Glenn Beck, Methodism, and "Black Founders"

by Christopher Jones

Glenn Beck initially drew my interest because of his Mormonism—I sensed in Beck’s conspiratorial approach to politics something reminiscent of an earlier generation of Mormon public figures. The pervading fear of socialist subversion, combined with the particularly Mormon interpretations and understandings of human agency, the methods and aims of satanic opposition, and the divinely-inspired nature of America’s Founding documents, were reminders both that the influence of Cleon Skousen and Ezra Taft Benson’s religio-political views still loomed large among a certain segment of the Mormon population and that in them lay a narrative that had the power to appeal to not only conservative Mormons but other embittered Americans as well, suspicious of the government and intent on rescuing the nation from secularism and immorality (and make no mistake, perceived secularism and immorality are as central to Beck’s movement as is some vague libertarian notion of fiscal responsibility). These topics have been discussed, analyzed, and reanalyzed at least a hundred times over by now (though some commentators rehash them anew and claim such discoveries for their own, all while butchering the identities of key people and ideas in Mormon history), and to be honest, I’ve grown weary of thinking about Beck, his Mormonism, and his agenda in general. In fact, I’d sworn off posting anything more on Beck here or at the Juvenile Instructor.

But one of Beck’s more recent forays into early American history has forced me to reconsider. It touched a nerve not because of Beck’s subtle invocation of Mormon themes, but rather because they addressed the subject of my current research—early American Methodism. Sandwiched in between Beck’s recent assertion that race relations in America were (with the exception of some unidentified “racists”) fairly harmonious before the years immediately preceding the Civil War and that provisions for Revolutionary War soldiers and veterans operated on a sort of colorblind basis is an intriguing discussion of what Beck oddly refers to as “the first real megachurch … a white and black megachurch.” The "megachurch" in question (which goes unidentified) is St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia and the central figure is Richard Allen, eventual founder of the AME Church.

“Richard Allen,” Beck explains, “was a preacher at a white church—a megachurch. … And Richard Allen, this megapreacher, he tried to segregate.” Beck’s go-to guy for all matter historical, David Barton, chimes in, noting that “In the 1790s [Allen] proposed having a black denomination. And both whites and blacks said, ‘we don’t want that. We want the integrated stuff. We don’t want separate denominations.’ There was finally an overt act of racism in one church that kind of gave him the impetus to go ahead and start a black denomination. But for years, neither blacks nor whites wanted a separate denomination ‘cause they worshipped together in those churches, in Philadelphia and elsewhere.”

Rather than focusing on each of the several problematic points raised (the insightful scholarship of Albert Raboteau, Dee Andrews, and Richard Newman is recommended for those interested), I’d like to ruminate on the meanings and implications of two particular points.

First, I was struck by Beck and Barton omitting entirely any mention of Methodism. Richard Allen is simply “a black preacher” and St. George’s is simply a generic “megachurch.” Considering that Methodist theology and worship were so central to Allen’s identity as a Christian (and as a black man), and that his "black denomination" remained within Methodist Episcopal tradition, this seems as especially odd omission. This not only simplifies and distorts the history of St. George’s (and Methodism more generally) by ignoring the complex dynamics of early American religion, but also serves as a useful means of locating this supposed bastion of interracial harmony within the tradition so many of Beck’s listeners and viewers claim as there own today—conservative evangelical Christianity. This rhetorical maneuver, then, allows these conservatives to co-opt the legacy of interracial evangelicalism in early America (in much the same way that Beck has co-opted the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement of the twentieth century).

Second, this conversation between Beck and Barton took place during a recurring segment of Beck’s show called “Founder’s Friday.” This particular episode was devoted to “Black Heroes in American History,” and was part of Beck’s stated effort to “spend more time learning about our black founders, and restoring this part of history” (a worthwhile effort, no doubt—at least theoretically). I was immediately reminded of Richard Newman’s biography of Richard Allen, Freedom’s Prophet, in which Newman sought to place Allen squarely within the tradition of America’s Founding Fathers. Echoing others, Newman reinforced the notion that Allen was a black founder, but moved beyond previous assessment by declaring that Allen was deserving of such a title not only because he founded black institutions but also because he “was essentially the forerunner of modern civil rights activists” and because “his belief in nonviolent but confrontational reform offered lessons for virtually every black leader who followed in his wake” (p. 4). As Alan Taylor summarized in his review of the book, “Allen was a Founder for all Americans. He emphasized a prophetic vision of America as a multi-racial democracy of equal rights and equal opportunity. His egalitarian vision was far more daring than anything considered by the more famous white Founders.”

In Beck’s vision of “black founders,” however, Richard Allen in cast as a foil to the interracial harmony he earlier enjoyed as a “mega-preacher” to “2,000 whites” by promoting “segregation.” Tellingly, then, what Beck sees as antithetical to his imagined ideal of American society, Newman see as admirable and daring. The implication of Beck’s narrative—that this “black preacher” and the black church he pioneered, are mere distractions to the real story of this Christian nation—serves as an interesting contrast to those who “seek a sense of authenticity” in black institutions and raises important questions about the place of the black church in the conservative white mind today.

Pragmatic Saint

Editor's Note: Below is the first of two reviews/assessments I hope to post of John Wigger's new biography of Francis Asbury. The first comes from our new contributor Christopher Jones, who is studying Methodism and other subjects at William and Mary.

