It was exactly a century ago when our society seemed to split in two directions, argues B.C. writer Jim Coggins
The year 1925 was a watershed moment in North American life.
At the beginning of the 20th century, there had not been a major war in Europe for a century, and there had not been a major war in North America for half a century.
Evangelical revivals had increased church attendance and spawned worldwide missionary efforts. They had also spurred wide-ranging social improvements.
Schools, libraries and hospitals had proliferated. So had a host of social service agencies – the YMCA, SPCA, Boy Scouts, children’s camps, Sunday schools, the Salvation Army, street missions and prison visitation ministries, among others.
Slavery had been abolished. Laws had improved working conditions and limited child labour. Women were gaining increased rights and opportunities, including the right to vote (Canada in 1917 and the United States in 1920). The temperance movement was gaining strength, and Prohibition promised to eradicate alcohol and the crime, violence and abuse that went along with it.
Scientific and technological breakthroughs and economic growth were making many people healthier and wealthier. Transportation and communication systems improved tremendously. Science and religion were working together to create a better world. The watchword of the day was progress.
In theological terms, the prevailing ideology was a form of postmillennialism, the idea that the world would keep getting better until it emerged into the millennium, the thousand-year reign of Christ on earth mentioned in the biblical book of Revelation.
The horrendous butchery of the First World War should have provided a cautionary warning that the future might not be as rosy as was expected. However, in some circles that brutal event was considered the war to end all wars, literally Armageddon, the last great battle that Revelation describes as ushering in the millennium.
The mid-1920s changed all that.
The Scopes trial in July 1925 was the first highly visible crack foreshadowing the massive rupture that was coming. A Tennessee school teacher named John T. Scopes was prosecuted for teaching evolution. Evolution was the ultimate secular theory of progress, the idea that humanity had evolved over long periods of time from simple cell organisms and would evolve into a superior human race.
The trial was widely publicized and had implications far beyond the fate of one teacher. It pitted science against the Bible, humanity against religion. It contrasted the belief in progress against the biblical idea of the Fall. Christianity had been marching forward in harmony with science and education, and they were now being torn apart to pursue different trajectories.
This was not the only sign of the rupture. Prohibition was in force in the United States from 1920 to 1933. Prohibition was enacted by most provinces in Canada during the First World War and repealed by most provinces in the 1920s. This attempt to legislate morality failed because North American society was divided on the issue. Some, especially mainstream conservative Christianity, supported it strongly, while others, especially the more secular minded, opposed it. Society divided here along similar lines as it did on the evolution question.
As the Roaring Twenties went on, it became clear that not only had the war to end all wars not ushered in the Kingdom of God, but church attendance was beginning to decline in the Western world. Progress toward achieving heaven on earth was stalled. This, along with the Great Depression, the rise of Nazism and fascism, and the Second World War, convinced many Christians the world was actually getting worse.
Many lost hope of improving society and turned to attempts to mitigate the damage in a troubled world. Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in 1935.
The great divide also affected Christian churches.
On one side, some church communities in Western societies continued to believe in progress and embraced a compatible theology called the social gospel.
One of the earliest expressions of this was Walter Rauschenbusch’s 1917 book A Theology for the Social Gospel. Rather than individual salvation, social gospellers focused on making society better, achieving social progress envisioned in alignment with the Kingdom of God.
In Canada, the social gospel was promoted by the Social Service Council of Canada, founded in 1912, and by thinkers such as J. S. Woodsworth. This resulted in the founding of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (precursor of the New Democratic Party) in 1932.
On the other side, another significant group of churches in North America refocused on the fundamentals of the Christian faith. These were codified by brothers Milton and Lyman Stewart in The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth, a collection of 12 pamphlets published between 1910 and 1915.
Rather than looking forward to improve society, fundamentalists looked back to the Bible and sought to save individuals through evangelism, rescuing the few who could be saved from a dying society.
In a sense the divide between social gospellers and fundamentalists (also known as the fundamentalist-modernist controversy) could be considered a divide between optimists and pessimists.
