not all residents would agree, some would even argue that the city has improved since the flood; a common sentiment is that the downtowns (in particular) are more attractive and more functional than they were before the flood.23 This rebuilding allows us to ask not only how the city was perceived during the disaster, but how city officials and developers chose to rebuild the area and rethink its relationship to the river.

Disproportionate Effects of the Flood and Recovery The blame of the flood in public discourse, as mentioned above, was not laid on the feet of social ills such as poverty or racism. This is not to claim, however, that poverty or racism do not exist in the Grand Forks area, or that they did not affect how the flood was experienced. With any disaster, natural or otherwise, social disparities are amplified both during the disaster and in the recovery. Several studies have looked at the role of gender in the experience of the disaster and subsequent recovery. In a study on the 1997 flood in nearby Manitoba, Enarson and Scanlon argue that “taken-for-granted gender relations privileged male lines of action and male voices when couples were confronted with an extreme event” (1999, 118). In other words, existing gender relations were exaggerated by the flood. As has been documented in other disasters, marital stress and domestic violence accordingly both increased in the aftermath of the disaster (Davis and Ender 1999); in line with this, one person I interviewed mentioned that numerous couples on her block were divorced within four to five years of the flood (interview, 19 June 2009). Gender also affected methods for coping with the disaster. Enarson (2000), for instance, notes how two groups of quilters in Grand Forks used their craft to voice protest, offer hope and express grief. As noted in Chapter 1, however, room also existed for challenging traditional gender and cultural stereotypes, such as previously tentative women who found assertive voices in the flood’s aftermath, in contrast to a learned ethic of “North Dakota nice” (Fothergill 2004, 65–6).



Urban Development in the Red River Valley

69

In Alice Fothergill’s research, the flood also highlighted class divisions. While the flood itself affected people across income and status lines, class distinctions quickly arose in the recovery. Having more financial resources (ironically) helped people acquire more financial assistance, such as loans from the Small Business Administration. Those with more wealth were also often more socially connected to decision-makers in the city government, and thus able to understand regulations and acquire help more readily, and home-owners were less vulnerable and had significantly more governmental assistance than renters (Fothergill 2004, 70–8). During an interview for this project, a city official volunteered regret for the lack of assistance offered to renters. The situation was more complex than simply a disregard for the poor, however. He explained that the city was deeply concerned about the sudden loss of a tax-base that would accompany the destruction of so many homes. Officials were concerned that people simply would not come back to Grand Forks (indeed, some early media speculation doubted whether the city remained viable), and that the city’s income from property taxes would be decimated. Such a permanent loss of income would affect not only the government’s ability to do its normal job, but also its ability to help people recover, making the possibility of a full recovery more remote (interview, 19 June 2009). Within the existing literature and data available to me, there is no evidence of racial or ethnic patterns in which neighborhoods were kept and which were demolished. Race and ethnicity nonetheless did affect how the disaster was perceived (and, by implication, likely affected how the disaster was experienced by minority groups). One study has shown that the “community” evoked by the Grand Forks Herald, for instance, was an implicitly white one. Minority coverage in the newspaper was minimal, and when it existed it placed minority communities outside of the city: Native Americans were only portrayed in one article, which describes them going back to the Turtle Mountain Reservation (several hours to the west), and Hispanics were shown only in the context of penal labor and migrant labor camps (Ganje and Kenney 2004). The Scandinavian ancestry of many residents also plays into a popular mythology about both Grand Forks and Fargo, as mentioned earlier and developed in the next chapter. The endurance and tenacity of people as they both struggled with building dikes and then dealt with a flooded city is often explained as a product of sturdy, immigrant, Scandinavian roots, simplistically grouping all of the (white) residents into one ethnicity. An article in the Christian Century, for instance, refers to the “Scandinavian pietism” of the area as providing a “bulwark” against the weather, and even

70

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

(with apparently unintentional irony) quotes a Catholic priest as evidence of such pietism (Herman 1997). Among issues of gender, class, race, and ethnicity, the rebuilding of Grand Forks was most affected by class. The older neighborhoods in Grand Forks were built along the river, and thus more vulnerable to flooding; they also tended to be more working class than the suburban housing farther from the river; one interviewee described the Lincoln Park and Riverside neighborhoods, which were both heavily damaged and later demolished, as “working hard to make middle class” before the flood (interview, 4 June 2010). It should be noted, however, that income disparity was much less in Grand Forks than that seen in larger cities such as New Orleans, both preand post-Katrina.24 Nevertheless, wealthier neighborhoods near the river held an advantage in the rebuilding process over poorer neighborhoods near the river, as wealthier communities had more social and political resources for participating in civic decision-making, and thus were more capable of keeping their neighborhoods intact.

Urban Recovery in Grand Forks since 1997 Parts of Grand Forks, particularly downtown, were able to recover from the flood with remarkable speed. The mayor of Grand Forks, Pat Owens, immediately proclaimed, “We will rebuild,” which was quoted repeatedly in the media (e.g., Fedor 1997d), and within days of the flood the Grand Forks Herald announced that it would rebuild again in the city’s downtown. The block of the Security Building, a downtown landmark that also burned to the ground, was turned into a small urban park, along with other vacant downtown lots, so as not to leave unused land scarring the downtown. Several years later a condominium development was constructed on the site. Third Street, historically the city’s primary shopping street, had suffered a great deal of water damage; it was significantly renovated, including the removal of a roof that had been placed over the street in the 1970s, which had turned it into an (unsuccessful) indoor mall. East Grand Forks, whose small downtown was severely damaged, replaced its damaged bars and restaurants with a new row of businesses along the river, immediately behind a new “invisible” flood wall and included space for preflood establishments such as Whitey’s, a popular bar. They were also able to convince Cabela’s, a large outdoor sports store for anglers and hunters, to build a new store along the town’s main street. The significance of Cabela’s for East Grand Forks might be lost on outsiders and those who



Urban Development in the Red River Valley

71

do not hunt or fish, but the store dominates downtown and greatly enabled the city to rebuild itself. In an interview with a former city council member, for instance, the importance of building the new Cabela’s was discussed in detail and at length, and it influenced later developments as well. The decision of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to build a state park and campground in an adjacent neighborhood, for instance, was influenced by the camping and fishing supplies the store would make available, as well as the tourism it would draw.25 A permanent flood protection system, planned and built by the Army Corps of Engineers, was discussed as soon as the flood waters began to subside, though it took nearly a decade to complete. Ruling out the possibility of a floodway that would divert water around Grand Forks, such as had been built in Winnipeg, the Army Corps of Engineers published drawings for a new proposed dike system. These new dike locations were perhaps the central public and political issue for the first several years after the flood. Dikes cannot be endlessly built up; the higher an earthen dike is built, the wider its base must be, and eventually the needed width becomes unmanageably large. In order to contain future major floods, the Corps had to enlarge the river’s flood basin and move the dikes farther into the cities on both sides of the river. This required the dislocation of neighborhoods, homes and businesses. Thus, while some experienced the rebuilding of the city as a recovery, many people living within these neighborhoods experienced it as a second disaster (Rakow et al. 2003); in a children’s book of poetry about the flood in the Lincoln Drive area, for instance, a poem about the demolition of the neighborhood is tellingly given the title, “The Most Terrible Part” (Kurtz 2000). A later poem, about the new dike system, ends with the image of a squirrel running around a tree that a child had planted; while the flood did not destroy the tree, the last line tells us that “the new dike will” (Kurtz 2000). Neighborhoods, including Lincoln Drive, were often demolished only with protest from some community members, who argued against both the demolition of their neighborhoods as well as the process of buying out homes (Rakow et al. 2003). New homes constructed by the city often cost more than the homes that were demolished, for instance, and were located in suburban-style neighborhoods away from the river in the far western side of town (and thus, while they were not prone to flooding, they were a poor replacement for the tree-lined, established riverfront communities). As mentioned in the section above, there was class disparity within this process, and wealthier “historic” neighborhoods were more successful at

72

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

landing on the “dry” side of the dike. Reeves Drive, for instance, is an old, tree-lined street full of large historic homes near downtown, holding some of the most expensive residential real estate in the city. The street runs roughly parallel to the river along its western bank, and in the initial drawings from the Army Corps of Engineers, the dike was to lie alongside the street. This would require the demolition of the entire eastern side of the street for several blocks in order to make room for the new dike. Because of concerted and organized efforts by residents who had both material resources and connections in city hall, however, residents were able to convince the city and the Corps to move the proposed dike back toward the river so that their homes could remain. Today the dike rises out of their backyards, running parallel to the street. Another concern was the effect of the dike on the relationship between the river and the downtowns of Grand Forks and East Grand Forks. Beyond the fact that several buildings needed to be demolished in order to make room for the dike, visual continuity between the town and the river upon which it built would be permanently blocked. The residents of East Grand Forks, with some apparent consternation from their neighbors in Grand Forks, took matters into their own hands and built the first “invisible” flood wall in the United States, using technology first implemented in Germany. The new flood wall, smaller sections of which were later built in Grand Forks for street crossings (see Figure 3.3), is constructed of a series of columns, decoratively covered in brick, between which temporary walls can be inserted when the river is at risk of flooding. If waters reach the wall, it is constructed so that the water actually fills the wall itself and reinforces its strength. Once the flood wall was built, at considerable expense, the city left it to the Army Corps to revise their plans accordingly. The risk (political, physical, and economic) taken on by the city of East Grand Forks is evidence of the importance of the river to the community. Despite the threat the river poses during floods, the city’s identity is connected to the river; without the river, Grand Forks and East Grand Forks would never have been built in the first place. Several people I interviewed thus mentioned the importance of the invisible flood wall in rebuilding East Grand Forks, in that it did not block visual connection between the downtown and the river. Beyond this particular flood wall, the process of redeveloping the city also demonstrates the significance of the river for the community, as explored in Chapter 5. Despite substantial (and expensive) efforts to protect the city from the river during future floods, the city went to enormous lengths to make the river into something that could be enjoyed by both residents and visitors.



Urban Development in the Red River Valley

73

Figure 3.3  The removable flood wall in downtown Grand Forks, ND, crossing Demers Avenue. Source: Michael Rieger/FEMA

The most prominent example of this recreational approach to the river emerged at the same time that the dike was being planned and constructed. Plans for a “greenway” – essentially a long, narrow park along the banks of the river – were drawn, the result of initiative from both the city governments and a handful of grassroots organizations. The city of Grand Forks and the Army Corps of Engineers also worked heavily with an outside consultant, Greenway, Inc., an industry leader in building greenways.26 Greenway, Inc. had built numerous greenways across the county; thus, while the constraints of the Red River floodplain were somewhat unique, the Grand Forks Greenway system was based on a shared template for building urban parks along waterfronts (see Figure 3.4). A greenway is, at its most basic, a long and narrow park, usually with a path or trail for walking, biking, and other recreation. The Grand Forks Greenway was completed by the flood’s ten-year anniversary, resulting in a rather elaborate park system, given the size of the Grand Forks community. It stretches over roughly 2,200 acres along the Red and Red Lake Rivers, spanning the entire length of the Grand Forks and East Grand Forks, and includes more than 20 miles of bike and ski trails, numerous parks and

74

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

Figure 3.4  Downtown Grand Forks, ND, in  2006, with the newly constructed greenway beneath. Source: FEMA/Brenda Riskey

playgrounds, a campground run by Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources, golf and disc-golf courses, boat ramps, and access points for fishing.27 An extensive bike path system has also been built in the city of Grand Forks itself, which connects to the greenway in several places. A labyrinth for meditative walking, such as can be found in many churches, was recently constructed, and is the only explicitly religious space in the greenway. The labyrinth follows a rather simple construction; it is a spiral of large stones placed into the grass, along with a few shrubs, and people can follow its winding path as a meditative practice. Similar labyrinths are found in a growing number of churches and retreat centers, and walking a labyrinth is a popular form of contemplative spirituality among some facets of Christianity. A placard erected by the labyrinth de-Christianizes it, however, and describes it as “for the mind and body,” noting that “many users believe in the power of labyrinths to heal both physically and spiritually. Although commonly linked with religious and spiritual well-being, labyrinths are open to all people as a nondenominational, cross-cultural tool for ­well-being.”28 The overall purpose of the greenway, of course, is much more practical and economic. In the official greenway plan, prepared by Greenway, Inc.



Urban Development in the Red River Valley

75

in 2001, the first three goals of the project, placed in order of importance, are: 1) to “protect residents of Grand Forks and East Grand Forks from flooding,” 2) to “provide opportunity for economic growth,” and 3) to “improve and restore ecological stability” (Greenway, Inc. 2001: 3–13). In most of the official literature promoting the greenway during its early stages, the primacy of flood protection is also repeated. It is important to remember, then, that while the greenway has been an environmentally innovative and positive project for much of Grand Forks, its central purpose is not recreation or the promotion of environmental sustainability, but protecting the cities of Grand Forks and East Grand Forks from future floods. At its root, the greenway is about controlling nature, for protection and then for recreation.29

Conclusion As this chapter has begun to describe, in order to understand why Grand Forks flooded, one must first recognize that the city was built at the bottom of an extinct glacial lake, which partially refills during some heavy spring floods. As we will continue to see in the next chapter, the North Dakotans and northern Minnesotans who now live in the Red River Valley tie their identity, at least in part, to their relationship with their unique and harsh environment, as well as to the area’s Scandinavian heritage, despite the much broader ethnic diversity that exists within Grand Forks and Fargo. This is indeed a unique land – and, unfortunately, part of that uniqueness is its proclivity to flooding on a massive scale. When the 1997 flood came, the city’s system of dikes were unable to keep the flood waters out, and large portions of the city were damaged and several neighborhoods destroyed. While disasters affect everyone, those living near the river, often in more working-class neighborhoods, were hit the hardest, and those with less wealth had a more difficult time recovering from the flood and keeping their homes. In the years since the flood, the two downtowns have largely managed to recover, and a substantial greenway has been built inside of the dike system. While the circumstances of rebuilding Grand Forks are specific to this particular place – thankfully, not many cities in the US have been severely damaged by natural disasters in recent years – the rebuilding choices were often parallel to common building practices found in many American cities. And while the design constraints imposed by the Red River are idiosyncratic – for instance, the Grand Forks Greenway was intentionally modeled on

76

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

greenways found in numerous cities throughout the country, and the greenway concept itself originated in the nineteenth century30 – the current desire for new mixed-use developments in the downtown likewise echoes the growing popularity of downtown revitalization efforts in many cities, as well as the growth of New Urbanism.31 Paying close attention to how the urban environment was understood during this period and the disaster that preceded it, then, can bring out perceptions and motivations (discussed in the following two chapters) that are likewise not entirely unique to Grand Forks. Not every town or city fears being flooded, but the control of water is central to the modern infrastructure that provides indoor plumbing, sewage, and sanitation (Kaïka 2005). Similarly, the dual purpose of the greenway, meant both to protect the city and as a place of recreation, has analogies in other cities, such as development along the Charles River in Boston in the nineteenth century.32 Because of this continuity, while the following chapters focus specifically on Grand Forks, broad questions (What counts as nature? How is it controlled?) are asked that are applicable to a multiplicity of urban contexts.

Chapter 4

A Hard Land: The City Against the River

The centennial history of the Catholic diocese of Fargo, which includes Grand Forks,1 begins with a meditation on the land. In the opening essay, the flat terrain of North Dakota is described as holding a “kindness [that] cannot last; it is not really the gentle earth of other, warmer places. It is a hard land, which in the final analysis will shape us as much or more than we shape it.” Written a decade before the 1997 flood, the essay elaborates: “It is a hard land. Listen to the litany of evil genii it has harbored – flood and cyclone, root rot, fungi, drought and ice storm, dust storm, hail storm, grass fire, blight, rust, a thousand hungry bugs, and more and more” (Lamb 1988, 1–2). The author’s meditation is indicative of a larger consciousness shared among many residents of the river valley: their land is difficult, often unforgiving, and, on occasion, is dangerous to human life. For many in the valley and elsewhere in the Dakotas, not least the descendants of immigrants who live there, such images of the land influence how they perceive themselves and often how they are perceived by others. William Sherman, a Catholic priest who worked for many years in Grand Forks and a sociologist who has published several books on ethnicity in North Dakota, remarked in an oral history on the curious nature of North Dakotans: “I’d done some thinking about what kind of peculiar people live in this country. Obviously they’ve got to be different. Why are they here? Why do they stay when everybody else gets out? The history of our state is everybody leaving. So it’s obvious that a certain kind of people kind of relish this country. It occurred to me that really these people are exceptionally durable” (Glassheim 1999, 149). A week before the flood, a columnist in Fargo likewise wrote that “In the end, the hardy stoics of the Northern Plains will survive” (Zaleski 1997). North Dakotans and Minnesotans, it would seem, are made (or culled) by their environment. The perceived ruggedness of the local people is also often tied to Scandinavian ethnicity, part real and part imagined. Perhaps the most concise example of this comes from the owner of a grain-processing plant

78

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

in Grand Forks who, after the flood, told a reporter for Time magazine that “we’ll get through this. I’m full-blooded Norwegian” (Lopez 1997, 53). Stewart Herman, an ethicist at Concordia College in Moorhead, MN, across the river from Fargo, attributes the durability of people from the Red River Valley to both the weather and their ethno-religious roots, particularly Scandinavian pietism. “This pietism,” he writes,“ not only provides an especially sturdy bulwark against the uncontrollable vagaries of prairie weather; it takes its particular hue in no small measure from the endless struggle against that weather” (1997, 697). As mentioned in the previous chapter, Herman ironically then goes on to use an assertion by a Catholic priest as evidence of such a Scandinavian (and presumably Lutheran) perspective. His religious thesis does not hold up entirely, one might argue, for the simple reason that other European ethnic groups colonized the eastern Dakotas, including German Catholics and Russian Orthodox. It nevertheless promotes the prominent cultural stereotype of the region as stoic Scandinavians. For our purposes, what is important about this stereotype is how, as witnessed in these instances above, ethnic/regional identity is tied to the land and its weather. The perceived ruggedness and durability of North Dakotans is seen as a result of their relationship to the “hard land” on which they live and its extreme weather.2 As a popular saying goes, “Forty below keeps out the riff raff.” This chapter charts out ways in which this relationship between the people and the harsh land they live upon played out during and after the 1997 flood, often with the city and nature positioned antagonistically against each other. Beginning with how God is seen as acting (or not acting) during the flood, it then proceeds to describe some of the most prominent images using during this period, centered upon battles, chaos, and having faith in the city.

Acts of God When I first began imagining and planning this project, I assumed that the research would point especially to language that described the flood as an act of God. As briefly mentioned in the first chapter, however, descriptions in the US of disasters as divine acts dwindled to become almost nonexistent over the past century. Ted Steinberg, who has charted this change in a history of natural disasters in the United States, sees the demise of such language as caused by forces of secularization; he cites



A Hard Land: The City Against the River

79

Weber and argues that for Americans the world has become increasingly “disenchanted,” with people more likely to view events through a scientific lens (Steinberg 2000, 21). The literature and accounts I reviewed in Grand Forks partially correlate with Steinberg’s observation, but only partially. There are indeed only a few instances where the phrase “act of God” occurs, and in these cases it is used so quickly that it makes more sense for it simply to point to people’s inability to doing anything to stop the flood; it is likely not intended as a theological claim. For instance, in a Grand Forks Herald column on postflood looting, one person remarked that “the flood and fire are acts of God . . . but this (looting) was the limit. It was so cruel” (Koehler 1997). Even off-hand comments such as this are rare, however, and there was otherwise an almost total absence of language that blamed the disaster on God. Nonetheless, God is still seen as present in these events in different frameworks, which describe a significantly less culpable God. Two ministers I interviewed (one Catholic Roman and one an independent Baptist) both remembered congregants who wondered why God allowed the flood to occur; one of these ministers, of an evangelical church, was quite clear that he believed his congregation felt God allowed the flood, but not that God directly caused it. An evangelical minister in Ada, MN, between Fargo and Grand Forks, held a similar view. In an article in the Minneapolis newspaper, he said that he does not know why God “allowed” the flood to happen. “But I know,” he continued, “that the Lord of the storm is the Lord of our lives, and in the midst of the storm the Lord is seated over the flood.” There are also occasional, if somewhat rare, instances of people voicing such sentiments in the oral histories. One resident remembered looking down into the Lincoln Drive area, which was severely flooded, and commented, “I remember thinking, it was almost like this conversation with God, I said, you know, ‘Lord, does it have to go to the top?’ (Laughter) ‘Does the water really have to go to the top?’” (Glassheim 1999, 105). This same idea – that God allowed the flood but did not cause it – is implicit in the actions of William Sherman, a local Catholic priest quoted at the beginning of this chapter. In the midst of the flood, Sherman went to some effort to find the appropriate saint for the situation: I’d found out that there’s a saint by the name of St Columban who was a patron saint of flood protection and so I was praying to St Columban and I got word out, in fact it was in the Herald, that St Columban is the guy to pray for us. I was trying to figure out what this Irishman from back in 600 had to do with floods. Well, he was shipwrecked once and

80

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

lived on a little island out in the sea someplace so I guess he knows something about water. Well, anyway, I know one thing, when I get up to heaven, God willing, I’m going to have a little chat with St Columban and say now what’s going on here? But he’ll probably say “well listen, I asked God and God said ‘no.’” What do you do then? But I tried. (Glassheim 1999, 147) In all of these instances, it is important to note that while God is ultimately held responsible for the flood, people nonetheless fall short of claiming that God directly caused such a disaster. Similarly, the Time magazine article mentioned earlier assumes that religious “faith” should lead to protection from disasters. According to Time magazine, “The Grand Forks Yellow Pages list 143 churches and only three psychiatrists and it would take all 146 of them to explain how a place with so much faith could lose a turnof-the-century downtown to nearly biblical disaster while the Wal-Mart on the edge of town stayed high and dry” (Lopez 1997, 52). Again, this implies that disasters such as this must be caused by God, or perhaps by a lack of faith in God, but the article nevertheless politely refrains from actually blaming God. In  all of the materials I reviewed, there was only one explicit instance where such politeness was not found.3 A rabidly anti-Semitic newsletter from Missouri, the Winrod Letter, devoted articles to the flood in Grand Forks in its May and June 1997 issues, calling it divine retribution for allowing Jews to take over the state’s financial and legal systems. Against an image of a burned downtown block, it provided the caption “Grand Forks Jew Stock-Exchange Building Gutted by Christ’s fiery wrath” (Winrod 1997). Likewise, in Fargo’s 2009 flood, which almost inundated the entire city, Fred Phelps and his violently homophobic Westboro Baptist church blamed the flood on homosexuality in Fargo (Westboro 2009). Both of these instances remain far outside of the norm, however, and they do not reflect local sentiments and understandings.4 In oral histories, if the subject of God arises at all, it is more common for people to be either directly agnostic or antagonistic to notions of God causing the flood. One interviewer asked the owner of a downtown candy shop if he had “any feelings about why this flood happened.” His reply was similar to several others: “Now that’s a good question. It all depends on what your philosophy of life is. Is the Almighty telling us something? I don’t know. I’m not a theologian. But anyway, it’s gonna come out all right” (Glassheim 1999, 171). Another person in the same oral history project was more direct: she remembered reading a newspaper article in which there



A Hard Land: The City Against the River

81

was “one guy who was viewing this flood as a test from God. And I was very, very, well, not supportive of that one. I just went, oh, my God. God has nothing to do with this. This is just water” (Glassheim 1999, 131). Within the media and government documents I reviewed, sentiments that blame the flood on God are almost entirely absent. That is, there is neither language that blamed the flood on God either directly (e.g., as an “act of God”) or indirectly (as something God allowed). Stewart Herman, mentioned above, connects this common absence to the “Scandinavian pietism” of the valley in an article in the Christian Century. He writes: This pietism does not pause to speculate whether God was using the flood to chastise or warn the community or to accomplish purposes independently of or in contradiction to human purposes. “God could but would not will such disasters,” insisted one Catholic priest. In a terrain where the Red River and its tributaries provide the only natural squiggles on a strictly rectilinear grid imposed by commodity agriculture, this anthropocentric focus is not surprising, however irritating it might be to more theocentric, biocentric or ecocentric forms of piety. Yet in its own way, it does open a door to a transcendent, even disturbing glimpse into the nature of God’s governance—the terrible beauty of a divine economy operating on nothing but sheer gift, and our inability to sustain such an economy on earth. (Herman 1997, 697) Such an explicitly anthropocentric focus need not form the only basis for skepticism about God’s role in the flood, however. Jerome Lamb, for instance, wrote and self-published a small, Catholic newsletter based in Fargo called The Small Voice, and devoted an issue to the flood on its first anniversary. “All we are certain of is that we live at the bottom of a lake,” he writes, “And that we could have another [flood] another year; after all, we’re not really running the show” (Lamb 1998, 2). Lamb goes on to specifically address the role of higher powers in the flood. In an essay entitled “Acts of God and other Unusual Goings On,” he notes that for both Mother Nature and God, “apparently taking blame is part of the job description for higher powers.” Mother Nature is blamed for a myriad of disasters, but for Lamb “mother nature gets off easier than God, Who is the ultimate scapegoat . . . He numbers the hairs on our heads we are told, and reckons the flight of the sparrow, so surely the typhoon and the earthquake must be His, His the flood and the famine. After all, they’re called ‘acts of God’ aren’t they?” (5–6).

82

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

Nonetheless, he remains hesitant to lay blame on anything other than faceless, natural forces, and reaches a conclusion that puts humanity on the sidelines, rather than at the center, of the flood’s drama. Answering his own question, he continues, Again, I don’t know. I’ve never understood whether an “act of God” signifies a theological or a legal concept, whether it refers to some sort of divine and sometimes malign power or to a convenient escape for the insurance companies. I’m inclined to go with the latter, to suspect that God is once again getting the bum rap that much of what He is blamed for amounts simply to a condition of human existence. Some things happen just because we live in a world not entirely organized around our well being, a world that shakes, rattles and rocks with natural forces over which we have little or no control. My guess is that death, taxes and natural disasters are more or less part of the environment, they come with the territory, and though having blameable targets close at hand may satisfy some basic need it’s largely beside the point. The point being that it ain’t our show; it’s life’s show, and the earth’s. All we’re really in charge of is the way we handle ourselves. (Lamb 1998, 6) These two quotes by Lamb and Herman have slightly different claims about God’s role in the flood. The first implies that it is impossible for God to have “willed” such a disaster, and the second claims it is impossible to know whether there was anyone or anything in control at all. They nonetheless both agree that the flood was not an “act of God” in any typical meaning of the phrase. As Lamb’s meditation implies, for some people a personified nature (or Nature) fills in the gap left behind. Nature is not simply a meaningless conglomeration of objects acting randomly, but is given agency. In other words, some responses go beyond claiming that the flood was “just water,” as in the earlier reference, and make nature into an entity itself. Several people, for instance, such as the editor of an oral history for East Grand Forks (Quam 1999), described the flood as the city in a war against “Mother Nature.” In Time magazine, a FEMA representative is quoted as saying that “Mother Nature will find a way over, under or around anything you put in its path” (Lopez 1997, 53). References such as this do not explicitly deify nature, but they do lend it a will, and often add to it extra-human, incredible powers described using mythological language – though in the case of the quote from Lamb, Mother Nature and God are relatively equivalent



A Hard Land: The City Against the River

83

categories. This mythological use of nature was not necessarily antagonistic, however; that is, “mother nature” is not always something that brings destruction. A student in a college course on eco-feminism, for instance, wrote this message on a flood memorial quilt: “we are just borrowing this land for our short journey on Mother Earth” (Enarson 2000, 54). It should be noted that the purpose of Mother Earth/Nature imagery shifts with this last example. The flood ceases to necessarily be an act of Mother Nature and instead is an act against Mother Nature, invoking a Mother Nature that is vulnerable and not adequately powerful. The conflicting uses of Mother Nature imagery here is consistent with the work of Catherine Roach (2003), whose work on such images in popular culture shows that in contemporary US culture this feminized image of nature is alternatively described as loving, as an enemy, and as a victim. Nevertheless, Mother Nature/Earth images remain somewhat rare in the literature and responses surveyed.5 Nature is not always explicitly deified or even given agency, of course. Numerous people in oral histories, for instance, described the flood as “just nature,” or “just the river.” As in one of the passages that opened this chapter, floods are simply an aspect of living on “a hard land.” Even in these instances, however, nature is still confronted as an external force beyond human control. Katherine Fry, for instance, compared her research on television coverage of the 1993 floods along the Mississippi to the 1997 Red River floods; in coverage of both events she saw the floods blamed on nature (or Nature). This not only “reinforce[ed] nature as a separate entity,” but also “allow[ed] us to shift the blame while celebrating our own heroism in our fight against nature” (2003, 127). That is, according to Fry’s research, initial media coverage in both the 1993 and 1997 floods tended to include social disagreements, angry residents, and explanations based on poor development or farming practices. In later commemorations, however, farmers and urban residents alike are presented as heroic and unified in their fight to save their city or farm, and all blame is placed on a mysterious, uncontrollable nature (126–7). Fry’s research is in line with Ted Steinberg’s observation, discussed in the first chapter, that blaming disasters on nature (or God) tends to function as a way to avoid culpability. Shifting the blame onto nature, however, still does not mean that the Christian God simply exits the scene or gets fully replaced by nature, deified, or otherwise. Carolyn Kitch and Janice Hume (2008), in an analysis of media coverage for several natural disasters in the 1990s (including the flood in Grand Forks), observe that “time and again, the people quoted in these disaster stories repeated the same notion—that God was not responsible for the destruction, but had a hand in the survival and any good

84

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

that might come from the trials of storms and earthquakes” (16). This is a more precise and more tangible claim than the usual depiction of religion as therapeutic in times of disaster (cf. Brand 1999; Lawson and Thomas 2007). Within the responses found in Grand Forks, for instance, God is often squarely placed in recovery efforts; there are frequent references to God acting in the flood, especially in literature from church organizations, but God is seen in the process of protecting and rebuilding the city, rather than in instigating the disaster itself. This shift is stated most succinctly in a more recent slogan used by the Salvation Army. In the flooding of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in June 2008, for instance, the front page of their website (www.usc.salvationarmy.org) was dominated by this creative reversal: “We combat natural disasters with acts of God,” a phrase the Salvation Army has now used in multiple disasters.6 A small Catholic seminary, built along the Red River in Fargo, likewise proclaimed their school was “saved by ‘An Act of God’” following the record flood there in 2009 (Cardinal Muench 2009). Similar, if less catchy, sentiments are voiced throughout the responses to the Grand Forks flood. A prayer recorded by Minnesota Public Radio (MPR), for instance, clearly lays the blame on nature and not God: “Lord, the great flood of 1997 has clearly reminded us how powerless we are over the forces of nature” (Enger 1997). One way this reversal happens is through a use of Christian baptismal imagery as a counterbalance to the flood. In this vein, a little more than a week after Grand Forks was evacuated, the presiding bishop of Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) made the exhortation, “Even as the flood waters surround you and destroy or threaten your homes, places of work and communities, be reminded of that even greater power of the waters of baptism in which we have already been buried with Christ Jesus and raised to newness of life” (ELCA 1997, 30 April). A Benedictine sister in East Grand Forks was similarly quoted in a diocesan newsletter, which was later reprinted in a book celebrating the dedication of a newly rebuilt Catholic school: The sisters in the convent had planted [a] lily sometime after the flood waters had receded . . . Now, just days before frost, the plant has raised its trumpet blossom. Sister Marguerite sees that as a sign of hope and a promise of God’s continuous presence. She is awed by the mystery of it. “From death comes life – it’s the Paschal Mystery,” professes the East Grand Forks sister. “We always have to die to something to come into a



A Hard Land: The City Against the River

85

new way of being. How ironic that it is through the waters of baptism that we are immersed into the Paschal Mystery. And here this river of water just washes us into a new phase.” (Gregg 1999, 38) In a somewhat different but visually evocative use of water imagery, the associate pastor of the Sacred Heart Church (which runs the school mentioned above) took a photo of a statue of Jesus standing in front of the church. While on a tour of East Grand Forks given shortly after the flood for area ministers and priests while the city was still evacuated,7 the pastor photographed the statue with the water level holding steady at its feet, giving the illusion that Jesus was walking on the flood water – an image that hearkens back to the biblical story of Jesus walking on the Sea of Galilee, and that could easily be interpreted to show Christ’s dominion over the flood. The photo then ran in the Catholic press and was published in several magazines and newsletters (e.g., Malcolm 1997; Leopold 1997).The pastor who took the photo believes that it was a large part of why the parish received so much financial assistance from churches around the country after the flood (interview, 18 June 2009). As discussed later in this chapter, water is also closely associated with chaos in many passages in the Hebrew Bible, and several people turned to such imagery. In the Grand Forks Herald, shortly after the flood, a reporter observed a National Guard chaplain conducting a church service. During the service, the reporter tells us that the chaplain “read from the 69th Psalm. ‘Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in the miry depths where there is no foothold. I have come into the deep waters where the floods engulf me. I am worn out calling for help. My lips are parched’” (Lee and Long 1997). The Salvation Army published a special edition of their newsletter in 1997, called “Operation We Care,” in which readers are given a similar, albeit much more reassuring, quote from Isaiah, overlaid with images of Salvation Army volunteers: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through fire, you will not be burned  .  .  .  For I am the Lord, your God.” The clear implication of this latter quote, which is reinforced by their later slogan (“We combat natural disasters with acts of God”), is that God is present through these relief workers. The final image on the page is of a rainbow hovering over a burnt downtown block. This particular picture is reprinted in multiple publications, including a permanent downtown flood memorial, and the photographer

