Fundamentalism and American Culture
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36. Both were active in the National Reform Association which had this goal. Jonathan served as Vice-President for a time. See Jonathan Blanchard, “God in the Constitution,” Sermons and Addresses, pp. 138–48, delivered at the NRA convention in 1871. Charles Blanchard spoke at the 1874 meeting, Proceedings of the National Convention to Secure the Religious Amendment of the Constitution of the United States (Philadelphia, 1874). It is significant regarding the dynamics of the later fundamentalist coalition that Archibald Alexander Hodge of Princeton Theological Seminary also spoke for this cause, ibid.
37. A Brief History of the National Christian Association (Chicago, 1875), pp. 10–12.
38. Askew, “Liberal Arts College,” pp. 81–82.
39. “Henry Ward Beecher,” Christian Cynosure I (May 9, 1872), p. 118; “The Spirit of the Cynosure,” p. 154. I am indebted to Paul Carter who points out this controversy, The Spiritual Crisis, pp. 113–14, 124, 139.
40. Blanchard had been closest to Edward Beecher. The two co-edited Secret Societies: A Discussion of their Character and Claims (Cincinnati, 1867). Edward, however, was in Brooklyn aiding Henry in editorial work at the time of the Blanchard attack. Taylor, “Blanchard,” pp. 121, 129; Caskey, Chariot, 137–38.
41. Kilby, Minority, pp. 182, 190; Taylor, “Blanchard,” pp. 139–46. By this time Blanchard was correspondingly more cautious in his optimism for society, seeing each advance in one area accompanied by setbacks in others. In 1886 he saw the immediate prospect as “gloomy,” although the long-range outlook seemed good. Taylor, “Millennialism,” pp. 16–17.
42. Cy Hulse, “The Shaping of a Fundamentalist: A Case Study of Charles Blanchard,” M.A. thesis, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1976, p. 56, convincingly sets the date for Charles Blanchard’s shift to premillennialism at around 1885. He did not, however, say much about such views before Light on the Last Days: Being Familiar Talks on the Book of Revelation (Chicago, 1913), a work dedicated to Emma Dryer.
43. Frances Blanchard, Life, pp. 65, 73.
44. Ibid., pp. 52–53.
45. Quoted in Askew, “Liberal Arts College,” p. 227.
46. Frances Blanchard, Life, p. 180.
III. D. L. Moody and a New American Evangelism
1. “Introduction,” Dwight L. Moody, Echoes from the Pulpit and Platform… (Hartford, Conn., 1900), p. 31.
2. Ibid., title page.
3. Ibid., p. 27.
4. Quoted in James F. Findlay, Jr., Dwight L. Moody: American Evangelist 1837–1899 (Chicago, 1969), p. 412.
5. Cf. the excellent discussion of this issue in Stanley N. Gundry, Love Them In: The Proclamation Theology of D. L. Moody (Chicago, 1976), pp. 198–218.
6. “Revivals,” Moody’s Latest Sermons (Chicago, 1900), p. 125.
7. Liberals as well as conservatives claimed the Moody heritage, as is indicated by a long controversy sparked by an editorial, “Where Would Mr. Moody Stand?” Christian Century XXXX (July 12, 1923), pp. 870–72. Gundry, Love Them In, p. 200, lists twelve publications in the ensuing debate.
8. The following account depends considerably on the outstanding biography of Moody by James F. Findlay. Cf. Richard K. Curtis, They Called Him Mister Moody (Grand Rapids, 1962); and J. C. Pollock, Moody: A Biographical Portrait of the Pacesetter in Modern Mass Evangelism (New York, 1962).
9. Findlay, Moody, pp. 286–87, 337.
10. See Findlay, Moody, pp. 306–55 for fine accounts of these works. On the schools see Donald A. Wells, “D. L. Moody and His Schools: An Historical Analysis of an Educational Ministry,” Ph.D. dissertation, Boston University, 1972.
11. Gundry, Love Them In, pp. 71–86 argues against the charge that “technique had triumphed over truth” in Moody’s theology. His argument establishes that Moody was not a pragmatist in theory the way Finney was. However, Gundry’s own subsequent account shows that Moody tested doctrines on the basis of their suitability to evangelism. See, for instance, p. 185 where Gundry says that “perhaps Moody’s major emphasis in his preaching of premillennialism … is the practical effect of preaching the doctrine.” See also the quotations cited in notes 12 and 14 below. Such pragmatism, of course, does not imply that Moody (or Finney for that matter) did not test his doctrines first by Scripture.
