Preface
This book contains Marsden's further elaborations (especially in light of recent developments e.g. "the reemergence of fundamentalism as a conspicuous force in American life" vii) developed during the 1980s after his book Fundamentalism and American Culture (1980). Focuses on science and politics as ways to see fundamentalism trying to re-assert "19C evangelical claims to stand for universal and self-evident cultural principles" (viii). The implication would be that other cultural areas e.g. economics, philosophy, academia, the arts, etc. will follow.
Introduction: Defining Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism
"A fundamentalist is an evangelical who is angry about something" (1, i.e. militant opposition to creeping secular humanism). "During the 1950s and 1960s ... an evangelical ... was anyone who like[d] Billy Graham" (6). Both E and F are movements, not organizations. E grew out of 18-19C revivalism.
Part 1: Historical Overview
1. The Protestant Crisis and the Rise of Fundamentalism, 1870-1930
Narrative survey and analysis of particular themes, mostly from Eerdman's Handbook to Christianity in America. Main event; cultural change splits E into 2 factions; liberals (theological, cultural, political) v. conservatives. The F term's meaning has changed. Originally (early 1920s) it was the militant conservative wing (from all denominations) confidently ready to battle creeping liberalism, which by 1925 "had gained wide national prominence ... [but] a few years later (by 1930s, after Scopes trial)... faded and ... disappeared from the headlines" (3). By the 1960s, F meant mostly Baptist, dispensationalist, separatist (notably excluding holiness, pentacostals).
Essential E beliefs are (est. 50M Americans):
1) Reformation final authority of Bible (sola scriptura)
2) real, historical saving work (resurrection) of Christ
3) personal salvation to eternal life in Christ
4) importance of evangelism, missions
5) importance of a spiritually transformed life (piety)
"All [Es] have been touched in some way by the cultural and religious crisis of a century ago that shook American Protestantism to its core. All have been influenced as well by the rift between the earlier broad fundamentalist coalition and liberal mainline Protestantism. All share to some degree the common experience of becoming outsiders to the most sophisticated modern culture. All are part of a recent E resurgence" (6).
A. When Evangelicalism Reigned (1865-1890)
"At the height of the Civil War, Northerners often equated the advances of the Union armies with the advances of Christ's kingdom ... a Christian millennium [seemed imminent, great revivals] ... seemed capable of bringing the majority of the citizenry to Christ ... progress ... was apparent ... Drinking, sabbath-breaking, prostitution, Romanism, and Freemasonry were all opposed by formidable organizations. Slavery ... seemed the leading obstacle to America's becoming a fully righteous nation. If it were eliminated, even at the cost of a bloody apocalyptic struggle, little would stand in the way of the advancing kingdom. Surely a golden age was at hand" (9-10).
- The "Gilded Age" (roughly Civil War to 1900)
"Marked by the assassination of two presidents [Abe Lincoln (R) 1865, James Garfield (R) 1881] and the impeachment of another [Andrew Johnson (D) 1865-9], a stolen election [Hayes (R) 1876], and a reign of rampant political and business corruption and greed, was well named by Mark Twain. A veneer of evangelical Sunday-school piety covered almost everything in the culture, but no longer did the rhetoric of idealism and virtue seem to touch the core of the materialism of the political and business interests ... Outwardly Protestantism prospered" (10). "The Gilded Age [was] when the honey of money trapped [everyone]" (NR 31 May 04 p. 47).
- The Evangelical Empire
"Protestants' apparent cultural dominance rested on a strong base of the wealthiest and oldest American families and institutions" (11). Whereas Europe was secularizing during the 19C, America curiously (being "the land of revolutionary liberal political ideals" after all, 11) was not. "The fact that America had not in the 19C followed the course set in the 18C by leaders like Franklin and Jefferson was due largely to vigorous evangelical enterprise" (11). But this establishment faced severe challenges, including intellectual attacks by Robert G. Ingersoll (1880s), Darwin's Origin of Species (1859), and the German higher criticism. "It would be difficult to overstate the crucial importance of the absolute integrity of the Bible to the 19C American evangelical's whole way of thinking. When this cornerstone began to be shaken, major adjustments in the evangelical edifice had to be made from top to bottom" (13).
- Urbanization and Secularization
Simultaneous to the intellectual assault was urbanization, fueled by industrialization, immigration (largely Catholic and non-English-speaking). "Catholics did not keep the sabbath, they danced, being Europeans most of them drank, and since they were often poor ['an ignorant and squalid people' FT], they were regarded as a threat to the stability and moral health of the nation generally" (14). But the logic of democracy (which Protestants claimed to support) demanded that Protestants compromise (though there were "widespread anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish, and anti-'foreign' efforts" 14).
A further related challenge was increasing secularization as "various areas of American culture were drifting away from any real connections with religious influences. Higher education and science reflected this trend most dramatically during the period after the Civil War" (14). "In 1850 the vast majority of American colleges ... [were controlled by evangelicals, but by 1900] the best colleges were now 'universities' ... based on a German scientific model" (14-5). Rather than being Bible-based, each area became autonomous and "scientific." Paley's idea (which had expressed the consensus) of design pointing back to its creator was replaced by talk of "the warfare between science and religion" (15). Economics and politics had been more slowly separating from religion since early Puritan and Quaker times, although Progressivism was at least partially fueled by Christian moral concerns. Henry Adams lamented in his novel Democracy (1880) how religious and moral concerns seemed increasingly an afterthought and veneer. While Protestant influence of the Public Square waned, it still seemed strong in many private lives and families.
B. The Stars
Because America has always been individualistic, the "stars" of religion are more revealing than denominational history (the same is true of business leaders vs. companies).
- Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), Brooklyn, NY, Puritan lineage, tried to smooth the transition from harsh Calvinism to liberal Protestantism. Immense appeal. Accused of seducing a parishioner's wife, but inconclusive. Accused of heresy, but simply left organization; "the individual had become more influential than the institution" (18).
- Phillips Brooks (1835-1893), Boston, MA, Puritan lineage, Beecher counterpart, rejected Calvinism for feel-good liberalism, though Marsden says "like Beecher, Brooks was a master at integrating modern thought and Christianity into an optimistic, though socially and politically conservative, 'American' message" (19).
- Josiah Strong (1847-1916), social Darwinist, feared WASP dominance was threatened by immigrants, esp. cities, solution: Christianize (i.e. civilize, uplift), then Americanize. Sypathetic to British Imperialism.
- Russell H. Conwell (1843-1925), Philadelphia, PA, Baptist, not content (unlike Beecher, Brooks) to preach to social elites, he reached out to underclass, self-help, Christian duty to become rich, human potential, gave "Acres of Diamonds" speech 6Kx!
- Dwight L. Moody (1837-1899), Chicago, IL, successful shoe businessman turned evangelist, not sensationalist (like Finney, Sunday) but establishment, business-like, lifeboat theory of life mission (i.e. had lost confidence in social solutions to world problems => premillenialism). Good relations with denominations, but avoided affiliations, built his own empire, free of ecclesiastical control.
C. The Era of Crusades (1890-1917)
Emerging from Moody's work was the Student Volunteer Movement, whose motto: "'the evangelization of the world in this generation' summarized well the spirit of much of the American Protestantism of the day" (22). This was an era of great piety, enthusiasm and voluntary organization (i.e. enterprise).
- Missions
"Certainly in America the period from 1890 to WWI was the golden age of Protestant missions" (23). Organizations like the American Sunday School Union and Christian Endeavor focused on evangelism and "had the important side effect of uniting Protestants from almost every denomination" (24). The most famous and successful was the temperance movement, on which "liberals and conservatives could thoroughly agree, and ... [even] some Catholic leaders" (25). Less successful was that for sabbath observance (seen as a way to highlight America's Protestantism).
- Women as Reformers
"The evangelical activism and reforms of this era were closely connected with changing roles of women" (26). Men were seen as leaders in business, public (individualist, competitive), while women were acknowledged moral and spiritual leaders at home, even in church ("promoters of religion and virtue" 26). Women outnumbered men in churches, which became "one of the first public forums in which they were permitted to organize" (26). This eventually strengthened calls for women suffrage. It was reasoned that if women are the moral and spiritual leaders, their votes would improve society. Also, women gained access to many church leadership positions.
- Social Involvement and Retraction
As urban social problems mounted, the 19C Protestant consensus in support of self-help, individualism, laissez-faire economics, social conservatism was challenged (in reaction was "distrust or dislike of the new American working classes and their unions" 27). "The Populist movement, primarily a farmers' movement in the South and the western Midwest, included radical proposals for national social reform. By 1896 Populism had become such a potent political force that it virtually captured the Democratic party with the nomination of the eloquent Christian spokesman for the people, William Jennings Bryan. Another ardent Christian, William McKinley, representing more conservative political assumptions, was elected" (29) but after his death in 1901 and TR's switch, "progressive" views became dominant through the 1916 election.
All advocated increased "social service" or volunatary acts of charity, but some called for more government help. The latter became known as the "social gospel" progressive program, explicitly rejecting both 19C individualism and laissez-faire economics. "Such themes fit well with the emerging liberal theology of the day, which was optimistic about human nature, ethical in emphasis, and hopeful about establishing the principles of the kingdom in the 20C ... This association of progressive politics with liberal theology came at the same time as a deep crisis was brewing over theological issues. The [gradual] result ... was that 20C American Protestantism began to split into two major parties" (29); conservatives (theological/political) and liberals (theology) / progressives (political). "As theological liberals spoke more and more about the social implications of the gospel, revivalist evangelicals spoke of them correspondingly less" (30). In 1912, the rising star Billy Sunday, in a heated exchange with a liberal, said they're "trying to make a religion out of social service with Jesus Christ left out ... We've had enough of this godless social service nonsense" (31). Though the leaders tried to keep these internal controversies away from public attention, stressing unity and progress, the divides had by WWI become too deep to ignore.
