From State Church to Pluralism

A Protestant Interpretation of Religion in American History

Franklin Littell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351518499
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filosofía
• Subtopic: Historia y teoría filosóficas

For most of our history, American religious life has been dominated by a view of church history in which we appear as mere deposits of European religious culture. In fact, however, the freedom of Americans to choose without penalty to join any religious body or none at all is new in human history. This book is an effort to understand and interpret how we arrived at our present situation and, in doing so, to clarify many cultural, social and political issues.

CHAPTER V

Mid-Century Encounter

Voluntary discipline, basic to the integrity of Free Churches, had well-nigh disappeared by the end, of the Great Century of missions in North America. Those small religious bodies which had split off in defense of internal discipline were largely outside the main stream of Christian events and had little part in the efforts of councils of churches and co-operative missionary societies. Nevertheless, there were by the middle of the twentieth century evidences that the churches were headed for severe shocks in their happy afBrmation of the spirit of the times, and that this might in time produce a new emphasis upon disciplined witness.

Emotionally and intellectually, large sections of American Protestantism have remained lodged in the nineteenth century. As in the Victorian Era in England and the Wil-helminian Age in Germany, a continuum of Christ and culture, of cultural mores and religious values, was cultivated and defended. Even the view of missions, so formative in the experience of the American churches, was frequently expressed in cultural terms.

In an age when world peace, world citizenship, world fellowship are the goals after which popular imagination reaches out, the only objective big enough to define the comprehensive aims of the Christian world mission is the creation of a Christian world civilization.¹

By the middle of the twentieth century, the insecurities expressed by the Hocking Report (Re-Thinking Missions, 1932) had eroded much of the confidence of an earlier age in the works of Christ across the world. This was noticeably true of the larger denominations, where the missionary effort had flagged steadily over a forty year period—although the less money and personnel in the field, the grander the language became.

In this period, the smaller and more intense and more-disciplined churches have come to the fore in missionary effort. From the time of the 1938 Statistical and Interpretative Survey of World Missions published by the International Missionary Council (ed_e Joseph I. Parker), it has been evident that the main portion of finance and personnel going into the expansion of Christianity in new fields was coming from the Free Churches of America. More recent reports on Central and South America, Africa and sec-tions of Asia, have stressed the presence of missionaries from smaller fundamentalistic and pentecostal groups—quite out of proportion to the numbers of members in the home churches.² After a review of the situation in Latin America and the West Indies, Dr. Henry P. Van Dusen of Union Theological Seminary has referred to these groups as a “third type” alongside Roman Catholic and classical Protestant churches. Thus the expanding edge of Christianity is not only staked out by Free Churches rather than state churches, but—to a remarkable degree—by small res-titutionist groups which count the gift of the Spirit and/or the process of sanctification conclusive evidences of the existence of the True Church. They attempt to recapitulate the mission and style of the Early Church, with literal obedience to the Great Commission one of the prime points. Most of all, the churches of this “third type” have a standard of discipline, in other areas as well as in missionary effort, long since abandoned as repressive and restrictive by the larger Protestant bodies.

John R. Mott and the Flowering of Foreign Missions

There was a time, before the larger churches largely lost their discipline and sense of mission, before the division movements before the First World War, when world-view and missionary passion were still held in a tight span. Perhaps no one represented so fully the peculiar genius of Christian missions in the American Protestant tradition as John R. Mott, Methodist layman. Combining personal piety and business acumen, evangelical faith, and administrative genius, he splendidly represented in his long life that high tide of religious and cultural energy which marked the nineteenth century at its best.

John R. Mott (1865-1955), called by Kenneth Scott Latourette the greatest Christian missionary since St. Paul, represented the flowering of the American churches’ missionary concern, lay initiative, and universal perspectives. And in spite of the morbid fascination which many Europeans find in the wide variety of American religions and religious associations, Mott was a good deal more representative of the genius of American Christianity than were Aimie Semple McPherson or Father Divine. Mott was a layman, converted during J. K. Studd’s visit in America (March 1S86), with an independent income which made it possible for him to devote his life to furthering the Christian cause around the world. In the course of over sixty years of tireless travel he visited eighty-three countries, was decorated by nineteen governments, received the Distinguished Service Medal and the Nobel Peace Prize. To bring missions to a higher level of effectiveness, he was the advocate of interdenominational co-operation. He was a key figure in the World’s Y.M.C.A. (Honorary President, for life), in the Student Volunteer Movement, a founder of the World’s Student Christian Federation, chairman of the International Missionary Council (1921-42), leader in the preparatory work and founding of the World Council of Churches (Honorary President), and officer in numerous other denominational, interdenominational and ecumenical organizations and movements.

