1. To Save a Wretch Like Thee
At the end of the 20th century, Christian ministers were starting to reckon with some sinister forces in society.
Theological scholars insisting that the five books of Moses were not really written by Moses:
That each book was in fact a composite of several ancient authors’ works.
Other intellectuals of the day pointing out inconsistencies in the sacred texts, arguing that the scriptures came from human hands after all.
Then there were the biologists: asserting that humans had descended from apes, the pinnacle of God’s creation rendered as a lowly beast.
And that the countless varieties of life in the world emerged not from the hand of a heavenly designer, but from blind natural forces.
Worst of all, there were church leaders in the US and England actually advocating for these heresies.
The earliest pioneers of modernist reforms, such as Charles Augustus Briggs, were excommunicated for their positions.
But in the early 20th century more and more church leaders began to push for accommodationist approaches to religious faith. Something had to be done.
In 1910, the Presbyterian General Assembly published a “doctrinal deliverance” that established some core tenets of faith that were absolutely fundamental to Christianity.
No contradictions in the scriptures.
No symbolism, or allegory, or any attempt to explain the Bible’s stories in naturalistic terms.
Whatever the differences across church communities might be, if you did not accept these tenets, then you were not a real Christian.
Similar-minded pastors from the US, England, and Canada published essays decrying various modernist heresies, which were compiled in a book series titled The Fundamentals. From this resistance, a new movement began to coalesce.
Like the Romantics of the 19th century, this was a reactionary movement against modernity.
Unlike the Romantics, the individuals here did not see themselves as apart from the larger society. Instead, they claimed to speak for the people against the perceived elites of a decadent world.
They argued that their religious traditions were under attack, and so they mobilized to counter the community-destroying forces that besieged them. Liberal theology, communism, socialism, women’s suffrage, the alcohol industry, you name it.
While some fundamentalists sought to live apart from the fallen modern world and carry on their own affairs, many others were called into action, to try to fight back the tides of change, and transform their society for the better.
As a result, local community and even national boundaries began to diminish in importance. Thus began the early stages of a worldwide cultural phenomenon for the masses.
They would employ new techniques of communication and outreach to do so. Revival tours and media presence allowed them to reach new audiences to join and fight for their global campaign against modernism.
And there was some real success on that front.
Billy Sunday was the first bona fide celebrity for mass evangelism.
Formerly a baseball player, Sunday toured the US to give raucous sermons to adoring crowds.
Like many fundamentalists, Sunday’s take on faith descended from the Muscular Christianity trend of the early 20th century, in which Christian messages were fused with a love of athleticism, tough talk, metaphors of war, and all things traditionally masculine.
Plenty of rival pastors complained that Sunday’s sermons were far too simplistic and sensational; more entertaining than they were edifying. But with that simple message and his electrifying delivery, Sunday would provide the movement with hundreds of thousands of willing soldiers for the spiritual battle at hand.
Some evangelists also turned to the emerging sphere of radio broadcasting to spread their gospel over the airwaves. The first fundamentalist radio station was started in 1922. This was KJS Radio, short for “King Jesus Saves,” based in Los Angeles, California.
Two years later, KFSG Radio started to broadcast its own faith-based content in the LA area, including a charismatic evangelist named Aimee Semple McPherson.
Originally hailing from Canada, McPherson had honed her talents for populism on the tent revival circuit, yet she perfected those talents on radio, and soon became a massive star.
“Friends, this thing’s bigger than I am!
It’s bigger than my family! It’s bigger than you are. It’s the world for God!
I don’t belong to anybody. I belong to Him. And because I belong to Him, I belong to everybody.
You belong to me because you belong to Him, and if we Christians would ever get organized and join hands here, and stop punching each other:
Saying, “Well, I don’t like the way so-and-so does their hair, or I don’t like the way they tie their shoelaces, “we’d begin to preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified, and get out and go on with the work, Glory to God!
We can win the world for the Lord Jesus!”
Aimee Semple McPherson: Los Angeles, March 12, 1939 at the Angelus Temple
Alas, this wave of fundamentalism did not lead to a world takeover. Despite their determination to change the culture, fundamentalist Christians nevertheless found that they were on the outside looking in.