D. New Departures and Conservative Responses (1865-1917)
Athough "the prevailing mood of Protestants in the era from the Civil War to WWI was one of prosperity, progress, and confidence[,] the truth of the matter was that vastly different understandings of the gospel were developing. Ultimately these differences were so great as to precipitate what historian Sydney Ahlstrom describes as 'the most fundamental controversy to wrack the churches since the Reformation'" (32).
- Liberalism and Modernism
"Perhaps the most important point for understanding theological liberalism or modernism (the terms are often used interchangably) is that it was a movement designed to save Protestantism" (32).
3 typical liberal strategies to "save the faith":
- Deifying Historical Process
- Stressing the Ethical
- The Centrality of the Religious Feelings
All of these deemphasized static dogma, doctrine and emphasized fluid experience, development, process. It was a retreat of faith from reason, which was seen as a secular stronghold.
- Conservative Reactions
Many conservatives (on the liberals' other flank) saw these "accomodations to modernity as a sell-out" (36), though even among them there was a range of opinion, with some willing to make some concessions to modernism. The most articulate hard-liners were at Princeton's (Presbyterian) seminary. It was they who developed "inerrancy" as a central doctrine, even a test of faith. In 1891, Prof. Charles A. Briggs (1841-1913) of Union Th. Sem., though generally traditionalist, attacked inerrancy as articulated by Archibald Alexander Hodge (1823-1886) and Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield (1851-1921) of Princeton. Though Briggs was suspended from the ministry, the ultimate result "was that both he and his seminary left the Presbyterian church" (38). "Between 1878 and 1906 almost every major Protestant denomination experienced at least one heresy trial ... by the early 1900s many Protestant seminaries in the North were controlled by liberals" (38). But this was largely a movement of elites. The rank-and-file members were mostly unaffected by (often unaware of) the changes. Many of these downplayed or even rejected "inerrancy" (too technical, straining gnats), stressing instead "personal religious experience and practical morality" (39).
- Conservative Innovations:
All of these were mirror images of liberalism and featured "a distinctly antiliberal stress on dramatic intervention of the supernatural" (43) to counter liberalism's insistence on naturalism.
-- Dispensational Premillennialism
As many saw culture drifting away from God (and no longer under primarily Protestant influence), they rejected belief in human "progress" toward Christ's kingdom and looked to Christ's personal return to rule from Jerusalem. Dispensationalism, imported from England, interpreted history as God testing humanity with 7 different plans of salvation. As humans failed each test, the era would end in catastrophic divine judgement. They are:
1. ends in human Fall into sin and explusion from Eden
2. ends in Flood
3. ends at Tower of Babel
4. ends at ?
5. ends at ?
6. ends at rapture, tribulation, Armageddon (church age)
7. 1000-year reign of literal kingdom at Jerusalem, ending at Gog and Magog
Dispensationalism was spread via summer Bible conferences and institutes (Moody, Biola, Philadelphia College of Bible) by leaders like Dwight L. Moody, Reuben A. Torrey (1856-1928), James M. Gray (1851-1925), C. I. Scofield (1843-1921), William J. Eerdman (1833-1923), A. C. Dixon (1854-1925) and A. J. Gordon (1836-1895). The movement was "strikingly antimodernist," in many ways a mirror image of modernism: pessimistic vs. optimistic on modern culture, interpreting history thru lens of the Bible vs. reverse, explaining history and seeking social solutions in terms of religion (i.e. supernatural, divine intervention) vs. explaining religion and seeking solutions in history (naturalistic processes, social forces).
-- The Holiness Movement
Likewise, this movement mirrored the liberal stress on ethics and natural goodness of man, emphasizing the need for the Holy Spirit to transform (dramatically, vs. liberals' gradualism) naturally evil man. The movement (actually many related movements) grew out of John Wesley's Methodism, spawning many organizations in late 1800s, best known Salvation Army. These groups often separated from larger, more respectable denominations, specialized in caring for and evangelizing the socially outcast. Represented socio-economic low end ... "illustrates a general point in modern church life: the more well-to-do a group, the less demanding its requirements for sanctification ... Liberal Protestants ... [saw] virtue in the best developments of modern civilization and in their own lives. Traditional denominationalists stood somewhere in the middle, having more ambivalent attitudes toward how much of the world had to be renounced in order properly to live the Christian life. Near the [other end] ... were holiness groups, speaking of much radical separation from worldliness, but having, in a material since, less of the world to renounce" (42).
-- Pentacostalism
"...after 1900, developed first in some Holiness groups, was even more radical in its teachings and even more prone to attract the socially disinherited" (43). Again a mirror image of liberalism, stressing "the supernatural just at the point where the liberals stressed the divine elements in the natural. So while modernists might speak of a gentle 'religion of the heart' Pentacostals insisted that true heart religion be evidenced by unmistakable signs of the Spirit's radical transforming power, especially the pentacostal signs of faith healing and speaking in tongues" (43). Looked for not only conversion and holiness, but also "a dramatic outpouring of the Holy Spirit" (43) and a dispensational expectation of Jesus' return at any moment. All these together comprised the "full gospel" (43). "Sparked especially by the Azusa Street Revivals in LA beginning in 1906, led by black evangelist William J. Seymour" (43). Later led to Church of God and Assemblies of God (largest).
- Immigrant Traditionalism
"While the mainstream of American Protestantism was fragmenting" (44) immigration was further complicating things. Protestant newcomers (German, Scandinavian, Dutch) at first tried to retain their ethnic religious heritages (shared conservative beliefs but distrusted enthusiastic style), but eventually moved toward either evangelical or liberal camps (slow processes). One liberal driver was the desire for "a dominant social group hoping to keep its customary control ... easier to maintain if Protestant religion was defined in terms of high moral ideals with which few were likely to disagree" (44). By 1910, the largest religious groups were Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran, in that order.
E. African American Evangelicalism
- Christianity among Blacks
"A unique case in America ... robbed of most of what gives people a sense of identity ... [were permitted to retain only] kinship ties and evangelical Christianity ... [after Civil War, faced] lack of education, poverty, racial prejudice" (46-7). "Institutionally, the black churches were the most important agencies in providing structure and leadership to the newly separate black communities. Spiritually, the Christianity of the black people was incalculably important in their extreme circumstances in providing them with meaning, acceptance, hope, and a moral dignity that surpassed that of their evangelical white oppressors" (48).
F. The Emergence of Fundamentalism
Though naturally optimistic, idealistic, can-do Americans threw themselves into WWI (and won, militarily), "despite some expectations to the contrary, war was not a sanctifying experience. Abroad, the crusade to 'make America safe for democracy' was soon left in a shambles. At home the war unleashed the forces of secularization that brought the jazz age. It also sparked an era of bitterness and reaction. American idealism was overwhelmed by dissension. Although rearguard actions were fought to keep America Protestant, the fact of the matter was that the age was over when the US was in any significant sense a bastion of 'Christendom' ... the impact [of WWI] on the culturally dominant white Protestant community probably was the most intense ... [sending it] reeling for two decades, and, when it recovered to some extent after WWII, it was not the same" (51). In the emotionally patriotic fervor, many clergy (left and right, including Billy Sunday) blurred (even eliminated) the distinction between loyalty to God and country. Many wrestled with the moral dilemmas, but nonenthusiasts were forced into silence. Dispensationalism (which clearly distinguished) was "considered subversive to the war effort and subjected to scathing attacks" (52). The hysteria included many German atrocity stories (false or exaggerated). Anti-germanism "hastened Americanization of many Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox who had recently immigrated" (53).
Thinking about how WWI "broke the back" of "the Protestant Establishment," a related thought is the thesis (in, I think, Democracy, the God that Failed) that US entry into WWI shifted the balance against Germany and set the stage for totalitarianism, including the Russian and Chinese Communist Revolutions, Nazism in Germany, facism in Italy, WWII, the Cold War and that, in retrospect, the US should NOT have entered it, letting the (then stalemated) Europeans work out their own truce, which would have been inevitable without our involvement. Hmmm, WWI a disaster on many levels.
I also think of the fascinating Hoover Digest article portraying WWII, the Cold War and the War on [primarily Islamic] Terror as simply repercussions of WWI, which deposed 3 powerful empires: Austro-Hungarian (included Prussia, Germany), Russian, and Ottoman (I added; in decreasing order of power, sophistication).
- The Aftermath (of WWI)
When WWI ended with a decisive Allied victory, the patriotic fervor had no place to go, and so mixed with "the dregs of bitterness, suspicion, and hatred" (53). At first, the mood among Christians was unity and idealism, manifested in passage of Prohibition and founding of the "massive interdenominational Interchurch World Movement" (53). But IWM, lauched immediately after WWI, was "in a shambles" by 1920, having been, like the League of Nations, killed by conservative opposition. "In the churches, as in the nation generally, the idealism of WWI was very quickly overshadowed by a growing mood of bitter reaction. When the war ended abruptly it seemed as though a considerable element of the American people needed to find new enemies on whom to vent their superheated emotions. The Marxist revolution in Russia in 1917 together with labor unrest and a series of frightening terrorist bombings fueled the 'Red Scare' during 1919 in which much of the nation was gripped with fears of communist infiltration and uprising. More directly involved with the churches was the revival of the Ku Klux Klan. Reorganized in 1915, this antiblack organization extended its range of hatreds to include Catholics, Jews, and non-Nordic people generally. If the war had accelerated the[ir] assimilation ... its aftermath accelerated the reactions and prejudices against them ... By 1923 the Klan had reached a peak membership of nearly 3 million" (54). The Klan was an extremist version of what many Protestants felt in milder forms, fear of foreigners (esp. economically, but also culturally, religiously) and resentment of the urban problems they caused. Thus the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 severely restricting immigration. The 1920s also brought a "revolution in morals" as secularism burst forth (Freudianism, free expression, collapse of public standards). Some Christians acquiesed (or even saw an opportunity to build a new consensus), others reacted. In the absence of unifying war activism, the conflict broke into the open.
