Recovering a Heritage

The major focus of this series has been the pre-Civil War era in America. That period provides the clearest historical examples of the conjunction of "evangelical" faith and social reform. There the revivalism of evangelist Charles G. Finney gave major impulse to a variety of reform campaigns, including some that called for a radical restructuring of society.

In this last essay of the series, I would like to give some indication of how this heritage was worked out in the post-Civil War era. In Revivalism and Social Reform, Timothy Smith advanced the somewhat controversial claim that the "social gospel" movement owed much to the impulse of the pre-Civil War revivalism. Whatever the validity of that thesis, it is the "social gospel" that has received the greatest attention from historians of this period. It is generally assumed that the increasing polarizations in American Protestantism that climaxed in the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy forced a split between those who emphasized a "social gospel" and those who advocated a "personal gospel" of individual regeneration.

This is not entirely accurate. Just as the social gospel was a manifestation of a social conscience on the "left," there was also a disaffection with bourgeois church life on the "right." This movement (in some ways more conservative and in some ways more radical than the social gospel) even more clearly drew its inspiration from Finney's "new measure" revivalism. This little known aspect of American church life cries out for further study, not only to fill out the history of the period, but also for the illumination of current questions. Here I will attempt only to trace one major theme of this movement as a way of identifying some of the material available for study.

Perhaps the most consistent theme of the current Christian radicalism is that the Scriptures clearly teach that the church has a special responsibility to the "poor and oppressed." Biblical religion may, in fact, be said to have a sort of class bias that favors the poorer classes. This is made especially clear in the Gospel of Luke where Jesus quotes the prophet Isaiah to describe his own mission in terms of being "anointed to preach the gospel to the poor" (Luke 4:18).

It is this theme that regularly appears in the "right wing" disaffection from the bourgeois church in the late 19th century. And evangelist Finney made a direct contribution to its emergence. The last essay in this series (April, 1975) described the support of the Tappan brothers for a special New York presbytery that consisted only of those churches that advocated Evangelist Finney's "new measure" revivalism. These churches emerged in the 1820s and 1830s and were known as "free" churches in protest against the growing practice of pew rentals. Such rentals encouraged seating patterns according to wealth and economic class. They tended to exclude or shunt to one side those who could not afford to "rent" a pew. This practice was only one sign of developing patterns of church life that alienated middle-class Christians from the poor and their concerns. The Finneyites resisted these developments as inconsistent with the scriptural call to a special concern for "preaching the Gospel to the poor."

This question of "free churches" continued to be a matter of contention across denominational lines during the middle decades of the 19th century. One branch of Methodism founded in 1860 was called the Free Methodist Church. The word "free" stood for a number of things, but especially abolitionism and "free pews." This was spelled out in the 1866 Discipline in a statement that draws directly on the Lukan passages so popular today:

All their churches are required to be as free as the grace they preach. They believe that their mission is two-fold—to maintain the Bible Standard of Christianity—and to preach the Gospel to the poor. Hence they require that all seats in their houses of worship should be free...the provisions of the Gospel are for all ... But for whose benefits are special efforts to be put forth? Who must be particularly cared for? Jesus settles this question: "the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up," and as if all this would be insufficient to satisfy John of the validity of his claims, he adds, "and the poor have the gospel preached to them." This was the crowning proof that He was the One that should come. In this respect the Church must follow in the foot-steps of Jesus. She must see that the gospel is preached to the poor.

This principle became determinative for Free Methodist church life. B.T. Roberts, the founder of the denomination, insisted that "human systems seek the patronage of the rich; the crowning proof of the divine origin of the gospel is the fact that it is preached to the poor." Or again, "the poor are the favored ones. They are not called up. The great are called down." Out of this conviction, Roberts argued that "the edifice in which the gospel is preached should be built plain, and with all the seats free, with special reference to meeting the needs of the poor.” And similarly “the Free Methodist Church requires all its members to dress plain. So plain people need not be afraid to attend church with them.”

(The Free Methodists advocated a number of themes that parallel the concerns of today’s Christian radicals. Roberts editorialized on the values of the simple life and polemicized against the “modern, easy way of getting people converted, without repentance, without renouncing the world.” The world in this case included such social sins as slavery. Roberts pointed out that “many a man will contribute liberally to the church if he may still gamble in stocks, or drive hard bargains, or oppress the hireling in his wages.” Though they sometimes degenerated into trivial legalisms, the Free Methodists were struggling with a form of “radical discipleship” that has lessons for today’s discussions.)