In 1925, the World Christian Fundamentals Association had successfully lobbied the Tennessee legislature to pass a bill banning the teaching of evolution in that state’s schools.
John Scopes was a substitute teacher from Dayton, Tennessee who was itching to fight the new law, and he was brought to trial.
What ensued was the so-called “Scopes Monkey Trial.” And it became national news.
The trial itself was a victory for anti-evolution activists, as Scopes was found guilty, and the Tennessee Court of Appeals upheld the ban.
But amidst the frenzy of articles written about the ordeal, fundamentalist Christians found that they had lost the respect of the larger culture. They emerged a national laughingstock, particularly as portrayed by the derisive H.L Mencken.
And yet, this new movement would not give up. They had lost the battle, but the war for the soul of the world would continue.
It’s just that the tactics needed to change. In the 1930s, many people assumed that fundamentalism had gone extinct. In fact, it had adapted, or evolved.
Fundamentalist groups still existed, but they tended not to label themselves as such. Most of them opted for the older and more generic term, “evangelical.”
They continued to build their own alternative subculture via faith-based schools, lobbies, publishing firms, broadcasting networks, and good old fashioned revival tours to spread their gospel of embattled righteousness.
And as the times continued to change, more and more customers would come to want what they were supplying.
2. Once Lost, Now Found
Around the same time, in the US South, there was another movement, separate but sometimes overlapping with fundamentalism. Many of those Christians who longed for a return to old-time religion also pined for a national narrative that painted their communities as the heroes of recent history, rather than the villains.
The Civil War was a major sore spot for white families in the American South, and remained so, even in the early 20th century, decades after Reconstruction had ended.
People whose ancestors had fought and died for the Confederacy began to spread around their own alternative history, a self-serving narrative that portrayed the Confederate movement as a noble lost cause.
The Confederate rebellion was not one of traitors, they insisted; it was a movement of heroes who had given their lives for the right of their states to act independently of a meddlesome Union controlled by the North.
In this alternative history, slavery conveniently wasn’t the primary cause for the war. But, you know, those black folks sure seemed to be better off when the noble white plantation owners could keep them in line…right?? This part of the story was surely made in bad faith.
But much of the Lost Cause narrative served as a soothing psychic balm for wounded egos, and an aspiration to claim the old dominion that their ancestors had once wielded.
And so it began to spread.
This was the era when all the Confederate war memorials started to spring up, an effort spearheaded by groups like the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who still exist today.
In 1905, author Thomas Dixon Jr published a contentious work of revisionism, titled “The Clansmen: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan.”
The KKK had first emerged in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, as a rash of ragtag militants terrorizing freed men and women with threats and real violence. In the 1870s they were branded as dangerous extremists by the federal government, and legislation was passed to help fight against their intimidation tactics.
Dixon’s book not only pushed the Lost Cause falsehoods of the Confederacy, he re-imagined the South’s most vicious reactionaries as errant knights, straight out of a Walter Scott story of chivalric romance.
And in 1915, the world’s most talented filmmaker, D.W. Griffith, brought Dixon’s alternative history to the big screen.
The Birth of a Nation was a sprawling, massively ambitious feat of cinematic storytelling, filled with technical innovations that would inspire countless filmmakers to follow.
It was also shamelessly self-serving rhetorical trash.
It refashioned racist terrorism as a heroic force necessary to keep the bestiality of freed black men from bringing society down.
Like Dixon’s novel, Griffith’s film was mendacious to its core, and utterly repugnant.
The film was controversial upon release, but it was wildly popular. It was the first film to be screened at the White House, albeit by the notoriously racist Woodrow Wilson, who had recently allowed the departments of federal government to segregate its staff.
Beyond its popularity and success, Birth of a Nation had a visceral impact on the culture, and not just in terms of its visual production.
The film’s depiction of a white woman’s suicide to avoid being raped by a black man served to incite violence against black citizens all over the country.
And that same year, the Ku Klux Klan officially reformed. And they began to adopt signifiers that were seen in Griffith’s film. The white robes and the burning cross that we now all associate with the KKK were actually details that Thomas Dixon had invented for his novel; they were not part of the original lore.