- Fundamentalists Versus Modernists
By the 1920s, these 2 camps had turned their "guns" on each other. The term "fundamentalist" was coined by Curtis Lee Laws, conservative editor of the Baptist paper The Watchman-Examiner, as a call to arms to "those ready to do battle royal for the Fundamentals" (57). At the center of this formidable conservative coalition were the dispensationalists, who had been promoting their teachings "for nearly half a century through prophecy conferences, Bible institutes, evangelistic campaigns, and the Scofield Reference Bible (1909)" (57). In some denominations one side far outnumbered the other, but in others the forces were more evenly matched, intensifying conflict. Generally, liberals prevailed in the Northeast and conservatives in the South ("ever since the Civil War most southerners had been against liberalism and modernism, which they associated with Yankee culture" 58), with other areas dominated by moderates. J. Gresham Machan became the leading conservative spokesman.
Conservatives, seeing what had happened to Germany even with its strong Christian heritage, sought to preserve Christian civilization from attacks by secularism, atheism, communism, barbarism. A central focus became opposition to biological evolution, which was linked to Darwin, Nietzsche, might makes right thinking. This led to the famour Scopes trial of 1925, pitting conservative William Jennings Bryan against liberal Clarence Darrow. "Although the outcome of the trial was indecisive and the [anti-evolution] law stood, the rural setting and the press's caricatures of fundamentalists as rubes and hicks discredited fundamentalism and made it difficult to pursue further the serious aspects of the movement" (60). Thereafter, the press tended to focus only on fringe figures (e.g. Aimee Semple McPherson) of the fundamentalist movement.
As Protestants were busy in-fighting, "various non-Protestant groups were establishing stronger footholds as permanent parts of American culture and religion" (60). When Catholic Al Smith won the 1928 Democratic presidential nomination, the strong conservative reaction was the last for 3 decades. During these years, fundamentalism seemed to be in disarray, many assumed it would fade away as modern education overcame its presumed rural social base (i.e. think of "poor, uneducated, easy to command quote" from Hofstadter's aial bk). But the movement "was not disappearing but realigning. Not being able to control either the major northern denominations nor the political culture, [they] continued to do what they did best, evangelize and build up local churches ... [adeptly using] mass media ... one of the few [parts of American Protestantism] that was growing during the 1930s. It was not until decades later, when fundamentalists and their evangelical heirs reemerged in American life, that many observers noticed this growth or took it seriously" (61).
2. Evangelicalism since 1930: Unity and Diversity
Draws on Marsden's earlier Reforming Fundamentalism: Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism, 1987).
The neo-evangelicals were already in the 1940s talking about and hoping for a resurgence. "They were convinced that if ... fundamentalism could be tempered slightly, ... [it] could 'win America.' They saw themselves as standing in the tradition of Moody, Finney, Edwards, Whitefield, representing the longstanding transdenominational center of the American evangelical tradition" (64). "If the New Evangelicalism ... ever had a chance of achieving some real working unity, it would have centered around Billy Graham in his prime. Carl F. H. Henry, once one of Graham's lieutenants, looking back in 1980 observed, 'During the 1960s I somewhat romanced the possibility that a vast evangelical alliance might arise in the US to coordinate effectively a national impact in evangelism, education, publication and sociopolitical action'" (62). "Graham had decisively broken with the separatist fundamentalists, had made inroads into the major denominations, was immensely popular, and stood almost alone as a recognized evangelical leader" (62). By 1975 that dream was gone, with "battle for the Bible" (63) infighting. "As evangelicals [re]gained some ... national prestige ... [their] leaders could no longer agree among themselves as to what an evangelical was" (63). The movement had achieved some success by the 1970s, but only partly due to the leaders' vision. It had gotten beyond their control, becoming even more kaleidoscopic.
Yet, despite this bleak outlook, and the fact that both liberals and conservatives in 1930 had been "expecting secularization to advance steadily in churches and culture" (63), until Christ returned to bless it (liberals) or destroy and rebuild it (conservatives), by 1980 "the progressive denominations [were] in a state of decline, while evangelical and conservative groups [were] flourishing" (64).
Marsden discusses the inherent internal conflict within fundamentalism between (negative) militant anti-modernism and dispensational cultural pessimism leading to separatism (give up on the mainline) on the one hand, and (positive) revivalistic, evangelistic outreach to save souls (with willingness to use "worldly" means to do so, including cooperative ambivalence toward mainline denominations, "how can we get a hearing to win the nation if we give up on mainline") on the other (66-7). So separatism was tempered by the desire for cultural influence. Youth for Christ (organized 1945), with its first full-time evangelist Billy Graham, was the most notable success of the more positive fundamentalists. The NAE (National Assn of Evangelicals), founded 1942, "and other important agencies founded during the next 2 decades [many headed by Harold John Ockenga, former Machen student, were the work of] a group of people, predominantly Baptist and Presbyterian, most of whom had connections with institutions such as Wheaton College, Moody Bible Institute, Dallas Theological Seminary, Gordon College and Seminary in Boston, and those followers of Machen who were not strict separatists" (69). As intended, they built a large and diverse coalition. But strict (negative) fundamentalists were becoming more uneasy (though they too sought national revival). "The most vocal spokesman for this more separatist view was Carl McIntire, another former Machen student ... In 1941, apparently anticipating the formation of the NAE, McIntire founded the American Council of Christian Churches on a strict fundamentalist basis - no Pentacostals and, especially, no denominations (or their members) affiliated with the Federal Council of Churches" (71). His vigorous PR and attacks on liberals, stressing communist ties, were well known.
"During the 1940s, however, it was not clear to the heirs of fundamentalism that a split was shaping up over ... negative vs. positive [,] separatist vs. inclusivist ... the role of dispensational premillennialism" (71). "With America's emergence into world leadership after [WWII, many positive fundamentalists] saw a unique opportunity for reconstituting Christian civilization, if America's evangelical tradition could be revived" (72). They aimed to stress "the broad tradition of Augustinian orthodoxy [vs.] the more narrow dispensationalist teachings of recent invention ... a positive social program [vs.] emphasis on personal ethical prohibitions ... [and intellectual sophistication vs.] the anti-intellectualism" (72) of Bible institutes and pragmatic popularizers. "Their most notable effort ... was the founding of Fuller Theological Seminary ... in 1947" (72). But Billy "Graham's move toward the respectable centers of American life precipitated a definitive split with the hardline fundamentalists in 1957" (73, over Graham's acceptance of sponsorship by the liberal Protestant Council of Churches in his NYC crusade). After this, the term fundamentalist referred to strict separatists and evangelical meant allies of Graham.
In addition to this split, there was by 1967 (the time of the World Congress on Evangelism) an additional political split within the neo-E Graham camp. "During the 1940s and 1950s, when neo-Es had called for an E social program, they had assumed it would be a Christianized version of Republicanism. By the 1960s ... a second generation ... was calling for more progressive political stances. Vietnam polarized everyone ... and arch-conservatives [and huge funders] like J. Howard Pew demanded that Es take unreservedly pronationalist and procapitalist positions" (74). Insufficiently militant (though solidly Republican) Carl Henry was replaced in 1968 at CT by Harold Lindsell, "who readily provided Christianized versions of the rhetoric of Spiro Agnew during the Nixon era. This militantly conservative political stance of the E 'establishment' sparked a reciprocal action on the left ... [leading in 1971 to] Sojourners ... Sen. Mark Hatfield became the best-known supporter of this movement. During the 1970s a spectrum of well-represented E political stances emerged" (74-5).
Yet another splitting point became the debate over biblical inerrancy. CT editor Harold Lindsell's 1976 The Battle for the Bible revived this debate among transdenominational Es (the SBC and LCMS were already embroiled in internal battles over it).
Meanwhile, "while the E 'establishment' was immobilized by internal divisions, Falwell [and his Moral Majority in late 70s] took over the program of its right wing and mobilized many Americans with fundamentalist decisiveness. The Moral Majority rode the Reagan wave to success, a strategy apparent from their almost uncritical endorsement of the new president's domestic and foreign policies. The Reagan administration, in turn, adopted some of the rhetoric of the religious Right, but it did little substantively (except through court appointments) to promote such leading concerns of the right wing as antiabortion and prayer in public schools" (76-7).
Marsden notes Es huge political impact in "broadening the popular base for an almost unreserved support for the state of Israel. The Moral Majority only articulated a much more widely held E view on this issue" (77). The largest group to hold these views (and overwhelm the old F reform movement) was the charismatics, whose movement swept the nation, claiming by 1980 around 20% of Americans, including most major denominations (and aiding ecumenism, experientialism, therapeuticism [health, success, personal fulfillment]). All the major televangelists of the 70s and 80s (Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, Pat Robertson) were charismatic (79). Robertson in the mid-80s combined the therapeutics of healing pentacostalism with "the equally popular patriotism and conservatism that had won such wide support for (the non-charismatic) Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority" (79).
