Chapter 1: The Great Century
I
The Great Century
Introduction
The church historian Kenneth Scott Latourette called the period of the church from AD 1800 to 1914 “The Great Century of the Church.” He referred to it this way because of the worldwide expansion of the church during this period. He writes, “In geographic extent, the movements issuing from it, and in its effect upon the race, the nineteenth century Christianity had a far larger place in human history than at any previous time.”1 There were a number of factors that led to the expansion of the church, and we will be looking at them in this chapter.
The main focus of the book will be Albert Benjamin Simpson and the role he played in the Third Great Awakening.
This was a time of great changes in the church, possibly the most changes since the birth of the church in the first century. It was a time of excitement, growth, and great outreach by the church. During this period, men such as Asahel Nettleton, Charles Finney, and D. L. Moody led thousands to Christ and brought them into the church. Moody preached to more people in his lifetime than anyone else until Billy Graham began his ministry after World War II. Finney and Moody’s impact was felt in North America and in Great Britain. It was D. L. Moody and Ira Sankey who helped spread the revival to the British Isles. After ministering in the British Isles, they came to the United States to minister.
The Great Century was a period of missionary outreach. It began with a British cobbler-turned-minister, William Carey. Carey went to India in 1793 and generated interest in missions work literally to the ends of the earth. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the focus of missions was on the coastal regions of Asia and Africa. The missionaries would follow the colonial powers as they settled in these countries. Later in the nineteenth century, Hudson Taylor, a missionary to China, left the safety of the colonial-controlled areas and went to the interior of the country, away from his countrymen. Others followed Hudson Taylor’s example to reach the interior of Africa and Asia. Missionary boards arose to send out missionaries into these unreached areas.2 Moody also impacted this worldwide missionary movement by starting the Student Volunteer Missionary Movement, which raised up numerous college students to go into the mission field in the later half of the nineteenth century.
In the eighteenth century, John and Charles Wesley were integral in what would come to be known as the First Great Awakening in Great Britain, at which time they also founded the Methodist Church. The Wesleys taught the importance of holiness and the necessity of a second work of grace for sanctification. This emphasis on holiness spread throughout the British Isles and came to America through the ministry of Francis Asbury. Salvation and sanctification were preached together throughout the United States. The message was spread by the Methodist circuit riders who preached the gospel to enthusiastic audiences. This enthusiasm was a reaction against the cold orthodoxy found in many of the denominations at the time in the United States. The holiness movement spread from the Methodist Church to other Christian churches until it became one of the major forces in British and American Christianity in the nineteenth century.
The nineteenth century was also a period of new ideas that came into conflict with Christianity. It was a time when the Bible was under attack by Bible scholars and theologians in Germany. Men such as Julius Wellhausen and F. C. Baur were teaching that the Scriptures were simply like any other book written by man. They taught that the Scripture was not inspired by God, destroying the average churchgoer’s confidence in the Word of God. Many Bible students would study in Germany and would find their faith shaken by this higher criticism. It was during this time that Charles Darwin took the world by storm with the publication of his book On the Origin of the Species in 1859. He introduced the theory of evolution, which challenged all Christendom. It called into question the divine origin of man. This affected not only Great Britain, but also Europe and the United States. In America, the majority of the church fought against the idea of evolution. Although the higher critical method was becoming popular in Britain, a large part of the church that rejected its claims.
During this period, large number of immigrants flooded the United States. The Industrial Revolution was taking place in both Great Britain and America. The cities in both nations became filled with factories. People moved to the cities to work in the factories and lived in squalid conditions. In the United States, poor immigrants from Europe flooded the urban areas looking for work. Overpopulation in these areas caused ghetto-like conditions. The church attempted to reach out with the gospel and to improve living conditions. In England, William Booth tried to reach the poor through the Salvation Army he founded. The Salvation Army preached the gospel and tried to meet people’s physical needs with food and job training. In the United States, men such as Washington Gladden and Walter Rauschenbusch introduced the Social Gospel, which was concerned with improving the living conditions of the working man and the poor. This Social Gospel claimed to be concerned with the whole person, but it focused primarily on people’s physical wellbeing. The Social Gospel movement began to weaken after World War I.
The Evangelists
The two most influential evangelists in the nineteenth century, both of whom were integral to the Second Great Awakening that commenced in 1800 and to the Third Great Awakening that began in 1857, were Charles Finney and D. L. Moody. A third evangelist who also played an important role, although not to quite the extent of Finney and Moody, was Asahal Nettleton. Nettleton was involved in the Second Great Awakening and had a tremendous impact on the Northeastern part of the United States. Charles Finney was involved in the Second Great Awakening, and his ministry extended into the Third Great Awakening. Although Finney had vast influence in the United States, his impact was somewhat less in Great Britain. D. L. Moody’s ministry began during the Third Great Awakening and lasted until the end of the nineteenth century. Moody had a significant impact on both the British Isles and the United States. Moody helped to spread the gospel throughout the English-speaking world. He was considered the greatest evangelist in the Great Century.