A somewhat less radical illustration of the same theme may be seen a couple of decades later in the life of A.B. Simpson who came to New York’s 13th Street Presbyterian Church in 1879. For two years Simpson struggled to turn this church outside of itself to the poor of New York City, describing the increasing polarization in these words: “What they wanted was a conventional parish for respectable Christians. What this young pastor wanted was a multitude of publicans and sinners.” Finally Simpson resigned and announced his decision in an address based on the text: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.” He then moved to the Times Square area to found among the immigrants a church that felt a special calling to the “neglected classes both at home and abroad.” Out of  A.B. Simpson’s work came the body now known as the Christian and Missionary Alliance.

The turn of the century saw numerous expressions of this pattern. Perhaps the most important of these was the Church of the Nazarene. After years of service in some of the most beautiful churches and well-paid pulpits of California Methodism, Phineas F. Bresee felt called in the 1890s into ministry to the poor of inner-city Los Angeles. Bresee originally hoped to maintain his position in the Methodist Conference while engaging in this work, but the bishop and his cabinet refused this request, forcing him to sever his life-long relationship with Methodism to found the Church of the Nazarene in 1895.

The original “Articles of Faith and General Rules” described the “field of labor” of the new church as “the neglected quarters of the cities.” The name Church of the Nazarene was chosen to symbolize the “toiling, lowly mission of Christ” by taking a “name which was used in derision of Him by His enemies.” Like their predecessors in this succession, the Nazarenes adapted the whole of their church life to this mission. They objected to the wealth spent in elaborate churches not only because such churches made the poor feel uncomfortable, but because the money used should be spent to feed and clothe them.

We want places so plain that every board will say welcome to the poorest. We can get along without rich people, but not without preaching the gospel to the poor ... Let the Church of the Nazarene be true to its commission; not great and elegant buildings; but to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, and wipe away the tears of sorrowing; and gather jewels for His diadem.

Such sentiments were not just Bresee’s. Large sections of the denomination in the Southwest consisted of little more than chains of inner-city missions. One paper started in 1906 in Texas was called Highways and Hedges. It boldly proclaimed that “the respectable have had this call and rushed madly on after the things of this world” and claimed that “Steeple-house church people are busy chasing dollars.” This paper vowed to “open up a chain of missions in all of our large cities where real mission and slum work will be pushed; and the poor and the destitute will be looked after.”

Other manifestations of this theme could be mentioned, but perhaps its profoundest incarnation was in the Salvation Army. This movement emerged in England in part in response to domestic currents, but also in part in the wake of the importing of “new measure” revivalism from America. The Salvation Army originated in the 1860s as the Christian Mission founded by William and Catherine Booth. This mission too was in part a protest against the “respectable churches” whose life cut them off from the masses. Its dominant concern was to follow Christ, “who, though he was rich, yet for our sakes became poor, that we, through his poverty, might become rich and who has left us an example that we should follow in his steps.”

The Salvation Army came to America about 1880 and by the end of the century had thousands of officers engaged in relief and evangelism throughout the cities of the world. A living critique of the bourgeois churches and a disturber of the peace by revealing the sickening underside of a supposedly respectable society, the Army generated intense opposition from both mobs and church people. In one 12-month period about 1880, 669 Salvationists were reported “knocked down, kicked, or brutally assaulted,” 56 Army buildings were stormed and partially wrecked, and 86 Salvationists imprisoned (the mobs attacked, but the Salvationists were arrested and imprisoned!)

Though concerned primarily with “salvation” and “preaching the gospel to the poor,” the Salvation Army, like other “slum workers,” soon found itself providing other services. Most immediate were the needs for food, clothing and shelter. But such services constantly expanded into new areas. A “poor man’s bank” was established. “Day-care” centers were provided to permit mothers to get out to earn a living for their families. The Army discovered that the legal system was biased toward those who could afford to hire counsel and began to provide free legal aid. Special attention was given to work among prisoners. The Army sought to become custodians of first offenders to prevent their being cast into prisons that would turn them into hardened criminals. (Other work among prisoners yielded some unexpected dividends; one Army post in 1896 reported that 47 of its 48 members had prison records!)

Prostitution was a particular concern of the Army and other slum workers of the era. Historians until recently have wondered what happened to the reform impulse of abolitionism in the postwar period. Part of the answer is to be found in the “purity crusade” that captured abolitionist leaders and rhetoric for the “abolition” of the “white slave trade.” Booth startled his age by his sympathy for the prostitute, arguing that it was more social conditions than inherent evil that forced young women into the world’s “oldest profession.” The Booths joined forces with muckraking journalist W.T. Stead to expose the “white slave trade” in which young girls were kidnapped, tricked, or sold into prostitution. Stead arranged for the purchase of a young virgin and then wrote up the incident in his paper. The resulting controversy resulted in Stead’s imprisonment, but forced Parliament to provide a legal weapon against the practice by raising the age of consent.