“The Pragmatic Saint”

Review of John Wigger, American Saint: Francis Asbury and the Methodists (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

by Christopher Jones

“Why do we have no modern critical biography of Francis Asbury, one of the most revered and influential figures in the early republic?” (Nathan Hatch, 1989)[i]

It took twenty years, but someone has finally answered Nathan Hatch’s call for a scholarly biography of Francis Asbury. John Wigger, who studied under Hatch at Notre Dame, has published American Saint: Francis Asbury and the Methodists, a highly readable and lively portrait of the Methodist bishop who shepherded the movement through its early growing pains in America to set it on a course to become the largest Protestant denomination in antebellum America. Contradicting decades-old assessments that “no biographer should try to make [Asbury] lovable, for this he would never allow himself to be,”[ii] Wigger concludes that the exact opposite was the case: “Asbury loved and was loved, despite his flaws” (p. 416).

Wigger’s biography does much more than simply satisfy a decades-old call for a critical biography of Asbury and refute simplistic and outdated characterizations of the man, though. It challenges common assumptions about religious leadership in American history. As Wigger noted in a recent interview, one of his goals in writing this book was to “raise questions for readers about the meaning of religious leadership in America.” Attributing scholarly neglect of Asbury to the fact that he doesn’t neatly fit any of the “three camps” in which “key figures in American religious history are generally lumped” (“charismatic communicators,” “intellectuals,” and “domineering autocrats”), Wigger contends that Asbury’s life forces us to nuance such categorization and look to alternate models of religious leadership. Never known as an eloquent speaker or innovative theologian and having left behind only a scant collection of published writings, Asbury is usually characterized as a rigid autocrat singularly committed to maintaining his hierarchical control by virtue of his status as the head of the Methodist episcopacy in the United States. Such a description, according to Wigger, ignores Asbury’s deeply-rooted piety, his ability to interact and communicate with individuals in intimate settings, his sensitivity to shifts in the surrounding culture (and his related ability to react and adapt), and his organizational genius. Asbury, Wigger maintains, led by example in supervising the force of itinerant missionaries he organized and led. He steered clear of politics (basically hiding out for two solid years during the height of the Revolutionary War), lived a life of relative poverty (never owning a home or plot of land, thus shunning the things of this world), never married (in an effort to more single-mindedly serve the Church), and traveled relentlessly to both preach and maintain personal contact with those he was given charge over (so as to be able to more effectively appoint preachers to locales better suited to different personalities and backgrounds).

According to Wigger, “Asbury had a better feel for the tension between faith and culture than most of the religious leaders around him” (p. 417). He consistently navigated this tension by exhibiting a pragmatic approach to nearly all tensions within Methodism in an effort to allow the church to grow. He was committed to Arminian theology but never was as strident in his critiques of Calvinism as other Methodists (including Wesley) were. “Theological exactitude didn’t concern him as much as it did Wesley, Wigger suggests. Instead, Asbury read widely in theological and devotional writings in an effort to adequately assess “the intellectual currents of the day, so that he could guide the movement to engage them” (p. 107). He never experienced the miraculous and visionary episodes that other Methodist converts did, but forthrightly refused to automatically reject such experience as heretical or dangerous, and encouraged intimate communal gatherings (class meetings and love feasts) and later adopted camp meetings in an effort to nurture immediate and emotional religious experience. God, Asbury maintained, could manifest Himself differently to different people. While such pragmatism often allowed Methodism to prosper and grow, it sometimes had more negative consequences. Such was the case in Asbury’s shifting commitment to abolition and antislavery. Initially an advocate of requiring all Methodists to emancipate their slaves and no longer participate in the practice, Asbury later decided to allow individual conferences within the movement to decide for themselves whether local clergy and laity could own slaves and remain in good standing with the MEC. Practical commitment to institutional growth trumped ideological devotion to morality.

While Wigger’s biography thus provides a lively and provocative portrait of a complex religious leader, it also succeeds in revealing a detailed and intimate account of early American Methodism. Methodist dissenters and schismatics are granted a greater role in the story of American Methodism than in other accounts of the movement (including Wigger’s own earlier treatment, Taking Heaven by Storm), and several short but illuminating biographies of lesser-known leaders with the MEC are embedded within the larger narrative. In following Asbury’s daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly travels, relationships, and interactions, readers catch a glimpse of the growing pains associated with Methodism’s rise to prominence. Instead of simply noting that Methodism grew immensely during the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries, Wigger traces the ups and downs of that process, illustrating in the process that Methodist growth was never a guarantee, constantly being threatened by discontent dissenters, rival religious groups, and regional, theological, and ideological disputes within the MEC itself. Asbury’s singular commitment to seeing Methodism prosper in its American setting thus produced mixed results. But that commitment, combined with the dedication and piety of Asbury, qualifies him for the title of “American Saint” granted him by Wigger.

I was disappointed in Wigger’s occasional failure to engage relevant literature on certain topics. In his otherwise excellent treatment of Asbury’s complicated relationship with Richard Allen and other black Methodist preachers, for example, he fails to cite or engage Richard Newman’s insightful biography of Allen entirely (reviewed at RiAH last year). But such omissions do little to detract from the value of this perceptive and thoughtful offering from Wigger.

Throughout the book, Wigger’s admiration for Asbury shines through (he notes with apparent satisfaction in one footnote that upon completing his manuscript he “was surprised to find how closely Asbury resembled the leaders described” in a recent book on what makes modern businesses and leaders successful (p. 425, n. 17)). Perhaps previous biographers of Asbury refused to recognize as a lovable figure because they themselves felt no affection for the man. Such is not the case with Wigger. One senses in reading American Saint that Wigger sincerely enjoyed the extensive research and writing that went into this biography because he not only respects but genuinely admires Francis Asbury. Others will likely feel the same after reading the book. This is an important contribution to American religious history, and readers will discover a much more detailed and rich account of Asbury and early Methodism than what I’ve been able to cover here.

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[i] Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 220.

[ii] L.C. Rudolph, Francis Asbury (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1966), 220.

Moses at Christmas

Moses at Christmas
by Ed Blum

I tried to ruin the blockbuster film Avatar. Not for everyone, mind you, just for my new brother-in-law, David. "Jen and I just got out of Avatar," I texted falsely. "Can you believe the Jackneff … is that how you spell it? … destroyed the village at the end. Jen figured out way early that Halpha was a traitor." I hadn't seen Avatar. There's no Jackneff; no Halpha. It was my brilliant way of tricking and hopefully irritating David, an animator who had been Facebooking about his excitement for Avatar for weeks.

"Bro, haven't seen it yet," David texted back immediately, "Not cool." I laughed and laughed. He fell for it. I called and explained that I was teasing and that I hadn't seen the movie. David mustn't have been too upset with me (or perhaps he had already purchased my Christmas present), for in my stocking he placed America's Prophet: Moses and the American Story by Bruce Feiler. I had seen the book at Barnes and Noble and determined to get it at the library. Instead, I had my own Christmas copy. Flying home from the east coast, all hopped up on Bayer because of my sprained ankle, I had my dose of religious history to read.

Feiler's work passed the time well. It's a quirky, but fun, book.

Pitched to a general readership, I can only imagine scholars enjoying it. Feiler oscillates between historical analyses of Moses at various moments in American history to Feiler's personal experiences or interviews. So he jumps from Puritan sermons to his observations of Pilgrim reenactors, or from the words of the Founding Fathers to what the Liberty Bell sounds like to him. I had a great time venturing with Feiler to Cincinnati where he raced across the frozen Ohio River at midnight as if he was fleeing from slavery. But sometimes the personal anecdotes seem ridiculous. There's no one chasing him through the streets; the drama is fake and the reader knows it (just as it is in Dan Brown's disappointing The Lost Symbol). Feiler is probably at his best when interacting with director Cecil DeMille's descendants and piecing together the personal and social origins of his 1950s epic The Ten Commandments.

Feiler concludes that Moses taught American's a series of lessons. He taught them to have the courage to hope and rebel (in Exodus liberation style) and how to consolidate as a community (in law-giving and law-abiding style). He taught Americans how to form identities in difficult times (like massive immigration moments), how to fight the Nazis and Commies (with superheros and Charlton Heston), and how to deal with devastation (by accepting that sometimes you don't make it to the Promised Land).

And finally, Feiler proclaims that more than any other figure, Moses is the man - even more than Jesus. "Moses was more important to the Puritans, more meaningful to the Revolution, more impactful during the Civil War, and more inspiring to the immigrant rights, civil rights, and women's rights movements of the last century than Jesus," Feiler shouts. "Beyond that, Moses had more influence on American history than any other figure from the Bible or antiquity."

These are bold words. In modern America, it takes a lot of guts to challenge Jesus. Sure, two thousand years ago you could get away with arresting him or crucifying him pretty easily. But throughout American history, as Stephen Prothero and Richard Fox have shown brilliantly, Jesus has been a force. Prothero even suggests that the United States can best be understood not as a "Christian nation" or as a "pluralistic nation" but as a "Jesus nation." Now we have a challenge: Moses or Jesus. Historians, marshal your evidence and make your choice.

I'm not sure why Feiler insists on comparing Moses to Jesus in American historical influence. Perhaps it's his way of divesting American history of some of its overly Christian emphasis (like how some of my colleagues have quietly balked at Prothero's claim about the ubiquity of adoration for Jesus in American culture, explaining "I'd never put this in print, but I have always hated Christmas. You can't say that, though."). Do we need some statistician to quantify the number of books on Jesus and Moses in the Library of Congress or how many paintings there are of each one or of how many times members of Congress have referenced either one? Do we need to compare the box-office numbers of The Ten Commandments with those of Passion of the Christ? Do we need "Touchdown Jesus" to square off with Charlton Heston in a cage match?

It may be better to think of Moses and Jesus as tag-team partners in American history than separate entities. I'm guessing that the folks who want huge blocks of the decalogue inside and outside of courthouses tend to be the people who pray to Jesus. But I'm probably being too harsh. We historians are often found debating whether economic or political or cultural or religious forces were the most important in an era, as if any of these can neatly be separated. So perhaps we have Feiler to thank for a new scholarly discussion - which biblical character was the most important in American history - when, where, how, to whom? Regardless, thanks for the great present David.

Dissertations on Dudeness, the Historical Profession, and Francis Asbury

Paul Harvey

Just following up on some of previously posted-about topics.

First, "Dissertations on His Dudeness," NY Times, December 30, has more on religion/philosophy, cult movies, and The Big Lebowski, which we had posted about here previously.

Secondly, over at Immanent Frame is more on "Religion and the Historical Profession," including several scholars weighing in on an uptick of interest in religion in the historical profession, as discussed in a recent AHA study and reported on by Inside Higher Ed; we blogged about it previously here (with links to all of the above). From the perspective of a Europeanist, Jonathan Sheehan of UC Berkeley points out that many of the great studies of the Reformation (to cite one of many examples) occurred during the alleged low period for study of religion a generation ago. He continues:

So what seems most interesting about these findings is not that we are attending to religion with renewed zeal. Rather, it is the eagerness of historians (myself included) to hitch ourselves to the religion train, to declare ourselves historians of religion, rather than historians who happen to study religious events, people, or phenomena.

Sheehan then goes on to reflect further on some of the dangers of according religion a field of autonomy that is often not so readily granted to other phenomenon: Whether it is 9/11 or modern evangelical politics, world circumstances lure us into believing in belief. They lure us into believing that, beyond the social, political, and cultural, there is a certain something, an area of faith, that stands apart. But of course, this is exactly what religions have always said about themselves. If historians don’t want do the work of religion, then I think we have to reserve judgment on the thesis of religious autonomy.

David Hollinger, the renowned intellectual historian at UC Berkeley, reflects on the necessary and healthy disconnection among some between religious faith and religion as a field of study. He writes:

Religion is too important to be left in the hands of people who believe in it. Finally, historians are coming to grips with this simple truth. Why this has happened and with what effects may differ from period to period, continent to continent, and religion to religion.

Here, I will comment on this transformation as visible in the field I know the best, 20th century United States history.The careful and sustained study of Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism in this particular field has been carried out primarily by scholars who profess some version of the faith they study. This has produced some wonderful work, and I am not suggesting that belief is a barrier to successful scholarship. But this religious demography of scholarship does narrow the inventory of perspectives brought to the field, and once in place it is self-reinforcing: it can create the impression that religious history belongs mostly to the religious, and that historians of a more secular orientation will compromise their secularity by getting involved at all. The current increase of interest in religion on the part of scholars in this field follows in large part from the breaking of the connection between belief and the object of study. Just as we have lots of studies of Nazis by people who have no sympathy for Nazism—to use an extreme example to make the point—so, too, can we have studies of Presbyterians by people who have no commitment to Presbyterianism and may indeed find its influence on American life to be more pernicious than not.

Finally, more one someone who most certainly didn't think that Methodism was "more pernicious than not" -- Francis Asbury, subject of a recent biography by John Wigger, which

we'll have further and more extensive discussions about up sometime in the next few months; we previously blogged about the book here. Wigger is interviewed about his huge new biography here and also here. Here's a little excerpt from the 2nd:

One of the things I hope this book does is raise questions for readers about the meaning of religious leadership in America. To some extent, we’ve misunderstood religious leadership. We’ve tended to focus on individuals who were great communicators, great preachers. But, if you look at the country’s largest religious movements—Methodists, Baptists, Roman Catholics—most Americans today can’t name a single figure who put these religious movements together in this country. Most Americans today don’t know who Francis Asbury is. I wanted to go back and find out what was it about Asbury that allowed him to do this with Methodism. The first thing I found was that he was never a great preacher.

Finally, I would just add that our contributor John Fea has more about all this (including a good short summary of the Immanent Frame contributions) on his own blog, so check that out too.

All You Need is Love (or, A Book I Should Have Read Three Years Ago)

by Steven P. Miller
I was doing many things back in 2006—namely, defending a dissertation, then beginning the laborious task of revising it. I was not, I regret, reading Debby Applegate’s thrilling and richly contextualized biography of Henry Ward Beecher, The Most Famous Man in America—and wouldn’t finally do so until last week. Paul talked a while back about a “boomlet in religious biography.” Applegate’s Pulitzer Prize winner puts the boom in boomlet. The book provides a window into the human (very human) side of perhaps the greatest of the many great reversals in American Protestant history: the transition from Lyman Beecher’s providential God, who already was warming up to the idea of human improvement, to his son Henry’s Gospel of Love, from which derives that warm fuzzy feeling I get every time I attend a Presbyterian Church, USA service. In short, Applegate offers a riveting coming-of-age story for liberal Protestantism. In the sense that Beecher was at the center of so much of mid-nineteenth century American history, the book also is a mini coming-of-age story for the nation itself. (Applegate proudly writes in the old-school—that is, pre-theory—American Studies tradition, which practically begs for such sweeping generalizations.)

Ward’s status as the man at the center got me thinking. Purportedly, more than a few conservative Protestants in this country are nostalgic for an earlier golden age of evangelical culture and influence, which likely occurred sometime in antebellum America. Likely, that is, just as Beecher started mucking everything up with his Gospel of Love and, if you believe the evidence in the book (from which Applegate, in an odd replication of the euphemistic ways of her Victorian subjects, skirts around outright conclusions), his propensity to express that love in diverse fashions. Maybe Beecher wasn’t a hypocrite, but rather a good anything-goes liberal, suggests this shallow reading of Beecher, which Paul smacked down when it surfaced in a Books & Culture review. But, if you think about it, shouldn’t fans of the old-time Christian America wish that, say, Ted Haggard’s own extramarital endeavors had caused as much of a stir as did the charge that Beecher seduced Elizabeth Tilton? Perhaps what evangelicals should really be nostalgic about is a period when an adulterous minister was the subject of a national scandal precisely because that minister had real influence outside of his home base. On the cusp of the Beecher-Tilton scandal, New York elites genuinely believed that revelations about Beecher’s exploits “would tend to undermine the very foundation of social order” (408). Say what you what you will about Ted Haggard, but he can only wish he had ever been a pillar of the social order. Besides, Beecher’s story would make a much richer movie. Anyone know if one is in the works?

Horace Clarence Boyer: How Sweet the Sound

Paul Harvey

Horace Clarence Boyer, pioneering scholar of the history of black gospel and the author of How Sweet the Sound: The Golden Age of Gospel, died earlier this year, and a celebration of his life and work appeared today on NPR; hear it here. Boyer started How Sweet the Sound when, as a student at Eastman School of Music, he was discouraged from studying the African American gospel tradition because there were no materials available for such a work. Boyer used his connections and early performing career (including appearing as a warm-up act for Mahalia Jackson) to create the materials, a well from which scholars have since drawn.

Boyer was also a contributor to We'll Understand it Better By and By, edited by Bernice Johnson Reagon, where he took a bit of his work on the pioneering composer Charles Albert Tindley (a key figure in reviving and bringing back to life the older tune "I Shall Overcome," which later became -- well, you know what it became) and presented it in a gem of an essay for this volume. In this volume he also did the same for Lucie Campbell, Tindley's contemporary and author of numerous gospel classics. And then he did the same for Thomas Dorsey, William Herbert Brewster (author of "Move On Up a Little Higher," which Mahalia Jackson turned into a classic recording), and Roberta Martin.

Boyer was hugely influential for my own work, and the interview above brings his voice back to life.

American Saint

Paul Harvey

The boomlet in religious biography continues -- Joseph Smith, Aimee McPherson, George Whitefield, Dorothy Day, Walter Rauschenbusch, Henry Ward Beecher, W. E. B. DuBois, Catherine Tekakwitha, Richard Allen, Billy Graham -- all have received recent excellent scholarly biographical treatment from leading historians in the field.

Add to that list Francis Asbury, founder of Methodism in America, and the subject of John Wigger's new biography American Saint: Francis Asbury and the Methodists (Oxford, 2009). Down the road a bit we'll have a couple of folks put up their reflections on this text on the blog, but for now, just wanted to let everyone know of the book and also a session on the book at the upcoming AAR meeting in Montreal. Here's information on the session, for those interested:
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Wesleyan Studies Group

Theme: Discussion of John H. Wigger, American Saint: Francis Asbury and the Methodists (Oxford University Press, 2009)

Tuesday - 9:00 am-11:30 am (Nov. 10)

Douglas M. Strong, Seattle Pacific University, Presiding

Theme: Discussion of John H. Wigger, American Saint: Francis Asbury and the Methodists (Oxford University Press, 2009)

Francis Asbury is one of the most important religious leaders in American history. He was largely responsible for creating the American Methodist church, the largest church in nineteenth century America and the foundation of much of the Holiness and Pentecostal movements. This session features a panel discussion of John Wigger's new biography of Asbury, American Saint: Francis Asbury and the Methodists (Oxford University Press, 2009). Wigger's work considers previously unexamined and underappreciated aspects of Asbury's personality and style of leadership, showing how and why his tireless activity led to the church’s expansion into every state and territory. Growth brought financial prosperity and social respectability, ultimately undermining the church’s culture of discipline, which in the end seemed a bitter irony to Asbury. Under his leadership, Methodism exerted a powerful influence on American culture, but was itself transformed in the process, a pattern repeated again and again in American religious history.

Panelists:

Russell E. Richey, Emory University
Ian B. Straker, Howard University
Jane Donovan, West Virginia University
Richard P. Heitzenrater, Duke University

Responding:
John Wigger, University of Missouri

Religion and the Prince Edward County School Closings

A warm welcome to our newest contributing editor, J. Michael Utzinger!

Michael is Associate Professor of Religion at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia. He is the author of Yet Saints Their Watch Are Keeping: Fundamentalists, Modernists, and the Development of Evangelical Ecclesiology, 1887-1937 (Mercer University Press, 2006). Recently he is writing a biography of the Rev. Dr. Charles R. Erdman (1866-1960), a Presbyterian minister and professor of practical theology at Princeton Seminary and a key figure in the Presbyterian fundamentalist-modernist controversies in the 1920s. He is also recently compelled by the importance of local religious history and the pedagogical problem of assuming the essential connection between religion and violence. Utzinger serves as moderator of the Southeastern Colloquium of American Religious Studies and on the board of the Episcopal Historical Society. He also participates in the College Theology Society’s evangelical-catholic theology consultation.

Michael's first post concerns the 50th anniversary of the closing of schools in Prince Edward County, Virginia, beginning in 1959 and going for five years (an undergraduate student of mine just completed a splendid senior thesis on this subject, which I hope eventually will be published: "Virginia's "Massive Folly": Harry Byrd, Prince Edward County and the Front Line." It is available here). Utzinger reflects on the role of religion in the Prince Edward County saga.

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A Few Reflections on Prince Edward County, Virginia

J. Michael Utzinger

In 1951 R. R. Moton High School students led by Barbara Johns (niece of Rev. Vernon Johns) and John Stokes led a strike for better school facilities for African Americans in Prince Edward County, Virginia. The NAACP represented the students on the condition they would sue for the end of separate but equal education. The Supreme Court ultimately folded the Prince Edward case into Brown v. the Board of Education (1954). On 3 June 1959, when the government mandated the implementation of Brown, the Prince Edward County supervisors chose to stop funding public education for five years. Fifty years to the date, William “Bucky” Fore, stated that closing the schools was “wrong” and apologized on behalf of county “for the pain that was caused, for how those locked doors shattered opportunities and barricaded the dreams our children had for their lifetimes; and for all wounds known and unknown.” Soon after Fore’s speech, school Board President Russell Dove noted that the four educational institutions in the county (Prince Edward County schools, Fuqua School, Longwood University, and Hampden-Sydney College), all once segregated, now provided integrated education. Fuqua School, once the all-white Prince Edward Academy, now provided scholarships for African American students. This year Hampden-Sydney elected its first African American president, Dr. Christopher Howard, a notable development in its 233-year history. Sitting in the shadow of the courthouse, I knew things had changed significantly even since I came here ten years ago.

On the courthouse lawn, the supervisors unveiled a memorial which, on one side, permanently immortalized the apology that Supervisor Fore had just read to the public. On the other side, the large plaque commemorated the illuminating of the “Light of Reconciliation” in the tower of the courthouse the previous summer. The language was unmistakably religious: “When we raise our eyes to see this light, may we incline our hearts and minds to shine our light of reconciliation toward all people.” The supervisors presented the flag that draped over the monument to the representatives of the R. R. Moton Museum, a grass-roots museum organization that has worked tirelessly to gain broad community involvement to tell the story of education and civil rights in Prince Edward County. After a benediction by the Rev. Jim Ashton, pastor of First Baptist Church (a traditionally black church), all the students who had been of school age between 1959-1964 were invited to walk before the Memorial plaque. Photographs mixed with tears and smiles as the procession slowly moved its way around the courthouse lawn.

Over the course of the last year, I have served on two projects surrounding the anniversary of the school closings in Prince Edward County, both as an organizer for a symposium on the Prince Edward story at Hampden-Sydney College and as a board member for the R. R. Moton Museum. In these capacities I am struck by the pervasive role of religion in this otherwise apparently “non-religious” story. More important, as I reflect back over the past year, three ideas have struck me as a scholar of American religion. First, I believe that I have learned that religion is rarely a simple reflection of a community’s values nor does it simply act to comfort and mollify its adherents. Next, I think my involvement has suggested that the study of institutions is still important for the study of America religion. And finally, I have learned that historical work can affect people’s lives.

It takes very little effort to see that religion weaves through the Prince Edward story. The student strikers found an immediate ally in the Rev. L. Francis Griffin, the pastor of First Baptist Church. On one panel at the Hampden-Sydney symposium, Griffin’s sons, Skip and Eric, shared that they grew up in a house where their father discussed the ideas of Walter Rauschenbusch and Reinhold Niebuhr. During the closings the American Friends Service Committee volunteered to help children denied a public education. Many African American churches opened their doors to try to provide some rudimentary academic skills to those students denied public education. The role of white church communities was equally important. In the same way that black churches provided a space for self-determination for African Americans, Southern white churches during the 1950s often provided a haven from government interference. When the courts denied public funding for the local white academy, many white churches in Farmville provided spaces, spaces protected by the separation of church and state, to house this institution. James Kennedy, minister of Farmville Presbyterian Church, opposed the closing of the schools, a view not shared by the majority of his congregation. The apparent incongruity of his role as a public figure of a white church and his views on public education cost him his pulpit. These are the stories one would expect to hear.

However, close examination suggests that the threads of religion in this story are much more complex. While people can marshal their religion to challenge injustice or to maintain social hierarchies, religious systems themselves often make such attempts more or less credible. When student activists came to Farmville, they did not try to eat at segregated lunch counters; rather, they tried to attend white churches.

Some churches posted “guards” to prevent this; others simply called the police and had would-be worshippers arrested. The symbolic effect of denying black student worshippers access to a church made many white members uneasy. One “guard” at the local Episcopal church simply could not allow himself to turn away the African American worshippers—it just wasn’t right. Gordon Moss, a professor at the State Teachers’ College (now Longwood University) and vestryman of Johns Memorial Episcopal Church, counted on just such a reaction when he conspired with his bishop and the student protesters. With backing of the bishop, Moss planned to meet the students at the door of the church and lead them to his pew. This he did in the presence of a shocked parish. Moss remained a thorn in the side of his church because many parish members found themselves in the awkward position of standing against their highest religious authority if they acted against him. A final example: as the school closings dragged on for years, L. Francis Griffin’s authority in his own church became more tenuous. Further, he became plagued with self-doubt. Griffin’s son Eric noted that late in his life his father confided that he still wondered if his decision to support a lengthy court battle was the best pastoral choice considering the individual lives that were directly affected by an absence of five years of public education. The Prince Edward story reminds that while religion can be a powerful tool to divide or unify, sometimes commitment to religion doesn’t simply comfort us or project a community’s wishes and dreams. Religion can also destabilize a community’s assumptions about their circumstances and leave an individual uneasy and uncomfortable over her beliefs and actions.

The Prince Edward story also suggests to me that institutions are still worth studying and understanding, even if they do not constitute the whole cloth of religion in America. Religious institutions have importance, not only because members identify themselves with them, but because religious institutions have symbolic (perhaps vicarious) importance within the communities in which they reside. At the final session of the symposium at Hampden-Sydney, I arranged a panel of ministers to discuss religious resources for racial reconciliation in Prince Edward. During his talk the Rev. Michael Cheuk publicly acknowledged practices of discrimination and segregation practiced at Farmville Baptist Church. He then (in an unscripted moment) dramatically apologized to the Rev. Samuel Williams (sitting in the front row) because he was arrested for attempting to attend church there in 1963. The utter silence and rapt attention of the audience (including students, faculty, and townsfolk) underscored the gravity of the moment. Cheuk’s comments, of course, did not happen in a vacuum. Jim Ashton, the pastor of First Baptist Church (another panelist that evening) and he had already begun discussions of reconciliation. Cheuk and Williams had developed a friendship over the past year. When Cheuk spoke at the symposium, however, many folks remarked that he had courage. Why? Such an interpretation only makes sense if we recognize that he (and everyone else) knew that he spoke for more than himself. His apology had to be received, not only by those for which it was addressed, but also by his own community. Acceptance could not be guaranteed in either case. If Cheuk did not get fired by the deacon board (and he didn’t), his apology signaled a change at Farmville Baptist. And it mattered more to members of the community what he said as the pastor of the church rather than as an individual.

Finally, by serving on the symposium team and the museum board, I have learned that that telling stories of the past can affect people’s lives. With a functional definition of religion I might argue that the R. R. Moton Museum has acted as a civil religious institution. Moton promotes as its mission that it “attempts to promote positive discussion of integration and to advance positions that ensure racial harmony.” The museum has a large board of directors that represents broad community constituencies. Under the capable leadership of its director, Lacy Ward. Jr., this museum has become a symbol of reconciliation by promoting community healing through shared storytelling, both tragedies of the past and hope about the future. I have also learned that we historians too often ignore the ethical dimensions of our craft. I have never been so aware of this dimension as I have while working on the museum board. The dilemmas surrounding how we tell history are much more obvious when they are scrutinized in the relatively democratized space of the public sphere. Whose story do you tell or emphasize? What’s the “real” story? On what grounds was that decision made? Who has the effective power to withhold knowledge, money, or social imprimatur? All historical work has the potential to affect people’s lives; although it is easy to forget this if we write cloistered from communities about whom we write. We should become aware that our claims to tell the real story might really be a code for telling only the parts of the stories that interest us. The Prince Edward story has shown me that there is not a single story. There is neither a “white” side nor a “black” side of the story. Rather than the single voice of the historian disguised as virtuoso, history exists as a multitude of voices that act more like instruments in an orchestra that need to express themselves together.

Freedom's Prophet

Paul Harvey

You know the old adage, often intoned to students as we dispense nuggets of wisdom, of how the more we know, the more we know what we don't know. We pretend like we really believe that. It's a reassuring process of confirming our own ego while ostensibly humbling ourselves.

But we don't really think that, usually. How do I know that? Because of how I often make my own personal reading lists. Biographies of subjects I think I know pretty well already often don't make the list. "I know about that already," my self says, "so better to read about some other stuff that I don't know."

Then if we actually read about what we assume we know already, we come to know what we allegedly knew but actually didn't know. Humiliating though that is to the ego, it's also what makes "keeping up with the scholarship" fun and exciting, and it invigorates both research and teaching.

I went through this process, from dismisal to discovery, yet again recently when encountering Richard Newman's new book Freedom's Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers. Ok, my self said as I gave it a brief skim initially, I'm pretty well up on African American religious history, and I know Allen pretty well, so I'll save my reading energies for elsewhere. Then a student of mine last semester prepared a senior thesis on the AME Church in Colorado Springs (Payne Chapel, constructed on land donated by the founder of this city). Before getting to his subject, the student went through a lengthy and well-presented history of the AME Church, and included material that I didn't know (one way of learning how much we don't know about what we "know"). The student's thesis drew heavily from Newman's biography, compelling me to reopen the book for real this time.

So, a shout out to you, Marcus, for exposing my need to learn about what I already knew, and making me excited about a subject on which I had grown rather passe, inclined to rely on my standard bromides rather than resituating my knowledge in ways that kept my thoughts fresh.

I was reminded of this again reading over Alan Taylor's review of Newman's biography here at The New Republic (I also read a similar review elsewhere, but can't track that down presently). Taylor's review captures Allen's significance beautifully, and gives the author his props for managing to forge bricks out of evidentiary straw.

I find "founding father kitsch" as tiresome as anyone, until the founding generation gets set in ways that demonstrate afresh the significance of the period. Here's how Taylor does it:

Newman employs the notion of a "black founder" in two ways, one bolder than the other. In the more modest (but still important) sense, Allen was a Founder for African Americans, a man who pioneered black institutions and black politics. . . .

In a bolder sense, Allen was a Founder for all Americans. He advanced a prophetic vision of America as a multi-racial democracy of equal rights and equal opportunities. His egalitarian vision was far more daring than anything considered by the more famous white Founders. Allen exceeded them by fighting against the white racial privilege that so stunted, and threatened to stifle, the libertarian promise of the American Revolution. . . .