The earlier F reformers must have had mixed feelings about all this. While E was indeed thriving, it was leaving behind the "transdenominational E tradition" tracable back thru F to the days of Moody, Finney, Edwards, Whitefield. "[orthodox] Political fundamentalism [mixed with unorthodox] self-serving nationalism ... charismatic revival [mixed orthodox] concern for individual spirituality [with unorthodox] health and prosperity [therapeutics]" (79-80). Marsden notes interestingly that "it can be plausibly argued that E's rounding off of the sharp edges of the gospel message between 1960 and 1985 paralleled the gentle modifications of the gospel by Protestant liberalism in the later 19C. Still, many found it difficult to argue with success, which was always at a premium in evangelicalism. People were being converted and brought into churches where most of the essentials of the E message remained unchanged. During the 1980s, however, success took its toll, as most of the major TV ministries were rocked by scandal, or at least embarrassment" (80). Roberts: God will "take me home" unless funds received, Bakker and Swaggart's sexual scandals (and financial for Bakker), Robertson's '88 run and ridicule for his claims of miraculous healing powers and prayer-diverted hurricane. Falwell withdrew from politics, endorsing Bush rather than (charismatic) Robertson. Bottom line, "there was little holding E together and little to control its extravagances [organizationally resembling medieval] feudalism ... one of the striking features of much of E is its general disregard for the institutional church [Steve: small wonder in view of latter's history of corruption, left-leaning, compromise] ... ultimately, individuals are sovereign" (81).
Given all this, Marsden says "it is remarkable that American E has the degree of coherence it does. Little seems to hold it together other than common traditions, a central one of which is the denial of the authority of traditions ... Probably the principles of the mass market, which emphasize standardization and national campaigns, are primary forces that help maintain this considerable E uniformity" (81-2, anti-capitalism, -commercialism?). Which will prevail, centripetal or centrifugal forces? Perhaps 3 parties are replacing the transdenominational core: charismatic, conservative-nationalistic political, progressive evangelical. He worries that E's lack of institutions will hinder its ability to challenge secularism. "The movement depends on free enterprise and popular appeal" (82). But this leaves it vulnerable to mixing in potentially unorthodox simplifications and concessions to the currently popular spirit of the age. "As is so often the case in church history, the advance of the gospel is bound up with the advance of secularization within the church. Perhaps this conjunction is inevitable in a fallen world. The tares will grow with the wheat" (82).
Part 2: Interpretations
3. Evangelical Politics: An American Tradition
Although many seem to think mixing religion and politics is somehow unAmerican, such mixes "have always been one part of the American political heritage ... Throughout the colonial era a central political theme was the cold war between the Protestants and the Catholics. The British colonies were Protestant outposts in a predominantly Catholic hemisphere. The deep rivalry between [them] dominated American thought in a way not unlike" (85) that between capitalism and communism during the Cold War. Affecting not just foreign policy, "rivalry between Anglicans and Calvinists was a primary theme in colonial domestic struggles" (85). Calvinists and other "dissenters" bitterly opposed any type of Anglican (seen as closely allied to Catholicism and tyranny) establishment. 18C English dissenters, drawing on earlier Puritan thought, developed Whiggism as a critique of royal and ecclesiastical power. Originally (i.e. Puritans) highly religious, later Whigs largely secularized their critique. Religion was seen as both too important and too divisive for inclusion in the Constitution (Steve: also beyond the very limited scope envisioned for Federal power). As a result, two traditions developed; [Anglican-friendly, Virginia-based] Jeffersonian and [Calvinist-friendly] New England republicanism. Jefferson saw religion as tribal, divisive, and generally distrusted (esp. sectarian) religion's role in politics. For their part, many religious people (esp. Baptists) also sought to protect religion from government meddling, joining Jefferson's camp. In New England, on the other hand, people "saw a more positive role for Christianity in national life" (87), seeing a cosmic struggle between "Catholicism, Anglicanism, centralized monarchical power, corruption, and tyranny [vs.] Protestantism, Puritanism, representative government, virtue, and freedom. The American way thus had strong religious and ethical dimensions" (87). Both the 1rst and 2nd Great Awakenings strengthened the latter camp.
Hmmm, think about how these have fared in the meantime. New England is now a left-liberal stronghold. So much for Puritan holding the line. Of course, Jefferson is usually claimed by the left-liberals, not the right-conservatives (other than libertarians), so Whiggism has also not successfully held back government creep. Probably a case could be made that the only effective ingredient in doing so is real, vital, Christian faith, which has been watered down in both colonial camps and only preserved in F/E conservative camps.
Also, it seems like these two camps correlate well to the two major colonial political parties, Federalist and Democratic-Republican, aligned to New Englandism and Jeffersonianism, respectively. John Adams was clearly a Federalist, "believing with Hamilton in a centralized financial structure, government by elites, and closer ties with the British" (from Faith of our Mothers, Harold I. Gullan, Eerdmans, 2001, p. 39). This fits with New England's closer identification of political hierarchy with God-ordained order. Jefferson and the Dem-Reps were more French-oriented, seeing a more secular version of the "rights of man." Interesting factoid; James Madison was originally a Federalist, but later allied closely with Jefferson as a Dem-Rep.
Especially in the north, revivalism (1rst and 2nd Great Awakenings) strengthened Puritan-based evangelical republicanism. "Reflecting the Puritan heritage, they sought the conversion of individuals and also strongly favored applying Christian principles to the transformation of society" (88). An early political expression of this was the Anti-Mason party, which later merged with the new Whig party to become the latter's "conscience" wing. Once slavery was settled in the Civil War, anti-Masonry was again taken up by Finney, Jonathan Blanchard (pres. of Wheaton) and others. A new factor was the rise of Catholic political power in the mid 19C. Before that, intra-Protestant rivalries had dominated (e.g. Scotch-Irish distrust of New England moral regulation, allied with [Democratic] South to check it). [Mostly Irish] Catholics also joined Democrats against crusading New Englanders, but this prompted Scotch-Irish to leave the Democrats (along with some Baptists, Methodists). "Explicit anti-Catholicism emerged as the major political issue of the early 1850s. In 1856 the anti-Catholic, nativist Know-Nothing party won 21% of the popular vote for its presidential candidate, Millard Fillmore. Then it merged with the antislavery and purely regional Republican party" (89). This gave the Republicans "a strong Puritan-E component, bent on regulating society according to Christian principles" (89). Slavery had been defeated, but alcohol and Catholicism remained as threats. Opposed to these (self-styled) "insiders" were such "outsiders" as Catholics, the South, and various others suspicious of "the E-Puritan version of a Christian America" (90) (e.g. "High Church, liturgical, and confessional Protestants [e.g. CRC, and even some] Es who, in the tradition of Roger Williams, were sufficiently sectarian to question the possibility of ever establishing a Christian political order" 90).
Republican presidential candidate James G. Blaine's notorious 1884 remark that the Democrats were the party of "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion" revealed the GOP's self-image as the party of Protestant consensus. But his loss (due, many think, to that remark) signaled the end of GOP/E direct linkage. "Neither party could afford to be as overtly sectarian as before. [They] were closely enough matched that Rs had to cultivate some Catholic support and Ds, some E" (90-1). Significantly, this latter reality ended the era "when religion had largely worked against national consensus. The real turning point to the reorientation of American politics came in 1896, when the Ds ran the E William Jennings Bryan for president" (91). By this time, the Ds had developed an "interventionist reformist element" and the Rs had toned down their E element (e.g. adopting the social gospel, theological liberalism, slightly secularized social reform of the progressive era) to attract enough Catholics and immigrants to maintain the northern Protestant (WASP) cultural dominance (political, literary, scholarly, artistic, economic) they had inherited from their E forbears. Seen in this light, its easy to see why many Fs felt too much had been traded away to maintain that cultural dominance.
So, as Martin Marty noted long ago, secularism in America didn't so much "storm the gates" as it was gradually invited in by (largely Christian) cultural elites as a way to maintain their WASP influence (perhaps hoping to co-opt the new arrivals?). Religion, slightly secularized into a "certain concept of (in most minds, Christian) civilization ... had begun to work toward consensus" (92). This basic balance (Catholic-South Ds vs. northern mainline Rs) held until 1960 (with religious issues being backgrounded by economic ones during the Depression and New Deal years, the exception being the civil rights movement, which challenged the "collective conscience of the nation" (93) (Steve: but from a leftist perspective)). Politicians [esp. Catholic] "learned to play the 20C game of appealing to the nation's religious heritage, but in a purely ceremonial (and non-sectarian) way" (93). The large trend was consensual secularization in which a "four faith pluralism" (Marty's term) united Protestants, Catholics, Jews, and secular humanists in support of "the American way of life" (94).
So, as mainline Protestants had blended themselves into the new consensus, Fs, Es, and other conservatives were forced out. As the latter's political power faded, "either they lapsed into political inactivity, blended in with conservative Rs in the North or as birthright Ds in the South" (94). But their dissent (against liberal theology, progressive "social gospel" social policies, Steve: i.e. leftism) would one day challenge the consensus. "By 1968 the liberal New Deal consensus had broken down. The Vietnam War, the rioting of the blacks, and the counterculture brought down the illusion of [the 4-faith] consensus" (95). The consensus itself split, with its now-radicalized left wing "tr[ying] to rebuild a more thoroughly secular and more inclusivistic and pluralistic consensus" (95) but the rest, along with those who had been excluded before ("the silent majority" in VP Spiro Agnew's words, including, no doubt, WFB's NR) "mobilized around anticommunism and love-it-or-leave-it Americanism" (95). After Vietnam and Nixon, "a new, more religious coalition began to coalesce around ethical issues such as antiabortion, antipornography, anti-ERA, and symbolic religious issues such as school prayer" (95). But while generally united culturally (i.e. being on the same side in the "culture war"), they remained divided in other respects (e.g. denominations, political emphases). The significance of this movement was to "supply a rhetoric to bring one wing of the R party back toward its 19C heritage ... [without the] anti-Catholicism ... explicitly E [but with] the exclusiveness of E ... toned down [for political consensus]" (95). This new consensus included southern Es, who had bolted the Ds (forsaking their 19C black advocacy [Steve: or perhaps recognizing leftist radicalism masquerading as such]).