(Stead carried this campaign to America and published in 1894 a book entitled If Christ Came to Chicago. This book must rank as a classic of Christian “investigative reporting.” It named names and marshalled devastating facts and statistics. One appendix contained a “black list” that not only listed the ostensible “owner” of each building in Chicago’s “red light” district, but also indicated who really paid the taxes.)

Close contact with the poor forced the Salvationists and similar slum workers into an increasingly radical critique of American society. Booth’s son Ballington argued in New York that “We must have justice—more justice...To right the social wrong by charity is like bailing the ocean with a thimble...We must readjust our social machinery so that the producers of wealth also become the owners of wealth.” In a biography of Catherine Booth, W.T. Stead called her a “Socialist, and something more” because she was “in complete revolt against the existing order.” The Army’s organ The War Cry asserted that the chief social evil in America was the “unequal and unjust distribution of wealth.”

The Booths followed closely the emergence of various forms of socialism and utopian visions of the age and strongly affirmed elements of both. As Booth put it, “I say nothing against any short cut to the Millenium that is compatible with the Ten Commandments. I intensely sympathize with the aspirations that lie behind all these socialist dreams...what these good people want to do, I also want to do.” But Booth feared that many of these schemes were idealistic and actually a way to avoid the immediate pressing needs of the poor. In this concern he drew an interesting parallel with certain forms of Christian theology:

This religious cant, which rids itself of all the importunity of suffering humanity by drawing unnegotiable bills payable on the other side of the grave, is not more impracticable than the socialist claptrap which postpones all redress of human suffering until after the general overturn. Both take refuge in the Future to escape a solution of the problems of the Present, and it matters little to the sufferers whether the Future is on this side of the grave or the other. Both are, for them, equally out of reach.

The adequacy of that pragmatic turn of mind I shall leave to others to debate. The point here is to draw attention to a certain “evangelical” protest against the bourgeois church of the late 19th century. This protest drew its inspiration from Christ’s mission of “preaching the gospel to the poor.” Obedience to that ideal forced those who followed it not only into various forms of social service and welfare, but also into profound identification with the class interests of the poor and a consequent radical critique of existing society.

Donald W. Dayton was a contributing editor to the Post-American, director of Mellander Library, and assistant professor of theology at North Park Seminary when this article appeared.

For further reading:

Charles C. Cole Jr., “The Free Church Movement in New York City,” New York History XLXI (July, 1953), 284-297.

B.T. Roberts, Pungent Truths (Chicago: Free Methodist Publishing House, 1912—reprinted Salem, Ohio: H.E. Schmul, 1973).

Donald P. Brickley, Man of the Morning: The Life and Work of Phineas F. Bresee (Kansas City, Mo.: Nazarene Publishing House, 1960).

General William Booth, In Darkest England and the Way Out (London: International Headquarters of the Salvation Army, 1890—still in print).

William T. Stead, If Christ Came to Chicago (Chicago: Laird and Lee, 1894).

Norris Magnuson, “Salvation in the Slums: Evangelical Social Welfare Work, 1865-1920” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1968). This important study is available from University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan, order #69-1548.

For the rest of the series, see below: 

Recovering a Heritage, Part I: Wheaton College and Jonathan Blanchard, by Donald W. Dayton. June-July 1974. 

Recovering a Heritage, Part II: Evangelical Feminism, by Donald W. Dayton and Lucille Sider Dayton. August-September 1974. 

Recovering a Heritage, Part III: The Lane Rebellion and the Founding of Oberlin College, by Donald W. Dayton. October 1974. 

Recovering a Heritage, Part IV: The "Christian Radicalism" of Oberlin College, by Donald W. Dayton. November 1974.

Recovering a Heritage, Part V: The Rescue Case, by Donald W. Dayton. December 1974.

Recovering a Heritage, Part VI: Orange Scott and the Wesleyan Methodist, by Donald W. Dayton. January 1975.

Recovering a Heritage, Part VII: The Sermons of Luther Lee, by Donald W. Dayton. February 1975.

Recovering a Heritage, Part VIII: Theodore Weld, evangelical reformer, by Donald W. Dayton. March 1975.

Recovering a Heritage, Part IX: The Tappan Brothers: businessmen and reform, by Donald W. Dayton. April 1975.

Recovering a Heritage, Part X: Annointed to Preach the Gospel to the Poor, by Donald W. Dayton. May 1975.