For all its success, however, the Evangelical United Front began losing some of its unity. Growing denominations withdrew from ecumenical voluntary societies to erect their own benevolent and missionary structures, with a resulting decline in interdenominational cooperation. Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians split over slavery. Revivalism itself, familiar to all and approved by most, was still criticized. Although Finney established itinerant evangelism as a respectable profession, men of less ability and integrity reduced it to a trade, and not always a respectable one. Numerous evangelists took advantage of the ecstatic feelings they stirred in the bosoms of their female auditors, and others drew fire for bombastic theatricality and unvarnished greed.
During 1857 and 1858 the nation experienced a throwback to the Great Awakening in New England and a precursor of the charismatic revival that began in the 1960s. The revival broke out among laymen in New York in 1857, when economic indicators pointed to a major financial upheaval. When the stock market crashed in October, setting off an epidemic of bankruptcies, similar meetings began, and within six months more than 10,000 men were meeting daily for prayer in gatherings throughout the city. At a time when urbanization and technology were disrupting whole communities and creating new lines of division between social groups, this truly nonsectarian revival, though it crested rather quickly, provided a basis for new community and had lasting consequences. At a tangible level, it introduced the widespread use of tents as gathering places for revival and reinvigorated the YMCA, which would serve as a key operation base for later evangelists. It also eased some tensions between religion and business. If God could generate such revival in the hearts of men and women engaged in capitalistic commerce, was this not clear and sufficient proof that he smiled on their endeavors? Finally, by providing participants with a sense of solidarity with fellow worshipers throughout the nation, the mass media—in the form of newspapers and the telegraph—laid an early foundation stone of what would come to be called the electronic church.
The decades that followed the revival of 1857–1858 were of course among the most tumultuous in the history of the republic. The Civil War and Reconstruction left scars that have never disappeared from the body and soul of the nation. Despite this national trauma, however, the war threatened the survival of religion less than did other factors. Many Christians, particularly Northerners, were able to interpret the suffering as punishment for grievous sin; others, particularly Southerners, viewed it as part of the unjust pain often visited upon the righteous. Ultimately more upsetting were the combined forces of industrialization, urbanization, and immigration, which replaced the relative homogeneity and social cohesion of an earlier time with multiple subcultures divided by class, ethnicity, and language.
As these social forces shook the ground beneath them and changed the society around them, Evangelicals began to suffer an even more devastating set of crises within their hearts and minds. Charles Darwin’s account of the Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871) cast doubt not only upon the veracity of the opening chapters of Genesis but upon the entire doctrine of human nature and destiny. An even more serious threat came in the form of historical criticism of the Bible. Imported from German universities into American seminaries and pulpits, this approach questioned the traditional authorship and dating of the books of the Bible, dismissed the miracle stories as naive magical nonsense, and asserted that so-called prophecies were either written after the events they allegedly predicted or had been inappropriately twisted to fit situations that bore no relation to the original intent of the passages. It also raised serious questions about whether the New Testament picture of Jesus was reliable in any meaningful sense. Many Protestants, including some from the revivalist tradition, adjusted to these challenges. They set forth theories of “theistic evolution” and interpreted the days of the Genesis creation story as ages that were as long as God needed to get the job done. Most Evangelicals, however, chose to ignore or deny them. The Bible could still be accepted at face value, they insisted; it still said what it meant and meant what it said. The vehicle they used to deliver this reassuring message to the new urban frontier was the same one that had worked so well on other frontiers: revival. And the man who epitomized revival for this era was Dwight Lyman Moody.