Asahel Nettleton was a congregational pastor and evangelist who went to different churches and held crusades. He helped spread the Awakening throughout New York and Connecticut. Nettleton always worked with local churches and pastors and was very constrained in his approach and his methods. He would preach in churches and speak to the congregation about the need for salvation. He would then pray with them. His meetings were described in the following way: “In his meetings, the atmosphere was quiet, dignified and solemn. He always involved local pastors in his awakening work, and emphasized the need to teach and nurture any who were convicted.”3 Nettleton was a bachelor who lived a simple lifestyle and never asked for money, nor did he accumulate any property.4 During Nettleton’s ministry in the early 1800s, he saw close to thirty thousand conversions.5
Charles Finney was a New York lawyer who became the greatest evangelist in the first part of the nineteenth century. Finney was converted in 1821 and began to preach the gospel almost immediately.6 He became a full-time Presbyterian evangelist sponsored by the Female Missionary Society of the Western District.7 Finney drew on the skills he developed as a lawyer in his evangelism methods.8 His ministry blossomed in 1830 and 1831 in Rochester, New York, where he held an evangelism campaign. Later he preached and held meetings all over the state of New York and throughout New England.9 During his ministry, Finney saw over one hundred thousand people come to Christ.10 This was an immense number of people at the time. As a result of his ministry efforts, Charles Finney became one of the most well known men in the United States and Great Britain.
Finney also introduced to the church what were called the “New Methods.” Finney received criticism about these New Methods from fellow evangelists such as Asahel Nettleton and Lyman Beecher, who were both prominent evangelists in their own right. What were these New Methods? For one, Finney introduced the “anxious seat,” which was a bench in the front of the church or hall where someone who was “under conviction” could come and receive Christ. This popularized the idea of public invitations at evangelical meetings.11 Finney also held protracted meetings that were longer than normal. He prayed for people by name and held women’s prayer meetings.12 Finney was well ahead of his time with these evangelism methods, but this did not always make him popular among his contemporaries. Elmer Towns and Douglas Porter called Finney “the Father of modern revivalism” and generally considered him to be the prototype of American evangelists.13
Finney left his revival ministry in 1835 and became the pastor of the Broadway Tabernacle Church, which was a Congregational church in New York City. He resigned in 1837 to become the pastor of a Congregational church in the small town of Oberlin, Ohio, and during this time he also taught at Oberlin College.14 Later, Finney would become president of the college. At the time, Oberlin was a center in the holiness movement as well as the abolition movement, and Oberlin College was the first college to admit African American students and women students. Finney would become a leader in all of these movements.
Finney was also involved with the rise of urban evangelism in the 1850s. It was at this time that the Third Great Awakening broke out in New York City in 1858. Finney’s ministry overlapped both Awakenings, and he would have a direct influence on D. L. Moody’s ministry. Moody adopted Finney’s focus on urban evangelism and would go on to popularize it in the Third Great Awakening during the second half of the nineteenth century.15
Dwight Lyman Moody emerged as the most important spokesman for the Awakening and is widely considered to be the greatest evangelist of the latter half of the nineteenth century. Moody impacted not only the United States, but also Great Britain. Unlike Finney and Nettleton, who were both pastors, Moody was a layman—a businessman from Chicago. He had been involved in starting Sunday schools, the YMCA, and a church in Chicago. Yet he was never ordained. Moody felt he would have a greater impact as a layperson. Moody’s style of evangelism appealed to the common man, and average Americans were attracted to this evangelist.
In 1873, D. L. Moody took his song leader, Ira Sankey, to Great Britain for a simple preaching tour. Although only a few meetings were scheduled, more speaking engagements were arranged soon after people began hearing Moody preach. This evangelism tour changed Moody and Sankey, and God used them to change Britain.16 Moody was God’s instrument to spread the Awakening throughout the land. Moody and Sankey remained in Great Britain for two years, and vast numbers of people came to the Savior. During the four-and-a-half months Moody was in London, an estimated million-and-a-half people came to hear him speak.17 Moody impacted all levels of society from the average man all the way to the most influential leader in British society.18 Moody met Prime Minister William Gladstone, and even Queen Victoria came to hear him speak.19
When Moody returned to the United States, his popularity had skyrocketed, and he was asked to preach all over America. He held crusades throughout most of the cities in the United States.20 Moody focused his efforts on larger cities, believing that they would have a greater influence on the nation than villages in rural areas.21 Moody was also able to reach people from all levels of society in the United States. As Latourette comments, “he was a layman and remained such to the end of his days. He had only a smattering of formal education; but by reason of his transparent sincerity, informality, and good sense, he had a striking influence on university students and graduates.”22
Moody and Sankey returned to Great Britain in 1881 and stayed through 1884, and again their meetings were overflowing. Moody continued to spread the revival. In 1891, Moody made his final trip to Britain and spent most of his ministry focused on Scotland.23 When Moody came back to the United States, he was engulfed with speaking engagements and continued to minister until his death in 1899.
