X. “The Great Reversal”
The evangelicals’ interest in social concerns, which lasted into the early years of the twentieth century, has been something of a puzzle to historians of fundamentalism. The chief question is the rather dramatic disappearance of this interest—or at least its severe curtailment—by the 1920s. In recent years many evangelical interpreters have commented on this “Great Reversal” in evangelical social views, although they have not always been clear on precisely what was lost.1 Non-evangelical interpreters have tended to see a less sudden transition. Some have seemed to discount late nineteenth-century evangelical social efforts because they were motivated primarily by desire to “save souls.”2 Others have concluded that, at least since the Civil War, an emphasis on the “private” implications of the Gospel has almost invariably been a feature of the revivalist tradition, especially the premillennialist wing. This private Christianity, looking toward the next world and individual salvation, was contrasted with the “public party” of the Social Gospel of the early twentieth century, which was associated exclusively with the theologically liberal wing of the church.3
In order to clarify matters, and to distinguish two quite distinct stages of the “Great Reversal,” it is important to note first that social concern may emphasize one or both of the following: (1) political means to promote the welfare of society, especially of the poor and the oppressed, and (2) reliance on private charity to meet such needs. Although before the Civil War many evangelicals displayed neither type of social concern, many others emphasized both. The ensuing transition came in two stages. From 1865 to about 1900 interest in political action diminished, though it did not disappear, among revivalist evangelicals. As we have just seen, however, the revivalist evangelicalism of this era still included vigorous champions of social concern, especially in the form of private charity. The lessening of political concern, then, did not in itself signify a “Great Reversal” in social concern, even though it shifted the focus and prepared the way for what followed. The “Great Reversal” took place from about 1900 to about 1930, when all progressive social concern, whether political or private, became suspect among revivalist evangelicals and was relegated to a very minor role.
The preparatory stage, from 1865 to 1900, can be described in a number of ways. Using the terms broadly we may call it a transition from a basically “Calvinistic” tradition, which saw politics as a significant means to advance the kingdom, to a “pietistic” view of political action as no more than a means to restrain evil.4 This change can be seen as a move from Old Testament to New Testament models for understanding politics. It corresponds also, as is often noted, to the change from postmillennial to premillennial views of the relation of the kingdom to the present social and political order. In America it was also related to the rise of the holiness movement.
From the time of the Puritans until about the middle of the nineteenth century, American evangelicalism was dominated by a Calvinistic vision of a Christian culture. Old Testament Israel, a nation committed to God’s law, was the model for political institutions. Hence the Christian ideal was to introduce God’s kingdom—a New Israel—not only in the lives of the regenerate elect, but also by means of civil laws that would both restrain evil and comprehensively transform culture according to God’s will. Charles Finney expressed this ideal when he declared that “the Christian church was designed to make aggressive movements in every direction—to lift up her voice and put forth her energies against iniquity in high and low places—to reform individuals, communities, and government, and never rest until the kingdom … shall be given to the people … —until every form of iniquity shall be driven from the earth.” Jonathan Blanchard similarly spoke of “a perfect state of society,” meaning that “the Law of God is the Law of the Land.”5
Holiness teaching spread from the pietist Methodist tradition into the culturally influential Calvinist camp of American evangelicalism within the context of these assumptions concerning the role of God’s law for people and society. At first the Reformed teachers of holiness simply fused the two ideals. Both Charles Finney and Asa Mahan, for instance, when they first defined Oberlin “perfectionism” in the late 1830s, described the standards for “holiness” in terms of God’s law revealed in the Old Testament covenant. “Whatever the old covenant, or moral law, requires of the creature,” wrote Mahan in a typical statement, “the new covenant … promises to the believer.”6 Such formulations, echoing and amplifying themes sounded by the Puritans, did not abrogate the Old Testament law, but kept it functioning as a most important guide.
