BI 3322 (Part 4)

Church History: From the 16th to the 20th Centuries

April 18, 1587: English Protestant historian John Foxe, author of Actes and Monuments of Matters Happenning to the Church (the shorter version is now known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs), dies at age 71 (see issue 72: How We Got Our History).

April 18, 1874: Having died nearly a year earlier (May 1, 1873) in what is now northern Zambia, missionary-explorer David Livingstone (whose remains had been brought, as his tombstone reads, "by faithful hands over land and sea") is interred in London's Westminster Abbey (see issue 56: David Livingstone).

Where does the Apostles' Creed come from?

A. After Jesus' death and resurrection, the apostles got together to decide on a common statement of faith, with each apostle suggesting one clause.

B. The emperor Constantine, who had converted to Christianity in 312, had his theological advisors compose a creed that would impose uniformity of belief on everyone in his empire.

C. In the second century, Roman Christians used an early form of the text in the form of questions ("Do you believe in God the Father Almighty?") posed to candidates for baptism.

D. We're not sure who wrote it, but the text comes from an apocryphal book from the fourth century, attributed to the apostle Peter.

Answer: (C) The wording of these early baptismal "creeds" eventually evolved into what we now know as the "Apostles' Creed" by the 8th century. If you answered (a) you are in good company—Rufinus of Aquileia in his Commentary on the Apostles' Creed (ca. 400), argued that this is how the creed had come into being.

The Rise of RomanticismLonging for the beauty and tranquility of the past, a war-weary Europe began to express renewed interest in the supernatural and the idealism of nature.The result was the Romantic Movement, which flourished from 1760 to 1870.The Romanticists insisted that experience includes more than analytical reasoning and scientific experiment—that it also includes imagination, feeling and intuition.The Deists searched for a universal creed, while the Romanticists espoused variety as the very essence of religious experience.

The Rise of RomanticismThe Romantic Movement was not a precise system so much as a mood and a tendency, yet it was very explicit in the works of this period.

Literature, art, philosophy and theology often overlapped in the quest for a new concept of experience that would transcend the rationalism and moralism of the 18th century; we will note its influence in theology only.

The Rise of RomanticismSamuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) had a lasting impact on English theology and became known as the “father of the Broad Church Movement.”Through C., German Romanticism and Idealistic philosophy were introduced into British intellectual life.He taught that the Bible’s spiritual authority lies “in its fitness to our nature and our needs”; he contended that divine revelation is neither a wholly objective or subjective reality but requires both poles, objective fact and existential appropriation.

Samuel TaylorColeridge

(1772-1834)

The Rise of RomanticismAt the same time Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768-1834) deeply influenced Germany; he is often considered to be the dominant theologian between Calvin and Karl Barth; his theology is the most forceful statement of the Romantic and liberal understanding of the Christian religion.

His On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers (1799), was an attempt to win the educated classes back to religion, which he defined as “a sense and taste for the infinite.”

Schleiermacher

The Rise of RomanticismHis systematic theology and his masterpiece was The Christian Faith (1821-22).He began, not with the dogmas of the past, but with an inward analysis of himself; he became aware of a sense of dependence on something beyond himself and concluded that this awareness was God-consciousness, the source of all religion; from this he developed his theory of the feeling of Absolute Dependence.The claims of faith did not represent objective knowledge, but expressions of devout self-consciousness or the Christian’s inner experience.

The Rise of RomanticismThe ceremonies and doctrines of religion are always preceded by devout self-consciousness, God-consciousness, and the absolute feeling of dependence; it was Christ’s perfect God-consciousness that constituted his divinity, and he redeems men by inspiring God-consciousness in them.Thus we are dependent on Jesus, but orthodox doctrines such as the resurrection and second coming of Christ are not essential.His emphasis on feeling as the basis of religion was a reaction against both rationalism and formal orthodoxy.

The Rise of LiberalismS. is credited with being the father of Liberal Protestantism which originated in the 19th c. reached its zenith in the decades before World War II.It to link S. with Liberalism is strange in the sense that his theology was Romantic, a reaction against rationalism; and Liberalism was a continuance of rationalism; but it was his thesis that all doctrines must be shown to be directly related to the religious self-consciousness that opened the way for radical examination of previously unquestioned orthodox doctrines.