Moody also had a great influence on the holiness movement. He would have holiness speakers come to his Northfield Bible Conferences to speak on the importance of sanctification. People like A. B. Simpson, A. J. Gordon, F. B. Meyer, and a host of others would speak on the importance of being filled with the Holy Spirit. He also helped found the Student Volunteer Missionary Movement, which encouraged college students to go into the mission field in the latter part of the nineteenth century. This was one of the keys to the missionary movement during the Great Awakening.
Missionary Outreach
One of the reasons for the unusual growth in Christianity in the nineteenth century was the Protestant missionary movement. Missions was rediscovered by the Protestant Church during this period. Although the Roman Catholic Church had put an emphasis on missions through the centuries, the Protestant Church had for the most part neglected foreign missions (except for the Moravian Church in the eighteenth century). At the end of the eighteenth century, William Carey brought missions to the forefront for the Protestant Church. This began in 1792 with the publication of Carey’s book titled An Enquiry into the Obligation of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens, which was actually the shortened title.24
The missions movement resulted from the First Great Awakening. It was influenced by the leaders of the Awakening: men such as Jonathan Edwards, George Whitfield, and the Wesley brothers. Many of the early missionaries—including Henry Martyn, who followed William Carey to India—had been influenced by David Brainerd.25 Brainerd had been a missionary to the American Indians in the 1740s in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, but he died of tuberculosis at an early age. Jonathan Edwards published Brainerd’s journal, which would go on to impact Christianity on both sides of the Atlantic, especially with regards to missions. John Wesley recommended it to his Methodist societies. Brainerd’s journal became an inspiration to all those who were interested in missions.
Earle Cairns states that the missionary excitement was the result of revivalism among the pietists, Methodists, and evangelicals in the Anglican Church. They wanted to see others experience the joy of conversion they had experienced.26 During the period from 1792 to about 1830, all kinds of benevolent and missionary societies were founded in England and North America. This trend was initiated by evangelical fervor from the First Great Awakening and continued as a result of the Second Great Awakening that began in 1800 in America.27
Missionaries traditionally followed governments as they set up colonies. Great Britain was the main colonizing force in the world, but other nations were also busy colonizing the world. Much of the time these colonial governments did not welcome missionaries with open arms; they fought to keep them out. William Carey went to India in 1793 and was employed as a foreman in an indigo factory, since missionaries were not permitted entry at that time.28 Carey was able to become a full-time missionary only after the East India Company was forced to open India up to missionary work after 1813.29 Carey stayed and worked in India for forty years.30 Other missionaries such as Henry Martyn followed Cary to India. Another English missionary, Robert Morrison, opened China for missions work in 1807 at the Portuguese colony of Macao in South China. Robert Moffat, another missionary who hailed from Britain, went to South Africa to begin mission work on that continent in 1815.31 Moffat’s son-in-law went on to achieve much greater fame than he had. His son-in-law was David Livingston, the famous missionary and explorer of Africa’s interior. Missionaries were being sent out to all parts of the globe.
In America, several important societies were founded as the result of the Second Great Awakening. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was the result of a covenant made by a group of students who were meeting for prayer out in a farmer’s field. When a thunderstorm broke out, they went to meet under a haystack, where they agreed to devote themselves to foreign missions.32 Adoniram and Ann Judson were one of the first missionary couples the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions sent out to serve as missionaries, but on the ship to Burma, they became Baptists and left their original mission board. A Baptist Board of Missions was founded in the United States to support them.33 Adoniram Judson continued to work in Burma until his death in 1850.
For the most part, missionaries during this period worked under the shadow of colonial power structures. Most missionaries would not venture out from the protection of the established colonial government. They were not reaching the interiors of the countries they were working in. This changed with the emergence of a new missionary, Hudson Taylor, who established the China Inland Mission as a new missionary organization. This was the first of what would become known as the “Faith Missions.”
Hudson Taylor was from England and went to China as a missionary in 1853. Taylor was a missionary with the Chinese Evangelization Society, which was an independent missionary organization.34 Taylor adopted Chinese dress and lived among the Chinese, which was totally revolutionary at the time. Missionaries traditionally wore Western clothes and stayed within their missionary compounds, which meant that missionaries to China were staying in the large cities on the coast rather than penetrating the interior of China.
In 1865, Taylor founded the China Inland Mission with the goal of reaching the interior of China—to go where no missionaries were going. The China Inland Mission made no appeals for funds and relied on God for all of its needs. It was an interdenominational missionary organization that took men and women from all denominations as missionaries. Missionaries did not have to be ordained; they could be laypeople who felt called to the mission field.
The China Inland Mission became the first, and the model of, “faith missions.” Faith Missions were interdenominational and relied on individuals and churches to supply their funds. They also would take the layperson as a missionary and were run by independent boards. A number of them came into existence after the Third Great Awakening. Their focus was to reach the interior of the countries that lay beyond the coastal regions, which at that time was the main focus of missions.35 Taylor and his CIM (China Inland Mission) were profoundly affected by the Third Great Awakening. Many of his missionaries were converted during the initial Awakening and later from D. L. Moody’s crusades.
