The History of Christianity in America

Transcription

1 The History of Christianity in America CH503 LESSON 19 of 24 John D. Hannah, PhD, ThD Experience: Professor of Historical Theology at Dallas Theological Seminary in Dallas, Texas We begin today with the nineteenth in our series of studies on American history. We come today to the era of the 1920s, an era that perhaps has been influenced in our thinking by television and popular books as no other era really has. When you think of the 1920s, you think of Prohibition. You think of a loose era of change. You think of Eliot Ness and the Untouchables. You think of the coming of the Great Depression. And usually the popular image of the 1920s is one of restive change, of complexity, of irritation, and of a loss of direction for people. That popular image, like the image of the gilded age that we have talked about, is, I would say miscued. What I would like to do in our time together today is this. I d like to continue the story of the rise in America of the reaction to the mushrooming, fearful cloud of liberalism. What I have said thus far is this; that in the late nineteenth century liberalism or the new theology began to emerge in America in response to changes that had occurred in the previous century in the realm of philosophy, epistemology, the interpretation of history, and biblical criticism. And I would argue that with all of those factors combined, scholars and teachers in the seminaries began to feel that there had to be a new way to approach the Scriptures, that religion as it had been traditionally taught was no longer viable, that science had discredited that approach to the Scriptures. To make a long story short, in the late nineteenth century, liberalism emerged which suggested to us that the way off of the horns of the dilemma of science and morality was to suggest that the Bible should no longer be perceived as a uniformly true book; the Bible should be viewed as a book that contains the revelation of God but does not consist entirely of the revelation of God it s a book within a book. So by various methods of discerning the true from the false, the transient from the permanent, there emerged a sense that the kernel of the Scriptures was more the broad moral teachings of general religion than the truth of 1 of 12

2 historic Christianity. In response to that movement, that mushrooming cloud in the late nineteenth century, you have a movement of resistance to many of those salient ideas. That movement of resistance begs a clear, defining term because of the innuendos and twists within the movement itself. But for the sake of naming it something at this time, I would use the word the rise of interdenominational evangelicalism, the rise of conservatism, the rise of fundamentalism, though that term is itself one that changes very many times in the twentieth century. I have said that the reaction to that period, a reaction to the coming of liberalism, breaks into four parts. There s a period of conception which is a loose, non-polarized reaction to liberalism; I cited several examples of that reaction. There s a period of conflict in the 1920s and then a period of reorganization in the 1930s. I would like to turn to the period of the 1920s, which is commonly called the period of conflict a period of intense denominational strife, an era of conflict and turmoil. What I would argue is that when you come to the second and third decade of the twentieth century, the religious forces in the world in America become polarized. There are on the one hand those who advocate the new theology and a revising and updating, putting a new face upon Christianity because Christianity is conceived as a cultural and social phenomenon. And those who believe that that was all a farce and indeed the truth of the Scriptures is uniform and plain and eternal and that we did not need to redefine Christianity because of a supposed cultural change. In the 1920s, there came a clash in many of the major, mainline northern denominations over a movement that purported to want to update the church and bring it into the twentieth century, and to redefine Christianity and those who resisted that change. Those who resisted that change became known as fundamentalists sometimes, evangelicals, conservatives, Bible believers, whatever. Now before we come to that period of the 1920s, let me say something by way of introduction about the 1920s itself. I would argue that the 1920s was really a period in American history of profound change. Unlike the gilded age, the 1920s was really a phenomenal era of extreme changes in America. Now the reason 2 of 12

3 that those changes did not become apparent was because of the Great Depression of the 1930s and a world war in the 1940s. The evidence of those fundamental presuppositional changes spilled out in the 1950s and certainly the radical 1960s. I would argue that morality, for instance, did not really change in the 1920s. It was not really a frivolous era, but the reasons for morality radically changed; the reasons for doing things more than the things being done is what changes radically in the 1920s. I think scholars are generally willing to say now that the 1920s was really a conservative era. It was a prosperous era. In fact, too much speculation is what indeed caused the financial collapse that came to us in But let me briefly talk first about the decade of vast cultural and social change in America in the 1920s. First, it was an era characterized by the decline of national idealism, or what is called the loss of manifest destiny. I would say that World War I was something of a wellspring of cynicism. It brought it to the surface, though did not cause it. One has suggested that the characteristics of the nineteenth century were perhaps defined as three: moralism (a belief in morality or Victorian moralism) a belief in progress, and a belief in Christian culture. Those three assumptions of the nineteenth century moralism, progressivism, and Christian culture are all going to be redefined in the 1920s. One writer (Faulkner, I believe) has said that this was the generation that woke up to find all gods dead, all wars false, all faith in men shaken. Secondly was the rise and popularity of the social sciences. What I am arguing at this point is really the rise of two things that seem to contrast against Christianity in the Christian view of sin. One example is behaviorism, which emerged through John Watson and his very important book, Behavior: An Introduction to Comparative Psychology. A more recent advocate of Watsonianism is, of course, B.F. Skinner in his rather important book, Beyond Freedom and Dignity. A behaviorist would suggest that moral behavior is a function of environmental stimulation. Moral misbehavior is a function of a bad environment. It would suggest that man is not responsible for his own action, that he s not a self-directional creature but a manipulable creature. And the environment determines his behavior. Sigmund Freud, the Austrian psychologist who came to America 3 of 12