86

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

appears to have titled the image “Sign of Hope” (Hylden and Reuter 1998). The rainbow, of course, hearkens back to the biblical flood itself, and this image is possibly one instance among several of the Noah imageries used during and after the Grand Forks flood. A Lutheran newsletter describes, for instance, a “rainbow of volunteers [God] sent after the flood” (Recovery 1998c); Grace United Methodist, in nearby Warren, MN started up “Project Noah’s Ark” for recovery work on their church building (Bloom 1997); and at least one Lutheran church in Grand Forks hung a rainbow banner in their temporary sanctuary (Miller 1997c). The Noah story usually gets radically reinterpreted in these references – God does not cause the flood, but helps Noah rescue people. In this vein, Lutheran Disaster Response started a “Camp Noah” for children affected by the flood, helping to “[keep] hundreds of children afloat,” and their descriptions of the flood story are strikingly different from the biblical account. In the book of Genesis, God sends flood waters (water being a symbol of chaos in the Ancient Near East) to destroy the earth for its wickedness, and only saves one human family, who themselves save a handful of animals. There is no ambiguity within the biblical text that God sent the flood as a punishment against humanity, wiping out most of living creation. With Camp Noah, however, the curriculum followed the story of Noah, relating each part of the story to an aspect of the flood experience. On the first day, Noah prepared for the flood by building an ark; the children talked about sandbagging and other steps. On day two, when Noah and his family came aboard, they talked about rising flood waters and evacuations. The third day’s lesson, focusing on Noah and his family’s discomfort aboard the cramped, smelly, animal-laden boat, related to time spent in shelters and temporary housing. Releasing the dove to look for land, Noah expressed the same confidence and hope the children were feeling as recovery began. Finally, when the dove returned with a branch demonstrating renewed life, the camps ended with hope for the future and the assurance that day would come for those who had survived disaster aboard the Upper Midwest “ark.” (Recovery 1998a) While this curiously lacks any direct reference to God, the point does not appear to be about making claims about who God is, but explaining what people did during the flood and how people are rebuilding their city. In another instance, written less than two weeks after Grand Forks was evacuated, a prayer was posted from the bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran



A Hard Land: The City Against the River

87

Church of America (ELCA) on the denomination’s Domestic Disaster Response website. “Oh God, Great Deliverer,” it reads, “as you delivered Noah and his family from the flood; as you rescued your people Israel at the Red Sea; look now with compassion upon your sons and daughters of the Red River Valley” (ELCA 1997, 30 April). Again, the intent here is to bring a message of hope about a comforting God, and not (as the biblical story of the flood would lead the reader) to depict the flood as a punishment from God. Noah and the flood images occur in nonreligious contexts as well. In Life magazine, an article on the flood closes with a child looking at a book which reads, “In Noah’s time the rainbow was God’s promise to us that the whole world wouldn’t flood again.” The child’s book goes on to make the obvious connection: “Maybe the rainbow in Grand Forks means that the river won’t have to visit our houses again either” (Dowling and Gomez 1998). There is also a flurry of trivial references: the most popular name locally for newborn boys during and after the flood was Noah (Fothergill 2004), Noahic references appear in several other popular magazines – Inc. magazine described those redeveloping the area as “The Noahs of Grand Forks” (Fudge 1998) – a temporary technology hub for downtown Grand Forks was dubbed Noah’s Arc, and an ice sculpture competition the following winter featured a sculpture of Noah’s Ark. In these latter instances, of course, the use of Noah imagery is perhaps nothing more than people drawing from a larger cultural repertoire of flood symbolism. For instance, the image of a rainbow hovering over a burnt-out downtown, mentioned above, was also published on the front page of the Grand Forks Herald during the flood on 30 April, but with a quote from Percy Shelly above it (“When the cloud is shattered, The rainbow’s glory is shed”). On 5 May, a smaller version of the same photograph was run again, this time under the fold on the front page, with the caption “A rainbow shown over downtown Grand Forks the day it was announced an anonymous donor was giving $2,000 to each household affected by the flood.” A drawing of a rainbow, by a local second-grader, appeared as a small image on the front page as well that day, pointing readers to a section of children’s drawings about the flood. Two years after the flood, the Free Press also ran an article on funding for rebuilding downtown Grand Forks, which clearly tied into a very different rainbow metaphor: the title was “Pot of gold builds rainbow after flood in Grand Forks” (Lyons 1999). These references might be instances of people grabbing from a cultural grab-bag of flood images – drawing on a different biblical image, for instance, the Winnipeg Free Press titled their flood photo-book A Red Sea

88

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

Rising (1997), and an early article from the St Paul newspaper observed that “the fabled dikes of Grand Forks, like the lost city of Atlantis, are under water” (N. Coleman 1997). It is clear that the relevance of religious imagery in many of these instances is not due to some kind of religious authority or to the ultimacy of some higher power. Nevertheless, such images might indicate more than just grabbing flood symbols at random. This is clearer in another, perhaps trivial, reference to the Bible, found in a memoir of the flood published by Jane Varley, who at the time was a PhD student in the English department at the University of North Dakota. In one instance, Varley conflates God and nature. After the flood, she assumed her office had been destroyed, only to discover than it had remained dry and she lost nothing. “Some of my friends,” she writes, “understand when I say I wanted to see all the work saturated beyond rescue. To be swept away in a flood as though God had come down and made a change. Nature would change my life” (Varley 2005, 98). The shift from “God” to “Nature” here is seamless, and perhaps not even intentional. The use of God and nature, which is otherwise largely absent in her memoir, however, is likely less about a belief in a deity/force that could change her life in such a way, and more about the events holding what she later calls a “resonance” (103) with things that are world-changing. To refer back to Peter Berger’s work (1967), and Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality (1966), discussed in Chapter 2, the flood disrupted how people ordered their world, and culturally available religious language provides an avenue for expressing the cosmos-changing nature of the event – perhaps even when its proper theological meaning is largely disregarded. A few pages after the quote above, Varley writes, “First, they called it the flood of the century. Later, with theories about the history of the floodplain, they called it a five-hundred-year flood. Fifty-four feet every five hundred years? Numbers took on the resonance of the Bible, Noah and his three hundred cubits by fifty cubits by thirty cubits. Forty days and forty nights” (Varley 2005, 103). It would seem that Varley is drawing on Noah because the dimensions of such an extreme event were beyond ordinary time, invoking myth and taking on “the resonance of the Bible.” Rather than invoking the Noah story to make a theological claim or draw a parallel with God delivering people from the flood, as in some of the texts mentioned above, Varley is using language that resonates with the gravity of the events she experienced. In a similar vein, a song in a high school musical written after the flood called Keep the Faith begins with the query “Were you washed in the waters of the Red?” It then drops the baptismal metaphor and goes on to catalogue



A Hard Land: The City Against the River

89

the various blizzards the region suffered before the flood itself came. In this context, the question is clearly not meant to invoke a theological argument about God’s role in the flood, but perhaps to draw an analogy between a religiously transformative event – baptism – and the transformation of Grand Forks in the flood. In the second chapter, I defined the religious within this project as shared images, concepts, and perceptions that make sense out of reality by pointing to an ultimate source. With Camp Noah and the prayers from the bishop of the ELCA, this reference to an ultimate source is clear. More trivial references, such as those found in Varley’s memoir or in references to Noah in business magazines and ice sculptures, might also be seen as religious in a broader sense, however, because they also use shared images that “resonate” between the experience of everyday reality and something more ultimate. They draw on a common cultural repertoire that reminds the reader of an assumed and shared faith, or at least a shared familiarity with biblical religion, and with that, of a God that takes care of those who believe. What is important about most of the Noah images, however, goes beyond the fact that they fit my definition of “religious.” Many of these images are important because they share a conviction found in multiple places that God can be found in the rebuilding of the city – “act of God” language that labels the flood as divine retribution is replaced with images of God acting on behalf of the city. At times this is as simple as a statement of faith in God’s ability to help people rebuild. A press release in December 1997 from the United Methodist Committee on Relief contained a picture of a home knocked off of its foundation, for instance, with the following spray-painted on its side:8 “I will succeed in life in general with self-confidence, faith and with the help of GOD Almighty.” A children’s painting, published on the back cover of the East Grand Forks oral history (Quam 1999), similarly contains an image, amid scenes of people fleeing the city, of two hands reaching down from the sky and holding the earth, under which is the exclamation, “God is helping us!” One of the most widespread symbols during the flood stemmed from an anonymous donation (mentioned above), which was given to the city so as to provide $2,000 to each resident of Grand Forks who was affected by the flood and applied for it, as briefly mentioned in Chapter 3. This donor quickly became known as the “Angel,” and her money the “angel fund,”9 even after the Herald revealed her to be Joan Kroc, a philanthropist and widow of the founder of McDonalds. In one of the earliest articles in the Herald that mentioned the fund, before it was accredited to an “angel,” Mayor Owens is quoted using overtly Christian language to explain the

90

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

money: “We’ve all prayed so hard together  .  .  .  God has answered our prayers. He’s sent a person as an anonymous donor” (Fedor 1997e). While there was a good deal of frustration from some people about the logistics of personally receiving the money, newspapers covered it very positively and frequently used angel imagery or other Christian images. In the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, for instance, one man attested that receiving the check felt “like a scholarship from God” (Robertson 1997). Lynn Stauss, the mayor of East Grand Forks, was also quoted in the StarTribune referencing the Bible to describe the donation. Citing the book of James, he tells a reporter that “If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit you?” “This is what the angel basically did,” Stauss said. “{She} came forward and put the money on the line – out there for the people who needed it. They can now go out, put their heads up and step forward in life.” (Lonetree 1997) Kroc was not the only angel of the flood, however. After a visit from President Clinton, Mayor Owens told him that “we knew that there were people in Washington looking after us, and indeed, you are our angels” (Wald 1997). Outside of large scale philanthropy and government aid, analogies to angels remained quite common, especially to describe relief workers and others who helped clean up in the months after the water receded. Less than a month after the river crested, the associate director of the Domestic Disaster Response (ELCA) wrote: I believe in angels! Not only do I believe in the major messengers of God whom we know by name, such as Michael and Gabriel. I also believe in the anonymous angels, the unnamed angels, such as the ones who ministered to Jesus after he left the wilderness. I hear on the news that a second “angel” had offered to contribute additional millions of dollars to distribute to the families affected by the flood waters in Grand Forks . . . But I am much more thankful for the tens of thousands of “unnamed angels” who are ministering to those who are coming out of the wilderness left behind by the flood waters in North and South Dakota and in Minnesota. . . . Many of our brothers and sisters in Christ will be out of their homes for weeks or months, and will face long and extensive clean-up and rebuilding. And the angels minister.



A Hard Land: The City Against the River

91

. . . I believe in angels. I can see them, busy, across the country. They are sending special offerings and individual contributions to ELCA Domestic Disaster Response. They are volunteering their physical labors. The angels are ministering – spiritually, financially, physically, emotionally – bearing the message that God does not abandon his people, that we are a people of hope and new life; that Lutherans are people who care; and that God’s angels have charge of us, and the wicked one has no power over us (ELCA 1997, 10 May). The angels there, interestingly, are not just demonstrating the presence of God, but also the presence of the Lutheran (ELCA) church. Relief workers are likewise occasionally referenced as “godsends,” especially in reference to relief agencies and volunteers. Different Lutheran agencies reported that “the many prayers and expressions of concern from all over this church have been a godsend” (ELCA 1997, 19 April), and that through volunteers “real people still living in difficult storm-related circumstances are touched by God’s hand” (ELCA 1998, 22 March). In an article reprinted in several newsletters a home-owner remarks that “Without Lutheran Disaster Response, it would’ve taken us a minimum of three years to have gotten this far. It was a God-send” (Recovery 1998b). On the first anniversary of the flood, the ELCA Domestic Disaster Response let people know that by contributing money, “YOU can be a real godsend” (ELCA 1998, 17 March). As with some of the Noah imagery, language about something being a “godsend” does not necessarily mean anything overtly theological or religious (a parallel might be the common use of phrases such as “Oh, my God . . .”). One person, recorded in an oral history, offhandedly remarked that her husband “solicited the help of his nephews who were a God-send” (Glassheim 1999, 69), and Inc. magazine quoted a restaurant owner who had to move from downtown to the suburbs, who notes that the suburban space “turned out to be a real godsend” (Fudge 1998). While it is possible that one or both of these was meant as a literal claim about God acting in their lives, given that phrases like this are quite common, it is likely that many such statements were meant much more casually. In at least two instances, however, the language grows stronger. The bishop of ELCA is quoted in a magazine, claiming that “The church really was the presence of God with skin on” (Blezard 1998), and in another article, the pastor of a Lutheran church in nearby Ada, MN, observes that “We’ve been blessed by the many volunteers who have dominated their time and energy to help us in recovery. They got dirty. They worked hard. They tore out

92

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

flood-soaked drywall and paneling and carpet. As one elderly woman said, ‘In these volunteers, I’ve seen the face of God!’ (Isaacson 1997). Jeffrey Brand found similar themes in sermons prepared after the flood. One Methodist minister, for instance, used the story of Jesus calming a storm on the Sea of Galilee as a way to argue that not only is God more powerful that “nature,” but that also that “the same power that brought sister and brother together to fill and stack sand bags would open the hearts and homes and schedules of faces known and unknown to help us” (Brand 1999, 67). In another sermon, a Lutheran minister remarked that “We embody for each other God, literally. We are God’s helping hands to each other” (68). As in these previous quotes, God’s presence in the city often moves beyond metaphor and analogy, with God’s presence linked explicitly to the physical infrastructure of buildings and homes.10 In a posting on a Lutheran disaster relief website, one person described the effect of Lutheran volunteers as follows: “There is dust in the air, and a heavy smell of mold and mildew. But there is something else—the sweet smell of fresh-cut lumber, the new smell of wallboard and spackling . . . and the sounds of hammering and the words ‘Thank you.’” The letter ends: “As thousands in the upper Midwest continue to clean up and rebuild, let us pray God’s strength and presence with these long-suffering brothers and sisters” (ELCA 1997, 23 September). And an earlier post, when residents had not yet all returned, stated that early relief workers in Grand Forks “have been obedient to the Risen ascending Lord who said: ‘Stay in the city’” (ELCA 1997, 8 May). During the flood itself, the presence of God in the city often revolved around the dikes themselves, which were continually being enlarged and reinforced. In a short article written by a Catholic priest in Fargo about his experience of the flood, for instance, the priest recounts a family who called him “to come and bless their home,” as it was going to be on the wet side of a new temporary dike in Fargo. “Several women suggested that we go out and bless the [old] dike,” he writes. “We would ask God through His goodness to spare the city of Fargo. The five of us walked to the dike, prayed and sprinkled holy water on it.” This image of a dike being anointed with holy water forms a clear contrast between good and bad waters, between the holy water meant to protect the dikes, and the implicitly unholy water threatening to overcome it. Inset in the article is a picture of the priest and women praying on the dike. When they were returning from the blessing, “a woman came out and asked me to bless her home -- even though she wasn’t Catholic. I asked God’s angels to protect it from every evil and from



A Hard Land: The City Against the River

93

the ravages of the flood and other elements.” The priest then returned to the first family’s house, and “prayed that all evil would be driven from the house and that God’s holy angels would come and protect the family.” The following day, a Sunday, he officiated for an ecumenical mass on a neighbor’s front yard. “In front of one home, we set up an altar -- a kitchen table -- with sandbags running right next to it. Some of my altar servers already were present, helping to build the dike . . . ” (Schill 1997). In this last example, the priest and the people he is serving are clearly interested in God protecting the city, even going so far as to imply the flood is “evil.” In doing so, they are also implicitly assuming that God can indeed control whether or not the dike breaks, making their actions parallel with later claims that God allowed the flood in Grand Forks, though God did not cause it. Taken individually, there is nothing inherently remarkable about these depictions. As a whole, however, those that see God present in the flood consistently portray God as on the side of protecting and then rebuilding the city, and implicitly against the “natural” consequences of the flood. This antagonism between the city and nature most often finds an outlet in a different set of images, however: that of a fight between the city and its environment.

Battling with Nature On 19 April 1997, the same day that Grand Forks would be evacuated, the Herald ran an article about the mayor, Pat Owens, and her efforts during the flood. The article, which describes the city “waging war” with the record flood, reports the mayor had told CNN that “residents refuse to surrender to the Red River.” Later, Owens is quoted as saying that “it’s a constant battle . . . They keep patching and patching and patching [the dike] . . .  It’s holding. It’s like we’re in God’s hands” (Fedor 1997a). The article’s title – “‘Owens: We’re in God’s Hands’” – emphasizes this final line, and was set in large print in the regional section’s front page. There is continuity here with the preceding section – God is active in the flood, but on the side of saving the city – and, perhaps unintentionally, Owen’s statement also implies that God would hold some responsibility if the dikes were not to hold. But this statement of God’s partiality also takes on a militaristic edge. Such images are numerous in the Herald’s coverage of the flood, which is frequently described as a “flood fight,” war, or battle (though often without references to the divine). The use of water “bombs” from a helicopter to

94

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

fight the downtown fire, for instance, was described as an “aerial attack” (Nelson 1997),11 and the difficulty of controlling the fire was called an “assault on the soul of Grand Forks” (Fedor 1997b). In a particularly colorful article, under the title “Come Hell and High Water,” we read of “another day of lost battles.” in which “traumatized Grand Forks residents continued their exodus from flood-ravaged neighborhoods Sunday, even as they struggled to cope with the devastation wrought by fires that left the downtown looking like a war zone . . . ‘We’re still fighting this flood,’ said Emergency Manager Jim Campbell. ‘We haven’t given up’” (Fedor 1997c). When the editor of the newspaper was interviewed by Life magazine, he specifically mentioned this article: “‘The newspaper was the tangible evidence that Grand Forks existed,’ says editor Mike Jacobs. ‘In a weird way, it meant the town was still there.’ The banner headline on April 21, 1997, said it best: COME HELL AND HIGH WATER. It became a battle cry for the community” (Dowling and Gomez 1998). The Herald  would later publish a commemorative photo-book of the flood, and use that issue’s headline for the title (Jacobs 1998). Descriptions of the flood as a war, a battle or a fight are easily the most abundant images and narratives used in the materials I reviewed. I found such images in every type of material, from church publications, to newspapers and magazines, to oral histories, high school musicals and interviews. One person’s graffiti was particularly succinct: “We fought the flood . . . and the flood won” (Hagen et al. 1999, 152). In the oral history interviews, many people describe the events in militaristic terms. Dikes, for instance, are described as the “line of battle” by a National Weather Service hydrologist (Quam 1999, 7). Another resident remembers the dikes in a similar, if more resigned, manner: As we got into April I saw a lot of people from different cultures in Grand Forks who didn’t affiliate much come together to fight a common enemy . . . I got personally charged up and motivated to fight the flood and make the dikes hold.  . . .  When we saw that the water was just going to keep coming we picked up forty or fifty of these sandbags and laid them in a line across North Third Street just basically to say to the flood, to say to the power of the water that we know you’re coming, we know we’re beaten, but we’re still going to make this final act of defiance. This is our line and we’re drawing it here. (Glassheim 1999, 11)



A Hard Land: The City Against the River

95

A biology professor at UND likewise comments that “Almost everybody I personally knew reacted during the flood with a sense of resisting it and gathering together our forces, defending the city . . . ” (Glassheim 1999, 47), and another professor describes the dike-building as a “planned battle.” One person, who was among the last to evacuate the city, described the heavy presence of military personnel: “It wasn’t until we were evacuated from the area that we heard the helicopters coming, the Humvees, the pounding in your heart from the sounds in the sky of all the helicopters. It felt like you were in a war zone. All we didn’t have was bombs. (Laughter)” (Glassheim 1999, 53). The military’s presence, which was substantial along the Red River in both the US and in Manitoba, is now the norm for natural disasters (e.g., Tierney and Bevc 2007). At the tenth anniversary of the flood, the city of Grand Forks continued to use such language in literature produced chronicling the history of the flood and later rebuilding, written partially with the purpose of helping other communities who face such damage from natural disasters. In the introduction to these materials, the editors retrospectively write that “long gone is the war-zone appearance of a city ravaged by one of the worst disasters in North Dakota history” (City of Grand Forks 2007). On the city’s flood mitigation efforts, they write that when Grand Forks was “still reeling from the heartache of a city devastated to its core . . . leaders and residents made the decision to fight back against the forces of nature. So they set out to rebuild their city with [the] idea of better protecting it in the future from the tragedy of the past.” As has already been alluded to, religious imagery often gets added to the mix. For instance, in the first full article on religion in the Grand Forks Herald to be printed after the storm, published the Sunday following the evacuations, readers are met by a photograph of a large Bible resting on a pulpit, with congregants out of focus in the background – the bible, however, has a camouflage cover, and the congregants appear to be in military fatigues (Lee and Long 1997).12 In the aptly-titled A Small Town’s War, an oral history commissioned by the city of East Grand Forks, the editor writes that after taking a newspaper job in the area, “I found myself writing stories for a town battling Mother Nature through a legendary and bitter winter. With the spring I was taking photographs, writing stories and throwing sandbags in a fight to save that town from water” (Quam 1999, xix). This battle imagery continues throughout the editorial comments. After the city received its first official flood forecasts from the National Weather Service, East Grand Forks “began to gather its forces and supplies and prepare the lines of battle.” After a

96

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

blizzard a month later, she comments that “if Mother Nature had any gloves left, they were thrown into that man-eating wind” (7). While the heavily gendered language used here – “Mother Nature” unleashing a “man-eating wind” – is not typical of the published and public materials I reviewed, at least one researcher (Enarson 2000) found a strand of similar language that posits the flood (or other disasters in other places) as a distinctly feminine threat against a male world. Literature from churches and church organizations use similar language. The city’s effort against the river is described as a “battle,” a “long long battle,” a “war,” a “fight,” and an “endless struggle.” In the lead article in a Salvation Army newsletter, we read that “The waters may have won the battle, but the amazing spirits of the flood-affected communities have won the hearts of the nation” (Operation1997). Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota described their headquarters as a “war room” (Hanson 1998). A statement from the executive assistant to the bishop of the ELCA, and published on the website of their Domestic Disaster Response, quoted a letter published in the Fargo Forum: “I have learned that this is not weather, this is war!” Grand Forks, he continues, is a “war zone.” As the river goes down, “there are signs of beginning reoccupation,” and Lutheran leaders of relief workers are “veterans of disasters . . . Weather, the enemy, has not yet turned friend.” Relief workers are “faithful warriors” in the “weather war of 1997,” supported by the “‘power from on high’ that Jesus promised” (ELCA 1998, 8 May). The lead article in an issue of The Lutheran, a magazine from the ELCA, is even self-aware of this trend. Entitled “Fighting the Good Fight,” the essay reads: as the waters rose in the weeks that followed so did the currency of military metaphors. People maintaining dikes to save homes were ‘fighting the battle,’ ‘holding ground,’ while others ‘lost the battle.’ People ‘kept watch’ over their dikes, ‘walking the perimeter.’ When the fight was over and exhausted adrenal glands took a break, there was ‘battle fatigue.’ (Miller 1997a) There is a long history of militaristic language in American Christianity, often used to describe spiritual battle. In the early twentieth century, for instance, some Protestant churches in the US portrayed Jesus as excessively masculine and sang hymns such as “Onward Christian Soldier” (Prothero 2003, 94). What is distinct with this imagery is that God is clearly portrayed as fighting against the forces of nature. Dikes themselves are often envisioned



A Hard Land: The City Against the River

97

in military terms. The same issue of The Lutheran tells, among other battlethemed stories, of a thirty-foot sandbag dike in Fargo dubbed “Fort Apache” and built by local church volunteers. The lead article of that issue holds the title: “Fighting the Good Fight: Comrades and a ‘can-do’ spirit buoy hearts amid flood and fatigue.” A Catholic magazine tells of a Benedictine sister who “patrolled” the East Grand Forks dike in the night, near the Sacred Heart Church. “In the end,” the article tells us, “the river won the battle with the town” (Leopold 1997). Moving back outside of religious media, a local community theater consisting of high school students wrote and performed a rather elaborate and popular musical the fall after the flood, titled Keep the Faith. The title song included this chorus: “We’ve fought the Good Fight, we will win the race. /With quiet strength we’ve Kept the Faith.” In the liner notes handed out for the play, it is quite clear what the fight is between: “In the terrible winter, you kept plowing, shoveling, and working when Mother Nature hurled blizzard after blizzard at the area. When floods were forecast the city did not run, and the city did not give up without a fight.” Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) ran a series of segments on the flood, including a number of recordings made by a Lutheran pastor in Fargo, whom they asked “to record his thoughts during the siege of the Red River.” On 7 April, after clearing snow from his driveway, he looked at the inside of the dike beside his house and commented that it felt like we were fighting back and, uh, kind of regaining our flood spirit again of ‘We’re gonna beat this thing.’ . . . So, in a short while after another cup of coffee here I’ll have to get outside, put on the warm stuff here, and see what I can do to fight against our enemy here, the Red River. (Hansen 1997) MPR also sent a reporter to a service, which included pastors from all over the valley, for the National Day of Prayer on 1 May, less than two weeks after Grand Forks was evacuated. In the first clip recorded in the segment, we hear someone give a prayer in which they do not know whether to blame nature or God: “Lord, it’s been a tough year for many in this Valley. Many have fought long and hard to win a battle against nature. For some it meant the saving of their home and property, but many thousands have lost the battle. We have many questions. Why? Why me? Why our family? Are you angry with us, God?” (Enger 1997). As Kitch and Hume (2008, 10–12) have observed in several other disasters, battle imagery as a whole is a dominant framework used by the media for

98

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

describing many disasters. In materials reviewed for this project, for instance, numerous news photographs from Grand Forks and Winnipeg depict soldiers building dikes. Outside of the media, even city planning documents, in describing the ideas for rebuilding Grand Forks, occasionally use battle imagery. In a plan presented by outside consultants, the dike system is described as a “rampart” that protects the city during floods (Camiros 1998, 18), for instance, and a promotional poster produced by the city of Grand Forks for the greenway project describes the struggle of many residents of the area: “The emotional distress of losing one’s home and everything in it, the economic impacts of lost wages and lost jobs due to damaged businesses, and a feeling of defeat against a river residents fought so hard against, are also damages caused by the flood.” As the next chapter will discuss, this militaristic position is more complex than simple antagonism. Writing about the dikes, this same poster notes that “for 115 years, Grand Forks has embraced and fought the Red River of  the North.” A similar sentiment was voiced in an article published in Newsweek. “In North Dakota,” it reads, “the reaction to this devastation is almost uniformly stoic. On the northern plains, nature is less an enemy than a sparring partner, trading rounds in a grudge bout that never ends” (McCormick 1997, 30). Whether it is a sparring session or a full-scale war, battle imagery is easily the most prevalent image during the flood and the weeks immediately following it, though it later subsides. It occurs in every type of literature reviewed for this chapter, and is quite commonly mixed with Christian allusions. There is thus a consistent thread throughout that not only posits nature and the city against each other, but, in many instances, places God squarely on the side of the city and against nature. Ironically, of course, this is a flood that for many God also allowed to happen, and many of the initial reactions and prayers show a belief that God can act through nature. While battle imagery does not continue to be dominant through the rebuilding process, it is nonetheless consistent with one of the main themes that emerge: controlling nature, which is discussed in the next chapter along with less antagonistic perceptions of the environment. As will also be discussed with more detail in Chapter 6, such thoroughly antagonistic perceptions of nature are a challenge to most environmental scholarship, including religious environmental ethics and theologies. Similar to Val Plumwood’s (1999) explorations on predators and environmental philosophy, reactions to such violent capacities within the nonhuman world de-center the role of humans. Perhaps more importantly for environmental scholarship, they also portray a world that is not docile



A Hard Land: The City Against the River

99

or beneficent, and can act in rather violent ways without regard for human flourishing. But before continuing, battle imagery also appears in less explicit forms than those discussed above, and two significant sub-themes were present in the materials I surveyed: a battle of chaos versus order, and frequent admonitions for residents to “keep the faith.” Chaos and Control The experience of a natural disaster is, of course, for most people also an experience of chaos; the basic structures of life are interrupted, sometimes permanently. To return again to Peter Berger’s framework, the order of the cosmos is dramatically disrupted, creating what he would call a social theodicy; in his rubric, the sacred is constructed not only in opposition to the profane, but in opposition to chaos.13 In line with this, the abundance of battle imagery found in the flood and its immediate aftermath (with God often on the side of the city in a war against nature) is, on several occasions, also told as a story of chaos versus order. For instance, a children’s book with poetry about the flood, written by a local resident, encapsulates this dichotomy in its title: “River Friendly, River Wild.” The book’s poems contrast a “friendly” river along which children played, with a “wild,” flooding river that destroys a child’s home (Kurtz 2000). As Katherine Fry has observed, nature becomes newsworthy in a disaster such as this because it is “unreasonable in human terms” and is “out of control” (Fry 2003, 26). But this attention to nature’s lack of control reaches well beyond the media. When a social worker was asked by an oral historian what kinds of grief issues people have dealt with since the flood, for instance, she talked of the shock of losing control: “Many of us had never lived through a disaster before. We didn’t realize how nature can take away control and people are really grieving that” (Glassheim 1999, 74). In another oral history interview, one person was asked what they would “miss about old Grand Forks.” Their reply was concise: “The sense of security. I don’t think many are going to feel secure now for a long time” (Glassheim 1999, 95). Similarly, in an article published several months after the flood in The Lutheran, a pastor from East Grand Forks observed that “it’s hard for people who aren’t here to have a concept of what is going on . . . Even those in my family will call up and say, ‘It must be nice to have things back in order.’ And to some degree there is order, but there is an awful lot that’s not. The flood still dominates our lives in many ways and prevents a return to what you might call normal” (Favre 1997).

100

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

For some Christians in the area, this uncertainty and loss of order had implications for how they relate to God; it brought about theodicy in its traditional theological meaning. For instance, Sojourners  reprinted a sermon by a Lutheran pastor in Moorhead, MN, across the river from Fargo, which meditates on the experience of trying to understand the flood. “Groping for the tough answers is no different, really, than groping for God,” the pastor writes. “We grope for God when we need clarity in our lives, when we are confused, when we are angry, when we are sick and tired, when we are sick and tired of being sick and tired” (Hulden 1997). A prayer recorded by MPR starts from a similar place of confusion and anxiety: The recent flooding has made us feel fragile and uncertain. We are full of hope one moment, then tears and fears the next. So much has changed for us, but not your love and care for us. The people of Grand Forks and East Grand Forks, along with our brothers and sisters up and down the Valley, have felt your care through the support of one another, felt your love through the love of strangers. (Enger 1997) While this second prayer is much more reassuring and hopeful than the sermon before it, it nevertheless is trying to answer the same kind of question: where is God in the midst of such profound uncertainty? For many, the immediate chaos and loss of order brought by the flood became emblematic of a chaos on a grander scale. For Jerome Lamb (1998), quoted at the beginning of this chapter, the flood was emblematic of the plight of human existence, in which we have little control over a natural world that does not revolve around human concerns. Such reflections on chaos can also (and perhaps more commonly) be more antagonistic and less willing to accept such anomie. In an early article in The Lutheran, for instance, we read of a home-owner who “no longer [had] control over what happened in his backyard, a loss of control symbolic of the many ways the flood reminded people that their lives are held captive by powers larger than their own” (Miller 1997b). In several instances, this fear of chaos becomes a battle between God (or the church, or faith) against chaos. At an early meeting of disaster response representatives in the ELCA, one person prayed that “our sisters and brothers may be sustained by the waters of baptism in Jesus Christ while in the midst of the waters of chaos” (ELCA 1997, 18 April), juxtaposing two very different understandings of water. Likewise, in MPR’s coverage of the Day of Prayer service held in Fargo, a woman sings of her faith in God’s control: “God is in control, we believe that his children will not be forsaken.



A Hard Land: The City Against the River

101

God is in control, we will choose to remember and never be shaken” (Enger 1997). In a responsive prayer read by Lutherans across the country on the one-year anniversary of the flood, the leader was to begin the prayers with the following invocation, which again alludes back to the first creation story in Genesis and its chaos symbols: “Holy God, Mighty Lord, Loving Savior, your Spirit blew over the waters of chaos as a strong wind; you spoke and the world took shape.” The congregation then responds together, reading, “But there are times when disaster threatens our lives and order is turned into chaos.” At least one person connected these “waters” of chaos to that archetypal chaos story of Noah and the flood. In describing Christmas dinners organized by a Lutheran relief agency for flood evacuees, a relief worker wrote that “Although each [dinner] was unique, they all had a common message: ‘Like Noah, God is at work to bring new life out of destruction, order out of chaos. God has not forgotten them in their losses, nor had their brothers and sisters in Christ.’” (ELCA 1997, 18 December). In his article in the Christian Century, Stewart Herman also makes a biblical allusion in a reflection on dike-building in Fargo: “Rising floodwaters generate a powerful urge to do something, and heaving sandbags onto a dike is a powerfully symbolic action. Sandbagging pits formed earth against formless water, firmness against flow, order against chaos” (­Herman 1997, 694). The “formless water” Herman cites is likely an allusion to the first creation story in the biblical book of Genesis, where the Hebrew God is depicted as creating the world when the “earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters” (Gen. 1.2, NRSV). In this story, God does not make the world out of nothing (ex nihilo), but out of chaos (Anderson 1994, 9–11). Just as this creation story is one intended to display both the Hebrew God’s mastery over (or perhaps enjoyment of) chaos as well as creation’s emergence from chaos, it also forms one basis for the development of what Catherine Keller (2003) would call “tehomophobia.” The word “tehomophobia” comes from the Hebrew tehom – in the passage quoted above, it is the word for the sea or “the deep,” a symbol of primordial chaos in the ancient Near East – and refers to the “dread and loathing” of “chaos as evil” (26). This dread and fear came in part from later Christian interpretations of the Genesis account, which erased the presence of chaos and emphasized the orderliness of creation. By referring to this antagonism to chaos as a phobia, Keller points to a general disposition toward the world, in which things which are different from established

102

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

boundaries (e.g.,  atypical understandings of gender or sexuality) are threats in need of control. What is found in places like Grand Forks in 1997 is somewhat different; in the context of a natural disaster which is threatening the basic livability of one’s home and city, fear of the chaos seen in one’s environment is partially about the collapse of established boundaries between the human/urban world and nature, but it is also about very practical issues of survival. Nonetheless, one might argue that the long history in Western Christianity of placing God over and above the messiness of chaos makes it easy to shift beyond a simple reaction against the chaos of a disaster, and toward narratives that place God on the side of order and nature on the side of chaos. The long-term response of Grand Forks might not be accurately characterized as tehomophobic, however. As described in the next chapter, the city did build a greatly enlarged flood protection system, but this (outside of people moving away entirely) is a reasonable response to a real threat. More interestingly, city residents were also quick to resurrect much more positive and even celebratory images of the river, as the city re-created the river into an enormous public park. In many of these descriptions of chaos, however, there is overlap with how God’s activity in the flood was more broadly viewed by many, as discussed earlier: God’s presence is seen in resistance to the flood (or, alternatively but with the same consequences, God’s perceived absence is called out in the wake of the flood). But in  all of these instances, the experience of disruption and disorder inherent to a disaster gets interpreted as a battle between chaos and order; when God appears, it is always on the side of order. It is here that a deeper fear of chaos (beyond a fear of disaster) seems to linger, for God is always portrayed as ordered and ordering.

