Such rhetoric was most certainly not in any way connected with progressive reformism. Reform was in fact, according to Haldeman, Satan’s way of lulling the world into ignoring the immensity of the crisis. If the Devil would lead the twentieth century “into a drunken orgy of sin and shame and outbreaking vice” as he had in the French Revolution, the reaction would ultimately result in a religious revival. On the contrary, “the Devil would be glad to see prohibition successful. Nothing would please him more than to be able to shut up every saloon and every house of shame.”6
Haldeman, moreover, associated most reforms with the growing menace of socialism, which in turn he seemed to equate with anarchy. In any case reform reminded him of prophecies of the spread of “lawlessness.” Most alarming was the appearance of reform and socialist sentiments even within the churches. Jesus Christ was no reformer, he argued, since he did not raise his voice against slavery or war. Furthermore Jesus rebuked Judas for his suggestion to give to the poor. Judas was “the only Socialist among professed Christians of whom the New Testament gives us record.” Trying to save the world by socialism, said Haldeman, was like cleaning and decorating the staterooms of a sinking ship.7
Democracy fared little better. It, too, like socialist “lawlessness,” was included in prophetic utterance. In Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the colossus, which was generally considered to represent four world empires ending with Rome, the feet and toes were iron mixed with clay. According to the dispensationalists, the ten toes represented the ten European nations whose federation (leagues of nations were already rumored) would be the final restoration of the Roman Empire. These nations were increasingly turning to constitutional or “mixed” democracies, and this was just what the mixture of iron and clay in the dream prophesied. Thus democracy was a symptom of weakness. Haldeman even went so far as to identify it with the socialist menace. The banner of democracy, he said, “is becoming more and more each day, the red flag, the symbol of socialism and the rule of man.”8
Science and technology likewise were among the deceptively attractive human achievements that the Bible prophesied as signs of the end. The Bible spoke of the “increase of knowledge, the running to and fro” in the last days, which now could be seen to mean “rapid transit and rapid flight—the multiplications of human inventions.” Science was impotent. The really important mysteries of life—such as the origin of life, and of motion, the mysteries of consciousness, thought, and the will—were “great riddles which laugh in the face of the most accomplished science.” Science could not explain the “why” of even the simplest things. “Two and two do make four and that is all you know or can know about it,” said Haldeman in an appeal to common sense. “There is not a scientist in the world can tell why. And yet this science dares to talk about the unreason of miracles. This is the thing that demands an entrance into our pulpits.”9
The pulpits were indeed a major concern. Not only was there the continuing menace of Rome, but also the confusions of the cults, which fit the predictions of the coming of “many false teachers” who “repudiate sound doctrine.” Even in Protestant churches, colleges, and universities, fundamental doctrines such as the resurrection of the body were “laughed out of court.” As an alternative to true doctrine, modern theologians found the spirit of Christ in the culture around them, in every person who is good and honest and brave-hearted, in every work of art, in the telegraph and telephone, in education, and in social reform. Calling self-development “the Spirit of Christ,” said Haldeman, is “nothing less than evolution under a taking name.” It is “the old doctrine of Cain come to town again; it is offering the fruits of the earth, man bringing out the best things in his own life and evolving God’ward.”10
In contrast, Christ’s plan rejected the present world and age. Christ himself had not chosen to live in the world during this era. Rather, he was preparing a heavenly destiny for his people, the church. “All this settles the relation of the church to the present age.” The church should not be concerned with the present culture. “The outlook of the church … is not on this age but on one to come.” Christ has promised “to come and take the church out of this world.”11
Even Haldeman did not go as far as he might in working out the ecclesiastical implications of this radically anti-worldly position. He did not call for ecclesiastical separation, and he himself remained in the Northern Baptist Convention.12 A. C. Gaebelein, on the other hand, was one of the few of the prophetic leaders who did at this time interpret the radical doctrine of separation from the world as demanding separation from the worldly church. “God’s greatest call is separation,” he told the Prophetic Bible Conference of 1914. Gaebelein himself had separated from the Methodist apostasy in 1899 and demanded that others follow:
How dare you support men and institutions who deny your Lord? H ow dare you keep fellowship with the enemies of the cross of Christ?
Oh, listen to His call! Who is on the Lord’s side? If He tarry a little while longer you will find that you must either follow this solemn call of God or go along with the apostasy.13
In 1914 Gaebelein was a leader with few followers. A half-generation later, when the fundamentalist battles to save the denominations had been lost, such separation would be for many a badge of orthodox fundamentalism. In the meantime, few were willing to see true Christianity as so radically opposed both to the culture and to its respectable churches.
2. THE CENTRAL TENSION
William B. Riley, just beginning to emerge as one of the chief architects of fundamentalism, was more typical. Riley also spoke on “The Significant Signs of the Times” at the 1914 conference. Riley mentioned essentially the same signs as Haldeman and Gaebelein, but without the attacks on democracy and socialism, and his mood was distinctly optimistic:
There are those who say that the battle has gone against us. I confess I do not belong to that company. My own ministry keeps me from any pessimism in that regard.
