The remarkable strength and vitality of the American church from its very beginning with the Pilgrims in 1620 until the mid-nineteenth century can be attributed to its success in resisting Satan’s two-fold attack that has plagued the church throughout its history since its birth 2000 years ago. The first attack comes from within through attempts to corrupt the doctrinal truths of the Bible and undermine unity within the body of Christ. The second attack arises from without through the assimilation and accommodation of worldliness in the church including the contra-biblical relationships between the church and state.

The humanistic spirit of the world became a cultural force that swept over the American Beulah Land during the last half of the nineteenth century. The enormous changes that occurred in the six decades between 1870 and 1930 profoundly transformed the way Americans thought and acted in all spheres of American life. By 1870 the nation had been guided for 250 years by a central cultural vision infused with the collective Judeo-Christian worldviews of the great majority of Americans since the Pilgrims undertook to establish a colony “…for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith…”[1] Protestant cultural authority was at its peak in 1870, but a brief sixty years later it had been relegated to the shadows within every institution of American life, despairing of approval and hoping only for an occasional hint of recognition from the new masters of American culture. The once prevailing Christian Protestant dominion had surrendered substantially all of its social power, institutional influence, and cultural authority and did so without much of a whimper. For the first time in American history a vast schism had developed between the religious and secular. How did this tragedy happen? Was it accidental or planned?

Who were the humanist secularizers and what was their agenda?

Christian Smith edited a book titled The Secular Revolution in which he and other authors describe the secularization of American public life. In the Preface of the book Smith identifies the instigators and their motives with regard to the enormous transfer of cultural power in America between 1870 and 1930.

…American public life was secularized by groups of rising scientific, academic, and literary intellectuals whose upward mobility—made possible by expanding industrial capitalism and an enlarging state—was obstructed by the Protestant establishment. Seeking to increase their own cultural authority and class autonomy—and to reinforce their own intellectual identities—these knowledge elites struggled to displace Protestantism’s authority and to advance themselves as new, alternative cultural authorities…What these secularizers were actually pursuing was not primarily a neutral public sphere, but a reconstructed moral order which would increase their own group status, autonomy, authority, and eventually income.[2] [emphasis added]

Smith divides these secularizing activists into two groups: intellectual elites who were members of the knowledge class (the scientific, academic, and literary intelligentsia of their day) and the romantic intellectuals comprised mostly of journalists, independent writers, and artists. The secularizing activists were found in many different groups and at different time periods during the six decades under discussion and were not all alike. Generally, they tended to be skeptical, free-thinking, antagonistic toward traditional authority and conventions, and sought the privatization or extinction of religion. But regardless of their individual motivations and priorities, they had all had drunk deeply from the well of the Enlightenment philosophies of humanism, materialism, positivism, and naturalism.[3]

What were the humanist secularizers assumptions and tactics?

A second question arises as to how these secularizing activists were so successful in wresting control of the culture from the Protestant establishments. Smith notes seven contributors to the secularization process.

• The source of all real knowledge is assumed to the product of science as defined by the aforementioned Enlightenment philosophies of humanism, materialism, positivism, and naturalism. Religion was no longer thought of as having a role in defining “true knowledge.” It had become irrelevant except for the supernatural, personal preferences, and values, all of which were outside of science and the production of new knowledge.

• Institutions of higher education began favoring “objective,” a-religious, and irreligious concepts of knowledge and marginalized religious concerns of morality and values.

• Mass primary and secondary education was transformed into a supposedly “neutral” arena which banished any discussion or practice of religious matters.

• The guardianship of public culture was removed from Protestant to secular hands as liberal political theory privatized religion and made it irrelevant to public deliberation.

• In the judicial sphere, secularists erected a strict wall of separation in which religion no longer had a voice in defining and guiding normal human relations as they involved the state.

• Secularists established a “naturalistic, psychologized model of human personhood” to give a new understanding of the human self and his care. The Protestant conception of man and his spiritual and moral health were banished as credentialed therapists and psychologists replaced the clergy in defining the nature of man.

• The centralization of corporately-owned print broadcast media caused a move away from religion-friendly reporting practices to a supposedly “objective” and “neutral” brand of journalism. As a consequence, religious and other perspectives oriented towards objective truth and biblical values were marginalized.[4]

Why were the humanist secularizers so successful in such a short period of time?

We have spoken of the Protestant domination of American life that had been achieved by the middle of the nineteenth century. Perhaps a more accurate description is the Protestant domination of American life by the evangelical populist churches, particularly the Methodists and Baptists which together had approximately fifty-five percent of all adherents to the Christian religion in the United States by 1850.[5] One may rightly ask how the secularist steamroller so easily and completely flattened 250 years of Protestant cultural supremacy in a relatively short span of sixty years between 1870 and 1930.

The American church following the end of the Civil War was at the height of its power and authority but was ignorant of and unprepared for the spirit of the world about to invade, overwhelm, and subdue it and the culture. The attack on the American church came from without in the form of various Enlightenment philosophies centered on humanism which rapidly captured the institutions of American life. Because the church did not recognize the spirit of the world in its generation, it was unprepared and failed to adequately defend the faith and American culture for which it was responsible.

The big lie: Duality of truth

The spirit of the world is a deceptive, lying spirit. When Satan attempts to deceive someone who is familiar with the truth, he chooses a more subtle attack in which a little truth is mixed with the lie to make it more palatable. Christian America of the 1870s revered the Bible and its truth and would not easily relinquish its beliefs in favor of an obvious lie. Satan chose to convince Christians that truth did not flow from a single authority but that there were two sources of truth—religious truth and all other (secular) truth newly revealed in an enlightened age of science and reason. In the secular segment were matters of the brain in which science and reason were located. These truths were considered to be public truth, objective by nature, and applied to everyone. The truths derived from science and human reason must be applied to the physical sciences, social sciences, politics, economics, and all other segments in the public life. The religious half of humanism’s dichotomy of truth was limited to matters of the heart in which its truths are oriented to the supernatural, are religiously based, and involve issues of value and personal morality. These include matters that are considered to be personal beliefs, non-rational, subjective, and have no basis in fact in the natural world and therefore privatized which is to say they have no voice in the affairs of the other spheres of American life.[6]

The church accommodates or ignores the big lie

Christianity’s declaration is and always has been that it is total truth—a unified and integrated claim about all reality. But in the early twentieth century, both liberal and conservative branches of the evangelical church embraced different elements of the concept of a dichotomous truth. On the one hand, liberal churches readily embraced the dichotomy of truth. The remaining conservative evangelical churches chose to ignore the big lie promoting a dichotomy of truth and isolated themselves from the culture at large.