This stress on the law had definite political implications. Finney included a section on “Human Government” in his Systematic Theology. A government’s aim should be to promote holiness or “the great law of benevolence.” Toward this goal of benevolence “or universal good-willing,” Christians “are bound to exert their influence to secure a legislation that is in accordance with the law of God.” Finney did not allow that such political activity would divert from saving souls. On the contrary, he insisted that “the promotion of public and private order and happiness is one of the indispensable means of doing good and saving souls.”7
The growing emphasis on the role of the Holy Spirit, however, almost demanded some sort of dispensationalism that would draw a clear line between the Old Testament dispensation of law and the New Testament dispensation of the Holy Spirit. In 1839, Charles Finney was already declaring that the day of Pentecost marked “the commencement of a new dispensation,” in which the new covenant replaced the old.8 The distinction between the two covenants was not new, but the central place given to Pentecost and the Holy Spirit soon pushed interpretation in a new direction. In the new dispensation those who had received the anointing with the power of the Holy Spirit were radically different from professing Christians who were still in bondage to the law. Moreover, the freeing and empowering work of the Spirit was known experientially, not by laboriously conforming to codes of law and order. Accordingly, in the thirty years after Finney and Mahan first adopted their holiness views, the place of the law was drastically reduced in the writings of Reformed advocates of holiness. After 1870, when they spoke of the dispensation begun at Pentecost, they stressed the personal experience of being filled by the Spirit and the resulting positive personal power for service. By this time it was rare to find holiness teachers of any sort stressing the Old Testament law as the secret to a happy Christian life. The mood of the revivalist evangelicalism of the day was suggested by Philip Bliss’s verse, “Free from the law, oh happy condition….”9
The Spirit-oriented holiness teaching, spreading quickly in this period, encouraged a clear distinction between law and Spirit, Old Testament and New Testament, and seems to have been a major factor paving the way for the acceptance of a more definite dispensationalism in the later nineteenth century. By the 1870s when the dispensationalist movement began to take hold in America, holiness teachers already commonly spoke of “the Dispensation of the SPIRIT.”10 This and similar phrases became commonplace within the premillennial movement11 with the age of the Spirit sharply separated from the age of law. C. I. Scofield in his classic formulation called these two dispensations “Law” and “Grace.” He did not make Pentecost itself the turning point but he did argue that the special characteristic of the age of grace was the presence of the Holy Spirit in every believer and the necessity for repeated “fillings” with the Spirit.12
The contrast between the present New Testament age of the Spirit and the previous Old Testament age of law did involve a shift toward a more “private” view of Christianity. The Holy Spirit worked in the hearts of individuals and was known primarily through personal experience. Social action, still an important concern, was more in the province of private agencies. The kingdom was no longer viewed as a kingdom of laws; hence civil law would not help its advance. The transition from postmillennial to premillennial views was the most explicit expression of this change. Politics became much le
ss important.
Few premillennial-holiness evangelists, however, carried the implications of their position to the conclusion—more often found in the Anabaptist tradition—that since Satan ruled this age and its governments, Christians should avoid all political action, even voting.13 Far more characteristic was a position—typical of the pietist tradition—that saw governments as ordained by God to restrain evil, so that politics in this respect was a means to do good. What they gave up—at least in theory—was the Calvinist-Puritan Old Testament covenantal view of the identity of the people of God with the advance of a religious-political kingdom. Even this idea was not abandoned totally or consistently. Sabbath legislation—despite its Old Testament origins and intention to promote both Christianity and human welfare—continued to be an interest of many. Likewise, prohibition, which was both an attack on a demonic vice and a progressive reform for improving civic life, received support from almost all evangelical quarters.
In any case, at the turn of the century, even while many premillennial-holiness leaders continued to urge private charity, they were also ready, at least on occasion, to urge quite progressive political reform. A. C. Dixon encouraged Christians to promote, and even organize, political parties “for the carrying forward of any great reform.” He based his argument simply on the duty to “Do good to all men.”14 Similarly, Charles Blanchard, although a convert to premillennial and holiness views, had not yet abandoned—as he eventually would—progressive reform ideals, or even the idea of “Christian civilization,” inherited from his father. “Christian men should lead,” he urged in 1897, in fighting such injustices as unequal taxation, benefits to favored railroads and other corporations, delays injustice in the courts, justice denied to the poor because of excessive legal expenses, and pardons for corrupt officials while poor immigrants served out jail terms. “If Christian ministers and members will not take pains to perform their civil duties,” asked Blanchard, “how are we to expect those others will?”15
More consistently pietistic and premillennial, yet just as progressive, was the position taken by James M. Gray in a sermon preached around 1900. Gray’s case is particularly striking, since later, when he served as President of Moody Bible Institute, his political views became rigidly conservative.16 In 1900 he explained that he was “not expecting the millennium to be brought about by moral and political reforms.” Moreover, he warned that Christians should not allow their money to go “into the pockets of peculators, and boodlers, and loafers and incompetents who feed at the public crib.” Nevertheless he saw many areas where Christians could use the government to fulfill their social duties toward their neighbors. What is involved, he asked, in my duty to love my neighbor? “I shall feed him if he is hungry, clothe him if naked, visit him if sick, and especially seek to win his soul if lost.” Christians should not hesitate to use other means to show this love, even to the unbeliever. “Is it consistent with the spirit and the mind of Christ that we shall have no interest to ameliorate their material and physical condition, or make it better than it is because they are not following with us?”