4 the first time in 1909 to lecture at Clark University, suggested to us that man s basic need or problem is that he is suffering from a suppressed ego, suppressed by a super ego creating a neurosis. That neurosis that every man has leads, when he finds some degree of independence, to aggression. Man s basic abnormality is a function of imposed authority figures suppressing his id when his ego was tender. Third was the rise of ethical pragmatism. Pragmatism swept America in terms of ethics. Walter Lippman, for instance, wrote his book, A Preface to Morals. Morality increasingly became a function of the social sciences, as evidenced in William James famous book on pragmatism, rather than a function of revealed revelation. The decline of Judeo-Christian thought is quite evident. By that, I mean that scholars have written that the 1920s indeed represent an end to metaphysics, and that there is a decided shift to existentialism. The emergence of economic and technological prosperity simply says that America began to be a nation of consumers. The automobile emerged in the 1920s. What I mean by that is simply that by 1928, one-eighth of the gross national product came from the Detroit motor plant. Radio came in 1920, then the movies, the phonograph, and so on and so on. Next was the rise of a consumer orientation. It was the era of the flapper, the nineteenth amendment, the cosmetic industry, fashions, and short hair. One writer has said that the word neck ceased to be a noun (it abruptly became a verb) and lost all anatomical value. It seemed to be an age that lost its fear of hell and its interest in heaven. The emergence of functionalism in educational theory simply is the emergence of the John Dewey school that learning should not be so much idealistic as it should be functional and goal-oriented in the sense of job-oriented. An illustration, perhaps, in the realm of ethics which I would take to be a symbol of the age in the 1920s in the area of aesthetics you have the emergence in, say, art of the Ashcan School in New York which painted realism. But the subject matter of that realism tended to be more vernacular. And then, of course, in the second decade of the twentieth century, you have the advent of cubism, the essence of which (as I understand it) is the flattening of the surface with which a painter deals, the loss of time perspective the past and the present occur simultaneously. The central focus of a canvas is lost with things going in different direction. It s called non-realism. 4 of 12

5 In the area of literature, it s the era of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Sinclair Lewis. Lewis, of course, is popular for his several writings: Main Street, which is worth looking at because he applies a Freudian model to life in a small town in Ohio; Babbitt, Arrowsmith, and the very famous Elmer Gantry. In the realm of music, you have the advent of jazz, the departure from eight tonal music to twelve, which was a symbol of protest. The emphasis in jazz, in part, is a qualified improvisation which leads to free expression of style and form and a mild rejection of the old canons of taste. So all that I m saying is that, in a way, the 1920s was an era of change, but it was more an era of presuppositional change than actual change. The implications of those presuppositions the shift to the social science, to pragmatism, and to psychological models of behavior will evidence themselves more in the radical 1960s than certainly in the 1920s. Not too many were listening to Shakespeare when he said, Life is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing. That may be true of the 1960s but not of the 1920s. But changes were occurring in the 1920s. Now for the point of our study. The most significant changes that did come in the 1920s was this clash between the new theology, which felt that the old theology needed to be cast aside entirely, along with those who rejected that change; a new form of Christianity must emerge.. And what I would like to do is simply look at that change, or that clash, over those two schools in three northern denominations: Northern Baptists, Northern Presbyterians, and Northern Methodists. There were obviously fundamentalist, modernist tensions in the Disciples of Christ Church, as well as several others. But I will confine myself for our discussion to these three. Now what I am saying is very simple. The mushrooming cloud of liberalism polarizes into denominational divisions in the 1920s. There will be clashes in these major denominations. When the controversies are over, narrowists will lose. And when I say narrowist, what I mean is that those who want to maintain their denominations in a strict, narrow, traditionally-conservative manner will sense that this is no longer possible. That true liberalism, meaning a broader interpretation of Christianity (at least latitudinarianism) will prevail in these denominations. If you do hold to conservative, traditional views, you are not put out; you just found it more difficult, if not painful, in being able to express your particular orientations and, your views. This is true 5 of 12

