The Great Divide

This week, in addition to enjoying summer break (personally, with my family as well as professionally, by getting some work done) I have been doing some various blog/article reading on what some might consider to be the Great Divide in American Protestant Religious History of the twentieth century:  that between the Religious Left and Religious Right.

Now, this topic is one that I talk a good deal about in The Mainline, so I won't go over what I say there here.  Rather, I want to say a few things about what I've been reading as well as touch on something else that this great divide has gotten me thinking about while I soak up the summer sun.  First, there are the articles announcing the decline of the Religious Right/resurgence of the Religious Left (which is something I mentioned in the book might happen, and more likely would be something that scholars claimed following the election of President Obama in 2008).  There is little doubt that there has been an out pouring of scholarship of late on the Religious Left/Liberal evangelicals (here is a New York Times article about it), and that this is important in its own right, as well as something (from an academic stand point) to be welcomed.  Liberal Protestantism does need more study, and doing so might also add more nuance to the discussion of Mainline decline as well as better appreciate the complexities of American Protestantism and how it has related to American culture and politics in the last 50 to 60 years.

That being said, should it be triumphant?  Some of this scholarship seems to imply that liberal Protestantism is responsible for the civil rights movement, the Great Society, indeed of "liberalism" in the American political and cultural senses.  And at least some recent polls seem to argue that Religious Progressives/Religious Left are growing in the United States and that decline has (at last, some of them say) set into the Religious Right.

It sounds nice, but it falls flat I think.  As some of these scholars point out, what they really need to study (and is also perhaps a large flaw in the above argument) is why liberalism continued in American life/culture, but liberal Protestantism did not.  But there are other problems with this hypothesis as well, chiefly that it discounts Roman Catholics and their contributions to these projects, it assumes that denominational pronouncements reflect congregational realities, and assumes that religious conservatives did not have a hand in shaping some of these trends as well (not just in terms of opposition, but also in offering different courses to travel the same journey).  And as for the triumphant talk based on polls, I will allow others who have read the data do the dissection, here and here.  Needless to say, I am not ready to pronounce either the Religious Left triumphant, nor declare the Religious Right dead.  Indeed, one of the other articles I have read this week reminded me (and other readers) that the Religious Right has a much longer history than it is sometimes given credit for (and as such, not only is there more study to be done on it, but it probably is stronger than a it is currently being credited for).  That complexity, I hope, is something else I touched on in the pages of The Mainline.

So, if none of these articles, as good and as informative as they were -- and whether I agreed with them entirely or not -- was not the sum of my ruminations, then what was?  Well, dear reader, like any good inquiry, such reading got me thinking.  And what I got to thinking about was whether or not this Great Divide (Left and Right) was worth more ink (at least from me, at least right now), or if there was something else -- right under the surface of these articles/arguments, that demands more attention.  If I had limitless time, I might just be pondering if we needed to study a great divide that was greater still than Left and Right in American Religious History, one that as I have thought about it deserves much more attention than either just in passing within larger works or that is largely ignored by focusing on groups/denominational leadership.   And that Great Divide is the one between rural, suburban, and urban congregations in the progress of American Religious History, past, present, and future.

Perhaps it is because my son (the younger of my children) asked this week if we lived in a rural place or in the city and my daughter, the older, more experienced one in the ways of the world and social study terminology, was quick to offer (correct) textbook answers.  Maybe it was because I read a really great article about American Religious History and Indiana (kudos Elesha Coffman).  Perhaps it is because I grew up in a rural community, moved to an urban one, and now reside in a rapidly suburban one.  Or maybe it is just because I think increasingly that place matters.  Where you are shapes who you are (in both good ways and bad), and shapes what you do while you are there (as my First Year Seminar students learn when I subject them to a professor led campus tour each Fall).  The long and the short of it is that I think we might understand the rise/fall/rise (and dare I even argue formulation) of both the Religious Left and the Religious Right better IF we started looking at how rural, suburban, urban impacted the congregations that made up the denominations that came to make up both.  It would lead to some interesting questions, like did/do rural Catholics and rural Protestants share the same values/beliefs more so than there urban co-denominationalists?  Where are we more apt to find non-denominationalism (and why)?  Does having a denominational headquarters (and its location) matter to how representative its pronouncements on issues are?

