America succumbs to mammon
J. M. Roberts in his definitive The New History of the World stated 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.” By 1850 Great Britain was the only country in the world that had established a mature industrial society. Yet, most industrial workers in England were found at businesses employing fewer than fifty people and those that worked in larger factories were concentrated at the large Lancashire cotton mills with their distinctive urban appearance and character. However, a significant increase in the number of large factories would soon occur because of the trend toward greater centralization, specialization of function, economies of scale and transport, and regimentation of labor. By 1870, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, and the United States had joined Britain in the race for self-sustained economic growth through industrialization.[1]
In “Shame of the Cities,” American historians Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen gave a vivid description of American life in the cities during the late 1800s.
…immigrants flooded into the seaport cities in search of a new life. Occasionally, they were fleeced by local politicians when they arrived. Often they melted in the American pot by starting businesses, shaping the culture, and transforming the urban scene. In the process the cities lost their antebellum identities, becoming true centers of commerce, arts, and the economy, as well as hotbeds of crime, corruption and degeneracy…in 1873, within three miles of New York’s city hall, one survey counted more than four hundred brothels housing ten times that number of prostitutes. Such illicit behavior coincided with the highest alcohol consumption levels since the turn of the century, or a quart of whiskey a week for every adult American. Some level of social and political pathology was inevitable in any population, but it was exacerbated by the gigantic size of the cities.[2]
The social gospel
Because compassion was the premier Christian innovation in all of history and an example of Christ’s concern for the hurting and sick, the church did not quietly cede Western civilization to the flood waters of industrialization throughout the nineteenth century. 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 afflicting the hurting masses. The social impact of the mid-nineteenth century evangelical awakenings fostered tremendous efforts for the betterment of social conditions including the issues of the working man, the protection of women and children, poverty, education, slum housing, and racial strife. Changes came through sharing the gospel message, the transforming of individual lives by the power of Jesus Christ, evangelism, and initiating reforms through the work of tireless individuals and societies.[3]
But out of Christian compassion and its concern for a hurting humanity eventually arose a liberal social gospel found within many Protestant churches that had become less concerned with saving the soul than fixing the ills of society by works of men and government. However well-intentioned the liberal church’s social gospel was, it was soon subjugated by the powerful forces of Enlightenment liberalism which quickly rolled over the nineteenth century Protestant establishment and the nation between 1870 and 1930.
Following the Civil War a perfect storm of societal dysfunction and pagan philosophies caused much of America to forget her Christian heritage and the blessings that flowed therefrom. The humanistic spirit of the age became a cultural force that inundated the Western world during the last half nineteenth century. Karl Marx in politics, Charles Darwin in biology, Christopher Langdell in law, and John Dewey in education and psychology were among the principle players of the nineteen century vying to introduce within society a “new way” to solve its seemingly inextricable problems. The end result was devastating to the American Protestant church.
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…Although Protestant cultural authority was at its peak in 1870, 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.[4]
The Gilded Age in America 1870-1930
The Gilded Age is generally considered to be the American era from about 1870 to 1900. It was a time of immense growth and change in America which did not bode well for all Americans. Not long after the beginning of the disaster known as Reconstruction Act of 1867 following the Civil War, concern for the plight of the former slaves was supplanted by other issues which began to occupy the attention of the nation: the often chaotic westward expansion, the rise of big business, rampant political corruption, and community fragmentation and moral decline caused by the rapid growth of large cities.
The tentacles of the monumental graft and corruption within Ulysses Grant’s administration (1869-1877) spread over the whole nation—from the rural areas of the devastated Southern states to the cities of the north. In the first year of Grant’s two terms in office, the notorious stock promoters Jay Gould and Jim Fisk almost succeeded in cornering the gold market after lavishly entertaining Grant and bribing his brother-in-law. The cities were no less corrupt. New York City was robbed of seventy-five million dollars by the Tweed Ring, and Philadelphia’s city debt grew by three million dollars a year through the collusions of the Gas Ring.[5] In May 1869, the immensity of fraud and corruption in the world of government and business was epitomized by the Credit Mobilizer scandal which was a complicated scheme that involved using massive public funding for the benefit of transcontinental railroads (Union Pacific and Central Pacific). To keep government land grants and federal loans flowing to the railroads, a number of congressmen, senators, Grant administration officials, and even Vice President Schuyler Colfax were given generous Credit Mobilizer holdings.[6] These examples of corruption stand at the apex of a labyrinthine web of business and government graft, bribery, fraud, dishonesty, and greed that had infected almost all levels of American life during the Gilded Age.