Taylor was also influenced by the holiness movement, which was key to his mission and the life of the China Inland Mission. After the Third Great Awakening, a number of faith missions emerged, such as the Sudan Interior Mission, the Africa Inland Mission, the Scandinavian Alliance Mission (which later became The Evangelical Alliance Mission also known as TEAM), the Christian and Missionary Alliance founded by A. B. Simpson, and the Inland South American Mission. The faith mission movement flourished in the second half of the nineteenth century and put out the lion’s share of the missionaries serving around the world. Most of these independent mission boards were part of the holiness movement that was integral to the Faith Missions message.
During the second half of the nineteenth century, another missionary movement emerged in the Student Volunteer Missionary Movement. The Student Volunteer Missionary Movement was born in 1886 at the Mount Herman conference grounds in Massachusetts, where it grew out of D. L. Moody’s Northfield Conferences.36 The Student Volunteer Missionary Movement’s goal was to send out college students as foreign missionaries. Their motto was “The evangelization of the world in this generation.” Many students signed a pledge to become foreign missionaries “if God permits.”37 During the time the Student Volunteer Missionary Movement was in existence, over 20,500 students were sent to the mission field.38 John Mott, who was a leader for the Student Volunteer Missionary Movement, became the foremost missionary statesman in the first half of the twentieth century.39
Other great mission leaders who came out of this movement included Robert Speer, a Presbyterian lay missionary leader in the first half of the twentieth century who focused his efforts on students.40 The Student Volunteer Missionary Movement reached its peak before World War I and was in decline by the late 1920s. Modernism and liberalism began to negatively affect it.41 Many students lost interest when they were taught universalism in the mainline churches. After all, what was the point of being missionaries if everyone would be saved eventually?42 Gradually, the Student Volunteer Missionary Movement died. By 1940, only a few hundred delegates attended their convention.43
Sherwood Eddy, a leader in the movement and a missionary with the YMCA, serves as an example of this change in theology over the years. He went from being a very conservative evangelist to being more liberal in his theological outlook. He ended up aligning himself with liberal theologians such as Kirby Page and Reinhold Niebuhr.44 As a result of moving away from its evangelical roots and its emphasis on holiness, the Student Volunteer Missionary Movement came to an end.
Holiness Movement
John Wesley emphasized the necessity of individual salvation and the importance of sanctification in the believer’s life. Sanctification always followed salvation. Wesley believed all believers come to a point in their lives where it became necessary to surrender complete control of their lives to Christ. This point was called by various names, such as a “second work of grace,” “perfect love,” “heart purity,” or “Christian perfection.”45
Gregory Schneider describes the experience of the “second work of grace” in the following manner:
It was a distinctive Methodist doctrine that sanctification, while something that grew gradually in the believer, was also an instantaneous second experience of grace. It could be dated and located like the new birth. This second religious crisis filled the soul with the pure love of God such that the impulse to sin was expelled from the heart and life . . .46
This message was preached throughout all the Methodist societies in England and then crossed the Atlantic to the United States, where it was preached at throughout America’s Methodist camp meetings. Sanctification, along with conversion, became the primary components of the Methodist message.
The message of sanctification was picked up by non-Methodist evangelicals such as Asa Mahan, the famous evangelist and president of Oberlin College. It was also spread by Charles Finney, who disseminated the message outside Methodist circles. Mahon and Finney taught that this “second work of grace” could be taken by faith, just as salvation was. It was an instantaneous process, and it was not necessary to struggle with sin as the Methodists had taught.47 Both Mahon and Finney denied that there were any necessary preparations for salvation or sanctification; all that was necessary was to believe. The Methodists believed conversion and sanctification might involve a long spiritual struggle and that it was necessary to have a time of waiting for the “witness of the spirit.” For many Methodists, what Mahon and Finney were teaching was considered too simple and dependent on individual will rather than on the Holy Spirit.48
A Methodist layperson by the name of Phoebe Palmer also helped to spread the message of sanctification. She began in 1840 by hosting Bible studies in her home, where she taught the doctrine of sanctification.49 Palmer taught a more simplified version of Wesley’s “second work of grace.” Her method was called “altar theology,” and she taught that believers could achieve sanctification by following three simple steps: consecration, faith, and testimony. The Christian just had to dedicate everything to God, believe God’s promises, and then receive the gift of salvation.50
Palmer expanded her ministry and spoke in more than three hundred camp meetings and revival services. She played an important role in the beginning of the Third Great Awakening.51 In 1859, she went to England to minister and became integral in the spread of the Third Great Awakening in the British Isles.52 During Phoebe Palmer’s life, she spoke to over one hundred thousand people about salvation and sanctification.53 Charles White wrote, “This emphasis on attainable sanctification made her the mother of the Holiness Movement.”54
The holiness movement’s message continued to spread beyond Methodist circles. William Boardman, a Presbyterian and an executive director of the YMCA, helped spread the message of holiness. His 1858 book, The Higher Christian Life, had a tremendous impact on the evangelical church. Boardman was considered to be the most successful evangelist between the time of Charles Finney’s and D. L. Moody’s ministries.55 In fact, Boardman’s book had a great influence on A. B. Simpson’s sanctification experience. Another couple who preached sanctification was Hannah Whitehall Smith together with her husband, Robert. Hannah Smith wrote the book The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life in 1875. This book was about how believers could live victorious Christian lives by being filled with the Holy Spirit. Both Boardman and the Smiths would play a key role in the holiness movement in England as well as in the United States.56 The Smiths inspired the Keswick movement in Great Britain, which stressed the importance of sanctification in a non-Wesleyan sense.57 The non-Wesleyan view of sanctification then beginning to spread into the mainstream churches was a key factor in the spreading of the Third Great Awakening.