A native of Northfield, Massachusetts, Moody struck out for Chicago, where he found quick success as a sales representative for a shoe company. Converted shortly before he left Massachusetts in 1856, Moody became active in a Congregational church and participated happily in the laymen’s prayer revival that came to Chicago a year later. The desire of businessmen involved in this revival to provide young employees who worked for them with a wholesome social and spiritual atmosphere led them to found Chicago’s first YMCA. Moody had lived at the Y in Boston for a time and threw himself enthusiastically behind this effort. Ever the salesman and promoter, he rented several pews at his church and began packing them with strangers cajoled in from the streets. When church members criticized this unorthodox approach, in part because many of his recruits were not of the middle classes, he organized his own Sunday school in a rented hall and attracted hundreds of poor children with candy, picnics, and pony rides. As the children and their parents were converted and needed a church to attend, Moody established the independent Illinois Street Church and served as its spiritual leader; since he was never ordained, he could not serve as pastor. In 1860 Moody quit his secular job to become the Chicago YMCA’s first full-time employee. Nothing illustrated his native pragmatic shrewdness better than his skill at fund-raising. To raise money for the first fully equipped YMCA in America, he persuaded Cyrus McCormick to contribute $10,000 and to allow that fact to be made public, explaining to the inventor and manufacturer that “the public will think, if you take hold of it, it must succeed.” The support of men like McCormick, of course, legitimated not only the YMCA but other projects headed by D. L. Moody.
In 1867 Moody traveled to England to meet with YMCA founder George Williams. While there he became acquainted with “dispensationalist premillennialism,” a new scheme of biblical interpretation that would have an incalculable impact on Evangelical theology. Premillennialism holds that Christ will return prior (pre-) to establishing a glorious thousand-year reign on earth. Dispensationalism’s distinctive contribution to premillennial thought was its positing of a series (usually seven) of distinct eras (dispensations) in God’s dealing with humanity, and its keen interest in reading the signs of the times in the light of biblical prophecy, to see just how close the Second Coming might be. The triggering action for the millennial age, the last dispensation, will be “the rapture,” at which point faithful Christians will be “caught up together to meet the Lord in the air,” leaving the rest of humanity to face an unprecedented congeries of calamities known as the tribulation. The main protagonist of the seven-year tribulation will be the Antichrist, who will seek total control by requiring every person to wear a mark or number (probably 666, “the mark of the beast” [Revelation 13:16–18]). The tribulation will end with the Second Coming of Christ and the battle of Armageddon, to be followed by the millennium and ultimately the Last Judgment and eternity of bliss for the redeemed and agonizing punishment for the wicked.
Moody fully accepted the premillennial teaching that the world was rushing headlong toward moral and social disaster from which only the second coming and millennial reign of Christ offered hope for the redeemed. The task, then, was to help as many people as possible prepare for that blessed event. In perhaps the most frequently quoted of Moody’s observations, he said, “I look on this world as a wrecked vessel. God has given me a life-boat, and said to me, ‘Moody, save all you can.’”
By 1870 Moody was an Evangelical celebrity in both the United States and England, receiving numerous invitations to speak at conferences and churches and ready to embark on a full-time career as an itinerant evangelist. During an extended tour of the British Isles, he and his musical assistant, Ira D. Sankey, drew great cro
wds and honed the techniques of their new profession. When he returned to America in 1875, he found himself with more opportunities than he could accept and went from victory to victory in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago during the next two years.
There was nothing mysterious about Moody’s success. His theology, style, and technique were perfectly suited to his age. Lacking time and inclination for subtle theological disputation, he summed up essential doctrine in the simple assertion that humans are fallen and that Christ came to seek and save them. He believed all were sinners, but sinners in the hands of a loving God who offered peace and comfort and refuge from the storm. Since Americans obviously have free will, so must all people. If they wish to accept salvation, it is a simple, straightforward choice, like voting for the right political party: “a fair, square, practical thing, isn’t it?” He acknowledged that conversion might involve cataclysmic upheaval but knew from his own experience that it might also be marked by nothing more dramatic than an improvement in daily habits, greater feelings of happiness, loss of the fear of death, and heightened interest in religious activities.
