Christianity in the U. S. Since the Civil War, and the Missionary Enterprise Worldwide

1. Christianity in the U. S. Since the Civil War, and the Missionary Enterprise Worldwide Hy 236 Spring 2008 April

2. Post Civil War Trends • Americans tended to believe that they were destined to lead the world, to prepare the Anglo-Saxon race to bring liberty, Christianity, the “highest civilization” to the world. • Protestantism and freedom of opinion “were the great contributionof the Nordic races against the tyranny and Catholicism of Southern European races.” • The Missionary Movement.

3. Modern missionary movement began in the 1790s with a cobbler named William Carey. Also tied to growing colonialism of the world by Europeans in the nineteenth century. The Missionary Movement and William Carey

4. Missionary Societies • Among these, the Baptist Missionary Society founded by Carey in 1792 the most important. • The London Missionary Society, the British and Foreign Bible Society, and others came into existence about the same time. Similar societies sprang up on other European countries and the U. S. about the same time, devoted to spreading the Gospel in the world. • The missionary societies had widespread popular support, different from earlier missionary movements which were sponsored either by the state or specific denominations/churches.

5. Women in Missionary Enterprises • Women played impt. roles, founding their own societies, both Catholic and Protestant, emphasizing teaching, nursing, care for the aged, etc. among Catholics, while Protestant women moved into areas forbidden to them at home, such as preacing and organizing churches. Their successes overseas helped promote the feminist movement for equality at home.

6. Spirit of Cooperation and Ecumenicism Promoted by Missionary Enterprise • Success in cooperation abroad was again influential on bringing down the barriers at home between denominations.

7. Asia and Oceania • Much of Asia and Oceania (the islands and people of the Pacific) had fallen into some form the European control through imperialism by the 19th century, for “commerce and its protection often led to military and political conquest.” • It was natural for missionaries to go to these regions, although initially, companies such as the British East Indian Company which came to control India opposed missionaries as disruptive, producing tensions and hindering trade.

8. India and William Carey • Enter Carey, raised an Anglican, subsequently converted to Baptist. “Joining his faith to his awareness of distant lands, he came to the conviction, unusual in his time, that Christians had the obligation to preach the gospel to those in far countries who had not heard of it.” When no one volunteered to go to India, he decided he himself would go; and he did, to Calcutta in 1793

9. Carey in India • Many struggles and hurdles to overcome. • Devoted to many areas, including translating the Bible into thirty-five languages! • Also devoted to putting an end to widows immolating themselves on their husbands’ funeral pyres. • Wrote often back to Britain and U. S. and popularized the work of missionaries.

10. Missionary Progress in India • Slow going, but after Carey others carried the work forward, such as the Scotsman Alexander Duff who promoted education. Many leaders of the Indian independence movement of the 20th century were either Christians or profoundly influenced by Christianity. • Caste system broken down within the missionary churches, many “untouchables” found in Protestantism a liberating force. Also women could realize their freedom within the churches. College at Serampore

11. China as Missionary Enterprise • Early Christianity, through Jesuits and Dominicans, planted but disappeared under severe persecution.

12. China as Missionary Enterprise, 2 • Protestants in 19th century translated the Bible into Chinese (Scotsman Robert Morrison). • First convert for Morrison took him seven years! • Chinese government’s resistance to Christian missionaries broke down with the Opium War of 1839-1842.

13. China as Missionary Enterprise, 3 • British merchants persuaded British govt. to go to war to protect their right to import opium into China, in spite of imperial government’s decrees. One of the worst examples of western imperialism. • Treaty of Nanking ended war, gave Hong Kong to British, and other ports. • Missionaries given protection as European powers emulated the British and penetrated China.

14. Boxer Rebellion to the Communism of Mao Ze Dung • 1899-1901 a rebellion by Chinese against foreign intervention broke out. Thousands of missionaries and converts killed. • Western powers eventually crushed the rebellion, an army beseiging and capturing Beijing to free Western diplomats. • Missionaries in early 20th century began to flourish again, making tens of thousands of converts. • This continued through the first half of the 20th century until the Chinese Communists came to power in the late 1940s.

15. Realities of Nineteenth-Twentieth Century America • Industrialization and urbanization and immigration had created great disparities in wealth. Christians sought to meet these needs through social organizations, the beginning of the “social gospel” movement. • YMCA founded, creation of Sunday Schools, adapting of “revivals” to the urban environment.

16. Dwight I. Moody • Started out as a shoe salesman. Moved by lack of religious spirit. Founded an independent Church. • Started working with YMCA, then preaching in England and America to the masses. • Simple and emotive preaching, calling for repentance and acceptance of salvation and Jesus Christ. Convinced that conversion of the masses would lead to better living conditions in the cities. • A revival arose around his preaching.

17. Holiness Churches • Some Methodists wished to return to earlier concerns with masses and to Wesley’s teachings on sanctification. • This emphasis became known as “holiness” movement and holiness churches, the most numerous being the Church of the Nazarene, organized in 1908 by union of several holiness churches. • Worship in holiness churches marked by outpouring of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, such as speaking in tongues,miracles of healing, and prophetic utterances. • The Azusa Street Revival of Los Angeles, 1906, greatest manifestation of this movement.

18. Pentecostalism • In the wake of the Azuza Pentecostal Street revival, “fire spread throughout the nation, including both black and white people. Moved up from its Wesleyan tradition and taken up by many Baptists and others. “ • William J. Seymour, one of the founders. • In 1914, many gathered and there emerged the “Assemblies of God,” the main Pentecostal denomination in the U. S. The Apostolic Faith Mission at 312 Azusa Street, ca. 1906.

