Fundamentalist Christians had by the 1950s become more defined by a particular set of do’s and don’ts than by answering the “what’s” and “whys” of their beliefs. Their world was neatly divided into “the black hats” and “the white hats,” the good folks and the bad. The anti-intellectual faith of the fundamentalist Christian community had reduced its practical distinctive into a set of dress and behavioral codes. “The rules” stated clearly that Christian men must have short hair—women must always wear dresses. No one could listen to music (more…)

With the growth of liberaliism, socialism (also called “Progressive”) on both sides of the ocean, 1940 saw Europe in the midst of war as Germany, led by the Socialist Party (NAZI) moved toward world domination. It was hoped that war wouldn’t come to our shores but that all changed on December 7, 1941 when Japan launched a stealth attack on Pearl Harbor. America awoke to the news that either they would take a stand and enter the war or give up to be governed by another. Although there were signs and indicators of an impending attack, they didn’t seem to be picked up or if they were, they weren’t taken seriously. After all, America was a great nation and seemed invulnerable. As it turns out, that was its greatest vulnerability. The sleeping giant began to awaken and chose to enter the war.

The dawning of 1940 witnessed another arousing from slumber, the Conservative Intellectual. A number of individuals were concerned at what the universities had become and were producing in terms of worldviews and philosophies. Dewey’s plan to use the universities to administer social change was in full swing and working rather well in shifting the students into collectivism and socialism. (more…)

It would be wonderful to be able to report that racial discrimination and segregation were not a problem within the church—that God’s people would never have allowed such obviously (to us) unchristian and patently unfair thinking and practice to hold uncontested sway in their midst, but sadly, they did. It is always easy, and usually unfair, to judge the ignorance of the past by present day enlightenment. It was, it would seem for the most part, a blind spot rather than a consciously malicious way of thinking. We dare not harshly judge those who were of another time, for the reason that we may be, for all we know, judging people who were in many ways, better persons than we are. But we can judge what took place. The ignorant and virulent racism that stains our past was cruel and immoral, a dark seed sown that has reaped the whirlwind, both socially and within the church, doing terrible damage to the wonderful Christian unity that might have been, should have been, but may never be. How tragic—what a waste! Blacks were excluded from the “Christian Only” Bible colleges and Universities which had shamefully turned out to be for “White Christians Only.” The result of this would be that blacks who would be trained for the ministry went to the schools, which would accept and even provide scholarships to them, the liberal institutions which had been utterly abandoned by the Church and which were in the business of destroying the true faith. This gave birth in the 1960s to a new black liberal theology, or as Dr. Jerry Buckner puts it, “The Cult of Black Liberal Theology.” This development has not turned out to be any better for society or the church than the racial segregation of old, since it has become another seemingly insurmountable wall of division among those who should be working in harmony to preach the gospel to a lost world.

And Then Along Came John

Just as many fundamentalists were climbing down into their cultural manholes and pulling the covers over their heads, seeds of radical social change were being sown. In 1933 John Dewey authored the Humanist Manifesto. In it he argued (more…)

And the last part, I might add. Dear reader I hope you are not too weary of looking at our little section of upstate New York. I want to visit it one last time. In previous posts we have looked at the philosophical and theological headwaters of the Culture-Driven church. I now want to go “downstream” a bit and consider the political thought that also contributed to the Twentieth Century church.

I think it’s been established that the Burned-over district was a hotbed of change (and probably some hope as well). “New” was everywhere. New men, new methods, New Thought and new movements dominated the landscape. It is no accident that women’s suffrage (the right to vote), abolition, and the temperance movement spring up in New York at this time. As with any human movement, these were conglomerations of good intentions, justice, and genuine concern. However, they were also the occasions for injustice, manipulation, and the temptations of power. Listen to Lyman Beecher in a letter to his friend Nathaniel Berman (from Whitney Cross’s book):

There is nothing to which the minds of good men, when once passed the bounds of sound discretion, and launched on an ocean of feeling and experiment, may not come . . . nothing so terrible and unmanageable as the fire and whirlwind of human passion, when once kindled by misguided zeal . . . for in every church, there is wood, hay, and stubble which will be sure to take fire on the wrong side.

It should give us all pause how movements built on good intentions can be warped by our own tendencies to “crusade.” As C.S. Lewis warned, what begins as the political aspect of our faith can quickly become (more…)

In our more or less ongoing series on recent church history and the culture driven church Jonathon Miles mentioned something last week in Revivalism in the Burned-Over District Part 2 that he and I have been talking about in order to help the readers understand the run of history and impact of a variety of events and people which although initially unconnected none-the-less converge in unanticipated ways which then change the course of future events and indeed society and its institutions. Let’s let Jonathon speak to this again:

I like the analogy of the streams rather than dots. Connecting dots could imply direct connection from one thing to another. As I warned earlier, history just isn’t that simple. Furthermore, connecting dots doesn’t show how strong the influence of one thing is on another. But the stream analogy does. When you look at a river, it is made up of streams of water that flow from many different sources–some creeks and some tributaries. Sure the Mississippi has its headwaters in tiny stream dribbling out of Lake Itasca Minnesota but no one would say that Lake Itasca is the one source of the Mississippi. Likewise, the Romanticism of Emerson or Finney’s perfectionism can’t be definitively the source of the ills of the Burned-Over district. But they are tributaries in what would become a river. And like a river the route is seldom straight and picks up all sorts of debris along the way. When I last posted, I thought Finney’s revivalism was just a stream. Turns out that his perfectionism was tributary all its own.

As I pointed out in Training the Mind of Faith in America, there was a major shift in theological focus from Christocentric (Christ centered) to Anthropocentric (man centered) in the early 19th Century. The church opted (more…)

In Revivalism in the Burned Over District Part 1 I attempted to illustrate something simple: Philosophical movements often precede and influence religious movements. This was an attempt to connect the dots. But before I illustrate how religious movements precede and influence social and political movements I have to take time to unpack some more of this revivalism. I have discovered that Finney’s perfectionism is far more important than I had originally thought.

I like the analogy of the streams rather than dots. Connecting dots could imply direct connection from one thing to another. As I warned earlier, history just isn’t that simple. Furthermore, connecting dots doesn’t show how strong the influence of one thing is on another. But the stream analogy does. When you look at a river, it is made up of streams of water that flow (more…)

I grew up in the buckle of the Bible belt. North-east Mississippi. Home of Elvis, Faulkner, and a church on every corner. I have been to more revival services than I can count. As I grew in my Christian walk, I must confess, that I became a bit cynical about revival services. I made jokes about the Holy Spirit coordinating with local pastors to plan the summer revival season. But in all seriousness, I had never wondered about where this–what should we call it? tradition? practice? habit? comes from. Over the last few weeks we have been exploring the intellectual and ideological history of protestant Christianity. I want to continue that with some commentary about Revivalism in the 1800s. Ron Henzel and Don Veinot have discussed the so-called “Burned Over District” in upstate New York as the watershed location for millennial heresies like the Millerites, the visions of Joseph Smith, and the spiritualism of New Thought. When I started delving deeper into that particular time and place what I found was fascinating and disturbing. History, it seems not only repeats itself but is chock full of intricate traps and snares (more…)