Hey, my friends.

Hey, my friends, it's Matt.

This is the 10-minute Bible Hour podcast.

And did you ever hear about the Chautauqua movement?

That's a weird word.

C-H-A-U-T-A-U-A-C-U-A-C-T-A-Tauqua.

I don't know the origin of that.

I assume it's a Native American name. I know it hails from New York, though. There's a lake up there, and it's apparently it's beautiful. I've been in the neighborhood. I don't know if I've actually seen Lake Chautauqua or not, but there were a couple of opportunistic dudes in 1974. The nation's healing up after the Civil War, trying to figure out what it's going to look like next.

People are trying a lot of different movements and stuff that will build social strength, strength in communities, teach morality.

You know, they didn't ever want it to come to the sword again because it was pretty ugly, pretty costly when the Civil War went hot.

So a lot of people were scheming on how to make stuff better, how to bring about social reform and religious reform.

And so these two guys, John Hyle Vincent, he was a pastor, I think Methodist, and another guy named Lewis Miller, who I don't think was a, I don't think he was a minister. I think he was

a Christian. They started this event that was, it's hard to explain. It's an outdoor event.

It's kind of like a camp for adults and families, like a festival maybe, like a Renaissance

fair without the Renaissance. And also it's like a TED talk.

So they would bring people in and there'd be food and activities and stuff.

And there would be a bunch of talks.

Some of it would be Christian education.

But other parts would be entertainment, music, performances, things like that.

But it was meant to be educational and to build up the audience.

Well, the first of these happened on the shores of Lake Chautauqua in the 1870s, but then it caught on.

Other people started imitating this, and there were daughter Chautauquas. That's what they called

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