19. Seventh Day Adventists • In 19th century a Vermont Baptist named William Miller, reading and interpreting prophetic scripture in Daniel and the rest of Scripture concluded that the Lord would return (parousia) in 1843. When that date passed many followers left him. Then a prophet named Ellen Harmon White appeared, and organized the Seventh Day Adventists, so named because they observed the seventh day of the week, rather than Sunday.

20. Twentieth Century Trends • While conflict between liberal and fundamentalist Protestants continued—the famous Scopes trial of the mid-1920s the most famous incident in this long conflict, most Christian denominations united in one great cause, Prohibitionism. In 1919 the 18th Amendment was ratified and it went into affect. However, “legislating morality” proved far more difficult in the enforcement than the enactment and the amendment was repealed in 1933.

21. Protestant Liberalism • Protestant Liberalism represented the “modern” response of some Christians to the challenges of the new age of science, the theories of evolution, and the new faith in the capacity of mankind to overcome diseases, wars, solve problems, and bring in a new age of joy, freedom, justice, peace and abundance. Protestant liberalism largely restricted to middle and upper classes of the Northeast.

22. Rise of Fundamentalism • Many saw liberal Protestantism as loosing touch with the “fundamentals” of Christianity, and so “fundamentalism” came into vogue in the mid-nineteenth century. • In 1895, a meeting of fundamentalists at Niagra Falls, NY listed the five “fundamentals” that “could not be denied without falling into the error of liberalism.”

23. Five Fundamentals and Niagra Falls • “These were the inerrancy of Scripture, the divinity of Jesus, the Virgin birth, Jesus’ death on the cross as a substitute for our sins, and his physical resurrection and impending return.” • New interpretations of the Bible—especially those devoted to revealing the order of Jesus’s Second coming arose in this period.

24. The “Dispensationalists” • The most successful of the schemes explaining the plan of God was developed by Cyrus Scofield, who “divided human history into seven ‘dispensations’—the present one being the sixth.” In 1909 the Scofield Bible was published, outlining this interpretation of history, and it soon circulated widely in fundamentalist circles, and fundamentalism became closely tied to dispensationalism.

25. The Social Gospel • Led by Walter Rauschenbush, a professor of church history at a Baptist seminary in the late nineteenth century, a group of liberals began to devote themselves more and more to addressing the misery of the urban masses. • “

26. The Social Gospel, 2 • He insisted that the social and economic life of the nation should conform to the requirements of the gospel, and showed that economic liberalism—the theory of the law of supply an demand suffices to regulate the marketplace—results in great inequity and social injustice.” • Christians should work to alleviate the unbridled power of capital and to help the poor and promote greater justice; ergo, the social gospel, a powerful component of Progressivism of the period.

27. Prohibition

28. Prohibition, 2 • Although many Christians divided over “liberal” vs.”fundamental” forms of Christianity, they tended to united in the campaign to eliminate alcohol consumption in the U. S. This temperance movement finally culminated in • 1919, when the 18th amendment was passed, and Prohibition became the law of the land. It was repealed in 1933.

29. Post Second War Christianity • The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association established in 1950 to promote conversion in the old American evangelical revival tradition, partly in response to perceived falling away from the Church in the wave of prosperity and material contentment that pervaded post-war America.

30. His background, ascendancy, and message over time. And, of course Billy Graham on You Tube! Billy Graham Crusades

31. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Crusade • The Civil Rights movement, from a Christian perspective, had its roots in the deep faith in historically black churches where much of the movement was located. • Set off by returning black soldiers from WWII and the Korean War, who had fought as equals, yet were denied equality at home because of continuing segregation.

32. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Crusade, 2 • The armed forces were integrated in 1947 and the Supreme Court issued its famous Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954 opening up the legal road to desegregation. • Among the leaders who emerged was Martin Luther King, Jr.

33. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Crusade, 3 • “We shall overcome” became the battle cry of the Civil Rights movement, which was firmly Christian and equally firmly non-violent. • “I have a dream speech” summer 1963 a landmark in the movement. • The Southern Christian Leadership Confence (SCLC) founded by King followed his precepts after his assassination in Memphis in 1968.

34. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Crusade, 4 • The movement embraced not only a theology of equality, but a theology devoted to liberating the poor from oppression, regardless of color, race, gender, and one devoted to justice across the spectrum of the human experience. • So, the movement moved into such areas as the anti-war movement, for the draft and recruitment among the poor and uneducated was patently unjust.

35. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Crusade, 5 • “The entire movement found much of its inspiration in the Christian faith of the black community. The old ‘spirituals’ gained new meaning—or, rather, they were given once again the defiant meaning they had when first sang in the old plantations. Churches became gathering and training places for protesters. Preachers articulated the connection between the gospel and the movement. Finally, a ‘black theology’ emerged. This was the theology that was both essentiall orthodox and an affirmation of the black reality, hope and struggle.”

36. Charismatic Movement • Meanwhile, the Azuza Street Holiness movement, largely relegated to lower classes and Holiness churches began to spread out in the 1950s and 1960s to suburbia and even within mainline congregations. The movement emphasized the baptism of the Holy Spirit, faith healing, prophecy, and speaking in tongues, all examples of early Christian practices

37. Charismatic Movement, 2 • Led by such preachers as Oral Roberts, Kenneth Hagin, and Bob Yandian, they founded “non-denominational” churches devoted to worshipping as the Holy Spirit directed them, and closely tied to the preaching of the Word as expressed literally in the Bible. Many embraced the seeming immediacy of the Second Coming as prophesied especially in the Book of Revelations.

38. Moral Majority • Evangelicals banded together for political action as the “moral majority” in the 1970s and 1980s, expressing their values in the political forums.

39. The Televangelists The Electronic Church