Fundamentalism and American Culture

by Marsden, George M. ;

  By 1890 a definite movement or sub-movement with emphasis on the Holy Spirit was taking shape among the evangelists and Bible teachers associated with Moody. As with the other sub-movements, conferences provided a basic structure. Northfield, of course, was already a strong base of operations. In addition, in 1890 in Baltimore the first major public conference on the Holy Spirit was held. A. C. Dixon, its organizer, noted that it fit in with the major conferences on prophecy and in defense of Biblical inspiration recently held. Much of the personnel overlapped with that of the prophetic conferences. The emphasis of the speakers was on the importance for present believers to receive the Holy Spirit as described in Acts 2. At least one hundred of the ministers present “requested prayer for the fulness of the Holy Ghost.”35 At the time the organizers apparently thought of themselves as part of the general holiness revival, and this conference was not devoted to any one fully developed doctrine of the Holy Spirit. During the next few years, however, more explicit Keswick teachings emerged within the group, especially after the appearances of several notable British Keswick speakers at Northfield.36

  The aspect of Keswick teaching which aroused the greatest enthusiasm among Moody’s aides-de-camp was the practical concept of “power for service.” This phrase became a favorite of Moody’s and seems to have been adopted by nearly all his lieutenants. “Victory,” “peace,” and “resting in the Lord” were also important aspects of Keswick teachings, but among the Americans at least the main emphasis was on service. These concerns harked back to the activism of Finney, Mahan, and other precursors of Keswick who had stressed the importance of “power,” especially for witnessing. A. J. Gordon, in the 1880s one of the leading champions in the Moody circle of the work of the Holy Spirit, said much the same thing.37 C. I. Scofield, who eventually more or less canonized Keswick teachings in his Reference Bible, stated in 1899 (Torrey used almost the same words) that being filled with the Spirit was “indispensable” before a Christian “should be willing to perform the slightest act in the service of Christ.38

  The emphasis on practical results was especially prominent in the Holy Spirit conference of 1890 and its sequel, held in Brooklyn in 1894. At the first conference A. C. Dixon employed a common analogy with electricity and the power of the dynamo. “God’s power is like the Niagara current,” said Dixon. “Faith is the connecting wire between the battery of God’s power and the hearts of men.”39 The age demanded action, not contemplation. Unlike the holiness movement of the Civil War era, this newer Reformed holiness movement was male-dominated and masculinity was equated with power and action.40 A century of evangelical activism had provided channels for such action. Speakers at both conferences stressed that the church had many good programs, but not enough real power behind them. They envisioned a wide-spread application of the renewed power. Especially at the 1894 conference the speakers emphasized the importance of the Spirit’s power for service in a host of evangelical activities—missions, evangelism, Sunday-school work, young peoples’ work, church administration, city evangelism, institutional churches, and rescue missions.41

  IX. The Social Dimensions of Holiness

  Dispensationalist and Keswick teachings were two sides of the same movement; yet it is important to bear in mind that the movement had more than two sides. Arthur T. Pierson, prominent in both sub-movements, made this clear in Forward Movements of the Last Half Century, his end-of-century review of evangelical progress. Pierson gave special prominence to the holiness revival, especially of the Keswick variety, and ended with a brief account of premillennialism. But in between he devoted hundreds of pages to a wide variety of “philanthropic, missionary and spiritual movements” including rescue missions, city evangelization, orphanage work, student and young peoples’ movements, women’s work, Bible schools, missions of all kinds, evangelism among the specially needy, efforts for church unity, medical missions, “divine healing,” and increased prayer and spiritual life.1 In 1900 the offensive against liberalism was not yet noted as a distinct movement by Pierson. When it did arise, the anti-liberal movement was part of these developments, to which it gave for a time a new “fundamentalist” direction. In the meantime, the holiness emphasis seems to have been the most basic, providing the dynamic for almost every other aspect of the movement.