Faith in the City For many, a response to this chaos and disorder is to have faith; language of faith appears in a variety of places over several years after the flood, and fits with a broader contemporary emphasis on faith (often vague and poorly defined) in American life. A couple of months after the flood, for instance, a Catholic magazine asked for donations to help flood victims. In their plea for money, they note that many people have “lost everything – that is, everything but their faith” (Extension 1997). At least as common, however, and more interesting for the purposes of this book, are broader assertions of the necessity of “faith” during the rebuilding of Grand Forks.



A Hard Land: The City Against the River

103

This faith language often has a double meaning, pointing both to a faith in the city’s resilience and ability to recover, as well as (or in place of) a faith in the Christian God. In an article in Life magazine, for instance, an inset quote from Mayor Owens is placed beside a “thank-you portrait” of thousands of Grand Forks residents. “We are a community of faith,” reads the quote, “not just in God but in each other. That’s what makes us so strong” (Dowling and Gomez 1998). That this quote is ascribed to Mayor Owens is no surprise, as she frequently spoke of faith in public forums, though often with this dual meaning of both faith in God as well as faith “in each other.” She mentioned this double-layered faith several times in a column she wrote for a city newsletter, for instance. In one example, written at the one-year anniversary of the flood, she tells residents that “we should look to the future with hope and faith in our city and ourselves. The flood has left a mark on all of us but remember to continue to look to the future and, above all, to ‘Keep the Faith’” (Owens 1998). With this last phrase, the mayor is actually quoting herself, referencing a phrase that became repeated throughout the flood and the rebuilding. In one of the first instances of the phrase being used, a few days after the city was evacuated the Herald ran an article on the front page with the headline, “Mayor Inspires GF as Dad, 92, Evacuates Farm: With her own home flooded, Pat Owens urges residents to keep the faith, rebuild city.” In the text of the article, Owens is quoted as saying “I do not feel bad for one reason, because we will rebuild and we do have faith. Together we will all come out of this, and our city will be courageous” (Fedor 1997d). From the information supplied by the newspaper, however, it is unclear exactly what residents are supposed to have faith in – is this a Christian faith, is it neighbors having faith in one another, is it faith in the city’s ability to survive and recover? Rather than being multi-layered, it is simply ambiguous. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune ran a similar article on the same day; in this article the mayor’s quote has more specificity: “we do have faith and I believe in our people” (von Sternberg 1997). In the New York Times, the writer skips the direct quote and fills in the blank, so that readers are told Owens encouraged residents to “keep their faith in themselves and their resilience” (Johnson 1997). Over the next decade, her exhortation to “Keep the Faith” is quoted by newspapers, magazines, public television, the next mayor of Grand Forks, a utility company association, relief agencies, a dedication service for a Catholic school, and a high school musical, among others. Local Lutheran parishes even held a joint confirmation class, sponsored by Lutheran Brotherhood, called “Keep the Faith,” in which they gave a clarifying twist,

104

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

teaching students “to ‘Keep the Faith  .  .  .  In God’s love” (Lutheran Brotherhood 1998; ellipsis in original). In a series of documents written for the tenth anniversary of the flood by the city of Grand Forks, Owen’s exhortation to “Keep the Faith” (often capitalized) is mentioned multiple times. This includes a letter from the current mayor, Michael Brown, who defeated Owens in the 2000 election.14 Brown writes that “We persevered -we didn’t give up -- and we proved the impossible was possible. We kept the faith.We are proud of the efforts put forth by those who believed in our city and our future.” During the floods in the summer of 2011 in Minot, ND (roughly 200 miles west of Grand Forks), the Grand Forks Herald asked Mayor Owens her advice for the city, and the phrase was brought back again: “Her opening counsel is always the same,” the article reads. “‘Like I said in 1997, it’s “keep the faith.” You need to have faith in God, yourself and other people,’ she said. ‘If you keep that faith, you’ll be fine’” (Bakken 2011). In North Dakota Horizons, a magazine published by the state Chamber of Commerce, an article written for the flood’s tenth anniversary combines popular catchphrases from the flood in its title: “Through Hell and High Water Grand Forks Kept the Faith.” The article goes on to describe the latter phrase as “the rallying cry after the flood in Grand Forks”, and includes a similar quote to that found the original Herald article. “It’s like we’re in God’s hands,” Mayor Owens is quoted as saying. “I don’t feel bad because we will rebuild and we do have faith. Together we will come out of this, and the city will be courageous” (Hagerty 2007). Owens is likewise quoted in the May 1997 issue of a trade magazine for North Dakota utility companies, but this time through President Clinton, who visited Grand Forks after the flood. “Something your mayor . . . said the other day struck me in particular,” Clinton is quoted as saying. “She said, ‘What makes a community a place to live is not the buildings. It’s the people, the spirit and faith that is in those people. Water cannot wash that away, fire cannot burn that away, and blizzards cannot freeze that away” (Hill 1997, 1). Later, adding some battle imagery into the mix, the article observed that “Pat Owens . . . led the instant construction of a new wall of faith to fight the river’s devastation. ‘We will rebuild,’ Owens told her city . . . ” (12). In addition to the media saturation given to Mayor Owens, “Keep the Faith” took on its own momentum with a musical by the same name, mentioned earlier and written and produced by the Summer Performing Arts Company, a local theater company comprised of high school students. The musical was performed multiple times in 1997, and then again in 2007 for the ten-year anniversary of the flood. In a booklet with lyrics to the



A Hard Land: The City Against the River

105

musical, the audience was told that after the flood “the spirit of community held strong as the citizens began to take control back into their lives, cleaning and rebuilding. KEEP THE FAITH was conceived and written as a celebration of that spirit of community.” The phrase itself occurs throughout the show, but is also the title of one of the last songs in the musical, written by Daniel Pederson: As we look around us and see the damage done, We know we are not finished. We’ve only begun to appreciate our blessings. We wipe our tears and then we help another neighbor and make another friend. We’ve fought the Good Fight, we will win the race. With quiet strength we’ve Kept the Faith. What we wish for at evening tomorrow may not bring. Our ‘What ifs’and ‘If onlys’ cannot change a thing. But our spirit and compassion and greatest one of these is the love that Eases sorrow from the Flood of Centuries. We’ve fought the Good Fight, we will win the race. With quiet strength we’ve Kept the Faith. When our cities were flooded with help from volunteers the Heroes, Angels, Mayors led us in a cheer: ‘We’ll rebuild Grand Forks, Greater, and not forgetting East, We’re all in this together from the greatest to the least.’ We’ve fought the Good Fight, we will win the race. With quiet strength we’ve Kept the Faith. Now we look to the future to see what lies ahead: We know things will be different on these Rivers, Red. Yes, our lives have changed forever, they’ll never be the same. Let’s sing a song of victory, over the Water and the Flame. We’ve fought the Good Fight, we will win the race. With quiet strength we’ve Kept the Faith. Without the liner notes directing the audience to the “spirit of community,” it would be entirely unclear as to in what precisely they are keeping the faith. It would seem that, like some of the religious images described earlier that were perhaps chosen for their “resonance” with the flood experience,

106

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

faith language is being used to freely but indirectly to amplify the importance of a faith in the city’s recovery. Even though the lyrics contain no direct reference to God or to anything overtly Christian, “Keep the Faith” loosely uses Christian references throughout, and thus Christian language implies that the use of “faith” is meant to have religious overtones, and not just refer to confidence in general. The chorus with its battle imagery, for instance, manages to not just quote Mayor Owens, but also the apostle Paul.15 2 Timothy 4.7 reads “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (NRSV). This biblical reference seems not to be intended to make a statement about Christian faith or God; rather, what is a self-affirmation of Christian faith in  2 Timothy becomes a statement of confidence in the city’s power to rebuild itself. The changes in tense, for instance, are interesting – while the fight against the flood is in the past (“We’ve fought the Good Fight” and “we’ve Kept the Faith”), the song switches to the future tense to make a claim about their ability to recover in the future – “we will win the race.” This switch also hearkens back to the previous discussion in this chapter on God’s responsibility for the flood. In several of the instances cited earlier, there was a question as to how religiously faithful people could be hit so strongly by a natural disaster. The chorus of “Keep the Faith” implies a similar logic: though it leaves it up to audience members whether or not the chorus refers to a specifically Christian faith, the song heavily implies that the residents of Grand Forks will “win the race” because they have had faith and have “fought the good fight.” This forms a partial answer to the question of theodicy, of why disaster happened, by saying that the city will recover because it deserves to recover. A memorial plaque in downtown Grand Forks, on the site of the former Security Building, likewise encourages people to “take some time to enjoy these features and think of those who braved the flood and fire, fought the good fight, and had the fortitude and foresight to persevere” (emphasis added). The song also contains another biblical allusion. In the second stanza, it reads “But our spirit and compassion and greatest one of these is the love that/eases sorrow from the Flood of Centuries.” This is clearly referencing 1 Corinthians 13.13, where Paul, in a discussion of love, concludes that “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love” (NRSV). Again, however, the importance of the phrase within the song appears to be about how the community recovered from a tragedy; while the songwriter is assuming familiarity with biblical language, Paul’s discourse on love is beside the point, other than lending resonance to the lyrics.



A Hard Land: The City Against the River

107

As should be clear, what also unites these lyrics with much of the preceding examples discussed in this chapter is a positioning of the city against nature or, more broadly, of humans against nature – a reasonable posture within the context of a natural disaster. “Keeping the faith” also entails fighting the good fight and declaring victory over the river. Whether or not some “ultimate source” takes a side in this struggle varies depending on the source. A number of references are devoid of any theological claim, and in the few mentions of Mother Nature, most assume that she/it is responsible for the flood. However, almost all of the uses of Christian language, whether overt, implicit, or analogical, assume that God is on the side of humanity, and defending and then rebuilding the city becomes a primary symbol for God’s role in human life.

Summary A dominant story is present here: the city is in a battle against the river. In this battle to keep control of the city’s life, God is often seen working toward protecting, and then restoring, the urban community, and residents are called to keep the faith, either in God or in the city’s future. Katherine Fry, who has analyzed media responses to the 1993 flood along the Mississippi River in the Midwest, sees a similar story in media coverage of that event. “The network of local and broadcast news,” she writes, “told the story of an angry flooding river threatening the relatively peaceful lives of hard-working midwesterners who, determined to win a war with the river, battled long and hard, seeking out the help of the entire community and trusting that God was looking out for their best interest” (Fry 2003, 6–7). The 1993 flood was covered as a much more rural event (due to the fact that the area cities all had adequate protection), but otherwise much of this story coalesces with coverage of Grand Forks and reminds us that the most basic struggle in these narratives is between humanity and nature, with the city as a primary symbol of what it means to be human. At the root of these stories lies an antagonism – humans waging a “war with the river” – which in Grand Forks becomes stories about the city as well. As this chapter has shown, these stories are often not just about the city and nature, but also about a struggle against chaos and for maintaining order. Thus the battle between nature and human development, which is already a struggle between two basic concepts for ordering the world, also becomes a cosmic battle about the struggle for control over one’s life and one’s environment. Consistent with a very long tradition in Judaism and

108

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

Christianity, God appears in several places as a divine presence placed squarely on the side of order. More broadly, God is present throughout many of the narratives presented here; as discussed at the beginning of the chapter, even though the blizzards and flood were not commonly perceived of as “acts of God,” for instance, God was nonetheless seen as active in protecting of the city and people’s homes during the flood, and in rebuilding the city in later months and years. Religious language is particularly prevalent in the days and weeks immediately surrounding the flood; as will be seen in the next chapter, it becomes less present in the less-dramatic years of rebuilding. Often, this language is Christian, but in several instances nature (or Mother Nature) is used in such a way that it appears to be an ultimate source by which people are making sense of their world. Regardless of whether or not it is Christian, the main work of this religious language resides in connecting the events surrounding the flood to a broader and more ultimate plane of meaning; religious language provides a set of symbols and images that “resonate” with people’s experience of the flood. The prevalence of Christian language in particular – including “overt” language such as prayers and sermons, but also more trivial uses such as calling a philanthropist an “angel” – also implies a shared religiously informed worldview, and perhaps even something akin to Robert Bellah’s (1967) description of an American “civil religion” beyond of the bounds of institutional Christianity. The lyrics of the play “Keep the Faith” are a prime example of this, in which biblical references are interspersed with lyrics in a way that assumes many audience members will understand them. We also see a more genealogical relationship between traditional Jewish and Christian narratives – such as an antagonism to chaos – and current attitudes which are not always directly tied to religious convictions. This will be elaborated more in the following chapter, as controlling nature is discussed in more detail. Interestingly, it should be noted that the religious images and narratives discussed in this chapter show one clear distinction between uses of traditional Christian concepts, on the one hand, and religious uses of nature, on the other. One way of describing many of the narratives about the flood would be as a struggle between two different “ultimate” things – God and nature – in a battle to see which would become dominant. Read in this light, calls to “keep the faith” are clearly not calls to maintain faith in nature, but rather to maintain confidence in either God or in humanity (or both), over and against the forces of the natural world. The placement of God as an actor against the flood is thus not only about maintaining a faith



A Hard Land: The City Against the River

109

in the Jewish or Christian God in the context of a disaster, but about a conflict between two religious frameworks that are simultaneously held together – one in which God holds ultimate control, and one in which nature holds ultimate control. Likewise, in placing God on the side of order in a fight against chaos within these narratives, one can reasonably place nature on the side of chaos. Again, what would then be at stake is not simply finding a message of hope in seeing God as restoring order, but a competition between two very different ultimate sources for ordering (or dis-ordering) the world. This chapter has focused primarily on the time period immediately surrounding the flood; what we will see in the next chapter is a continuance of some of this antagonism, but with a very different tenor. We will also see, however, a different set of narratives emerge that celebrate the river as a place of beauty and a place of recreation. The question now at hand is what the implications are as the city gets rebuilt. How does this antagonism play out, and how do other competing narratives interact with it?

110

Chapter 5

Living in a River Town: The Control and ­Celebration of Nature

The story of the flood in Grand Forks is not just a story of disaster, but of rebirth. The antagonism, discussed in the previous chapter, between the city and its environment does not remain static but shifts – sometimes as a logical progression of that tension, and sometimes in different directions. The desire for the city’s renewal, though not held by all residents (or some of those who became former residents), stemmed from a “faith” in the city’s ability to recover. “We will rebuild” quickly became one of the civic catchphrases for the next several years, first pronounced by Mayor Owens in tandem with her more multi-layered pronouncement for residents to “Keep the Faith.” This chapter focuses on two broad themes that arose as people tried to make sense of how to rebuild a city along the banks of a river that floods: controlling nature, and celebrating it. After a disaster such as the 1997 flood, a desire to rebuild is significant enough in itself to warrant attention, and it is in elaborations of this desire that most of the explicitly religious language specifically about rebuilding was found. Within some Christian publications, this hope for rebirth took on the language of resurrection. In line with baptism imagery discussed in the previous chapter, the resurrection appeared both during and after the flood. The ELCA Domestic Disaster Response, for instance, referenced the resurrection in early calls for help. In one plea, written a month after the dikes failed, their associate director wrote that “We are people of the cross, resurrection people, people of hope and new life” (ELCA 1997, 22 May). Later that summer, the agency reminded its audience that “We, who celebrate the new life of the resurrection, bring new life to those in need by our response of Gospel love.” (ELCA 1997, 31 July). A similar request came a week after Easter in 1998, at the one-year anniversary of the flood: “Renew your commitment to show the power of the resurrection - by praying, by contributing, and by volunteering” (ELCA 1998, 19 April).

112

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

The Catholic bishop for the diocese of Crookston, which includes East Grand Forks, made a similar declaration at the groundbreaking for the rebuilding of a Catholic grade school: “This is a new kind of resurrection. Alleluia! Alleluia!” (quoted in Andrys and Andrys 1999, 5). In a letter to the editor of The Lutheran, someone wrote of the impact of relief workers, observing that “The love of God overwhelmed my friends and me more than the Red River could ever destroy our lives. Once again, we have ­witnessed life over death and more importantly, the power of the Resurrection” (Philpot 1997). A few months later, the editorial for the Easter edition of the same magazine ran with the title “Red River Resurrection,” and ­carried this thought: “How strangely coincidental--and appropriate--that the follow-up article on the 1997 Red River Valley Flood . . . appears in an issue with the theme ‘Stories of resurrection.’ . . . After their houses, possessions, farms, security and sense of normalcy were washed away, thousands can say they have been to hell and back” (Blezard 1998). Running parallel to the Christian resurrection are references to phoenixes, which appear several instances. An article in a city recovery newsletter, entitled “Phoenix Arising,” explained the significance of the mythological bird. The article observed that: The phoenix is a fabulous bird of ancient legend. It supposedly arose from the ashes of another Phoenix that burned itself when it turned 500 years old. It commonly appears as a symbol of death and resurrection. In one legend it is depicted as cradling the all-powerful elements of fire and water under its wings. It seems to symbolize what happened to our neighborhoods with both fire and water. (Recovery Road 1998b) The phoenix appears in other contexts as well; the same ice sculpture competition that featured a sculpture of Noah’s Ark also included one of a phoenix rising out of a destroyed house, and two elementary schools which were damaged in the flood were later combined into a new school and given the name “Phoenix Elementary.” In congruence with the religiously resonant images discussed in the previous chapter, references to phoenixes are obviously not meant as devout returns to ancient mythologies, but rather as a way to grasp the importance of rebuilding by using symbols that are out of the ordinary and that carry hope. Other similar descriptions carried the same idea, but dropped the explicit symbolism. For instance, in a strategic plan for redeveloping the city produced by Camiros, an urban planning firm, they include in the plan’s vision statement (which is repeated in several places) the



Living in a River Town: The Control and ­Celebration of Nature

113

­ eclaration that “born of water and fire, the new Downtown  .  .  .  will d ­continue to be the heart of the city” (Camiros 1998, 7). Such creation imagery is reminiscent of both the biblical Genesis account as well as the symbol of the phoenix. As Grand Forks moved from the immediate concerns of survival during the flood to the long-term questions of viability and redevelopment in the months and years that followed, the more antagonistic language discussed in the previous chapter largely dissipated. Most notably, talk of battles and fights between the city and the river almost entirely subsided, with the exception of flood remembrances. In rebuilding, the logic of the battle was nonetheless extended as the city shifted from emergency preparations to finding ways to make the city livable in the long term. One might say that the situation moved from fighting a battle to building defenses. While the redevelopment moved much too slowly for some,1 by the end of 1997 redevelopment plans had been drafted and dike lines were being drawn, though both of these would be modified over the following years (and the former is a continuing project).2 Most of this work focused on the downtown area3 and its relationship to the river, both because downtown was among the areas that suffered the most damage, and because downtown Grand Forks was, and is, significant to civic leaders due to its historic and cultural role within the city. Multiple planning and government documents describe downtown as the “symbolic heart of the region,” for instance. A column in USA Today likewise quotes a rural resident, who describes Grand Forks as “the center of our universe” (Howlett 1997). This is at least in part due to the downtown being relatively unique in a landscape otherwise characterized by large farms and small towns; an article on the rebuilding in Architecture magazine thus accurately remarked that “the three-by-four heart of Grand Forks’ century-old downtown forms the only urban fabric for miles” (Findley 1998). Mike Maidenberg, who published the Grand Forks Herald at the time and headed the Downtown Development Commission, made a comment in an oral history interview that is typical for many of the city’s leaders and downtown residents. “When people ask about what happened to Grand Forks,” Maidenberg imagined, “they’re not going to go out to 32nd and Columbia4 and say, ‘Oh, wow. Grand Forks is still healthy.’ They’re going to go downtown and ask, ‘When the downtown burned, and they had all this money to reconstruct, what did they do?’” (Glassheim 2002, 138). What city leaders did was to begin rebuilding downtown and the surrounding neighborhoods. In the process they also had to rebuild the city’s relationship to the river, both in terms of creating a flood protection

114

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

system that allowed residents and businesses to feel safe, as well as recon­ figuring the city’s social and economic relationship to the river that had just overwhelmed it.

Containing and Controlling Nature In a way that is obvious even to most casual observers, the continued existence of Grand Forks – and particularly the existence of the two downtowns and their adjacent neighborhoods along the river – is dependent on controlling the annual flooding of the Red River. This dependence on containing the river is based on an ironic combination of beliefs that stem from the area’s severe weather: nature needs to be controlled, while it is also to be respected for being so profoundly powerful. The power of the river (and, more broadly, the power of nature) became a common theme in flood responses. A portion of a permanent flood memorial located downtown, for instance, begins with this observation: “The flood showed how powerless man is against nature.” During the flood itself, articles in the Herald described the river as “an inexorable force” (Jacobs and Maidenberg 1997) and “unforgiving” with its “devastating grip” (Nelson and Grinde 1997). Articles in The Lutheran speak of “the anger of the elements” (Isaacson 1997) and of “a loss of control symbolic of the many ways the flood reminded people that their lives are held captive by powers larger than their own” (Miller 1997b). In a sermon reprinted in Sojourners, we read that “We know we are not standing on high ground yet, nor will we ever be totally insulated and safe from nature’s power” (Hulden 1997). Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) recorded a prayer that remembered how “powerless we are over the forces of nature” (Enger 1997), and in Rev Hansen’s flood memoir for MPR he comments, “I look forward to the day when I can soon walk down to the banks of that river . . . and see it tamed gently back into its natural course” (Hansen 1997). Floods, of course, are in fact normal events, and so in this last observation we might assume that “natural” means “normal” or perhaps even “appropriate,” and the need to see the river “tamed” implies its strength. This emphasis on nature’s power derives from people’s experience of the flood – an experience of their city and homes being overwhelmed by an uncontrolled force. Madelyn Camrud, a local poet, for instance, wrote on the flood taking over and “erasing” the land, a force “that stamps, flattens us back” and reverts the valley back into a lake (Hylden and Reuter 1998). The flood is not simply awe-inspiring here, but aggressively confrontational.



Living in a River Town: The Control and ­Celebration of Nature

115

One newspaper quoted Byron Dorgan, a US senator for North Dakota, likewise describing the flooded-out city as “haunting . . . The river just goes on and on and eats away at the city” (Howlett 1997). The power of the river in this context is, of course, a destructive power. In the introduction to an oral history of the flood in East Grand Forks, the editor remembers back to her childhood. “I grew up in a small lake-filled community,” she writes. “I never feared water. But as I watched the hungry brown rivers rushing by, worming through levees, attacking every inch of river front, for the first time – I was afraid of it. I feared what water could do” (Quam 1999, xix). In another oral history, a downtown jewelry store owner recounts that upon seeing his business for the first time after the flood he tried to imagine the worst possible damage so as to prepare himself for the shock. “Well,” he told an interviewer, “I was not even close. Even my wildest imagination did not do what nature did” (Glassheim 1999, 127). Within these narratives, what is important is not how people built too close to the river, though some of them will claim that as well; rather, the salient feature of the flood is nature’s destructive power. This power is demonstrated not through the harnessing of a river for electricity or by a canyon patiently carved by a river’s water, but by the destruction a flooded river can leave in its wake. The power of nature is thus closely intertwined with chaos, as discussed in the previous chapter, and for many people the power of nature is understood as primarily a loss of control to an external force. One person, for instance, when interviewed for the oral history project, remembered growing up in California, where the weather is so perfect that everybody has the air of thinking that they control their own destiny, whereas if you live in the Midwest it’s not like that. No one feels that they control their own destiny. They design their life around the environment. But now there’s more of a sense of neurosis, a real sense of vulnerability, much more than before. (Glassheim 1999, 41–2) Interestingly, this person is pointing not just to the 1997 flood, but to a larger context of the general environment of the “Midwest.” Within the context of the region surrounding the Red River Valley, it is important to remember that this is not an isolated incident – many in the Dakotas and Minnesota often experience the environment as an adversary. In line with the observations on local identity that began the previous chapter, a National Guardsman was asked how the flood had “changed the way [he] thinks about nature,” and his response gave a telling answer: “Nah, nature’s a

116

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

violent thing. It’s, you know, we had that blizzard. That’s what makes North Dakotans the toughest people in the world” (Glassheim 1999, 32). From comments such as this, it is reasonable to infer that while such attitudes were reinforced by the flood, they were not necessarily created by that particular experience. For instance, in the centennial history of the Catholic diocese of Fargo, written a decade before the 1997 flood, we read: The notion of Nature as a dense forest filled with things needing taming, exploiting, has been – according to some views – as basic a part of Western spirituality as it was of western technology or western economics. But we have never totally accepted that notion; a person cannot live up here for long without realizing that much of Nature is tame-resistant, that life must adjust itself to weathers and the rest of the non-human world. Pantheism or not, we know our days are so bound up in the land and the elements it is sometimes hard to say where drought or the blizzard ends and the wrath of God begins. (Lamb 1988, 2) As discussed in the beginning of the previous chapter, for at least some people the identity of a North Dakotan emerges through interactions with a harsh and powerful environment. Tellingly, nature’s power is experienced here on a level that is analogous to the acts of God, risking even the charge of pantheism; also telling, however, is that this experience of nature does not blur a line with divine benevolence, but with God’s “wrath.” Interestingly, this awareness of nature’s power has different logical conclusions. One person, asked what they learned from the flood, responded that “What I learned from the flood is that you can’t control nature, that you have to respect nature. We all knew that this was a valley and that there was a potential for flooding, but you get complacent living next to the river all your life. Maybe I just learned that you have to respect nature. That things are going to happen and you have to be ready for it” (Glassheim 1999, 92–3). For this person, the inability to control nature implies that it must be respected. Nevertheless, the majority of responses I surveyed took the opposite conclusion – that is, that nature’s power must be checked and controlled. Power here is predominantly about control – about the clear loss of control in the flood, and about whether or not such control is even possible. A clear inability to adequately control nature is at odds with a desire to live in Grand Forks and rebuild the city. On a very basic level, in a modern economy one cannot permanently reside in a home that is annually under threat of major flooding; residents and businesses thus needed insurance



Living in a River Town: The Control and ­Celebration of Nature

117

coverage to protect their assets when rebuilding downtown, and insurance companies needed assurance that the city could protect itself against similar floods in the future. Both of these needs are based on a belief in the city’s ability to keep out future floods. As discussed later in this chapter as well as in the next, in the absence of an ability to fully control the destructive forces of nature, an acceptable level of risk is agreed upon and shared. In the immediate context of the flood and its aftermath, the dikes became a symbol of both a controlling power over the river and, when they failed, the power of the river over the city. There is significant overlap here with those narratives, discussed in the previous chapter, which sought to symbolize God’s presence in the city with dikes that held. The flurry of emotions and activity that went into reinforcing the dikes during the flood shifted, however, to a more dispassionate and more bureaucratic process of constructing flood walls and levees over a period of several years. This has left the city with a flood control system that reaches several feet higher than the 1997 flood, which was considered a 100-year event;5 while the 1997 flood crested at just over 54 feet, the current dikes are built to 60 feet, and the floodwalls are built to 63 feet.6 In the planning stages for this flood protection system, there was disagreement over what kinds of flood control measures should be used. The main alternative to dikes was the construction of a floodway; a floodway is an alternate channel that goes around a city and is dry most of the time, but during a flood can be opened to divert a portion of a river’s flow. A large floodway had already been successfully built downstream in Winnipeg after that city was inundated in the 1950 flood; after the 1979 flood, a small floodway had also been built on the English Coulee,7 which is a small stream running through Grand Forks and the University of North Dakota and into the Red. However, a floodway for all of Grand Forks was rejected , primarily because of economic feasibility. Once it was decided by the Army Corps of Engineers that dikes were the only economically possible option, there was then disagreement over where the dikes should go – and, specifically, which homes would land on the “wet” and “dry” sides of the dike. Nonetheless, there was little disagreement over the need for flood protection in general. In my research, I found no evidence of anyone considering not building a larger flood protection system in Grand Forks. While there were numerous disagreements on how protection should be implemented, such as over who got to keep their house (see Fothergill 2004; Shelby 2003),8 as well as frustration by some residents over how long it took the city took to build the system, it is important to recognize that there was little disagreement on needing to control the flow of the river

118

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

during floods. Likewise, most of the literature was unapologetic about the desire to control the flow of the Red River; the title of a civil engineering article outlining the technology used in the dike and flood wall system, for instance, was “Restraining the Red River of the North” (Paulus et  al. 2008). The city could not be feasibly rebuilt without either heightened protection or being moved, and the wholesale movement of a city the size of Grand Forks is both economically unfeasible but also severely destructive to its culture – what is a river city without its river? Building the new dike system thus became the overwhelmingly most important step in the larger rebuilding process. When the greenway was being planned, for instance, the final report proposing the system contained a bulleted list of goals and objectives for the new ribbon-like park along the river. The first of these goals was not about parkland at all, however, but about the dikes: the report encouraged the city to “build support for [the greenway] keeping in mind the safety and flood protection properties of the original concept must be the first consideration of any plan” (Flink 1998). In an earlier report prepared by the Urban Land Institute in September 1997 on redeveloping the downtown, they likewise noted that “the top priority in the panel’s proposed plan or any plan must be the protection of the community from the Red River, to ensure that the flood tragedy that occurred this past spring will never be repeated.” As discussed in the previous chapter, the dikes became a literal and symbolic battle line between the city and the encroaching river, which pit “formed earth against formless water, firmness against flow, order against chaos” (Herman 1997, 694). The dikes thus simultaneously keep flood waters out, a very pragmatic goal, while they also symbolically construct (or reinforce the construction of) two different kinds of places – a civilized space (the city) and a place given over to the power of the river. It is at the line of dikes and flood walls that the distinction created between the city and the river becomes most overt. This demarcation is not just figurative but tangible: a line is literally drawn, first on a map, and then up and down the river with steel, concrete, and dirt (see Figure 5.1). Even on early autumn days with the river well below flood stage, the cities are walled off from the river. Unless one needs to cross to the other side, a person can travel throughout Grand Forks and never see the river. One can also walk, jog, or bike through numerous parts of the greenway and forget that a city lies just on the other side of the hills stretching up both sides of the river. The only place the breaks in the wall are large enough to visually connect the river and the city is in the two downtowns, especially on the Minnesota side of the river.



Living in a River Town: The Control and ­Celebration of Nature

119

Figure 5.1  The floodwall, immediately north of downtown Grand Forks, ND. Photo by author.

That humans construct cities is a fairly obvious point, but the “nature” of the river and its banks is constructed as well.9 Zygmunt Bauman and Tim May, in a discussion on what separates “nature” from “culture,” argue that “culture is about introducing and keeping an order and fighting everything that departs from it as indicative of a descent into chaos. Culture is about supplanting or supplementing the ‘order of nature’ . . . with an artificial, designed one” (2001, 126). Dike systems such as those found in Grand Forks are clear examples of such an ordered and artificial nature meant to “fight” off the “descent into chaos,” or what Matthew Gandy (writing on the Los Angeles River) calls “riparian anomie” (2006b). Not only are the heightened dikes built to keep the chaos of the river at bay and maintain order in the city, but when the protection system works as intended, it orders the river itself – both the city and nature are, in different ways, civilized. The point of the greenway, as discussed in Chapter 3, is indeed to supplant the “natural” order of things with a nature that is tame, designed, and thus artificial. The kinds of plants allowed within the greenway are regulated, for instance, based on how their roots affect the soil, and the ground itself is an engineered layering of different soils and rocks to help minimize flooding

120

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

and maintain stability underneath the dikes and flood walls during the immense pressure of a large flood. But the ideal “nature” found in the greenway is also complex, for despite its detailed engineering, in most places it is fully intended to look and feel like a natural space. It contains not only bike paths and the closely trimmed lawns of a golf course, but also a campground, fishing access, and restored riparian ecosystems. This mixture of park spaces, which are either more manicured or more wild, creates different stories about the kind of nature park-goers are interacting with – in the case of golf courses, nature is clearly modified, whereas in the case of restored ecosystems, the point is to return the land to a previous ecological state – and yet in both instances the land is being controlled and modified to benefit the urban community.