Even though conservative evangelical churches ignored the big lie and withdrew from the culture at large, Nancy Pearcey convincingly presents a strong case that certain characteristics, trends, and patterns within the populist or conservative evangelical church existing from colonial times caused them to unconsciously accept certain elements of the humanistic heart/brain dichotomy of truth in which the religious realm is limited (and also trivialized) to matters of value and private preference.[7] As a consequence, the evangelical church has become powerless and lethargic because it does not recognize and understand the humanistic spirit of the world that continues to prevail in America since the 1870s. This has occurred because of a growing ignorance among evangelicals of Bible knowledge, the failure to challenge a hostile culture, and because of an accommodation of the spirit of the world within the churches.

One of the central purposes of this book is to expose the prevailing spirit of the world that has invaded the church. Only when the church understands the nature of the enemy and his attacks can it mount an adequate defense of the faith. This understanding will come only when the church recognizes the prevailing spirit of the world at work in the present generation. John warns against the world and what it has to offer, “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If any one loves the world, love for the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the father but is of the world.” [1 John 2:15-16. RSV] Here we see the spirit of the world is centered on self, pride, power, human wisdom, fleshly desires, and anything else that stands against God, the Bible’s teachings, and His people.

In all of church history the spirit of the world has been its arch-nemesis whether the assaults came from within or without. Satan is the cunning master of deceit and temptation and continually refashions the spirit of the world so that it will appear as a new thing to be unconsciously accommodated and absorbed by the less vigilant of each generation. But, the spirit of the world remains unchanged beneath a shroud of lies and deceit. Whether absorbed by the church or an individual, it is similar to a narcotic that entices and thrills for a season but eventually enslaves and kills. Pearcey cut to the heart of the matter when she said that Christians are called to resist the spirit of the world but to do so we must first recognize the form it takes in our present day.[5] If the church is to survive and once again become a cultural force in America, the church body and its leadership as well as individual Christians must recognize and resist the spirit of the world in whatever form it takes in the church and in the culture at large.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Henry Steele Commager, ed., “Mayflower Compact,” Documents of American History, Vol. 1 to 1865, (New York: F. S. Crofts & Co., 1934), p. 15-16.
[2] Christian Smith, “Introduction,” The Secular Revolution, (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2003), p. 27.
[3] Ibid., pp. 1, 33-34.
[4] Ibid., p. 3.
[5] Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth, (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2004, 2005), p. 259.
[6] Ibid., pp. 20-21.
[7] Ibid., pp. 119, 255.
[8] Ibid., p. 118.

Therefore thus saith the LORD; Behold, I will give this city into the hand of the Chaldeans, and into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, and he shall take it… For the children of Israel and the children of Judah have only done evil before me from their youth: for the children of Israel have only provoked me to anger with the work of their hands, saith the LORD. [Jeremiah 32:28, 30. KJV]

Industrialization and societal change

J. M. Roberts in his definitive The New History of the World described the large-scale industrialization of the Western world that began in the late eighteenth century and lasted through most of the nineteenth century. He wrote that the magnitude of societal change produced by industrialization was the “most striking in European history since the barbarian invasions”…and perhaps the “…biggest change in human history since the coming of agriculture, iron, or the wheel.” These events included great strides in agricultural production, increasing population, technological advances, replacement of human and animal labor with machines, increasing specialization, production in larger units, and centralization of the means of production.[1]

The magnitude and rapidity of societal change described by Roberts was massively unsettling. The social fabric of whole societies was stretched or torn as populations shifted from agrarian life to crowded cities, new schools developed and educational requirements changed, and new social classes emerged as property and wealth were reshuffled to reflect new economic realities. During much of the nineteenth century, dislocation and human suffering were enormous and devastating to whole generations who experienced life in bleak industrial cities, exploitation of labor (particularly that of children and women), and loss of centuries of order more specifically defined as a loss of place and purpose.

Throughout the last half of the nineteenth century, humanists’ claims of superior scientific knowledge and advancement spread seeds of doubt as to the truth and authority of God and His Word. Humanism offered answers different than those of Christianity to address the turmoil caused by rapid societal changes. The nineteenth century’s icons of the humanistic faith included Karl Marx and his The Communist Manifesto (1848) which promoted a godless communistic social order; Charles Darwin and his Origin of Species (1859) which presented the evolutionary origins of life devoid of a creator; Christopher Langdell, dean of Harvard Law School from 1870 to 1895 and Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. at the beginning of the twentieth century whose views elevated man’s law above God’s law; John Dewey and the progressive education movement which began in the 1890s and supported a humanistic philosophy of education in which man was not fallen but perfectible; and William James who divorced psychology and the study of human nature from the doctrines of the Bible in his Principles of Psychology (1890).

Although the Church reeled under enormous challenges, it did not quietly cede Western civilization to the flood waters of industrialization and false Enlightenment philosophies. From the earliest days of the industrial revolution, Christianity invaded the cities to not only save the soul but provide for earthly needs and address societal ills for the hurting masses. Compassion was the Christian innovation in all of history and an example of Christ’s concern for the hurting and sick. The new poverty of urban life in gritty industrial cities was perhaps no greater than that of the pastoral agrarian hovels of prior generations except for the loss of the soul. But the church’s efforts to recapture urbanized souls competed with the voices of the Enlightenment and its philosophy of humanism whose deceptive definitions of man and his purpose sought to poison his consciousness and relegate him to animal status with no soul and therefore no need of God.

But the answers given by the theories and theorists of humanism were far surpassed by Christian men and women whose lives were spent in unparalleled works of compassion. Nineteenth century icons of the Christian faith are too numerous to cite, but three will serve as examples of the church’s efforts. Lord Shaftsbury worked tirelessly for decades in Parliament to pass many bills that improved the lot of English children.[2] George Muller, a German who became a missionary to England in 1829, established his first orphanage for girls in 1836, and by the time of his death in 1898, eight thousand children in numerous orphanages under his direction were being educated and cared for.[3] The Salvation Army, founded in London in 1865 by William and Catherine Booth, provided worldwide relief for millions of the poor and destitute. Although General Booth died in 1912, his and his wife’s work continued and expanded into more than one hundred countries by the end of the twentieth century.[4] These are just few of the thousands within the church that immersed themselves in the grit and poverty of the nineteenth century to address vast societal changes which produced enormous human suffering and deprivation.

