Fundamentalism and American Culture

by Marsden, George M. ;

  This lionhearted rhetoric, however, was contradicted by evidence of the beginnings of evangelical disarray over the question of Darwinism. A series of addresses on that subject in the “philosophical section” of the sessions on “Christianity and Its Antagonists” generated enough controversy to raise unscheduled debate from the floor at the 1873 meeting of the Alliance. This debate anticipated in microcosm the heated controversy that would soon break out among American evangelicals.

  An attempt to reconcile Darwinism and the Bible, presented by the Reverend James McCosh, President of the College of New Jersey (Princeton), sparked the floor debate. McCosh’s position was particularly important because he had an international reputation as a Scottish Common Sense philosopher. In 1868 he came from Scotland to Princeton and became America’s greatest (indeed its last great) exponent of that philosophy. In line with the basic premises of Common Sense, McCosh insisted that it was impossible seriously to deny that there was a God who had created human beings. “Common-sense turns away from it. Philosophy declares that this would be an effect without a cause adequate to prove it.” McCosh thought, however, that evolution and Christianity could be reconciled without violating this principle. Science and Scripture, he said, are parallel and mutually confirmatory revelations. “Both reveal order in the world; the one appointed by God; the other discovered by man.” Evolution therefore does not pose a serious threat to faith. “Those who view development in the proper light see in it only a form or manifestation of law.”32

  McCosh had conceded too much for some. The Reverend George W. Weldon of London took the floor and declared that although “as Bishop Butler says, we do not know the whole of the case” and although the Bible was not designed to teach science, nevertheless the choice was clear. “If man is sprung from primeval matter, he can not be the man spoken of in Genesis.” The two visions were irreconcilable. Another Englishman, a botanist, took the floor and declared that at least with respect to plants Darwin’s theory was a good working hypothesis. He then demonstrated his Christian orthodoxy by reciting the headings of the Westminster Shorter Catechism. He did not believe literally, however, “‘that God created all things out of nothing in the space of six days.’” This brought Charles Hodge of Princeton Theological Seminary, a venerable Presbyterian warrior, to his feet. The basic issue is a simple one, he said, in a summary of his classic formulation of the conservative position, which would be published in What is Darwinism? the following year. “Is development an intellectual process guided by God, or is it a blind process of unintelligible, unconscious force, which knows no end and adopts no means?” The supernaturalism of the Biblical view, Hodge was convinced, was utterly incompatible with the naturalism that he saw as essential to Darwin’s position.

  The debate continued as other papers were presented. A Princeton College professor produced elaborate charts showing parallels between the discoveries of science and the order of the six “days” of the first chapter of Genesis. He held, as did many conservative evangelicals, that in Hebrew “days” could refer to an indefinite period of time. A missionary from China volunteered that he had been studying comparative religions for twenty-five years and that all these religions showed remarkable parallels to Christianity. This fact, he said, should do much to “strengthen the scientific proof of the Scripture doctrine of the common origin of mankind.”

  Finally President Anderson of the University of Rochester offered to summarize the issue in a speech which the conference unanimously requested be published with the other Alliance documents. Anderson pointed out in answer to Hodge that the term “evolution” could be used in two different ways—either as God’s method of development or as pure chance. Christians could accept only the former. Distinguishing his view from that of McCosh (and in terms that would be repeated by fundamentalists many years later) he said that evolution was not a “verified law,” but an “unverified working hypothesis.” This observation was based on the principles of “Baconian” science that still prevailed in much American evangelical and scientific thought. “Positive science,” said Anderson, “claims to be conversant only with ascertained facts and verified laws.” The demand to confine science to rigorous observation of facts and demonstration of laws precluded the acceptance of speculations as scientific conclusions. “Hypotheses, or guesses, are all but indispensable for the direction of research in scientific inquiry; but such hypotheses are not science.”33

  Almost all the basic lines of argument had been presented, but the issue was far from settled. The implications of Darwin’s theory, particularly concerning impersonal natural process as opposed to divinely guided order, went far beyond biology. The new Biblical criticism which gave naturalistic historical explanations of cultural development was based on virtually the same assumptions. So was the new scientific social thought. The old scientific theology could not simply incorporate the conclusions of the new science into its body of beliefs. For over a century its proponents had reconciled themselves to the results of the first scientific revolution (associated with Bacon and Newton) by doing just that—adding new scientific discoveries to their beliefs and interpreting them as more evidence for the argument from design.34 At least since Jonathan Edwards, American theologians had not challenged the fundamental assumption of scientific inquiry—that truth was reliably discovered by objective examination of the facts that nature presented. The Common Sense philosophy supported a version of just such an approach. Science had been allowed to operate on a naturalistic basis free from theological assumptions, except for the assumption that objective investigation of nature would confirm what was revealed in Scripture.35