Those are some of the questions that came to mind as I have dwelt on the topic this week.  I think that studying this Great Divide could prove interesting.   It might even be more important, in the long run, to understanding what has driven the Mainline of the Seven Sisters, as well as the new one I believe has emerged within American Christianity.

Head and Heart

One of the fun things about teaching is that oftentimes, students raise questions that I as a professor have not really thought about before.  If you've read some of my earlier posts, you know that The Mainline was largely shaped in the classroom, so there should be little surprise that I've surely been influenced by this trend professionally.  That being said there is one question that has been raised several times by students over the past few years that I have a hard time figuring out, and since writing sometimes leads to answers, I thought I'd devote today's post to the issue, if not the answer.

Here is the basic outline.  While teaching the first half of the US Survey (roughly discovery/colonization through the Civil War/Reconstruction), I always make sure to spend time talking about the First and Second Great Awakenings.  Though there is debate over exact dates (as an aside, it is a pet peeve of mine how often historians get labeled as purveyors of dates, since History is rarely planned out and even when it is, its not as if things "just happen" on a given date or end a certain time), generally the First Great Awakening ran from the 1710s into the 1740s (give or take), and the Second Great Awakening ran from the 1790s into the 1830s (again, give or take).  The FGA was trans-Atlantic in scope, and was marked by the preaching of such divines as Jonathon Edwards, George Whitefield, and the Wesley brothers.  The SGA was more American in focus, and showcased the preaching talents of the Beechers, Charles Finney, Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell.  The FGA is often construed as having saved orthodoxy from the clutches of Deism and reinvigorated a sense of "the Protestant Interest" (to borrow from Thomas Kidd's excellent work on the topic).  For American Historians, the FGA also is a precursor event to the American Revolution (at least in some circles).  The SGA, while starting off as a religious revival (geared towards making sure that churches got planted in the newly opened Western states) eventually morphed into a movement that was also (at least in the Northeast and much of the Midwest) interested in reforming society (including, of course, anti-slavery).

So far, so good.  But then the questions start.  Consistently I have students who "embrace" or "support" the FGA (how can you not like Edwards' Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God?).  But just as consistently, I have students who berate the very idea of the SGA.  Many of those who take on the SGA cite its calls for Christian activism in the public sphere, or with specific reforms that became a part of it.  But probably the most persistent critique is that the SGA appealed not to the "head" but only to the "heart".  That its emotional appeals led to "shallow" conversions, which contributed to later problems in American Christianity.

I admit that the first time this happened in a classroom, I was sort of taken aback.  It was certainly new to me.  I generally point out that the same type of critiques were and could be leveled at the FGA (again, take a look at Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God -- it is pretty scary stuff to think that God's grace is the only thing keeping you from falling into hell, and maybe you should get right with Him before he removes His grace!).  I've also had to counter claims that "nothing like this (ie appeals to emotion) ever happened in the Bible" -- by asking those interested to take a look at Acts Chapter 2 and try not to hear the emotional appeal in it.

When we dig a bit deeper the "head vs. heart" debate eventually gets us into discussion about theology.  Now, I'm not a theologian (and I don't think I've yet had one as a student), but the gist of this animosity towards the SGA in some circles is the belief that it was the start of liberal theology within American Protestantism.  There maybe some truth to that, but I'd also argue that it isn't the whole truth.  Saying that someone like Henry Ward Beecher (whose theology eventually diverged quite a bit from that of his father Lyman -- and both men were standard bearers for the SGA) would be comfortably classified as a liberal today is problematic for several reasons.  Did the SGA get everything "right" (whether theologically or in the manner of reform)?  No.  But then again, I'd argue that most of the people (including one favorite target for some modern theological conservatives, Charles Finney) weren't attempting to forge a coherent theology at all.  For some, but only some (like Washington Gladden) that came later.

In the end (for me at least) talking about the FGA/SGA has prompted some interesting discussions, which I enjoy.  They've made me question assumptions I've had about these events, as well as raise questions for me about how we (including my students) understand them.  Oftentimes, it seems "we know what we know because we know it," my hope is that with some study and reflection we can see that both the FGA and SGA utilized a sort of balanced witness of the Christian faith, of both "head and heart", that it wasn't an "either/or" kind of thing.  If that makes for a more complicated history, so be it.  Because it is also probably more accurate.