Trouble in Beulah Land

In America, the societal disruptions caused by industrialization were also beginning to be felt by the mid-nineteenth century but were somewhat lessened by the rapid westward expansion of the nation. However, the geographical and cultural divisions in America and the church caused by the Civil War increased the magnitude of societal disarray during the last half of the nineteen century and beyond. Restoration and unity of both the nation and church did not come easily, and it was decades before signs of healing would appear. The Northern and Southern churches continued to have different interpretations of the war and its outcome. Northerners viewed theirs as a righteous victory and themselves as guardians of the ideals embodied in the Constitution which were based on the same principles as found in Christianity.[5] Following the war main-stream Northern churches tended toward rectifying other ills of society through a growing involvement in matters of social justice but with a consequent loss of focus as it “…switched its emphasis from perfecting the inner man to social justice.”[6]

In the aftermath of the Civil War, the nation struggled with Reconstruction, a political system mired in patronage; rapid growth of large industries; an influx of large populations of foreign immigrants; migration from family farms to factories; and a host of other challenges to civil society. By the 1880s the intellectuals of the era birthed numerous reform movements. Many of the intellectuals came from mainstream Christian religions but virtually none from the Baptists, traditional Methodists, and others that held to a more fundamental understanding of the doctrines of Christianity. The mainstream Protestant reformers had generally absorbed the humanistic view that man was inherently perfectible but remained a victim of his environment. Therefore, these reformers set about to fix the broken environment through legislation and social action. With rare exceptions, the reformers came from families of wealth and privilege that had never experienced the poverty and hardships of life.[7] But the Protestant religious elite not only embraced a nonbiblical understanding of the nature of man, they also abandoned the poor to the responsibility and care of a secular state. The Protestant reformers looked to government as the solution as opposed to the church whose proper role was to minister to the poor (see: Matthew 25:35-40).

The larger social gospel movement arose from the early efforts of mainstream Protestant ministers to reform society through social justice. Having long abandoned the Bible’s claim of inerrancy in favor of higher criticism, they now saw it as merely a moral guidebook. And having dispensed with the importance of biblical doctrine, it was an easy step to have greater toleration and acceptance of the beliefs of other religions.[8] In the liberal churches, deeds had triumphed over doctrine which was contrary to the essence of the Reformation message.

Secularization of culture and decline of the church

In 1831 Alexis de Tocqueville toured America for nine months to determine the source of its exceptionalism. His conclusions published in Democracy in America pointed to the centrality of religion, and Christianity in particular, in America life of the early 1830s. He believed that the spirit of Christianity was so completely identified with freedom that to think of one without the other was impossible. He saw Christianity and freedom as being in joint reign over the nation, and he believed America to be the most enlightened and free nation in the world because the Christian religion had the greatest real power of the people’s souls. And by Christianity in America, Tocqueville meant the Protestant religion with which the great majority of Americans identified themselves.[9]

In 1870, Protestantism was still the dominant power in culture and controlled the most important social institutions and much of private life. The republic was seen by many as a “triumphalist Christian America” as the Christian moral order had been institutionalized in almost all spheres of society. But the ensuing decades after 1870 witnessed a substantial decline in the Protestant establishment’s social power, institutional influence, and cultural authority.[10]

Christian Smith attributes this decline to two dramatic transformations in American society. The first was the ascendance of the humanistic view of knowledge and science in which religion could have no voice in defining “true scientific knowledge.” The second transformation occurred as Christian higher education was supplanted by a secular mass public educational system whose philosophy of learning and inquiry was markedly different from the Christian worldview. These twin transformations led to the eventual displacement of the Protestant cultural ethic in the “…nation’s scientific establishment, universities and colleges, public schools, judicial system, and mass media.”[11]

In the legal field, the “science of law” developed supposedly predetermined abstract principles to replace a judge’s mostly Protestant sense of justice. By 1910, “legal realism” allowed judges to base their decisions on secularized standards of justice and on changing social conditions as well, both of which viewed Protestant morality as being irrelevant. Publishers were no longer as strongly concerned with the Protestant establishment’s cultural sensibilities, conventions, and worldview. Publishers gravitated toward opinions and views of a newly emergent group of elite, young, and dissident literary intellectuals. [12] These various secularizing movements eventually cast their spell on all of American popular culture. Discarding generations of wisdom and infatuated with supposedly new freedoms, popular culture bowed to the new gurus of cultural authority found in Hollywood, the arts, advertising, journalism, and the social sciences. Whatever vestiges of Protestant influence that remained by 1930 continued to be scrubbed from American public life in the decades to follow.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] J. M. Roberts, The New History of the World, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 708-709.
[2] Alvin J. Schmidt, How Christianity Changed the World, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2004), pp. 142-143.
[3] Ibid., pp. 132-133.
[4] Helen K. Hosier, William and Catherin Booth, (Uhrichsville, Ohio: Barbour Publishing, Inc., 1999), pp. 3, 192, 201.
[5] Gardiner H. Shattuck, Jr., A Shield and Hiding Place – The Religious Life of the Civil War Armies, (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1987), pp. 129-130.
[6] Larry G. Johnson, Ye shall be as gods – Humanism and Christianity – The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, 2011), p. 244.
[7] “Introduction: Rethinking the Secularization of American Public Life,” The Secular RevolutionLarry Schweikart and Michael Allen, A Patriot’s History of the United States, (New York: Sentinel, 2004), pp.426, 444-445.
[8] Ibid., pp. 497-498.
[9] Alexis De, Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Gerald E. Bevan, Trans., (London, England: Penguin Books, 2003), pp. 340, 343, 345.
[10] Christian Smith, “Introduction: Rethinking the Secularization of American Public Life,” The Secular Revolution, (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2003), p. 27.
[11] Ibid., pp. 27-28.
[12]Ibid.

America the exceptional

John Quincy Adams expressed the sentiments of many of the Founders when he wrote of the importance of the Bible and Christianity in the nation’s founding.

The highest glory of the American Revolution was this; it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity…From the day of the Declaration…they (the American people), were bound by the laws of God, which they all, and by the laws of their Gospel, which they nearly all, acknowledge as the rules of conduct.[1]

The remarkable strength and vitality of the American church from its very beginning with the Pilgrims in 1620 until the mid-nineteenth century can be attributed to the American church’s success in countering Satan’s twofold attack as previously described. The European reformers had begun the reformation process. The American church’s continued devotion to the Bible as the final authority of truth greatly influenced the formation of the political structure of the United States. As a result, America became most successful nation in the history of the world, and soon after its founding, many nations recognized the exceptional nature of the American Republic.