12. W. H. Daniels, ed., Moody: His Words, Work, and Workers (New York, 1877), quoted in Gundry, Love Them In, p. 88.
13. This scheme is attributed to Moody by Daniels, op. cit. Its adequacy is attested by Gundry who organizes his analysis of Moody’s theology around this scheme.
14. Quoted in Gundry, Love Them In, p. 99.
15. Moody’s Latest Sermons, pp. 52–60.
16. For example, “Tekel,” Moody: His Words, Daniels, ed., pp. 415–16.
17. “The Ninety-First Psalm,” Moody’s Latest Sermons, pp. 11–12.
18. For examples, “Sowing and Reaping,” Secret Power (Chicago, 1896); “Temptation,” Latest Sermons; “Tekel,” Moody: His Words. Cf. Gundry, Love Them In, pp. 90–91, who observes from a wider study of Moody’s sermons, “In expanding the thought of the sinfulness of humanity, it was common for Moody to speak of acts of sin such as ingratitude to parents, drunkenness, acts of sexual immorality, theater attendance, worldly amusements, Sabbath-breaking, etc.”
19. Latest Sermons, pp. 27–28. Cf. Secret Power, pp. 109–11, where he argues that lotteries, entertainments, dramas, or “unconverted choirs” in churches are signs of the Church descending to the level of the world.
20. All these hymns are found in Gospel Hymns Nos. 1 to 6, Ira D. Sankey, et al., eds. (New York, 1894). Sandra S. Sizer, Gospel Hymns and Social Religion: The Rhetoric of Nineteenth-Century Revivalism (Philadelphia, 1978), provides a very insightful analysis of the Sankey volume and other aspects of this topic. William G. McLoughlin, Jr., Modern Revivalism: Charles Grandison Finney to Billy Graham (New York, 1959), pp. 233–39, also discusses Sankey and these hymns.
21. Moody: His Words, Daniels, ed., pp. 431–32. Moody’s social views are discussed in Findlay, Moody, pp. 272–302, and in McLoughlin, Modern Revivalism, pp. 267–79. McLoughlin’s work documents similar emphases in other evangelists of the era. Moody’s associates, however, were quite divided on the issue; see Chapter IX below.
22. These points are argued at length in Sizer, Gospel Hymns.
23. Moody: His Words, Daniels, ed., pp. 431–32.
24. This point also is stressed in Sizer, Gospel Hymns.
25. Sowing and Reaping (Chicago, 1896), p. 83.
26. Ernest Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism (Chicago, 1970) has an excellent discussion of the relationship of the premillennial movement to Moody’s work.
27. Secret Power: or, the Secret of Success in Christian Life and Christian Work (Chicago, 1881); and The Way to God and How to Find it (Chicago, 1884). These reflect the influences of Keswick teaching; cf. Chapter VIII below.
28. Gundry, a dispensationalist himself, has examined Moody’s sermons carefully on this point and does not find any clear teachings on such dispensationalist positions as the secret rapture of the church, a seven-year interval between Christ’s coming and his inauguration of the millennial kingdom, or the view of the church age as “a parenthesis,” Love Them In, pp. 187–88.
29. Gundry, Love Them In, p. 185.
30. “The Second Coming of Christ,” The Best of D. L. Moody, Wilbur M. Smith, ed. (Chicago, 1971), pp. 193–95.
31. Ibid.
32. “Revivals,” Latest Sermons, pp. 106, 125–26.
IV. Prologue: The Paradox of Revivalist Fundamentalism
1. Stanley N. Gundry, Love Them In: The Proclamation Theology of D. L. Moody (Chicago, 1976), although very sympathetic, raises questions about his anti-intellectualism, p. 221. Cf. the rather less sympathetic treatment in Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (New York, 1962), pp. 106–14; 121–22.
2. “What was Christ’s Attitude Towards Error? A Symposium,” Record of Christian Work (November, 1899), pp. 600, 602, quoted in Gundry, Love Them
In, pp. 217–18. Cf. the response of A. T. Pierson, another fundamentalist precursor, whose response is negative, unlike most of the others, ibid., p. 602.
3. The relationships among Puritanism, pietism, and later evangelicalism are explored in helpful ways by Richard Lovelace, The American Pietism of Cotton Mather (Grand Rapids, 1979).
4. Sizer, Gospel Hymns and Social Religion (Philadelphia, 1978), esp. pp. 50–82; 112–15.
5. Sizer, Gospel Hymns, pp. 48, 111–37, and passim.
6. Sizer, Gospel Hymns, e.g. p. 129, emphasizes the neglected popular forms, but then neglects the role of the belief system.
