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.