A Frenchman named Alexis de Tocqueville traveled to the United States in 1831 to find out the reasons for America’s success. For nine months he traveled throughout the nation to observe all facets of life in America and wrote of his findings in Democracy in America.

On my arrival in the United States, it was the religious atmosphere which first struck me. As I extended my stay, I could observe the political consequences which flowed from this novel situation. In France I had seen the spirit of religion moving in the opposite direction to that of the spirit of freedom. In America I found them intimately linked together in joint reign over the same land.

…America is still the country in the world where the Christian religion has retained the greatest real power over people’s souls and nothing shows better how useful and natural religion is to man, since the country where it exerts the greatest sway is also the most enlightened and free.[2]

Tocqueville’s first-hand account provided ample evidence that America’s exceptionalism was the result of the centrality of religion and especially Christianity in American life during the nation’s founding and first fifty years of its history.

How does one judge whether or not a nation is exceptional? Generally, a nation may be judged as exceptional when it is stable, prosperous, and free. Those marks of an exceptional nation are produced when a specific set of ideas and philosophies produce institutions and policies that are conducive to those qualities of stability, prosperity, and freedom. The critical element standing between a nation’s institutions and policies and the qualities a nation exhibits are the ideas and philosophies upon which the nation is guided. The ideas and philosophies that guided America were based on the Bible and Christianity and produced a nation that was the envy of the world.

Before we proceed, it is necessary to repeat an earlier caution. Although the scriptures are the wellspring of all truth, the church must not discard the wisdom and experience of generations of our Christian forefathers nor reject the church’s rich history and knowledge gained over the centuries which are invaluable to a right understanding of scriptures. The successes and failures of the church through the centuries serve to illuminate, explain, and confirm the Bible’s teachings.

As has been shown in previous chapters, Satan’s primary attack on the church centers on undermining the truth and authority of God’s Word and occurs both within and without the church.

The church is attacked from within – doctrinal errors and heresies

The church’s first challenge came almost immediately following its birth and came through challenges to the truth of biblical doctrines (dogma, creed, beliefs, principles, teachings).
Over the entire course of church history, various doctrinal errors and heresies sought to discredit, corrupt, or deny the inerrant Word of God. Over the centuries the church eventually elevated man’s reason to be equal or superior to the authority of the Bible in many areas which led to sin and corruption. The Reformation promised sola scriptura—the Bible alone. But the doctrinal embellishments and practices of the pre-Reformation church clung tenaciously to the reformed churches in Europe. The American colonists were eager to cast off these man-made hindrances and looked to the scriptures alone as to their authority in building “a pure and stainless church” undefiled and unencumbered by centuries of man’s wisdom and corruptions of doctrinal purity. As a result, church authority built on man’s reasoning and opinions no longer dictated church practices and defined doctrine apart from the scriptures.

The church is corrupted from without – mixing of church and state

Beginning in the fourth century, the church abandoned its proper scriptural role in society and relationship with governments and rulers which allowed the church to wield the sword of the state and the state to meddle in church affairs. This mixing of church and state lasted for more than a thousand years and was not entirely cast off by the Protestant reformers.

The most distinguishing feature of the Reformation Lutheran church was the power given to the state. Luther supported the principle that the state should be above the church. However, Calvinists took the opposite view and denied that the state had any power over the church. Calvin believed the church had power over the state. Both responses were nonbiblical as to God’s design of the roles of church and state in society and the relationship between them. The church must let the state bear the sword of state but at the same time admonish the state when it overreaches its proper biblical position and role in society.[3]

Because the first settlements of New England were small, isolated, and highly motivated by their desire for religious freedom, of necessity they tended toward governance through theocracy. At the beginning of the 1700s, those colonies founded upon religious purposes continued as theocracies but in a less stringent manner. The Great Awakening and the subsequent multiplication of new sects and denominations continued to lessen the influence of church-dominated civil governments which had substantially disappeared by end of the Revolutionary War or soon thereafter. With the ratification of the Constitution, a new relationship between church and state was established and was closer to the biblical model than had ever occurred in the history of the church.

The church is corrupted from without – the humanistic spirit of the world

The church had also been attacked from without as it absorbed many of the tenets of humanism. But, the colonists’ adherence to scripture alone as their source of authority stood as a bulwark against humanistic doctrines and influences. In spite of the American church’s resistance for over two hundred years, humanism became its greatest challenge during the latter half of nineteenth century and continues as such to the present.

To understand the devastating effects of humanism on Christianity and the nation, a brief examination of humanism’s meaning, origins, and history is necessary. This examination is important as it will give a better understanding of the forces of humanism at work in the modern church as well which will be discussed in later chapters. Because humanism has been such a central force in causing the decline of the church, some comments from prior articles bear repeating.

The humanistic spirit is of Satanic origin and has been present within human society since Adam and Eve were driven from the Garden. It is the spirit of rebellion of man against God. The ancient Greeks made it a philosophy, and eventually humanism banished God altogether and placed man at the center of all things.

The Renaissance (generally dated as being the 1300s through the 1500s) was considered a rebirth or revival of learning and a time of transition between the Middle Ages and modern times. Beginning in Italy, it marked the humanistic revival of the classical influence of Greece and Rome that led to the flowering of the arts, literature, and modern science.[4] The Renaissance and post-Renaissance cultures were profoundly affected by the writings of the Greek and Roman philosophers and thinkers who lived many centuries earlier. But along with the advancement of mankind, the humanistic emphasis fundamentally changed the way man thought of himself. He had become the center and focus of life in contrast to the biblical revelation of man’s position and relationship with God.[5]

Elements of this redefinition of man invaded the church as early as the thirteenth century through the thoughts and writings of Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), an outstanding Catholic theologian whose influence still dominates many within the Catholic Church.
Aquinas believed that man revolted against God and was fallen but not completely. He believed the will was fallen but the intellect was not. Therefore, in addition to the Bible, men could rely on human wisdom as well as the teachings of non-Christian philosophers. As a result philosophy was separated from the Bible and freed man to act autonomously.[6]

