At least as a matter of research protocol, I am approaching the various Fortean groups geographically—concentrating right now on the San Francisco Bay Area, but collecting information on Southern California, the Midwest, New York, Great Britain, and hoping to find sources on Philadelphia, Dallas, and New Mexico, where there were also (supposedly) groups.  This approach may or may not make it to the final product—other arrangements may make for better narratives—but it helps organizing the material right now, and raises some questions that need to be answered.

Most obviously, why did Fortean groups appear where they did?  Why San Francisco?  Or New York?

This question is a tricky one—because answers are too easy.  The fact is, the Fortean groups did appear in these places, and one can then find any number of ways to explain these appearances.  But that doesn’t mean they are right or even persuasive.

Still, the question should be asked.  Answering it may not be more than a tautology—the Fortean groups appeared in San Francisco because they appeared in San Francisco—but they can also point toward connections between Forteans and society more generally.  For instance, Forteanism proliferated in Bohemia, and this raises questions about the structure and culture of American Bohemia in the middle of the twentieth century and why Bohemians would be attracted to Forteanism.  Such a question is a better one than why San Francisco—but it is arrived at by asking that first question.

And so, I need to explore San Francisco regional history to understand more about the development of Forteanism there and how it connected to local, national, and international trends.

Today, a consideration of California’s spiritual frontiers, based on Sandra Frankiel’s brilliant book of that name and Glenna Matthews’s essay, “Forging a Cosmopolitan Civic Culture.”

Both begin  by noting that California—and the Bay Area especially—is markedly different from other parts of the country in its liberalism and openness to religious experimentation, and ask why.  Both find the answer in the Gold Rush.

In 1848, San Francisco was home to a few hundred people.  By 1865, it had a population of over 100,000.  The assemblage of the San Francisco Bay Area prevented any one group from becoming too dominant.   Men flooded the region from all over the world, in huge numbers, making the city (or, as local prefer, The City) cosmopolitan in a sense unknown elsewhere.  By 1880, the City had over 230,000 residents, the ninth largest city in the country, and the highest percentage of foreign-born residents, just shy of 50%.

So, unlike other regions that developed slowly, there was no major power.  By 1906, barely 14% of the population was Protestant.  Catholics had dwindled from 30% of the population in 1850 to 20%.  About 3% of the population belonged to some smaller group.  Sixty-five percent was unchurched.  San Francisco was the first large American city to elect an Irish mayor, a Jewish mayor, labor-leader mayor, and an Italian mayor.  The first Jewish synagogue was founded only three years after the first Protestant Church; Buddhists churches opened in the middle of the nineteenth century.

Now that doesn’t mean all was peaches and cream.   Discrimination against Asians and Mexicans and Native Americans was often harsh.  The Vigilante Committees of the 1850s often deployed racist rhetoric.  The Know-Nothings had a presence, as did white supremacists.  But, discrimination between white groups was comparatively mild—one reason the labor movement did so well—and even the oft-despised Chinese were enough of a presence to organize and have their interests protected.  Matthews wrote, “San Francisco was not born enlightened—far from it—but it was born in such a way that many groups could contend in its public sphere.”

The Gold Rush contributed to San Francisco’s cosmopolitanism in other ways, too.  The men who came to the region were suspicious of evangelism, emotional religions, and denominationalism, for those things were leading the country into civil war.  They preferred a gentle denominationalism, one that was not unified, but respective of other traditions.  The Evangelism of the era—which was very important in other regions—also did not work in San Francisco because there were already well-established secular entertainments—rodeos and bullfighting—because the men were focused on material things—gold!—and because the people of San Francisco were men—about 90% of the population.  Evangelism worked primarily through women, who were supposed to be the moral centers of their families.  But there were no families.  The men of San Francisco were not actively hostile to traditional Protestantism—they encouraged churches for the sense of social order they brought—but also found little in them that appealed.  An image of California was taking shape which they supported, one that turned away from traditional Protestantism: an image of California as open, tolerant, a natural aristocracy.  This image helped attract to the town a number of Bohemians—and San Francisco was famous for its Bohemians.