The Rise of LiberalismLiberalism was characterized by an eagerness to discard old orthodox forms if they were judged to be irrational in the light of modern knowledge or irrelevant to what was regarded as the central core of religious experience.The second criterion (the central core of religious experience) came directly from Schleiermacher; the first criterion (the light of modern knowledge) came directly from G. W. G. Hegel.

Hegel

The Rise of LiberalismHegel’s dialectical process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis was postulated on an essentially evolutionary view of the universe; his system involved not only the natural sciences but also such disciplines as history, law, aesthetics and religion.Truth lay in the whole; he did away with distinctions between the world of things and the world of the spirit, insisting rather that all things are the result of the growth of spirit toward the ideal.His reasoning method opened the way for analyzing how things are evolved, even the Scriptures; his premise was that Absolute Spirit was manifesting itself in the historical process.

The Rise of LiberalismF. C. Baur (1792-1860) used Hegel’s methodology to develop his methods of biblical criticism.B. saw Peter’s portrayal of Jesus as the thesis and Paul’s as the antithesis, with the early church creeds becoming the synthesis; from this basis he proceeded to determine which NT books were written by Paul and which were not.His conclusions were not as important as the fact that he opened the way for “scientific” research on the Bible.He founded the Tubingen School (a school of NT theologians who tried to apply Hegel’s conception of development to primitive Christianity.

F. C. Baur

The Rise of LiberalismDavid Friedrich Strauss (1808-74) was a pupil of Baur and strongly influenced by Schleiermacher and Hegel.

Applying Hegelianism to the NT, he wrote his Life of Jesus in 1835, portraying Jesus as simply a man who was raised to the mythical status of Christ by the messianic expectations of his time; he denied the historical validity of many of the Gospel narratives and set the pace for others to work on the NT books in an effort to establish their historical value.

David FredrichStrauss

The Rise of LiberalismAnother Life of Jesus (1863) was written by Ernest Renan (1823-92), who presented Jesus as the enlightened modern man of rationalism as opposed to the orthodox Christ that had been known for 17 centuries; he rejected the accounts of the miracles as being unscientific and untenable.Baur, Strauss, and Renan represented an era in which serious theologians were applying general historical principles to the Bible; these principles presupposed that the biblical documents were human and that it was possible to ask if the events recorded in the documents were true.

Ernest Renan

The Rise of LiberalismSuch inquiry led to questions like: What are the most reliable biblical texts? What are the sources the authors used? What are the relationships of these sources to other oral and written materials of the time? What was the author’s purpose and intention?

Protestant conservatives attacked the “higher criticism,” and the RCC established the Biblical Commission (1902) to make sure that no Roman Catholic scholar advocated historical views alien to church dogma.

The Rise of LiberalismThe new Liberalism of the 19th c. agreed with S. that religious faith must be grounded in experience, but it pointed out that S. failed to see that Christian experience is only appropriated through the existence of particular, objective events in history; thus the new call was “back to the historical sources,” and the theological response to that was the Ritschlian school of theology whose influence dominated Protestant though in Germany from 1875 to WW I and in America from 1900 to as late as 1930.

The Rise of LiberalismThe Ritschlian school was a perfect expression of Protestant Liberal theology because of its skepticism concerning metaphysics, its rejection of church dogma and natural theology, its concentration on the historical Jesus and his moral teachings, and the idea of the kingdom of God as the communion of spiritually free persons.The school was named after Albert Ritschl (1822-89).

Albrecht Ritschl

The Rise of LiberalismFor Ritschl, religion was not located in feelings, as with Schleiermacher, nor in metaphysical knowledge, as with Hegel—but in practical experience of moral freedom; we apprehend by faith, not by reason, and this faith rests not on the intellectual apprehension of a series of facts but on the making of value-judgment.R. also insisted that it was to community, not to individuals, that the gospel was, and still is, committed; the final purpose of God for redeemed man is the moral integration of humanity into the kingdom of God.

The Rise of LiberalismOne of R’s outstanding disciples was Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930), German historian and foremost Patristic scholar of the time.H. applied R’s critical methodology to the field of church history, maintaining that the metaphysics which came into Christian theology was an alien intrusion from Greek sources.In his later years, he stressed the moral side of Christianity, especially the claims of human brotherhood, to the exclusion of all that was doctrinal.In summary, the Ritschlian school was characterized by its stress on ethics and on the “community,” and its repudiation of metaphysics and religious experience.