Aquinas revered the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 B.C.). Through Aquinas’ efforts, elements of Aristotle’s non-Christian philosophy began to be accepted by the church as a source of authority alongside the Bible. In searching for answers to the questions about life, Aristotle emphasized the meaning of individual things (the particulars) as opposed to biblical absolutes and ideals. Because Aquinas’s unfallen human reason was now autonomous and equal to revelation, many of the pronouncements of the church were based on pagan Greek and Roman philosophies, and eventually these became more important than many teachings of the Bible. But man’s fall was complete including his reason. Therefore, if one begins with man’s intellect to determine truth about the particulars (things, actions, e.g., a person’s individual acts) instead of the absolutes found in the Bible, there are no fixed standards for determining values, morals, and laws. In other words, there is no basis for distinguishing between right and wrong.[7]

Humanism’s entry into the church in the thirteenth century led to an increasing distortion of biblical teaching. When the authority of the church became superior to the teaching of the Bible, fallen man was told he was able through his own reasoning to return to right relationship with God by “meriting the merit of Christ.”[8] In time this focus on understanding the meaning of the particulars without benefit of God’s revelation dominated all spheres of life.[9]

Renaissance humanism continued to strengthen and cries for a complete separation of man’s reason from God’s revelation prepared the way for the rise of modern humanism during the Enlightenment in which man declared himself to be a totally independent being and denied God’s existence.[10] France was humanism’s epicenter, but all of Western Europe was affected. The era of Enlightenment is generally considered to have lasted from the late 1600s through all of the 1700s. Although a relatively short period, the Enlightenment has had monumental destructive consequences for the church that continue to the present day. The Enlightenment produced a strong intellectual confidence in the power of human reason which was reflected in its doctrines of progress, rationality, secularism, and political reform.[11]

This witch’s brew distilled from the swirl of the intellectual ferment and political turmoil of the Enlightenment era produced the philosophy of modern humanism in which all authority must be continually questioned, moral values do not arise from fixed ideas of right and wrong, and man is declared not fallen but perfectible and continually progresses through the accumulation of knowledge from scientific advances and human reason.

In 1949, Dr. Corliss Lamont wrote The Philosophy of Humanism in which he defined the humanistic philosophy by listing a number of propositions that gave humanism’s explanation of the universe, man’s nature, and treatment of human problems. The following are some of Dr. Lamont’s key tenets: All forms of the supernatural do not exist. Nature is the totality of being. Man is the evolutionary product of Nature. There is no conscious survival after death. Through reason and the scientific method, man can solve his own problems. Human values are derived from man’s earthy experiences and relationships and therefore are not absolute or universal. Happiness, freedom, and progress in this world are the highest goals of all mankind.[12]

It was the humanism of the French philosophers’ that built the framework for the disaster known as the French Revolution. Shouts of “Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!” became the reality of “monarchy, anarchy, dictatorship” all within the space of a little over a decade. However, it was the ideas and philosophies derived from the Bible and Christianity that guided the American Founders, led to the Constitution, and produced the greatest nation in the history of the world. Historian Paul Johnson wrote of the core difference between the two revolutions.

The essential difference between the two revolutions is that the American Revolution, in its origins, was a religious event, whereas the French Revolution was an anti-religious event. That fact was to shape the American Revolution from start to finish and determine the nature of the independent state it brought into being.[13]

Consequences for the nation if the pillars of Christianity are overthrown

John Jay co-authored the Federalist Papers and was the first Chief-Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. He described the consequences to America should it ever allow the overthrow of the pillars of Christianity upon which the nation was founded.

To the kindly influence of Christianity we owe that degree of civil freedom, and political and social happiness, which mankind now enjoys…Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present republican forms of government—and all blessings which flow from them—must fall with them.[14]

Over two hundred years later Jay’s caution appears to have been prophetic for the forces of humanism and secularism have chipped away at the pillars of Christianity for the last 150 years to such an extent that our civil freedoms and republican forms of government are near collapse in twenty-first century America.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Tocqueville, Alexis de, Democracy in America, Gerald E. Bevan, Trans., (London, England: Penguin Books, 2003), pp. 340, 343, 345.
[2] William J. Federer, America’s God and Country, (Coppell, Texas: Fame Publishing, Inc., 1996), p. 18.
[3] B. K. Kuiper, The Church in History, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1951, 1964), p. 184, 200.
[4] “renaissance,” Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, (Springfield, Massachusetts: G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, 1963), p. 725.
[5] Francis A. Schaffer, How Should We Then Live? (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 1976), pp. 40, 51.
[6] Ibid., pp. 51-52.
[7] Ibid., pp. 52, 55.
[8] Ibid., p. 56.
[9] Ibid., pp. 60, 71.
[10]] Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth, (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2004, 2005), p. 101.
[11] Russell Kirk, The Roots of American Order, (Washington, D. C.: Regnery-Gateway, 1991), pp. 348-349.
[12] Corliss Lamont, The Philosophy of Humanism, Eighth Edition, (Amherst, New York: Humanist Press, 1997), pp. 13-14.
[13] Paul Johnson, A History of the American People, (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997), pp. 116-117.

To understand the dominant Protestant paradigm and its characteristics that existed in 1870, we must understand the main currents of Christianity in America that began with the Pilgrims and developed through the three Great Awakenings. The first current began with the early Reformation churches planted in America in the early seventeenth century. These were the Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians (Anglican), but their religious fervor and commitment cooled as native-born second and third generation colonists replaced their European-born parents during the last half of the 1600s. The second current grew from the stirrings of revival that blossomed within the church during the 1720s. These stirrings became a renewal movement called evangelicalism and birthed the First Great Awakening that began in the 1730s. Evangelical churches emphasized a revivalist style of preaching, personal conversion, personal devotion and holiness, and individual access to God which deemphasized the importance and authority of the church.[1] Separate from these two currents was another group known as confessional churches which did not participate in the revivalist movements but emphasized their official and churchly characteristics. Confessional churches included Catholics, Lutherans, German Reformed, Dutch Reformed, and Old Side Presbyterians.[2]

The evangelical movement developed two branches of its own. The populist churches were strongly revivalist, appealed to the common people, did not emphasize doctrine, and were strongest in Southern states. These churches were mostly Baptist, Methodist, Church of Christ, Disciples of Christ, and “Christian” churches. Although evangelical, the second group was more rationalist and scholarly. These churches were found mostly in the north and included the evangelical segments of Congregational, New Side Presbyterian, and Episcopal churches and are generally viewed as having a traditional emphasis on theology and scholarship.[3]

The populist wing of evangelicalism became the dominant branch of Christianity in America by the end of the American Revolution and establishment of the American republic. In 1760, the Anglican, Congregational, and Presbyterian churches accounted for more than forty percent of all American congregations but declined to less than twenty-five percent by 1790. However, the number of populist churches grew dramatically. The Baptists grew from forty-nine churches in 1760 to 858 by 1790. The Methodists went from having no churches to over 700 congregations during the same thirty year period. Gordon Wood wrote of this period, “The revolution released more religious energy and fragmented Christendom to a greater degree than had been seen since the upheavals of seventeenth century England or perhaps since the Reformation.” Others called the period a “…Revolutionary Revival.”[4]

Nancy Pearcey lists four major themes in the development of the American evangelical church which continue to shape its characteristics, patterns, and contours to the present day.