  The “power for service” of this holiness teaching meant first of all verbal evangelism; yet in the 1890s it often meant social work among the poor as well. This was evident at the 1894 conference held in Brooklyn on “The Holy Spirit in Life and Service.” The principal emphasis was not on social concerns, but they were certainly an integral part of the evangelical program. S. H. Hadley of the Water Street Mission of New York (one of two who spoke briefly on rescue work) stressed, in opposition to the common theory that only the “worthy poor” deserved aid, the importance of “the relief of the unworthy poor.” “If you have worthy poor,” he suggested, “keep them yourselves.” Only one in five hundred of those corning to missions such as his would be interested in anything more than “to beat me out of a night’s lodging or a ten-cent piece.” Yet in the twenty-two years since Jerry McAu-ley had founded the mission, thousands of men and women had been rescued from drunkenness or prostitution.2

  In a more representative way, Baptist pastor Cortland Myers of Brooklyn summarized the prevailing opinions on the role of charity in the movement. “The church of Christ,” he said, “is not a benevolent institution nor a social institution, but an institution for one purpose—winning lost souls to Christ and being instrumental in redeeming the world.” Nevertheless, the “practical side of Christianity,” although “secondary” to this supreme purpose, was essential. Referring specifically to city evangelization, Myers said that preaching without practical charity would be empty as in the legend of St. Patrick who for three days only preached while St. Bridget truly proclaimed the Gospel through acts of charity. “Bridget was nearer to the spirit of her master,” said Myers, “than Patrick.3

  In fact in the years from 1870–1890, before the rise of the Social Gospel, holiness-minded evangelicals had their Bridgets as well as their Patricks and had assumed leadership in American Protestant work among the poor. It is worthy of note that in the 1890s Reuben Torrey was president of “The International Christian Workers Association.” This organization, founded in 1886, was designated by Aaron Abell, in his study of Protestant social work in the late nineteenth century, “the most important” of the era’s Protestant social service organizations.4 A. J. Gordon and J. M. Gray served on the board of this agency. From reports of the activities of its various Christian workers, there can be no doubt that the overriding interest of this organization was evangelism. It is also clear that they rejected Moody’s dictum that one should not carry a loaf of bread in one hand and a Bible in the other lest someone think only of the bread and ignore the word. Booker T. Washington (who a year later made a special trip from Boston to Atlanta to make a five-minute speech to a predominantly white audience of Christian Workers) told the Christian Workers convention in 1892 that he had “been drawn to this convention mostly, if I understand its object correctly, because it seeks not only to save the soul but the body as well.”5 Addressing the same convention, D. H. Warner, a Washington, D.C., banker, agreed. “Religion is a practical thing,” he observed, “when it walks down into the lowest dives of our land and takes those who have been buried in sin and wickedness, and lifts them up, cleanses them and sets to work to uplift the rest of humanity. … Is not religion a practical thing that can induce people from all walks of life to consecrate their services to the bettering of mankind.”6

  Historians who have studied this social consecration in nineteenth-century America have most often found it to be related to the holiness tradition. Timothy L. Smith, in his pioneering work on the subject, sees a relationship between the evangelical compassion for the poor and the mid-century holiness teachings of Finney and the Oberlin theology, W. E. Boardman, and the Methodist Holiness movement associated with Phoebe Palmer.
Smith also connects this impulse with the time’s optimistic postmillennial hope of reforming society in preparation for the return of Christ.7

  Yet the postmillennialists were certainly not the only innovators in Christian social work. Two of the most prominent Episcopal clergymen of the day, Stephen H. Tyng, Sr. and Jr., were active in organizing the premillennial movement in America. Tyng, Jr. organized the first American Bible and Prophecy Conference at New York’s Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in 1878. The Tyngs had been premillennialists for many years.8 They were also among the nation’s most notable pastors in implementing local evangelical social action. Tyng, Sr. was the chief promoter of the American Female Guardian Society and Home for the Friendless in New York City, which by 1868 maintained six industrial schools as well as other services. His son was probably the leading Protestant of the 1860s and 1870s involved in the organization of local churches into effective social service agencies. Appealing to the ideal of restoring the standards of the early church and to the need to meet new social problems, Tyng effectively enlisted the various talents of his congregation to aid the poor. According to Aaron Abell, Holy Trinity Church became “one of the great mission churches of America” and its members “were valued chiefly for their ability to influence the indifferent, the destitute, and the outcast.” In the same year that Holy Trinity was hosting the first of the major prophetic conferences, the church was endowed with an annual income for “‘support of undenominational, evangelistic and humanitarian work among the poor of New York City.’”9

