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Undermined Establishment

Church-State Relations in America, 1880â?"1920

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

The Protestant "Establishment" in Late Nineteenth-century America

By the closing decades of the nineteenth century the separation of church and state was widely acclaimed in the United States as the best framework for relationships between religious institutions and the arms of government. Legal establishments of religion, prohibited at the national level in 1791, had then been renounced by the few states in which they had survived. But an establishment of another informal and voluntary type, without legal or financial support by government, persisted. Though independently organized, the leading Protestant denominations worked together selectively through various voluntary associations in an effort to bring their nation more fully into accord with their understanding of what a Christian state and society should be. In this quest, the Protestant forces often cooperated informally with government officials.

A dramatic illustration of contacts between prominent political figures and the Protestant establishment occurred at Carnegie Hall in New York City on April 21, 1900, the first day of an Ecumenical Missionary Conference sponsored by the agencies of many denominations and societies. A great gathering was addressed by conspicuous Protestant leaders on that Saturday afternoon. In the evening the famous hall could hold only half those who wanted to enter. The record reflected the excitement: "Punctually at eight o'clock an outburst of cheering at the rear of the stage betokened the approach of President McKinley, and as he was ... making his way to the front of the platform, the whole audience rose, cheering him vociferously, and saluted him with the waving of handkerchiefs and hats." Speaking effusively of the struggles and sacrifices of missionaries, the president concluded on a high religious note: "May this great meeting rekindle the spirit of missionary ardor and enthusiasm 'to go teach all nations,' and may the field never lack a succession of heralds who shall carry on the task—the continuous proclamation of His gospel to the end of time!" (40). After the singing of the national anthem, another political figure spoke: Theodore Roosevelt, then governor of the state where the meeting was held, but soon to be vice-president and, when William McKinley fell at the hand of an assassin, president. Roosevelt spoke primarily of the importance of mission work in the American West, assuring the delegates that "you are doing the greatest work that can be done" (43). The response to the two high-ranking speakers was given by the honorary president of the conference, himself a former president of the nation, Benjamin Harrison.

That episode and others like it gave a certain visibility to the informal but often effective Protestant establishment at the turn of the century, midway in the period (1880–1920) within which this book is cast. That such informal relationships between Protestant leaders and executive, legislative, and judicial figures in government influenced certain actions and decisions in ways favorable to the churches will be illustrated in the pages that follow. But so will certain counterforces then at work in undermining the Protestant establishment, forces that were increasing in intensity and paving the way for new and quite different definitions and practices concerning the relationship of church and state. Such pressures decisively emerged as the twentieth century unfolded, especially after 1940.

Protestant Churches in the Context of American Life, 1880–1900

By 1880, the leading Protestant denominations—Baptist, Congregational, Disciples of Christ, Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, Quaker, and Reformed—had an estimated total of close to nine million members, or about 18 percent of the population. The bulk of them were descendants of the settlers who had arrived from the early seventeenth century onward. They had come primarily from western and northern Europe, but among them were also slaves imported from Africa. Denominational memberships had steadily increased throughout the nineteenth century as a percentage of the total population, through not only immigration but also the assimilative power of the various traditions as they drew into themselves individuals and groups from quite different backgrounds by conversion, marriage, social aspirations, and cultural success. The English-speaking Protestants, who especially regarded themselves as the custodians of that culture, had become accustomed to their formative role in American life.

Indeed, although their still-growing formal memberships never came close to enrolling half the population in this period, they often spoke as if they were prescribing the moral direction of the nation as a whole. They claimed that the Protestant faith had been predominant in the colonial and national periods and assumed that many who were not actually members of churches were part of their larger constituencies or at least in general sympathy with them. That view contained a considerable measure of truth, and it encouraged them to speak with a certain assurance when they discussed the American way of relating church and state. As Joseph P. Thompson, retired pastor of New York's Broadway Tabernacle, put it: "In reading the statistics of the American churches, it should be borne in mind that the term members by no means represents the total of worshippers in the several congregations, or of nominal adherents to a confession, but only those who by their own act have united with the church proper, the spiritual body, and who partake of its sacraments." Participants in the outer circle who were not full church members usually understood themselves to be part of the denomination of the congregation they attended.