…the focus on an intense emotional conversion experience; the celebrity model of leadership; a deep suspicion of theological learning, especially as embodied in creeds and confession; and an increasingly individualistic view of the church, which borrowed heavily from the political philosophy of the day.[5]

Focus on an intense emotional conversion experience

Populist evangelicals saw spiritual emotion as a necessary antidote for spiritual coldness during the First Great Awakening. Although the rise of rise of the evangelical church occurred at a time of spiritual coldness within the dominant, state-oriented churches, it must be remembered that America remained a highly religious enterprise even as a wave of spiritual coldness settled on its churches in the late 1600s and early 1700s. The means of renewal of the church became a contentious battle between the revivalists who demanded a heart-felt, on-the-spot decision for Christ and those churches who traditionally favored gradual growth in one’s faith through participation in rituals and teachings of the church. One emphasized a new birth; the other “Christian nurture” through faith and holiness.[6] But the rationalist-contemplative-scholarly wing of the American church had had its day. The evangelicals prevailed, birthed the Great Awakening, revitalized the church from its spiritual coldness, prepared the way for the Revolution, and changed America forever.

The appeal to emotion was also an important ingredient during the Second Great Awakening. Here the evangelicals’ target was pervasive sinfulness in the new nation and not, as George Whitefield had said a half century earlier, the ministers and people of New England who “…rest in a head knowledge, and are close Pharisees.”[7] The spirit of the age had changed from spiritual coldness preceding the First Great Awakening to brazen sinfulness of the citizens and former soldiers within the newly-formed nation. Additionally, most of the hardy and unlearned pioneers, adventurers, and outlaws that populated the expanding western territories did not have the civilizing influences of schools, churches, governments, and families. For these rank sinners on both sides of the Appalachian Mountains, salvation was a decision, not a process, and emotion was an essential ingredient in making an effective religious appeal. “You grab people by the throat with an intense emotional experience to persuade them of the power of the supernatural—then you tell them to stop drinking, stop shooting each other, and live straight.” The intense emotional experience used by the early evangelicals in converting people to faith in Christ was highly effective.[8]

The emotional aspects of living the Christian life have always been a central element in the lives of believers and the church body. However, when believers and the church body focus substantially on emotion alone, they foster a neglect of theology and doctrine which inevitably leads to emotional shallowness and manipulation by man.

The celebrity model of leadership

George Whitefield is the first and best example of a celebrity-style leader that emerged from the early evangelical church. In contrast to the reserved, somber preaching style of his day, Whitefield’s preaching was flamboyant, animated, passionate, and sought to inspire mass audiences of lost sinners rather than instruct a congregation of the faithful even though he counted many of those as “close Pharisees.” Although Whitefield relied on self-promotion and publicity to spread his message, this was necessary to reach the multitudes in a sparsely populated rural environment, make them aware of their sin, and lead them to repentance and acceptance of Christ as their savior.

Charles Finney was a celebrity-style leader like Whitefield. Finney took the camp meeting style preaching to the cities in the first half of the nineteenth century during the midst of the Second Great Awakening. His preaching was less revivalist and more calculated in presentation. A former lawyer, Finney always dressed in a suit, presented a message that was polished, refined, and targeted the professional and middle classes. Revivals following the early years of the Second Great Awakening were more of a planned event than a spontaneous move of the Spirit. Finney believed the results of revival were not to be left to chance but depended on the correct use of the appropriate means.[9] Although Finney was more refined than Whitefield, he was just as passionate about his message, and a recurring theme in that message centered on the abolition of slavery in America. For Finney and many others in the first half of the century, it was a cause whose time had come. And Finney used every means appropriate to spread that message.

Since the emergence of evangelicalism in the early 1700s, the celebrity-style of leadership has been very effective in enlarging Christ’s kingdom in many venues and environments where pastors, local churches, and other Christian organizations could not reap the same results. Those that cast stones at all celebrity-style leaders in the church should read biographies of George Whitefield, John Wesley, and others who devoted lifetimes to the cause of Christ amidst hardship and sacrifice. However, with some notable exceptions, the celebrity-style leaders in the modern church bear little if any resemblance to those giants of the First and Second Great Awakenings.

A deep suspicion of theological learning, especially as embodied in creeds and confession

The heightened emotional element and attacks on non-evangelical churches in the first two Great Awakenings eventually tended to give rise to charges of anti-intellectualism in evangelical churches. In their efforts to arouse churches and their members from the prevailing spiritual lethargy prior to and during the Great Awakening, evangelical preachers often characterized the pastors and congregations of the wealthier, intellectual, confessional, and state-oriented churches as elitist and bound by needless rituals, traditions, and creeds.[10]

Whatever the shortcomings of those churches in that season of American church history, the early evangelicals painted with too broad a brush and in the larger sweep of history did lasting damage to all segments of the church and particularly to the evangelicals themselves. They instilled a lasting suspicion of theological learning, doctrine, creeds, and the history of the church. Evangelicals are much the poorer for their rejection of the knowledge to be gained from the writings and teachings of the great minds of the Christian past which are invaluable to understanding of scriptures. Evangelicals that label church history as irrelevant to the message of the modern church have not benefited from a study of the great successes and failures of the church through the centuries which serve as priceless lessons that both illuminate and elaborate upon the Bible’s great themes and teachings.