The Rise of LiberalismThe student of Ritschl who became the most extreme in his rejection of traditional religious doctrine and values was Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900).The Nazism of Hitler’s Germany has often been seen as a product, or at least a by-product, of Nietzsche’s philosophy; 20th c. Nihilism definitely had roots there as did the “Death of God” theology of the 1960s.Nietzsche was the son of a Lutheran pastor and the nephew and grandson of Lutheran pastors (mother’s side).

Friedrich Nietzsche

The Rise of LiberalismN. was influenced by the atheistic philosopher Schopenhauer as well as Ritschl.His most famous work, Thus Spake Zarathustra, appeared in four parts, 1883-1885; in this he presented two of his most significant ideas: the transvaluation of values and the Ubermensch (Superman); the term was often associated with Nazi racial theories; N’s own translation probably would have been “Overman” or superior man.N. denounced the Christian values of pity, humility, kindness, and gentleness as weakness and herd morality; he extolled the “will to power” (the power of the great individual ruthlessly pursuing success without moral scruples) as being life’s dominant force.

The Rise of LiberalismSoren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), a Danish theologian, worked to overthrow the rational pretensions of Hegelianism.Although well known in Denmark, he was generally shunned as an eccentric because he demanded such a radical Christianity in 19th c. Europe; yet he was extremely influential in Europe after WW I, and he became known as the “father” of Christian existentialism; he is also known as the spiritual founder of the dialectical theology associated with Karl Barth and Neoorthodoxy.

The Rise of LiberalismWhereas the Ritschlian school emphasized the concept of community, Kierkegaard laid stress on the relation of the individual soul with God almost to the exclusion of the idea of a Christian community; he lambasted the hypocrisy of conventional Christianity and the institutional church, especially the state church of Denmark; he said that where everyone is considered Christian by the conventional act of baptism, Christianity as such does not exist.

The Rise of LiberalismIn his well-known doctrine, “Truth is subjectivity,” he insisted that it is wrong to think of religious truth, or faith, as acquired in the same way one acquires other knowledge; in Christianity, the issue is not objective truth, but the relationship of the existing individual to Christianity.In true existential form, he held that only a faith which exhibits passionate appropriation of its object is a true faith; since its object cannot be certainly known, faith involves a risk, which K. called the “leap of faith.”Man, in his sin and finitude, is in no position to resolve his own predicament; salvation can come only from God himself, the Wholly Other, a description which occupied the attention of Neoorthodoxy in the 20th c.

The Rise of LiberalismKierkegaard accepted the biblical traditions and was uninterested in the historical criticism of men like D. F. Strauss; but he opposed Hegel’s idea that absolute knowledge is possible and rational, contending instead that man must decide to take the “leap of faith” without proofs of God’s existence.

The Rise of LiberalismCatholic Modernism.The counterpart to Protestant Liberalism has usually been referred to as Modernism in the RCC; beginning in the later years of the 19th c., Modernism was a movement aimed at bringing the tradition of Catholic belief into closer relation with the modern outlook in philosophy, the historical, and other sciences and social ideas.The Catholic Modernists wholeheartedly adopted the critical view of the Bible, and accepted that the biblical writers were subject to many of the limitations of other historians; often they were even more skeptical than the Protestant scholars.

The Rise of LiberalismCatholic Modernism.A leading figure was Alfred Firmin Loisy (1857-1940), a French professor who was excommunicated in 1908 for his liberal treatment of the Gospels.In reply to Harnack’s What Is Christianity?, L. wrote The Gospel and the Church (1902), maintaining that the essence of Christianity is to be found in the faith of the developed church.It was not necessary to prove that Christ founded a church or established the sacraments; the important fact was the present existence of both; he also concluded that the Gospels did not report reliably the teachings of Jesus but expressed the faith of the early church.The RCC condemned all his works and excommunicated him.

The Rise of LiberalismCatholic Modernism.George Tyrrell (1861-1909), an Irishman converted to Catholicism from high Anglicanism, was another Modernist of note.T. accepted the apocalyptical interpretation of Jesus and his message as set forth by Loisy, Weiss, and Schweitzer; he held that the important thing about Jesus’ message was its spiritual truth; that Jesus was mistaken in his literal belief in a coming new age is not significant; Jesus was possessed by the truth of a great idea and had to embody it in the limited thought forms of his day.For his views, T. was dismissed from the Jesuits and deprived of the sacraments.