Controlling Rivers: Beyond the Red Transforming urban rivers, for beautification or for protection, did not begin with Grand Forks. Starting at least with Frederick Law Olmsted (Spirn 1996), who helped establish the field of landscape architecture, a tradition emerged in the nineteenth century of creating urban parks that allow access to a wilder side of nature within the safe confines of the urban fabric. In New York City, for instance, Central Park and Prospect Park (both of which are Olmsted designs) were created to give park-goers the illusion of being among forests and meadows, in intentional contrast to the formal gardens popular in continental Europe (Rybczynski 1999). In fact, each tree, shrub, and boulder was strategically planned and planted for aesthetic affect. Some of Olmsted’s other designs, such as the Back Bay Fens in Boston, incorporated these ideas with urban rivers and marshes. Olmsted’s designs are both pleasant and relatively benign when compared to the transformation of rivers in many cities. Elaborate efforts have been made to control the flow of the lower Mississippi River in Louisiana, for instance, which has some strong similarities with the Red River of the North: both are meandering streams that stretch across flat landscapes, and both are prone to floods in the spring. There are some notable differences as well, however. Unlike the Red, the lower Mississippi today is as much the result of engineering and technology as it is derived from nonhuman nature (Colten 2005). The land of southern Louisiana consists largely of built-up sediment deposited by the Mississippi over the millennia. Left untouched, the river gives out thin layers of soil as it routinely overflows its banks, particularly in the spring as snow melts far upstream,



Living in a River Town: The Control and ­Celebration of Nature

121

but also during strong storms. The landscape’s flatness is derived from this process, and consists of a puzzle of marshes, swamps, forests, and distributaries. Seasonal flooding and mosquito-friendly wetlands are not conducive to urban development, however, and from the eighteenth century, European settlers began to construct levees along the Mississippi to prevent flooding and protect towns growing up along the river.10 The length of the river throughout Louisiana and Mississippi is now built up by such levees; as the river’s flooding was disallowed, however, sediment accumulated in the riverbed instead of overflowing into the surroundings, causing the river’s levels to increase and consequently resulting in the need for higher levees (Kelman 2003, 172), as well as causing the surrounding marshland to sink into the Gulf of Mexico. This is one of the more significant differences between dikes along the Mississippi and those along the Red River of the North – the latter carries a much smaller load of sediment, and there is not a parallel concern about the dikes of the Red River eventually topping out. By the 1930s it began to be unrealistic to continue to build taller levees (for fear they would collapse), and spillways were constructed that could release flood waters into less economically valuable land during floods (Kelman 2003:192–6). In fact, the Mississippi is such a product of engineering that had humans not confined it, it would likely have changed its course entirely and shifted to the Atchafalaya River in the 1960s, abandoning Baton Rouge and New Orleans, had it not been for a massive (and almost unsuccessful) feat of engineering (McPhee 1989). As Craig Colten (2006) has argued, New Orleans and the Mississippi River have both been (re)created through their interactions with each other. There is a difference in scale, however, between the development of the Mississippi at New Orleans and that of the Red River at Grand Forks – the Mississippi has been much more engineered, creating a much larger potential risk in the event of a disaster such as Hurricane Katrina (Freudenberg et  al. 2008), and industrial pollution is also much more prevalent along the Mississippi. A core similarity nonetheless remains, in that both cities have grown in tenuous relationship with their rivers, from which they gain their identity while also attempting to secure their urban existence by controlling the rivers’ flows. Perhaps the most dramatically controlled river in the US is not the Mississippi, however, but the Los Angeles River. Starting in the 1940s, the entirety of the Los Angeles River, which stretches just over 50 miles, was replaced by a concrete channel in order to stem the seasonal floods which would occasionally overwhelm the floodplain on which the growing city was

122

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

built. For most of the length of the river, the impervious concrete banks and floor curb the existence of most plant and wildlife, effectively morphing the river into a drainage ditch (Davis 1998, 67–71). Like Grand Forks’ dike system, the concretization of the Los Angeles River came after a massive flood in 1938, which killed 87 people. Environmental groups in the area have not only been outraged at this extreme form of modernist reconstruction of a river, but also are currently seeking to restore the river to its original, un-concreted condition (Gandy 2006b). Yet, as Matthew Gandy has pointed out, this leaves the authentic danger of the river out of the question. “The ‘rediscovery’ of the river as an ecological facet of the city,” Gandy writes, “may in part be the paradoxical outcome of the success of the river channel in controlling the danger of flooding, so that this fragment of urban nature is no longer threatening but ‘domesticated’ and amenable to new forms of cultural appropriation” (Gandy 2006b, 143). In other words, the newly found desires to restore the Los Angeles River came in part from a generation’s lack of experience with severe flooding. Any restoration of the river that might successfully address both ecological and human concerns would, furthermore, still be a profoundly changed river; the vagaries of its flows are simply too “wild” to allow them to flow unimpeded through the middle of a city. The continuity between the controlling of these three rivers – the Red, the Mississippi, and the Los Angeles – lies in how diking and confining the rivers not only controls them (or attempts to control them) but also defines the rivers within a much broader plain through which the rivers would occasionally flow without human intervention. Rather than allowing the rivers play at their entire former deltas and lakebeds, they become “landscapes of discipline” (Oliver 2006) that are proscribed to relatively narrow channels, thus striking away ambiguity about the edges of the rivers and making it clear where the cities (and farms) begin and where the rivers end.11 Maria Kaika (2005) has written on a different kind of urban water – indoor plumbing and modern water infrastructure – and argues that the modern city is dependent on the control of water (see also Swyngedouw 2004). While her focus is much more on homes as nodes within a networked water system, and not on rivers, her insights nonetheless run parallel. The modern home, with its domesticated and controlled water systems, is a place of safety where nature or the “other” is controlled, Kaika argues, and water is separated into “good” and “bad” categories that are to remain distinct from each other. Kaika’s examples of “good” water is that which is intended for “drinking, bathing, swimming, baptizing, etc.,” whereas “bad” water includes “city rivers, lakes, rainwater, sewerage, etc.” (2005, 54) – and



Living in a River Town: The Control and ­Celebration of Nature

123

interestingly, urban rivers are included in the “bad” category, both because of their uncleanliness as well as their uncontrollability. Despite this clear demarcation between the good and the bad, there nevertheless always remains the possibility for the irruption of what she calls the “urban uncanny,” or things that disrupt the sense of home and of well being. Kaika cites the haunted house as a classic example of the uncanny, where the familiar is disturbed by the unfamiliar, and argues that a home with its utilities exposed (such as home under renovation) likewise creates a sense of the uncanny (69). But the uncanny also emerges “at times of crisis,” she writes, when “hidden elements can surface unexpectedly, and familiar objects can behave in unusual ways” (67); her examples includes events such as water shortages and blackouts, which reveal the degree to which the individual, private house or apartment is dependent upon a much larger network of interactions, and prove the safety and isolation of the individual home to be a facade. A city is obviously larger than a home, but a continuity clearly exists between Kaika’s observation and controlled rivers such as the Red. Urban residents can forget the necessity of the dikes, just as residents forget their dependence on plumbing systems, until the rare crises when the “hidden elements” of the river’s power come to the forefront. This “uncanny” aspect of cities points to an additional, and dangerous, side of controlling nature: the possibility of the disruption of that control. The dikes in Grand Forks (and elsewhere) thus also serve as a constant reminder not only that the river is controlled, but that there is a river that is in need of being controlled. The threat lying behind the dikes goes dormant, but does not disappear. This is indicative of what some scholars call a “risk society” (e.g., Beck 1999). Living in a risk society means that we all live at the edge of what Anthony Giddens describes as a “high technological frontier which absolutely no one completely understands and which generates a diversity of possible futures” (Giddens 1999, 3). Risks, it should be pointed out, are different from simple dangers. Dangers, as meant by Giddens, “are experienced as given. Either they come from God, or they come simply from a world which one takes for granted” (1999, 4). Risks, however, have to do with trying to control those dangers, and by controlling them also directing the future. Within Grand Forks, decisions to build alongside the river will always involve risk, as will attempts to control the flow of the Red River; there will never be a disaster-proof development plan. Furthermore, such attempts at controlling nature create “manufactured risks” which no one fully understands because they are so widespread and complex (Giddens 1999, 4),

124

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

and which not only leave open the continual possibility of being disrupted and causing disaster, but also increase the possible scale of a disaster if controls fail. The problems with flood forecasting, discussed in Chapter 3, are an example of manufactured risks; it is currently impossible to forecast the height of a flood with complete accuracy, and because things can always change in an unexpected direction, even at this very basic level (e.g., how high people should build a temporary dike) it is impossible to always adequately prepare for a flood. The Red River itself was not only experienced as a dangerous threat, or even simply as a powerful force of nature, however. As Matthew Gandy noted regarded the Los Angeles River (2006b), discussed above, once a river is believed to be controlled and properly “domesticated,” it becomes possible to create new cultural uses for the stream and its floodplain. We see this quite clearly with the Red River: once the flood waters had receded, much more benign images of the river began to resurface – images that make the “manufactured risks” forgettable and the river benign and enjoyable. For many, these became the dominant ways of thinking about the nature of the city and its river.

Recreating Nature The relationship between the city of Grand Forks and the Red River is by no means always antagonistic. Participants in a series of workshops in  1998 wrote a vision statement of the greenway, for instance, which was included in the final report formally proposing the project to the Army Corps of Engineers. As noted above, the first listed concern was protecting the city from flooding, but it does not stop there. “The Red and Red Lake Rivers Greenway,” it reads, will protect residents of Grand Forks and East Grand Forks from flooding, provide opportunities for economic growth, improve and restore ecological stability of the river corridor, link residents and tourists to four-seasons of recreation and transportation facilities, provide linkage between the cities, preserve and promote the history and culture of the region through education, and improve the quality of life for future generations. (Flink 1998, 2) Protection from or control of the river, then, is only one (albeit primary) aspect of how the city’s greenway was envisioned, along with things such as



Living in a River Town: The Control and ­Celebration of Nature

125

economic growth, ecological restoration, and recreation. Controlling the river is not simply one (dominant) vision in addition to these less antagonist approaches, however, but control defines the relationship to the river to such an extent that recreational and ecological appreciation of the river remains possible only through its control. On a most basic level, this demonstrates that not only was there more than one narrative about how the city should relate to the river, but also that many people and organizations held multiple interests in the river at the same time. The Urban Land Institute report, for instance, describes how “between the people of Grand Forks and those of East Grand Forks flows the Red River, in its beauty and its menace” (1997), while another planning proposal by a local committee, Re-Imagining Downtown, was described by the Wall Street Journal as “wanting a downtown that would pay homage to the river that destroyed it” (C. Coleman 1997). Re-Imagining Downtown (1997) also suggested the placement of “river beacons”12 along the dike, “conceived as a way to visually link both sides of the downtown together and to celebrate the Red River. A celebration that acknowledges the beauty and power of the river.” On the website for the city of Grand Forks (2007), the flood mitigation project is prefaced with a similar observation: “For 115  years, Grand Forks has embraced and fought the Red River of the North,” and in a Fargo Forum article, Mayor Owens is credited with saying the dike system was to be both “functional and picturesque” (Gilmour 1998). In the high school musical “Keep the Faith,” the audience would likewise hear a mixture of images; students sang of the river as “a gentle curve which God has drawn upon the firmament,” but also observed that “when you mess with the Red, the Red plays rough,” and exhorted the audience to “sing a song of victory over the Water and the Flame.” As might be expected, not everyone held the “beauty and menace” of the river equally. In a newsletter article about a family whose home ended up on the wet side of the dike, for instance, we read they had “a great view of the Red River from their patio entrance. But they’ve also seen the uglier side of the river. ‘Safety and security definitely outweighs beauty and scenery’” (Recovery Road 1998a). For many, however, while safety remained a top priority, the enjoyment of the river became a primary experience of the Red and the land within its dikes. In the process of protecting the city from future floods, several images of nature emerged. As the previous section describes, one way this happened was to re-inscribe the division between the “city” and “nature” and make a clear demarcation between what counts as each. The wet side of the dike

126

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

was given over to the natural – what little infrastructure remains (such as paths, benches, and playgrounds) can be flooded without harm, and large areas are turned back into (or at least something resembling) their native riparian ecosystems. The dry side of the dike was then rebuilt as a city, of course, as existing buildings were repaired and new buildings emerged downtown, flooded homes were restored, and the ebb and flow of urban life returned. At the same time, this boundary between nature and the city was (and is) permeable. Pragmatically, Grand Forks and East Grand Forks lay on opposite sides of the river, and so people must pass through the dike system to move between the two cities. The river was thus, at least in some instances, seen to some as a unifying presence between the two cities, which historically have not always had consistently good relations. In an early redevelopment proposal that came out of a community charrette, for instance, a vision of the city emerged that “proposes a remarkable view of a vibrant, united city that embraces its joining river” (Re-Imagining Downtown 1997). In at least one way, this unity was achieved by creating an organizational structure for the greenway that placed it under the auspices of four different government bodies, with two on each side of the river – the city of Grand Forks, the Grand Forks Parks District,13 the city of East Grand Forks, and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR). This permeability was about more than just uniting the cities and commercial opportunity, however, but also about bringing the cities, especially their downtowns, together with the “natural” river. In an early development plan, it was argued that “actions to rebuild Downtown should link river activities to Downtown activities,” and that those drafting the plan viewed the riverfront “as a cultural and recreational amenity to draw visitors from the entire region, enhancing the viability of retail and services in the Downtown area” (Camiros 1998, 9–10). The greenway actually becomes one of the primary ways of talking about downtown. In a tourism magazine describing Grand Forks a decade after the flood, for instance, the downtown is described largely by pointing to the river. “The downtown has taken a new look,” the article reads. There is a Town Square where public events and farmer markets are held in good weather. The river front has been redesigned with an obelisk showing the stages of the flood, and there is a labyrinth for walking and meditating. There are bike and walking paths along the Greenway on the river side of the dikes. Recovery has brought mini-parks to the downtown area (Hagerty 2007).



Living in a River Town: The Control and ­Celebration of Nature

127

In a much earlier PowerPoint presentation used by the Downtown Development Commission (DDC) for a meeting in March 1998, several of the “downtown strategies” likewise directly involved the river. Flood protection was to be “integrated” with the “development of riverfront open space and downtown design,” access to the “riverfront” by foot and by car was to be secured, and “riverfront development” was listed among several “catalyst programs” for the downtown. In a letter from the DDC to the Grand Forks City Council in May 1999, they also argue that “downtown needs to be an important gateway to the greenway and that there needs to be convenient access to the greenway for activities and festivals.” The recreational benefits of the river were thus tied to urban develop­ ment on the dry side of the dikes, drawing an economic link between the river and the city. For those involved in the city’s redevelopment, it was critical not only for the river’s flooding to be controlled, but also for the river to be economically integrated into the rebuilding of the city. In a promotional poster for the greenway, for instance, the “urban riverfront” is described as something that “will emerge in both Grand Forks and East Grand Forks that will offer a vibrant economic landscape. This will become a destination landscape for both communities, supporting community events, economic activity, tourism, celebrations, and year-round recre­ ational uses. The riverfront landscape will also serve as a gateway to both communities.” The river is important here not primarily out of concern for sustainability or a desire to restore ecosystems (though these concerns surface elsewhere), but out of an economic logic: the river is important because it can help bring business to the city. Just as the redevelopment of neighborhoods partially favored the wealthy, these visions of downtown – focused on retail and tourism – favored the interests of the wealthier and more middle-class residents, business owners and shop-owners downtown. Integrating the river into downtown, in other words, had an economic function that primarily benefited those with strong economic interests in the downtown area. Beyond the link between downtown and the river, there were pragmatic concerns about making it easier for the public to reach the riverfront. In the years before the flood, the riverbanks were less accessible; there were paths along the river, for instance, but fewer people knew of them, some of the small parks along the river were used infrequently and not well maintained, and portions of the riverfront were privately owned. In the first few years after the flood, when the city began developing the riverbanks into a park, there was also resistance to building the greenway; a number of people felt that time and money were being wasted on a system that people

128

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

would not use and that would be dangerous.14 In an interview, a city official who works with the greenway also stated that the river was simply “not wellliked” by many after the flood, and a number of people did not understand why the river should be make so accessible to the general public. These individuals felt the greenway was distracting officials from more important things that the city should be doing, such as rebuilding homes and attracting small businesses. Public sentiment began to change, however. While the greenway privileges certain activities (such as biking, fishing, and golfing), the concerted effort of planners and city officials to open up access to the river was a substantially egalitarian move and a large number of people use the system. A decade after these discussion began, many residents are so accustomed to using the recreational facilities in the greenway that this same official feels she occasionally has to remind people that its “primary purpose” is to protect the city, and that maintaining recreational features (like cleaning low-lying paths after a flood) are not always a high priority (interview, 4 June 2010). While the greenway was met with some initial antagonism, it also had many early supporters, and the river was a meaningful place for a number of residents before the flood (as well as after). In the recorded oral histories, for instance, several people nostalgically recall times spent at the river. One couple remembered taking their dogs down along the river to run in what “seemed like a real peaceful place” (Glassheim 1999, 138).Another person who lost her home in the flood and had to relocate remembered the dike itself fondly. “I never did have a problem with the dike,” she told the interviewer. “It was part of the kids’ growing up. It was a sledding hill, it was a place to go up and walk. I loved to walk the dike. It was gorgeous up there. On the other side it was just like a walk in the country, the huge trees that were down there. I always felt peace walking up there and I miss that” (Glassheim 1999, 106). A power company employee remembered using the river as a “playground” when he was a child and lived one block away from it, and specifically recalled playing on an island that formed each spring during the annual flood (Glassheim 1999, 168). When poet Madelyn Camrud was quoted in the New York Times on the possibility of losing her home to the dike, the author describes her looking out through her dining room window, seeing the river and saying “That view right there was my joy. I’ve always loved the river. I still do” (Baranauckas 1997). This kind of appreciation of the river returned rather quickly after the flood for some residents, though the meaning of it had changed. One newspaper reporter, who had lived in Grand Forks but at the time of the flood lived in Minneapolis and worked for the Star Tribune, went out fishing



Living in a River Town: The Control and ­Celebration of Nature

129

with a friend shortly after the flood. He wrote that, “It’s our river again, a boater’s river: calm, benign, a place of history, bird song and fish jumping” (Haga 1997). In a later interview for the oral history project, he similarly commented that “It was us reclaiming the river. It was the river benign once again.” When asked if the flood changed how he viewed nature or the river, he replied: No. I’ve always liked the river. When I lived in Grand Forks, I liked that the river was there and I fished it and I claimed an island in the middle of it. I always saw the river as a connector rather than a divider. It was a good thing to cross the river because Whitey’s [a popular bar in East Grand Forks] was there. And I liked riding on the river. I liked going up and down the river and seeing what it looked like. I liked it that orioles frequent the river and I liked listening to them. And I like cottonwoods (Glassheim 1999, 107–8). Interestingly, the friend he went fishing with was also interviewed, and he was a little more hesitant to say the river had been reclaimed. Asked if there were any signs that things are returning to normal, he commented that: It was fun for me to put my boat on the river and Chuck [quoted above] did a piece for the Minneapolis Star Tribune about recapturing, reclaiming the Red. I had that feeling when I was on the river, hey, I’m back in control of you now. But I should have known better. This weekend I would have been fishin’ in the catfish tournament but that’s been postponed because the river came up. So the river is still in charge. We may be making a mistake to think we can control the river. We’d better be learnin’ how to live with the river and give it room. Rivers have always been big for me. One of the things Chuck asked me in that article was if my attitude had changed towards the river. No. I respect the power of the river (Glassheim 1999, 162). Not only are multiple views of the river at play here – the river as holding power, and the river as a place to go fishing and listen to orioles – but there is also a conscious power play going on between who has control. Fishing becomes an act of reclaiming the river and saying “I’m back in control of you now,” but it also an avenue for the river to reassert its power, as the newly risen flood waters postponed their catfish tournament. The importance of the river as a recreational space – a space so successfully controlled that it could be enjoyed with leisure – was emphasized in several

130

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

redevelopment plans for the area. In the report from the Urban Land Institute (1997), for instance, their outside consultants felt the “river would be a significant asset, something to build upon, to be proud of, and to enjoy.” They then recommended a park (similar to what became the greenway) run by both states which would improve the river’s “hydraulics, aesthetics, and recreational potential.” Most of the development along the river itself was incorporated into the greenway, and so it became the focus of recreational experiences of nature (see Figure 5.2). While the greenway’s main purpose, as described above, is to protect the city from future floods, reports and promotional literature for the project frequently highlight the recreational aspects of the riverbanks. One of the greenway’s stated purposes is to “link residents and tourists to four-seasons of recreation and transportation facilities” and to “promote tourism through year round attractions and activities” (Flink 1998). A poster for the greenway likewise describes it as a “multi-use landscape,” a “destination landscape,” and “a resource that people can use to learn about the natural environment and improve quality of life.”

Figure 5.2  The greenway in East Grand Forks, MN, looking south toward the ­Kennedy Bridge. Photo by author.



Living in a River Town: The Control and ­Celebration of Nature

131

The greenway incorporates several efforts to ecologically improve the river, but within the literature this most often is couched in terms of economic benefits (almost certainly due to the need of gaining funding for the projects to be implemented). In a statement suggesting that the greenway be a wildlife sanctuary for bird and waterfowl, for instance, the final report proposing the greenway reads that not only is the valley an important migratory route, but also that “bird watching is fast becoming an important economic component of tourism throughout the United States and Canada” (Flink 1998). A promotional poster likewise proposed “ecotourist-based activities.” Perhaps the earliest greenway plan, written by the Army Corps of Engineers just a month after the flood, notes that “the Red River is classified by the North Dakota Game and Fish Department as a Class I highest-value fishery resource” and goes on to list other fishing classifications (Post 1997). Part of the making the riverfront into a natural space also involved the aspiration of creating a more environmentally sustainable river – one of the official goals of the greenway was to “enhance, protect and restore the  environment” – but this was only a priority so long as it followed the creation of a tame river, as several people quoted above called it. In a formal greenway report to the Army Corps of Engineers cited at the beginning of this section, for instance, one of the proposed goals for the greenway is to “improve and restore ecological stability” (Flink 1998, 2). Sustainability, or simply stability, in thus primarily understood as a method of flood control. In other words, the riverbanks were allowed to return to their pre-nineteenthcentury state only insofar as 1) they remained safe and helped to slow flooding, and 2) residents could continue to experience their beauty. Sustainability was thus closely tied to both economics and flood mitigation. This emphasis on economics is likely due to the need of those constructing the greenway to justify the large cost of the project. Nonetheless, there were arguments made for building a greenway using reasons beyond economics. For instance, in a newsletter from the Friends of the Greenway, a grassroots organization working to support the building of the greenway, a column off to the side of the front page describes the Friends as those who “care about nature,” “care about fitness,” and “care about community enhancements” (Friends 2001). The early greenway plan from the Army Corps (Post 1997) also highlights the ecological function of the greenway on its own terms, with the aim of improving water quality and biodiversity. Recreational nature was also not just confined to the greenway. Upriver in Fargo, for instance, the pastor who recorded a memoir for MPR noted during the flood that “I can almost imagine now what a big backyard of green

132

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

grass looks like, flowing down to the river and the river back in its banks, and soon [the river] will become a friend that we pump out of and water the grass a little bit with” (Hansen 1997).15 The experience of a personal backyard leading to the river, however, would soon be gone from Grand Forks, as the river’s channel was widened and the dikes were heightened, visually disconnecting most residential neighborhoods from the river. As briefly discussed in Chapter 3, much of the city’s financial and commercial center moved out to the suburbs and away from the river, in a trend that began well before the flood. For largely geographic reasons, the possible benefits of the river thus did not extend out to the suburbs, and were confined primarily to downtown and surrounding neighborhoods. In the final report proposing the greenway, for instance, it was argued that “recreational facility development should occur in a radial pattern from the downtown areas of Grand Forks and East Grand Forks. The more intensely developed recreational spaces for human use should be located near the downtowns, while those facilities more suited to wildlife and natural systems would occur further from the downtown area” (Flink 1998). This use of parkland also interestingly mimics the cultural division between urban and natural spaces. The areas more obviously groomed for human use – such as campgrounds or the labyrinth – are primarily located adjacent to the most urban parts of the city (downtown). Portions of the Greenway that have been kept or returned to a wilder, less manicured state, such as wetlands, are all located along the northern and southern extremities of the corridor. Nature was transformed into a recreational commodity most overtly in East Grand Forks. The small downtown on the east side of the river was hit very hard by the flood. In the subsequent rebuilding, the downtown was reoriented in multiple ways to the river. Economically, the most significant development was the successful luring of Cabela’s to the city, which remains the only large “anchor” store located downtown (on either side of the river). As briefly discussed in Chapter 3, Cabela’s is a large sporting goods store, primarily for hunting, fishing and camping, and all of their other locations are along major interstate exits; attracting the store to locate downtown was thus quite a feat for a town of 8,000 people. Cabela’s was also one of the reasons East Grand Forks was able to convince the Minnesota DNR to build a campground in the former Sherlock Park neighborhood. In addition to the campground and Cabela’s, a boat ramp is located just south of downtown, and there are multiple places to fish along the river (though these can be found across the river in Grand Forks as well). The effects of Cabela’s have been felt on both sides of the river. For instance, in an update from the Downtown Development Commission to the Grand Forks (ND) city council,



Living in a River Town: The Control and ­Celebration of Nature

133

dated 21 May 1999, a portion of downtown Grand Forks was described as “prime redevelopment area with its close proximity to the new Cabela’s store in East Grand Forks.” Historically, East Grand Forks has been a center for restaurants and (especially) bars in the area.16 In order to respond to the restaurants that were inundated by the flood and/or located on the wrong side of the new dike line, the city developed a string of restaurants across the street from Cabela’s, running parallel to the river and perpendicular to the main street, Demers Avenue. Several of these restaurants have large decks on the second floor, so that patrons can look over the river and over to Grand Forks, with a view aided by the “invisible” flood wall described in Chapter 2. One magazine noted that the “perhaps most important” development for East Grand Forks was this “‘invisible’ floodwall that allows the city to embrace the river rather than walling itself off from it” (Jacobson 2002).17 Comparable plans were proposed on the North Dakota side of the river. An early design proposal included a boardwalk along the top of the dike, for instance, as well as renovating or constructing new downtown buildings directly into the dry side of the dike, so that backside of their second floors would spill out onto the top of the dike with patios and storefronts looking over the river.18 In a concern over the adequacy of the river view, a proposal by the Urban Land Institute (1997) even went so far as to propose building an underwater weir to widen the width of the river basin in the summer, when it is typically rather narrow. This would allow the river to be more picturesque and create “a highly dramatic water path,” as well as increase the possibilities for water sports. Not surprisingly, in my research I found no other evidence of this last idea being considered. All of this research does attest, however, to a large interest in re-creating nature into something that can be enjoyed, most specifically for an urban middle class that can afford to spend money shopping downtown, eating at restaurants, and enjoying leisurely recreational activities such as golf and bicycling.19 This causes an ironic situation where the “nature” of the river is tightly controlled, allowing residents to live in an urban center protected from its river, and yet at the same time use that same river as a primary form of recreation and even economic development.

Conclusion In an interview, the manager of a local mill said that “the great lesson from this flood is that you live in a river town” (Glassheim 1999: 26). This voices

134

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

a common sentiment held among Grand Forks residents. The chair of the Mayor’s Task Force on Business Redevelopment, for instance, made a similar observation in arguing for rebuilding downtown: “Our civilization is based on a tradition, how did we start, how did we get here? We got here as a river port. So while the downtown had some deficiencies, it nevertheless was a source or origin of our community” (Glassheim 2002, 136). All of the images and narratives discussed in this and in the preceding chapter are trying to make sense out of what it means to live in a river town. They are, in other words, trying to make sense of how their city relates to its environment. Multiple images – most especially those revolving around battle imagery – work to keep the separation of the city and nature secure. This goes in line with predominant ideas of the city and nature in modern Western thought;20 namely, that the urban and the natural are definitional opposites. Yet much of the same scholarly literature that catalogues these oppositional concepts (e.g., Short 1991; Williams 1973) also make clear that this demarcation is artificial and not inevitable. There are different ways of describing the artificiality of this separation. Cities contribute significantly to their ecosystems, even though that contribution is usually negative to many life forms (Benton-Short and Short 2008). Cities also depend upon large, regional networks of resource extraction and manipulation, both in terms of producing the items people trade, which then form the basis of an urban economy (Cronon 1991), and of providing the materials that make up the urban infrastructure. Other scholars have argued for the need to throw out terms such as “nature” and “city” altogether, and instead look at the associations between things (Latour 2004) in order to get a clearer picture of how societies and environments work. While no one in Grand Forks, at least as far as my research would indicate, moved toward doing away with categories such as “nature,” there were nonetheless multiple instances where the lines between the city and nature were blurred. The Red River was seen as something linking the two downtowns, for instance; the greenway development was seen as key to reinvigorating downtown Grand Forks; and downtown East Grand Forks reinvented itself as a center for outdoor recreation. While none of these ideas erase the urban/natural divide, they nonetheless play with the edges of what counts for such terms. This must be at least in part to due to the reality of an urban natural disaster. Rebuilding the city was incumbent on the rebuilding of nature, and the process of rebuilding required coming to terms, at least on some minimal level, with the shifting boundaries of nature and city. In order to



Living in a River Town: The Control and ­Celebration of Nature

135

make sense out of the city and its future, residents had to find a way to make sense out of nature as well. In doing so, multiple narratives and images of the river and its city emerged, but two, somewhat opposite, images became dominant – battling against and then controlling the river in order to protect the city, and using the river as a source of outdoor recreation in the middle of, ironically, one of the few urban spaces in the region. Both of these images are tinted by their urban context. That is, efforts to control nature within an urban context tend to address urban concerns (such as keeping homes on the urban grid separate from the vicissitudes of the river) rather than more rural ones, which might include more agricultural interests (such as soil fertility and pest control). Likewise, the use of the riverbanks as a space of recreation and beauty is likely influenced by a middle-class urban lens that tends to view nature as a place for vacations and for fleeing from the responsibilities of life in the city. These two images – nature as controlled and nature as recreational – do not carry equal weight, however, as recreational and celebratory views of nature are dependent on the belief that the Red River can be controlled. As will be discussed in the following chapter, this complicates how environmentalists and scholars of religion and ecology might envision what it means to control the nonhuman world, for control in this situation entails not only confinement and economic profit, but also ecological restoration, celebration, an integration of nature into the fabric of downtown, and – most importantly for many residents in Grand Forks – the protection of people and property from disaster.

136

Chapter 6

Religion, Cities, and the Control of Nature

The goal of this project, as I mentioned in the first chapter, is not to tell the story (or stories) of how the 1997 flood was experienced in Grand Forks. My aim has been much narrower, as I have only been concerned with very particular kinds of images – especially religious images and narratives that reveal how people conceive of the city and nature. This project has attempted to discover the roles of such images and narratives in envisioning the urban environment during and after the flood, primarily within the dominant discourses found among the print media, city officials, and religious organizations. My aim has also been quite broad, in that the ultimate focus of my concern is on US cities in general, and not only on Grand Forks. Because of the broad nature of my interest, I have undoubtedly retold narratives and recast images of the flood in ways that might seem somewhat foreign to those who uttered or wrote them, as what is important for this book is undoubtedly different from what was important to those trying to rebuild their homes and their city after such a disaster. Statements of religious conviction made without much reflection, for instance, took on a rather high degree of significance within this project, and many of the political scandals (e.g., who decided which homes ended up on the wet side of the dike) have been covered very lightly in these pages, despite their significance to people at the time. The purpose of this final chapter is to ask three broad questions that arise out of the narratives described in the Chapters 4 and 5. First, it returns to the question of religion, and asks how religious impulses are present in the images and narratives that were uncovered – what counts as religious, why it matters if something is religious or not, and what kind of relationship exists between these images and how Grand Forks was rebuilt. Following these questions, it then moves on to ask how scholarship in religion, nature, and the city might be better integrated.

138

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

Finally, this chapter closes by returning to a recurring theme that appeared across many conversations in the flood responses: the need to control nature. All of the literature I reviewed and the people I talked to were in favor of fighting the flood, and/or in favor of building a better flood mitigation system to keep out future floods, and there was no question of letting the river revert to a more “natural” state and reclaim all of the cities, towns, and farmland in its path during the floods. The river could continue to exist only on human terms – in a semi-controlled, domesticated state – and all planning for the future pointed to increased control. There was also a significant amount of religious imagery and language to uphold this emphasis on control. This leads us to a final question: how this might challenge the way in which the control and domination of nature is thought of within environmental scholarship, including religion and the environment scholarship, and how it might likewise challenge some of the common perceptions of nonhuman nature.

Religious Perceptions of the Urban Environment in the 1997 Flood In the second chapter, I argued that things would be considered “religious” for this project insofar as they consisted of “shared images, concepts, and perceptions that make sense out of reality by pointing to an ultimate source and orienting people’s dispositions toward and interactions with the world.” This definition was based in part on the work of Peter Berger (1967), ­Robert Bellah (1964), Clifford Geertz (1973), and Kelly Besecke (2005). It is, as I noted, a limiting description of religion for this project; while it overlaps significantly with other conceptions of religion, it is not meant to provide the final answer as to what should count as religious in all situations. This definition is helpful in part because it requires more than just symbols and meaning-making activity (as opposed, for instance, to Geertz’s definition). Thus when two men went fishing on the Red River shortly after the flood waters subsided so as to “reclaim” the river, for instance, this would fall outside of the parameters of what I am considering religious; even though it was an avenue for the men to make sense out of reality, it does not appear to reference some ultimate source outside of human history. Similarly, by this definition, environmentalism is only considered a religious phenomenon, as some have claimed (Gottlieb 2006, 147ff), insofar as it is points toward some ultimate source, whether it be Nature, the spirit of a place, or some more traditional deity. For instance, when a student commented that



Religion, Cities, and the Control of Nature

139

we are only temporarily living on a land that belongs to “Mother Earth” (Enarson 2000, 54), this would fall under the rubric of religious language, whereas descriptions of plans to restore ecosystems in the greenway generally did not count as religious, as they were couched solely in social and economic terms. In these pages, I am also concerned specifically with public religious language and imagery. This definition of religion is correspondingly also broad enough to include things that reside outside of institutional forms of American religion (such as Christianity). While most of language that counts as “religious” for this project predominantly came from a Christian source or used traditional Christian language, in several instances “nature” or “Mother Nature” also served as an ultimate source to which people pointed. In a memoir, for instance, one person spoke guiltily of wanting her belongings “to be swept away in a flood as though God had come down and made a change. Nature would change my life” (Varley 2005, 98). While most instances do not have such a clear overlap between nature and God, nature is nonetheless a common referent for pointing to something outside of human control, especially when trying to describe who or what was to blame for the flood. Most of the religious language conveyed in the preceding chapters might thus be split into two main categories – Christian images and language that portrays nature as an ultimate source of meaning.1 Particularly interesting were the significant number of instances where popular Jewish and Christian narratives were used, but without any apparent intention of taking the traditional theological meanings or implications of the narratives seriously. Among the more common examples were the numerous references to Noah or Noah’s Ark, which were often outside of any otherwise noticeably religious context. Those helping to rebuild downtown were depicted as the “Noahs of Grand Forks” in Inc. magazine (Fudge 1998), for instance, but this reference was likely not meant to convey that downtown commercial developers were to be seen as a small remnant of righteous people surrounded by a world condemned to death. It would seem, as I argued in the fourth chapter, that those using such images were instead trying to find language that resonated with the gravity of the events they experienced, focusing less on who Noah was in the story, and more on the fact that Noah survived a great flood and set about rebuilding the world. Furthermore, the significance of the Noah references were made clearer by the rainbow images, which imply a promise of divine protection and, perhaps, a promise that another flood like this one would not come again.