An increasingly individualistic view of the church

Eighteenth century American evangelicals exhibited a particularly strong individualistic view of the church. The origins of this view are found in the Reformation’s chant of the “priesthood of all believers” which removed salvation from the jurisdiction of the king, priest, or church and placed it squarely in man’s own hands. This spirit of individualism was carried across the Atlantic with the Puritans whose churches adopted the congregational as opposed to the episcopal form of church government. With the rise of the First Great Awakening, populist evangelicals carried this concept of individualism to a new level as it began attacking church authority. From there the drive for individualism eventually undercut the natural authority of learning and scholarship and led to an anti-intellectual mindset among many in the church.[11]

Coinciding with the individualism manifesting itself within the church, there arose a growing sense of individualism in the political realm. The colonists had prospered and grown fond of the freedoms they had gained due to benign neglect from their distant homeland. As Great Britain roused itself and began tightening its authority and control over its colonies, the colonists’ grievances began to multiply as they saw many injustices in the newly imposed restraints and requirements. Soon these grievances and objections turn to phrases such as “inalienable rights” which were not bestowed by kings or parliaments and led to revolution.

The symbiotic relationship between religious and political individualism was instrumental and necessary in preparing the colonists for the American Revolution during the eighteenth century. However, the lingering and exaggerated individualism within the church in the nineteenth century became very destructive because the church did not adapt its response to changes in Satan’s tactics in attacking the church. In the last half of the nineteenth century, the spirit of the world now promoted a humanistic worldview centered on man and cloaked in the robes of science and reason. Exalting self and resting on a false view of God, man, and freedom, the new humanistic individualism eventually seduced and compromised the individualism of its religious and political predecessors.

Remnants of eighteenth century political individualism absorbed by the church continue to affect it today and has produced fragmentation within the body of Christ (between the church, pastor, and laity), undermined the unity of families as one’s religion became a matter of individual choice, and encouraged a “do-it-yourself” religion with regard to sin, salvation, and living the Christian life.
______

The American church from the early colonists through the mid-nineteen century was highly successful at warding off the spirit of the world, but Satan changed the demeanor of the spirit of the world by the middle of the nineteenth century. The dominant Protestant evangelicals did not recognize those changes and clung to their eighteenth century muskets as the European forces of humanism took aim at Christianity with their nineteenth and twentieth century cannons of humanism. As a result, the church was unprepared to resist those new challenges and thus failed to adequately defend the faith and the central cultural vision (collective Christian worldviews) of the Founders. Consequently, the America church progressively surrendered its social power, institutional influence, and cultural authority between 1870 and 1930.

It has been 150 years since the end of the Civil War and the last major sustained spiritual renewal in America. Under significant and sustained attack for more than a century, the American church has arrived at a time of crisis and is in danger of being overwhelmed by modern government and culture. The responsibility for the church’s weakness and the deterioration of American moral culture lies primarily at the door of the church. With the next chapter we begin a transition from a historical perspective of the church to events and circumstances beginning in the mid nineteenth century and lasting to the present day that have led to the afflictions, failings, and weakness of the modern American church and caused its demise as a moral force necessary to stem the decline of American culture.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth, (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2004, 2005), pp. 253, 256-257.
[2] Ibid., p. 257.
[3] Ibid., p. 256.
[4] Gordon S. Wood, “Religion and the American Revolution,” New Directions in American Religious History, ed. Harry S. Stout and D. G. Hart, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp.185-188.
[5] Pearcey, p. 274.
[6] Ibid., p. 269.
[7] Sherwood Eddy, The Kingdom of God and the American Dream, (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1941), p. 54.
[8] Pearcey, p. 263.
[9] Ibid., pp. 265-266, 287-288.
[10] Ibid., p. 265.
[11] Ibid., p. 270.

Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah…[Isaiah 62:4. KJV]

For all of its history, a principal battle for the Christian church has been the preservation and defense of biblical truth. For centuries the European church fought among themselves and with their respective governments or kings all the while accumulating wealth, power, and worldliness. Following centuries of neglect, compromise, and corruption of the sustaining power of pristine biblical truth, the decline of the church worsened as it came under the influence and eventual domination of eighteenth century Enlightenment thought and its religion of humanism. For many of the faithful, Europe and the state churches had become wicked Babylon and a new colony at the edge of the vast American wilderness was seen as a Beulah land, a new Jerusalem favored and blessed by the Lord. And so it was to be for a season.

It all began as a tiny ship approached the shores of a primitive continent called America. Historian Paul Johnson in his massive A History of the American People called the arrival on December 11, 1620 of an old wine ship at New Plymouth as “…the single most important formative event in early American history.” The Mayflower contained a mixture of thirty-five English Calvinist Christians including some who had lived in exile in Holland to escape religious persecution in England. All were going to America for religious freedom. They were Separatist Puritans who had despaired of reforming the Church of England and its episcopal form of government and heavy influence of Catholic teaching. They were accompanied by sixty-six non-Puritans. The two groups contained forty-one families.[1]

The Pilgrims weren’t the first colonists to arrive. In 1607 the first English colony was established at Jamestown by gentlemen-adventurers, indentured servants, and landless men attempting to better themselves. The best men of the Jamestown colony brought with them English traditions of fair-mindedness, freedom, reverence for the common law, and a sense of government that looked to the common interest and general needs of society. But the Puritans of Plymouth were completely different as to personality and motivation. Johnson described their various members as “…the zealots, the idealists, the utopians, the saints…immensely energetic, persistent, and courageous…creative too but ideological and cerebral, prickly and unbending, fiercely unyielding on occasions.”[2]

Paul Johnson’s belief in the singular importance of the Pilgrims’ arrival as the formative event in early American history rests on the monumental influence of the Pilgrims in shaping future generations of Americans. The Pilgrims established the model for faith, family, community, and governance which was followed to a large degree by Americans over the next two hundred years. They came not as individuals but as a community and not primarily for earthly gain but to create God’s kingdom on earth. This sense of community was formalized in a remarkable document signed barely three weeks before their arrival. Having endured two months of a winter voyage in the turbulent North Atlantic amid the discomforts of a tiny and crowded ship, forty-one heads of households gathered in the main cabin of the ship and signed the Mayflower Compact which pledged them to unity and the provision of a future government.[3]

In the Name of God, Amen…Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country…Do by these Presents, solemnly and mutually in the Presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politic, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid; And by Virtue hereof do enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions, and Offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general Good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due Submission and Obedience.[4] [emphasis added]

Here we see that the Mayflower Compact represented far more than just a commercial venture based on a secular civil arrangement to secure unity and a form of governance for the moment. The Pilgrims had solemnly and mutually pledged in the presence of God and each other to a “civil Body politick” under “just and equal laws…[for the] furtherance of the glory of God.” This simple document foreshadowed a theme that reverberated throughout the colonies over the next 150 years and led to the American Revolution. It put forth the idea that a just and equal society must rest on the foundation of religious faith. It recognized that government flowed from the governed—under God. It also recognized that there was a close connection between government and religious faith.[5] But for a time the colonists struggled to discover how the church-state relationship was to be properly constituted and limited according to the tenets of the Bible.