Appealing to this tradition were more liberal ministers, one who drew from Transcendentalism, Unitarianism, and Spiritualism, whose preachings deemphasized sin and punishment to focus on personal growth and the powers of the mind.  This focus on social progress and lack of judgment became common, but never institutionalized, and so never challenged the power of the established religions.  It remained fringe, although powerful.

A second gold rush refreshed these tendencies during World War II, when the ship-building business pulled in tens of thousands of workers (and nearby farming similarly attracted Hispanics from the Southwest).  Thus, just at the time the San Francisco Forteans were organizing, the central planks of the California ideal, the cosmopolitanism and lack of a dominant religious tradition were again on everyone’s minds.  This made the San Francisco Bay Area of the forties liberal and open to experimentation and Bohemian ideas.  ``The Second World War and its permissiveness were not lost on me,'' Anton LaVey said. ``Prurience was the order of the day.''  Indeed, much of LaVey’s subsequent life was spent trying to recapture the spirit of the 1940s.

Southern California developed differently—or, more like other places, in that the development was gradual, that families moved to the area together, and that an Anglo-Protestant power structure was established.   Still, by the 1890s southern California was home to a burgeoning metaphysical tradition: Theosophy, New Thought, and Christian Science found southern California a welcoming home.  Why?

First, let’s put it into numerical context.   In 1890, there were about 25,000 practicing Protestants in Los Angeles; about 3,000 members of Metaphysical groups (this was the third largest center of Christian Science in the country, about 1/10th of the nation’s total—and it may have been higher than that, since many Christian Scintists registered with the home church in Boston, although they did not live there); and about 3,000 Protestants were reading in the metaphysical tradition.  Protestants were a clear majority, and the lack of institution-building by the metaphysicians meant that the Protestants social power was never seriously challenged, but the presence of so many interested in the metaphysical tradition meant that, of course, the Protestants had to respond, and often incorporated the liberal tradition of Unitarianism, Transcendentalism, and Spiritualism into their practice.  So influential were the metaphysicians that the 1915 Pan-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco devoted an entire day to New Thought.

But why, given Southern California’s conventional development, did metaphysics gain such footing there?  Part of the explanation is the post-Civil War reaction against evangelism.  Part of it is migration patterns—about 1/5 of those coming to Southern California came from the northern plains where Christian Science and New Thought were then flourishing (although in lesser numbers than Southern California).

The main reason is the promise that Southern California held out to new arrivals, and the migrants who responded to it.  Southern California was not laid out like other areas, with churches and business centers integrated into towns.  Rather—even before the advent of the car—development separated suburban living spaces from other areas: suburbs with few communal areas beyond parks.  This was a response to what people wanted, as well as part of Southern California’s developing self-image.  People went to Southern California not for better business opportunities—as was the usual case for migration at the time—but for leisure and peace and relaxation, all very powerful motivators in the half century after the Civil War, the economic turmoil of the Gilded Age, and the depression of 1893.  Many retirees arrived, as well as many who planned to make money on speculation.  The East’s traditional cultural forms did not fit here.  The weather and natural environment were seen as special impediments, the climate encouraging leisure and not the Calvinist work ethic.

This Southern California vibe mixed with the Northern California ideology to create a California ideal of openness, leisure, and tolerance that stood against the dominant Anglo-Protestantism.  Southern California changed in the years after World War I, when an influx of traditional Protestants from the South migrated to the area, bringing more conservative ideas about religion and the social order.  By that time, though, the alternative religions had already gained a place.  It will be worth exploring, though, if Forteanism developed differently in the south than the north because of that more recent conservative tradition.  (It’s also worth noting that Forteanism, as best I can tell, did not find the Central Valley so receptive, and that area was—and remains—notably more conservative than the coast, especially the north coast.)