In Mott, simple piety and social concern, personal evangelism and organizational genius, were combined to a degree rare in the history of the church. His expression of the layman’s vision was characteristic of the Christianity of the great American churches of his generation:

The layman must rise up and make Christianity what it was in the early days when every Christian was a missionary in the sense of spreading the faith.³

Mott believed sincerely that the restoration of the practical unity of Christians was complementary to Christian world-mindedness, and that both ecumenicity and missions were basic dimensions of apostolic Christianity. In him we see the flowering of the Great Century, before world-mindedness and social concern were secularized and missions became excessively individualistic.

During the tremendous upsurge of religiosity at the high tide of the popular triumph of religion in America, when all membership standards were sacrificed for the sake of the last possible statistical successes, there occurred a proliferation of cult and sect movements. Nevertheless, the significance of this phenomenon can be exaggerated. The twelve largest churches in the U.S.A. account for more than three fourths of all Christians, and most of these bodies are affiliated with the National Council of Churches. Since 190S, the year in which the Religious Education Association, the Federal Council of Churches, and the first of the denominational social-action agencies were all established, the unitive factor in Protestantism has come to the fore. Indeed, the reunion of the churches was a fundamental part of the vision of the pioneers of the Social Gospel—Walter Rausehenbuseh, Leighton Williams, Nathaniel Schmidt, and others—who so fully represented the nineteenth-century theology and social apologetic which triumphed throughout the period 1865-1914. The present degree of co-operation between Protestant and Orthodox church bodies has not been equaled elsewhere in Christendom, although—to a considerable extent through Mott’s influence—there has been a parallel growth in the other major mission fields. Effective agencies of Christian co-operation are particularly widespread among the American and other Younger Churches.

As classical mass evangelism disappeared or turned to more subdued methods, many of the groups which continued to use the language without standing for the context of the message of repentance and conversion have become impassioned champions of the American way of life or the southern way of life. In the present controversies the heirs of the liberal tradition of culture-religion have frequently carried the message of prophetic discontinuity, while avowed “Fundamentalists” justify the status quo. This debasement of the great tradition of evangelism is particularly noticeable as the churches face the most important ethical crisis of mid-twentieth century: racialism in the churches and in society. Discrimination against American Negroes in the churches and in society at large are two different issues, and require different solutions, although both are products of cultural norms rather than Christian faith or democratic tradition.

A Crisis in Christian Discipline: Racial Discrimination

The effort to hold the Negro, or other minority peoples, at the level of second-class citizenship is a matter of law and constitutional liberties. Although some sentimentalists have discussed the problem solely in terms of “education,” it really has to do with social structures and legal rights and must be dealt with as such. Here, the proper role of the churches is that of supporting law and order, condemning anarchy and mob action, inculcating obedience to the duly constituted authorities. Life under law, even when imperfect, is still better than life in the jungle.

Within the American churches, racialism is carried over from the unbaptized society and measures the degree to which they have accommodated themselves to the prevailing culture. As the wife of a state Supreme Court justice in Arkansas put it,

My husband has been a Methodist all his life, but if it comes to choosing between being a Methodist and an American, hell be an American every time.⁴

But this was not the issue, quite. In this case the choice was between being a good Methodist and a good American, and being a tribal religionist. But the theological problem of churches without discipline comes into stark outline in the quotation. Inadequately trained for membership, admitted without preparatory training, without the proper instruments of voluntary discipline, many members never have had the discontinuity between life in Christ and life in the world brought home to them. Here the ordinary members are less at fault than the leadership of the churches, who—though sworn to uphold the form of sound words and doctrine—neglect catechetical instruction and concentrate solely on the acquisition of more new members at any price.

Significantly, it has been the churches which were most successful in the great period of popular expansion which have had the greatest difficulty in coming to grips with the issue. The Roman Catholic Church generally has taken a forthright position, and in those situations where some members have clung to tribal rather than Christian norms—as in St. Louis and New Orleans for a time—they have been confronted by the weight of a universal church. Although traditionally American Negroes have been Protestant—and four out of five of them Baptist, there has recently developed a steady though still small shift among university graduates and Negro intellectuals to the Catholic fold. There are many places in the southern states where a Catholic college campus provides the only place of refuge, the only sanctuary of freedom, where Negro and white citizens can meet to discuss their common problems.

The Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Church, with traditional programs of training and discipline, also have managed to withstand unbaptized social pressures to a considerable degree. The great revival churches, however—Baptist, Methodist, and Churches of Christ—have had grave difficulty. They have had the most rapid expansion over a century and a half, have the largest percentage of “new Christians,” and have had to rely more largely upon democratic processes to achieve voluntary discipline. In some areas their traditional structures of authority and discipline have functioned. Every Southern Baptist theological seminary, for example, is integrated. In other areas, however, among congregations inclined to the heresy that the voice of the people is the voice of God, there are grievous difficulties. Most striking, perhaps, is the failure of the Methodist episcopacy—once a powerful military office for the achievement of good—to meet the challenge of the hour,

Just as after the Civil War the Negro churches preached a full Gospel while the white churches identified themselves with prevailing cultural patterns, so in mid-century the leadership most inspiring to the Christian people is coming to a considerable degree from Negro ministers and lay people. Take “the student movement,” for example. For a decade and a half after World War II, the student workers and chaplains in American colleges and universities were in despair. Unlike the student revolt of the 1920s and the student social action of the 1930s, student bodies in the decade 1945-55 were docile, complacent, and uninspired. Students of this period seemed interested in little but training, jobs, and marriage. They accepted uncritically what their professors taught, and the professors themselves were intimidated and subdued by McCarthyism and other vulgar attacks on the colleges and churches. With the rise of “the student movement,” however, many white students as well as Negroes have been caught up in a cause greater than self-interest, and many thousands have demonstrated and sometimes gone to jail in protest against local statutes or practices which denied constitutional liberties to groups of citizens on account of race.

In the face of cowardly bombings of homes, local abuses of police power, corruption in courts, broken oaths by officials sworn to uphold law and order, and other manifestations of anarchy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and his fellow ministers have inspired their own people to disciplined action and won many whites to their side. Significantly enough, the opposition which did not resort to open violence has cloaked itself in a false view of the Gospel. Thus during the Montgomery bus strike, the first significant nonviolent direct action, those who defended the status quo accused Dr. King of “bringing trouble where we’ve always had peace,” as though the Head of the Church brought peace rather than a sword. And a white preacher, E. Stanley Frazier, sought popularity by outspoken championship of segregation.

The job of the minister, he averred, is to lead the souls of men to God, not to bring about confusion by getting tangled up in transitory social problems.⁵

Fortunately, the Negro ministers have had far more influence with their people than have the white preachers, and they have managed to keep violence at a minimum in the face of severe provocation. As a result, the white community has been severely burdened in conscience where it has not sympathized with the Negro campaign outright. And among the best of the white young people and students the movement has inspired co-operation and support of the efforts of their Negro fellow students.

A Crisis in Evangelism: The Rise of the City

The second major crisis for Protestant churches has come about through the shift from rural to industrial society, a shift which at first left a major proportion of Protestant churches stranded on the deserted land. During the Great Depression, hundreds of such preaching posts and chapels were abandoned; subsequently many have been reopened by Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Pentecostals, and other groups that still serve “the people of the dirt.” In making the shift to suburbia, however, popular Protestantism has not abandoned appeal to the village mind and style. In the flight from the rural proletariat and the depressed inner city, Protestantism generally has remained securely anti-labor, racialist, isolationist, and nativist. Although some conspicuous individual leaders of social causes have come from the Protestant churches—particularly from conscious minorities such as the Quakers and Unitarians, Catholic and Jewish Americans have contributed far more in recent years to social and cultural progress than have the major Protestant bodies.

The image about which the churches” concept of their work takes form seems to be the re-creation of the pre™ Revolutionary village as the standard form of community life. This is the ecclesiastical parallel to the romantic political dream of the “good old days,” before the rise of the corrupt cities supposedly spoiled the countryside and perverted simple, neighborly politics. The happy countryside of white, Protestant, virtuous America is the misbegotten dream used to justify every corrupt nativist scheme for oppressing and exploiting those who don’t fit, for maintaining the monstrous misrepresentation and malapportionment by which declining rural populations keep the majority of their fellow citizens at a disadvantage. The effort to transfer the image to the green lawns of suburbia continues, but it shatters on the high mobility and political irresponsibility characteristic of the new areas.

Against the vision of suburbia as the carrier of the grassroots faith, the tough-minded observer sees only a continuing spread of the influence of the central city, and the net of the metropolis is cast in larger and larger circles, promising ultimately to engulf us all.⁶

All of this goes...