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The Social Gospel--Part II Lecture TwentyThe Social Gospel (part II)The Social Crusades During the period 1865-1930, Christians in America embarked on three major crusades to address the rapidly expanding problems of society. The roots of two of these crusades predated the Civil War, and only came into their own in the post-war period: temperance and Sabbath observance. The temperance movement was brought about when the State of Maine passed a law imposing prohibition in 1851. In 1869, a National Prohibition Party was formed, and the Women's Christian Temperance Union was organized in 1874. Eventually this crusade was successful in passing the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution. But it's lasting significance comes from the fact that this movement provided a place for women to begin to take an active role in society. Many of the earliest prominent figures in the feminist movement got their start in the Temperance Crusade. A second crusade was centered around Sabbath observance. The idea of compelling everyone to honor the Sabbath was one that received much attention from the churches. This was a reaction to the "Continental Sundays" of many immigrants. Among the measures that were pursued by this crusade was the prevention of streetcars from running on Sunday, and the reading of Sunday newspapers. Despite countless sermons on this topic and repeated editorials in church newspapers, and resolutions from a host of religious bodies, the mores of an industrial and urban society had changed, and no "blue law" could alter that. The third, and final crusade, concerned missions. The idea that "Anglo-Saxons" were a superior breed, had entered American intellectual circles, where it supplied the rationale for American dreams of imperialism. James M. King a Methodist minister in New York made the case for this crusade in painfully clear terms when he wrote: "Christianized Anglo-Saxon blood, with its love of liberty, its thrift, its intense and persistent energy and personal independence, is the regnant force in this country; and that is a most pregnant fact, because the concededly most important lesson in the history of modern civilization is that God is using the Anglo-Saxon to conquer the world for Christ by dispossessing feeble races, and assimilating and molding others." Southern Baptists described this crusade this way: "the religious destiny of the world is lodged in the hands of the English speaking people. To the Anglo Saxon race God seems to have committed the enterprise of the world's salvation." The leading exponent of the Social Gospel--Josiah Strong--espoused Anglo-Saxonism in his widely circulated book, Our Country. Combining this idea with social Darwinism's principle of the "survival of the fittest," with doctrine of God's providence, Strong declared that Anglo Saxons were destined by God to carry the benefits of a superior civilization to less vigorous races and master them. When the United States openly adopted imperialistic policies in the closing years of the nineteenth century, churchmen prevailingly supported the new expansionism which they saw as an opportunity for mission work.The South and The Social Gospel Social issues less directly related to industrialization and the cities also challenged the Churches--both Protestant and Catholic--during the period 1865-1930. The political reconstruction of the South, which sought to ensure the "loyalty" of the South, and the new freedom of the negro, found a close parallel in the churches. Indeed, it could be argued that this effort was one of the first expressions of the emerging Social Gospel. Northern teachers, many of them with religious motivation and abolitionist background, sought to reeducate the South, and incorporate them into American society again. This whole process however had the opposite effect, antagonizing Southerners and driving them to establish their own identity. One of the primary focal points of this effort was the recently emancipated slaves. Effort to educate the freedmen had a high priority. Northern denominations with co-religionists in the South--most conspicuously the Methodists, Baptists, and Old School Presbyterians demanded that Southerners repent of the sins of slavery and treason as a condition of ending the divisions caused by slavery and secession. When the South refused, the resulting war of words added to the lingering bitterness on both sides, and prolonged divisions between North and South well into the Twentieth century. By the 1880's, however, a few southern churchmen, like Atticus Haygood, president of Emory College were championing the rise of a new reconstructed South. This new South had its origins in an alliance of Northern capitalists and the Southern ruling class to promote the region's development. In this new arrangement, social involvement on the part of churches was equated with cheerleading for new industry. Religious advocates of a New South generally had enlightened views on race. They were willing to allow for the eventual equality of the races, even if they argued that blacks were not equal at that point in time. But most were swimming against a strong tide. The South was a stronghold of racial and theological orthodoxy. An example of what passed for orthodoxy was J. William Jones. A Southern Baptist, Jones acquired the title of "Fighting Parson for his service in A.P. Hill's Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia. He was among the intimate friends of Robert E. Lee, and offered in his sermons a potent mix of Christianity and the Confederacy. He became the author of Lee's biography, and the first to canonize him. Jones was a preserver of Confederate memorabilia and sacred traditions, and painted a picture of saintly, gallant Confederate heros. The average soldier had been holy, and their leaders men of prayer and great Bible readers, he proclaimed in Christ in the Camp or Religion in Lee's Army. This book claimed to be a record of the revivals that broke out in the last two years of the war, but it was more than that. It was a collection of parables about religion and morality in which the men of the Confederate Army became the moral and religious exemplars. Like many others, Jones believed that the Southern cause had been the defense of the Christian faith, and he was not shy in making a strong identification of the South and Christianity. Jones would became chaplain at UNC where gave the following prayer: "Lord we acknowledge Thee as the all-wise author of every good and perfect gift. We recognize Thy presence and wisdom in the healing shower. We acknowledge Thou had a divine plan when Thou made the rattle snake, as well as the song bird, and this was without help from Charles Darwin. But we believe Thou will admit the grave mistake in giving the decision to the wrong side in eighteen hundred and sixty-five." Southern society was run by the Democratic Party, and it remained in power on the strength of black votes. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, these Democrats clashed with farmers and the under class whose interests not served by new economic arrangements. Poor people--black and white--united to form the Populist party, and took control of a number of Southern states. This led to a racist backlash on the part of Democrats. Playing the race card, the appealed to racism to divide poor whites and blacks, and allow them to regain political control. When these Democrats regained office, they vowed they would never again loose political control. They set about to disenfranchise black voters, to force them into segregated public facilities, and to lynch them if they objected to their dehumanization. The only voices to object were those of men like Haygood, or Andrew Sledd.Andrew Sledd Heretics were not welcome in the South in the late nineteenth century. No dissent was permitted, and those who dared raise their voice to challenge the prevailing orthodoxies of race and religion were driven out. One such heretic was a man by the name of Andrew Sledd. Sledd refused to participate in the brutality directed at blacks. Instead, he saw himself as a prophet challenging the identification of Christianity and the Southern way of life. He was willing to challenge the verities of his day, and at one point or another, he found himself challenging the major components of the reigning orthodoxy. The race issue came to the fore in 1902 when Sledd raised his voice against the reigning racial creed: Jim Crow Segregation. His willingness to speak out was provoked by a series of encounters with the harsh realities of segregation while traveling across the South. Ignorant of the dehumanization that blacks had to endure prior to travels, Sledd saw first hand the brutal nature of Jim Crow. Perhaps the defining moment for Sledd came when he observed the lynching of Sam Hose. Sledd witnessed this event when the train he was riding stopped to allow passengers to watch. It was bad enough that another train soon arrived from a nearby town carrying people eager to see this spectacle, but Sledd was sickened as he watched the crowd burn and mutilate the body after it had been lynched, and then hawk pieces for souvenirs. Moved to write a article condemning such abuses, he submitted it to the Atlantic Monthly. In this piece, ["The Negro: Another View," (July 1902)], Sledd rejected the practice of lynching because it violated the negro's rights which were both divine and civil in nature. While allowing that the Negro was presently inferior to whites, went on to violate the reigning orthodoxy once more by suggesting that this inferiority was the result of slavery and segregation, and could be erased through affirmative measures. For this, Sledd was called a traitor to his race, and eventually he was forced from his position as a teacher of classics at Emory. Fearful of the impact on the college's patronage, the Emory administration forced his resignation. Sledd left the South and went into a forced exile at Yale where he earned his Ph.D. in nine months. Upon his graduation, he returned to teach in South where he was hired to be the first President of the University of Florida in 1905. Sledd was forced to resign in 1909 because he refused to lower the high academic standards he had set. Again challenging the Lost Cause mentality, Sledd insisted that the University should be an education institution, not a place of indoctrination. In 1914, Sledd returned to Emory. His father-in-law was Warren Candler, a Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and the brother of Asa Candler who founded Coca Cola. Asa gave the money to organize Emory University, and to found The Candler School of Theology. Not surprisingly, Asa's brother Warren was named the first President. Warren promptly hired his son-in-law in order to bring his favorite daughter home from exile. Sledd was the only member of the new faculty to have an earned doctorate. Hired to teach Greek and New Testament in the School of Theology, Sledd got in trouble, over time, for his liberal views on Scripture. Sledd insisted on studying Scripture as any other piece of literature, and applied literary criticism to the Biblical text. Such an approach challenged the literal views of the Orthodox. As a result, contributors began to withdrew funds from the school, and Sledd's salary was cut. Eventually, he lost his home and died a poor man. But Sledd never repented of his heresies. He was willing to pay the price of his dissent. And the students he trained at Emory had a major impact on the disintegration of the old Orthodoxies. When the church in Birmingham was bombed, it was Sledd's students who were the only white clergy to reach out to the black community in their moment of grief. Individuals like Sledd are now largely forgotten. They faced defeat and a discredited future alone. They died deep in debt. But before he died, Sledd wrote that he believed he had made a small contribution to spread of righteousness in the region. He encouraged many Southerners to speak out against lynching, and other abuses of blacks. He helped establish new standards of academic freedom. And helped to give rise to a new South where whites and blacks could live together in equality. Today, Andrew Sledd is a prophet without honor in his own country, even though we owe him a great deal. Few Southerners know he lived, and still fewer appreciate the changes he helped bring to the region. But that would not surprise Andrew Sledd. In a lecture given to one of his classes at the Candler School of Theology, he described the true prophet in words that could have well been written for his epitaph:"The man has disappeared in the prophet. As a man he leaves nothing but a name, grown wellnigh meaningless; as a prophet, he leaves a message in which we recognize the voice of a changeless and eternal God."    |
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