As pastor of a flourishing Baptist church in downtown Minneapolis, Riley’s conclusion was not to separate, but to “‘Strengthen the things that remain.’ ”14
Riley, rather than Gaebelein, was suited to be the leading spokesman for the emerging movement, because he better represented the tensions of this multi-faceted phenomenon. Like a number of the leading premillennialists, Riley’s background combined revivalism and a pietistic version of social reform. Institutionally, one of the strengths of this combination had been the building of vigorous urban ministries. In Minneapolis early in the century Riley had spoken strongly and clearly for social reform. Christians, he said, were called by God to the cities. They should see in the cities not only their sin, but also their suffering, and attempt to eliminate both. Christians, Riley affirmed, should side with the poor against the rich, even with honest labor against capital. They should work for democracy, elect reformers to civic office, and fight to eliminate all civic vices, especially liquor. “The Church of God,” he emphasized, “is especially charged with civic reform!” While this did not mean that the church should seek political control as had the Roman Catholic Church or Calvin in Geneva, it did mean that “when the Church is regarded as the body of God-fearing, righteous-living men, then, it ought to be in politics, and as a powerful influence, before which the saloon, and all evil accessories, should be made afraid and in the face of which sins should be made ashamed.”15
Such affirmations were becoming rare among revivalist evangelicals and increasingly so after about 1910. Yet the fact that such views had remained acceptable in a movement known for its premillennialism is important. Although the new dispensational premillennialism was the chief distinguishing trait of one side of the movement, it was not even for them the overwhelming controlling interest.16 Evangelism came first. This evangelistic commitment was shaped by an older set of ideals and assumptions which characterized the pietistic American evangelical revivalism in the era around the Civil War. This older tradition was in many respects culturally optimistic and reformist. When
premillennialism was added on, this tradition was by no means obliterated. Rather the two were fused together in spite of the basic tension between them.
The character of this ill-defined middle position is clearer when viewed in the context of the emerging movement’s most characteristic and increasingly important institution, the Bible institute. Since dispensationalists lacked any clear view of the organized church above the local level, the Bible institutes played a major role in giving them some unity. They arose in response to the demands of urban ministries and the desire to train lay leaders for evangelism. They also served as centers for training for foreign missions—always a prominent concern. A wide variety of local evangelistic agencies, local congregations, Bible conferences, publications, and independent national agencies for missions and other types of evangelism was informally united by common ties to various Bible institutes. The first of these institutes—A. B. Simpson’s Nyack Missionary College—was founded in 1882, and by 1910 nearly a score of such schools had been founded by evangelists and successful pastors in major cities around the country. Of these, Moody Bible Institute was preeminent, not only because of its connection with the late evangelist, but also because of the leadership of two of the outstanding spokesmen for the movement, Reuben A. Torrey, first superintendent (from 1889 to 1908), and James M. Gray, who served from 1904 to 1934, first as dean and later as president.17
The extent to which evangelistic zeal overrode all else and consequently displaced interest in other types of cultural contacts is evident from surveying the Institute Tie, MBI’s monthly publication, during its first year (1907–1908) as a national journal. Economics and politics merit only occasional reference and then usually as the source of homilies for Christian witnesses. With respect to the financial panic of 1907, for example, the editors. Gray and Torrey, noted that the national leaders did not know either the causes or the solution—and posed an analogous question: “What if we know not the cause of spiritual unrest and its remedy?” Those who fail to vote were poor patriots. The moral: Christians who did not witness were far worse. And A. T. Mahan’s defense of naval maneuvers in peace time as necessary for war preparedness reminded the editors that Christian young folk should always keep themselves well prepared through attending evangelistic meetings and Bible institutes. In short, evangelism overshadowed everything else.18
These apolitical tendencies were reinforced by premillennialism, which could be used to side-step controversial political issues. “It was a disappointment to all,” observed editors Gray and Torrey in 1907, “to learn that the Hague Conference, recently held, is barren of results so far as permanent measures of peace are concerned.” But this, they said, was not surprising “to those familiar with the prophetic scriptures,” since they know that peace must wait for the coming of the Prince of Peace. Moreover, in the event that future peace efforts should appear more successful, students of prophecy should know also that “it is quite possible that Satan can counterfeit a millennium in the days of the anti-Christ, for there is a kind of peace which force can procure; but it will be a lull before the awful storm.”19 All eventualities were covered by this analysis; in effect it said that Christian workers need not concern themselves with such questions, or even, it seems, with reading the newspapers—except of course in order to find illustrations for use in evangelism or Bible study.