But really, it was Hollywood’s massively popular silver screen rendition of Dixon’s chivalric romance that had set the aesthetic for this new wave of revisionist terror.
With the klansmen once again ascendant, the 1920s saw a huge spike in violence and lynchings, not just against black men and women, but in the Northern cities against immigrants, whose numbers continued to grow.
Media rumors about black men disrespecting or trying to woo white women led to race riots and worse, such as the Tulsa Massacre, which decimated the well-to-do neighborhood known as Black Wall Street.
Fantasy fears can so easily lead to real life nightmares. Whether it’s to create heroes to venerate or villains to attack, all you need is the right narrative pretext.
3. But Now I Do Not See
The old spin about capitalism is that it’s about a free market. Supply emerges to meet a demand, and everyone gets what they want. But that conception of capitalism came from the Enlightenment, which argued for rational and well-informed self-interest to steer the invisible hand of the market.
Once the market shifts, and the demands of a culture changes, what is a supplier to do? The obvious answer would be to adapt and give the customers what they want. But in the early 20th century, reactionary groups chose a different route; to create their own markets for alternative demands.
In their efforts to do so, they stumbled upon a truth about human persuasion that had also been discovered by commercial marketing firms around this time. It turns out that emotion, passion, identity, and the promise of fulfilling dreams all sell a lot more than rational arguments ever will.
As Adam Curtis pointed out in his documentary chapters on the founder of public relations Edward Bernays, this was the era when suppliers decided to actively shape the people’s demands instead of following them, to engineer the consent of the masses, so that a small set of powerful people can set and steer a nation’s cultural agenda.
The fundamentalists and the Lost Cause revisionists didn’t have a name for it, but they understood the basic idea very well. If you can’t beat them, don’t join them! Instead, change the rules, transform the culture, even change the facts if you need to. It’s often said that it’s the winners who write the history, but it’s more true that the winners are those whose histories end up in the history books. This is a style of cultural retooling that unfortunately has not gone away.
Not to mention…
The traditionalism run amok, the dreams of a mythic past, the wounded pride turned into violent aggression, the villains of the recent past refashioned as heroes, the easy scapegoats, the thrilling populist screeds, the outsized transmissions through new mass media…all of these elements were foundational factors that led to the rise of fascism in Germany and Italy in the 1920s.
Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels even turned to Edward Bernays’ books on public relations for inspiration on how to manufacture the consent of the masses, though they stuck with Bernays’ original term:
Propaganda.
Whether it’s fascism or fundamentalism or something else, these were reactionary anti-modernist movements that nevertheless called for revolutionary change. In their steel-eyed determination to protect something that was considered to be under threat, the members of these movements failed to realize not just how different they’d always been from past tradition, but how much radical change their movements had inflicted upon society through the triumphs of their wills.
In the early stages of fundamentalism, at least there was a little bit more diversity of thought among its advocates.
William Jennings Bryan was a fundamentalist who took part in the Scopes trial against teaching evolution, and was in favor of the Jim Crow laws that limited the rights of black Americans in the South.
Even if I had been born in his time, I would probably have disagreed with many of his beliefs. And yet, he was an advocate of social policies to help the poor, he was for women’s suffrage, and was against eugenics.
And in his final address at the Scopes trial, he said these words:
“Science is a magnificent force, but it is not a teacher of morals. It can perfect machinery, but it adds no moral restraints to protect society from the misuse of the machine. It can also build gigantic intellectual ships, but it constructs no moral rudders for the control of storm-tossed human vessel. It not only fails to supply the spiritual element needed but some of its unproven hypotheses rob the ship of its compass and thus endanger its cargo.”
“In war, science has proven itself an evil genius; it has made war more terrible than it ever was before. Man used to be content to slaughter his fellowmen on a single plane, the earth’s surface.
“Science has taught him to go down into the water and shoot up from below and to go up into the clouds and shoot down from above, thus making the battlefield three times as bloody as it was before; but science does not teach brotherly love.“
“Science has made war so hellish that civilization was about to commit suicide; and now we are told that newly discovered instruments of destruction will make the cruelties of the late war seem trivial in comparison with the cruelties of wars that may come in the future.”