  Premillennial teachings alone hardly account for such concern; these social works grew out of the general revivalist enthusiasm of the period and usually had some direct connection with holiness teaching. The Tyngs had been among the leading preachers of the revival of 1858. Although they held a traditional Reformation view of sanctification (that vestiges of a sinful nature remain in the Christian), they nonetheless spoke of total personal humility which, together with the indwelling of Christ, resulted in “the certain control of that inner life, ‘that overcometh the world’ and ‘doth not commit sin.”10 Timothy Smith characterizes Tyng, Sr.’s evangelicalism as “nearly perfectionist.”11

  Whether or not the premillennial evangelists of the post-Civil-War era had yet adopted specific holiness doctrines, the stress on the sanctifying work of Christ in the believer’s life provided a strong moral impulse to complement the zeal for the salvation of souls. The “institutional church,” of which the younger Stephen Tyng’s was an early model, by the end of the century provided one of the principal ways in which Protestants could combine evangelism with social work and community service. Bethany Presbyterian Church, in Philadelphia, sponsored by John Wanamaker, was a leading example of such work, providing (in addition to preaching) a day nursery, kindergartens, diet kitchens, an employment bureau, a workingmen’s club, a dispensary, and a college. Bethany’s two leading pastors during the 1880s and 1890s were outstanding holiness and premillennialist spokesmen,12 A. T. Pierson and Wilbur Chapman. For the Baptists in the same city Russell Conwell built an even more impressive service-oriented empire around his church. Although Conwell was finding acres of diamonds for himself by preaching a gospel of wealth, the other side of his work involved establishing Samaritan Hospital and Temple College and organizing hundreds of workers to provide athletic, literary, and benevolent services of all sorts for the surrounding community.13

  In Boston, another Baptist, A. J. Gordon, one of the most highly respected premillennial pastors of the day and a leading holiness teacher, expanded his church to include similar programs, although not on so grand a scale. Encouraged by Moody’s revival in Boston in 1877 to undertake work among drunkards, Gordon instituted the Industrial Temporary Home. On the premise that it was futile to preach to those who had empty stomachs, the Home sought jobs as well as providing food and lodging. As was true of many who engaged in such rescue work at that time, the Boston pastor did not hesitate to seek to use the state for social betterment. Prohibition was widely considered the most effective way of attacking urban problems at their root, and after the Civil War it seemed natural for evangelical social reformers to place renewed emphasis on this cause. In this respect Gordon resembled a fellow New Englander, Jonathan Blanchard. After the war Gordon allied himself in prohibition work with the old-time anti-slavery reformer, Wendell Phillips. In 1884 Gordon helped to promote the new Prohibition Party, which continued to be his principal political interest until his death in 1895. Like Phillips and Blanchard, he also championed the legal recognition of the rights of women.14

  These ministries were a part of the wider holiness revival. Torrey emphasized that the “one great secret of success” in rescue and related works was the common experience of “the Baptism of the Holy Ghost.”15 Moody’s associates, such as Gordon, Torrey, Dixon, Pierson, and Chapman, were finding many successful allies in the new independent Holiness groups that emphasized vigorous work among the poor. Gordon, in fact, helped to inspire A. B. Simpson, who in the 1880s founded the Christian and Missionary Alliance, designed especially to bring the Gospel to the urban poor.16 The Salvation Army, imported from England at about the same time, had a similar ministry to the outcasts of society.17 During the 1880s these organizations founded scores of rescue missions, homes for fallen women, and relief programs, worked among immigrants, and sought or provided jobs for countless numbers of poor people. Preaching the Gospel was always their central aim, but social and evangelistic work went hand in hand. Uplifting the sinner, as well as saving his soul, was high among their priorities.18