The emphasis on sanctification was now finding its way into Presbyterian, Baptist, and Congregational churches.58 Boardman and Hannah Whitehall Smith were popularizing a different version of sanctification. Their belief differed from the Wesleyan’s view in that they taught that innate sin is a permanent condition until people get to heaven. It cannot be eradicated, but it can be subjugated. This subjugation, they taught, happens when a person surrenders complete control of his or her life to the Holy Spirit. This crisis experience was often called the “Baptism of the Holy Spirit.”
This phrase would later be used by the pentecostal movement to define that point when the believer would be filled by the Holy Spirit—an experience that was evidenced by speaking in tongues.59
Grant Wacker, describing the baptism of the Spirit, says that “its primary purpose is not to purify the heart, but to empower the will, the will to act—to witness, sacrifice and serve.”60 After the time of the American Civil War and during the Third Great Awakening, this view of sanctification became even more popular than the Wesleyan view of sanctification. It was popularized by A. B. Simpson, A. J. Gordon, A. T. Pierson, R. A. Torrey, and D. L. Moody. In fact, D. L. Moody was a primary promoter of the holiness movement in both the United States and Britain in non-Methodist circles.61
Moody interpreted the “Baptism of the Holy Spirit” primarily in terms of power and service rather than freedom from sin. This became the primary focus of the American Keswick holiness teaching. This also became the main emphasis of the Bible college movement, which was taught and practiced at schools such as Gordon College, Columbia Bible College, Nyack College, and Dallas Theological Seminary. These schools helped popularize the teaching of sanctification that became known as the “Higher Christian Life.”62
Grant Wacker writes, “Ultimately, their [reformed view of holiness] was institutionalized in the Christian and Missionary Alliance.”63 The Christian and Missionary Alliance became the vehicle to spread this view of holiness. The Keswick form of the “Baptism of the Holy Spirit” was part of the evangelism message preached by evangelists and Bible teachers in the second half of the nineteenth century. This view of holiness spread throughout many non-Methodist denominations across both the United States and in Great Britain.
The Wesleyan view of holiness was part of the Methodist Church from its inception. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, changes were taking place in the church. The Methodist Church was the largest denomination in America at that time. Methodism had stressed conversion and sanctification, but as the church became more firmly established and more mainstream, a change of perspective took place. As Methodists achieved more public respectability, the term “holiness” became a problem in the denomination.64 Methodists who were involved in the holiness movement fought to keep holiness as a primary focus, but they were losing ground. Their opponents to the “second work of grace” wanted to make sanctification synonymous with what happened at conversion. It began at conversion and continued throughout the Christian’s life.65 This conflict began in the 1830s and gained strength in the mid-nineteenth century. As the church became more settled, moved away from circuit preaching, and began to enjoy the benefits of more educated clergy, Methodists began to de-emphasize the “second work of grace.” Churches were becoming more urban and increasingly wanted to fit into the community and to stay away from the emotionalism that was often associated with holiness.66
In 1867, John Inskeep and a group of Methodist ministers established the National Camp-Meeting Association for the Promotion of Christian Holiness. Describing this new effort, Wacker writes, “Within a decade, the National Association had directly sponsored or indirectly fostered an extensive network of national, regional and local holiness associations, periodicals, missions, schools, camps, conferences and weekly prayer meetings.”67 It seemed for a time the holiness movement would sweep the entire Methodist Church, both south and north. But serious opposition developed, and those in the holiness movement began to lose ground. This opposition was from the more liberal segment of the Methodist Church. During the period between 1880 and 1905, over one hundred thousand people left the Methodist Church to start or join other denominations.68 They left because they wanted a more evangelical church. A few of the denominations begun during this exodus were the Church of the Nazarene founded by Phineas F. Breeze, a former Methodist minister; the Church of God located in Anderson, Indiana; and the Pilgrim Holiness Church.69
The nineteenth century was a period of new ideas. There were new ideas on the inspiration of the Scripture and what it meant. There were also new ideas on man’s origins, as expounded by Charles Darwin. These ideas were to have a significant influence on the church.