The Great Divide – modernists and liberals v. fundamentalists and evangelicals
The American Protestant church, already divided by denomination, region, race, ethnicity, and class, would split again into fundamentalist and modernist factions between the late nineteenth century and the mid-1920s. Amid rising skepticism, positivism, and Darwinism emanating from Enlightenment liberalism, the new liberal and modernist Protestant leaders chose survival through accommodation by embracing their adversary’s doctrines of Science, Progress, Reason, and Liberation. But this compromise would only forestall the approaching “…final dominance of Enlightenment moral order in the public square and the relegation of Christian and other religious concerns to private life” that has gained increasing momentum since the 1930s.[7]
As modernism and liberalism ascended in many Protestant churches, many members began to feel uncomfortable with the growing formalism among the wealthier and more prosperous segments of the congregations. Of greatest concern was the disappearance of a heart religion that was the defining symbol of evangelicalism since its birth the early 1700s. As a result of these concerns the question of “holiness” became a topic of great concern. This was especially true for the Methodists because Christian perfection as taught by John Wesley was no longer a goal of most Methodists of the late 1800s. As a result, a large measure of worldliness had crept into the church. Holiness groups began forming within these churches to defend Wesley’s doctrines and ideals. Because the pastors and leading men of the most influential churches were opposed to Holiness groups and their concerns, the more orthodox and less powerful Holiness groups began to withdraw and form their own denominations.[8]
New Holiness denominations came from many churches and were mostly found in the rural districts of the Middle West. However, most Holiness denominations came out of Methodist churches. Between 1880 and 1926, twenty-five or more Holiness and Pentecostal denominations were formed in protest against the increasing modernism and liberalism they saw in the larger churches of America. [9] The new denominations included the Church of the Nazarene (formed in 1894 when eight smaller holiness groups combined), Christian and Missionary Alliance (1897), Church of God, Anderson, Indiana (1881), Church of God, Cleveland, Tennessee (1896), the Pilgrim Holiness Church, Cincinnati, Ohio (1897), and the Assemblies of God (1914).[10]
Dwight Lyman Moody
As previously noted, Charles Grandison Finney dominated the middle third of the nineteenth century. The man who would dominate the last third during the Gilded Age was Dwight Lyman Moody (1837-1899). The contrasts between the two men could hardly have been greater. Compared to the well-educated, articulate, and polished Finney, Moody was born in poverty and had little formal education. He was one of nine children whose father died when Moody was only four. Moody was converted at eighteen and a year later moved to Chicago where he was profoundly affected by the Revival of 1857-1858. Moody quickly developed a passion for winning young people for Christ through Sunday school and the Young Men’s Christian Association. Moody’s Sunday school soon became a church, and in 1860 Moody devoted himself to full time ministry.[11]
In 1867, Moody traveled to Britain to seek out leaders of the evangelical movement such as of Charles Spurgeon, George Muller, and Harry Morehouse. Moody listen to Morehouse preach for a week on the love of God and was so profoundly affected that Moody’s preaching was forever changed. In 1872 Moody again traveled to England, and his preaching brought a local awakening to a church in North London. Other invitations followed, but the great breakthrough in his ministry came at Edinburgh, Scotland, where his meetings filled even the largest arenas. Moody continued holding meetings throughout Scotland, Ireland, and England. Attendance was enormous. Twenty thousand each night listened to Moody preach in London’s Islington Agricultural Hall. The London campaign lasted twenty weeks at which two and a half million people attended.[12]
Moody spent three years in Britain before returning to the United States in August 1875. As in Britain, vast crowds flocked to hear Moody preach all across the United States. Another trip to England was made in October 1881. Beginning in 1884, Moody began devoting much of his time to promotion of education at his institutes in Chicago and Northfield, Massachusetts, as well as conducting a number of evangelistic campaigns in smaller cities. In 1893, approximately two million visitors attended evangelistic services held by Moody during the World’s Fair, the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. With the help of Moody’s Bible Institute, three centers of preaching were established on the north, west, and south sides of Chicago. On Sunday’s, Moody preached in a large circus tent at the city’s lakefront on the east side. In November 1899, Moody preached his last campaign in Kansas City, Missouri. Exhausted, he withdrew from the campaign and returned home. He passed away December 22, 1899, after forty years of ministry.[13]
D. L. Moody’s success did not depend on his earthly attributes. He did not have a commanding physical appearance, was not a renowned theologian, and certainly was not a great orator. His theology and convictions were strongly conservative. His preaching was very simple but strong on scripture which he illustrated with homely stories presented in everyday language. [14]
The inspiration that led to Moody’s great contributions to the Kingdom of God occurred when Moody visited England for the first time in 1868. There he met Henry Varley, one of the great British evangelists, who said to him, “Moody, the world has yet to see what God will do with a man fully consecrated to Him.” Over thirty years later, the world had seen and heard Dwight Lyman Moody and now knew what God could do with a man fully consecrated to Him.[15]
Revival or evangelism?