As a preacher, Moody suffered from several disabilities; foremost of these was his meager education. His grammar was so poor that a deacon told him he would probably do more harm than good by attempting to tell others about Christ. With help from his wife and exposure to people of wider experience, he improved, but his letters reveal that he never mastered the rules of grammar and spelling, and his English supporters once canceled a scheduled appearance at Eton, fearing that his unpolished manner of speaking would embarrass them. In many ways, however, his style fit the taste of the times. He spoke rapidly, like a door-to-door salesman, described biblical people and events in the vernacular, and told syrupy stories of the sort that abounded in the popular literature of the period. When he was not exhorting his audiences with slogans that would have delighted an advertising man— “Ruined by Sin, Redeemed by Christ, and Regenerated by the Holy Spirit”—he was wooing them with tears and treacle. If he spoke of hell, it was with compassion in his eyes, not fire in his nostrils and brimstone on his breath.
Perhaps aware of Charles Finney’s dictum that “the commonsense people will be entertained” and that a successful preacher must take this into account, Moody and Sankey offered revival crowds an evening of wholesome family enjoyment, highlighted by Sankey’s enormously popular renditions of such comforting gospel songs and spiritual ballads as “Rescue the Perishing” and “Safe in the Arms of Jesus.” After Moody, all successful revivalists would make extensive use of music in their campaigns. Probably even more crucial to Moody’s success than his message and style was his talent as an organizer and manager. Historian William McLoughlin has aptly observed that “Charles Finney made revivalism a profession, but Dwight L. Moody made it a big business.” He studied the techniques of other evangelists and, by the time of his great meetings in the 1870s, had developed a detailed program for organizing and executing revivals, or, as he preferred to call them, “preaching missions.” He accepted invitations only when the major Evangelical churches in a city would agree to support the meetings on a nonsectarian basis. Prior to each campaign, he met with local clergymen to respond to any concerns they might have about his coming to their city, stressing always that the success of the endeavor depended on their wholehearted support. When the meetings ended, he met with them again to thank them for the key role they had played. To promote a nondenominational atmosphere, he appointed a prominent layman to serve as general administrator for the campaign, and he chose neutral sites for the meetings, hiring public halls or erecting temporary buildings large enough to accommodate crowds that would neither attend nor fit into a conventional church building. Moody received honoraria for his revivals, and he lived quite comfortably, but much of his money went to various institutions and projects he believed in, and he was not personally wealthy. He left a modest estate and a reputation for financial integrity that later evangelists have seldom equaled.
Moody’s early revivals were the greatest triumphs of his career. When subsequent efforts failed to match them, he turned increasingly to perpetuating his contribution through the establishment of two college preparatory schools, the Northfield School for girls and the Mt. Hermon School for boys, both located in his hometown of Northfield, where he moved his family after leaving Chicago. As he grew increasingly pessimistic about the direction of American society, he retained his belief that the conversion of individuals was the only plausible response but realized the battle could not be won without more trained warriors. Evangelical schools and seminaries might produce competent Christian soldiers, but the numbers were too small and the process too long. To meet the immediate challenge, he created the Chicago Evangelization Society, aimed at rapidly transforming eager laymen into consecrated minutemen who would “stand in the gap” for God, both at home and abroad. Later renamed the Moody Bible Institute and characterized as the West Point of Christian Service, this school served as a model for dozens of similar institutions and still exercises great influence in Evangelical circles.
Other evangelists followed in Moody’s train, some with notable success, but the country’s enthusiasm for revivals seemed clearly on the wane. Churches began to question whether revivals actually produced much long-term growth, Evangelicals more attuned to the social gospel grew uncomfortable with the one-sided emphasis on personal morality, and many pious souls were put off by the flamboyance and secular nature of evangelistic services. In addition, some evangelists fell under suspicion because of excessive emphasis on collections and alleged inconsistencies between public and private behavior. Those ready to pronounce itinerant evangelism terminally ill, however, soon learned that the sound they heard in the distance was not a dirge sung by mourners of the late revival tradition but the tooting and blaring of “the Calliope of Zion,” the Reverend Billy Sunday.