Intellectual Threats
There were two intellectual upheavals facing nineteenth-century Christianity. Both theories were disseminated in American universities. One was the theory of evolution. The other was the higher criticism approach to the Bible. These two philosophies rocked not only the scientific and academic world, but also the Christian world. In 1859, Charles Darwin’s book On the Origin of the Species introduced his theory of evolution to the world. This theory presented a major challenge to the church because it undermined the Christian perspective of creation.70 Bruce Shelly states the challenge in the following manner: “If there was no overseer, eye of providence in creation; if in fact there was no creation at all but merely an evolution from simple to more complex forms of matter and energy, what was left of traditional Christian belief in a creating and sustaining God? If Darwin was right, how could the Bible be true?”71 The theory of evolution called the traditional Christian view that God created the universe into question. Until then, Christians had almost universally accepted that God had created everything by simply a word. Protestant and Catholic theologians had argued that all was created “ex-nihilo,” or “out of nothing,” all down through the centuries. The argument of divine design pointed to the Creator.72 Protestant education in America had taught that the design of the universe proved the existence of God. The argument of design was the mainstay in American higher education.73
The theory of evolution was being applied to the sciences, humanities, and even religion. British philosophers Herbert Spencer and Thomas Huxley were saying that evolutionary theories could provide the basis for a person’s whole philosophy of life.74 The evolutionary theory was impacting universities in Europe, and it soon began to affect colleges and universities in America. Some of the seminaries in America were teaching evolution along with higher critical views of the Bible. This trend caused some Christians to wonder whether the Bible could be trusted at all.75
In nineteenth-century European universities, the Bible was being challenged by liberal biblical scholars. They were teaching that the Scriptures were no different than any other type of ancient literature such as the Iliad or the Odyssey. They taught that the Bible evolved like any other work of literature and was just a product of human religious imagination. German theologians had been attacking the reliability of the Scriptures before the American Civil War. After the Civil War, this view of Scripture began to filter into the United States. Such views challenged the very bedrock of nineteenth-century Christianity.
More and more American colleges and seminary professors were studying in Germany, where they were taught the higher critical view of the Scripture, which would in turn became dominant throughout some of the major denominations in America.76 Consider for a moment that the typical church-attendee during this time was being taught that the book of Exodus was not by Moses but was instead a myth. One could only imagine the turmoil this caused.77 The higher critical method’s approach to looking at the Scriptures became a battleground in the second half of the nineteenth century. The leaders in the Third Great Awakening counter-attacked higher critical view of the Scriptures, which resulted in the publication of twelve paperback books called The Fundamentals. This project was financed by two wealthy southern California businessmen, Lyman and Matthew Stewart.78 Three million copies of these books were distributed—seemingly to every theological student, pastor, and missionary in America.79 These books included articles by over sixty-four authors that defended the Christian faith, rejecting the “higher critical view” of the Bible and liberal Christianity.80
There was a group that accepted both higher critical views and evolution. They adapted them and incorporated them in their faith. They saw this new knowledge as a blessing from God and embraced it. They became what is known as the modernists, or Liberals, in today’s Christianity. Out of this group would come many of the leaders of what would become known as the Social Gospel movement.81
The Social Gospel
The years after 1850 proved to be a time of rapid industrialization in the cities of Great Britain. People were moving from rural areas to work in urban factories. Oftentimes they lived in slums and squalor and worked long hours for pitifully small wages. Christians in England became concerned about the condition of the poor and wanted to help those living in such terrible conditions. The same pattern was happening in the United States, where rapid industrialization fueled a massive immigration to the cities.
Within the church, Christians took two distinct approaches to reaching out to people in such difficult settings. Those churches that were part of the holiness movement, with its focus on individual salvation, tried to reach those suffering around them through various social outreach programs. One of the most successful efforts was the formation of the Salvation Army, which began in England in 1865. The other reactionary effort by the church was known as the Social Gospel movement, and its focus was on meeting people’s physical needs, with comparatively less emphasis on the spiritual needs.
The Salvation Army was founded by William Booth to reach the poor with the gospel while also helping to meet their physical needs. Booth had been a Methodist minister in London and saw that he had to do something to help the poor in the slums in East London.82 His “street preaching” in London would ultimately have a great effect. In just eleven years, he established thirty-two outreach centers to evangelize and meet the social needs of the people. Booth organized churches like an army, and the Salvation Army’s leaders were given ranks. They dressed in uniforms and were organized in military units.83
By 1888, Booth had established one thousand units, or corps. In England, the movement was growing like wildfire. In 1890, he published the book In Darkest England and the Way Out, which helped to show the church the great need of the day’s poor. It also showed how Christians could help.84 Booth’s daughter Evangeline came to the United States to lead the Salvation Army in America, where the Salvation Army continued the same type of ministry they had led in England. They focused on evangelism along with providing food, shelter, medical help, vocational training, elementary schooling, prisoner visitation, and legal help. By 1904, the Salvation Army had over nine hundred outreach centers, or corps, in the United States.85 The Salvation Army had a tremendous impact in helping the needy both in England and in the United States throughout the nineteenth century, and it continues to do the same today.