140

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

Returning to my definition of the religious, this kind of speech only vaguely succeeds at “pointing to an ultimate source,” though it is the weight of that ultimate source that gives the images their utility. What makes these images interesting for the sake of this project, however, is that not only are they rooted in a traditional religion (Christianity), but they also form a set of expressions or symbols that are shared among a large segment of the population. The widespread and often public dissemination of such expressions and symbols then also implies (though it does not prove) that they help a large portion of the population to find a way of making sense out of the events surrounding the flood and, perhaps, better know how to act in the months and years following the disaster. Within this subset of religious language that was commonly found in the wider public discourse, perhaps the most significant was the refrain to “keep the faith,” which began with Mayor Pat Owens’s encouragement to the city immediately after the flood. The religious overtones of this statement are obvious; a local Lutheran confirmation class adapted the phrase into “Keep the Faith .  .  .  In God’s Love,” for instance (Lutheran Brotherhood 1998; ellipsis in original). Most commonly, however, faith is not directed toward God but toward the “spirit of community” and “our people.” The Christian connotations of the phrase are nonetheless also quite present; Mayor Owens would later remark, for instance, that “it’s like we’re in God’s hands” (Hagerty 2007), and the high school musical “Keep the Faith” would integrate the well-known saying into a paraphrase of an also well-known biblical passage. As many studies have shown, religion often holds a significant psychological or therapeutic role in helping people cope with a disaster, and statements such as “it’s like we’re in God’s hands” likely have a therapeutic function. This is not irrelevant to this project; disasters are almost intrinsically theodicies – they are events which disrupt our most basic sense of order – and in theodicies there is a great need to try to make new sense out of a new reality. What is most relevant for this book, however, is not that religious language can provide a therapeutic role in such a context, but that religious language can describe urban-natural connections that are most visible during and after a disaster. In the materials reviewed, there were no direct statements explicitly connecting religious images of the flood to how the city was rebuilt. No one was recorded as writing or saying, for instance, that their understanding of God’s place in world, or their understanding of what Mother Nature would want, meant that downtown should be developed in some particular fashion. Nonetheless, I contend that we can make a Weberian argument similar to



Religion, Cities, and the Control of Nature

141

that of Richard Sennett (1990), discussed in Chapter 2. According to Sennett, the minimalist aesthetic of modern design arose out of a Protestant disavowal of the pleasures of the material world. Similar to Max Weber’s argument about ascetic Protestantism and the emergence of modern capitalism (1920/2002), Sennett is arguing that Protestantism did not directly cause a modernist aesthetic, but that Protestantism created a set of dispositions toward the world out of which modernism could arise. In terms of this research on Grand Forks, I am making an analogous argument. While we cannot draw a straight line between a particular religious image of the urban environment and how a particular part of Grand Forks was rebuilt, the religious images surveyed in the last two chapters nonetheless helped to reinforce a basic disposition to the city and to the river, which was then manifest in planning decisions adopted by the city. As the preceding chapters make clear, even within the narrow confines of religious portrayals of the urban environment there was a multiplicity of images. To begin with, the flood was blamed on nature or, less commonly, Nature, and only very rarely on God. Nonetheless, numerous people believed that God “allowed” the flood, even if God did not cause it. This is an interesting contrast to much of the scholarship in religion and ecology, which has tried to demonstrate the presence of the sacred within nature (e.g., Wallace 2005). In Grand Forks during the flood, however, the impulse found in a large portion of the data was explicitly not to see God as present in nature,2 so as to not implicate God in the destruction caused by the flood. As discussed in Chapter 4, however, just because the flood was not an “act of God” did not mean God’s presence was not felt in the city. God was seen as acting on behalf of the city, especially through those people building dikes and, later, in people providing relief and helping to rebuild. For many, the city was in a dramatic battle with nature, with some people making the connection that God was fighting on behalf of the city and humanity; this reflected a sense of human exceptionalism and the belief that nature is in need of taming by humans, a perspective that dates back to early interpretations of the book of Genesis (Ruether 1992). With some overlap, this battle also took on the cast of a war between chaos and order, which (as discussed in Chapter 4) also hearkens back to a long tradition within Christianity of antagonism toward the unpredictable chaos of nonhuman nature. Overlapping partially with this imagery, there were numerous exhortations to “keep the faith,” a phrase with broad meaning that started with Mayor Owens. Sometimes this faith was to be in the Christian God, but at least as

142

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

frequently it was in the city’s effort to battle nature and to later rebuild. Occasionally it was just faith, and it was unclear if that faith was intended to be directed at anyone or anything. As the city rebuilt, two overlapping constructions of the urban environ­ ment emerged, which in some instances were at odds with each other. First and foremost, the importance of controlling and confining nature was emphasized, so that the city would be able to safely rebuild within much of the floodplain on which the downtown and older neighborhoods were originally constructed. At the same time, the river in the middle of the city was seen as both a space for recreation and as an integral part of the city. This first construction of the urban environment – rebuilding the city by controlling nature – was easily the most common theme found throughout multiple forms of religious language and religious images. As the two previous chapters demonstrated, the overwhelming majority of religious images found were in support of not only rebuilding the city, but also of constructing the city in opposition to the perceived forces of nature. While religious language only rarely appeared in actual planning proposals during the rebuilding process, the idea of rebuilding was nonetheless strongly supported by language such as calls to “keep the faith,” battle imagery that placed God against nature but on the side of the city and of maintaining order, and resurrection imagery. Many of these images, of course, largely dissipated in the later years during which most of the rebuilding took place, though “keep the faith” was especially persistent. It is reasonable to infer, however, that these early images helped either to establish or to reinforce a basic disposition to the city and to the river – namely, that the river should be controlled, and that urban concerns should be prioritized – which influenced later planning decisions. If one stays strictly with the data collected, it is impossible to know whether the flood caused such images, or if those images already existed and influenced how the urban environment was perceived during the flood.3 Some of what we know about floods and other disasters suggests that they exaggerate social relations but also cause them to change. As briefly discussed in Chapter 3, for instance, Alice Fothergill (2004) has shown that even while in many circumstances the flood merely amplified the gender and class relations that existed before the flood, in several instances gender and class norms were challenged after the disaster. By extension, one might reasonably argue that the flood could have caused new forms of religious meaning-making to arise. However, because there is such a long history within Western Christianity of separating nature from humanity – and because there is such a long history of flooding in the Red River Valley – it



Religion, Cities, and the Control of Nature

143

is more likely that religious perceptions already existed before the flood that would uphold such a separation. In other words, it is reasonable to assume that the images which arose during the flood are indicative of beliefs and postures held both before and after the disaster. It is also reasonable to infer, then, that the narratives and images discussed in the preceding chapters were not idiosyncratic to the 1997 flooding of the Red River of the North, but instead were indicative of beliefs held more widely. And yet more specifically, we can say that multiple forms of religious imagery support a basic disposition toward the world – a prioritizing of the city via the control of nature – that correlates strongly with how Grand Forks was rebuilt. This disposition likely supported the extensive diking in of the Red River, but – once the river was contained and controlled – also allowed for the recreational enjoyment of the civilized and commodified river. The rest of this chapter addresses two sides of how this research might be relevant outside of Grand Forks and its flooding river. First, it looks at the implications for academic scholarship at the intersections of religion, the environment, and cities. To address this question it returns to the literature discussed in the second chapter, and looks at the three relevant disciplinary intersections that currently exist in the academy – religion and the environment, religion and cities, and cities and the environment – and how the scope of each of these might be expanded so as to be in fuller conversation with one another. The chapter then concludes with reflections on a major theme that arose in Chapters 4 and 5 – the control of nature – and points to questions worthy of further exploration.

The City in Scholarship on Religion and Ecology As stated above, while a disaster is indeed an extraordinary event, disasters exaggerate existing social dynamics and make them more apparent, as well as instigate questions about why things are the way they are and how things should be. If we broaden our understanding of the social and include those relationships not just among humans but also with our broader environments – such as the relationship between urban planners and floodplains – we might argue that the social/natural dynamics within these larger networks of relationships are made more visible as well, along with narratives and images (including religious ones) that explain how things are connected.4 Scholars of religion and the environment have largely organized themselves around the words “ecology” and “nature,” both as ways to signify the nonhuman world.5 The term “environment,” on the other

144

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

hand, has been used somewhat less, in part because it is rather vague – one can speak of the natural environment, the built environment, or even the environment of an online chat room – and in part because it is implicitly anthropocentric.6 Not only are our relationships much broader than just those between humans, but our environments are also much larger than those things typically grouped under the labels of “natural” or “ecological,” which categorically do not fully account for humanity or for the city, that most human of places. As discussed in the second chapter, this is one of the contributions of the environmental justice movement – which seeks to redefine “environment” to include those places where we “live, work and play” – to the wider environmental movement (Novotny 2000). One way of understanding the implication of this project’s research it to see it as similarly arguing that the word “environment” is useful specifically because of its ability to cross boundaries and simultaneously refer both to the human and nonhuman spheres.7 Integrating the city into our conceptions of nature or ecology is thus crucial to religion and ecology scholarship. As outlined earlier, the constructed separation between humanity and nature has been critiqued from a variety of perspectives within religious studies, ranging from eco-feminism to deep ecology. In many ways, what I am arguing is simply an extension of this critique: if we are to take the nonhuman world seriously and consider humans to be simply one part of much larger ecosystems or creation or the universe, we should also consider cities (as human spaces) to be parts, albeit most often dysfunctional parts, of those larger ecosystems as well. To understand the current ecology of any part of the Red River Valley, for instance, a scholar must also understand the place of cities and towns along the river and the ways urban development and flood mitigation, among other things, have shifted how the river flows and functions. Likewise, in order to understand cities like Grand Forks, Fargo, and Winnipeg, one must understand their histories with the Red River and their changing development strategies to accommodate seasonal floods. A number of scholars would nevertheless argue for maintaining the distinction between wilder parts of nature and those things that have been transformed by humans in some way – or between first and second natures, respectively – as part of a very valid concern for things like vanishing wilderness and species extinction (e.g., McFague 2008). Yet the point of my argument is not that we are all the same; there are innumerable differences between a human, a tree, and a piece of plastic; between cities and rivers; or even between a tree and a piece of lumber. The goal, rather, is to place



Religion, Cities, and the Control of Nature

145

“urban” things and “natural” things into the same sphere of concern, so as to be able to trace the associations between things (Latour 2005) in order that we understand them better. In analyzing responses to the flood in Grand Forks, for instance, it would do no good to argue that the downtown and the river were really the same thing. Not only would it border on nonsensical, it also is not true to how people understood (and continue to understand) the downtown and the river, and it fails to acknowledge the vastly different ecosystems living in two such places. And yet in these same responses, one would not be able to understand how people conceived of their city if the river was left out of the picture; likewise, one would not be able to understand much of how people think about the Red River without also looking at its relationship to the city built alongside of it. For research at the intersection of religion and the environment, this means expanding the academic discourse to take into more adequate account all of the factors that matter for any environment, whether natural or built. The goal would not be to broaden the scope of research just for the sake of expansion – in other words, I am not arguing for tacking an additional issue onto religion and ecology research. Rather, I am arguing that in order to understand religious perceptions of ecosystems and nonhuman nature, one also has to consider those human and urban things beyond the boundary of what often counts as “natural.” In Grand Forks, for instance, some of the most prominent religious understandings of nature – such as nature as chaotic, or nature as powerful and destructive – only become comprehensible when put into relation with constructions of the city as ordered or as controlling nature’s power. The point here is thus not simply to note the importance of integrating cities and nature in studying Grand Forks, but that this integration is broadly applicable in academic work on religion and the environment. In Bron Taylor’s recent work on “dark green religion” (2010), for instance, he briefly notes the dispositions of many environmentalists toward cities, from ­John Burroughs and John Muir’s antiurban biases, to the suburban childhood of a Columbian ecologist studying woodpeckers in southern Chile. Yet he never fully explores the relationship between their environmental commitments and their views of cities; a similar gap is found, to a lesser degree, in Rebecca Gould’s work (2005) on homesteading, which is mentioned in Chapter 2. Taylor’s work then bears the risk of missing critical dimensions of how such figures understand “nature” or form environmental spiritualities. He mentions in passing, for instance, that Muir was criticized for not only misanthropic remarks but an indifference to urban poverty (2010, 70). For Taylor this shows the potential for “real harm and

146

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

danger” in dark green religions (ibid.), but he then moves on to other points without asking how integral this antiurban bias was to Muir’s environmental ethic and spirituality. This leaves the full ethical implications of Muir’s nature spirituality unexplored – was his spirituality based on an antiurban worldview, and was his antiurban bias integral or incidental to his environmental spirituality? Similarly, in Taylor’s discussion of surfing as an “aquatic nature religion” he begins with a quote from a surfer who remarks that “no amount of money is worth living away from Mother Ocean” (2010, 103). The role of “Mother Ocean” and other reverent invocations for the ocean are a major part of Taylor’s argument (that surfing is a primary form of spirituality for some practitioners), and yet the place where this statement was made – at an urban surf shop in San Diego, CA – goes unexplored. The location of this conversation is not irrelevant, however; one might ask, for instance, to what degree surfing (and surfing as a nature religion) is an urban phenomenon, and to what extent experiences of living in cities such as San Diego (along with things such as class and race) influence how people understand the nearby ocean as a spiritual place. Taylor’s work is instructive because, in my reading, it is typical of how cities are treated in much scholarship in religion and ecology, as discussed in Chapter 2. One of the implications of this research on Grand Forks, then, is not simply that some of the narratives (such as a chaotic nature against a God on the side of order) found during and after the flood likely exist more broadly, but that cities and urban issues are central to the study of religion and ecology.

The Environment in Scholarship on Religion and Cities As has been mentioned in previous chapters, there is, nonetheless, a growing amount of academic scholarship on religion and cities, but it has largely ignored environmental issues, including how constructions of the city are tied to constructions of the natural. As was discussed in the second chapter, for instance, there are numerous religious constructions of the city in the West, primarily arising out of Christianity, including utopic images of the New Jerusalem, early American efforts to build a “city on a hill,” and images of cities as havens of sin and temptation. Only rarely has this literature dealt seriously with the environment, however. There are a few occasional exceptions, such as Karen McCarthy Brown’s work on the practice of Haitian Vodou in Brooklyn (1999), described at the end of Chapter 2, and some work on pre-twentieth century history, including James



Religion, Cities, and the Control of Nature

147

Machor’s (1987) work on “pastoral cities” and Vito Fumagalli’s (1994) work on early medieval European cities and the fear of nature. There is much more room, however, for integrating environmental theory into scholarship on religion and cities. In literature that looks at constructions of the city as sinful and hellish (e.g., Todd 2002; Pike 2007), for instance, it might be helpful to put these concepts into a fuller conversation with juxtaposed constructions of a purer rural countryside. In a short essay on rural churches, Mary Jo Neitz (2005) has thus noted that rural Christianity has often been constructed as something better and purer than its urban counterparts, at least in part because of its proximity to nature. By making these connections more visible, one might then argue that if such depictions of cities are so closely interrelated with images of the countryside, then they are in fact dependant on each other – as, for instance, Raymond Williams (1973) claimed in his foundational work on cities and the countryside in English literature. Thus claims about urban spaces are also claims about rural places, as well as claims about “nature” (because purity and impurity, for instance, are partially linked to access to nature, as Neitz points out) and based on an assumption that makes a firm dichotomy between what counts as human and what counts as natural, or between the urban and the nonurban. As only briefly discussed in Chapter 2, however, most current scholarship on religion and cities is more focused on urban religious practices, and much less on the city as a concept. In doing so, this scholarship nonetheless also offers a broad array of definitions and assumption as to what constitutes a city, or at least what makes urban religion distinctively urban. Robert Orsi, for example, in his introduction to Gods of the City (1999), gives one of the more extended discussions on the characteristics of urban religion. In doing so, he limits urban religious practices to those that occur in “industrial and post-industrial cities” (45).8 In an overlapping but more economic approach, John Giggie and Diane Winston’s edited volume, Faith in the Market (2002), looks at religion and urban commercial culture, and others have similarly described cities as centers of capital and communication (Tanner 2004). These essays, along with many others, are partly a rebuttal of the idea that modern cities (unlike the rural countryside) are antagonistic to religious practice, an assumption that reached its high point in the 1960s. In Harvey Cox’s The Secular City (1966), for instance, the “city” is simply a stand-in for modern secular society. In addition to Gods of the City, other recent works, such as New York Glory (Carnes and Karpathakis 2001) refute the claim that cities in the US are “secular” and look at the variety of thriving forms of

148

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

religious practice going on in American streets, or investigate the role of religion in public life (Farnsley et al. 2004). Research on urban religion goes beyond issues of industrialization and secularization,9 of course, but in my reading all of this scholarship looks at the city as a specifically human place, much like the broader sociological definitions of the “city” discussed in Chapter 2. And while this work also heavily focuses on religion as urban institutions or ways of making meaning in an urban landscape, interactions between people and their physical environments (whether built or natural) are rarely dealt with.10 This, I contend, limits the possibilities for understanding urban religion. Laurel Kearns, in a methodological reflection on her ethnographic work among environmental justice activists in Newark, NJ (2002), has noted that one has to consider Newark’s physical environment in order to make sense out of many religious practices in that city. “It became clear to me,” she writes, “that one cannot fully understand the prevalence of health concerns, or the religious landscape of Newark in general, if factors such as the conditions of the soil, dirt and dust, the quality of air and water, the lack of green space, or contact with non-human nature are ignored” (216). By maintaining such a strict focus on human relationships, most of the literature on religion and cities misses opportunities to connect what is going on in urban streets to both the natural environment as well as rural human communities, which then might, in turn, help to further understand what is going on in cities. For instance, for those such as Orsi (1999) and Giggie and Winston (2002) who look at urban religion as it takes place in “industrial and post-industrial cities” and the role of religion in urban commercial culture, it might be instructive to also look at how industrial processes are based on larger networks that extend well beyond urban boundaries, as William Cronon (1991) has demonstrated, or at the ways in which urban economics, along with its social injustices, is based on the domination of nature, as David Harvey (1996) has argued. One might ask, then, how the role of religious communities in urban commercial culture also correlates to a role in supporting or subverting the domination of nonhuman nature, or how the effects of industrialization on religious communities also affect and are influenced by their relationship to the nonhuman world.11 Just as I would not advocate that all religion and ecology scholars need to become experts in urban theory, all urban religious scholarship does not need to become coterminous with environmental scholarship. And yet bridging the gap between these two academic worlds might make research on both sides more fruitful and complex. As described in the second chapter, there is also a body of literature which does bridge the



Religion, Cities, and the Control of Nature

149

urban/natural divide, and yet heavily tends to ignore religion. Before turning to final thoughts and questions on controlling nature, it is worth asking why religion should matter to this scholarship.

Religion in Scholarship on Cities and Nature Literature in the humanities and social sciences on cities and nature has shown a wide array of influences on how the relationship between these two concepts has been conceived in the West. In my reading of the current state of scholarship, however, it has largely failed to account for religious influences, even though (as discussed above) there is a large amount of scholarship that documents various religious influences on perceptions of nature (outside of urban issues) and perceptions of the city (outside of environmental issues). Beyond the necessary implication here, which I have already stated in multiple ways – given these other two bodies of literature in religious studies, there must be something religious about how people understand the urban environment – there are several reasons why I argue that religious factors should matter to those who study cities and nature. In reviewing the role that religious images played in making sense of the urban-natural dynamic during and after the Grand Forks flood, it is apparent that Christian (in particular) images of nature and city influenced and/or reinforced a separation between the city and nature, both as concepts and as planning strategies. During the flood itself, there were numerous instances of God being placed in a battle against nature and against chaos (and on the side of the city), and both implicitly religious and explicitly Christian language was used in exhortations to keep faith in the city and its ability to rebuild itself. Given the widespread presence of this language, particularly during the time immediately surrounding the flood itself, it is reasonable to infer that religious language was one of the things informing and reinforcing how people made sense out of the urban environment. Religious language was not confined to traditional Christian images, of course, and nature itself often took on a religious role. In addition to the handful of references to Mother Nature, there were also numerous instances of nature (or Nature) seen as a force that rivaled the (implicitly Christian) God. This is perhaps best summed up in the Salvation Army’s slogan mentioned in Chapter 4, which albeit arose out of later disasters, that they “combat natural disasters with acts of God.” Nature, for some, takes on the role of an external force that must be confronted with divine force.

150

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

There are, then, at least two different things at stake here regarding the relevance of religion for the study of cities and nature. First, as stated above, traditional religious (e.g., Christian) images have been influential in how people have conceived of the (often antagonistic) relationship between the city and nature. We might more broadly then also say that images, perceptions, and narratives about the urban-natural relationship are often tied to larger religious systems that connect the everyday places in which people live to some kind of ultimate framework. To use traditional Christian images as they appeared in this research, for instance, God was often squarely placed on the side of humanity (and urban development), and humanity was understood to be separate from nature. We might also then go beyond this traditional framework and say that these opposing concepts of “human” and “nature,” at least for some people, are not just definitional opposites, but are contending powers rooted in something ultimate in the cosmos – for example, God fighting on the side of the city, or human civilization, against Mother Nature. In other words, in some narratives about the urban-natural relationship – for instance, in nationalist ideologies based on virtuous farmers (Short 1991) or efforts to create suburban paradises (Machor 1987) – nature might be seen as a religious concept in itself, insofar as it is used to frame an argument based on something ultimate about reality. In line with literature that finds some forms of environmentalism to be religious (see Chapter 2), it also might especially be the case that some forms of urban environmentalism, urban gardening, and “green” urban design use nature as a moral guide in this more religious sense. This then opens up the possibility of seeing certain constructions of the urban-natural relationship as about power, and specifically a power struggle between two different “ultimates.” Precisely because nature is often made completely separate from what is human, it then holds the capacity to function as an outside authority in which people can ground their understandings of the world. Religion, then, should matter to those who study the relationship between cities and nature in US culture for at least two reasons. First, as discussed earlier, Christianity has been a significant influence on how these two concepts have historically evolved and continue to evolve. But religion should also matter to urban/natural scholarship because the concept of “nature” in the West has often held a religious function for some people, and thus even non-Christian or nontheistic perceptions of the urban-nature relationship can be grounded in a religious worldview.



Religion, Cities, and the Control of Nature

151

The Challenges of Controlling Nature My overarching thesis should now be clear: religious factors influence how the urban-natural relationship is perceived both in Grand Forks and, more broadly, in the US. It is of more importance, however to ask how that relationship has been constructed, and one particular way of understanding the city and nature has recurred throughout this research: the urban control and domestication of nature. Almost all of the themes outlined in Chapters 4 and 5 are somehow related to controlling nature: God battling against nature, or against nature-as-chaos, and the accompanying reinforcement and building of dikes are the most obvious examples, but exhortations to “keep the faith” and declarations in the city’s confidence to rebuild (including images of the resurrection and phoenix) were also implicitly predicated on the city successfully controlling the flow of the Red River. Later efforts at turning the “wet” side of the dike into recreational parkland were likewise made possible by the construction of a large flood protection system. In much of environmental scholarship, including work in religion and ecology, the domination or control of nature is consistently and strongly condemned (e.g., Merchant 1989). A core claim of much of eco-feminist theology and ethics, for instance, is that the patriarchal domination of women and the domination of nature are symbolically linked (Ruether 1993, 72ff). This antipathy toward controlling nature has solid grounding – for instance, efforts to control the flow of the lower Mississippi River, as discussed in Chapter 5, have caused enormous environmental damage throughout that river’s delta, destroying ecosystems along with jobs and communities, and increasing the risks of flooding to cities such as New Orleans. In a passage that somewhat parallels the experience of Grand Forks, Carolyn Merchant has argued that before the advent of modernity, “people lived at the mercy of Nature’s storms, droughts, frosts and famines . . . Only in the last few centuries have technologies and attitudes of domination stemming from the Scientific Revolution turned the tables”(Merchant 2004, 225). Merchant’s claim here might be slightly overstated, for multiple civilizations attempted to use expansive technology to alter their environment before the Scientific Revolution,12 but the scale at which contemporary technologies allow this is nonetheless unique. With flooding along the Red River, this shift toward controlling nature is actually much more recent; it was only since the 1950 flood in Winnipeg that serious efforts to contain flooding were implemented within the valley.

152

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

Merchant goes on to argue that our “technologies and attitudes” gave humans the ability to damage, pollute, and destroy vast swaths of the nonhuman world – a claim with which, again, it is difficult to argue. With this shift, she writes, “Western culture has developed the idea that humans are more powerful than nature and that Euroamericans have the tools to dominate, control and manage it” (Merchant 2004, 225). This is indeed in line with many of the actions taken in Grand Forks during and after the flood – the assumption has been not that trying to stop the flow of the Red River was a mistake, but that the city needed better and stronger tools with which to manage and control the river. Ironically, however, the attitudes of many who experienced the flood(s) in Grand Forks nevertheless do not entirely mesh with Merchant’s claim here. It is precisely because nature is believed to be more powerful than humanity that many feel the river needs to be controlled as much as possible. As was quoted in the fourth chapter, the editor of a small Catholic newsletter remarked, “All we are certain of is that we live at the bottom of a lake, and that we could have another [flood] another year; after all, we’re not really running the show” (Lamb 1998). There is no evidence that the author is implying here (or in any other similar statements) that Grand Forks should not have built better dikes – so this is not a direct rebuttal of trying to control nature – but this author shows a certain level of either humility or pessimism in face of the power of the river, and an awareness that humans cannot always control their environments. The actions of the Army Corps of Engineers and of the local government in Grand Forks, along with numerous people who saw God and the work of angels in the rebuilding process, are, of course, a bit less humble as they responded to the 1997 flood by supporting and building a massive system with the primary intent of “controlling” or “mitigating” future floods. In the face of widespread efforts to dominate nature, which would certainly include efforts to control the Red River, Merchant’s proposal is that we develop a “partnership ethics” between humans and nature, which would advocate that the “greatest good” for each “is in their mutual living interdependence” (2004, 223). Others have made similar arguments. For instance, Dan Spencer (1996) follows Donna Haraway (1991) when he appreciatively comments on the use of coyotes as a “trickster” symbol in the spiritualities of several southwest Native American groups. The trickster image of the coyote, he observes, “emphasizes that nature cannot be controlled, and is always full of surprises and new possibilities” (Spencer 1996, 102); some of these surprises and possibilities, of course, might not be to the benefit of humans. In other words, the ethical programs that



Religion, Cities, and the Control of Nature

153

Merchant and Spencer offer are both based on the stance that nature cannot – and implicitly should not – be controlled. Their work implies that human control or domination of nature is always a move of either exploiting the nonhuman world or removing some part of it to make it more amenable to humans. Spencer’s work is written in the context of injustices committed both against the earth and against humans based on their sexuality, and Merchant’s work is written in response to the ecological destruction left in the wake of modern industrialism. She thus envisions the “garden city” of the industrial and postindustrial era, for instance, as the ultimate expression of conquest over a feminized nature. In more contemporary terms, she claims that the truest expression of the garden city is the indoor shopping mall, which “recreates the pleasures and temptations of the original Eden, where people can peacefully harvest the fruits of earth with gold grown by the market” (2005, 168). Conquest thus involves not only destruction but replacement, a shift from living with a wild nature to owning a commodified and civilized one. As discussed in several places in earlier chapters, Grand Forks itself might be seen as a grandchild of the garden city movement, where the postflood Red River was both constructed into parkland for recreation and tied to downtown commercial redevelopment; this commodification of the river was dependent on the river being civilized and controlled. The flood in Grand Forks elicits a different kind of question regarding control, however. Most environmental literature has been written on the destruction of (or threats to) nonhuman nature, often due to hubristic attempts to control and/or exploit parts of the nonhuman world. The story of the Red River flood, in contrast, is one (or at least was perceived as one) of the city, a space perceived as thoroughly human, being destroyed by “nature.” This flood, then, begs the question of whether the control of “nature” might in some instances be ethically necessary. To complicate matters further, rebuilding and expanding the dike system in Grand Forks not only confined the river, but also included ecological restoration projects and opened up vast swaths of the river banks to public as parkland. Not all cities are built on floodplains, but that is beside the point: all cities and all human developments are in some way vulnerable to their environments, whether through hurricanes, tsunamis, tornadoes, droughts, mudslides, fire, or any number of other possible disasters and problems. Likewise, our cities are, at their roots, based on necessary attempts to control their environments, even if not with such obvious technologies as flood walls. Just to stick with water, we control nature when we keep rain out of our homes, when we cleanse water to make it potable, when we cook or

154

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

make tea, or when we use indoor plumbing; that is, the idea of not trying to control some grouping of nonhumans is antithetical not only to contemporary lifestyles in modernized countries, which are often problematic, but also to basic human safety and hygiene. As Bachelard (1964) observed, our homes are defined by their ability to keep unwanted nature, such as a rainstorm, on the outside – even though, as Maria Kaika (2005) notes, “uncanny” events will inevitably demonstrate our inability to truly control the boundaries of our homes. On a different scale, we might extend Bachelard’s observation and say that cities are defined by their perceived ability to keep unwanted parts of the nonhuman world under human control.13 I use the word “control” here quite intentionally, despite the very reasonable discomfort it brings many environmental scholars (inside and outside of religious studies). I want to emphasize that, at least on occasions such as building homes, towns, and cities, humans must interfere with the nonhumans around them in such a way that causes irreversible change, even if (in some cases, such as an individual home) only on a small scale. The idea here is not that controlling nonhuman nature should be desirable in its own right, or that humans can ever successfully control nature – indeed, the flood proves the latter idea to be quite false – but, rather, that one lesson of the flood is that trying to control some aspects of the nonhuman world is inevitable and necessary for human development. The flood responses surveyed in this project thus challenge much of the work on religion and the environment, represented here by Merchant and Spencer, but not because it disagrees with their arguments – the Red River, for instance, falls perfectly in line with Spencer’s coyote-as-trickster image, and the development of the Grand Forks Greenway involved not only diking the river, but embracing it, whether it be through fishing and camping or through ecological restoration. In contrast to Los Angeles, for instance, Grand Forks did not turn the riverbed into a concrete channel. However, the kinds of questions emerging from Grand Forks, such as how to keep a city inhabitable in both the near and long term, raise a challenge to the field of religion and the environment because they pose different questions, emerging out of a different kind of context than is usually discussed in environmental circles – that is, they primarily raise questions about human vulnerability to nonhuman nature, and not the reverse. Anthony Giddens, in describing life in a “risk society,” briefly discussed in the previous chapter, characterizes this first perspective – and one I am partially arguing against – in which human control of nature is only seen as



Religion, Cities, and the Control of Nature

155

something which endangers the planet. “For hundreds of years,” Giddens writes, people worried about what nature could do to us – earthquakes, floods, plagues, bad harvests and so on. At a certain point, somewhere over the past fifty years or so, we stopped worrying so much about what nature could do to us, and we started worrying more about what we have done to nature. The transition makes one major point of entry in risk society. It is a society which lives “after nature.” (Giddens 1999, 3) Giddens correctly observes that one of the characteristics of the modern risk society is the ability to damage, sometimes permanently, large portions of the nonhuman environment, and yet he is working under the assumption that what counts as true “nature” is necessarily outside of human influence – we can thus speak of living “after nature,” because all of the nonhuman world has been somehow touched by human influences. While we undoubtedly live in a time where all of nature has somehow been influenced by humanity (McKibben 1990), the Red River flood reminds us that we will never live in a period that is fully “after nature,” as Giddens claims. The ability for humans to destroy nature is frighteningly powerful; similarly, hubristic attempts at controlling nature, such as witnessed in New Orleans and the lower Mississippi River, can have catastrophic consequences. Yet this human ability to transform nonhuman nature does not mean that the entire nonhuman world is now servile, as climate change is increasingly showing us. Despite Giddens’s claim, many people still worry about “earthquakes, floods, plagues, bad harvests and so on” – and not only in the Dakotas. “Nature,” so to speak, has not stopped acting. The effects of global climate change, or what Thomas Friedman (2008) calls “global weirding,” are one example of how we can simultaneously (and justifiably) worry about “what we have done to nature” while also worrying about what nature can “do to us” – we humans are increasingly altering our atmosphere and climate systems, but that does not mean that we now control our weather or even fully understand how and why weather occurs, and it might also mean that some weather systems will become increasingly violent and antagonistic to human flourishing. Humans have undoubtedly influenced all of nonhuman nature, in other words, but humanity has not (nor will it ever) succeeded in controlling the nonhuman world, nor have all of the nonhumans around us lost their agency. But we can even move beyond instances such as global climate change, where humans have clearly influenced and altered nonhuman nature and

156

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

see that we are in no way truly “after nature.” The philosopher Slavoj Žižek made comments along these lines shortly after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan. “The catastrophe,” he remarked during a lecture, happened in one of the most highly developed countries in the world, which, on the top of it, was fully aware that it finds itself in the earthquake zone. So, to put it with cruel irony, the conditions to test our safety measures were optimal. I mean, there we cannot say we were not developed enough, or we didn’t know how this could happen. [It] brings home an important lesson which, of course, in all probability will be ignored: natural disasters are useful reminders that our ecological troubles cannot be reduced to human hubris, to our disturbance of some balanced order of mother earth. Nature is chaotic in itself, prone to cause the wildest disasters, meaningless and unpredictable catastrophes. We are mercilessly exposed to nature’s cruel whims. There is no mother earth watching over us. We are not disturbing nature’s balance, we are just prolonging it. So we have nowhere to withdraw; there is no mother earth or balanced state to which we should [..] modestly return. So there is, I claim, something deceptively reassuring in our readiness to assume full guilt and responsibility for the threats to our environment. We like to believe that if we are guilty, then it all depends on us, we pull the strings, and so in principle we can also save ourselves by simply changing our lives. What is really difficult for us to accept is that we are sometimes reduced to the purely passive role of an impotent observer who can only sit back and watch what his fate will be. To avoid such a situation, we are prone to engage in frantic, obsessive activities: recycling paper, buying organic food, or whatever, just so that we can be sure that we are doing something. (Žižek 2011) Žižek is half right in his observation. Some forces of nature, such as Japan’s earthquake and tsunami, are so beyond human ability to control that there is, for many, very little one can do to augment the situation. And the sense of anomie that follows such a lack of control can be so powerful that people can move toward finding token measures which are ultimately ineffective but give people at least some sense of empowerment and control over their lives; one could argue that the dikes in Grand Forks and other river towns are a good example of such ultimately futile measures. One might say that cities such as Grand Forks are both “after nature” and yet nonetheless directly vulnerable to their nonhuman environment. Grand Forks now has an extensive flood control system, but that does not mean the city is now permanently secure from flooding. Indeed, there are



