When the Medium Was the Mission traces the shaping influence of religion—particularly US Protestantism—on network culture through the story of the Atlantic Telegraph Cable of 1858. In the middle of the nineteenth century, this medium was emphatically the mission of Protestant missionaries to “civilize” non-Protestants, public figures who used the telegraph to establish an implicitly Christian national culture, of utopianists who understood this new technology to herald the advent of global and divine accord, and of all the many who passionately believed the cable would connect the world. Peopl ... More

When the Medium Was the Mission traces the shaping influence of religion—particularly US Protestantism—on network culture through the story of the Atlantic Telegraph Cable of 1858. In the middle of the nineteenth century, this medium was emphatically the mission of Protestant missionaries to “civilize” non-Protestants, public figures who used the telegraph to establish an implicitly Christian national culture, of utopianists who understood this new technology to herald the advent of global and divine accord, and of all the many who passionately believed the cable would connect the world. People acting in the name of religion—from US Protestant missionaries to the Ottoman sultan—spread Samuel Morse’s telegraph machine around the world and linked the telegraph to an emerging discourse of global unity. Christian tropes infused enthusiasm into fantastical public discourse about telegraphs’ capacity to connect, new religious communities in the United States indelibly affiliated networks with promises of perfect harmony, and Protestant-inflected religious affect charged essentially meaningless signals with profound cultural significance. In all of these activities, religion forged imaginaries of networks as connective, so much so that connection now defines networks, despite networks’ regular reliance on disconnection. The book analyzes documentary evidence of US enthusiasm for telegraph infrastructure—including missionary accounts, public speeches, celebratory memorabilia, religious publications, and telegrams—to demonstrate the vital ways religion helped to establish communication networks and produce an abiding sense of what networks are and what they can do.