In addition to the response from the holiness movement, another attempt to reach the ignored urban masses became known as the Social Gospel movement. This movement was an attempt by the more liberal part of the church to reach people in the cities. Mark Noll comments on the origin of the Social Gospel movement by writing, “This strong link in the American revival tradition between personal holiness and social reform contributed to the seriousness of the movement, as did a newer concern for the scientific study of social problems that accompanied the rise in the American university of social problems after the Civil War.”86
David Bebbington states, “The most characteristic doctrine of the social gospelers, that the Kingdom of God was to be realized by social improvement, was derived primarily from the German liberal theologian Albrecht Ritsehl.”87 Indeed, the higher critical view of the Scripture was accepted by most who were then preaching the Social Gospel, while those who accepted the Bible as the Word of God tended to think the Social Gospel was corrupting the message of the Bible. The Social Gospelers based their doctrines on liberal views such as the God’s Fatherhood of all people, whether Christians or not. They also taught that all people were going to heaven whether they accepted Christ as their Lord and Savior or not. The Social Gospelers turned their focus from individual salvation to improving economic life in order to help set up the kingdom of God on earth.88 Their focus was on the economic good of humankind, with a lesser emphasis on the salvation.
The Social Gospelers’ concern for improving economic conditions and ideas on how to achieve this goal would often come from outside the Christian tradition, especially from social scientists and others who saw the same need. Some of the leaders with the most innovative ideas were from Britain, such as Thomas Chalmers of Scotland and F. D. Maurice of England. They formulated new Christian responses and answers to the problems of industrialization. Both leaders impacted Americans who were interested in Christian reform.89
Those who espoused the Social Gospel embraced a wide range of political and economic ideas. The Social Gospelers ranged from fairly conservative to very liberal in their Christian and economic views. All those who were in the Social Gospel movement were concerned with the suffering of others. They espoused reforms such as eliminating child labor, the need for a day of rest, shorter workdays, and controlling industry to protect workers.90 Their focus was on social justice for all the downtrodden. Most in the movement were pastors or seminary professors who had accepted the higher critical view of the Scriptures and the evolutionary perspectives influencing the sciences. They did not form any organizations but preferred instead to incorporate their goals into their particular denominations and seminaries. They also pushed their agendas through the appropriate public and political agencies.91 As Bruce Shelly comments,
The Crux of The Social Gospel was the belief that God’s saving work includes corporate structures as well as personal lives. If it is true that social good and evil are collective in nature, not simply the total of good and evil individuals, then Christians are obliged to work for the reconstruction of the social order. It is part of their religious responsibility.92
One of the most prominent leaders of the Social Gospel movement was Washington Gladden, the pastor of the First Congregation Church in Columbus, Ohio. The leading theologian and academic proponent of the Social Gospel was Walter Rauschenbusch, a professor of church history of Rochester Seminary in Rochester, New York. A third proponent of the Social Gospel was the author Charles Sheldon, whose book In His Steps became immensely popular in the late nineteenth century. All three played an important role in popularizing the Social Gospel.
As a pastor, Washington Gladden had a great care for the poor and for exploited workers. Gladden, in his church in Columbus, had both factory workers and the owners of the factories sitting in pews right across from each other. His concern for the workers in those factories was immensely practical because he saw them every Sunday. His goal was to impose the brotherhood of man on both groups.93 He wrote a number of books exposing the dangers of the powerful industrialist and the conditions of the workingman.94 His commitment to justice would lead him to fight for labor rights and to apply the “golden rule” of the New Testament to industrial organization.95 Gladden became the primary spokesman from the pastoral perspective for the Social Gospel.
Walter Rauschenbusch was a German Baptist pastor who ministered for ten years in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen. His church was very close to that of A. B. Simpson, who ministered at the Gospel Tabernacle in the same area. After ten years in New York City, Rauschenbusch left to become a professor of church history at Rochester Seminary. It was there that he published his seminal works on the Social Gospel. He became the prime spokesman and leader of the movement. Rauschenbusch published Christianity and Social Crisis in 1907, For God and the People: Prayers of the Social Awakening in 1910, Christianity, the Social Order in 1912, and finally in 1917 his magnum opus, A Theology for the Social Gospel.96 Raushenbusch taught a prophetic idea of justice and emphasized idea of building the kingdom of God through the power of Jesus Christ.97 The Social Gospel also became associated with Christianity’s liberal trends. While Gladden helped popularize the higher criticism of the Bible, Rauschenbusch taught that some of the miracles in the Scriptures never took place.98 For the most part, the Social Gospel was looked on with distrust among those Christians who were part of the Third Great Awakening.
