Missionary Generation

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U.S. Generations
* = dates disputed, ^ = Strauss and Howe
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Term Period
^Puritan Generation
1588–1617
Puritan Awakening 1621–1649
^Cavalier Generation
^Glorious Generation
^Enlightenment Generation
^Awakening Generation
1618-1648
1648-1673
1674-1700
1701–1723
First Great Awakening 1727–1746
^Liberty Generation
^Republican Generation
^Compromise Generation
1724–1741
1742–1766
1767–1791
Second Great Awakening 1790–1844
Transcendentalist Generation
^Transcendental Generation
^Gilded Generation
^Progressive Generation
1789–1819
1792–1821
1822–1842
1843–1859
Third Great Awakening 1886–1908
^Missionary Generation
Lost Generation
Interbellum Generation
G.I. Generation
Greatest Generation
1860–1882
1883–1900
1900–1910
1900–1924
1911–1924
Jazz Age 1918-1929
^Silent Generation
Beat Generation
Baby Boomers
Generation Jones
1925–1942
fl. 1950s-1960s
*1940s-1960s
1954–1965
Consciousness Revolution 1964–1984
Generation X
^13th Generation
MTV Generation
Boomerang Generation
*1960s–1980s
1961-1981
1974–1985
1977–1986
Culture Wars 1980s–present
Generation Y
^Millennial Generation
Echo Boom Generation
Internet Generation
^New Silent Generation
*1970s–1990s
1982-2000
*1982–1995
*1994–2001
*1990s or 2000s-?

The Missionary Generation is the designation given by Strauss and Howe in their book Generations to that generation in the United States of America born from 1860 to 1882. They became the indulged home-and-hearth children of the post-Civil War era. They came of age as labor anarchists, campus rioters, and ambitious first graduates of black and women's colleges. In rising adulthood, they had an Awakening that had given birth to the Bible Belt, to Christian socialism, to Greenwich Village, to the Wobblies, and to renascent labor, temperance, and women's suffrage movements. Their young adults pursued rural populism, settlement house work, missionary crusades, and muckrake journalism. In midlife, their Decency brigades and fundamentalists imposed Prohibition, cracked down on immigration, and organized vice squads. In elderhood, they presided over the twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II. Their elder elite became the Wise Old Men who enacted a New Deal (and Social Security) for the benefit of youth, led a global war against fascism, and reaffirmed America's highest ideals during a transformative era in history.

Contents

[edit] Place in Time

In Strauss and Howe's Generations categorization, The Missionary generation's typical grandparents were of the Transcendental Generation. Their parents were of the Gilded Generation and Progressive Generation. Their children were of the Lost Generation and G.I. Generation; their typical grandchildren were of the Silent Generation.

23% of the Missionary generation were immigrants; 1% were born into slavery.

This generation is fully ancestral, with the last member of the Missionary Generation, the American Sarah Knauss, having died on December 30, 1999 at an astonishing 119 years of age.

[edit] Prominent Americans

The Missionaries had four U.S. Presidents:

They held a plurality in the House of Representatives from 1909 to 1937, a plurality in the Senate from 1917 to 1943, and a majority of the Supreme Court from 1925 to 1943.

[edit] Sample cultural endowments

[edit] Prominent non-U.S. Peers

Preceded by
Progressive Generation
1843 – 1859
Missionary Generation
1860 – 1882
Succeeded by
Lost Generation
1883 – 1900