Religion and Society in America

Religion and Society in America Religion and Conflict in Interwar America 1919 – 1941 Week 8 – Lecture 3

Religion and Conflict in Interwar America 1919 - 1941 • Introduction – A Tenuous Harmony • Pragmatism and the “Essence” of Religion • Religious Response – The Social Gospel • Voices of Conflict • The Red Scare • White Hoods • Yellow Peril (next class gathering)

Pragmatism and the “Essence” of Religion • Pragmatism: What is it and how should it be understood in light of historical developments? • Key assumption of philosophers of the time was their work must serve the public life or discourse • This is not a type of crude idea of “what works” in society holds value

Pragmatism and the “Essence” of Religion • Distinct from previous generation of philosophers (Hume, Descartes, etc.) pragmatists are less concerned with religious beliefs, the role of reason, and normative claims of scriptures • Critical of objectivists views of reality that seemed to separate judgments of truth from the value of human experience

Pragmatism and the “Essence” of Religion • Concern with utility or practicality enables philosophers to entertain ideas of religion as valuable because it is purposeful

Pragmatism and the “Essence” of Religion • William James (1842 – 1910) • 1897 publishes essay entitled “The Will to Believe” • Argued against philosophical tide at the time which was largely antireligious • Claimed religion not concerned with the same issues as science, therefore the methods (hyper-skepticism) must be detached from understanding religion

Pragmatism and the “Essence” of Religion • James argued the verdict for claiming religion and its truth claims was still out. James suggested one cannot simply forfeit such evidence to understand truth when human nature or psyche suggests there is some type of religious understanding shared by humanity

Pragmatism and the “Essence” of Religion • 1901 – 1902 lectures at University of Edinburgh entitled The Varieties of Religious Experience • Apologetic which argued human beings necessarily draw upon a fund of spiritual power beyond the realm of materialism

Introduction – A Tenuous Harmony • Important changing patterns of global connections developed in three areas in the first half of the 20th century • One, the development of global structures of interstate, economic, and socio-cultural relationships • Two, the emergence of globally competing sociopolitical ideologies for shaping the nature of societies in the modern era

Introduction – A Tenuous Harmony • In the social, economic, political, and religious transformations framed by the two world wars and the Great Depression, world visions and broad programmatic perspectives were an important part of the global scene • 3 major competing ideologies in Western society

Introduction – A Tenuous Harmony • Democratic liberalism - The World War I settlement reflected this ideological position. The global terms set by President Woodrow Wilson (son of a minister) in an ideological liberal internationalism committed to the self-determination of peoples, democratic political systems, relatively capitalist market economies, and peaceful resolution of international conflicts by public negotiation.

Introduction – A Tenuous Harmony • Communism – Articulated by Karl Marx (1818-1883), it built on a materialist interpretation of history, developing a vision of a society in which production and distribution were controlled by the community in a collectivized economy. The working class was to be the major vehicle for achieving this goal, and class interests rather than national identities were seen as primary.

Introduction – A Tenuous Harmony • Leninist communism became a major alternative to and competitor with Wilsonian liberal democracy. • Great Britain, France, and the U.S. intervened militarily in the Russian civil war in 1918-19 to prevent the consolidation of Bolshevik rule of Russia but failed. • In Germany, the Spartacist group, which advocated a Communist state, led a series of uprisings in 1919-20 against the emerging Weimar Republic and was defeated.

Introduction – A Tenuous Harmony • In Germany, the Spartacist group, which advocated a Communist state, led a series of uprisings in 1919-20 against the emerging Weimar Republic and was defeated. • Communist attempts to gain power in the new republic of Austria (1919) and Bulgaria (1923-25) were unsuccessful. • The Communist dictatorship of Béla Kun in Hungary lasted only a few months in 1919.

Introduction – A Tenuous Harmony • In Iran (Persia), Persian nationalists and social democrats received support from the Bolshevik regime in establishing a short-lived Soviet Republic of Gilan in 1920. • The new Communist Party in China cooperated with the Kuomintang regime until a major split in 1927, and the Communists went into revolutionary opposition.

Introduction – A Tenuous Harmony • Fascism - Movements that emerged after World War I took a number of different forms, but they shared an ideological perspective that subordinated the individual to the state, opposed class struggle, and affirmed nationalist identities and a corporate state. Structures were elitist rather than egalitarian, and there was an emphasis on the role of the great leader.