Gray’s answer was unmistakably progressive:
There are crowded tenements in our cities where hundreds of souls are herded together through greed of grasping landlords under conditions inferior to those of the cattle in the stockyards; in some of these tenements are sweat-shops where clothing is made at starvation wages and disease bred and scattered wherever their products go; there are dram-shops, brothels and gambling dens open in multiplying variety for the allurement of our young men and women; if our newspapers are to be believed, law is defied continually by municipal and state officers to the demoralization of both public and private standards of right and wrong; Sunday is desecrated; and life is imperiled by the iniquity of those in authority, when it is in the power of the members of the Christian church17 in almost every community to overawe and remove that official iniquity as Christ Himself drove the traders and money-changers from the temple.18
Gray went on specifically to recommend breaking up the American Ice Trust, reputedly in unholy alliance with Tammany Hall. Because the Trust raised ice prices “during the terrible heat of the early part of this summer, it was practically impossible for the suffering and dying poor to alleviate their miseries….” He also endorsed the standard causes of the prohibition movement, the banning of gambling, and Sabbath legislation, as other important ways of helping the poor. He even went so far as to cite very favorably the example of Glasgow, where the gas, telephone, and transportation systems were owned by the government and the government was run by Christians. But even if we should work for such good, he cautioned, we must not expect any more than to limit the reign of evil until Christ returns. The rallying cry of Christians in public life should be, “Hold the fort, I’m coming.”
We return then to the question of the “Great Reversal,” or what happened to evangelical social concerns. Clearly the earlier stage, the shift from a more Calvinistic to a more pietistic view of politics after the Civil War, was not in itself sufficient to eliminate a sometimes strong emphasis on social aspects of the Gospel. Neither premillennialism nor holiness teachings, both associated with this earlier stage, were sufficient causes either. In fact the holiness views seem to have provided an important impulse for continuing social concerns. Some evangelists, Moody in particular, did use the priority of evangelism, together with premillennialism, as an excuse to avoid saying much on social issues.19 Most of his constituency was apparently Republican and conservative,20 as were most Protestants at that time. Yet in 1900 strong social concerns were still commonly expressed by some of Moody’s prominent admirers, both through evangelistically oriented private charity and by advocacy of some political means aimed at the public good.
The “Great Reversal” (although not as great at the popular levels as sometimes suggested) appears really to date from the second stage, which extended from 1900 to 1930, when social concerns dramatically disappeared or were at least subordinated to others. Though it carries us ahead of our story, we may look briefly at this time period. During this second period the members of the group in question, associated with the Bible institute movement, did not generally alter their theories on premillennialism or holiness. Neither did they abandon politics or become entirely “private” in their outlook. If anything, as will be seen, after World War I they showed increased interest in relating Christianity to the welfare of the entire society, as the anti-evolution campaign and growing anti-communism demonstrated.21 Sometimes they did use premillennialism or personal holiness to argue that Christians should not become much involved in work for the public welfare. Moreover, they abandoned the view of Finney and the other mid-nineteenth-century moral philosophers that the kingdom would be positively advanced by good laws. This helped to prevent them from developing any positive or progressive political views of their own. In fact, however, they applied their reservations regarding political action quite selectively, disregarding them when they themselves became concerned with a public issue.
It seems then that the basic causes of the “Great Reversal” must be broader than simply the rise of the new dispensationalist or holiness views. At times these theories certainly augmented trends toward more private Christianity. When the occasion arose, these doctrines were readily available to provide rationales for rejecting social reform. So they were contributing causes of the “reversal.” Other factors, however, seem to have determined which aspects of social action and reform were avoided.
Social factors contributed to the transformation also; but clear evidence for most of these is lacking or very difficult to assess. From the time of Moody through the fundamentalist controversies of the 1920s, the constituency of these revivalist evangelical movements appears to have been the predominantly white, aspiring middle class of Protestant heritage. Often they had, like Moody himself, grown up in rural communities and moved to cities.22 No doubt the tensions inherent in this experience increased with the accelerating urbanizatio
n and pluralization of the nation during this whole period.23 These tensions, however, were doubtless mixed with so many others for those who responded to the Gospel that the weight of the social factors, while no doubt of great importance, is impossible to measure. World War I, more than any other general social experience, intensified conservative reaction of every sort.24 Yet even such social factors do not fully account for the fundamentalists’ rejection or endorsement of social causes. Too many non-fundamentalists, including some liberal and moderate Protestants,25 had similar social experiences for these alone to offer an adequate explanation.
The factor crucial to understanding the “Great Reversal,” and especially in explaining its timing and exact shape, is the fundamentalist reaction to the liberal Social Gospel after 1900. Until about 1920 the rise of the Social Gospel and the decline of revivalist social concerns correlate very closely. By the time of World War I, “social Christianity” was becoming thoroughly identified with liberalism and was viewed with great suspicion by many conservative evangelicals. The Federal Council of Churches tried to maintain some unity in 1912 by instituting a commission on evangelism to counterbalance its well-known social activism. By this time the balance was precarious, and the issue of evangelism as opposed to social service was widely debated.26 World War I exacerbated the growing conflict. When fundamentalists began using their heavy artillery against liberal theology, the Social Gospel was among the prime targets. In the barrage against the Social Gospel it was perhaps inevitable that the vestiges of their own progressive social attitudes would also become casualties.27
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