Billy Sunday grew up in Iowa, played baseball in the National League, and found Jesus in Chicago by listening to a street preacher holding forth outside a saloon where he and several other ballplayers had gone to drink. No one could question the sincerity of his conversion. He gave up alcohol immediately and refused to play ball on Sundays, using the time to give talks at local YMCAs instead. Sunday was not a great player, but he was a good one. He once batted .291 (though his average for eight seasons was only .248), and he stole 84 bases in 117 games during the 1890 season. (This record stood until Ty Cobb surpassed it in 1915 with 96 thefts in 156 games, setting a mark that endured for another 47 years, when Maury Wills stole 104 bases in 165 games.) When he left baseball in 1891 to work full-time for the Chicago YMCA, it was not because his career was fading; he had just been offered a new contract for the then-handsome sum of $500 a month, nearly six times what the Y would pay him.
Sunday’s position with the YMCA put him in contact with Moody’s friends, and he soon went to work as advance man and manager for J. Wilbur Chapman, whom Moody regarded as the greatest evangelist of the day. When Chapman abruptly retired from the field to become pastor of a church in Philadelphia, Sunday struck out on his own, armed with a handful of his mentor’s sermons and a handful of confidence. Over the next five years, he held over sixty revivals in towns and small cities of the Midwest. As he gained experience and built a reputation, he and his wife, Nell (better known as Ma Sunday in later years), worked out a system that surpassed even Moody’s in its detail and efficiency, and he honed a style of preaching that was perhaps the most distinctive and flamboyant ever to erupt from an American pulpit.
For the first several years, Sunday held most of his revivals in tents, but after 1901 his reputation and success were such that he was able to demand construction of large wooden tabernacles designed to hold 10 percent of the population of smaller cities or, in the case of major cities, at least 20,000 people. Since loudspeakers did not exist, anything larger would have been pointless. Moody and others had used specially constructed tabernacles on occasion, but they were so identified wi
th Sunday’s ministry that some older evangelists still speak of revivals they held in “old Billy Sunday-type tabernacles.” One common feature of these structures, the spreading of sawdust on the floor or ground, not only deadened the noise of shuffling feet and chairs but introduced a memorable term into the language of American popular religion: “hitting the sawdust trail.”
In his early talks, Sunday spoke in a restrained, even dignified manner, avoiding slang or other rhetorical devices that might obscure his message. Out on the revival circuit, he decided that a preacher should “put his cookies on the lower shelf.” So, he said, “I took out the old gospel gun and loaded her up with rock salt, ipecac, barbed wire, carpet tacks, and rough-on-rats. I lowered the hindsight and blazed away, and the gang’s been ducking and the devil’s been hunting his hole ever since!” As he became flashier and more colloquial, people began to wait eagerly to hear him scream his anger at some “bull-necked, infamous, black-hearted, white-livered, hog-jowled, god-forsaken, hell-bound gang” that had stirred his ire; or to ridicule “those ossified, petrified, mildewed, dyed-in-the-wool, stamped-in-the-cork, blown-in-the-bottle, horizontal, perpendicular Presbyterians”; or to condemn Pilate as “just one of those rat-hole, pin-headed, pliable, stand-pat, free-lunch, pie-counter politicians,” and to denounce Pilate’s wife as “a miserable, plastic, two-faced, two-by-four, lick-spittle, toot-my-own-horn sort of woman.” Such outbursts eventually became so renowned that newspapers printed the latest “Sundayisms.” Sunday supplemented invective with jokes, mimicry, mockery, dialects, homey illustrations, and a keen sense of timing, all sharpened to perfection as he repeated the same sermons dozens (or hundreds) of times. And, lest the ear say to the eye, “I have no need of you,” he used his athleticism to full advantage, pacing (an estimated one-and-a-half miles per sermon), running, whirling, pounding on the floor, leaping onto a chair or swinging it around his head, and after shedding his coat and tie and rolling up his sleeves, sliding baseball fashion across the platform-level press table, causing startled reporters to recoil in astonishment and the audience to roar with laughter.
A Prophet with Honor Page 6