6 among Baptists, among Presbyterianism, and among Methodists. What I would like to do is just tell that story. The 1920s is a very tragic period because latitudinarianism will overtake those major denominations not so much in the pew as in the administrative corporate offices of those denominations. There ll be a sense among conservative evangelical people that somehow their denominations are no longer doing their bidding. That will create tensions, and some very hard decisions had to be made in the 1930s as they look back upon the tragedy of the 1920s. To say it another way, in the 1920s, there will be a struggle for control of the denominations. The conservative, narrow element will lose their battle to preserve their denominations in a strictly narrow evangelical sense. In the 1920s and later in the 1930s, they will all become increasingly broader. That increasing broadness will cause some unrest among evangelicals, leading to separation and division. Let me come now to the Baptists and explain something of them. The Baptists in the north formed a denomination in 1908, the Northern Baptist Convention. It simply pulled together its benevolent societies and formed a convention. The Southern Baptist Convention obviously formed in But we said when we told the story of slavery and the Baptists in the south, that Northern Baptists simply maintained their independent benevolent agencies without a denominational hierarchy. By 1908, they coordinated those various benevolent societies, home and foreign missions, publication society, and education society, and formed a convention having a president, having a hierarchy, etcetera. Some of the impetus for the merger of these societies and the creation of a convention among Northern Baptists came out of the Chicago Baptist Association, which was backed, of course, by Shailer Mathews of the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. So there was, at least in part, in the creation of Baptists a move by some to use the creation of the convention as a vehicle for propagating broader ideas of interpretation in the convention itself. Now the clash did not occur, though, in The clash over the narrowists and the more latitudinarians those who wanted to maintain historic Christianity as interpreted traditionally, or those who wanted to update and improve it, they said, for a technological world did not clash until Part of it might 6 of 12

7 have been after World War I, after the Bolshevik Revolution, as Darwinism became the popular hands-on issue to do battle with. What I am suggesting is simply this; that from 1919 to 1925, there was a clash in the annual conventions of the Northern Baptist Convention (they called them anniversaries, annual conventions) over control of their denomination. When 1925 is finally over, among the Northern Baptists the controversy subsides with a sense that the conservative has not won, and that the more latitudinal element has prevailed in making the denomination more broadly tolerant of different perspectives. Let me just rehearse very quickly these annual anniversaries and some issues involved. In 1919, the controversy erupted between these two poles of people over the issue of Harry Emerson Fosdick, a keynote speaker. At that time, he was known for his latitudinal views. Controversy over him at Denver, controversy over the inter-church world movement (sort of a precursor of an ecumenical movement) created tensions and brought things to the surface. It s in the wake of the Denver anniversary, or convention, that Curtis LeeLaws, the editor of The Watchman Examiner, an independent newspaper of Baptists, coined the term fundamental or fundamentalist movement in So the origin of that term dates from the post-denver anniversary. The long and the short of it is, that Baptists became polarized, and that the Buffalo Annual Convention in 1920 the distressed conservatives founded an organization called the Fundamentalist Fellowship. It tried to be a caucus of concerned conservatives to bring about change within the convention. The long and the short of it is though they were able to make some minor victories, they were not able to win the war. The next year at the Des Moines anniversary, they pushed to have their schools investigated. And the conservative element failed, in that it was committeed, and at a committee, it went to a broader vote. What I m trying to say is that through these anniversaries, there s a sense of continual frustration. In the Annapolis anniversary was perhaps the watershed, because there they pushed to have a doctrinal statement made part of the convention the New Hampshire Confession of Faith of The essence of it was at Indianapolis, the issue of gaining a doctrinal confession whereby orthodoxy could be determined and evaluated failed. Though they adopted a doctrinal statement, it was not binding. It did not accomplish what they had hoped, so that before the next convention, another caucus group emerged among Northern 7 of 12