  When Darwinism brought about the second scientific revolution, evangelicals who had adopted this method of reconciling science and religion were faced with a dilemma. If they kept their commitment to autonomous scientific inquiry now, the very foundations of theistic and Christian belief seemed to be threatened. Moderates such as McCosh attempted to steer a middle course. For most educated American evangelicals, however, the commitment both to objective science and to religion was so strong, and the conflict so severe, that they were forced into one of two extreme positions. They could choose to say with Hodge that Darwinism was irreconcilable with Christianity—a new form of infidelity—and that it was speculative and hypothetical rather than truly scientific. The alternative solution was a redefinition of the relationship between science and religion. The basis for this redefinition was already well developed in the philosophical tradition of Kant and German Idealism and in the theological work of Friedrich Schleiermacher and Albrecht Ritschl. Religion would no longer be seen as dependent on historical or scientific fact susceptible of objective inquiry; religion had to do with the spiritual, with the heart, with religious experience, and with moral sense or moral action—areas not open to scientific investigation. Thus science could have its autonomy, and religion would be beyond its reach. Since mid-century some American evangelical theologians, especially in New England, had been moving in this direction under the influence of romanticism and Idealism. This solution also appealed to the strong sentiment and moralism of American Protestantism.

  At the Evangelical Alliance meeting of 1873, the new direction was suggested by the most popular American preacher of the day, Henry Ward Beecher. Urging that American preaching should strive for such unassailable sentimental goals as “to inspire men with an idea of manhood,” and to kindle the “nobility of a heart opened when God has touched it,” the famed Brooklyn preacher had discovered a formula that would for many years allay the fears of respectable evangelical Americans concerning the new science and learning. “While we are taught,” said Beecher, “by the scientists in truths that belong to the sensual nature, while we are taught by the economists of things that belong to the social nature, we need the Christian ministry to teach us those things which are invisible.”36

  II. The Paths Diverge

  PROLOGUE: THE VICTORIAN SETTING

  The people facing this crisi
s were “Victorians.”1 Their culture was dominated by a Protestant middle class which combined an at least formal reverence for their religious heritage with a deep concern for morality, respectability, and order. The leaders of this culture believed that they had a mission among the poor at home and among the heathen abroad (in the words of President McKinley) to “uplift and Christianize.” The Victorians placed great value on both rationality and sentiment. Their era, characterized by the desire for order in society, was a technological one—an age of statistics, standardization, professionalism, specialization, and tremendous industrial expansion. It was an age of print, a medium well suited to preserving the interests of permanent order. Yet it was also an age of emotion and romantic sentiments. Victorians loved their orators, especially those who could make them weep.2

  Change was rapid and doubtless often disconcerting. The social changes were the most dramatic. America was changing rapidly from a culture dominated by small towns and the countryside to one shaped by cities and suburbs. Waves of “uprooted” immigrants, together with rapid industrialization, created virtually insurmountable urban problems. Industrialization, with the drive for efficiency usually overcoming traditional moral restraints, created ethical, social, labor, and political problems beyond the capacities of traditional solutions. The characteristic response in America was neither panic nor rigid conservatism. The response might best be characterized as “innovative conservatism.” Among the captains of religion as well as the captains of industry, creative leaders substantially altered aspects of the old order, but always with the stated goal of preserving its essence.

  HENRY WARD BEECHER AND A NEW AMERICAN THEOLOGY

  In the 1870s New England still dominated the councils of American Protestantism. Almost every theologian or churchman of any standing had been born in New England, educated in New England, or himself taught in New England. Only the theological school at Princeton, the bastion of conservative or “Old School” Presbyterianism, could compete in reputation with the New England tradition. The Civil War left the Southern theologians, who had often stood close to Princeton, isolated and without national influence. At the same time, the war enhanced the already considerable New England prestige and cultural leadership. The “Yankee” war, with its extravagant worship of the Northern concept of the Union, encouraged continued reverence for the prophets of the New England religious establishment.

  Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) was the heir to all the sentiment, enthusiasm, and veneration bestowed by Americans on this victorious and Victorian Yankee evangelical tradition. His father was Lyman Beecher, an early (moderate) evangelical exponent of anti-slavery and “New England theology.” Henry Ward himself had championed abolition (though perhaps inconsistently). Indeed, as one of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s several activist brothers, he could be said to be part of the first family of the Christian Northern cause. He was famous in his own right as a man of eloquence and high ideals. He was widely considered the best preacher of the age and was a front-runner for chief patriot; in his orations he skillfully equated Christian redemptive meaning with the spirit of the Union.3 Even after 1874, when in a sensational trial he was accused of committing adultery with one of his parishioners (his defense was sustained by a divided jury), Beecher continued to be seen almost as a national saint. This veneration is a measure of the degree to which his message had captured the spirit of much of the popular Protestantism of the time.4

  Henry Ward Beecher exemplified a progressive spirit, by the end of his career defined as “liberal.” Theological “liberalism” at this early stage, it is important to note, lacked almost all the social emphases that it would take on in the twentieth century.5 Like the older “liberalism” in Unitarian Boston, progressive religion appealed primarily to the prosperous middle class and tended to endorse its social elitism.6 As William McLoughlin points out, Beecher’s message was aimed at relieving the anxieties of his affluent Brooklyn suburbanite audience, who sensed a conflict between their new wealth and the stern Puritan morality in which they had been raised. Beecher, like all the popular preachers of the era, preached a gospel of virtuous wealth as a commendable moral example to the poor.7 He also provided relief from traditional Calvinist theological anxieties with a gentle liberalism that gradually unfolded as his sensibilities developed along with those of his national audience.