Introduction – A Tenuous Harmony • Benito Mussolini – first fascist leader in Europe • Became prime minister of Italy in 1922 and seized full power by 1926. • Other states came under the control of dictators in the interwar period, including Poland (1926), Lithuania (1926), Portugal (1932), and Estonia (1934).

Introduction – A Tenuous Harmony • Changing climate of economic markets throughout the world and the responses to them profoundly shape responses of religious traditions in America • No longer do the Christian/Protestant benevolent societies of old seem to address the weighty issues of internationalism

Religious Responses – The “Social Gospel” • The Social Gospel Movement • Movement initially among American Protestants, both black and white, to relate theological and biblical insights to rapidly changing economic forces • Charles M. Sheldon’sIn His Steps: What Would Jesus Do? was an initial attempt to relate Christianity to modern-day issues

Religious Responses – The “Social Gospel” • By turn of the century, the Social Gospel is attached to the more moderate reformist or liberal element of churches and synagogues • Influence was great in the formation of Federal Council of Churches in Christ in America in 1908

Religious Responses – The “Social Gospel” • Washington Gladden (1836-1918) • Minister in First Congregational Church in Columbus, Ohio for much of his career • Served on City Council from 1900 to 1902 • Influenced by the writing of Horace Bushnell

Religious Responses – The “Social Gospel” • Applied Christianity (1886); Social Salvation (1902); The Christian Pastor and Working Church (1907) • Not a “systematic theologian” • Gladden’s body of literature and concepts espoused was the foundation for what became known as “the Social Gospel”

Religious Responses – The “Social Gospel” • Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918) • Born and educated in Rochester, New York receiving two degrees (1884; 1886) • Serves as pastor for German Baptist Church on the edge of “Hell’s Kitchen” for 11 years • Returns to Rochester Theological Seminary to become professor of church history in 1902

Religious Responses – The “Social Gospel” • Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907); Christianizing the Social Order (1912); A Theology for the Social Gospel (1917) • These works present a program of progressive democratic reformism as moving toward the kingdom of God

Religious Responses – The “Social Gospel” • “The progressive transformation of all human affairs by the thought and spirit of Christ” • Note emphasis on “spirit” and “thought,” not letter of the gospel • Rauschenbusch dies of cancer in 1918

Religious Responses – The “Social Gospel” • Legacy: • Reinhold Niebuhr – “most brilliant and generally satisfying exponent” of the Social Gospel • Martin Luther King, Jr. – “Rauschenbusch gave to American Protestantism a sense of social responsibility that it should never lose”

Religious Responses – The “Social Gospel” • Samuel S. Mayerberg (1892-1964) • Rabbi of Congregation B’nai Jehudah in Kansas City, Missouri during the 1930s • Citizens of Kansas City suffered under the notoriously corrupt political leadership of Thomas J. Pendergast • Problems of fraudulent ballots, kickbacks, bootlegging, etc. • Mayerberg leads a reform crusade against the entrenched political machine

Religious Responses – The “Social Gospel” • John Lancaster Spalding (1840 – 1916) • Kentuckian who served as bishop of Peoria, Illinois • Argued the church could not avoid problems of modernity • Articulates the calling or shape of the Catholic faith through the subjects of politics and social causes

Religious Responses – The “Social Gospel” • Pastoral Letter(1920) • Leo XIII (1878- 1903) demonstrates an awareness of the dramatic shifting forces in economics which are shaping the lives of Catholics worldwide • 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarumencouraged Catholics to apply Christian tenets to the marketplace broadly

Religious Responses – The “Social Gospel” • The arguments of American Catholic leaders such as James Cardinal Gibbons (1834-1921) helped to shape the pope’s thinking about Rerum Novarum • Gibbons served as Archbishop of Baltimore, Maryland • Asked to approach the Vatican on issues of American labor and unionism

Religious Responses – The “Social Gospel” • Gibbons must make the case between unionism in light of capitalism vs. labor movements in Europe which are anti-Church • Suggests to pope “The presence among our citizens of those dangerous social elements, which most come from certain countries in Europe, is assuredly for us an occasion of great regret and of vigilant precaution…”

Voices of Conflict – Red Scare • First abrupt disturbance to Americans following World War I was the intense attack of Bolshevism abroad and Communism in U.S. • May Day, 1919 – several bomb blasts within U.S. including the rectory of Our Lady of Victory church in Philadelphia

Voices of Conflict – Red Scare • One anarchist bomber, identified as an Italian alien, left a tract outside the door of one target which read: “There will have to be bloodshed; we will not dodge; there will have to be murder; we will kill…there will have to be destruction; we will destroy…We are ready to do anything and everything to suppress the capitalist class.”