  Evangelicals with more moderate Keswick-type holiness views applauded these efforts and clearly considered them and their own work as part of one movement. J. Wilbur Chapman in his holiness work. Received Ye the Holy Ghost? (1894), concluded with impressive accounts of the accomplishments of spirit-filled Christians who sacrificed the comforts of life to work in the midst of the appalling conditions of the urban poor. He lauded the great rescue workers of the day, S. H. Hadley and Emma Whittemore, who moved in his own circles, and climaxed the volume with the example of “Mrs. Booth, the mother of the Salvation Army, one of the grandest women God has ever called into his service.” Catherine Booth had done so much because she was filled with the Holy Ghost. “That is always the secret of POWER.”19 A. T. Pierson, in his end-of-century survey, although criticizing the Army on a number of counts, nonetheless lauded its “hundred-fold methods” for uplifting, saving, and transforming men and women as “having proved effective beyond anything of the sort.”20

  By this time the most vigorous Protestant efforts to reach the poor were not confined to the various holiness-oriented groups. By the 1890s some liberal Protestants were beginning to move toward less evangelistically oriented reform efforts and found a more decidedly social “Social Gospel.”

  Yet probably as indicative of the prevailing spirit after 1890 were the broadly based efforts of some theologically conservative evangelicals to meet social needs. Of these the most impressive were those sponsored by the popular non-denominational weekly journal, The Christian Herald. Founded in 1878, the magazine was originally called The Christian Herald and Signs of the Times and was (as the name implied) largely a premillennialist organ, featuring such contributors as A. J. Gordon, A. T. Pierson, Samuel Kellogg, and England’s Charles Spurgeon.21 By 1890 the weekly enjoyed a respectable circulation of about thirty thousand. During the next twenty years, under the leadership of Louis Klopsch, a New York businessman, the journal became one of the nation’s leading agencies of relief work, distributing nearly three and a half million dollars for famine relief, overseas orphanages, its own Bowery mission, and a summer home for tenement children. In this same period, with these causes as its central focus, the Christian Herald increased its circulation by almost ten times, reaching about a quarter of a million by 1910.22 This growth meant broadening the base. Premillennialism was dropped and there was no apparent emphasis on holiness teachings. Leaders of the Bible institute movement oc
casionally contributed on other subjects, however, and judged the magazine to be theologically safe.23

  Despite its theological conservatism and its continued championing of a number of exclusively evangelistic efforts, by 1910 the Christian Herald had become distinctly progressive in politics. It endorsed labor unions, worked for legislation concerning women’s and children’s labor, advocated better treatment of immigrants and blacks, and waged an unceasing campaign for world peace.24 These efforts were part of a large evangelistically oriented conservative Protestant movement that continued to enjoy some sense of unity. This movement had many sides. Dispensationalism and holiness were two; social concern was another. At some time all these were intimately associated.

  There was a tendency among the premillennialist holiness Bible teachers, expressed by Moody, to see the world as a “wrecked vessel,” implying that one should concentrate on saving souls and stay away from social issues except for what could be reached by preaching conversion and repentance. Most evangelical preachers, furthermore, along with their businessmen supporters and most of their contemporaries, viewed the cause and cure of poverty as related directly to the initiative of the individual. The present account stresses the degree of involvement in social concerns but does not intend to deny the more prominent evangelical endorsement and confirmation of the prevailing values of middle-class America. The intention is to correct the impression that revivalist evangelicals of this era were overwhelmingly complacent and inactive on social questions. In fact, many of the same evangelist associates of Moody who took the lead in preaching dispensationalism and holiness also led in preserving the tradition of evangelical social work. Though they were dedicated first to saving souls, greatly occupied with personal piety, and held pessimistic social views, their record of Christian social service, in an era when social reform was not popular, was as impressive as that of almost any group in the country.