Religion, Cities, and the Control of Nature

157

some historical reasons to suspect that the 1997 flood is not the largest one possible; in Winnipeg, for instance, the estimated crests of the floods of 1826 and 1852 were both significantly higher than any modern flood.14 “The flood of 1997,” James Mochoruk, a local historian, has observed, “is not only likely to be repeated, but one day will be surpassed” (1998, 296). Those responsible for designing and building the new dike system indeed planned for the flood to be surpassed. The 1997 flood came to just over 54 feet, and the new dikes were constructed to 60, with the possibility of adding three feet to the top.15 So far, the new flood protection system has worked well as Grand Forks has experienced high river levels several times since 1997, most notably in 2009 and 2011. But Mochoruk’s caution is nonetheless appropriate; we simply have no way of firmly knowing how high the river can go. Would the city be protected from a 1,000-year flood, for instance, as Nashville, TN, experienced in 2010? In light of such floods, respecting the power of nonhuman nature means not only recognizing our limits, preventing harm to our environments, and respecting the dignity of the nonhuman while accounting for the perhaps painful surprises of nature-as-coyote. It also means respecting – and even reasonably fearing – the destructive capabilities that live within our environments, and, to whatever degree possible, trying to protect ourselves from such power. There is an irony here: we must respect the power of nature, and recognize our inability to always control it, while we also must try to protect ourselves to some degree from its vicissitudes. The people of Grand Forks, after all, were only briefly “impotent observers,” to use Žižek’s phrase; they were able to build newer and much better walls after the flood, in anticipation of future catastrophes. Protection, in this case, can at times mean trying to control certain parts of the nonhuman world as best we can. The Grand Forks flood, along with other natural disasters, is a challenge not because it demonstrates that we should always control nature in  all circumstances, but because it reminds us of the full capacities of the nonhuman world. David Harvey writes that “Western discourses regarding the relation to nature,” which include but go beyond religious traditions, “have frequently swung on a pendulum between cornucopian optimism and triumphalism at one pole and unrelieved pessimism not only of our powers to escape from the clutches of naturally imposed limits but even to be autonomous beings outside of nature-driven necessities at the other pole” (1996, 149). The flood might be a reminder that neither of the two extremes of this pendulum are viable – hubristic “triumphalism” will not only inevitably fail, but is often profoundly destructive to the nonhuman world

158

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

and more vulnerable humans, and yet giving over all control to external, “natural” forces would not be conducive to human life. What, however, does this have to do with cities, beyond the dangers posed to them during natural disasters? As discussed earlier, perceptions of nature are almost always linked to perceptions of humanity and, in urbanized areas, cities; in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, for instance, US cities were thus often depicted as sinful and dangerous, in contrast to a morally pure countryside. In Grand Forks after the flood, one of the ways a link between the urban and the natural appears is in desires to control the Red River (which often functioned as a stand-in for “nature”), which were tied to desires to rebuild the city and its downtown. The rebuilding of Grand Forks was dependent on controlling the Red, in other words, and controlling the Red would have been pointless without the existence of a city along its banks. Understanding the Red River as something in need of control thus also entails images about the city of Grand Forks; controlling nature also means preserving and building a city. For questioning how we should build cities, which these pages can only lightly touch upon, an awareness of mutual reliance between images of nature and images of cities might change the equation of how one thinks about the moral ramifications of controlling nature. There exists a lesson behind the realization that those things which we group together as “nature” and the “city” are, in fact, intimately related and only falsely separated: the point of such an observation is not now to lump cities into the category of “nature” (or the reverse), but to realize that both categories fail us. To borrow Bruno Latour’s (2004) language, as I have done elsewhere in these pages, we instead have a multiplicity of “things” existing in various relationships with one another. The question of controlling nature, then, is ultimately a false one. There is not a unified, singular “nature” to control. To lump a multiplicity of things into categories of “nature” and “city,” and then to attempt to dominate the former results in profound destruction to life on many levels; I believe this has been proven well enough now by generations of scholars. But to argue that we should protect or love or restore all of these nonhuman things while still keeping them lumped together under “nature” simply uses the same dichotomous logic as those who wish to dominate. The city of Grand Forks does not sit alongside of “nature.” Rather, a collection of objects and organisms augmented by humans, which we call the city, sits among and in numerous relationships to a particular collection of organisms and objects that can collectively be labeled a “river” (its own little construction) or “nature.” This is an awkward way of phrasing things,



Religion, Cities, and the Control of Nature

159

but it is also more accurate.16 Thus, questioning the control of nature, or arguing that controlling or dominating nature is necessarily a moral wrong, misses the point: we can try to control where particular animals live, the spread of certain micro-organisms, the growth of specific trees in a forest, or the way water floods over a local river’s bank, but to lump all of these things into a single moral problem misses the particularities of each, which must inform any ethical decision-making. Carolyn Merchant, for instance, is quite right to critique paradigms justifying the domination of nature that undergirded the Industrial Revolution. And yet this does not mean we now necessarily must let all of those things still grouped under the label “nature” flourish to their fullest, or, as she argues, strive to achieve the greatest good for both humans and nature. We might instead find more nuanced ways of asking when certain nonhumans must be controlled in order to insure human survival (we do this every time we eat, after all). We justifiably want the rain out of our homes and the floods out of our neighborhoods; but we also want the rain in fields and forests, and we want floods in deltas and wetlands. It is not possible to take simple distinctions between nonhumans seriously so long as we continue to speak of “nature” as the focus of our moral concern. Furthermore, asking the question “Should we control nature?” or even more specifically “Should we dike in this particular river at this time and place?” inherently misses the human factor necessarily implied in the equation; definitions of nature do not exist in a vacuum, and those things we label as “nature” only exist in relationship to other things and against an implicit “humanity.” The overwhelmingly dominant question for many people in Grand Forks, for instance, was not simply, or only, how to control “nature” after the flood, through confining the flow of the Red River, but how people could continue living their lives and how they could maintain an existence in a particular city or neighborhood that they knew as home – questions which, for many, are also religious questions. The question is not just “can we control the Red River,” but also “How do we muck out our basements?”, “When can I return to work and collect an income?” and “Is it safe to live in this neighborhood?” In other words, just as those things we group together as the city and nature are part of numerous relationships across the urban-natural divide, the practical and more ethical questions arising out of the flood are interconnected and span across concerns for both sides of the dike, both urban and nature. David Harvey’s pendulum, which swings between a “triumphalism” over nature and an “unrelieved pessimism” about humanity’s inability to control the world, is thus too simplistic; there are more concerns at play in a place

160

Public Religion and the Urban Environment

such as Grand Forks than simply whether or not humans should or can control nature, and that nature is itself composed of a myriad of things. Controlling “nature,” or parts of the nonhuman world, also implicitly means something about how “humans” live; people in Grand Forks were concerned about the river because they are concerned about the safety of the homes, and because it is the river along which their homes were built – it is part of Grand Forks being “home.” The question cannot only be if some nonhumans should be interfered with or controlled; not only must we invariably control at least some of the nonhuman world in order to survive, but a question of what to do with nonhumans is invariably also a question about humans and, quite often, their cities.

Notes

Chapter 1 As discussed in Chapter 2, in these pages I assume that nature and humanity are artificial and false categories, which I nonetheless use to refer to those things which are very commonly referred to as either “human” or “natural” (such as ­cities and rivers). 2 Many of these images are discussed in Chapter 2. 3 For a discussion of such religious uses of nature, see Albanese 1990 and Roach 2003. 4 “First nature” refers to the nonhuman world as untouched by humans, whereas “second nature” refers to transformations of the nonhuman world by humans. ­William Cronon, for instance, describes changes in the landscape around ­Chicago in the nineteenth century using this language: “A kind of ‘second nature,’ designed by people and ‘improved’ toward human ends, gradually emerged atop the original landscape that nature – ‘first nature’ – had created as such an inconvenient jumble” (Cronon 1991, 56). 5 The Chester Fritz Library at the University of North Dakota, which is located in Grand Forks and was partially flooded in 1997, holds an extensive collection of materials which form the primary sources for this project. A smaller archive is additionally located at Minnesota State University in Moorhead. 6 Most popular media was accessed through two databases, Lexis Nexis and Factiva. Relevant articles were primarily compiled by database searches using the term “Grand Forks,” with relevant time constraints. The Grand Forks Herald, whose offices were destroyed in the 1997 flood, is not electronically available for the months immediately following the flood, but physical copies were accessed in library archives. For newspaper coverage of Grand Forks, articles were compiled from four national newspapers (chosen because of their high circulation and their availability on online databases) – the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and the Wall Street Journal – as well as the Grand Forks Herald and two regional papers, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and the Fargo Forum. 7 Data was entered into open-source qualitative data analysis software (Weft QDA), and coded according to relevant themes and terms. Depictions of the city and nature were recorded regardless of whether they used any form of religious imagery or language, and research findings were additionally parsed out between whether or not they were published by a religious institution or figure. 8 Tierney et al. (2006), in their work on Hurricane Katrina, have also shown the powerful role of the media in shaping perceptions of disasters.

1













162

Notes

David Chester and Angus Duncan (2010) have argued, however, that “supernatural interpretations of natural disasters” continue to be exceedingly common (their research is specific to volcanic eruptions and earthquakes). Two important qualifiers need to be made on their research, however. First, they are surveying responses to disasters globally (as opposed to within the US). Second, and perhaps more importantly, they are trying to uncover supernatural explanations outside of public discourse; this project, in contrast, is looking specifically at public discourse. As is discussed in the fourth chapter, my research has shown an almost total absence of language that blames the disaster on God, but a continued presence (and even dominance) of language that nonetheless see God as actively protecting and rebuilding the city. 10 Mike Davis’s work on Los Angeles (e.g., 1998) and the omnipresence of potential natural disasters does a vivid job of describing humanity’s ultimate inability to control our environment permanently. 11 In a parallel argument, Rozario (2007) observes that disasters allow governments and (today) large multinational corporations to redefine policy and profit from calamity. 12 Social reform answers the question of theodicy in this situation, because, for Weber, religions that focus on law or ritual (his primary examples are Confucianism and some forms of Judaism) are not concerned with rejecting the world, but seek instead to adapt to it. 13 In a different use of Weber’s idea of theodicy, Steiner-Aeschliman (1999) argues that the environmental crisis has caused a “legitimation crisis” for the modern, industrial, disenchanted world, re-opening the possibility for new kinds of religious authority or re-enchantment. 14 Field notes, 16 June 2009. 15 Bourdieu often preferred to speak of ideas or predispositions that are non-conscious, as opposed to unconscious, so as to differentiate his theory from Freudian psychology. 16 Lewis Mumford likewise saw the physical infrastructure of the city as not only a reflection of social order, but as a force that continually made social order possible. “What men cannot imagine as a vague formless society,” Mumford writes, “they can live through and experience as citizens in a city. Their unified plans and buildings become a symbol of their social relatedness; and when the physical environment itself becomes disordered and incoherent, the social functions that it harbors become more difficult to express” (Mumford 1938, 481). 9

Chapter 2 For an example of how this applies to the study of “world religions,” see ­Masuzawa 2005. Evan Berry (2011) has also provided a helpful discussion of how religion is defined within scholarship on religion and nature. 2 Religion does not do this alone, however. Along with Thomas Luckmann, Berger argues that the primary “conceptual machineries of universe maintenance” that create and uphold the symbolic universe are “mythology, theology, philosophy, and science” (Berger and Luckmann 1966: 110).

1





Notes

163

Geertz writes that “if sacred symbols did not at one and the same time induce dispositions in human beings and formulate, however obliquely, inarticulately, or unsystematically, general ideas of order, then the empirical differentia of religious activity or religious experience would not exist.” Geertz then uses the example that a person can be said to be “religious” about a sport, but this is only true (according to Geertz’s definition) insofar as such a person sees something the sport as “symbolic of some transcendent truth” (98). 4 Furthermore, while the majority of Grand Forks is Christian, there is a small but established Jewish community; it is also likely that there is a substantial percentage of the population that considers itself “spiritual but not religious;” especially considering the dominance of the University of North Dakota on the town’s composition. Most importantly, not all imagery or perceptions cataloged in my research (such as Mother Nature imagery) are exclusively Christian. 5 As discussed toward the end of this chapter, Catherine Albanese (1990) has written extensively on the different ways in which “nature” has served as a religious and moral authority in the history of the US. 6 Latour (2004) is primarily concerned with how arguments based on what is natural effectively cut off democratic debate; he goes on to argue for speaking in terms of “collectives,” at least when undergoing research projects – that is, mapping out the associations in a given context that exist between all entities, human and nonhuman. Many others, such as Donna Haraway (1989), however, have also argued groups of human (especially along gender and racial lines) are often labeled as more “natural” as thus accorded less ethical importance. 7 As Gaziano (1996) observes, Park noted that the concern of “human ecology” is “not man’s relation to the earth which he inhabits, but his relations to other men” (1926: 2). 8 Bell and Jayne (2006) define “small” in terms of mindset – residents and neighboring large cities understand the place as a small city (thus in some places it might contain 10,000 people, and in others it might hold 500,000 people). 9 Williams goes on to note that Marx and Engels saw socialism as “abolishing the contrast between town and country” and establishing an “intimate connection between industrial and agricultural production” (Engels, quoted in Williams 1973, 304). For an overview of Marx’s understanding of nature, see Foster 2000. 10 Machor is specifically arguing with scholarship such as that of Leo Marx (1964). 11 On Marxist perspectives on the metabolization of nature, see Foster 2000. 12 Earlier in the same essay, he writes that much contemporary urban theory tends to create a normative image of the “city” that erases differences between cities, and much of the literature on cities and the environment (particularly literature on sustainable cities) creates a simplistic notion of the city. “The risk,” Braun writes, “is that cities are understood as spatially bounded and homogeneous, eliding the networks that link local places and actors with others elsewhere, and the vast disparities that exist within cities” (2005, 636). 13 Gandy is specifically arguing with Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1997), whose work has been used by other urban theorists (e.g., Kaika and Swyngedouw 2000). 14 This field has begun to recently organize itself more formally. In  2007, for instance, the Religion and Cities Consultation began meeting at the American Academy of Religion. 3

164

Notes

The city of God is a heavenly place for Augustine. Cain was the first person to build a city, Augustine notes, not his more righteous brother Abel, whom he slew (see Sennett 1990, 6–8) 16 The biblical author, after giving rather precise measurements, descriptions of foundation stones, numbers of gates, and so on, goes on to write: 15

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, sparkling like crystal, flowing from the throne of God and the Lamb coming down the middle of the city’s streets. On either side of the river stood a tree of life, which yields twelve crops of fruit, once for each month of the year. The leaves of the trees are for the healing of all nations . . . There shall be no more night, nor will they need the light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will give them light; and they shall reign for ever. (Rev. 22.1-5, Revised English Bible). These authors, it should be noted, are using the paradigm of Eden/Babylon/ Jerusalem quite freely, including when it is not used by their subjects (e.g., any utopic portrayal of the city is included as a depiction of a New Jerusalem). 18 The European settlement of the Grand Forks area came initially from Canada (through Winnipeg, which is downriver from Grand Forks), and so its history is tied to that of the Canadian prairies. 19 The “city on a hill” metaphor has continued past the seventeenth century. In a recent study of Pentecostalism in contemporary Guatemala City, for instance, Kevin O’Neill (2010, 184–5) found exhortations for congregants to become a “city on a hill” and save both their city and the world. President Ronald Reagan also used the phrase (as a way to describe the United States as a moral example to the world) in several speeches. 20 There has been more influence on urban design by separatist religious groups (such as Shakers), though because of their separatist nature their influence is limited on the rest of society. As noted earlier, the Mormon Church has also had some influence on urban design in Utah (Reps 1965, 439–74). 21 Writing on the view from a bridge going over the river Irk, in Manchester, Engels comments: 17

The view  .  .  .  is characteristic for the whole district. At the bottom flows, or rather stagnates, the Irk, a narrow, coal-black, foul-smelling stream, full of debris and refuse, which it deposits on the shallower right bank. In dry weather, a long string of the most disgusting blackish-green slime pools are left standing on this bank, from the depths of which bubbles of miasmatic gas constantly arise and give for a stench unendurable even on the bridge forty of fifty feet above the surface of the stream. . . . The stream itself is checked every few paces by high weirs, behind which slime and refuse accumulate and rot in thick masses. Above the bridge are tanneries, bone mills, and gasworks, from which all drains and refuse find their way into the Irk, which receives further the contents of all the neighbouring sewers and privies. It may be easily imagined, therefore, what sort of residue the stream deposits (1845/1978, 581). 22

For a response to the scholarship that has emerged to date on religion and nature, see Bauman, Bohannon and O’Brien 2011.



Notes

165

John Gatta (2004) has argued, however, that within the writings and sermons of Jonathan Edwards, perhaps the most significant Puritan thinker in the Americas, there was an environmental ethic that anticipates the later works of Aldo Leopold. 24 For a history of this literature, see Grim and Tucker 2011. 25 Interestingly, some people have used this perception of environmentalism-asreligion as a way of invalidating the work of environmental organizations. Bron Taylor mentions a government executive who discredits the work of the Environmental Protection Agency because it “is a religion, not a job, to its people” (2006, 589), and Laurel Kearns (2007, 109–16) has shown how some global warming deniers have attempted to discredit the science that indicates anthropogenic climate change as a religion. 26 It should be noted that this perspective is closer to my own definition of religion, as described above, than a functionalist approach. 27 Soleri has designed a number of other small cities and towns, often for agricultural settings, which have not been built. 28 While Soleri is clearly influenced by de Chardin, it should be noted that (unlike de Chardin) Soleri’s framework is not Christian, nor does it even include a concept of a god. 29 There have additionally been a number of much shorter essays on theology and architecture, including Sheldrake (2009) and Conradie (2009). 30 Moreover, an ethics or theology of the built environment for Gorringe must also be a theology of liberation – that is, a theology that is not only about creation but redemption too (2002, 222–40). His more recent work has focused on an ethic of building cities based on “the common good” in light of peak oil and climate change (2009), and a theology of grace as it pertains to the “global emergency” and the built environment (2011). 23

Chapter 3 High mountain regions would be colder, of course, but they remain relatively unpopulated. According to the National Weather Service, the average high in January for Grand Forks is 14.9°F, and the average low is –2.7°F. It is not uncommon for high temperatures to drop below freezing in late November or early December, and then stay below freezing until late February or March. 2 Such a tree-less landscape was perhaps the partial result of land management by Native Americans (Anderton 1998). 3 The Métis developed their own language system; French-Métis spoke Michif, a blend of French and indigenous languages (especially Cree), and Anglo-Métis spoke Bungi or the Red River Dialect, a mix of Scotch/Orkney and Cree, as well as English and Objibwe (Bakker and Barkwell 2006). 4 While this early European settlement was indeed violent, in the two centuries before the 1860s (Minnesota gained statehood in 1858) there nonetheless existed a hybrid relationship between Europeans and Native Americans that was tenuous but relatively peaceful and mutually beneficial. See Wingerd 2010. 5 Like many frontier towns, life was difficult and often tinged with violence. By one account, for instance, in 1881 the town held “three hundred people and about

1









166

Notes

sixty buildings, forty-five of which dispensed liquor” (Dovre 1980: 3). Institutional churches existed only at the periphery of town, though the violence of frontier life had also brought missionaries; Catholics were successful in Manitoba in the mid-nineteenth century, where there was already a substantial French Catholic population, while Protestant missionaries generally were not. 6 While the current wave of immigration is numerically larger than that of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it is proportionately smaller. Between 1901 and 1910, 8.8 million people immigrated to the US, which represented 9.5 per cent of the total US population in 1910; 10.2 million people are estimated to have immigrated to the US in the decade between 2001 and 2010, but this represents only 3.3 per cent of the total population for 2010 (Schaefer 2011, 121). 7 This trend has recently been reversed in rural western North Dakota, however, with the sudden growth of oil fields there in the past decade. 8 For the ethnic history of the area, see Sherman 1983, and Sherman and Thorson 1988. 9 While Presbyterians and Methodists were the first to establish permanent congregations in Grand Forks (Tweton 2005), the rush of immigration in the 1890s brought Lutherans, Catholics, and a small Jewish population. Though Lutherans dominated (and continue to dominate) the new religious landscape, they contained a number of divisions among them. In addition to ethnic distinctions – for example, there were Norwegian Lutherans, Swedish Lutherans, and Danish Lutherans, each worshiping in separate parishes in their native language – there were divisions within immigrant communities from the same country. Among the Norwegians, for instance, there were three different Lutheran denominations (Hauges, Free Church, and Synod or United) (Lindberg 1980). 10 Approximately 100,000 people live in the official Grand Forks metropolitan area, which includes all of Grand Forks County, ND, and Polk County, MN. This figure is misleading, however, as these counties are heavily rural outside of the city limits of Grand Forks and East Grand Forks (with the exception of Grand Forks Air Force Base, which lies about 15 miles west of the city and housed just under 5,000 people at the 2000 census). Grand Forks is in the habit of annexing its outer growth and suburban sprawl, and so there are no contiguous suburbs that exist as separate municipalities. Like any US city, there is nonetheless a small percentage of people who live in neighboring small, rural towns, separated from Grand Forks by miles of farmland, and commute to work in the city. 11 Non-Hispanic whites make up over 93 per cent of Grand Forks in the 2000 census, and Native Americans are the largest minority (2.8 per cent), followed by Hispanics (1.9 per cent) and blacks (0.9 per cent). 12 There has also been a sizable migrant population of Hispanic agricultural workers, primarily in the sugar beet fields. New technology for harvesting sugar beets has made these workers unnecessary in recent years, however, and the local migrant population has shrunk significantly. 13 Grand Forks is located in Grand Forks County (ND) and East Grand Forks is located in Polk County (MN). 14 According to the Association of Religion Data Archives, the combined figures for the two counties in  2000 were Lutherans 32 per cent (33,235, including 26,515 in the ELCA); Catholics 21.65 per cent (22,335); and other Protestants



Notes

167

19.5 per cent (10,443). There is one synagogue in Grand Forks, roughly a century old and located near downtown, which has diminished in size and is now served by student-rabbis who stay for only one year. As with much of the US, there is also a growing presence of Pentecostalism. The Assemblies of God, for instance, is the fifth-largest denomination in North Dakota, though their presence in Grand Forks is smaller. In 2000, the Assemblies of God only reported 466 total members in three congregations in Grand Forks (Rodgers 2003: 308). 15 Ironically, because Grand Forks was able to build a robust protection system after 1997 (the destruction from the flood was enough to attract federal funding, which had not been previously available), Fargo is now the most vulnerable city along the Red River. This caused Fargo to be at great risk during the flood of 2009 – which was the largest flood on record in Fargo, and the third-largest in Grand Forks – whereas Grand Forks and Winnipeg were much more secure. As of this writing, Fargo is currently planning on building a large floodway, similar to that found in Winnipeg. 16 In the US, river height is measured from the base of the riverbed (Canada uses a different system); thus the average river height and flood stage varies between towns depending on whether the river is relatively wide and shallow or narrow and deep at that location. The official flood stages in Fargo, Grand Forks, and Winnipeg are thus all quite different. 17 Kimberly Porter (2001), who has written the most exhaustive history of the 1997 flood (based on the oral history project she helped to direct at UND), goes into great detail on the evacuation process. 18 A relief worker I interviewed (22 June 2009) commented that coverage of floods in the Red River Valley over-emphasized, both in 1997 and in 2009, urban issues and tended to ignore the widespread rural issues. An unfortunate result of this imbalanced coverage has been that relief assistance in local floods is often much more oriented to cities, and more difficult to obtain in rural areas. 19 Ashley Shelby (2003) has given the most extensive journalistic account of the National Weather Service’s predictions, and lays the blame for the flood fully on its shoulders. Kimberly Porter (2004), a historian at UND, has strongly critiqued Shelby’s research, however. 20 This observation is based on a review of media responses, outlined in more detail in Chapters 4 and 5. 21 The Army Corps of Engineers is (and was) responsible for the dike system. In New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, the Army Corps of Engineers was often (justifiably) blamed for poor engineering decisions along the Mississippi River long before the storm hit in 2005 (see Colten 2005), which heightened the risks and effects of flooding. In Grand Forks, however, I found no evidence of anger in Grand Forks toward the Army Corps before the flood hit that city. The engineering problems of the lower Mississippi River, furthermore, are significantly different from those of the Red River of the North. In the lower Mississippi, the river has been confined within a dike system for two centuries, causing the riverbed to slowly rise and the surrounding landscape to subside. Thus, flooding in the area is amplified by how the river has been engineered since the late eighteenth century. The Red River of the North, in contrast, has not been heavily diked, and there are no permanent dikes at all in many rural areas along the river.

168

Notes

The two cities along the river on the US side are also both relatively small, and were not able to afford a flood protection system on their own; Grand Forks was only able to secure adequate federal funding after the flood in 1997, and Fargo has only been able to secure adequate funding for an enlarged system since the 2009 flood. 22 For 1997, approximately 50,000 to 52,500 people lived in Grand Forks (estimates vary) and 9,000 lived in East Grand Forks. The US Census Bureau’s estimated populations for 2010 are 52,838 for Grand Forks and 8,601 for East Grand Forks. 23 This notion came up in numerous interviews I held. It also fits with Kevin Rozario’s claim that modern US disasters have been framed as “instruments of progress” (Rozario 2005, 28). 24 The Social Science Research Institute at UND prepared a survey for the city of Grand Forks (1997) of home-owners who voluntarily participated in a buy-out program for severely damaged houses. In their findings, which were presented three months after the flood, the price of individual homes (which included 184 houses at that point, all on the North Dakota side of the river) ranged from $20,000 to $650,000; the average price of homes in the four relevant neighborhoods ranged from $77,699 to $183,147. 25 Interview notes, 19 June 2009. East Grand Forks has the only Cabela’s between Winnipeg and the Twin Cities. See also Schroeder and James (2001). 26 For instance, four years before the Grand Forks flood, Charles Flink (the head of Greenways, Inc.) published one of the major texts which outlined the design and implementation of greenways (Flink and Searns 1993), with examples from across the country. 27 In a survey of residents taken in November and December of 2007, the greenway “activities,” in order of most used to least used, were “walking, biking, picnics, nature trails, golfing, running, public races/walks, cross country skiing, ice skating, disc golf, bird watching, athletic fields, star gazing, tennis courts, softball fields, fishing, wildlife photography, in-line skating, basketball courts, boating, snowmobiling, and canoeing” (Greenway 2007: 10). 28 The labyrinth, however, is barely visible unless one is standing immediately next to it; I walked by the labyrinth several times myself before realizing it was there. The idea for it came from Mike Maidenberg, formerly the publisher of the Grand Forks Herald, and no churches or other Christian organizations participated in building it. When I interviewed a Greenway employee from the city of Grand Forks while sitting on a nearby bench, we both remarked that the labyrinth was becoming overrun by weeds, and she commented that she had not noticed it being used (interview, 4 June 2010). In a 2007 survey conducted by the Greenway, however, it was listed as a popular “event.” 29 This is explored in more depth in Chapter 5. 30 Boston’s “Emerald Necklace,” developed by Frederick Law Olmsted in the 1870s and 1880s, is an early example of a string of parks going through an urban area (see Freestone 2002). 31 For instance, in reviewing planning documents, city council minutes, and promotional literature used at the time the downtown and the Greenway were being developed, the following cities, counties and programs were explicitly mentioned



Notes

169

as models for how Grand Forks should rebuild itself: Winnipeg, MB; Charleston, SC; legislation in Colorado; the Missouri River Centennial Commission; Athens, GA; Bristol, TN; the Main Street Program in Washington, DC; Boise, ID; Duluth, MN; Rochester, MN; Howard County, MD; Virginia, MN; Chattanooga, TN; Chicago, IL; Denver, CO; Johnson County, KS; Minneapolis and St. Paul, MN; Portland, OR; Oklahoma City, OK; Dallas, TX; and San Francisco, CA. 32 The Charles River was originally a tidal basin, which flooded with the tide and left behind a large “bay” of mud at low-tide. The development of a large park system (primarily in the nineteenth century) along the Charles not only beautified the city of Boston, but was driven by public health concerns, among other things (Haglund 2002).

Chapter 4 The greater Grand Forks area is split between two dioceses in the Roman Catholic Church: the North Dakota side of the river belongs to the diocese of Fargo, and the Minnesota side belongs to the diocese of Crookston. 2 In the 1993 flood along the Mississippi River in the Midwest, Katherine Fry (2003) sees a myth of an idealized agrarian heartland at play, consisting of hard-working, unsophisticated white people running single-family, independent farms. Churches were often visual symbols of these perceived communities. The agrarian focus of the 1993 floods is missing from coverage of the 1997 flood, likely in part because of the scale of flooding in Grand Forks and the visual spectacle of the city’s downtown burning. In both instances, the ruggedness of the local population is due to their relationship with the land and their ethnicity – in the 1993 floods, residents are portrayed as both white and as farmers – but in the Dakotas, this relationship is specifically tied to the area’s harsh winter climate. 3 Responses to Hurricane Katrina were less kind, with various religious figures (Christian, Jewish, and Muslim) calling the hurricane divine retribution for things as various as homosexuality, voodoo, the war in Iraq, and racism (Dyson 2006, 179–81; see also Ross and Ross 2008, 558–62). 4 It is interesting to note that both of these populations – Jews and homosexuals – have most often been stereotyped in broader American culture as urban (and ghettoized) people. 5 In the 1993 flood in the Midwest, however, Fry sees the primary news frame as “the fight with Mother Nature” (Fry 2003, 95) 6 An internet search (21 July 2010) showed this phrase used in multiple campaigns by the Salvation Army; it has subsequently been used by others as well. 7 Tours were given for religious leaders while the city was still too dangerous for residents to re-enter, with the hopes that they would be able to communicate to parishioners the status of neighborhoods and explain to anxious residents why they needed to wait to check on their property. 8 It was relatively common for home-owners to spray-paint messages on the sides of their destroyed houses; see Hagen et al. 1999. 9 The official, and rarely used, name of the fund was the Greater Grand Forks Immediate Aid Fund.

1

















170

Notes

Ross and Ross (2008, 562–3) found a similar theme in their work on post-Katrina reconstruction in New Orleans. 11 Newsweek also described helicopters in wartime terminology. An article on the flood begins with this image: “Dodging radio towers blackened by power outages, a North Dakota National Guard chopper flies through the night on a recon mission” (McCormick 1997, 30). 12 This image was reprinted in the Herald’s commemorative flood book, with the caption, “Faith in Fatigues” (Jacobs 1998, 97). 13 For Berger, theodicy is brought about by anomic forces, allowing the irrational “surrender of self to the ordering power of society” (Berger 1967, 54); or, put less bluntly, it allows the “integration” of a person’s experience of disorder with their own internalization of the dominant social order. (Berger is following Durkheim [1912/1995] here in his focus on “anomic” forces). The primary work of religion in this rubric is legitimate the social order in the cosmic or nonhuman sphere. 14 In the 2000 election, both the mayor and most of the city council in Grand Forks were voted out of office. 15 The allusion to biblical passages is not commented upon in the 1997 playbill, but the 2007 playbill contains this explanatory note: “We heard the words from Mayor Owens and it struck a chord and the rest was from Dan Pederson. It comes from 2 Timothy vs. 1-4.” 10

Chapter 5 For instance, many home-owners in Grand Forks, particularly in the North Dakota side, were frustrated at the city’s speed in determining where the dike line would fall and how affected homes would be bought by the government. This meant that a number of home-owners had to live for several months (and longer) without knowing if they could repair and keep their homes, or if their homes were going to be demolished and they would be forced to relocate. See Fothergill 2004. 2 As one person I interviewed observed, it will take years before we are able to truly evaluate how well the city was able to recover from the flood (interview, 4 June 2010). 3 Unless otherwise noted, in this chapter “downtown” refers to both downtown Grand Forks and downtown East Grand Forks, which are immediately across the river from each other. 4 32nd Avenue and Columbia Road is a suburban intersection by Columbia Mall, the largest shopping mall in Grand Forks and the center of suburban development in the city. 5 This standard terminology is slightly misleading. A 100-year flood simply means that in any given year there is a 1/100 chance that a flood will occur at a particular level. Thus every year, for instance, there is a 1 per cent chance of a 100-year year flood; over any given decade, there is a 10 per cent chance of such a flood. Furthermore, because of long-term weather patterns, flood years tend to come close to one another – thus a 100-year flood one year does not mean it will not be repeated for the next 99 years (this might explain the large

1











Notes

171

number of high floods that have hit the Red River valley in the past two decades, as ­discussed briefly in Chapter 3). The 1997 flood has also been described by many as a ­500-year flood, especially in early media coverage; current flood models ­suggest this to not be the case. 6 Flood walls (which are, as their name implies, straight walls) cannot be reinforced to give them additional height; dikes, on the other hand, are sloped hills with a ten-foot wide flat surface at the top (primarily to allow access for emergency vehicles), and thus can be reinforced with sandbags in a severe flood, allowing them to match the height of the flood walls. 7 The English Coulee nonetheless also flooded in 1997, damaging nearby neighborhoods and part of the campus of the University of North Dakota, which the Coulee runs through. As part of the post-1997 flood mitigation system, the English Coulee Diversion Channel was significantly enlarged. 8 Many homes which were severely damaged during the flood were placed on the wet side of the dike, but the most contentious decisions were about homes that were not severely damaged during the flood, but needed to be demolished so as to widen the river channel. 9 See Chapter 2 for a longer discussion on the construction of nature. 10 Because of pressure to compete as a national center of trade after the development of the steamboat in the 1830s, it was decided by a court that trade was the paramount use of the Mississippi, and that its banks could be developed with buildings and other infrastructure. This made a firm shift away from any remaining attempts to work with the natural flows and deposits of the river, toward trying increasingly to fully stabilize it for economic purposes (Kelman 2003, 78). 11 For a similar argument specific to the Mississippi River in southern Louisiana, see Anuradha Mathur and Dilip da Cunha (2006). 12 The river beacons, which were never built, were to be decorative towers erected on both sides of the river along the dikes, with lights atop each beacon (ReImagining Downtown 1997, 4). 13 The Grand Forks Parks District is a separate entity from the city government, capable of collecting its own taxes. 14 According to one interview, some people were concerned that the greenway would only attract homeless people and, after dark, loitering teenagers, with both groups perceived as dangerous or undesirable. 15 This theme was otherwise largely missing from the Christian materials that I surveyed, and there was no significant religious participation in the development of the greenway. In the Greenway Alliance, for instance, which was a conglomeration of business, governmental, and civic organizations that supported the development of the greenway, there were no religious members outside of a Catholic grade school; the school’s participation was primarily because it uses recreational fields which were to be on the wet side of the dike (interview, 18 June 2009). One minor exception to this trend was the newsletter of Lutheran Social Services, Disaster Outreach (April 1998), which reprinted a community survey of people’s hopes for rebuilding and included the goal of Grand Forks “becom[ing] a recreational area that draws on the region’s unique artistic, ethnic and natural heritage.” As discussed in Chapter 3, a small labyrinth was also recently built for

172

Notes

meditative use; it was, however, primarily the project of only one person and does not appear to be widely used. 16 North Dakota voted a prohibition law into the state constitution in the late nineteenth century; as Minnesota did not have this law, bars moved across the river to East Grand Forks (Tweton 2005, 25). 17 As discussed in Chapter 3, an invisible flood wall is essentially a series of decorative columns, widely separated, between which a protective wall can be placed during a flood. 18 In an interview with a greenway employee for the city of Grand Forks, she suspected that the boardwalk was eliminated because of privacy concerns from homeowners immediately adjacent to the dikes (interview, 4 June 2010). The proposed buildings to be constructed into the side of the dikes were also never developed. 19 It should be noted, however, that many of recreational activities offered in the greenway, especially fishing, are also fully embraced by the working class community as well. 20 See Chapter 2.