8 Baptists that became known as the Bible Baptist Union. So now there are two caucus groups that differ with one another over policy. The Bible Baptist Fellowship led by T.T. Shields, J. Frank Norris, William Bell Riley and others was a little more strident in its orientation, wanting to bring change and willing to push harder than the Fundamentalist Fellowship. When you re all done, there was not much to be accomplished. At Milwaukee the next year, the conservatives pushed to have their mission fields investigated. And when the report came back in 1925 that approved the direction of missions, it was as though they had struggled but they could not carry the day. They could not carry the day, basically because they could not secure an investigation of their seminaries: Crozer, Rochester, and other schools like that. They could not secure an investigation of their foreign missions program or secure a theological statement. So what I m saying among Northern Baptists is that try as they would and will, by the time you come to 1925 six years of controversy within the annual anniversaries, the emergence of a Fundamentalist Fellowship, the emergence later of the Bible Baptist Union a more strident and vitriolic attempt was made to bring change. Both of those caucus groups sensed that after 1925, they could not carry the day; they would have some important decisions to make as they now realized that the Northern Baptist Convention was broader and more tolerant of various positions than it had been before. So the bottom line among Northern Baptists is that latitudinal strife led to the dominance of a latitudinal position. The evangelicals (fundamentalists if you call them) conservatives, all synonymous terms at this time, were faced with the fact that they were now in a world that they were unused to; a mixed world of competing religious views as to how to serve mankind best. That will force them to make some real decisions in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In other words, the Baptists fought and struggled, but the conservatives could not carry the day. The Northern Presbyterians story is a little more complicated, and it goes something like this. In 1869, the new school-old school controversy came to an end; you have the merger or the creation of Northern Presbyterianism or the PC (USA), the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America. I am not saying that new schoolism, which was more of a liberal approach to traditional 8 of 12

9 orthodoxy, suddenly became the new theologians or liberals. That s not really true. Some, indeed, may have become or adopted more liberal persuasions. But the advent of new liberalism in the 1880s and 1890s is what occasioned strife among the Northern Presbyterians. That is what caused the fundamentalist-modernist controversy, as we might call that in the 1920s. The strife among Northern Presbyterians actually could be discussed by three subjects; first, the struggle over doctrinal conformity. By that I mean that there was a strident attempt beginning in the 1880s to revise the Westminster Confession of Faith. The first attempt at revision came in That attempt at revision of the Westminster Confession of Faith was voted down by the church. In fact, the authors of it, including Charles Augustus Briggs of Union Seminary, underwent heresy trials thereafter. That attempt to revise or change or slightly modify the church s confessional standards went unheeded, but the issue continued. In 1903, the Westminster Confession of Faith was modified. The more Calvinistic emphasis was deleted by the insertion of statements on the love of God and the necessity of missions, etcetera. So what I m saying is that in 1889 there was an attempt at revision of their confessional standards which failed. In 1903, mild concessions did prevail, and the Westminster Confession of Faith, even with the alterations, prevailed as a very conservative document. The issue in the 1920s really boiled down over what is called the Auburn Affirmation, a document signed at Auburn Seminary in New York by several hundred Presbyterian pastors. It called for latitudinalizing of theological consent within the Presbyterian Church. The background for this is simply that after the struggles over the first revision failed in the context of the heresy trial of Charles Briggs, the Presbyterians responded by a document called the Portland Deliverance. This was a statement of the essence of what they wanted to defend in terms of their theology and reduced to five statements. The Portland Deliverance then was periodically affirmed and reaffirmed down into the 1920s. Now the Auburn Affirmation was a statement calling for latitude of interpretation of the church s standards as reflected in the statements and restatements of the Portland Deliverance from the 1890s. For instance, they would say that what they were calling for is simply a wider tolerance of belief to be held by the 9 of 12