"As was true for 19C E Rs in the era of U. S. Grant, what conservatives actually got in the White House with the victory of Ronald Reagan fell far short of the Christian America of their rhetoric. The mixture of high moral aspirations for Christian civilization with the pragmatic individualistic acquisitiveness of business interests always compromised the ideal. The advent they helped usher in proved to be the second Gilded Age" (96, hmmm, not a big fan of Reagan's, eh? smacks of leftist sour grapes). He later claims Jimmy Carter "was the only practicing E to be president during the 1980s" (97), implying Reagan wasn't one (?! buying into the leftist myth that Reagan wasn't a true believer, but only used religion for political advantage).
"19C anti-Masonry and the contemporary war on secular humanism are generically related" (96). As Ds moved toward "pluralism and moral inclusivism" (96), a significant wing of the Rs moved toward "a militant, broadly Christian, antisecularist, and anticommunist heritage" (96). He quotes Robert Wuthnow's observation of "two civil religions," the conservative one that basically "baptizes the status quo" (my use of JRS' phrase) vs. the liberal one (clearly favored by Wuthnow, and Marsden?) that "raises questions ... scrutinizes ... in the light of transcendent concerns ... challenges ... to [rise above our] own interests" (96, as if 'man is the measure of all things' liberals are concerned about "transcendent" [i.e. God's] principles!!??). As Marsden notes, not only Americans, but also Es, are divided along these lines. Most (70%?) Es are conservatives, but a large minority endorse "the vision more critical of nation and self-interest [which] is an equally venerable part of a heritage that goes back at least to Roger Williams. Likewise strong is a view with roots in the Rev. era, which recognizes that America is divided tribally into religious-ethnic groups and that therefore a high moral principle in public life is to keep explicit religion out of politics (Steve: therefore ceding latter by default to secular humanist [pretending not to be] religionists). Jimmy Carter ... held something like this view" (97). Marsden stresses that Falwell, Robertson represent only the Puritan desire to "set E standards for the nation" and that there are other E strains (e.g. the Jeffersonian desire to keep church-state separate). I get the distinct feeling that Marsden favors at least the latter, and possibly even Wuthnow's "liberal vision."
4. Preachers of Paradox: Fundamentalist Politics in Historical Perspective
History is unpredictable. No one in the 1950s forsaw the turmoil of the '60s, nor in 1970 the coming religious resurgence. Marsden says we don't know if the "relgious right" "marks the dawn of a new spiritual era, a phase in recurrent cycles of social and spiritual anxiety, or the last gasp of an old older" (98). But secularist theories of religious decline in the "bright sun of modern culture" (98) now look like mere wishful thinking on their part. As secularists had gained influence in late 19C, early 20C, they rewrote history, downplaying (criticizing) or ignoring America's Protestant heritage. In the last chapter, we looked at modern F/E in light of American political history. In this one, we look at specifically F/E history. We learn that modern F/E includes "a fascinating variety of traditions ... fused together ... by intense efforts to [both] fight American secularists and to convert them. The result is movement fraught with paradoxes" (99, e.g. intellectual v. emotional, elitist v. populist, public v. private).
A. Fundamentalists and Evangelicals
"By the 1940s and 1950s it was becoming clear that F was dividing into several camps" (101). The major division was over the need for separatism. Separatists political views ranged from resigned (give up illusion of 'Christian civilization,' Titanic, throw life vests) to concerned and engaged (e.g. McIntire). The latter camp saw Catholicism and communism (both often seen as demonic) as chief threats and tended to be Manichean (i.e. good/evil, no gray areas). All these politically active Fs rallied around Barry Goldwater in 1964. "The cultural crisis of the 1960s eventually proved a boon to F ... [being] in an important sense, a spiritual crisis. The ideals, the belief system, and the eschatology of the mid-20C version of liberal culture were proving vacuous" (103). The first attacks came from the counterculture. The breakdown caused a new openness to religion of all sorts. Es were ready, expert as always in "promotion, organization, and communication ... [having] always depended on these for its survival" (104). Paradoxically, Es benefited from reaction against both the old "liberal-scientific-secular establishment" and against counterculture ideals (which most Es saw as "a more virulent sort of Godless secularism and lawlessless" 104). "Many Es defended with fierce patriotism the nation that they nonetheless regarded as disastrously corrupt" (105, focused on law and order). Es offered stablity (clear good/evil, inerrancy, Bible as rock) in a time of flux. This led to the E resurgence of the 1970s, with Jimmy Carter's win symbolizing their new status (though he was not a typical E). Political conservatism was still the majority, but with fairly strong liberal-D and radical Anabaptist minorities. This resurgence led in 1979 to the Moral Majority. There were several F approaches to politics; simplistic anticommunism (morphed into anti-secular humanism, explains all problems), organized moral campaigns (e.g. textbooks, pornography), endtimes call for repentance. Falwell walked a fine line between separatism and influence-seeking compromise. His movement highlighted the "culture war" theme of two worldviews contending for dominance of the West; Christian civilization vs. secular humanism (some, e.g. Tim LaHaye, even suggested conspiracy).
B. The Paradoxes of the Fundamentalist New Right
Marsden here highlights the diversity of the New (religious) Right and its sometimes self-contradictory approaches toward culture. He cites studies which distinguish up to 14 varieties of E. A central tension is between "positive revivalism and polemics" (110). Another is the proper degree of cultural and political engagement (E experience includes both 19C establishment as "insiders" v. 20C exclusion as "outsiders"). Marsden notes the 19C view "is a popularization of the Whig view of history, in which true religion and liberty are pitted against [false] religion and tyranny. America ... was founded on Christian principles embodied in the Constitution and has been chosen by God to be a beacon of right religion and liberty for the whole world" (112-3). This latter nearly always includes Puritan jeremiad, calling America back to her original greatness and dependence on God (current troubles are God's punishment). Another persistent fault-line is private pietist, Methodist, Baptist zeal for church-state separation v. Puritan-Whig, quasi-Calvinist visions of (publicly) Christian America (i.e. personal v. social). "A related point is worth noting: F are reputedly highly individualistic. Indeed, F are individualistic in the sense of advocating classical liberal economics and in emphasizing the necessity of an individual's personal relation to Jesus. Moreover, their view of the church is nominalistic ... they see it essentially as a collection of individuals ... Social Gospel[ers] were quick to [criticize this] and [promote instead] their own more communal emphases ... [while true,] F churches and national organizations are some of the most cohesive nonethnic communities in America ... certainly [moreso] than their moderate-liberal Protestant counterparts [analogous to liberals claiming to stand for liberty against 'repressive' conservatives, but actually delivering tyranny, see TTIF] ... despite the profession of individuality, F churches and organizations tend to be highly authoritarian ... although F preaching stresses making up one's own mind, in fact, the movement displays some remarkable uniformities ... that suggest anything but real individualism in thought" (114-5).
Yet another tension is between anti-intellectualism v. the Puritan heritage, which "includes a cultural vision of all things, including learning, brought into the service of the sovereign God ... Although they may only rarely attain excellence in learning, they seek it in principle and sometimes do attain it ... F are among those contemporary Americans who take ideas most seriously ... what one believes isof the utmost importance [v. the secular] intellectual establishment ... tendency to reduce beliefs to something else [usually social or class interests], hence devaluing the importance of ideas as such" (116). Though F tend to oversimplify into good v. evil, they also reflect modern Enlightenment (Baconian, Common Sense) assumptions (i.e. "humans are capable of positive knowledge based on sure foundations" 117). Marsden notes that F, often accused of anti-intellectualism, are in some ways more intellectual than modern academics (value ideas as such, value Enlightenment inductive reasoning from biblical postulates). "What is most lacking [in F thought] is the contemporary sense of historical development, a Heraclitean sense that all is change" (118), recognizing that this must lead (and has) to doubt, lack of certainty, which is most highly valued by F. Another paradox is E insistence both on personal choice and also God's absolute sovereignty.
"It is incorrect, then, to think of F thought as essentially premodern" (118). "F thought is in fact highly suited to ... [quintessentially modern] technological [thinking] ... to the F the Bible is essentially a collection of true and presice propositions ... F fits this mentality because it is a form of Christianity with no loose ends, ambiguities, or historical developments. Everything fits neatly into a system. It is revealing, for instance, that many of the leaders of the creation-science movement are in applied sciences or engineering" (119). F have more generally "proved themselves masters of modern technique ... If there is a rule of mass communications that the larger the audience the simpler the message must be, [F/E] came to the technological age well prepared. TV ministries flourish best when they provide answers in simple polarities ... subtleties and ambiguities would kill [mass popularity] ... Although not often acknowledged by [elites], E have also dominated the actual best-seller statistics during recent decades. The key to such success is again a simple message ... [it soothes] the tensions, uncertainties, and ambiguities that surround modern life and always shape the human condition. At the same time, the ancient simplicities have been given a contemporary shape by the same forces that produce the efficient production and sales of, let's say, McDonald's hamburgers" (119-20).