7. C. Norman Kraus, Dispensationalism in America: Its Rise and Development (Richmond, Va., 1958), develops this relationship. Both Kraus and Ernest Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism (Chicago, 1970), trace the development of Darby’s views and their importance in America in very helpful detail. On the Brethren, see also H. A. Ironside, A Historical Sketch of the Brethren Movement (Grand Rapids, 1942).
8. Sandeen, Roots, p. 152; cf. p. 239. Samuel J. Kellogg of Western Seminary, one of the early theologians of the movement, estimated that at the 1878 conference at least 88 percent of those supporting the call to the conference were explicitly committed to Calvinism, Kraus, Dispensationalism, pp. 59–60.
9. A notable exception was William E. Blackstone who in 1878 published Jesus is Coming, which was the most popular book associated with the movement through World War I. Blackstone and the few other notable Methodists in the movement had very loose associations with the denomination, Sandeen, Roots, p. 163.
10. Sandeen, Roots, pp. 75–78; James Findlay, Dwight L. Moody (Chicago, 1969), p. 127. Moody accepted the outlines of premillennial teaching some time after 1867 largely through contacts with Henry Moorhouse, a representative of the British Plymouth Brethren.
11. One example is the popularity of Hal Lindsey, The Late Great Planet Earth (Grand Rapids, 1970). As of 1978 the publisher claimed over 9,800,000 copies in print. In the 1970s most fundamentalists, holiness groups, pentecostals, and other evangelicals held some form of these premillennial views.
12. The importance of the institutional history of the movement has been described in helpful detail by Sandeen, Roots.
13. Modern Revivalism (New York, 1959), p. 371.
14. Arthur Tappan Pierson (1837–1911) was (as his name suggests) closely related to the New School Presbyterian tradition. J. Wilbur Chapman (1859–1918), another evangelistic associate and successor of Moody, was educated at Oberlin College and Lane Seminary. A. J. Gordon (1836–1895) was always a New Englander with a typical New England clerical education. William J. Erdman (1834–1923) was a graduate of the New School Presbyterian Union Theological Seminary in New York. The Blanchards always considered themselves New Englanders. For a discussion of such affinities see George M. Marsden, “The New School Heritage and Presbyterian Fundamentalism,” Westminster Theological Journal XXXII (May, 1970), pp. 129–47.
15. Robert Harkness, Reuben Archer Torrey: The Man and His Message (Chicago, 1929), p. 10.
16. Interview with Dr. Ernest W. Wordsworth, Torrey file, Moody Bible Institute archives.
17. McLoughlin, Modern Revivalism, 371–73.
18. Modern Revivalism, p. 375.
19. Daniel Stevick, a particularly acute observer of fundamentalism, pointed out such contrasts continuing in the 1960s. “One observes,” he says, “that a good many Fundamentalist churches … practice both styles of worship—lecture hall with black gown and immense dignity on Sunday morning, vaudeville with xylophone and frenzied indignity on Sunday evening.” Beyond Fundamentalism (Richmond, Va., 1964), p. 148.
V. Two Revisions of Millennialism
1. Sixty Years with the Bible: A Record of Experience (New York, 1912 [1909]), p. 102.
2. Such secularization, of course, can be found in every age, but has been especially pronounced since the eighteenth century. “Secularization” is not a precise term, and can be used with more positive connotations.
3. The Modern Schism: Three Paths to the Secular (New York, 1969), p. 95.
4. Clear distinctions in terminology between “premillennial” and “postmillennial” do not seem to occur before the nineteenth century. A third position, “amillennialism,” not so termed until the twentieth century, holds that the prophecies concerning both the struggles with anti-Christ and the reign of Christ are being partially fulfilled already in the present church age so that the “millennium” does not represent a separate historical period. Robert G. Clouse, ed., The Meaning of the Millennium: Four Views (Downers Grove, 111., 1977), clarifies these distinctions.
5. See, for instance, “History of Opinions Respecting the Millennium,” American Theological Review, 1st series, I (November, 1859), p. 655. I have summarized postmillennial teaching, as well as pre-Civil-War American premillennialism, in more detail in The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience (New Haven, 1970), pp. 182–98.
6. See Nathan Hatch, The Sacred Cause of Liberty: Republican Thought and the Millennium in Revolutionary New England (New Haven, 1977) on the secularization of postmillennialism during the Revolutionary era. For a broader discussion of American millennialism and nationalism, see Ernest Lee Tuveson, Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America’s Millennial Role (Chicago, 1968).
7. Clarke, Sixty Years, pp. 104–5; cf. Clarke, The Use of Scripture in Theology (New York, 1905), pp. 102–13.
8. The Ideal of Jesus (New York, 1911), pp. 70–72.
9. McGiffert, “The Kingdom of God” (1909), Christianity as History and Faith, Arthur Cushman McGiffert, Jr., ed. (New York, 1934), p. 303.