Chapter 6 There are a few minor exceptions to this, however, such as references to phoenixes, a mythological bird, when the city was being rebuilt. 2 This hesitancy to see God in nature might have receded somewhat after the flood, as the construction of a meditative labyrinth in the greenway implies. 3 Further historical work, including (but not exclusive to) previous floods, might help to answer this question. 4 This does not mean that such influences are always the same, of course. Even within Grand Forks, language shifted considerably between the initial period of the flood and the following years of less dramatic reconstruction. 5 The three largest organizational structures in the US for the study of religion and the environment, for instance, are the Forum on Religion and Ecology, the Religion and Ecology group at the American Academy of Religion, and the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture. In Europe, however, scholars have formed the European Forum for the Study of Religion and the Environment. 6 As noted in Chapter 2, the term “ecology” has also been adopted by sociologists in an analogical sense to describe human communities (such as cities) that work in a manner similar to natural ecosystems. This use of the word “ecology” has not found significant traction outside of sociology, however. 7 This is not unlike Bruno Latour’s argument (2004) for speaking of a “collective” as a word to include things commonly split into separate categories of the “social” and “natural.” 8 This label, we might note, would not accurately describe cities such as Grand Forks; the essays included in Orsi’s volume include research from Seattle, Miami, Washington, DC, and (for the majority of essays) New York City.

1

















Notes

173

Beyond issues of industrialization and secularization, for instance, urban churches have also been seen as “community organizations,” an idea going back at least to WEB Du Bois; in this vein, Arthur Farnsley has looked at urban community ­organizations in the context of governmental cooperation with faith-based ­organizations (Farnsley 2003). Others have focused on particular urban congregations or on religious districts in urban neighborhoods (e.g., McRoberts 2003), on pluralism, religious diversity, and responses to urban change (Livezey 2000), and on the effects of suburban sprawl on religious practice (Eiesland 2000; ­Diamond, 2003). 10 There are a few notable exceptions to this trend, all of which deal with the built, but not natural, environment of cities. Mary Lethert Wingerd’s history of religion and politics in the early years of St Paul, MN (2001), is perhaps the most notable, as she deals with early city planning in the Twin Cities, among other things (such as the placement of the Catholic cathedral in St Paul on a hillside overlooking downtown). Diane Winston (1999) has also written on the sacralization of the streets of New York City among early members of the Salvation Army, and Paul Ivey (2002) has written on the politics of urban architecture in early Christian Science churches. Nancy Eiesland’s work (2000) would be a partial exception to the trend above, in that she has looked at the ways exurban sprawl on the fringe of Atlanta changed religious practices in a former small town being overtaken by suburban development. One additional and partial exception would be Jerome Baggett’s work (2001) on habitat for humanity as a form of public religion. ­Baggett, however, is not dealing with cities, but only on the construction of personal homes. As noted, however, none of these works deal with the natural environment in any significant way. 11 Marx (1844), for instance, saw the effects of alienation caused by capitalist industry on both how humans related to one another and how they related to the nonhuman world, and saw religion as a (unproductive) method of coping with such alienation. 12 George Perkins Marsh had already noted this in the nineteenth century, in his influential Man and Nature (1864). 13 It should be noted, however, that while this is true of most cities, it is not true of slums (either currently or historically), where the ability to keep out the rain, rats, and other “wilder” things can never be assumed. 14 In Grand Forks, the estimated crests of these floods were slightly below the 1997 levels. 15 For a dike to properly work there needs to be at least two feet of height (called “freeboard”) between the maximum water level and the top of the dike. This allows for temporary changes in the water level (e.g., due to high winds or ice accumulation) and protects the top of the dike from crumbling in such situations. Thus, a 60-foot dike, for instance, would be able to handle a maximum water level of 58 feet. 16 Interestingly, Latour has argued that getting rid of the term “nature” is only useful for research purposes; he does not mean it to be a rubric for daily life (see Barron 2003). 9

174

Works Cited

Primary Sources Andrys, Bonnie, and Dave Andrys (eds). 1999.The dedication of Sacred Heart School, East Grand Forks, Minnesota, August 14–15, 1999. East Grand Forks, MN: Sacred Heart Catholic Community. Bakken, Ryan. 2011. “Stories of recovery in GF give hope.” Grand Forks Herald, 2 July. Baranauckas, Carla. 1997. “Life returning to normal in North Dakota.” The New York Times, 23 June. Blezard, Rob. 1998. “Red River Resurrection.” The Lutheran, April. Bloom, Linda. 1997. “In some Upper Midwest areas, flood’s effects linger for months.” United Methodist Committee on Relief. http://gbgm-umc.org/umcor/ emergency/archives/storm709.stm (accessed 10 June 2008). Camiros, Ltd. 1998. A strategic plan for downtown Grand Forks. Prepared for the city of Grand Forks, ND, in association with EDAW, Inc. October. Cardinal Muench Seminary. 2009. Flood 2009. http://www.cardinalmuench.org/ flood09.html (accessed 25 March 2011). City of Grand Forks. 2007. Introduction. Accessed 9 Dec 2009. http://www.grandforksgov.com/Flood/Introduction.pdf Coleman, Calmetta Y. 1997. “Grand Forks, ND, finds its huge flood isn’t a total disaster.” Wall Street Journal, October 17. Coleman, Nick. 1997. “Rising above the waters: The Red River of the North devastated communities and uprooted lives.” St. Paul Pioneer Press, 27 April. Dowling, Claudia Glenn, and Linda Gomez. 1998. “Ain’t it Grand.” Life, March. ELCA Domestic Disaster Response. 1997. The archives: Established on 24 April 1997: “Upper Midwest winter storms and subsequent floods.” Printed on 8 May 1998, and archived at the Chester Fritz Library, University of North Dakota. http:// elca.org/dcs/disaster/97archiv/a-midwes.html —1998. “Update on Upper Midwest floods.” Printed on 8 May 1998, and archived at the Chester Fritz Library, University of North Dakota. http://elca.org/dcs/ disaster/midwest.html. Enger, Leif. 1997. “Day of prayer in Fargo.” Minnesota Public Radio, May 1. http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/199704/04_newsroom_ flood/501enger.htm (accessed 15 November 2009). Extension. 1997. “Heal hopelessness with your donation.” June. Favre, Jeff. 1997. “You’ve got a friend: 750 partner churches provide aid and relief to flood victims.” The Lutheran, December. Fedor, Liz. 1997. Owen’s: “‘We’re in God’s Hands.’” Grand Forks Herald, 19 April.

176

Works Cited

—1997b. “Water slows fight against downtown Grand Forks fire.” Grand Forks Herald, 20 April. —1997c. “Another day of lost battles, and embers of hope.” Grand Forks Herald, 21 April. —1997d. “Mayor inspires GF as dad, 92, evacuates farm.” Grand Forks Herald, 21 April. —1997e. “A $2,000 helping hand: Anonymous donor offers gift to hardest-hit GF, EGF families.” Grand Forks Herald, 30 April. Findley, L. R. 1998. “Soaked, burned, and salvaged: Grand Forks, North Dakota, rebuilds after its epic flood and fire.” Architecture, May. Flink, Charles. 1998. “Red River of the North Greenway: Final report.” Prepared for the US Army Corps of Engineers, St Paul District. April. Friends of the Greenway. 2001. Newsletter, 1 May. Fudge, Tom. 1998. “The Noahs of Grand Forks: Postflood reconstruction is a story of struggle and ingenuity.” Inc., May. Gilmour, Gerry. 1998. “Heart of downtown: Flood-ravaged Grand Forks is poised to unveil an improved business district.” Fargo Forum, 3 October. Glassheim, Eliot, ed. 1999. Voices from the flood: An oral history of the 1997 flood of the Red River of the North. Grand Forks: North Dakota Museum of Art. —2002. Behind the scenes: Leadership and decision-making in a natural disaster. Grand Forks: North Dakota Museum of Art. Goldberg, Carey. 1997a. “As a river rises, so does a small town’s determination.” New York Times, 27 April. —1997b. “Stoic Midwestern town bails out after flood.” New York Times, April 28. Gregg, Carol. 1999. “Hope in midst of destruction.” In The Dedication of Sacred Heart School, East Grand Forks, Minnesota, August 14–15, 1999, ed. Bonnie and Dave Andrys. East Grand Forks, MN: Sacred Heart Church. Originally published in Our Northland Diocese, 25 September 1997. Greenway, Grand Forks/East Grand Forks. 2007. Greater Grand Forks Resident Survey Nov/Dec 2007. Haga, Chuck. 1997. “Poet-angler returns to beloved Red River.” Minneapolis StarTribune, 9 June. Hagerty, Marilyn. 2007. “Ten years later . . . Grand Forks.” North Dakota Horizons, Spring. http://www.ndhorizons.com/horizons/featured/index.asp?ID12 (accessed 26 October 2009). Hansen, Craig. 1997. “Flood Diary.” Minnesota Public Radio, 7 April–4 May. http:// news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/199704/04_newsroom_flood/ (accessed 15 November 2009). Hanson, Nancy Edmonds. 1998. “Looking back: Upper Midwest recovery movement is a ‘shining moment’ among Lutheran partners.” Recovery: Lutheran Disaster Response, April. Herman, Stewart W. 1997. “Coming together in Fargo.” Christian Century, 30 July– 6 August. Hill, Dennis, ed. 1997. “Ice storm fury, massive flood, tragic fire” (issue title). North Dakota REC/RTC Magazine, May. Howlett, Debbie. 1997. “After the river’s wrath, ‘haunting’ silence.” USA Today, 24 April.



Works Cited

177

Hulden, John. 1997. “The Red River rises.” Sojourners 26.4. Hylden, Eric, and Laurel Reuter (eds). 1998. Under the whelming tide: The 1997 flood of the Red River of the North. Grand Forks: North Dakota Museum of Art. Isaacson, Gregory. 1997. “Advent of flood recovery: God was prepared in ways we didn’t expect.” The Lutheran, December. Jacobs, Mike (ed.). 1998. Come hell and high water: The incredible story of the 1997 Red River flood. Grand Forks: Grand Forks Herald. Jacobs, Mike and Mike Maidenberg. 1997. “The day the changed everything.” Grand Forks Herald, 20 April. Jacobson, Louis. 2002. “Flood’s fertile soil sprouts new growth.” National Journal 34, no. 36: 2560. Johnson, Dirk. 1997. “Flooding crests in ravaged city; residents face weeks of anxiety.” New York Times, 22 April. Keillor, Garrison. 2001. In search of Lake Wobegon. Photographs by Richard Olsenius. New York: Viking. Koehler, Darrel. 1997. “For some, a big city problem hits home; although infrequently, some homes in Grand Forks were robbed by looters during the flood.” Grand Forks Herald, 1 May. Kurtz, Jane. 2000. River friendly, river wild. Illustrated by Neil Brennan. New York: Simon and Schuster. Lamb, Jerome D. 1988. “Faith and the shape of the land.” In Scattered steeples: The Fargo diocese: A written celebration of its centennial, edited by Jerome D. Lamb, Jerry Ruff, and Fr William Sherman. Fargo, ND: Burch, Londergan and Lynch. —1998. “Flood: A theme with variations.” Special issue, The Small Voice 22, no.2. Lee, Stephen J., and Phil Long. 1997. “And on the seventh day . . . Exiles find comfort and encouraging words at church service.” Grand Forks Herald, 28 April. Leopold, Claudia. 1997. “Disaster opens a floodgate of generosity.” Extension, June. Lonetree, Anthony. 1997. “More flood victims find shelter beneath their angel’s wings.” Minneapolis Star-Tribune. 1 May. Lopez, Steve. 1997. “The city that wouldn’t drown.” Time, 5 May. Lutheran Brotherhood. 1998. “Confirmation extravaganza launched to ‘Keep the Faith.’” Printed on 23 June 1998, and archived at the Chester Fritz Library, University of North Dakota. http://www.luthbro.com/n_01/flood97/flood3.html. Lyons, John. 1999. “Pot of gold builds rainbow after flood in Grand Forks.” Winnipeg Free Press, 12 September. Malcolm, Teresa. 1997. “Priests serve evacuees.” National Catholic Reporter, 9 May. McCormick, John. 1997. “Washed away.” Newsweek, 5 May. Milbank, Dana. 2010. “If oil spill is ‘an act of God,‘ BP merits divine retribution.” Washington Post, 6 June. Miller, David L. 1997a. “Fighting the good fight.” The Lutheran, June. —1997b. “More than a house.” The Lutheran, June. —1997c. “Beyond the rainbow.” The Lutheran, June. Nelson, Tim. 1997. “Fighting a flood: Whiz-bang technology plays a vital role in the modern flood-war arsenal.” Grand Forks Herald, 17 April. Nelson, Wayne, and Kevin Grinde. 1997. “Red, Red Lake rivers begin to recede in Grand Forks.” Grand Forks Herald, 24 April.

178

Works Cited

Operation We Care: A Special Edition of the Scope Newsletter. 1997. Turning flood victims into survivors. Salvation Army. Orvik, Jan, and Richard P. Larson. 1998. The return of Lake Agassiz: The University of North Dakota and the flood of 1997. Grand Forks: University of North Dakota. Owens, Pat. 1998. “A word from Mayor Pat Owens.” Recovery Road, March. Paulus, Tim, Bonnie Greenleaf, and Christopher Behling. 2008. “Restraining the Red River of the North.” Civil Engineering, January. Philpot, Leon. 1997. Letter to the editor. The Lutheran, December. Post, Robert F. 1997. Greenway plan: Grand Forks, East Grand Forks. US Army Corps of Engineers, 22 May. Quam, Jennifer (ed.). 1999. Asmall town’s war: East Grand Forks 1997 flood fight. East Grand Forks, MN: City of East Grand Forks. Recovery: Lutheran Disaster Response. “1998a. Children return to Camp Noah this month.” April. —1998b. “LDR/LSS and volunteers return life to normal for grateful Grand Forks family.” 4 April. —1998c. “Volunteers sill needed as upper Midwest recovery progresses.” May. Recovery Road. 1998a. “Losing a house – not a home.” February. —1998b. “Phoenix arising.” September. Re-Imagining Downtown Committee and Atelier Heamavihio. 1997. “Re-Imagining downtown greater Grand Forks: Executive summary.” 12 August. Robertson, Tasha. 1997. “Not just a gift: A $10 million miracle.” Minneapolis StarTribune, 30 April. Schill, Damien. 1997. “A community is truly blessed.” Extension. June. Urban Land Institute. 1997. Downtown Grand Forks: Grand Forks, North Dakota: A ­strategy for rebuilding downtown Grand Forks. An advisory services panel report, ­September 7–12. Washington, D.C.: Urban Land Institute. Von Sternberg, Bob. 1997. “Faith amid the ruin.” Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 23 April. Wald, Matthew L. 1997. “Clinton promises flood victims a ‘Marshall Plan.’” New York Times, 23 April, A20. Westboro Baptist Church. 2009. “Thank God for record flooding in North Dakota!” Newsletter. 25 March. Winnipeg Free Press. 1997. A red sea rising: The flood of the century. Winnipeg: ­Winnipeg Free Press. Winrod, Gordon. 1997. “Why God furiously revenges in freeze, flood and fire.” ­Winrod Letter. June. Zaleski, Jack. 1997. “Icy floods try midwestern optimism.” Christian Science Monitor, 11 April.

Secondary Sources Albanese, Catherine L. 1990. Nature religion in America: From the Algonkian Indians to the New Age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. —2002. Reconsidering nature religion. Rockwell lecture series. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International.



Works Cited

179

Ammerman, Nancy T. 2007. Everyday religion: Observing modern religious selves. New York: Oxford University Press. Anderson, Bernhard W. 1994. From creation to new creation: Old Testament perspectives. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Anderton, John B.1998. “The Red River valley prior to major American settlement: A cultural landscape created by Native American landscape Burning.” The North Dakota Quaterly 65, no.4: 24–34. Bachelard, Gaston. 1964. The poetics of space. Translated by Maria Jolas. New York: Orion Press. Baggett, Jerome P. 2001. Habitat for Humanity: Building private homes, building public religion. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Bakker, Peter, and Lawrence Barkwell. 2006. “Michif languages.” In Metis legacy (volume II): Michif culture, heritage, and folkways, edited by Lawrence J. Barkwell, Leah M. Dorion, and Audreen Hourie, 173–81. Saskatoon: Gabriel Dumont Institute and Pemmican Publications. Barnhill, David Landis, and Roger S. Gottlieb (eds). 2001. Deep ecology and world religions: New essays on sacred ground. Albany: State University of New York Press. Barron, Collin (ed.). 2003. “A strong distinction between humans and non-humans is no longer required for research purposes: A debate between Bruno Latour and Steve Fuller.” History of the Human Sciences 16, no. 2: 77–99. Bauman, Whitney A., Richard R. Bohannon II, and Kevin J. O’Brien (eds). 2011. Inherited land: The changing grounds of religion and ecology. Eugene, OR: Pickwick. Bauman, Zygmunt, and Tim May. 2001. Thinking sociologically. 2nd edn. Oxford: Blackwell. Beck, Ulrich. 1999. World risk society. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Bell, David, and Mark Jayne. 2006. “Conceptualizing small cities.” In Small cities: Urban experience beyond the metropolis, edited by David Bell and Mark Jayne 1–18. London: Routledge. Bellah, Robert N. 1964. “Religious evolution.” American Sociological Review 29, no. 3: 358–74. —1967. “Civil religion in America.” Daedalus 96, no. 1: 1–21. Benton-Short, Lisa, and John Rennie Short. 2008. Cities and nature. New York: Routledge. Berger, Arthur Asa. 1998. Media analysis techniques. 2nd edn. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Berger, Peter L. 1967. The sacred canopy: Elements of a sociological theory of religion. New York: Anchor. Berger, Peter L., and Thomas Luckmann. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Berry, Evan. 2011. “Nature religion and the problem of authenticity.” In Inherited Land: The Changing Grounds of Religion and Ecology, ed. Whitney Bauman, Richard Bohannon, and Kevin O’Brien. Eugene, OR: Pickwick. Besecke, Kelly. 2005. “Seeing invisible religion: Religion as a societal conversation about transcendent meaning.” Sociological Theory 23, no. 2: 179–96. Bohannon, Richard R. II. 2011. “Religion and the urban environment.” In Inherited Land: The Changing Grounds of Religion and Ecology, edited by Whitney Bauman, Richard Bohannon, and Kevin O’Brien. Eugene, OR: Pickwick.

180

Works Cited

Bookchin, Murray. 2007. Social ecology and communalism. Oakland, CA: AK Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1991. Outline of a theory of practice. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Brand, Jeffrey D. 1999. “Religious discourse in times of crisis: Declaring ‘Victory’ after the Grand Forks flood of 1997.” North Dakota Journal of Speech and Theatre 12: 65–72. Braun, Bruce. 2005. “Environmental issues: writing a more-than-human urban geography.” Progress in Human Geography 29, no. 5: 635–50. Brown, D. Mackenzie. 1965. Ultimate concern - Tillich in dialogue. New York: Harper & Row. Brown, Karen McCarthy. 1999. “Staying grounded in a high-rise building: Ecological dissonance and ritual accommodation in Haitain Vodou.” In Gods of the city, edited by Robert A. Orsi, 79–102. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Brown, Peter. 2000. Augustine of Hippo: A Biography. New edition. Berkeley: University of California Press. Brown, William P., and John T. Carroll. 2000. “The garden and the plaza: Biblical images of the city.” Interpretation 54, no. 1: 3–11. Buder, Stanley. 1990. Visionaries and planners: The garden city movement and the modern community. New York: Oxford University Press. Campbell, Brian G. 2011. “Religion and ecology on the ground: ‘Practice’ and ‘place’ as key concepts.” In Inherited Land: The Changing Grounds of Religion and Ecology, edited by Whitney Bauman, Richard Bohannon, and Kevin O’Brien. Eugene, OR: Pickwick. Carnes, Tony, and Anna Karpathakis (eds). 2001. New York Glory: Religions in the City. New York: New York University Press. Casanova, José. 1994. Public religions in the modern world. Chicago: University of ­Chicago Press. Chapman, Kim Alan, Adelheid Fischer, and Mary Kinsella Ziegenhagen. 1998. Valley of grass: Tallgrass prairie and parkland of the Red River region. St. Cloud, MN: North Star Press. Chester, David K., and Angus M. Duncan. 2010. “Responding to disasters within the Christian tradition, with reference to volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.” Religion 40: 85–95. Cobb, John B., Jr. 1972. Is it too late? A theology of ecology. Beverly Hills, CA: Bruce. —1975. Christ in a pluralistic age. Philadelphia: Westminster Press. —2007. A Christian natural theology: Based on the thought of Alfred North Whitehead. 2nd edn. Louisville: Westminster John Knox. Collins, Julie. 1997. “Environmental health effects of the Red River flood of 1997.” Journal of Environmental Health 60, no. 2: 17–21. Colten, Craig E. 2005. An unnatural metropolis: Wresting New Orleans from nature. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. Conradie, Ernst M. 2009. “The whole household of God: The use of the oikos metaphor in the built and the non-built environment.” In Nature, space and the sacred: Transdisciplinary perspectives, edited by S. Bergmann, P. M. Scott, M. Jansdotter Samuelsson, and H. Bedford-Strohm. Farnham, Eng.: Ashgate. Cox, Harvey. 1966. The secular city: Secularization and urbanization in theological perspective. New York: Macmillan.



Works Cited

181

—1984. Religion in the secular city: Toward a postmodern theology. New York: Simon and Schuster. Cronon, William. 1991. Nature’s metropolis: Chicago and the great West. New York: W.W. Norton. —1996. “The trouble with wilderness; or, getting back to the wrong nature.” In Uncommon ground: Rethinking the human place in nature, edited by William Cronon, 69–90. New York: W. W. Norton. Cross, Bradley D. 1997. “New Jerusalems for a new world: The garden city idea in modern planning thought and practice in Britain, Canada and the United States, 1900–1970”. PhD diss., University of Cincinnati. Davis, Karen M., and Morten G. Ender. 1999. “The 1997 Red River Valley flood: Impact on marital relationships.” Applied Behavioral Science Review 7, no. 2: 181–8. Davis, Mike. 1998. Ecology of fear: Los Angeles and the imagination of disaster. New York: Vintage. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. 1997. “City-state.” In Rethinking architecture: A reader in cultural theory, edited by Neil Leach. London: Routledge. Diamond, Etan. 2003. Souls of the city: Religion and the search for community in postwar America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Dovey, Kim. 2005. “The silent complicity of architecture.” In Habitus: A Sense of Place, edited by Jean Hillier and Emma Rooksby. 2nd Edition. London: Ashgate. — 2008. Framing Places: Mediating Power in Built Form. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. Dovre, Paul J. 1980. “Religion: Backbone of the Valley.” Red River Valley Historian,Fall: 3–6. Dyson, Michael Eric. 2006. Come hell or high water: Hurricane Katrina and the color of disaster. New York: Basic Civitas. Durkheim, Emile. 1912/1995. The elementary forms of religious life. Translated by Karen E. Fields. New York: Free Press. Eiesland, Nancy. 2000. A particular place: Urban restructuring and religious ecology in a southern exurb. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Enarson, Elaine. 2000. “‘We will make meaning out of this’: Women’s cultural responses to the Red River Valley flood.” International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters 18, no. 1: 39–62. Enarson, Elaine, and Joseph Scanlon. 1999. “Gender patterns in flood evacuation: A case study in Canada’s Red River Valley.” Applied Behavioral Science Review 7, no. 2: 103–24. Engels, Friedrich. 1845/1978. “Working Class Manchester.” In The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd edn, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 579–85. Erikson, Kai. 1976. Everything in its path: Destruction of community in the Buffalo Creek flood. New York: Simon and Schuster. Evernden, Neil. 1992. The social creation of nature. Baltimore: The John’s Hopkins University Press. Farnsley, Arthur E. II. 2003. Rising expectations: Urban congregations, welfare reform, and civic life. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Farnsley, Arthur E. II, N. J. Demerath III, Etan Diamond, Mary L. Mapes, and Elfriede Wedam. 2005. Sacred circles, public squares: The multicentering of American religion. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

182

Works Cited

Flink, Charles A., and Robert M. Searns. 1993. Greenways: A guide to planning, design, and development. Edited by Loring LaB. Schwarz. Washington, DC: Island Press. Foster, John Bellamy. 2000. Marx’s ecology: Materialism and nature. New York: Monthly Review Press. Fothergill, Alice. 2004. Heads above water: Gender, class, and family in the Grand Forks flood. Albany: State University of New York Press. Freestone, Robert. 2002. “Greenbelts in city and regional planning.” In From garden city to green city: The legacy of Ebenezer Howard, edited by Kermit C. Parsons and David Schuyler, 67–98. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Freudenburg, William R., Robert Gramling, Shirley Laska, and Kai T. Erikson. 2008. “Organizing hazards, engineering disasters? Improving the recognition of political-economic factors in the creation of disasters.” Social Forces 87, no. 2: 1015–38. Friedman, Thomas L. 2008. Hot, flat, and crowded: Why we need a green revolution – and how it can renew America. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Fry, Katherine. 2003. Constructing the Heartland: Television news and natural disaster. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Fumagalli, Vito. 1994. Landscapes of fear: Perceptions of nature and the city in the Middle Ages. Translated by Shayne Mitchell. Cambridge, Eng.: Polity Press. Gandy, Matthew. 2002. Concrete and clay: Reworking nature in New York City. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. —2005. “Cyborg urbanization: Complexity and monstrosity in the contemporary city.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 29, no. 1: 26–49. —2006a. “Rethinking urban metabolism: Water, space and the modern city.” City 8, no. 3: 363–79. —2006b. “Riparian anomie: Reflections on the Los Angeles River.” Landscape Research 31, no. 2: 135–45. Ganje, Lucy, and Lynda Kenney. 2004. “Come Hell and high water: Newspaper photographs, minority communities, and the greater Grand Forks flood.” Race, Gender and Class 11, no. 2: 78–89. Gatta, John. 2004. Making nature sacred: Literature, religion, and environment in American from the Puritans to the present. New York: Oxford University Press. Gaziano, Emanuel. 1996. “Ecological metaphors as scientific boundary work: Innovation and authority in interwar sociology and biology.” The American Journal of Sociology 101, no. 4: 874–907. Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books. Giddens, Anthony. 1999. “Risk and responsibility.” The Modern Law Review 62, no. 1: 1–10. Giggie, John M., and Diane Winston (eds). 2002. Faith in the Market: Religion and the Rise of Urban Commercial Culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Gillette, Howard, Jr. 2010. Civitas by design: Building better communities, from the garden city to the new urbanism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Gorringe, Timothy J. 2002. A theology of the built environment: Justice, empowerment, redemption. New York: Cambridge University Press. —2009. “Living toward a vision: Cities, the common good, and the Christian imagination.” Anglican Theological Review 91, no. 4: 521–37.



Works Cited

183

—2011. The common good and the global emergency: God and the built environment. New York: Cambridge University Press. Gottlieb, Roger. 2006. A greener faith: Religious environmentalism and our planet’s future. New York: Oxford University Press. Gould, Rebecca Kneale. 2005. At home in nature: Modern homesteading and spiritual practice in America. Berkeley: University of California Pres. Grim, John, and Mary Evelyn Tucker. 2011. “Intellectual and organizational foundations of religion and ecology.” In Grounding religion: A field guide to religion and ecology, edited by Whitney Bauman, Richard Bohannon, and Kevin O’Brien, 81–92. New York: Routledge. Hagen, Carol A., Morten G. Ender, Kathleen A. Tiemann, and Clifford O. Hagen, Jr. 1999. “Graffiti on the Great Plains: A social reaction to the Red River Valley flood of 1997.” Applied Behavioral Science Review 7, no. 2: 145–58. Haglund, Karl. 2002. Inventing the Charles River. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hakutani, Yoshinobu, and Robert Butler (eds). 1995. The city in African-American literature. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. Haraway, Donna. 1989. Primate visions: Gender, race, and nature in the world of modern science. New York: Routledge. —1991. Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature. New York: Routledge. Hardy, Lee. 2009. “Nature and nature’s God: The religious background of the Garden City movement.” Christian Scholar’s Review 38, no. 4: 435–56. Harvey, David. 1996. Justice, nature and the geography of difference. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Heynen, Nik, Maria Kaika, and Erik Swyngedouw (eds). 2006. In the nature of cities: Urban political ecology and the politics of urban metabolism. New York: Routledge. Howard, Ebenezer. 1902. Garden cities of tomorrow. London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co. Hunt, Tristam. 2005. Building Jerusalem: The rise and fall of the Victorian city. New York: Metropolitan Books. Ivey, Paul E. 2002. “Christian Science architecture in the American city: The triumph of the classical style.” In Faith in the market: Religion and the rise of urban commercial culture, edited by John M. Giggie and Diane Winston, 108–32. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Jenkins, Willis. 2009. “After Lynn White: Religious ethics and environmental problems.” Journal of Religious Ethics 37, no. 2: 283–309. Johnson, Kirk. 2010. “Huge church project renews downtown, and debate. New York Times, 8 February. Kaika, Maria. 2005. City of flows: Modernity, nature, and the city. New York: Routledge. Kaika, Maria, and Erik Swyngedouw. 2000. “Fetishizing the modern city: The phantasmagoria of urban technological networks.” Internation Journal of Urban and Regional Research 24, no. 1: 120–38. Kearns, Laurel. 1996. “Saving the creation: Christian environmentalism in the United States.” Sociology of Religion 57, no. 1: 55–70. —2002. “Greening ethnography and the study of religion.” In Beyond personal knowledge: Reshaping the ethnography of religion, edited by James V. Spickard, J. Shawn  Landres, and Meredith B. McGuire, 212–24. New York City: New York ­University Press.

184

Works Cited

—2007. “Cooking the truth: Faith, science, the market, and global warming.” In Ecospirit: Religions and philosophies for the earth, edited by Laurel Kearns and ­Catherine Keller, 97–124. New York: Fordham University Press. Keller, Catherine. 1996. Apocalypse now and then: A feminist guide to the end of the world. Boston: Beacon Press. —2003. Face of the deep: A theology of becoming. New York: Routledge. Kellert, Stephen R. 2005. Building for life: Designing and understanding the humannature connection. Washington, DC: Island Press. Kelman, Ari. 2006. A river and its city: The nature of landscape in New Orleans. With a new preface. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kelsey, Vera. 1951. Red River runs north! New York: Harper & Brothers. Kitch, Carolyn, and Janice Hume. 2008. Journalism in a culture of grief. New York: Routledge. Kjellberg, Seppo. 2000. Urban ecotheology. Utrecht, the Netherlands: International Books. Lane, Belden C. 2000. “Two schools of desire: Nature and marriage in seventeenthcentury Puritanism.” Church History 69, no. 2: 372–402. Latour, Bruno. 2004. The politics of nature: How to bring the sciences into democracy. Translated by Catherine Porter. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. —2005. Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. New York: Oxford University Press. Lawson, Erma J., and Cecelia Thomas. 2007. “Wading in the waters: Spirituality and older black Katrina survivors.” Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved 18: 341–54. Lindberg, D. R. 1980. “Pastors among the people.” Red River Valley Historian, Fall: 12–15. Livezey, Lowell W. (ed.). 2000. Public religion and urban transformation: Faith in the city. New York: New York University Press. Luckmann, Thomas. 1967. The invisible religion: The problem of religion in modern society. New York: Macmillan. Machor, James L. 1987. Pastoral cities: Urban ideals and the symbolic landscape of America. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Marsh, George Perkins. 1864/2003. Man and nature. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Marx, Karl. 1844/1978. “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.” In The Marx-Engels reader, 2nd edn, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 66–125. Marx, Leo. 1964. The machine in the garden: Technology and the pastoral ideal in America. New York: Oxford University Press. Masuzawa, Tomoko. 2005. The invention of world religions: Or, how European universalism was preserved in the language of pluralism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mathur, Anuradha, and Dilip da Cunha. 2006. “Negotiating a fluid terrain.” In Rebuilding urban places after disaster: Lessons from Hurricane Katrina, edited by ­Eugenie L. Birch and Susan M. Wachter, 34–46. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Mazis, Glen A. 2007. “Ecospirituality and the blurred boundaries of humans, animals, and machines.” In Ecospirit: Religions and philosophies for the earth, edited by Laurel Kearns and Catherine Keller, 125–55. New York: Fordham University Press.