  Henry Ward Beecher was not a theologian. Although he was well informed, he claimed he “never read a book through”8 —presumably with the exception of those he wrote. He was not altogether consistent as a thinker and, in Paul Carter’s marvellous phrase, preached “charity at the price of clarity.”9 Much of his ambiguity, however, apparently was intentional. The aspects of his father’s New England Calvinism that Henry Ward Beecher rejected were those based on “abstract truth.”10 The moral government of God, God’s relationship to humans, and the nature of religious experience had all been reduced to clear propositions through Common Sense and Baconian analysis. Popular as these Enlightenment views remained in American theology, they were out of style in the more advanced “culture.” The sophisticated literary and intellectual community in America revered the purely romantic ideals revealed in Nature (always capitalized): truths of the heart, sentiment, “imagination,” and “sublimity.”11 The vogue of Transcendentalism among the literary elite and its continued attractiveness to the young provided a further impulse to bring evangelical religion into harmony with the standards of the best society.12 Beecher was acutely aware of this cultural gap and struggled to bridge it both for himself and for his parishioners. In Beecher’s only novel, Norwood (1867), the village champion of romanticism says to a New England cleric:

  A truth which does not admit of a logical statement seems to you a phantasy. You believe not upon any evidence of your spirit but upon the semi-material form which language and philosophical statements give to thought.13

  Beecher’s romanticism softened the implications of traditional doctrines without denying them altogether. Thus, for example, with respect to “Future Punishment,” the subject of the most heated theological debates in the Civil War era, Beecher began an 1870 sermon with the assertion that the Bible “employs not the scientific reason, but imagination and the reason under it.” Imagination, central to faith, discerns “clearly invisible truth in distinction from material and sensuous truth.” The idea of eternal punishment for all who do not know Christ, accordingly, makes us “shiver and tremble with sensibility.” Such sensibilities accounted for the move away from the “medieval literalization” of the doctrine. Nevertheless, Beecher did not shock his audience and deny this doctrine. “I must preach it,” he says with apparent sincerity, even though “it makes me sick.” It is a “great element of moral government.” No one else, however, he hastens to add, need accept this view. “We are to be utterly tolerant of those who have adopted other theories; … we are neither to disown them as Christians, nor to discipline them for believing as they do—the day has gone by when a man is to be disciplined for his honest belief…”14

  Beecher used romanticism in similar fashion in the service of science. By 1885 he was sufficiently freed from denominational inhibitions to publish Evolution and Religion, “which,” says Frank Hugh Foster, the historian of New England liberalism, “was the first avowed and complete adoption of evolution in its full extent among our theologians.”15 Beecher characteristically mixed tradition with romanticism in his defense of the new. He spoke of “two revelations,” suggesting the traditional distinction between the complementary and harmonious revelations in Scripture and nature. But the terms were romanticized. The revelation he placed alongside God’s record in nature was not Scripture alone but the far broader “record of the unfolding of man and of the race under the inspiration of God’s nature.” The “sublime history of God as an engineer and architect and as a master-builder” could be seen in material creation. The “master builder” suggested traditional theistic evidences, yet “sublime” lifted them beyond scientific inquiry. Eve
n with regard to evolution, there was no need to worry about the crucial question of human origins. “Whatever may have been the origin,” Beecher insisted, “it does not change either the destiny or the moral grandeur of man as he stands in the full light of civilization today.”16

  Beecher saw the progress in science and morality as the coming of the Kingdom of God. Addressing his defense of evolution “to all those clergymen who are standing tremulous on the edge of fear in regard to the great advance that God is making today,” he explicitly equated the Biblical injunction to “be sure to meet the Lord when he comes in the air” with willingness to see God’s coming “when He is at work in natural laws, when He is living in philosophical atmospheres, when He is shining in great scientific disclosures, when He is teaching the human consciousness all around….”17

  Several tendencies of emerging American religious liberalism can be seen here. First, the progress of the Kingdom of God is identified with the progress of civilization, especially in science and morality. Second, morality has become the essence of religion and is indeed virtually equated with it. Third, the supernatural is no longer clearly separated from the natural, but rather manifests itself only in the natural.