10. For example, see William R. Hutchison, The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), pp. 148–50, on Clarke.
11. This analysis follows roughly the analysis of how changes in ideas take place found in Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (1970 [1962]). An accepted orthodoxy provides a paradigm into which all data are placed. Eventually, however, this paradigm may become so overburdened with anomalies that a period of crisis develops. At this point some may produce new paradigms that interpret the data in a radically different framework. Exponents of the two schools of thought then can hardly communicate since their basic perceptions of the data differ. See also the discussion in Chapter XXIV below. I see Kuhn’s own model as a useful analogy for discussing changes in other areas of thought, rather than as a precise analytical tool.
12. See Marsden, Evangelical Mind, pp. 182–98. For an example of this earlier premillennialism see George Duffield, Dissertations on the Prophecies Relative to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ (New York, 1842). The rise of premillennialism in the 1860s is suggested especially by the appearance of many premillennial hymns during this era. Particularly prominent in this respect is the work of Philip P. Bliss, author of “Hold the Fort, For I am Coming,” and many other premillennial songs. By the time of the Moody revivals of the 1870s, such hymns seem to have been quite popular. Cf. Sandra Sizer, Gospel Hymns and Social Religion (Philadelphia, 1978).
13. Arno C. Gaebelein (1861–1945), a German by birth, relates that this fact initially aroused the suspicion of James H. Brookes (1830–1897) who questioned him carefully to see that he was free from German rationalism and higher criticism. Gaebelein, Half a Century (New York, 1930), pp. 39–40.
14. These developments are traced in detail in the works by Sandeen and Kraus, cited Chapter IV, and Dollar, cited Introduction—to name only the best known sources—and so will not be repeated here. Timothy P. Weber, “Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming: American Premillennialism, 1875–1925,” Ph.D. disssertation, University of Chicago, 1976, provides one of the best discussions of the cultural attitudes of the movement. Cf. his book of the same title (New York, 1979).
15. The Scofield Reference Bible, C. I. Scofield, ed. (New York, 1917 [1909]), pp. 914–15, notes.
16. Ibid., pp. 1334–50, notes.
17. This controversy over
whether the rapture would take place before or after the tribulation split the movement and contributed to the demise of the Niagara Bible Conference in 1901. Robert Cameron (ca. 1845–ca. 1922) led the posttribulationist party. A. C. Gaebelein and C. I. Scofield (1843–1921) became the most influential spokesmen for the successful pretribulationist party. See Sandeen and Kraus. Also Talmadge Wilson, “A History of Dispensationalism in the United States of America: The Nineteenth Century,” Th.M. thesis, Pittsburgh-Xenia Theological Seminary, 1956; Larry D. Pettegrew, “The Niagara Bible Conference and American Fundamentalism,” five parts, Central Bible Quarterly XIX-XX (Winter, 1976–Winter, 1977). Richard E. Reiter, “The Decline of the Niagara Bible Conference and Breakup of the United Premillennial Movement,” unpublished seminar paper, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1976, points out that the dispute was “a serious family quarrel’” but that not all personal connections were severed, as evidenced, for instance, in the cooperation of some posttribulationalists in the Scofield Bible.
18. Scofield Bible, pp. 1002, 1089, notes.
19. See, for instance, W.E.B. [William E. Blackstone], Jesus Is Coming (Chicago, 1908 [1878]), pp. 83–97.
20. For example, see the chart, “Degeneration,” near the beginning of Chapter VII. Timothy Weber, “Living in the Shadow,” p. 33, lists six schemes of prominent dispensational leaders. That of C. I. Scofield, which became a sort of orthodoxy in his Reference Bible, has the following dispensations: (1) Innocence, from the creation of Adam and ending in the Fall; (2) Conscience, from the Fall to the flood; (3) Human Government, from Noah but overlapping other dispensations, ending with various failures (Babel, the captivities of the Jews, and for the Gentiles the judgment of the nations) though continuing today among the Gentiles, who govern for self and not for God (cf. Reference Bible, p. 16); (4) Promise, from Abraham to Moses; (5) Law, from Moses to the death of Christ; (6) Grace, from the cross to the second coming; (7) the Kingdom, or millennial age, or personal reign of Christ, ending with “Satan loosed a little season” but quickly defeated. After the millennium are the “new heavens and new earth” of eternity. Scofield, “Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth,” Revell paper edition (Westwood, N.J., n. d. [1896]), pp. 12–16.