The Rise of LiberalismCatholic Modernism.C. Modernism was most systematically formulated by the Frenchman Edouard Le Roy (1870-1954); his significant work was Dogma and Criticism (1907); he rejected the scholastic conception of dogma, claiming it would lead either to anthropomorphism or agnosticism; instead dogma had a simple twofold purpose of excluding certain false notions and guiding one in his religious life; the resurrection of Christ, for instance, was not to be understood as historical fact but as a guiding principle of Christ’s continuing activity in the world; his book was condemned the same year it was published.

EdouardLe Roy

The Rise of LiberalismCatholic Modernism.Leo XIII (1878-1903) at first gave considerable encouragement to the Modernists, but in his later years became increasingly critical.Pius X (1903-1914) distrusted the movement from the first and condemned it in 1907; in 1910 he imposed an anti-Modernist oath on all suspect clergy and most of the clergy connected with the movement were excommunicated.Although it was almost completely eradicated, the more recent doctrines of men like Emmanuel Mournier and Teilhard de Chardin reflect vestiges of the earlier Modernism.

April 23, 1073: Hildebrand is elected pope, taking the name Gregory VII. The first pope to excommunicate a ruler (Henry IV), Gregory was driven out of Rome in 1084. "I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity," were his last words, "therefore I died in exile.

April 23, 1538: John Calvin and William Farel (whom Calvin was assisting) are banished from Geneva. The day before, Easter Sunday, both had refused to administer communion, saying the city was too full of vice to partake. Three years later, Calvin returned to the city he would forever be associated with (see issue 12: John Calvin).

April 23, 1968: The Evangelical United Brethren Church joins with the much larger Methodist Church, forming the United Methodist Church, the largest Methodist group in the world and America's second-largest Protestant denomination (after the Southern Baptist Convention).

April 24, 387: On this day, Augustine of Hippo writes in his autobiographical Confessions, "We were baptized and all anxiety for our past life vanished away." The 33-year-old had been a teacher of rhetoric and pagan philosophies at some of the Roman Empire's finest schools, but after great influence by his mother, Monica, and the famous bishop Ambrose, he turned to Christianity. His baptism by Ambrose, on Easter Sunday, marked his entrance into the church (see issue 15:Augustine and issue 67:Augustine).

The Industrial RevolutionTheological Response Christianity faced one of its greatest challenges in the Industrial Revolution.Two overwhelming needs cried for attention: 1) spiritual conversion of the thousands who packed the cities; 2) physical assistance to the oppressed and destitute.The response of the religious community came in wide variety, both in the kind and the amount of help.

The Industrial RevolutionThe ChurchesAs a whole, the established churches of the 19th c. were not able to accommodate the radical changes brought on by the swelling cities; the organizational structure of the C of E made it virtually impossible for it to be flexible enough to meet the demands; an act of parliament (time consuming and costly) was required for a new parish to be created.Consequently, the new urban masses found that there was not room for them in church and there was usually no clergyman to care for their spiritual need.

The Industrial RevolutionThe ChurchesThe parish church was often called “the Tory Party at prayer,” while a new generation grew up outside the church; Christianity was viewed in contempt as “the bulwark and refuge of privilege” by many who were burdened for the betterment of the masses.Then, in the 1830s & 1840s, an awareness of responsibility seemed to take hold of both parliament and the C of E, resulting in acts to correct the more flagrant abuses and to enable the church to meet the conditions of the time.

The Industrial RevolutionThe ChurchesLarger parishes were reduced in size and new parishes created; revenues of wealthy bishoprics were shared with the poorer ones; the compulsory payment of local parish rates was made voluntary; several societies were formed to sponsor the erection of new church buildings and repair old ones; in 1836 the Pastoral Aid Society was organized to increase the number of clergy.

The Industrial RevolutionThe ChurchesThe Methodists were much quicker to respond; with their itinerant and local preachers, it was easier for them to go where the people were; their simple, barnlike preaching places made the poor feel comfortable in church; their lack of ecclesiastical machinery made it possible for them to act more quickly; since a small group is usually able to take a more radical stand than a larger group. The Ms were in the forefront of many social reforms; the Primitive Methodists had a special interest in those who were replaced by the looms.