5. The Evangelical Love Affair with Enlightenment Science
A. One Science or Two?
In 1902 B. B. Warfield of PTS took issue with Abraham Kuyper's presuppositionalist view (i.e. in this case, that "because there are 'two kinds of people,' regenerate and unregenerate, there are 'two kinds of sciences' ... Christian and non-Christian scientific thinkers were not working on different parts of the same building, but on different buildings" 123). Warfield was defending "the dream that had dominated so much of modern Western thought - that the human race would eventually discover one body of objective scientific truth" (123). Thomas Kuhn was also later challenge this dream. "For Warfield and his coleagues at Princeton, theology was still the queen of the sciences and its truths could be discovered once and for all on the same foundational epistemological principles as the truths of Newtonian physics had been established" (124). Kuyper's view seemed cowardly, a refusal to face the fight that Warfield was convinced must eventually lead to "total apologetic victory" (124). In retrospect, "the Princetonians were fighting overwhelming odds but going down with their guns blazing" (124). At the time, it seemed like Calvinism and science would win together. Warfield's fellow Calvinist Francis L. Patton, recently retired Princeton University president, had confidently "helped create the very scientifically specialized structures of the modern university that [would later make] his own views such an anomaly" (125).
It occurs to me that Kuyper went too far. Its true there's only 1 science, but the mistake the early Christians (and many today) make is assuming we can trust nonbelievers to show good faith in separating out their own pagan biases from the science. History has shown we can't, and in the process we Christians lost control of many great universities and other institutions to liberals and pagans. We need to ramp up our intellectual battle-readiness and assume our adversaries will use unfair tactics like promoting their presuppositions as "science" and using any power at their disposal (social, political, legal, financial) to discredit any who challenge them. Thank God, this is now happening in science, with Philip Johnson and others having joined the battle to reclaim the high ground (which Christians certainly have, but have not been willing to claim until recently).
B. The Historical Problem Stated
"The strict Calvinist theologians at Princeton did not represent all of American E [meaning those] that insisted that 'the sole authority in religion is the Bible and the sole means of salvation is a life-transforming experience wrought by the Holy Spirit through faith in Jesus Christ' [quote from Grant Wacker, in footnote Marsden says 'this is as economical and careful definition as I have seen'] ... [being] unhappy with many of the emphases of [the E movement], they nonetheless were allied with it and eventually became the intellectually most influential group in the conservative, or Bible-believing, E that survived and now flourishes in the 20C" (125). Key question: "why were the Princetonians and so many of their 20C conservative, E, intellectual dependents so committed in principle to a scientifically based culture even while [that] culture was undermining belief in the very truths of the Bible they held most dear?" (126).
C. Evangelicalism and the American Enlightenment
While both Kuyper's and Warfield's "nations had a predominantly Calvinist religious heritage ... had been early leaders in tolerance and religious pluralism ... [and] had been much influenced by the Enlightenment and reshaped politically in the age of revolution ... [the key difference had been in their responses] to the Enlightenment and revolution" (126). Whereas Dutch Calvinists rejected [mainly French] Enlightenment secularism and revolution, American Calvinists embraced the American Revolution, seeing Enlightenment rationality and science as allies of Christian liberty and enemies of (corrupted "Christian" or atheist) tyranny.
Henry May (in The Enlightenment in America, 1976) taught us to "divide the European Enlightenment ideas that influenced the U.S. into 4 categories" (128):
- early Moderate: Newton and Locke (ideals of order, balance, religious compromise)
- Skeptical: Voltaire, Hume (questions religious truth)
- Revolutionary: Rousseau (the search for a new heaven on earth)
- Didactic: Scottish Common Sense (opposed 2 and 3, but rescued 1 "the essentials of the earlier 18C commitments to science, rationality, order, and the Christian tradition" 128)
Of these 4, only the first and last "had major lasting influence in" (128) America. "The American Revolution was managed primarily by proponents of the Moderate Enlightenment, such as Adams and Madison. More radical revolutionary ideas, such as those of Paine and Jefferson, were significant for a time, but were discredited in many influential circles when they became associated with the French Revolution and Paine's skepticism ... according to the principles of Scottish philosophy, it appeared that the 3 great strands in American thought - modern empirical scientific ideals, the self-evident principles of the American Revolution (Steve: i.e. God-given natural rights), and E Christianity - could be [remain, actually] reconciled. Thus the Scottish Enlightenment had a remarkable afterlife in the United States, dominating American academic thought for the first 6 or 7 decades of the 19C ... among the great heroes of the faith for E intellectuals during the first half of the 19C were Isaac Newton and Francis Bacon" (128). Finney insisted "that producing a revival was just as scientific an enterprise as producing a crop of corn" (129). "So in the first heyday of E in the U.S., objective scientific thought was not tinged with the guilt of fostering secularism. Rather it was boldly lauded as the best friend of the Christian faith and of Christian culture generally ... [the synergy being] not a recent invention [but] a matter of restoring a long-standing marriage briefly threatened by revolutionary passions and infidelity" (129).
D. Faith and Reason
"The Puritans cordially supported the new science of the 17C ... [seeing it not as a threat to their] providential readings of nature [but as an] investigation [into God's] orderliness ... By the 18C, however, the tension between providential and natural law explanations was becoming a major struggle for thoughtful Protestants of all sorts ... [the orthodox saw them as merely] complementary perspectives (Steve: ref. The Clockwork Image) ... [and, with Paley, claimed] empirical science supported Scripture by providing irrefutable evidence of design" (130). Protestants had worked out a dualistic, two-tiered worldview, "founded on an empiricist epistemology, with the laws of nature below, supporting supernatural belief above ... a modern version of the Thomist synthesis of reason and faith ... in H. Richard Niebuhr's categories, ... a 'Christ Above Culture' intellectual framework" (131). A key point is that in the founding era, most Christians saw politics as belonging to the lower, objective, scientific realm, seeing no need to develop a specifically Christian alternative to Locke, Paine, Jefferson, etc. "Locke's contract theory of government was, in practice, sufficiently like the Puritan covenant that no one in the revolutionary era seems to have thought it significant to criticize its essentially secular theoretical base" (132). Here, I believe Marsden misses the crucial point that early Americans saw (correctly, I believe) that Locke's theoretical base was in fact Christian, not secular, despite attempts then and now to claim otherwise. They welcomed Locke's ability to downplay any hint of sectarianism to make these [Godly, they believed, as do I] principles acceptable to all, religious or not (i.e. moving as much as possible from [subjective, requires faith] "upstairs" to [objective, demonstrable, agreed upon] "downstairs," with the hope that even more could be likewise moved in the future). 19C Christians agreed to separate "upstairs" (relgious) areas from "downstairs" (secular, scientific) areas for study. "When this division of labor took place, the two realms were seen in perfect harmony, and true science was always the base of proof for true religion. Once the disciplines were declared autonomous and separated from explicit Christian reference until after they had drawn their conclusions, however, it was easy for a later generation to omit" (133) the last step. In retrospect, this dualistic approach "has been seen as part of a subtle process of secularization in American life" (133).
E. The Darwinian Challenges
"By 1859, Es, both scientists and theologians, thought they had discovered an impregnable synthesis between faith and reason" (135). Liberals have portrayed Darwin as "mark[ing] the triumphant assault of modern scientific culture against the last remaining citadels of the premodern religious culture ... [Darwinist] Thomas Huxley destroyed ['befuddled' Christian Bishop] Wilberforce's position in their famed debate of 1860. After that it was a mopping-up operation" (135). In other words, they play up the religion/science warfare theme, then claim that Darwin decisively ended this "longstanding struggle between modernity and prescientific religious faith" (136). The fact is that conservative E leadership was divided (lay opinion may have been largely negative, not sure?). "The most formidable American scientific opponent of Darwin was Harvard's Louis Agassiz, a Unitarian. The most formidable supporter was Agassiz' colleague, Asa Gray, an E" (137). Opponents of Darwin had several beefs: evolution v. literal Genesis, dignity of man, too speculative to be scientific (went beyond Baconian induction), Darwinism = atheism (Charles Hodge). A big debate was whether atheism was entailed by Darwin's theories or a nonessential addition promoted by some. "Among conservative Protestant intellectuals ... the prevailing opinion seems to have favored Gray's view" (138).
F. Origins of the Conflict
"In the early decades after Origin of Species, the 'warfare' framework for understanding the relationship of Christianity to Darwinism was developed and promoted primarily by ardent opponents of Christianity" (139), projecting this battle into the past, writing revisionist history, e.g. ignoring the fact "that most of the debates about science had been debates among Christians ... religiously based obscurantism [v.] enlightened ... value-free scientific truth" (140). Seeing this battle as dark v. light, they were themselves ironically anti-Christian Fs. They were determined to purge science of any religious content and also to purge the scientific community of any religious advocates. Two points: the movement to secularize science and society pre-dates Darwin, and secularists heavily promoted Darwinism since it ideally suited their campaign (Steve: perhaps this is why Darwin was coy, his biggest promoters were atheists but of course he didn't want to offend the vast majority of believers).
G. Why Many Biblicists Did Not Know They Were At War With Science
Secularization was progressing when Darwin's theory hit. An important question is how much of this just happenend v. was part of a planned "revolution" (see The Secular Revolution). Of course unbelievers were in favor of this (some "positivists" even thought it a better basis for morality [e.g. libertarian objectivism?]), but its important to understand that even many Christians supported it as a working methodology to enhance efficiency in science, business, etc., i.e. professional quality-control (as above, to move as much as possible into the lower sphere of common acceptance, provability, etc.). William Graham Sumner's famous remark captures the danger with this approach: "I put my religious beliefs in a drawer and 20 years later I opened the drawer and they were gone" (143). Unlike Sumner, for most it took a generation for methodology to become worldview. The process was so apparently benign that most Es didn't see the danger before 1900.