“If civilization is to be saved from the wreckage threatened by intelligence not consecrated by love, it must be saved by the moral code of the meek and lowly Nazarene. His teachings, and His teachings alone, can solve the problems that vex the heart and perplex the world.”
I actually agree with most of what WJB said here. I don’t think that Jesus is the only way to attain an upright morality, and plenty of people have done terrible things in the name of Jesus.
Still, there is merit to this reverence for a meek and lowly savior, rather than a righteous warrior for threatened masculinity. We need moral systems to help communities not just survive the tumult and constant churn of modernity, but thrive throughout it all.
I don’t fault anyone for wishing things were simpler or wanting to return to how things used to be.
The engines of progress will make bumbling codgers of us all, and cultural change can often feel disruptive and alienating no matter who we are.
But as we stumble through this life of never-ending transformation and need for adaptation, I hope that most of us can try to do so with our hearts full of grace. Pride will be the downfall of us all.
Either we see the wisdom of these words…or we do not see.
(Bad joke, but I’m standing by it! Okay, I’m done.)
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Obligatory:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtNdYsoool8
Now that was a post of biblical proportions. Good thing I included chapters!
On a personal note, such reflection is what I really need today. So thank you from me.
Some of the best people I’ve ever met are devout Christians. Some of the worst people I’ve ever met are devout Christians. I could say the same about the atheists and Jews I know, and I presume Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists too, though I don’t know many well.
I’m with you in agreeing with some of what Bryan said, but it leads him to the wrong conclusion. Clichéd as it is, all you really need to be a good human is the Golden Rule. A little empathy goes a long way, and doesn’t require any particular religion.
Ultimately (fundamentally?) I agree, though it can sure be hard to apply that Golden Rule to policy issues, particularly as the world gets more complex, complicated, and confusing.
Maybe this means that we need to re-tool our lives to actually have more face-to-face interactions, and more time as a community in physical spaces rather than abstract administrative (or online) ones. Yay, an easy fix!
This article detailed everything that I dislike about contemporary (or historical, for that matter) Christianity. Thank you for pointing out that there are also a lot of people out there trying to do it differently. I know that the same is true of all faiths, but in this country, it’s really Christianity that dominates the discussion. Sadly, the worst elements always seem to get the majority of the attention.
I think we should just follow Nana’s example.
Oh, my sweet Lord…
You bring up so many important points in this article it’s hard to know where to begin. I will start with this- Still, there is merit to this reverence for a meek and lowly savior, rather than a righteous warrior for threatened masculinity. We need moral systems to help communities not just survive the tumult and constant churn of modernity, but thrive throughout it all.
Yes, agreed on this. And as a faith-based person, I will say loudly that people of faith also need to listen to scientists! Your article points out exactly what befalls us as a civilization when this doesn’t happen. The good news is that, despite tons of historical evidence to the contrary, faith and science can actually come together and dialogue and there are more examples of this happening than ever, I believe. I don’t have much hope for this world without it. If anything, your article affirmed to me that when we ignore whatever history doesn’t fit into our narrative, or simply revise it to our own liking, we are in big trouble.
I love that Billy Sunday made it into tnocs and I found your summary of him to be very intriguing. He is important piece of the puzzle of why a huge swath of Christianity in the U.S. looks the way it does today. And I can assure as someone who grew up highly influenced by a strain of evangelical Catholicism (yeah, it exists), I certainly knew who he was and he was still celebrated in the fundamentalist/evangelical world when I was immersed in it. CCM late 80s hitmakers First Call even had a song about him-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4_0xKJ0UOg
Whatever you think of Billy, this is a smoking track.
That was not the song I was expecting, given the subject matter!
I’m thinking Johnny Cash could have done a song that Billy himself could appreciate (as long as he ignored the drugs, booze, and infidelity).
Still, I like it. And it sounds rather complex to my admittedly untrained ear. I kind of want to see a breakdown video for it by Rick Beato.
It’s frightening to me how successful the rebranding of the Confederacy has been. Growing up in the Midwest, I never saw a Confederate flag. Now the countryside is dotted with them. Not to the extent that you see them in the South, but they’re out there. I am relatively sure that is true of other parts of the country as well, but I don’t travel there as often.