10 church. I ll just cite one. The second statement of the Portland Deliverance as it was modified says, It is an essential doctrine of the Word of God and our standards that our Lord Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary. The Auburn Affirmation statement signed by a large group of pastors suggesting wider views of tolerance would want to replace the Portland Deliverance with what is called the Auburn Deliverance or affirmation. And that reads this way; We believe from all our hearts that Jesus Christ was God manifest in the flesh. But we are united in believing that these five doctrines that make up the deliverance are not the only theories allowed by the Scriptures and our standards as explanation of these facts and doctrines of our religion. Whatever theories they may employ to explain them are worthy of all confidence and fellowship. Conservatives took that as a possible denial of the necessity of the doctrine of the virgin birth of Christ. So there is in the 1920s a struggle among Presbyterians over broadening of latitudinal standards, particularly when it came to the issue of the Great Auburn Affirmation. Secondly, there was a missions controversy in the church that ironically began in the early 1920s, when a non-presbyterian (actually Anglican) by the name of W.H. Griffith Thomas, who was then residing in Philadelphia, made a trip to China. When he returned from the mission field of China, he gave a report before the Presbyterian Social Union of Philadelphia. In Thomas report, this Anglican man a teacher at Wycliffe College Toronto, Canada, previously suggested that liberalism was intruding into China; that syncretism was coming to China and emanating from American theological seminaries, Presbyterian schools, and through missionaries sent out by the Presbyterian board of foreign missions. Most certainly Spear, the director of the foreign missions program of the Presbyterian Church thought lightly of Thomas report. However, in 1932, eleven years later, a book was published by the board entitled, Rethinking Missions. That book which set out a new purpose for missions and a new content of missionary message, coupled with the presence of Pearl Buck on the mission field created a stir and consternation among Northern Presbyterians. In fact, to give you some view of Pearl Buck s writings (and she is a foreign missionary at this time) she said, Some of us Christians believe in Christ as our fathers did. To some of us, He is still the divine Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary, conceived by the Holy 10 of 12

11 Spirit. But to many of us, He has ceased to be that. Let us face the fact that the old reasons for foreign missions are gone from the hearts and minds of many of us, certainly for those of us who are young. It s controversy over foreign missions that led in 1933 to the founding of an independent board of foreign missions, a separatist Presbyterian group, and the erection of the foreign independent board or board of foreign missions to propagate narrowest traditional ideas of theology in missions; that eventually led to the defrocking of the great Presbyterian giant, J. Gresham Machen. So there is doctrinal controversy in the 1920s. There is a huge missions controversy in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and then there is also the interesting case of Harry Emerson Fosdick, who was really the arch, popular, giant latitudinarian of the 1920s. To make a long story short, Fosdick, after training under William Newton Clark at Colgate, took a degree at Union Theological Seminary in New York. When he finished his training at New York and after a short pastorate, he returned to Union Seminary, a Presbyterian school (though he was a Baptist) as professor of homiletics. He also became pastor of the Old First Presbyterian Church in New York City. So you have a man who is in an independent but Presbyterian seminary, who himself is a Baptist, pastoring in a Presbyterian church. In 1922, he preached a very famous sermon entitled, Shall the Fundamentalists Win? It was, in essence, an attack upon Presbyterian fundamentalism and their beliefs. And that led to open conflict to an attempt to remove Harry Emerson Fosdick from Presbyterian influence. They could not remove him from Union Seminary because it was an independent school, but they did remove him from Old First Church. But his parishioners moved him and built for him a new church called The Great Riverside Church. Now Fosdick was a particularly troubling case for Presbyterians because he was a well-known man of great liberal persuasion teaching in a Presbyterian school and training Presbyterian clerics for the ministry; they could not deal with him. So there s this mounting sense of frustration in the story, and that s what I m trying to tell. The final struggle from conservative points of view was the struggle over Princeton Seminary which, unlike Union, was owned by the general assembly. That general assembly directed the fortunes of this citadel of old-school Presbyterianism. The long 11 of 12

12 and the short of the story is that as Presbyterianism increasingly became latitudinal in its toleration of ideas, the seminary did as well; certainly with the coming of Stevenson as president in 1913, certainly with the coming later of J. Ritchie Smith. The seminary began actually to reflect the broader theological contours of the denomination. The real question at Princeton was whether or not the seminary would be allowed to reflect the broadening of the denomination or the traditional, narrow old-schoolism of the nineteenth century. The leader of the conservative tensions with broadening Presbyterianism was, of course, the great J. Gresham Machen, a professor at Princeton. When the story is complete in 1929, the presbytery reorganized Princeton. In that reorganization, they assured that Princeton Seminary would reflect the broader contours of Presbyterian theology. When that happened, conservatives evangelicals who were fundamentalists like J. Gresham Machen then left the Presbyterian Church (meaning Princeton Seminary, not the denomination). They formed a rival school which they thought was truly a continuation of Princeton called Westminster Theological Seminary. That marked sort of the end of the struggle among Presbyterians. So there is first a struggle among Baptists, and Baptists sensed failure at the end, the narrowists, same among Presbyterians. We turn now to two other denominations or topics our next time. Christ-Centered Learning Anytime, Anywhere 12 of 12