H. And Then it was Too Late
By around 1910 it was no longer acceptable to mix religious considerations, especially conservative biblicist ones, with science. The E's Warfieldian view of "one science" had set up "their spectacular intellectual defeat" (145). They had expected their views to triumph in fair competition (leading to, in economic terms, a monopoly), but what resulted was severe E loss of "market share." But this very E openness to "a monolithic public philosophy dominating [society] ... opened the door for the triumph of a secular version of such a policy" (145). John Dewey's life illustrates the process. Early in life "a New England Calvinist at heart ... [he later became] a champion of a virtual Comptean positivism, praising the triumph of 'science' over religious prejudice" (146).
I. The Fundamentalist War on Evolution
Having now been marginalized, conservative Es (now called Fs) declared war on evolution. The secularists mythologized it as the focus of good, the Fs as the focus of evil. As E scholarship was forced into exile, secular (and Jewish) scholarship bloomed. Having been driven from the colleges and universities (they had earlier founded), Es formed their own Bible Institutes and Conferences, developing "curricula centered on the Bible alone ... learn[ing] from other disciplines only insofar as these might aid in evangelism and missions" (149). The secularists had declared war, now the Fs had too.
J. The Sequel: Warfield and Kuyper Today
If 1920 to 1950 were a dark age of E scholarship, there has since then been a minor renaissance. [Steve: Interesting that since E/Fs were exiled by 1910, WWI and WWII happened, related? i.e. remove the salt and things fall apart? hmmm]. "Most roots of the resurgence can be traced to the tradition of the Princeton theologians, the one group in the F coalition who had insisted on rigorous scholarship. J. Gresham Machen ... had led the Princeton movement during the years of F-modernist controversies ... In the 1930s most of the few serious scholars who remained in F had some connection with Machen. These inspired a new generation of F intellectuals who began to emerge by the early 1940s" (149, see Mark Lau Branson's The Reader's Guide to the Best E Books, 1982, also Marsden's Reforming F). Even today, E scholars are divided into Warfield (still trying to win the whole pie, contending for truth, fight the good fight) and Kuyper (Wolterstorff, Plantinga, presuppositionalism, see E as minority view in pluralistic society) camps [Where am I? I lean Warfieldian, "all truth is God's truth", if no-God is a basic assumption, its falsity should eventually lead to logical contradiction, so let's find it]. This ongoing irresolution feeds confusion as to what the "Religious Right" wants of society. Both camps are "working at reconciling 2 of the central forces in the American cultural heritage, E and modern science" (152).
6. Why Creation Science?
Although the creation science movement has tried to cast the debate as "either-or" between a literal reading of Genesis or biological evolution, many continue to hold intermediate positions, usually designated "theistic evolution" or "progressive creation" (154). Notable Christian evolutionists were Asa Gray and George Frederick Wright (contributed an essay on evolution to The Fundamentals, he did criticize "extravagant philosophical claims of evolution" 155). Interesting note; "unlike Darwin, Calvinists were not distressed by the idea of a [sovereign] God who permitted considerable cruelty ['extermination of the weak and unfit' Henry Morris] and wastefulness ['billions of years in aimless evolutionary meandering before getting to the point' HM] in his universe" (155). Even Warfield (inventor of the term "inerrancy") denied that evolution and creation were opposites. Thus the question; why have surprisingly many insisted on opposition to biological evolution as a test of faith?
A. The Role of the Bible
Central to the answer is biblical literalism, resulting from "the convergence of 2 powerful traditions of biblical interpretation in America [next 2 headings]. These, in turn, lead to a number of factors in the American religious and cultural heritage [remaining headings] that have inclined some substantial groups of people toward accepting such views" (158).
B. Millenarianism
Various forms of millenarianism have grown since the 19C and are "based on exact interpretations of the numbers in biblical prophecies. The Bible, [they] assume, is susceptible to exact scientific analysis, on the basis of which at least some aspects of the future can be predicted with some exactitude. Seventh-Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the influential dispentational premillennialists among Fs all treat the prophetic numbers in this way" (158). The biblical hermeneutic is "literal where possible" (158). Not surprisingly, these folks have also insisted on literal readings of the Genesis creation account; i.e. 6 24-hour days. The influence of these views far exceeded F circles; Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth was "the best-selling book in America during the 1970s" (159). The main CS organization, ICR, founded by Henry Morris, has close ties to this prophetic movement. Morris' main precursor (i.e. young-earth flood-geology approach) was George McCready Price (1870-1963), a Seventh-Day Adventist whose "whole career was dedicated to confirming the prophecies of Ellen G. White, who claimed divine inspiration for the view that the worldwide flood accounts for the geological evidence on which geologists built their theories" (159) [Steve: this feels like an effort to discredit CS, an irritant to those (liberals?) seeking scholarly credibility for E views, God's 'foolishness' irritating the proud?].
C. Protestant Scholasticism
"Not all creation-scientists are millenarians, however. Another formidable tradition in American Protestantism ... is Protestant scholasticism ... articulated most prominently by the Princeton theologians, such as Benjamin Warfield ... [but they were not] the inventors of this concept nor the only purveyors of it in America. The substance of the inerrancy view [and of Protestant scholasticism] - that because the Bible is God's Word it must be accurate in matters of science and history as well as in doctrine - was already [widely] held in ... the 17C" (160). This view was also promoted by the very conservative LCMS, members of which comprised a third of Morris' original ICR steering committee in 1963.
D. Rational and Scientific Christianity
The previous two movements share "a desire to establish a firm rational basis for Christian belief" (162). "Crucial to the creation-science movement is the desire to restore [the previously widely accepted] harmony of science and Scripture which the 20C intellectual climate seemingly had shattered. In the wake of the derision heaped upon ... [Fs], some literal-minded Bible believers set out to demonstrate that, contrary to popular opinion [which saw Christianity 'as outmoded beliefs, conceived in superstition and nurtured by scientific and philosophical illiteracy' 163, quoting Morris], science still supported Scripture" (162-3). Marsden's criticism is that the Bible in this view is regarded primarily as a book of facts and principles, the "principle goal of biblical study to classify [these] in Baconian fashion ... Perhaps most importantly, [this literalist view] allows scriptural language as few ambiguities as possible" (164).
E. Common Sense
Although many modern scholars would find these literalist views incredible, anachronistically "applying linguistic standards of one age to another" (165), Fs claim to stand for common sense, and indeed "there can be no doubt that in our age such [F] thinking is widely regarded as common sense" (165). These views "reflect the 19C American E heritage where Scottish commonsense realism was long the most influential philosophy" (165). In this view, the Bible "is best interpreted by the naive readings that common people today give it. [99% of the time] wrote Reuben Torrey, 'the meaning that the plain man gets out of the Bible is the correct one'" (165). Marsden sees this related to the general decline of "mystical, metaphorical, and symbolical perceptions of reality" (166), replaced by what sociologist Michael Cavanaugh calls an 'empiricist folk epistemology' now held by most Americans. This new outlook, "it happens, is close to that which works best for engineers - straightforward, consistent, factual, with no nonsense" (166). "Evolution [in particular, philosophical naturalism, which assumes all arose by random chance] may have [many] scientific experts on its side, but it simply strains popular common sense" (167). [Steve: its kind of unclear here whether Marsden is criticizing evolutionary experts or naive popular notions, or both I guess?! He loves Cavanaugh's phrases 'doubting Thomism' for the widespread American demand for empirical support of the faith, and 'the epistemic priesthood of all believers'].
F. The Sense of Cultural Crisis - The South After the Civil War
The anti-evolution movement is closely linked with the idea of protecting America's [Protestant] Christian heritage and civilization [e.g. less influential in England] and, Marsden suggests, is especially strong in the South (i.e. evolution identified with cultural decay). Marsden argues the reasons for this are lower education and a "siege" mentality in the South after the Civil War. Having lost militarily, they were determined to win the war of ideas and resist most changes, seen as northern corruptions. Also, their case for slavery had rested upon literal readings of the Bible, so there they stood in all matters.
G. Fundamentalism After WWI
"The rise of the antievolution issue in F was related to the convergence of several forces that took their exact shape when precipitated by the catalytic action of the American experience in WWI. The war exacerbated mounting liberal v. conservative Protestant tensions" (174) as liberals castigated conservatives for "their failure to identify the kingdom with present efforts for the advance of worldwide democracy" (174) and conservatives drove home (amid liberal anti-German propaganda) the German roots of liberal theology, 'might makes right' ideology, loss of decency and civilizational disaster. What evolution had done to Germans it could do to Americans, they said. William Jennings Bryan led this crusade. The civilizational scale of the threat of evolution invited polarization, oversimplification and Bryan's skill in popular leadership contributed to this [Marsden seems not to want to admit that Bryan was indeed right about the danger].
H. The Warfare Metaphor
Both sides stood to gain [mobilize their forces] from the sheer rhetorical power of the military metaphor [like the modern "culture war", which is largely a continuation of this one]. Darwinists started this "war" and some Christians, unsurprisingly, responded in kind (Marsden thinks this response has been unfortunate, blurring the viability of mediating positions). Immigrant groups and Souterners already viewed themselves in a sectarian "war" with the surrounding culture, but the rise of F in the 1920s exploded this conflict to a nationwide scale. "F was a peculiar blend of sectarianism and aspirations to dominate the culture" (178). Marsden quotes Hofstadter (in AIiAL): "The F mind ... is essentially Manichean; it looks upon the world as an arena for conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, and accordingly it scorns compromises (who can compromise with Satan?)" (178, I basically agree with this, so I guess I'm a Manichean too!). [Bush's war on terror is also a war on liberals and anti-Americanism, part of the culture war].