But I question whether many people really believe the propaganda that the war was all about states’ rights, or whether they use that rhetoric to attempt to hide the underlying racism that flag represents. It’s seen in conjunction with the Nazi flag way too often not to realize the purpose of displaying it.
The mid-westerners who fly that flag don’t have even the flimsy excuse of “heritage”. They know what it means.
Yeah, that’s a tricky matter, similar to a lot of “dog whistling” that came later. Are there some people who take these positions in good faith, rather than use them as convenient cover for nastier beliefs? Probably some.
For instance, I believe that Barry Goldwater really did believe in small government and states rights. Even in that case though, it’s not like he believed in no federal government. So the fact that he didn’t see black suffrage and representation as an inalienable human right subject to federal protection says something about his priorities, good faith though they may have been.
I do imagine there’s some swath of people who simply see the Confederate flag as a badge of heritage, especially nowadays, given how much time the Lost Cause narrative has had to take root. But such a view depends on ignorance and indifference in order to thrive. It should be approached with empathy, probably, but it is their responsibility as citizens to know the full history.
I do think that when we engage with these dog whistle issues in face-to-face conversations, we should address them on the merits, rather than simply condemn the person as peddling covert hate. As much as we may want to, and as much as we might be right, I think that grace will more often than not be our secret weapon in winning hearts and minds.
Interesting stuff as ever, shining a light on how our paths diverged. While you start by saying there were church leaders in England and the US advocating the heresies the reactions to the challenges that science and new ideas presented were dealt with in very different ways. Obviously there are elements of British society for whom religion is of the utmost importance to their sense of being but for the most part it has been a long slide into secularism where the church has lost its power on society.
Why do you think that is? And, related, why did a strong fundamentalist strain emerge from Australia? Maybe it was inevitable in America, due to our obsession with market forces, but maybe some other factors were at play.
Honestly, I don’t know. Doing some quick reading on that question comes up with idea that improvements in education for the masses taught society the importance of science and critical thinking. Though I still don’t know why we would go down that route rather than the American route.
It does also make it seem like we’re a nation of intellectual free thinkers which is far from the reality. Perhaps after centuries of power being invested in nobility, keeping the lower classes in their place, religion was seen as upholding that system. The industrial revolution also provided a pretty grim reality for many working in terrible conditions and living in slums that were no better. When your life is unremittingly grim it would be understandable to decide that God and religion were of no help.
And once conditions started to improve WW1 came along to plunge people back into a living hell.
We have a census here every 10 years, one of the questions is around religion. The latest in 2021 shows that for the first time less than half the population described themselves as Christian – 46.2%. No religion was the second most popular response, at 37.2%. An increase of just over 10% in a decade. On that trajectory no religion will have overtaken Christian in the next census in 2031.
I’m familiar with Charles Coughlin because I’m reading about one specific period. Thank you, Phylum, for providing me with a roadmap to Coughlin. Just once, have I heard somebody with name recognition make mention of a historical figure(when Coughlin’s radio show was all the rage), whose activism may not be familiar to the general public, but I suspect, known to people who are sympathetic towards the Klan, and groups that descended from the Klan.
Bob Costas on Jim Acosta.
I couldn’t believe it.
That’s the first and last time I’ve heard this piece of American history discussed on such a massive platform.
In my opinion, MSM does a poor job of differentiating religion from what looks more like a voting bloc. They lump the two together. And it’s not fair to people who stick to what’s actually written in the Bible, unlike those who misrepresent it, as a means of giving their anti-pluralistic beliefs a benevolent sheen.
I saw The Birth of a Nation in a classroom. Is it still taught? I recently watched Todd Field’s Tar. Lydia Tar kicks her student out of the classroom because he objects to Bach, the person. Arguably, it deserves to be seen. Birth of film language mastery, and all. But I guess you could substitute it with Intolerance.
For the first time ever, The Birth of a Nation didn’t receive a single vote in the latest Sight and Sound poll.
Whew.
A lot of unfun reading in my future.
We’re living in very interesting times; too interesting, perhaps.
I agree that right wing Christians in America look more and more like a voting bloc than a religious group. It’s become more common for political issues to be brought up at the pulpits, and for congregations to rend apart just like families have been, along political lines.
