In a recent entry cross-posted at HNN’s Revise and Dissent and his own blog Airminded, Brett Holman ruminates on the apparent differences that existed in the manner in which American and British audiences responded to the advent of the airplane age. Inspired by his reading of Joseph Corn’s The Winged Gospel, which noted that American aviation culture was characterized by an overriding faith in the benefits that would result from the coming air age, Holman contrasts the American “gospel of flight” with the far less optimistic views that he’s seen expressed in the writings of then contemporary British citizens.

I don’t doubt the accuracy of Brett’s assessment regarding British public opinion and I think he’s on the right track in attempting to assess the nature of the British experience by drawing comparisons and contrasts with other nations’ responses. Even so, while the optimism/pessimism dichotomy may be a good way of beginning discussion and suggesting further avenues of research, beyond that, I’m not certain that it helps us better understand the origins or characteristics of, say, American or British aviation culture.

Like all new technologies, the airplane produced its fair share of both optimism and pessimism within (and across) those societies immediately influenced by its development. This was certainly the case in Russia where Imperial statesmen and private patrons optimistically hailed the airplane’s potential to strengthen the nation and promote culture at the same time others (especially within the artistic world) pessimistically focused on aviation’s destructive potential. Later, in the 1920s, Bolshevik Party officials made use of both visions of aviation to advance their political goals.

A more interesting issue is the one that Brett raises in a follow up comment on Revise & Dissent. Again in reference to Corn’s Winged Gospel he writes:

“I’d also like to know of any other countries which have gone through this almost religious enthusiasm for technology (atomic energy might be another, briefer example). Tremendous optimism, sure — think of Victorian Britain, all those steamships, railways, canals, telegraph cables, heroic engineers — but the religious flavouring does seem to be an American thing (to my untutored eye, anyway).”

I’ve argued that Russia was one such country in which religion played a vital role in shaping aviation culture, though it did so in a manner unlike that in the United States. However, my take on The Winged Gospel is different from Brett’s. As I understood the book, Corn did not argue (as Brett seems to imply) that America’s optimistic response to the airplane resulted from a “religious enthusiasm for technology” but, rather, that America’s enthusiastic response to aviation technology was largely a product of its underlying religious optimism.

This is an important distinction, as it does more than simply describe the fact of America’s enthusiasm for aviation. It offers an explanation for that enthusiasm by identifying as its source a particular vision of the future rooted in the unique religious traditions and customs of the American past. Given the near universal symbolic presence of flight with religious and spiritual traditions the world over, the intersection of faith and flight strikes me as a topic deserving much more attention.

ScP