I. The Mythological Powers of Evolutionary Explanation
Sagan's opening statement for Cosmos that "The cosmos is all there is, was, or ever will be" (179) is, of course, a philosophical premise and not (as he and others like to pretend) a conclusion of scientific inquiry. "F on both sides make the same mistake in debating such questions. Both F antisupernaturalists, such as Sagan, and their creation-scientist opponents approach the issue as though it could be settled on the grounds of some scientific evidence [as a Warfieldian, I'm still hoping! What a victory it would be!]. In each case, the oversimplification of the issue reflects widespread overestimation in American culture of the possible range of scientific inquiry" (180). The fact that biological evolution need not be linked with philosophical naturalism or materialism (anti-supernaturalism) has been lost in the shuffle of conflict.
7. Understanding J. Gresham Machen
A. A Controversial Legacy
"Machan (1881-1937) was not a typical F or E. He [was a] ... strict Presbyterian loyal to the Old Princeton theology that looked to the Westminster Confession of Faith for its creed ... he was an intellectual ... ill-at-ease with the emotionalism and oversimplifications of revival meetings, he opposed church involvement in politics" (182). As the Presbyterian Church fell to the modernists, he was forced out and left Princeton in 1929 to found Westminster in Philadelphia. Although he died young, leaving "a small and struggling movement" (183), his influence continued on, including that from 3 of his students; Harold Ockenga, Carl McIntire, and Francis Schaeffer (and indirectly Billy Graham, who worked closely with Ockenga and Falwell, who was influenced by Schaeffer). Seminaries Westminster, Faith, Fuller, Covenant, Gordon-Conwell, Reformed look to Machan as a model. Machan was the key counterexample to the common claim that E and serious scholarship were incompatible. Yet many Es repudiated Machan, most notoriously Edward J. Carnell of Fuller, linking Machan to the "cultic mentality" (184). "Almost all E scholars who are not strictly Reformed have found his Presbyterian confessionalism too narrow, and even many of the strictly Reformed have rejected his Princetonian apologetics for Kuyperian models, or have been unhappy with his insistence on ecclesiastical separatism" (184). Needless to say, Machan is uniformly reviled by mainline Protestants (seen as a "narrow and bigoted crank"). Marsden wants to look at Machan as an example of someone who took a stand against modernism (which we can and should admire), while also (like all others who did so) encumbered by "particularities of personality, church setting, and peculiar American traditions, any one of which might lead us to dismiss the stand entirely" (184).
B. Interpretations of Machen
We must interpret Machan on many levels. Doctrinally, he was heir to the venerable Old Princeton tradition of Hodge and Warfield. But he also alienated even other conservatives (notably Clarence Macartney) with his "temperamental idiosyncrasies" (186, bachelor, very close to his mother, flaring temper, lack of tact, inability to separate people/issues). In the next sections, we'll look at "two other levels ... that are less on the surface and less controversial, but that may" (187) illuminate him whatever your view of him (hero/crank).
C. History and Truth
Machan's view of history is key. This area "has arguably been the 20C problem. For many people, all absolutes have been dissolved in historical relativism" (187). Machan believed intensely in absolutes, at least in part reflecting "his own deep intellectual crisis as a young man" (188). Having been raised Old School Presbyterian, he spent 1905-6 in Germany, being exposed and sorely tempted by "modern historical consciousness and higher criticism" (188). He was lured back to Princeton by his mentor William P. Armstrong (arranged by his mother?) and "brought back safely into the Old School fold" (189). He did, however, remain committed to the idea that Christianity "was based on historical events that actually happened, or it was nothing" (188), implying that, yes, we must "stake our salvation upon the intricacies of historical research" (189). Sacred history is still history, and "it should be studied by the best historical method which can be attained" (189, he wrote 2 major scholarly historical works himself).
While Machan clung to the traditional (Christian) belief in objective historical fact, which we must carefully uncover (and which is completely known by God), his virtual opposite was Carl Becker, who in 1931 laid out his very modern historiography in his address "Everyman His Own Historian" (190). In short, he believed "truth," "history" and "fact" are mere social constructs, that "the past itself" (like truth or fact) is not available to us, and only human memories and interpretations of it survive (God's knowledge of it is unacknowledged, its all up to us). "Historians then are ... the keep[ers] of useful myths" (190). In this, Machan was affirming the traditional Scottish Common Sense philosophy "first introduced at Princeton by John Witherspoon" (192) and unchallenged until by modernism. This basic (Christian) belief (postulate, premise) in objective reality and in human ability to comprehend it (the basis of all science, even knowledge) had first been questioned by "philosophers, especially since Locke ... [who] had interposed between us and the real world the concept of ideas" (192). Reid warned that this would lead to skepticism (e.g. Hume) and that all sane people do in fact believe in objectivity in practice ("only madmen and philosophers doubt it" and "Humeans duck when they go through low doorways" 193). Another way to put it is the traditional belief is "humans do not create meaning, they find it" (191), v. "the post-Kantian belief that the mind functions to impose its categories and in some sense, then, creates reality as we know it" (193).
Machan believed the historical facts would bear out traditional Christian belief. If not, we should abandon those beliefs, not try to fudge them with talk of "interpretations" like the liberals were doing (really creating a new non-Christian religion, Machan claimed). His father and grandfather were lawyers and he approached it that way too (Reid also noted matters of life and death were routinely sorted out by courts and law and the rules of evidence, pace skeptics and sophists). Paul basically said the same thing, that if Christ didn't really rise, then all bets are off and our faith is futile ("and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, your faith also is vain" 1 Cor. 15:14).
D. A Southern Perspective
"Machan, like ... [many other Fs] was a Southerner" (194) and his family had had strong Confederate (and aristocratic) sympathies during the Civil War. He strongly felt the south had had a clear constitutional right to secede and that the north's aggression was unwarranted. Like many southerners, his political views were "radically libertarian" (196). He believed the only instrument that could stop radicalism was "reasonable persuasion" (196). These views hurt him at Princeton. His departure from Princeton and later formation of a new denomination and mission board pointed to this belief that secession was an acceptable and even honorable solution to irreconcilable disagreements of principle.
E. Evaluations
Marsden believes Machan's Common Sense philosophy led him to "overestimate the prowess of rational argument and underestimate the importance of point of view" (198). It also allowed Machan to clearly see the dangers of relativism earlier than most. While Machan may have "overestimated the degree to which the task of the church in the 20C should be an intellectual one" (199), but most others at the time were underestimating that. He recognized that "academic debates ultimately had profound practical consequences. 'What is today [a] matter of academic speculation, begins tomorrow to move armies and pull down empires'" (199-200). At the time he spoke, many did not appreciate this deep insight, indeed "the American Protestant establishment was in the process of abandoning almost all the distinctly Christian elements of the vast network of universities it controlled" (200). On the other hand, Machan "stood for a narrow Old School confessionalism and exclusivism than many people today find appalling" (201, militant, separatist). He closes with this: "Though the old modernism of the 1920s is now largely defunct, new postmodernisms have risen to take its place. Those who do not find in such developments the hope of the world may be grateful to persons such as Machan and many others who, whatever their faults, insisted that traditional Christianity still had an important role to play in the 20C" (201).
On a related note, Benjamin Scharz (Atlantic Monthly, July/Aug 2004) discusses two books by Rhys Isaac. Isaac's The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790 "inventively adopted anthropoligical methods and approaches to examine the social, cultural, and political impact of evangelical Christianity on the colony ... [but marred by] vagueness, pomposity, and self-consciously literary style" (143). Isaac's later book Landon Carter's Uneasy Kingdom interprets Carter's famous diary for moderns, highlighting his contradictions (e.g. rebelling against the English establishment that made him rich and powerful, but trying to retain partriarchal authority over his own slaves and children). The other famous diarist was William Byrd. May want to check out Transformation book sometime.
In "Capital Shakeup: Remembering a theological earthquake" (World 20 May 2006 p48, w/pic of Walter R), Marvin Olasky recalls Walter Rauschenbusch's 1907 book Christianity and the Social Crisis, which promoted the "social gospel, a doctrine that placed the emphasis on liberal social change rather than evangelism." He was b1861 and at age 25 became pastor of a church in a NY slum, staying for 12 yrs. He knew and cared for the poor, unlike the secular intellectuals of the time (e.g. Herbert Spencer) who advocated the Scrooge-like 'let them die and improve the world' line. R's error was in blaming capitalism ("it slays human character and denies human brotherhood"), which led him, along w/many others (e.g. Wm Dean Howells, Richard Ely, Anglican Bishop Wm Freemantle), to form the Society of Christian Socialists, advocating higher taxes and 'coercive philanthropy' as a path to the Kingdom of God on Earth. He failed to forsee what we've learned in the 20C; that "disdain for competitive commerce [allowed] autocrats [to ride] that disdain to political power ... that socialism reduces the role of the economically powerful only by letting the politically powerful become dictators ... winner-take-all politics" [v. individual-empowering markets] ... tendency of mkts to mitigate extreme selfishness ... And, most important, how govts that remove economic freedom usually take away religious liberty as well" (but Olasky says we shouldn't be too hard on Raschenbusch since we've learned all these lessons through hard experience in the 20C, i.e. he couldn't have known. Hmmm).