The Industrial RevolutionThe ChurchesWhile Ms would not condone violence, great numbers of them joined Workingmen’s Associations, although labor unions were illegal until the middle of the century; thereafter one-third of Ms entered the labor unions, taking with them their zeal, their Christian ideology and their experience as lay preachers.The concept of class imposed itself on the character of churches; the Wesleyans (Methodists) and the Congregationalists tended to attract the middle class, while the Baptist “Tabernacle” and the Primitive Methodist “Bethel” usually had a working-class congregations; the C of E was mainly the church of the privileged.

The Industrial RevolutionThe ChurchesThere developed a very distinct difference between the “chapel working class” and the “brute working class” of the back alleys; the Pleasant Sunday Afternoon (PSA) Movement was organized in 1880 for the express purpose of ministering to the working classes; men were assembled on Sunday afternoons, in their working clothes, for a program that was entertaining, religious, and patriotic.In the 20th c. the PSA became the basis of the international Brotherhood Movement.

The Industrial RevolutionThe ChapelsFrom the 1840s the city churches in England established satellite missions in the poorer areas of the city; more than just preaching stations, these missions were all-purpose relief stations, with clothing societies, penny banks, soup kitchens and other benevolent agencies; the concept of church as a covenant community gathered for worship gave way to the idea of church as a bustling organization engaged in various aspects of the missionary task; ministers became organizational men, running vast programs of evangelism and social redemption.These missions were known as chapels; the identification of chapel, however, was not reserved for the small satellite mission stations.

The Industrial RevolutionThe Chapels“Chapel” became the accepted distinction between the established C of E and the Nonconformist evangelicals.Some of the great free churches of this time were called chapels; Charles Haddon Spurgeon was the most popular preacher of his day and is still referred to as the “prince of preachers.”In 1854 he became pastor of the Park Street Chapel (Baptist) in London, where the power of his sermons led to many conversions; his chapel was expanded into the specially erected Metropolitan Tabernacle which seated 6,000.

The Industrial RevolutionThe Chapels

Commensurate with the chapels of that day, the MT also supported a large orphanage, a Pastor’s College for training young ministers, a Colportage Society for distributing Christian literature and a monthly magazine, The Sword and the Trowel; the title of the magazine symbolized the spirit of the day, the sword (Bible) of the church united with the trowel of service and work.

The Industrial RevolutionThe ChapelsDuring the latter part of the 19th c. “Church” came to mean bishops, parishes, the Book of Common Prayer and deference to “the Establishment” in both church and state.“Chapel” stood for two forms of dissent: the older, more loosely organized groups, such as the Baptists and Congregationalists, and the newer, more centrally organized brands of evangelicalism such as the Methodists; chapel religion made great strides and produced deep rifts in English Christianity; the chapels of the IR gave encouragement to the rural dissent against urban Anglicanism, and Nonconformists pushed to secure equal rights with Anglicans.

The Industrial RevolutionThe Salvation ArmyOne of the most effective and enduring efforts to offset the problems of an industrialized society was the formation of the Salvation Army.William Booth (1829-1912), the founder and first general, was an ordained minister in the Methodist New Connection; with his wife, Catherine, Booth left the Methodists in 1861 and established a revivalist movement of his own.In 1865 B. began his ministry among the poverty-stricken, unchurched masses in the East End of London.

William Booth

Booth Preaching

1917

The Industrial RevolutionThe Salvation ArmyAt first he tried to make his work supplementary to the churches, but found that impractical because most of the converts did not want to go to the churches where they were sent and they often were not accepted when they did go; so B. began to organize his work of the name Christian Mission, giving his followers a place to worship.Aware that needy souls could not be cared for if the body were hungry or in distress, B. started his social scheme to feed and house even the most depraved and then to try to uplift them spiritually.

The Industrial RevolutionThe Salvation ArmyQuickly, B’s mission stations were spread throughout London and beyond; in 1878 the names was changed to the Salvation Army, with an explicit military theme including uniforms, corps, citadels, and the magazine The War Cry; the organization followed a military pattern with a direct line of authority and a system of training personnel; the style of government was autocratic and unquestioning obedience was required throughout the ranks.Booth was general for life and was succeeded by his son William Bramwell Booth; but since 1931 the general has been elected by the High Council.

