-
Burning question:
How should religion relate to a changing America?
Become inclusive
- Move toward being sectarian- giving society
- control but remaining pure within one’s own group
Fundamentalism
-
Influence of the civil war
- -Many large protestant denominations
- (Methodists, Baptist, and Presbyterians) had created their own sections in the
- south and remained separate after the war.
- -Southerners held onto the 1850s style revival
- evangelism, generally making them more conservative, and accusing the North of
- being too liberal
- -White south was like its own ethnic group:
- strong sense of national identity. Religious conservatism (including keeping
- race separate)
-
Prohibition
- -The “high water mark” for the
- usually elusive ideal of a unified evangelical civilization
- Excessive consumption was the first
- major drug problem
- By the late 19th century
- it was a mark of the secular civilization and its opposition was a chief symbol
- of evangelical civilization
- Unique to American Protestantism
- was the complete abstinence, which caused tension among immigrants that drank
- as part of their culture.
- -opposition said that Jesus turned
- water into wine and that the solution was moderation, not abstinence
- -1895 Anti-Saloon League was
- largely protestant (Methodists and Baptists had special fervor)
- -1920 the 18th amendment
- went into effect banning the commercial manufacture and sale of alcoholic
- beverages from the country.
-
War and Peace
- -Churches were not really pacifists,
- but believed in a “just war”
- -Christians were troubled by
- violence in the name of the Prince of Peace
- -American Peace Society of 1828
- tried to promote peace whenever possible.
- It was overwhelmed during the civil war, but became part of the Women’s
- Christian Temperance Union
- Campaigns for world peace peaked
- right before WWI
- 1911 the Federal Council of
- Churches formed a Commissions on Peace and Arbitration
- -William Jennings Bryan stepped
- down from President Wilson’s cabinet in 1915 after the sinking of the Lusitania
- fearing it would bring the US to war
- -Sentiments changed when in 1917
- the US entered WWI.
- -For some it was the millennial
- hope that this was the “War to end all wars”
- -Patriotism was linked to the US’
- religious heritage. It was all part of a form of zeal for an American
- democratic way of life, even though it was a somewhat secularized form of the
- old deal of Christian and republican civilization
- -only peace churches were excluded
- in supporting the war, and it served as bringing unity. It was even a major
- step for conservative southerners in transferring their loyalty from the
- confederacy.
-
Fundamentalists vs. Modernists
- Protestant Christianity had a
- strong impulse to stay with whatever changes were going on in the culture
- because they stood so close to the centers of power
- -Created modernism among liberal
- Protestants as a way to build a progressive democratic worldwide civilization
- based on brotherhood (as they put it) of all people under the fatherhood of God
- -Premillenialists were on the
- opposite end in that their hope for humanity was not building a liberal
- civilization, but the return of Jesus
- -1910-1915 pamphlets made called The Fundamentals that defended
- traditional protestant faith against theological liberalism
-
Billy Sunday
- More of an outsider when it came to
- mainline Protestantism
- -Mixed the technique of Finney with
- Moody’s disinterest of deep theological discussion
- -Would do radical things on stage,
- much like an actor
- -gospel was a mix of popular
- Americanism and revivalist Christianity
-
Post War
- War brought unity and in 1919 the
- Interchurch World Movement was launched to keep that unity
- -These plans collapsed, as the gap
- grew larger between conservatives and liberals.
- -Conservatives said that America’s
- problem was moral because it was founded on the Bible while the liberals pushed
- for evolutionary-based philosophies and humanism as the solution
-
Dawinism
- Darwinism was seen as why WWI could
- occur if people were just animals that could be slaughtered. Therefore there was no basis for morality.
- -Therefore, a society founded on
- the Bible is better than one founded on evolution and Darwinism.
- -1919 William Jennings Bryan begins
- campaign against teaching evolution in Schools
-
Fundamentalism
- -First used by Curtis Lee Laws in 1920 to described
- militantly conservative Protestants
- -Meant that they were willing to
- fight for fundamental doctrines that liberals denied such as the inerrancy of
- the Bible, the virgin birth of Jesus, the authenticity of Jesus’ miracles,
- atonement for sin through the death of Christ, Jesus’ resurrection, and His
- coming again.
- -Fought against modern theology in
- their denominations and against secular trends in culture
- -1922 Henry Fosdick plead for
- tolerance in his denomination in “Shall the Fundamentalists Win” but was kicked
- out instead.
- -in 1923 J. Gresham Machen wrote
- Christianity and Liberalism saying that liberal Christians should create their
- own churches because they are a different religion.
-
Scopes Trial
- -1925 in Dayton, TN. Clarence Darrow defended John Scopes for
- teaching evolution against William Jennings Bryan
- -H.L. Menken was the reporter that got the media
- attention.
- -It was seen as a competition between theism and
- evolution, as well as rural simplicity and urban sophistication
- -Darrow called Bryan to the stand as an expert
- on the Bible where he mocked him with token atheist questions
- -Scopes was found guilty, but only received a
- small fine
-It was the image of defeat for fundamentalism
-Bryan died 5 days later
- -Afterwards, fundamentalists were not supported
- in their mainline denominations and left in order to create their own churches
- and bible schools
-
Catholics and the election of 1928
- -Al Smith was a Democratic Republican
- who ran for the presidency in 1928
- -The south was democratic simply
- because it still had a resentment for republicans from the war, but it also had
- a hate for Catholics
- -Both conservative and liberal Protestants
- disliked Catholics, with fundamentalists not likening them the most
-Smith did not favor prohibition.
- Smith was defeated and it was seen
- as a cracking of the Solid South for Hoover
-
Catholicism: building an identity
- Ethnic community was key as well as
- traditions
- School systems allowed them to
- teach what they wanted besides the secularism of public schools
- -Colleges put more Catholics in the
- mainstream
- -Emphasis on neo-Thomism, which
- said that reason was not an enemy of faith
- -Bred its own American
- Fundamentalism, such as Father Coughlin
-
Acids of Modernity
-becoming a sensate society
- -looked to humanism for a basis of
- morals
-sex became commercialized
- -Christianity became a means of
- character building, and not social reform
-
Pragmatism
-John Dewey
- -Its not about what is actually
- true, but what works
- -school should replace churches in
- teaching common ideals
-
Neo-orthodox critique
- -Karl Barth said that there was a
- huge gap between what man could learn just through reason and what he could
- learn through true knowledge of God, which could only be known through Christ
- -H. Niebuhr: preached the need to
- be God centered, and that the church should use society as a means to spread
- salvation or choose to be a political party or a school
- -R. Niebuhr: we cannot put the same
- standards on politics and social institutions that we can on individuals
- because they promote self-interest.
- Therefore, we cannot identify the Kingdom of God with any
- social-political proposal. Also big on original sin
-
A secular New Deal
- -By the 1930s there was a clear
- divine between the church and society as most entertainers, artists, and
- leading American figures were openly secular
- FDR repealed the 18th
- amendment
- -Pragmatism was applied to
- politics, just as it had been to business.
- -Progressivism meant finding the
- most effective means of getting something done, and it put ethics on the back
- burner
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