Social gospellers believed in progress, that the world was getting better. Using imagery from Revelation, many imagined the world would gradually emerge into the thousand-year reign of Christ. Such postmillennialists believed Christ would return and the world would end after (post) the millennium.
Fundamentalists were increasingly pessimists. The kind of imagery from Revelation that appealed to many of them portrayed the world going “from bad to worse” (2 Timothy 3:13) until it finally climaxed in the Great Tribulation. Premillennial theology believes Christ will have to come before (pre) the millennium – because of course humans could never build the Kingdom of God on our own.
Besides the Scopes trial, 1925 also saw the creation of the United Church of Canada when Methodists, Presbyterians and Congregationalists decided to merge into one megadenomination, an internationally remarkable and groundbreaking effort toward church unity and ecumenism. (An agreement to found the World Council of Churches was made in 1937, and it was formally established in 1948.)
Leaders of the United Church of Canada hoped and expected other denominations would also join and create a single, united national church. Informally, many were quick to call the new entity “Canada’s Church.” This new church would combine with social and political forces to build a better society – it was definitely in the camp that believed in progress and the social gospel.
However, splinters from some of the founding denominations refused to join, and the result was not fewer denominations but more.
Eventually, as the United Church blended in with social and political trends (like many other mainline and ecumenical churches), it struggled to stand out and retain and recruit members. This once million-strong denomination now expects to have only 111,000 members by 2035.
While the United Church was uniting, another major Canadian denomination was dividing. In 1926 the main Baptist denomination split into Convention Baptists and Fellowship Baptists. The dividing issue was the denomination’s university (McMaster), with the progressive wing siding with the university against the more conservative or fundamentalist wing.
The divisions that started a century ago have continued to the present day.
For the past century in North America, the struggle between these two visions – progressives inclined to believe change is good, and conservatives who want to return to a golden age of the past – has been evident in the Church and broader society.
Both have their flaws.
The social gospel, despite its admirable concern for the needy, has often seen the gospel part subverted by the social part. Organizations launched by the social gospel have become secular. Social gospel thinking has tended to place humans in the place of God, overlook human sinfulness and remove the anchor that restrains evil.
On the other hand, a singular focus on evangelism and individual salvation has also proved inadequate. Of course, evangelism is essential. Until people are born again in Jesus, they cannot participate in His kingdom. But Jesus also called His followers, once they have become His followers, to feed the hungry, satisfy the thirsty, welcome strangers, clothe the needy, look after the sick, and visit those in prison (Matthew 25:31–46).
Like the other apostles, James said the same thing. “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” (James 1:27).
The Early Church overwhelmed the Roman Empire by following this direction. Irish monks evangelized northern Europe by establishing outposts that offered a variety of social programs. The evangelical revivals also combined evangelism and social betterment. So did many overseas mission agencies.
Is the world getting better or worse?
Although the crack that split North American society one century ago continues to affect us today, ultimately the division is overly simplistic. History does not all flow in one direction. The Bible compares human society to the chaos of the ocean, with conflicting currents flowing in different directions, throwing up unexpected waves.
What human could have predicted events such as the rapid spread of Christianity across the Roman Empire, the evangelization of northern Europe by Irish monks, the Protestant Reformation, the evangelical revivals, the rise of Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement, the growth of Christianity in China, the increase in church attendance in North America after the Second World War (and the concurrent decline in church attendance in Europe), the recent increase in church attendance in England, and the success of the Alpha program introducing so many people to Christianity across so many denominations? What human could have predicted the fall of the Roman Empire, the rise of Islam, the Great Depression, Nazism, the rise and fall of communism, nuclear weapons, AIDS or Covid-19?
Sometimes one current can produce both good and evil consequences. What we know is that in all things God is working for good (Romans 8:28) and that in all circumstances so should we.
James R. Coggins (www.coggins.ca) is a writer, editor and historian in Chilliwack, B.C. Vintage photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash.