Jane Addams Motivation

To state my position, I'm gonna pull a half/half argument or Devil's Advocate on whether Jane Addams was religiously motivated or not in her creation of the Hull House and other social improvement programs for inner-city Chicago. I think its difficult to draw the line of where religious morals or motivations stop and such other "good-will" inspirations begin as I believe the two are very intertwined for her particular situation.

Jane Addams was raised in a religious household - Quaker, to be more specific. Besides the fact that Quakers are awesome, it cannot be denied that there many traces of religious undertones in her work could be attributed to Christian morals, voluntary or not. The majority of the world's main-stream religions (that I am personally aware of anyways) have general doctrines of doing well onto/not harming others, helping those in need, and overall attitudes of generosity and kindness. After being raised in such an environment (coming from personal experience), I would think it to be part of one's human nature to apply such attitudes and beliefs outside of a strictly religious context.

Likewise, not all service work for others has to be religiously-based. There exist innumerable organizations throughout our world today with the intention of benefiting others in need of help without any religious attachment. There is such a basic human instinct of getting satisfaction and even joy out of helping others - take the Golden Rule for example. An extended possibility (perhaps even a stretched tangent) of her motivation I believed came out of her liberal arts education. Women in the time era receiving extended education was not exactly common or even well-approved of. I can only imagine the mental determination it must have taken to go through such a process. This determination for success in education, along with the content she received out of it, is easily applied to other goals she might have had in life. Her motivation for social work and improvement could have been simply a drive for a larger goal in her life.

Religiously-based or not, I believe the motivations driving public benefit projects and programs are insignificant as to override the projected goal and larger picture they are aiming to achieve.