Works Cited

185

McFague, Sallie. 2008. A new climate for theology: God, the world, and global warming. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. McGrath, Alister E. 2008. The open secret: A new vision for natural theology. Malden, MA: Blackwell. McKibben, Bill. 1990. The end of nature. New York: Random House. McLeod, Hugh. 1998. “The urban/rural dichotomy in European and North ­American religious history from the eighteenth century to the twentieth.” Social Compass 45, no. 1: 7–19. McNamee, William. 1988. “Mother Stanislaus: Boom times and bad times.” In Scattered steeples: The Fargo diocese: A written celebration of its centennial, edited by Jerome D. Lamb, Jerry Ruff, and William Sherman, 51–9. Fargo, ND: Burch, Londergan and Lynch. McPhee, John. 1989. The control of nature. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux. McRoberts, Omar. 2003. Streets of glory: Church and community in a black urban neighborhood. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Meachem, Standish. 1999. Regaining paradise: Englishness and the early garden city movement. New Haven: Yale University Press. Merchant, Carolyn. 1989. The death of nature: Women, ecology and the scientific revolution. With a new preface. New York: HarperCollins. —2004. Reinventing Eden: The fate of nature in Western culture. New York: Routledge. Meyer, Ann R. 2003. Medieval allegory and the building of the New Jerusalem. Cambridge, Eng.: Brewer. Miles, Malcolm. 2006. “Garden cities and city gardens.” In Small cities: Urban experience beyond the metropolis, edited by David Bell and Mark Jayne, 135–50. London: Routledge. Mochoruk, James. 1998. “Marx—not hope—floats: A personal and historical reflection on life in a flood plain.” The North Dakota Quarterly 65, no. 4: 286–96. Morss, Rebecca E., and Eugene Wahl. 2007. “An ethical analysis of hydrometeorological prediction and decision making: The case of the 1997 Red River flood.” Environmental Hazards 7: 342–52. Morton, Timothy. 2007. Without nature: Rethinking environmental aesthetics. ­Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Mumford, Lewis. 1938. The culture of cities. New York: Harcourt, Brace. Neitz, Mary Jo. 2005. “Reflections on religion and place: Rural churches and ­American religion.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 44, no. 3: 243–7. Novotny, Patrick. 2000. Where we live, work and play: The environmental justice movement and the struggle for a new environmentalism. Westport, CT: Praeger. Oldfield, J. R. 2000. “City on a hill: American exceptionalism and the elect nation.” In The Holy Land, holy lands, and Christian history, edited by R. N. Swanson, 299–318. Studies in Church History, vol. 36. Suffolk, Eng.: Boydell Press. Oliver, Stuart. 2006. “The desire to metabolize nature: Edward Loveden Loveden, William Vanderstegen, and the disciplining of the river Thames.” In In the nature of cities: Urban political ecology and the politics of urban metabolism, ed. Nik Heynen,, Maria Kaika, and Erik Swyngedouw, 93–109. New York: Routledge. Oliver-Smith, Anthony. 2002. “Theorizing disasters: nature, power, and culture.” In Catastrophe and culture: The anthropology of disaster, ed. Susanna M. Hoffman and Anthony Oliver-Smith, 23–48. Sante Fe: School of American Research Press.

186

Works Cited

Orsi, Robert A. (ed.). 1999. Gods of the City. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. —2005. Between heaven and earth: The religious worlds people make and the scholars who study them. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Park, Robert. 1915. “The city: Suggestions for the investigation of human behavior in the urban environment.” American Journal of Sociology 20, no. 5: 577–612. —1926. “The concept of position in sociology.” Papers and Proceedings of the American Sociological Society 20: 1–14. Passfield, Robert W. 2001–2. “‘Duff’s Ditch:’ The origins, construction and impact of the Red River Floodway.” Manitoba History 41: 2–13. Peterson, Anna. 2001. Being human: Ethics, environment, and our place in the world. Berkeley: University of California. —2009. Everyday ethics and social change: The education of desire. New York: Columbia University Press. Pielke, Roger A., Jr. 1999. “Who decides? Forecasts and responsibilities in the 1997 Red River flood.” Applied Behavioral Science Review 7.2: 83–101. Pike, David L. 2007. Metropolis on the Styx: The underworlds of modern urban culture: 1800–2001. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Pollan, Michael. 2006. The omnivore’s dilemma: A natural history of four meals. New York: Penguin. Porter, Kimberly. 2001. Uncommon heroes: The city of Grand Forks flood fight, 1997. Grand Forks: North Dakota Museum of Art. —2004. “A river of errors.” Grand Forks Herald. 18 April. Plumwood, Val. 1999. “Being prey.” In The new earth reader: the best of Terra Nova, edited by David Rothenberg and Marta Ulvaeus, 76–91. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Prothero, Steven R. 2003. American Jesus: How the Son of God became a national icon. New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux. Rakow, Lana F., Becky Belter, Heidi Dyrstad, Jodi Hallsten, Jay Johnson, and Keri Indvik. 2003. “Class conflict in the making of a community disaster.” Southern Communication Journal 69, no. 1: 37–50. Rand, Ayn. 1943. The fountainhead. New York: Signet. Reps, John W. 1965. The making of urban America: A history of city planning in the United States. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Roach, Catherine. 2003. Mother/Nature: Popular culture and environmental ethics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Robinson, Elwyn B. 1966. History of North Dakota. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Robinson, Jennifer. 2002. “Global and world cities: A view from off the map.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 26: 531–54. —2005. “Urban geography: World cities, or a world of cities.” Progress in Human Geography 29, no. 6: 757–65. —2006. Ordinary cities: Between modernity and development. New York: Routledge. Rodgers, Darrin J. 2003. Northern harvest: Pentecostalism in North Dakota. Bismarck, ND: North Dakota District Council of the Assemblies of God. Ross, Robert R. N., and Deanne E. B. Ross. 2008. Walking to New Orleans: Ethics and the concept of participatory design in post-disaster reconstruction. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock.



Works Cited

187

Rossing, Barbara R. 1999. The choice between two cities: Whore, bride and empire in the Apocalypse. Harvard Theological Studies. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International. Rozario, Kevin. 2005. “Making progress: Disaster narratives and the art of optimism in modern America.” In The resilient city: How modern cities recover from disaster, edited by Lawrence J. Vale and Thomas J. Campanella, 27–54. New York: Oxford University Press. —2007. The culture of calamity: Disaster and the making of modern America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ruether, Rosemary Radford. 1992. Gaia and God: An ecofeminist theology of earth healing. New York: HarperCollins. —1993. Sexism and God-talk: Toward a feminist theology. With a new introduction. Boston: Beacon Press. Rybczynski, Witold. 1999. A clearing in the distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the nineteenth century. New York: Scribner. Samuel, Flora. 1999. “Le Corbusier, Teilhard de Chardin and ‘The planetisation of mankind.’” The Journal of Architecture 4: 149–65. Santmire, H. Paul. 1985. The travail of nature: The ambiguous ecological promise of Christian theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Sassen, Saskia. 2001. The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. 2nd edn. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Schaefer, Richard T. 2011. Race and ethnicity in the United States. 6th edn. Boston: Prentice Hall. Schroeder, Tim, and Joy James. 2001. “Collaboration in greenway development: Case study of the Grand Forks Greenway.” In Trends 2000: Shaping the future: Contributed papers for the 5th outdoor recreation & tourism trends symposium, 213–19. East Lansing, MI: Department of Park, Recreation and Tourism Resources, Michigan State University. Scott, Jamie S., and Paul Simpson-Housley. 1994. “Eden, Babylon, New Jerusalem: A taxonomy for writing the city.” In Writing the city: Eden, Babylon and the New Jerusalem, edited by Peter Preston and Paul Simpson-Housley, 331–41. New York: Routledge. Scruggs, Charles. 1993. Sweet home: Invisible cities in the Afro-American novel. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press. Seitz, Christopher. 1997. “The two cities in Christian scripture.” In The two cities of God: The church’s responsibility for the earthly city, edited by Carl E. Braaten and ­Robert W. Johnson, 11–27. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Sennett, Richard. 1990. The conscience of the eye: The design and social life of cities. New York: Alfred Knopf. —1994. Flesh and stone: The body and the city in western civilization. New York: W.W. Norton. Shelby, Ashley. 2003. Red River rising: The anatomy of a flood and the survival of an American city. St Paul, MN: Borealis Books. Sheldrake, Philip. 2009. “A spiritual city: Urban vision and the Christian tradition.” In Theology in Built Environments: Exploring Religion, Architecture, and Design, edited by Sigurd Bergmann, 151–72. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Sherman, William C. 1983. Prairie mosaic: An ethnic atlas of rural North Dakota. Fargo: North Dakota Institute for Regional Studies.

188

Works Cited

Sherman, William C., and Playford Thorson (eds). 1988. Plains folk: North Dakota’s ethnic history. Fargo: North Dakota Institute for Regional Studies. Short, John Rennie. 1991. Imagined country: Society, culture and environment. New York: Routledge. Sideris, Lisa. 2006. “Religion, environmentalism, and the meaning of ecology.” In The Oxford handbook of religion and ecology, edited by Roger Gottlieb, 446–64. New York: Oxford University Press. Simmel, Georg. 1971. On Individuality and Social Forms. Edited by Donald N. Levine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Smillie, B.G. 1983. “Introduction: Religious settlement on the prairies.” In Visions of the New Jerusalem, ed. Benjamin G. Smillie, 1–11. Edmonton: NeWest Press. Smith, Carl. 1995. Urban disorder and the shape of belief: The great Chicago fire, the Haymarket bomb, and the model town of Pullman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Smith, Conrad. 1992. Media and apocalypse: News coverage of the Yellowstone Forest Fires, Exxon Valdez oil spill, and Loma Prieta earthquake. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Smith, Jonathan Z. 2004. “Religion, religions, religious.” In Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion, 179–96. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Smith, Kimberly. 2007. African American environmental thought: Foundations. Lawrence: Univ. of Kansas Press. Social Science Research Institute, University of North Dakota. 1997. “Survey of Property Owners in the Acquisition Program.” Prepared for the Office of Urban Development, City of Grand Forks, ND. 24 July 1997. Soleri, Paolo. 1981. The omega seed: An eschatological hypothesis. New York: Anchor. Soper, Kate. 1995. What is nature? Culture, Politics and the Non-Human. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Spencer, Dan T. 1996. Gay and Gaia: Ethics, ecology and the erotic. Cleveland: The ­Pilgrim Press. Spirn, Anne Whiston. 1996. “Constructing nature: The legacy of Frederick Law ­Olmsted”. In Uncommon ground: Rethinking the human place in nature, edited by ­William Cronon, 91–113. New York: W.W. Norton. Steinberg, Ted. 2000. Acts of God: The unnatural history of natural disaster in America. New York: Oxford University Press. Steiner-Aeschliman, Sherrie. 1998. “The integrated Protestant ethic and the spirit of environmentalism.” PhD diss., Washington State University. Stephenson, Bruce. 2002. “The roots of the new urbanism: John Nolen’s garden city ethic.” Journal of Planning History 1, no. 2: 99–123. Swimme, Brian and Thomas Berry. 1992. The universe story: From the primordial flaring forth to the Ecozoic era: A celebration of the unfolding of the cosmos. New York: HarperCollins. Swyngedouw, Erik. 2004. Social power and the urbanization of water: Flows of power. Oxford, Eng.: Oxford University Press. —2006. “Metabolic urbanization: The making of cyborg cities.” In In the nature of cities: Urban political ecology and the politics of urban metabolism, edited by Nik Heynen, Maria Kaika, and Erik Swyngedouw, 21–40. New York: Routledge. Tanner, Kathryn. 2004. Spirit in the cities: Searching for soul in the urban landscape. ­Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress.



Works Cited

189

Taylor, Bron. 2006. “Religion and environmentalism in America and beyond.” In The Oxford handbook of religion and ecology, edited by Roger S. Gottlieb, 588–612. New York: Oxford University Press. —2010. Dark green religion: Nature spirituality and the planetary future. Berkeley: University of California Press. Taylor, Dorceta E. 2002. Race, class, gender, and American environmentalism. United States Department of Agriculture. General Technical Report PNW-GTR-534. Thistlewaite, Susan Brooks. 1994. “Why are our cities dying?” Theology Today 51.1: 17–26. Tierney, Kathleen, and Christine Bevc. 2007. “Disaster as war: Militarism and the social construction of disaster in New Orleans.” In The sociology of Katrina: Perspectives on a modern catastrophe, edited by David L. Brunsma, David Overfelt, and J. Steven Picou, 35–49. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Tierney, Kathleen, Christine Bevc, and Erica Kuligowski. 2006. “Metaphors Matter: Disaster Myths, Media Frames, and Their Consequences in Hurricane Katrina.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 604: 57–81. Tillich, Paul. 1963. Christianity and the encounter of world religions. New York: Columbia University Press. Todd, J. Terry. 1993. “Battling Satan in the city: Charles Henry Parkhurst and municipal redemption in gilded age New York.” American Prebyterians 71, no. 4: 243–52. —2002. “New York, the new Babylon? Fundamentalism and the modern city in Reverend Straton’s jazz age crusade.” In Faith in the market: Religion and the rise of urban commercial culture, edited by John M. Giggie and Diane Winston, 74–91. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Tucker, Mary Evelyn, and John A. Grim (eds). 1997–2004. Religions of the world and ecology. 10 vols. Boston: Harvard University Press. Tweton, Jerome. 2005. Grand Forks: A pictorial history. Expanded 2nd edn. Virginia Beach, VA: Donning. Varley, Jane. 2005. Flood stage and rising. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Wallace, Mark. 2005. Finding God in the Singing River. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Weber, Max. 1952. Ancient Judaism. Translated and edited by Hans H. Gerth and Don Martindale. New York: Free Press. —1978. Economy and society. 2 vols. Edited by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. —1920/2002. The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. 3rd Roxbury edn. ­Translated and with an introduction by Stephen Kalberg. Los Angeles: Roxbury Publishing. White, Lynn, Jr. 1967. “The historical roots of our ecological crisis.” Science 155, no. 3767: 1203–7. Whitney, Elspeth. 2006. “Christianity and changing concepts of nature: An historical perspective.” In Religion and the new ecology: Environmental responsibility in a world in flux, edited by David M. Lodge and Christopher Hamlin, 26–52. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame. Williams, Raymond. 1973. The country and the city. New York: Oxford University Press. Wilson, William Julius and Richard P. Taub. 2006. There goes the neighborhood: Racial, ethnic, and class tensions in four Chicago neighborhoods and their meaning for America. New York: Knopf.

190

Works Cited

Wingerd, Mary Lethert. 2001. Claiming the city: Politics, faith, and the power of place in St. Paul. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. —2010. North country: The making of Minnesota. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Winston, Diane. 1999. Red-hot and righteous: The urban religion of the Salvation Army. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Wolch, Jennifer. 2002. “Anima urbis.” Progress in Human Geography 26.6: 721–42. Wuthnow, Robert. 2011. Remaking the heartland: Middle America since the 1950s. ­Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Zecker, Robert. 2008. Metropolis: The American city in popular culture. Westport, CT: Praeger. Zimmer, Carl. 2011. “Evolution right under our noses.” The New York Times, 25 July. Žižek, Slavoj. 2011. “Catastrophic but not serious.” Lecture at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. New York City. 4 April 2011. http://fora. tv/2011/04/04/Slavoj_Zizek_Catastrophic_But_Not_Serious#fullprogram.

Index

“act of God”  2, 9–11, 78–93, 96–102, 108–9, 116, 141, 149, 162n. 9 actor network theory  12, 28, 134, 144–5, 158, 163n. 6 Albanese, Catherine L.  42, 45, 48–9, 161n. 3, 163n. 5 Alston, Dana  26–7 Ammerman, Nancy T.  22 angels  8, 89–91, 92–3, 105, 108, 152 anomie  14, 100, 119, 156, 170n. 13 anthropocentrism  26–7, 46, 81, 144 architecture  3–5, 14–16, 34, 40–1, 43–4, 51–2, 75, 92, 113, 133, 154, 165n. 29, 173n. 10 landscape architecture  120, 168n. 30 Arcosanti  51–2 Army Corps of Engineers (U.S.)  11, 67, 71–3, 117, 124, 131, 152, 167n. 21 Augustine  3, 39, 164n. 15 Babylon  13, 40, 42, 164n. 17 Bachelard, Gaston  14, 154 Baggett, Jerome P.  173n. 10 baptism  84–5, 88–9, 100, 111, 122 battle imagery  4, 40, 93–109, 113, 118, 134, 141–2, 149 Bauman, Zygmunt  119 Beck, Ulrich  123 Bell, David  30–2, 163n. 8 Bellah, Robert  21–4, 48, 108, 138 Berger, Peter  13–14, 20–5, 48, 88, 99, 138, 162n. 2, 170n. 13 Berry, Evan  45, 162n. 1 Berry, Thomas  26 Besecke, Kelly  22–3, 138 Bible (Christian)  8, 39–40, 42, 80, 85–90, 95, 101, 105–8, 113, 140, 170n. 15

Genesis  86, 101, 113, 141 164n. 15 see also Eden; Noah Revelation  3, 39–40, 164n. 16 see also New Jerusalem Blake, William  41 Bookchin, Murray  26 Boston, MA  76, 120, 168n. 30, 169n. 32 Bourdieu, Pierre  15–16, 162n. 15 Brand, Jeffrey D.  6, 15, 84, 92 Braun, Bruce  32, 37, 163n. 12 Brown, Karen McCarthy  53–4, 146 Brown, Michael  104 Burroughs, John  55, 145 Cabela’s  70–1, 132–3, 168n. 25 Camiros  98, 112–13, 126 camping  6, 71, 74, 86, 89, 120, 132, 154 Casanova, José  3, 22 chaos  4, 13–14, 17, 21, 40, 85–6, 99–102, 107–9, 115, 118–19, 141, 149, 151 Chester, David  162n. 9 Chicago, IL  13, 35–6, 38, 56, 161n. 4, 169n. 31 school of sociology  28, 39, 54 Christian Century (magazine)  7, 69, 81, 101 Christianity  2–4, 6–8, 15, 20–1, 23–5, 34, 39–49, 52–4, 69–70, 74, 81–4, 89–90, 96–109, 111–12, 139–42, 146–50, 163n. 4, 165n. 28, 168n. 28, 171n. 15, 173n. 10 see also Puritans and cities  3, 15, 34, 39–44, 52–4 evangelicals  39, 42, 61, 79–80 Grand Forks’ religious demographics  61–3, 166n. 14 Lutherans  61–3, 78, 84, 86–7, 91–2, 96–7, 99–101, 103–4, 112, 114, 140, 166n. 9, 14, 171n. 15

192

Index

Methodists  7, 61, 63, 86, 89, 92, 166n. 9 and nature  3–4, 45–9, 52–4, 69–70, 81–4 Protestantism  15, 21, 44, 63, 96, 141, 166n. 5, 14 Roman Catholics  7, 21, 41, 61–3, 70, 77–81, 84–5, 92, 97, 102–3, 112, 116, 152, 166n. 5, 9, 14, 169n. 1, 173n. 10 “city of God”  3, 39, 52, 164n15 “city on a hill”  3, 34, 39, 41–2, 44, 146, 164n. 19 class (economic)  12–13, 27, 35, 69–72, 75, 127, 133, 135, 142, 146, 172n. 19 disparities in and after 1997 flood  69–72, 75, 127, 133, 142 climate change  155, 165n. 25, 30 Cobb, John B., Jr.  45, 48, 52 Colten, Craig  36, 120–1, 167n. 21 Conradie, Ernst  165n. 29 Cox, Harvey  43, 147 Cronon, William  19, 35–6, 38, 51, 134, 148, 161n. 4 cyborgs  36–8, 51, 53 de Chardin, Teilhard  41, 51 Deepwater Horizon oil spill  10–11 Deleuze, Gilles  163n. 13 dikes  1, 4, 6, 10–11, 27, 49, 57, 64–5, 67, 69–73, 75, 88, 92–8, 101, 111, 113, 115, 117–28, 132–3, 137, 141, 151–3, 156–9, 167n. 21, 170n. 1, 171n. 6, 8, 12, 15, 172n. 18, 173n. 15 invisible flood wall  70, 72–3, 133, 172n. 17 Domestic Disaster Response (Lutheran)  87, 90–1, 96, 111 Dovey, Kim  16 Downtown Development Commission  7, 113, 127, 132–3 Duncan, Angus  162n. 9 Durkheim, Émile  14, 21, 170n. 13 East Grand Forks, MN  7, 57–9, 62, 65–6, 68, 70–5, 82, 84–5, 89–90, 95–100, 112, 115, 124–34, 166n. 10, 13, 168n. 22, 25, 170n. 3, 172n. 16 eco-feminism  47, 83, 144, 151

ecology  25–7, 32, 35, 45, 47, 50–5, 75, 120–5, 131, 135, 143–5, 153–6 human or urban ecology  28, 39, 163n. 7, 172n. 6 economics  11, 22, 28–33, 38, 55, 62, 72, 74–5, 81, 98, 114, 116–18, 121, 124–7, 131–5, 139, 147–8, 171n. 10 Eden (Biblical story)  40, 153, 164n. 17 Enarson, Elaine  68, 83, 96, 139 Engels, Friedrich  42, 163n. 9, 164n. 21 environmental justice  26–8, 144, 148 Erikson, Kai  10 ethnicity  29–30, 32, 59–63, 69–70, 75, 77–8, 81, 169n. 2 and nature  63, 69–70, 77–8, 81 see also Grand Forks, ND: ethnic heritage, Native Americans, race Evernden, Neil  25 faith  6, 8, 39, 78, 80, 88–9, 97, 100, 102–8, 111, 125, 140–2, 149, 151 Fargo, ND  1, 5, 8, 59, 61, 63–4, 69, 75, 77–81, 84, 92, 97, 100–1, 131, 144, 167n. 15–16, 168n. 21 diocese of Fargo (Roman Catholic)  77, 116, 169n1 Fargo Forum (newspaper)  96, 125, 161n. 6 Fothergill, Alice  3, 12–13, 15, 68–9, 87, 117, 142, 170n. 1 Fry, Katherine  9, 67, 83, 99, 107, 169n. 2, 5 Fumagalli, Vito  46, 54, 147 Gandy, Matthew  32, 36–8, 51–3, 119, 122, 124, 163n. 13 garden city  34–5, 40–3, 153 Geertz, Clifford  13, 21–4, 48, 138, 163n. 3 gender  15, 60 and the 1997 flood  12–13, 15, 68, 70, 142 and nature  47, 83, 95–6, 101–2, 151, 153, 163n. 6 see also ecofeminism; Mother Nature Giddens, Anthony  123–4, 154–5 Glassheim, Eliot  7 God (Christian)  13, 23–5, 61–2, 100, 103–9, 112, 123, 125, 139–41, 146



Index

see also “act of God”; “city of God” and the city  4, 39–40, 89–93, 98–9, 107, 117, 141–2, 150–2 and nature  3–4, 17, 43, 45–7, 55, 88, 96, 98–9, 101, 108–9, 139, 141–2, 149–51, 172n. 2 and wrath  13, 80, 116 Gorringe, Timothy  15, 52–3, 165n. 30 Gould, Rebecca Kneale  22, 46, 55, 145 government (federal)  10, 64, 69, 82, 90, 104, 162n. 11, 165n. 25, 173n. 9, 167n. 15, 168n. 21 see also Army Corps of Engineers; National Weather Service Grand Forks, ND see Red River of the North; greenways: Grand Forks 1997 flood and rebuilding see Red River of the North: 1997 flood demographics  62–3 see also Christianity: Grand Forks religious demographics ethnic heritage  59–63, 69–70, 75, 77–8, 81, 166n. 8–9, 171n. 15 Grand Forks Herald  65, 69–70, 79, 85, 87, 89, 93–5, 103–4, 113–14, 161n. 6, 168n. 28, 170n. 12 history  57–62 greenways Friends of the Greenway (organization)  131 Grand Forks Greenway  6–7, 73–6, 98, 118–20, 124–34, 139, 154, 168n. 26–8, 31, 171n. 14, 172n. 2, 18–19 see also Red River of the North Grand Forks Greenway Alliance (organization)  7, 171n. 15 Greenway, Inc.  73–5, 168n. 26 Grim, John  45, 165n. 24 Guattari, Félix  163n. 13 habitus  16 Haeckel, Ernst  25–6 Haraway, Donna  36, 152, 163n. 6 see also cyborgs Harvey, David  29, 36, 52–3, 148, 157, 159 Howard, Ebenezer  41–2 Hunt, Tristam  40–2

193

insurance  82, 116–17 Japan, 2011 tsunami  156 Jayne, Mark  31–2, 163n. 8 Jefferson, Thomas  33, 42, 48 Jenkins, Willis  45 Judaism  13, 21, 40, 80, 139, 107–8, 162n. 12, 163n. 4, 166n. 9, 167n. 14, 169n. 4 Juvenal  33 Kaika, Maria  36–7, 43, 122–3, 154, 163n. 13 Kearns, Laurel  46, 148, 165n. 25 Keillor, Garrison  63 Keller, Catherine  40, 53–4, 101 Kellert, Stephen  32 Kelman, Ari  10–11, 121, 171n. 10 Kjellberg, Seppo  15, 52 labyrinth  6, 74, 126, 132, 168n. 28, 171n. 15, 172n. 2 Lake Agassiz  57, 59, 75, 81, 114, 152 Lane, Belden  45 Latour, Bruno  12, 25, 27–8, 134, 145, 158, 163n. 6, 172n. 7, 173n. 16 Le Corbusier  3, 41, 43–4 levees see dikes Lincoln Park neighborhood (Grand Forks)  66, 70–1, 79 Livezey, Lowell  173n. 9 Los Angeles  38, 55, 154, 162n. 10 Los Angeles River  119, 121–2, 124, 154 Luckmann, Thomas  22, 88, 162n. 2 Lutheran Social Services  96, 171n. 15 Machor, James  33–4, 41–2, 54, 147, 150, 163n. 10 Manchester, England  42, 164n. 21 Marsh, George Perkins  173n. 12 Marx, Karl  163n. 9, 173n. 11 Marxism  26, 29, 33, 36, 163n. 11 Mather, Cotton and Increase  42 McFague, Sallie  53, 144 McKibben, Bill  155 McPhee, John  121 Merchant, Carolyn  45, 47, 151–4, 159

194

Index

metabolization,  36–7, 53, 163n. 11 Métis  60, 165n. 3 see also Native Americans military  26, 60, 95–7 see also Army Corps of Engineers (U.S.); battle imagery Minneapolis and St. Paul, MN  5, 61, 63, 128, 169n. 31 Minneapolis Star Tribune  79, 90, 103, 128–9, 161n. 6 Minnesota  1, 5, 59–60, 75, 77, 90, 115, 118, 165n. 4, 169n. 1, 172n. 16 see also East Grand Forks; Minneapolis and St. Paul; Moorhead Minnesota Department of Natural Resources  71, 74, 126, 132 Minnesota Public Radio  84, 97, 114 Mississippi River  10–11, 36, 67, 83, 107, 120–2, 151, 155, 167n. 21, 169n. 2, 171n. 10–11 see also New Orleans, LA 1927 flood  11 1993 flood  67, 83, 107, 169n. 2 Moorhead, MN  78, 100 Minnesota State University, Moorhead  161n. 5 Morton, Timothy  25 Mormonism  15, 164n. 20 Mother Nature  4, 25, 81–3, 95–7, 107–8, 139–40, 146, 149–50, 156, 163n. 4, 169n. 5 Mumford, Lewis  29, 31–2, 35, 162n. 16 Nashville, TN  157 National Weather Service  65, 67, 94–5, 165n. 1, 167n. 19 Native Americans  27, 59–60, 62, 69, 152, 165n. 2, 4, 166n. 11 natural disasters  2–3, 5–7, 9–15, 21, 38, 47, 49, 67–9, 75–6, 78–87, 95–102, 106, 121, 124, 134, 140, 142–3, 149, 153, 156–8, 161n. 8, 162n. 9–11, 168n. 23 see also “act of God”; theodicy Neitz, Mary Jo  43, 147 New Jerusalem  3, 34, 39–44, 53–4, 146, 164n. 17 New Orleans, LA  10–11, 36–7, 67, 70, 121, 151, 155, 167n21, 170n. 10 New Urbanism  34–5, 76

New York City  3, 29–30, 32, 34, 36, 38–9, 42–4, 53, 55–6, 120, 172n. 8, 173n. 10 New York Times  64, 103, 128, 161n. 6 Noah (Biblical character)  86–9, 91, 101, 112, 139 North Dakota  1, 13, 28–9, 55, 57–76, 77–110, 111–20, 124–35 see also Grand Forks; University of North Dakota North Dakota Museum of Art  7 Oliver, Stuart  122 Oliver-Smith, Anthony  14 Olmsted, Frederick Law  120, 168n. 30 Owens, Pat  70, 89–90, 93, 103–6, 111, 125, 140–1, 170n. 14–15 Orsi, Robert  22, 39, 147–8, 172n. 8 Park, Robert  28–9, 39, 163n. 7 parks see Grand Forks Greenway Pederson, Daniel  105 Perry, Rick  10–11 Peterson, Anna  22, 46, 56 phoenixes  112–13, 151, 172n. 1 Plumwood, Val  98 Pollan, Michael  27 Porter, Kimberly  3, 7, 167n. 17, 19 A Prairie Home Companion see Garrison Keillor prairies  1, 27–8, 40, 55, 59, 78, 164n. 18 Puritans  3, 15, 34, 39, 41–2, 44–5, 61, 165n. 23 race  27, 29–30, 32, 62, 67, 69–70, 146, 163n. 6, 169n. 3 see also ethnicity; Grand Forks, ND: ethnic heritage; nature and race Rand, Ayn  44 Red Lake River  57, 59–60, 73, 124 Red River of the North see also greenways: Grand Forks 1950 Flood  64, 117, 151 1997 Flood  1–3, 11–15, 17, 64–76, 77–9, 111–35, 138–43, 149–50, 151–9 flood mitigation see dikes geological history  57–9 Re-Imagining Downtown (organization) 125–6, 171n. 12

religion see also Christianity; Judaism; Mormonism; Puritans civil religion  21, 108 definitions of  8, 20–5, 50, 89, 138–40, 163n. 3, 165n. 26 lived religion  22, 45–6, 55 nature religion  23–4, 48–9, 108–9, 138–9, 146, 150, 161n. 3, 163n. 5 public religion  3, 6, 22–3, 25, 139–40 therapeutic role  6, 15, 84, 140 restoration ecology  35, 120, 122, 125–6, 135, 153–4 resurrection  111–12, 142, 151 risk society  10–11, 117, 123–4, 154–5 Roach, Catherine  83, 161n. 3 Robinson, Elwyn  60–2 Robinson, Jennifer  30–1 Rozario, Kevin  10, 162n. 11, 168n. 23 Ruether, Rosemary Radford  46, 141, 151 rural land  27–9, 31–3, 35, 38, 55, 62, 67, 107, 113, 135, 166n. 10, 167n. 18 and religion  43, 147–8 Salvation Army  84–5, 96, 149, 169n. 6, 173n. 10 Sassen, Saskia  29–30 secularization  3, 10, 43–4, 78–9, 147–8, 173n. 9 Sennett, Richard  3, 15, 44, 141, 164n. 15 Sherlock Park (neighborhood)  68, 132 Short, John Rennie  33, 51, 134, 150 Sideris, Lisa  26 Simmel, Georg  28, 30 Smith, Carl  13–14 Smith, Conrad  12 Smith, Jonathan Z.  20 Smith, Kimberly  55–6 Sojourners (magazine)  7, 100, 114 Soleri, Paolo  51–2, 165n. 27–8 Soper, Kate  25 Spencer, Dan  152–4 Stauss, Lynn  90 Steinberg, Ted  10–12, 78–9, 83 suburban development  31, 33–5, 39, 41, 62, 70–1, 91, 132, 150, 166n. 10, 170n. 4, 173n. 10

Index

195

Summer Performing Arts Company  104–7 Swimme, Brian  26 Swyngedouw, Erik  36–7, 122, 163n. 13 Taylor, Bron  48–9, 145–6, 165n. 25 Taylor, Dorceta  27 theodicy  13, 99–100, 106, 140, 162n. 12–13, 170n. 13 theology ecotheology  26, 44–8, 51–4, 98, 151 natural theology  25 and the urban environment  15, 40–1, 44, 52–4, 165n. 29–30 Tillich, Paul  24 Todd, J. Terry  42, 147 Tucker, Mary Evelyn  45, 165n. 24 University of North Dakota  5–7, 59, 61–2, 88, 117, 161n. 5, 163n. 4, 171n. 7 Urban Land Institute  8, 118, 125, 130, 133 urban renewal movement  34 Varley, Jane  62, 88–9, 139 war imagery see battle imagery weather  67, 69, 78, 96, 114–16, 155, 165n. 1, 170n. 5 see also National Weather Service Weber, Max  13, 28–9, 44, 79, 140–1, 162n. 12–13 White, Lynn  45–6, 56 wilderness  19, 26–7, 33, 40, 42, 45, 53–4, 90, 132, 144 Wingerd, Mary Lethert  165n. 4, 173n. 10 Winnipeg, MB  1, 31, 59, 60, 64, 71, 98, 117, 144, 151, 157, 164n. 18, 169n. 31 floodway  71, 117, 167n.15 Winnipeg Free Press  87–8 Winston, Diane  147–8, 173n. 10 Winthrop, John  41–2 Wuthnow, Robert  62 Žižek, Slavoj  156–7