The Industrial RevolutionThe Salvation ArmyFrom Britain overseas expansion followed with SA pioneers coming to the US in 1880; the first headquarters were established at Philadelphia and the movement grew rapidly in spite of opposition; today the Army is generally accepted and widely supported.Following its original emphases of salvation and service, its ministry includes treatment centers, maternity home and hospitals, camps, boys’ and girls’ clubs, community recreation centers, lodging, etc.; the SA also conducts regular worship services and regularly proclaims the gospel on the streets.

The Industrial RevolutionThe ReformersBooth was only one of many who were impatient with the church’s slow response.Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, a member of the Conservative Party in parliament, was a dedicated reformer who championed many causes and worked tirelessly to relieve the oppression of the working classes.His personal investigation of the London slums in 1846 led to the passing of the Ten Hours’ Bill in 1847 and the Factory Act of 1874; he also took up the cause of women and children in the mines and secured passage of the Climbing Boys Act on behalf of the chimney sweeps.

The Industrial RevolutionThe ReformersFor many years he was president of the British and Foreign Bible Society, took great interest in the London City Mission, the C.M.S. and the Y.M.C.A.A fervent evangelical, he hated ritualism and fought rationalism; he also worked for the abolition of slavery, the reformation of juvenile delinquents, the education of poor children, improved housing and the protection of animals.

The Industrial RevolutionThe EvangelistsWhile some were interested primarily in the physical plight of the oppressed, others were concerned about the spiritual needs and eternal destination of the poor; they were also advocates of social reform, but saw their primary calling as that of spiritual ministry.In the C of E a minority of evangelicals continued to thrive, preaching the necessity of conversion, stressing family prayers and the observance of Sunday, studying the Bible fervently, producing religious literature and giving sacrificially to charity.The evangelicals of the period produced hymns like, “Come, ye thankful people, come” (1844), “In heavenly love abiding,” (1850), “I love to tell the story” (1866), and “Take my life and let it be . . .” (1874).

The Industrial RevolutionAmerican EvangelismThe fervor of the evangelicals and Methodists were greatly strengthened by the introduction of American evangelism to the British Isles; the two most prominent evangelists of the period were Charles G. Finney and Dwight Lyman Moody.Finney was the outstanding revivalist across the northern states in the 2nd quarter of the century; he made several preaching tours in the cities of the British Isles in the middle of the century, and the Salvation Army copied many of his methods.

Broadway Tabernacle

The Industrial RevolutionAmerican EvangelismDwight L. Moody was a drastic contrast to the erudite Finney; he was neither a scholar nor an ordained clergyman; converted in a Congregational church in his late teens, he went to Chicago and became a successful shoe salesman; but he devoted most of his time to voluntary religious work—organizing a Sunday school, home visitation, welfare activities and personal “soul-winning.”In 1860 he gave up business and became an independent city missionary.

Dwight L. Moody

Moody at New York Hippodrome, 1876

The Industrial RevolutionAmerican EvangelismDuring the Civil War he worked with the YMCA, ministering to the wounded; in 1865 he returned to Chicago and organized several state and international Sunday school teachers’ conventions.Ira David Sankey (1840-1908) joined Moody in 1870, accompanying his preaching with singing and organ-playing; M. first visited England in 1867 and returned with Sankey on a preaching tour from 1872-1875, during which the Sankey and Moody Hymn Book was published; the tour through England, Scotland and Ireland was supported by clergy of all denominations and had a wide and enthusiastic response.

Ira David Sankey1840-1908

Sankey andFanny J. Crosby

The Industrial RevolutionAmerican EvangelismM. conducted a similar mission tour to Brooklyn, Philadelphia, New York and Boston, 1875-77; he founded a girls’ school, Northfield Seminary (1879), a boys’ school, Mt. Hermon (1881), and a Bible institute, Moody Bible Institute (1889) (Chicago).He made a 2nd tour of Great Britain 1881-84, during which he made his first appeal to the academic world; he subsequently began organizing student conferences for Bible study.

The Industrial RevolutionAmerican Evangelism

In 1891-2, he made another successful visit to England; M’s wide success as an evangelist was due to his courage in pursuing converts in spite of opposition, the frankness, vigor and urgency of his appeal and the use of the inquiry room and other revivalist methods.

Christianity had produced man and methods who knew how to reach the masses and tens of thousands were converted.

MovementsThe Youth MovementEvangelicals and independents assured the future of their causes with programs for and education of their youth; the Sunday school movement was a direct product of the evangelical revival in England.Sunday schools were put to use by missionaries in Asia, Africa and the Americas and in 1889 the first of a series of World’s Sunday School Conventions assembled in London.The movement depended chiefly on laymen and women as voluntary unsalaried teachers, but was generally supported by the clergy.