As far as the media goes, I think the failure is (in general and specifically here) not giving any context to help the public understand how things have changed and why it matters. They typically only cover the simplest, easiest angles. If these groups say they are for family values and religious integrity, then that’s how they’re covered. Just report the horse race between two teams.
No wonder I avoid most news these days, it’s become pre- and post-game sports radio chatter.
I strongly believe we shouldn’t shut out the dark parts of our history, and I think that schools would be doing their students a disservice by failing to include Birth of a Nation in a high school or college curriculum. Watching it recently for this piece, it was difficult to get though. My skin was crawling throughout. So I understand the repulsion that animates the decision to leave it out. But our nation needs citizens who can see the world as it is and as it was, not simply as we wish it to be.
I haven’t seen Tar. (if you haven’t noticed, I’m really behind on movies)
Looking at the plot summary, such instances do happen these days. Sometimes due to the passion of youth, but unfortunately also due to the enabling of certain adults. I’m hoping that type of tribalist fever on the left passes. Part of me thinks that it won’t unless social media is regulated enough to stop radicalizing our national discourse. So maybe not for a while.
“No wonder I avoid most news these days, it’s become pre- and post-game sports radio chatter.”
A picture-perfect observation.
‘But our nation needs citizens who can see the world as it is and as it was, not simply as we wish it to be.’
I wonder about the last part of that quote. If it’s referring to the past and the people trying to whitewash the black marks that this country has perpetrated throughout its history, I agree. But part of the impetus for change, for a (for want of a better description) progressive agenda, is the reality that the US is an imperfect thing. And we’ve got to keep trying to improve it, to get closer to the nation’s highest ideals. We’re not going to get there, because humans, but striving for what ‘we wish it to be’ is a big part of this continuing experiment.
-tosses away soapbox due to opinions on religion-
I certainly didn’t mean to minimize the “wish it to be” part, I just think we need to have a clear sense of history, and a clear sense of our reality now in order to effectively steer ahead to better waters.
ProPublica is publishing some important stories. One story, in particular, in my opinion, should be discussed for an entire week, instead of moving on to the next shiny object. In my opinion, it is the story. But unfortunately, all the cable news networks work from an entertainment model, to some degree. Don’t they all share the same advertisers? Oil, financial sector, etc,…
The average American will hear a term, but to the viewer, it’s a term in a vacuum, because unless they read a book or an a political science journal, they’ll be hearing it for the first time.
ProPublica is making a lot of people look bad.
In my opinion, the term is “court reform.”
Ruth Ben-Ghiat was a writer in residence at my alma mater. I kind of wish I didn’t attend her public lecture. It was like rereading her one mass market book, but with a updated foreword, live.
But, see, your referencing of ProPublica gets at the root of the ills of contemporary media coverage: Someone has to compensate journalists for the work that they do. In ProPublica’s case, the “someone” is a network of donors whose money makes it possible for the nonprofit to do its work. That’s not a model that can be sustained and multiplied at the local level — not when most adults/readers in the U.S. are unwilling to pay for subscription content under the idea that “information should be free.” (Information, sure. Specific ways in which journalists report that information? Hmm … You will never hear me grousing about a paywall.)
As daily journalism was gutted in the aughts and ’10s, there was less of a bulwark against propaganda, misinformation and manipulation of media to support agendas. My hope is that the generation coming up understands how to use technology to confront these ills — but given what we’ve seen recently with AI, I’m not so sure.
Who are these network of donors?
I never had it described to me this way. Instead of guessing, I’m going to ask you.
I don’t have any more information than what they provide on their website: https://www.propublica.org/about/
Thank you.
That article about Cardi B on the mothership left my jaw hanging. I want to tell her: Keep on reading, Cardi, you’re six degrees of learning something very important. You’re on the right path.
I felt like Donald Sutherland in JFK.
It’s not a conspiracy theory.
Just a secret history.
I saw Birth of a Nation in my fourth grade class…in 1978.
Whoa.
7th grade English: Romeo and Juliet.
I can still hear the roar of approval over the unexpected nude scene.
Fantastic. Thanks for this thought-provoking post. It needs wider distro.