The denominations had many differences, reflecting their varying histories, points of origin, polities, and theologies. They are more accurately described as complex "denominational families," for most of them were also internally divided along sectional, ethnic, racial, or theological lines. In many ways the Lutherans, originating from German and Scandinavian countries primarily, showed some distinctive differences from the others, which shared similar backgrounds in either the British Protestant traditions or Calvinism—and often both. Furthermore, some churches became entrenched largely in certain sections of the country, worked out close affinities with particular racial and ethnic groups, or became associated more directly with a given class in society than another; then social factors provided often hidden or immediately less obvious but nonetheless significant reasons for continued separation. Yet they all claimed to be a part of the continuing heritage of the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, and despite many tensions and quarrels they shared certain common emphases and values that were direct or (more often) indirect consequences of that major turning point in Christian history as they interpreted it.

With variations in details, the leading denominational families were trinitarian, Bible-centered, broadly evangelical, and missionary-minded. Prominent among their shared values was an insistence on the centrality of the Bible and the importance of personal and group freedom, and the literature that dealt with such matters was widely read across denominational lines. They believed strongly in religious freedom; it not only protected them against interference by government, but it also opened the door for them to win whomever they could to their version of Christian faith by the means of persuasion. The efficacy of persuasion in building vital congregations and denominations conscious of their mission had been amply demonstrated in the religious awakenings of the colonial and early national periods. By 1880, with some exceptions and in varying degrees of intensity, most leading denominational families had been strongly influenced by the theologies and practices of revivalism. Through the means of persuasion and the organizational vitality that voluntaryism had brought, they hoped to win increasing numbers to the Christian faith, at home and abroad.

With somewhat different emphases on such particular issues as Sabbath observance and temperance, the denominational families tended to be reformist in style, some more cautiously than others. Various reform causes, such as antislavery and abolition, had been conspicuously championed by important segments of the Protestant world earlier in the century. Enthusiasm for reform cooled somewhat in the decades following the Civil War, but as social and economic problems mounted toward the end of the century, various reformist measures were again advocated in the wider culture and slowly gathered support among church constituencies in the face of considerable opposition.

The rise of various social Christian movements in the period of this study significantly influenced attitudes toward church-state issues. Hence attention to such movements emerges at appropriate points in chapters that follow, with particular attention to those progressive Protestant aspects that became known as the social gospel. The development of social Christianity heightened the interest of growing numbers of church people in public issues in ways that have given a distinctive cast to twentieth-century religious history. The controversial social Christian movements—some relatively small and short-lived but others having a lasting impact on many denominations—injected new dimensions into the way the institutions and religion and government related to one another.

Protestant Views of a Christian America

Although the growing Protestant bodies actually enrolled far less than half the country's population in their formal memberships by 1900, they confidently believed that they formed the majority religious voice in the culture. As Edwin Scott Gaustad has stated, the large denominations "participated fully in the larger society, believing that they bore the heaviest responsibility for guiding the nation, sustaining its moral vision and its watchful walk along the paths of righteousness." Claiming that their nation's civilization was rooted in the premises of Protestant Christianity, its leaders aimed to make that civilization more fully Christian. For example, as Robert E. Thompson, a Presbyterian who taught sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, said to students at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1891: "There is no peace for us but in becoming a more Christian nation, and discovering anew the pertinence of the Ten Words of Sinai and the Sermon of the Foundations to our social condition."

The conviction that America was indeed a Christian nation was expressed by many contemporary writers. But they had to deal with the dilemma posed by an allegedly Christian nation whose constitutional provisions explicitly forbade its government to institute religious tests for public office, establish religion, or prohibit its free exercise. One of the most ambitious attempts to resolve this tension was offered in a lengthy book by Presbyterian minister Isaac A. Cornelison, who stated in some detail the Protestant establishment's position on the relationship of religion to civil government in America. On the one hand, he rejoiced "in the fact that we have, in this country, a grand system of political institutions, entirely separate from all ecclesiastical institutions." On the other hand, he believed, along with so many other nineteenth-century Protestants, that "the government of these United States was necessarily, rightfully, and lawfully Christian" (341). His way to resolve the tension was to stress the rights of the majority: "Christianity in a proper sense is the established religion of this nation; established, not by statute law, it is true, but by a law equally valid, the law in the nature of things, the law of necessity, which law will remain in force so long as the great mass of the people are Christian" (362).