This was the attitude also of Moody Bible Institute toward intellectual culture. The curriculum of the Institute was confined to Bible study, missions, and practical work.20 Torrey and Gray were frequently asked whether the Christian student and worker should be (as John Wesley had put it) “a man of one book.” This statement, it seemed to them, went too far. Yet their qualifications suggested something less than a total endorsement of the disinterested study of the Western intellectual tradition. One should read “intelligently and widely as time permits, giving the Bible first place always and reading other books through it, that is making all his other reading furnish information and illustration with which to better understand the Bible himself and to help others to understand it.” This was preferable to reading only the Bible because “the more one knows, the more resources has he at his command with which to get in touch with people and to lead them to the goal.”21
Although these remarks suggest an anti-cultural bias, it is important to emphasize again that even such statements as these did not amount to a repudiation of intellect or reason. In fact, at Moody Bible Institute, the same editorial page that carried the reflections on “a man of one book” noted and agreed with recent remarks of Woodrow Wilson, then president of Princeton, to the effect that people were not willing enough to think and that contemporary preaching was “too easy.” The Moody monthly advocated more doctrinal preaching and suggested that another Jonathan Edwards was needed. Both Torrey and Gray were known to distrust excessive emotion, and the editorial suggested that more intellectual content in contemporary preaching would help to remove it not only from the political and sociological arenas, but also from the “amusement competition.”
This last remark was doubtless directed at Billy Sunday, whose star was then rising in the Midwest, aided to no small extent by his talent for bringing the techniques of vaudeville to revivalism. With respect to the importance of intellect and precise statement, Sunday was at the opposite pole from the teachers at Moody Bible Institute. Certainly Sunday did not look like the next Jonathan Edwards. At his ordination examination for the Presbyterian ministry in 1903, his characteristic response to questions on theology and history was “That’s too deep for me,” or “I’ll have to pass that up.” “I don’t know any more about theology,” he once said with some accuracy, “than a jack-rabbit knows about ping-pong, but I’m on my way to glory.”22
The more decorous conservatives who were concerned that liberalism would turn religion into morality and abandon true doctrine, were often appalled by Sunday’s methods, as well as by his slipshod and often Pelagian teaching. In 1907, The Watchman, a conservative Baptist mouthpiece, said Sunday’s preaching “outrages every accepted canon of religious worhsip.”23 Apparently Reuben Torrey agreed, at least privately, advising A. P. Fitt, Moody’s son-in-law, not to let Sunday speak at the Institute because of his sensational evangelistic techniques.24
The difference was partly one of style. The early Moody Bible Institute was wedded to the style of Victorian culture. Torrey and other evangelists preached in cutaway coats and wing collars. Sunday, who did at first assume such airs in imitation of his early mentor, J. Wilbur Chapman, soon gained a reputation for abandoning clerical dignity by preaching in his shirt sleeves.25 At the Institute, by contrast, at the height of the summer of 1908, James M. Gray sent a stiff note to the faculty warning against sitting in their offices during the Chicago heat without coats and vests. Gray found such conduct “unusual” as well as detrimental to the “students who need our example of conventionality.”26
It was difficult, however, to argue with success. By 1913 Sunday was an immensely successful national figure and in the next several years outdistanced even D. L. Moody himself in numbers of conversions claimed.27 Conservatives, whether Baptist,28 Presbyterian,29 or of the Bible institute sort, came to support his efforts almost unanimously. The Moody Bible Institute itself was filled with students eager to imitate Billy Sunday, sporting such nicknames as “Bob,” “Bud,” “Cyclone,” “Gypsy,” and “Joe.”30 Nevertheless, the Victorian style of the movement did not disappear entirely.31
As their concern for intellect and convention indicates, these premillennialist leaders had by no means abandoned the world at every point. James Gray, in struggling with separation from the world, acknowledged that “we cannot absolutely separate ourselves from its society, its literature, its politics, its commerce, but we can separate ourselves from its methods, its spirits, and its aims.32
Even in the area of social reform, which was perhaps the most obvious practical test of the degree to which the culture and its welfare was considered a proper Christian
concern, the Institute’s interest had not abated entirely—at least in principle. Although there is nothing like the degree of advocacy of social concern apparent earlier, nevertheless, when the occasion arose. Gray and Torrey were still true to their old affirmations. Gray compared his reasons for opposing the liquor traffic, gambling, white slavery, political graft, and other forms of social injustice to the reasons he would kick a dangerous banana peel off the sidewalk.33 The metaphor is revealing. Protecting society from evil was still good for its own sake; yet one did not find such opportunities every day nor go out of one’s way to seek them. All the same this indicated a greater concern for the physical needs of society than that expressed by more radically anti-worldly premillennial brethren. Thus, while Arno Gaebelein found the “Social Creed of the Churches” which was adopted by the Federal Council of Churches in 1908 unacceptable, the editors of the Moody Institute Tie considered it “a most righteous and reasonable appeal on behalf of laboring man which we should like to forward to the utmost of our ability.34
Even politics could on occasion be viewed with favor by these sometimes optimistic premillennialists. Listing “hopeful signs” for the year at the outset of 1908, the Moody editors of course first mentioned that “Revival is in the air.” Not so typically, however, they added two other causes for hope. The prohibition movement was spreading nationally, and, in politics generally, “ethical revival is in the air.” “No matter who receives plurality in November,” Gray and Torrey observed in reference to growing demands for progressive reform, “we shall have a chief magistrate believing in cleaner government.35
Fundamentalism and American Culture Page 19