The Pilgrim Separatists were a humble people and often viewed as radicals because of their desire to separate from the Church of England as opposed to most Puritans who wanted to stay in the church and reform it from within. This second group formed the great migration of English Puritans beginning in 1628 upon the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Many were able men with wealth and social position. Twenty thousand had crossed the Atlantic by 1640 and resided in the Salem area. They would not separate from the Church of England but wanted separation from its corruption. If they could not reform the church in England, they would bring the church to America and change it to their liking. One of those changes was borrowed from the much despised small band of radical Pilgrim Separatists—the congregational form of church government.[6]

The English Puritans had arisen in 1560 within the Anglican Church and sought reforms to bring about “a pure and stainless church.” When the Church of England did not respond favorably to the Puritans ideas of reform, many sailed to America during the first half of the 1600s. Sherwood Eddy called those early years of colonial Puritanism “…the finest expression of spiritual life that Britain or America or Continental Europe had at that time.”[7] But by the end of the 1600s and beginning of the 1700s, interest in the colonists’ hard-won Christian legacy was eroding due to a decline of religious fervor and to a lesser extent because of the assault by the forces of deism and the Enlightenment. The ardor and commitment of the religious life of the early seventeenth century colonists had settled down into a moralistic Christian routine by the end of that century and into the early eighteenth century.[8] Eddy described the dismal condition of the church.

There was a gradual loss of the sense of sin, and the idea of God’s sovereignty became a means of oppression by the ecclesiastical oligarchy…The children of the hardy pioneers became softer and more worldly. The unregenerate second generation were allowed to remain in the church as members though not in full communion. Thus originated the halfway covenant with a mixed membership of a more all-inclusive church that had lost the purity of a separated regenerate sect.[9]

In 1740, one hundred and ten years after the arrival of the Puritans at Massachusetts Bay, evangelist George Whitefield wrote, “Boston is very wealthy. It has the form but has lost much of the power of religion. Ministers and people are too much conformed to the world. There is an external observance of the Sabbath. Many rest in a head knowledge, and are close Pharisees.” [10]

Whitefield’s remarks about worldliness in the church would also apply in varying degrees to the remainder of the American colonies. The decline in religious fervor that had enveloped the American colonies reached its nadir by the early part of the eighteenth century. But the decline of religious life was dramatically reversed as new religious forces exploded on the scene in the 1730s and caused a revival and resurgence of Christian churches. As these forces combined and grew over time, it became known as the Great Awakening and was the major formative event that crafted the worldview of the founding generation.[11] Sherwood Eddy captures the importance of the American religious awakening during the eighteenth century upon the Revolution and later writing of the Constitution:

Throughout the Revolution and the framing of the Constitution, the religious and the secular life of America could not be separated. The very ideals of political freedom had grown out of the principle of religious liberty of the Reformation and out of the experience of the Pilgrims, Puritans, and protesting colonists. It was in the churches of Boston and Virginia that revolutionary meetings were held. The clergy of the free, dissenting, and popular churches were preaching liberty as a religious principle. The pulpit inspired the Revolution and summoned the faithful to patriotic service and to the realization of the American Dream.[12]

Following the American Revolution (1776-1781) and efforts to form a new nation, there was a second ebbtide of religious fervor and an increase in secularism and irreligion, especially in the decade of 1790s. America’s spiritual and moral decline threatened the survival of the new republic. As a result of coordinated and concerted prayer among the American churches, the Second Great Awakening crossed the Atlantic in the late 1790s and resulted in a spiritual and moral regeneration and initiated other civilizing influences on the young nation. These influences included popular education, Bible Societies, Sunday schools, the modern missionary movement, and ultimately sowed and nurtured the seeds that led to the abolition of slavery.[13] Just as the Great Awakening was the formative moment in American history preceding the political drive for independence and making it possible, the Second Great Awakening was the stabilizing moment that saved the new nation from political and moral destruction and whose effects lasted until the 1840s.

The Third Great Awakening began in 1857-1858 and has been called by many names including the Businessman’s Revival, the Layman’s Revival, and the Union Prayer Meeting. But it is most widely known as the Revival of 1857-1858. Much like the central theme of the Protestant Reformation, this revival was about personal religious transformation from which society greatly benefited. It must be remembered that the ordering of society and the addressing of its social ills must begin with the individual and an ordering of his soul in right relationship with God. This must certainly be the greatest impact of the Revival of 1857-1858 as the nation was soon to be immersed in its greatest struggle for survival.

The Third Great Awakening was the sustaining moment that prepared the nation to endure the national conflagration of the Civil War and made possible its survival in the war’s aftermath. The efforts to abolish slavery in America began even before the nation’s Founding as a result of the moral suasion of Christian people who saw slavery as morally unacceptable within the biblical worldview. The Revival caused men and women, in both the North and South, to be spiritually prepared for the coming struggle in which the nation would exorcize the demon of slavery and recover its national unity.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Paul Johnson, A History of the American People, (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997), pp. 28-29.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid., p. 29.
[4] Henry Steele Commager, ed., “Mayflower Compact,” Documents of American History, Vol. 1 to 1865, (New York: F. S. Crofts & Co., 1934), p. 15-16.
[5] Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen, A Patriot’s History of the United States, (New York: Sentinel, 2004), pp. 27-28.
[6] B. K. Kuiper, The Church in History, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1951, 1964), p. 328.
[7] Sherwood Eddy, The Kingdom of God and the American Dream, (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1941), pp. 48, 56.
[8] Russell Kirk, The Roots of American Order, (Washington, D. C.: Regnery-Gateway, 1991), p. 333.
[9] Eddy, p. 55.
[10] Ibid., p. 54.
[11] Larry G. Johnson, Ye shall be as gods – Humanism and Christianity – The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Press, 2011), pp. 123-124.
[12] Eddy, p. 115.
[13] J. Edwin Orr, “Prayer brought Revival,” http://articles.ochristian.com/article8330.shtml (accessed November 26, 2010); Johnson, Ye shall be as gods, pp. 410-411.