Perhaps the best observation on the nature of the voluntary establishment came from an outsider. The distinguished British observer Lord Bryce, speaking of the relationship of religion and government in America, said:

The whole matter may, I think, be summed up by saying that Christianity is in fact understood to be, though not the legally established religion, yet the national religion. So far from thinking their commonwealth godless, the Americans conceive that the religious character of a government consists in nothing but the religious belief of the individual citizens, and the conformity of their conduct to that belief. They deem the general acceptance of Christianity to be one of the main sources of their national prosperity, and their nation a special object of Divine favour.

These perceptions pointed to a dilemma for the leaders of the Protestant establishment: every vehicle that they adopted to further their plan for a more Christian nation (as they defined it) logically contradicted the separation of church and state in a culture infused by religion. Protestant positions at that time on religious ceremonies at public events, education, Catholicism, immigrants, and the nature of missionary work illustrate this difficulty, and Protestant pronouncements on the relation between church and state often exemplified tortuous argument.

Religious Interpretations of Secular Life

Defenders claiming that America was indeed a Christian nation frequently referred to the continuing presence and power of religion in secular life. In stating a unanimous decision of the Supreme Court in 1892, Associate Justice David J. Brewer summed up with considerable precision the conventional Protestant position in this regard. After referring to many events, state constitutions, and court decisions to the effect that Americans were a religious people and that the morality of the country was deeply rooted in Christianity, Brewer concluded:

If we pass beyond these matters to a view of American life as expressed by its laws, its business, its customs and its society, we find everywhere a clear recognition of the same truth. Among other matters note the following: The form of oath universally prevailing, concluding with an appeal to the Almighty; the custom of opening sessions of all deliberative bodies and most conventions with prayer; the prefatory words of all wills, "In the name of God, Amen;" the laws respecting the observance of the Sabbath, with the general cessation of all secular business, and the closing of courts, legislatures, and other similar public assemblies on that day; the churches and church organizations which abound in every city, town and hamlet; the multitude of charitable organizations existing everywhere under Christian aupisces; the gigantic missionary associations, with general support, and aiming to establish Christian missions in every quarter of the globe. These, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances [a reference to the state constitutions] that this is a Christian nation.

Cornelison, too, subscribed to this view, but a tinge of doubt began to appear in the argument. His clear commitment to the patterns of the voluntary Christendom so dear to Protestants at the time was evident when he reasserted a familiar position:

The government ought not to discontinue any Christian practice or exercise which has become established by custom; such as the opening of the daily sessions of the Congress of the United States and of the legislatures of the States, with prayer; the employment of Christian ministers as chaplains in the army and navy, in the prisons, hospitals, and homes under its charge; and the opening of the daily exercises of the public schools with religious exercises [363–64].

Cornelison knew that time brought changes, but should such exercises as listed be discontinued, he declared that it ought not be for any reason derogatory to Christianity. Affirming that the formal meeting of large numbers for a common object is impressive and "excites an emotion which naturally tends upward," he tried to draw the line between public events at which prayer was or was not suitable:

It is perfectly natural that the great National and State political conventions should be opened with prayer; not so natural that the meetings of the National executive committees should be opened with prayer; perfectly natural that the National and State Teachers' Associations should be opened with prayer; not so natural that the meetings of sections and committees should be so opened; perfectly natural that the daily sessions of Congress and the legislature should be opened with prayer; not so natural that the meetings of their committees should be so opened; perfectly natural that the daily sessions of the public school should be opened with prayer; not so natural that the meetings of the Board of Directors should be opened with prayer [364–65].

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Excerpted from Undermined Establishment by Robert T. Handy. Copyright © 1991 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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