MovementsThe Youth MovementAnother youth movement was the Young Men’s Christian Association begun in 1844 by George Williams, a London draper; deeply influenced by Charles G. Finney, Williams began to witness to his fellow clerks at work; during a prayer meeting in Williams’ room, twelve young men banded together to win other young men to the Christian faith; similar groups began to spring up in the British Isles, Canada and the U.S.; in 1855 the World’s Alliance of the Young Men’s Christian Association was established.

George Williams

MovementsThe Youth MovementThe YMCA began with emphasis on evangelism, prayer meetings and bible study, but soon added educational, social and athletic facilities to promote wholesome activities for young men and boys.The greatest growth has been in the US where many large plants have been built; its sister organization, the YWCA, first appeared in Germany and Great Britain in the 1850s, but its greatest growth as well has been in the US.

MovementsThe Youth Movement

The YMCA movement produced a remarkable man, John R. Mott (1865-1955), a traveling secretary for the movement.

Mott became one of the original founders of the Student Volunteer Movement; while associated with the SVM, Mott, a Methodist layman, inspired thousands of youth to become evangelists and missionaries under the watchword, “the evangelization of the world in our generation.”

John R. Mott

MovementsThe Youth Movement

Countries from around the world invited M. to organize their youth, the Anglican Church made him a canon, the Russian Orthodox Church granted him a doctor’s degree, and in 1946 he received the Nobel Peace prize.

MovementsThe Social GospelDuring the 1880s the American clergy almost unanimously opposed socialism; after 1890, however, many Protestant leaders adopted ideas from socialism.The Society of Christian Socialist was organized in 1889, accepting many of the ideas of socialism, but repudiating its antireligious bias.George D. Herron (1862-1925), professor at Iowa College, was a popular lecturer on the subject of transforming society into the kingdom of God; his popularity wanted when he became fanatical in insisting that the institution of private property was un-Christian; he had, however, opened the discussion of the possibility of the kingdom of God being this-worldly rather than other-worldly.

MovementsThe Social Gospel

The exponents of social Christianity offered a social doctrine of the kingdom of God redefined as the community which includes all who are ethically interested; by contrast the church had long been more exclusively defined as the community of the redeemed.

The man who gave classic formulation to this new concept of the kingdom of God was Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918).

Walter Rauschenbusch

MovementsThe Social GospelR. was the son of a German Baptist profess in the Rochester Theological Seminary and became the pastor of the Second German Baptist Church in New York City on the edge of Hell’s Kitchen, one of the city’s infamous slums; after 11 years of facing the horrors of poverty and economic insecurity, R. emerged as the founder of the Social Gospel in America.He was disinterested in dogma and stressed the historical Jesus as the initiator of the divine community, the kingdom of God.

MovementsThe Social Gospel

This kingdom, as preached by Jesus, was not a purely internal, spiritual possession of the individual, but was involved with relationships and responsibilities for our fellowman.

Among R’s works were Christianity and the Social Gospel (1907), Christianizing the Social Order (1912), and A Theology for the Social Gospel (1917).

MovementsThe Social GospelR. stressed that the kingdom of God is always both present and future, that the kingdom of God is humanity organized according to the will of God, that the kingdom must be the purpose for which the church exists, that all problems of personal salvation must be considered from the point of view of the kingdom, and that the kingdom is not confined within the limits of the church.

MovementsThe Social GospelR. led a host of thinkers and activists who sought to make ethics central in religionWashington Gladden joined him in calling for unions, cooperatives, profit sharing and socialization of railroads and utilities; Josiah Strong contended that greed for money was corrupting the nation; Harry F. Ward led the successful effort to get a social creed stated in the purposes of the Federal Council of Churches; Ernst Troeltsch published his monumental Social Thinking of the Christian Churches.

Washington Gladden

Ernst Troeltsch

MovementsThe Social GospelCharles M. Sheldon, a pastor in Topeka, Kansas, with his sentimental novel, In His Steps (1896), that asked the question, “What would Jesus Do?” became a major apostle not only of the Social Gospel but the wider liberal movement; WWJD was the original and liberal version of the more recent evangelical expression with bracelets, etc.

Charles M. Sheldon