A final spokesman who helped popularize the Social Gospel was Charles Sheldon. Sheldon was a Congregational pastor in Topeka, Kansas. Sheldon hoped, through the influence of In His Steps, to see God’s kingdom realized on earth through evangelism and social action.99 Sheldon’s book poses the question “What would happen to a community if everyone asked themselves ‘What would Jesus do?’ and then proceed to do it.”100 Sheldon felt that answering this question would revolutionize society. This book sold millions of copies and is still popular today. The original text was never copyrighted, so it has been published by a number of different publishers, which helped its rise in popularity. In fact, one sees the acronym WWJD (What would Jesus do?) that originated from the book even to this today. Although Sheldon’s book played an important role in the spread of these ideas, the Social Gospel itself became less and less popular after the Great Depression and has since fallen into obscurity.
Conclusion
In this chapter, we have looked at the factors that impacted Christianity in the nineteenth century. All these factors played a role in Christianity in the Great Century. In the following chapters, the life of A. B. Simpson will be examined along with the role he played in the Third Great Awakening.
1. Latourette, History of the Expansion of Christianity, 1.
2. Foster, Streams of Living Water, 299.
3. Nettleton, “Did You Know?” 30.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Towns and Porter, Ten Greatest Revivals Ever, 98.
7. Foster, Streams of Living Water, 326.
8. Ibid.
9. Cairns, Christianity Through the Centuries, 471.
10. Towns and Porter, Ten Greatest Revivals Ever, 98.
11. Ibid., 102.
12. Cairns, Christianity Through the Centuries, 431.
13. Towns and Porter, Ten Greatest Revivals Ever, 102.
14. Latourette, Christianity in a Revolutionary Age, 29.
15. Cairns, Christianity Through the Centuries, 432.
16. Noll, History of Christianity in the United States, 288.
17. Pollock, D. L. Moody, 189.
18. Ibid., 169
19. Ibid., 176.
20. Noll et al., Eerdman’s Handbook of Christianity, 293.
21. Latourette, Christianity in a Revolutionary Age, 32.
22. Ibid., 33.
23. Ibid., 32.
24. Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya, 115.
25. Ibid., 133.
26. Cairns, Christianity Through the Centuries, 409.
27. Ibid.
28. Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya, 117.
29. Cairns, Christianity Through the Centuries, 407.
30. Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya, 119.
31. Ibid., 141.
32. Gonzalez, Story of Christianity, 245.
33. Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya, 123.
34. Steer, “Pushing Inward,” 12.
35. Noll et al., Eerdman’s Handbook to Christianity, 301.
36. Ibid., 295.
37. Ibid.
38. Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya, 261.
39. Foster, Streams of Living Water, 365.
40. Noll, Eerdman’s Handbook to Christianity, 301.
41. Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya, 261.
42. Ibid.
43. Noll, Eerdman’s Handbook to Christianity, 295.
44. Nutt, “G. Sherwood Eddy and the Attitudes of Protestants,” 518.
45. Schneider, “Conflict of Associations.”
46. Ibid.
47. Tait, “Cleansing Wave,” 22.
48. Ibid., 23.
49. White, “Holiness Fire-Starting,” 19.
50. Ibid.
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid., 16.
54. Ibid., 19.
55. Tait, “Cleansing Wave,” 24.
56. Noll, History of Christianity in the United States, 380.
57. Tait, “Cleansing Wave,” 24.
58. Noll et al., Eerdman’s Handbook to Christianity in America, 334.
59. Ibid.
60. Ibid.
61. Ibid., 335.
62. Ibid.
63. Tait, “Cleansing Wave,” 24.
64. Schneider, “Conflict of Associations,” 269.
65. Ibid., 270.
66. Noll et al., Eerdman’s Handbook of Christianity in America, 333.
67. Ibid., 33.
68. Ibid.
69. Ibid.
70. Shelly, Church History in Plain Language, 391.
71. Ibid.
72. Noll, History of Christianity in the United States, 366.
73. Ibid., 366–67.
74. Ibid., 367.
75. Noll et al., Eerdman’s Handbook to Christianity in America, 285.
76. Shelly, Church History in Plain Language, 391.
77. Ibid., 392.
78. Noll et al., Eerdman’s Handbook to Christianity in America, 331.
79. Shelly, Church History in Plain Language, 433.
80. Ibid.
81. Ibid., 392.
82. Noll, History of Christianity in the United States, 304.
83. Ibid.
84. Shelly, Church History in Plain Language, 411.
85. Noll, History of Christianity in the United States, 304.
86. Ibid.
87. Bebbington, Dominance of Evangelicalism, 247.
88. Cairns, Christianity Through the Centuries, 438.
89. Noll, History of Christianity in the United States, 305.
90. Noll et al., Eerdman’s Handbook to Christianity in America, 319.
91. Shelly, Church History in Plain Language, 413.
92. Ibid.
93. Ibid.
94. Noll et al., Eerdman’s Handbook to Christianity, 319.
95. Noll, History of Christianity in the United States, 305.
96. Ibid., 306.
97. Ibid.
98. Ibid., 307.
99. Ibid., 411.
100. Ibid.