Voices of Conflict – Red Scare • These incidents help to shape a popular paradigm for many Americans • Christian America vs. Communism • Of all the social issues of conflict during this time, the threat of communism created a unique response drawing together Protestants, Jews, Catholics, nonreligious, and blacks & whites into a common front

Voices of Conflict – Red Scare • Many Americans simply assumed free-enterprise economics was a God-given system; therefore, communism was inherently anti-God • Marxist atheism drew considerable opposition from churches • People of Slavic ancestry become target for the nation

Voices of Conflict – Red Scare • Fueling this anger was rising inflation and the threat of unemployment once the wartime economy slowed • One target of this tension was the Industrial Workers of the World organization (Wobblies)

Voices of Conflict – Red Scare • Wobblies – started in 1905 by Irish-born Mary Harris Jones, “Mother Jones,” who became a vocal leader for unionizing labor movements such as the miners and textile workers • Roman Catholic background • Distinguished between religious reforms and non-religious reforms

Voices of Conflict – Red Scare • “Only religion can make a colony successful and labor doesn’t have religion.” • Helped to lead miners strikes in Colorado in 1913-1914 (65 individuals killed during strikes; 45 women and children) • Jones for her involvement and Catholic background was despised

Voices of Conflict – Red Scare • Jones retires in 1923 leaving the Wobblies leadership to a new generation of anti-religious leaders • Protestant opinion divided in the early 1920s over Wobblies • One riot in Centralia Washington garnered the headline “Reds Murder Former Soldiers” from a Presbyterian newspaper, Continent

Voices of Conflict – Red Scare • Northern Baptist Convention daringly opposed the popular “ ‘Red’ hysteria which indiscriminately classes all foreigners as Bolshevists” • Federal Council of Churches also steps in to try to calm agitation

Voices of Conflict – White Hoods • Ku Klux Klan • Founded at the close of the Civil War by Nathan Bedford Forest, Confederate Calvary general who was its first leader • “Lost Cause” mentality coupled with ethnic and racial hatred which embraces idealized “Old South”

Voices of Conflict – White Hoods • By the dawn of the new century, the Klan is undergoing a revival in membership both North and South • The Klan was so troubling to many Protestant Americans not only because of what it stood for, but because it parodied many aspects of Protestantism in America • “Menace of the mirrored self”

Voices of Conflict – White Hoods • Espoused a program of civic reform which attracted moralists bewailing social change, prohibitionists, and people hungry for clandestine ritual • Protestant ethos to ritual behavior • Catechesis was fundamental to shaping community ethos

Voices of Conflict – White Hoods • Questions in “catechisms” • Are you a native-born white, Gentile, American citizen? • Do you believe in the tenets of the Christian religion? • Do you believe in and will you faithfully strive for the eternal maintenance of white supremacy?

Voices of Conflict – White Hoods • Questions in “catechisms” • Are you absolutely opposed to and free of any allegiance of any nature to any cause, government, people, sect or ruler that is foreign to the U.S.A.? • Do you esteem the U.S.A. and its institutions above any other government, civil, political, or ecclesiastical in the whole world?

Voices of Conflict – White Hoods • Ideals of the Ku Klux Klan (1923) • 1. This is a white man’s organization; • 2. This is a gentile organization; • 3. It is an American organization; • 4. It is a Protestant organization “Undesirables,” the objects of reform (Catholics, blacks, Jews, etc.), were usually not in geographical range of where the Klan had its greatest membership

Voices of Conflict – White Hoods • During the Interwar years, violent outbreaks of Klan activity in the mid-West • Example: Indiana (1920 – 21) Klan membership estimated at 240,000 • 1920 Census: Muncie, Indiana 92% of population was native-born Caucasian

Religion and Society in America