Although the words “revival” and “evangelism” are often used interchangeably, Dr. J. Edwin Orr in his book The Light of the Nations explained that there is a difference. In English-speaking countries outside of North America, revival is generally used to identify a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the churches resulting in a renewed interest in religion after a period of indifference or decline. Although this is the correct meaning when the term “revival” is used in the United States, it is often used interchangeably to describe an organized campaign of evangelism or a series of evangelistic meetings.[16] Dr. Orr points out the differences.
It often happens that there are elements of revival in an evangelistic campaign, and effects of evangelism in a revival movement. Evangelism is what dedicated men do for God, but revival is what God does to earnest men to bring them to fuller dedication.[17]
Orr described Moody as an evangelist and not a revivalist in the historic sense whereas Orr used revivalist as the correct term to describe the works of George Whitefield, John Wesley, Charles Finney, and Evan Roberts of Wales. Nevertheless, there are almost always elements of revival in evangelism and elements of evangelism in revivals.[18]
Revival and religion in the Gilded Age 1870-1900
Timothy L. Smith in his book Revivalism and Social Reform stated the primary feature distinguishing American religion after 1865 was “The rapid growth of concern with purely social issues such as poverty, working men’s rights, the liquor traffic, slum housing, and racial bitterness.” The Christian imperative of this concern eventually divided into two avenues. The first avenue was “militant modernism” in theology of the liberal branch which focused its energies on socialism, preaching a social gospel, and establishing a pre-millennial “Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.” On the second avenue were found the footprints of Moody and other conservative evangelicals and revivalists who advocated social service and the post-millennial hope of the Kingdom of God while distancing themselves from the social gospel which abandoned the soul in its quest for humanistic answers to individual and societal pathologies.[19]
The Revival of 1857-1858 in America was often called the Layman’s Revival because of the broad inter-denominational support, absence of clerical leadership, and focus on prayer. According to Dr. Orr, the greatest achievements of the nineteenth century were brought about by dedicated lay men and women nurtured in the faith and worship of evangelical fellowships. Because of the Great Awakenings, it was individual Christian lay people who persuaded church leaders and parliaments to address the great issues of the century: “abolition of the slave trade, reform of prisons, emancipation of slaves, care of the sick, education of the young, protection of workers and the like…”[20]
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In his final summation of the impact of the evangelical awakenings throughout the nineteen century, Dr. Orr wrote:
The nineteenth century proved to be a time of evangelical renewal and advance, in which shone widely the Light of the Nations. The phenomena of the Great Awakenings brought blessing untold to the Christian believer, to the congregation, to the Christian community, to the Church at Large, to the laboring man, to the world of women, to the welfare of children, to the care of the sick, to the shelter of the insane, to the protection of the unfortunate, to the education of the young, to the guaranteeing of liberty, to the granting of freedom, to the administration of justice, to the evolution of self-government, to the crusade for peace among nations—in fact, in the nineteenth century, the Evangelical Awakenings may be shown to be the foremost method of an almighty God to promote the betterment of all mankind and His chiefest instrument to win men to transforming faith in Himself.[21]
In the next chapter we will examine the great revivals in the first decade of the twentieth century and the gradual decline of revival and revivalism thereafter in America, Great Britain, and continental Europe, all former strongholds of evangelicalism but now in decline because of the absence of revival.
Larry G. Johnson
Sources:
[1] J. M. Roberts, The New History of the World, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 708-709, 711-712.
[2] Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen, A Patriot’s History of the United States, (New York: Sentinel, 2004), pp. 443-444.
[3] J. Edwin Orr, The Faming Tongue – The Impact of 20th Century Revivals, (Chicago, Illinois: Moody Press, 1973), p. xiv.
[4] Larry G. Johnson, Evangelical Winter – Restoring New Testament Christianity, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, 2016), p. 77.
[5] Sherwood Eddy, The Kingdom of God and the American Dream, (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1941), pp. 182-183.
[6] Schweikart and Allen, A Patriot’s History of the United States, pp. 182-183.
[7] Christian Smith, “Introduction,” The Secular Revolution, ed. Christian Smith, (Berkeley, California: The University of California Press, 2003), pp. 58, 67; 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), pp. 213-214.
[8]B. K. Kuiper, The Church in History, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1951, 1964), p. 389.
[9] Ibid.
[10] “Holiness Movement,” Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/event/Holiness-movement (accessed January 22, 2018).
[11] J. Edwin Orr, The Light of the Nations – Evangelical Renewal and Advance in the Nineteenth Century, (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 1965), pp. 190-191.
[12] Ibid., pp. 191-192.
[13] Ibid., pp. 192-195.
[14] Ibid., p. 194.
[15] Ibid., p. 191.
[16] Ibid., p. 193.
[17] Ibid., p. 194.
[18] Ibid., p. 194.
[19] Ibid., pp. 229-230.
[20] Ibid., p. 229.
[21] Ibid., pp. 275-276.