Allen and other black activists--James Forten, Prince Hall, Absalom Jones--struggled against the constriction of the revolution into a race-based republic for white men. In 1776, the white Founders had declared all men created equal and divinely endowed with inalienable rights, but by 1790 most of them had regretted that revolutionary burst of enthusiasm. In 1790, Congress adopted a naturalization law that limited new citizenship to white male immigrants. In late 1799, Philadelphia blacks petitioned Congress, then meeting in their city, to repeal the fugitive slave law (which had pinched Allen) and to consider emancipating all of the slaves by some gradual process. But by an 84 to 1 vote, the House of Representatives rejected the appeal with contempt, asserting that free blacks lacked the standing as citizens to petition Congress. A Congressman from Georgia sneered that "'We the people' does not mean them." Most white men had hardened around the consensus that the United States was a white man's republic. Even most white abolitionists of that generation doubted that black freedom should bring equal political rights. In their view, the best that blacks could hope for was a limbo above slavery but below citizenship.

Despite this crushing defeat, black activists refused to abandon the universal freedom and equality promised by the Declaration of Independence. Allen insisted that blacks had a sacred and prophetic mission to save the republic from the racism of white Americans. Since most whites had lost faith in true freedom, black Americans, as Newman remarks, were "the people on whom the great experiment in liberty depended." By non-violent resistance, blacks had a duty to remind the majority of the inclusive dream.

Taylor concludes his piece with thoughts on the meaning of "black founders," riffing on Richard Hofstadter's famous bon mot that America was born in perfection and aspired to progress:

The central narrative of American history insists that we began purified by leaving Europe and have been getting better ever since, perfecting our special brand of freedom. In this morality play, the American Revolution serves as an accelerator, creating a republic on a slow but inexorable course to freedom and justice for all. If this is so, then it matters little that the white Founders failed in their own time to extend freedom to most blacks or to allow equality to any of them. Instead, it is said, their republic ensured that freedom, equality, and justice would emerge in due time--and not a moment too soon.

By casting the early republic as a perfect machine of inevitable progress, this consoling version of our history is doubly distorting. First, it obscures the contradictory nature of the revolutionary generation. The revolution enhanced the liberty of common white men and allowed a measure of freedom for the black minority in the northern states--but the revolution denied citizenship to free blacks, while entrenching and expanding Southern slavery, which remained the lot of most African Americans. White supremacy became more virulent and more ratified by law after 1800 than before. During the 1820s and 1830s, most northern states rescinded the right to vote from blacks (who had rarely been allowed to exercise it previously). And thanks to the southwestern extension of slavery, there were twice as many American slaves when Allen died compared to when he was born. "Richard Allen's world was filled with high hopes and dashing disappointments," Newman concludes.

Our comforting story of inevitable progress also obscures the endurance and the creativity of real people working to change their society--or at least to preserve its ideals for a better day. In particular, the usual story reduces black people to silent victims, waiting for white people to liberate them once the time becomes right. By recovering Allen's life as a troubled but persistent redeemer of our republic, Newman illuminates a truer history of struggle by black as well as white Americans. In his scholarship, Newman reflects Allen's legacy: just as Allen sought to redeem the republic from the unbearable burden of whiteness, Newman helps to reform our national memory which insists that our Founders were all white men at the center of power. If we should finally achieve a genuinely egalitarian society, we will owe as much to our black founders as to their white brethren.

Taylor's review and Newman's book bring Allen to life and set him in historical context in ways that command attention, so I commend both.

And here's an interview with the author which sheds more light on the book.

Paul Harvey and John Updike: Religion in American Culture

Paul Harvey

Paul Harvey, the voice of a conservative, midwestern Protestant, genial radio populism, has died, while Rush Limbaugh, bombast intact, has risen to be unofficial head of the GOP. Makes me wonder if libertarianism is supplanting moralism in the struggle for the soul of the right. For the record, I shared an Oklahoma birthright with Paul Harvey, but nothing else, so you so-called friends of mine can stop sending me your smart-ass emails as of now, k?

Paul Harvey wove homespun stories amidst brief dollops of conservative commentary so deftly that most associated him with the rest of the story, not with any political messages.

Limbaugh's populism largely accords with Harvey's views, but is comparatively areligious, and his humor is as deliberately obnoxious as possible (to put it charitably) in contrast to Harvey's Reader's Digest style of gentle ribbing.

It makes me wonder if a national figure dispensing religious-themed homilies could ever again rule the airwaves a la Father Coughlin, Charles E. Fuller, or the many others who were such a part of American broadcasting. For more on Fuller in particular, see Phil Goff, "We Have Heard the Joyful Sound," available on J-STOR (institutional subscription required). Heck, even 'Reinhold Niebuhr did some very successful radio broadcasts, something impossible to conceive of today.

I've never connected John Updike and Paul Harvey before, but will do so now. Both came approximately from the same era, and Updike's perfectly pitched prose reached a New Yorker audience as deftly as Paul Harvey's genial stories attracted those who had never heard of the New Yorker, and wouldn't have read it if they had.

I felt some distance from both, perhaps more suprisingly from Updike. John Updike was never a writer I could love; it seemed as though his work, especially his reviews, often lingered over not-so-interesting subjects, or expressed not-so-interesting views on interesting subjects (such as in his review of Matt's Sutton's biography of Sister Aimee), in a highbrow Paul Harvey sort of way; and his most memorable character, in the Rabbit novels, just seemed a little too Sinclair-Lewis-like for my tastes. Philip Roth was more my man -- American Pastoral and other novels perfectly exploring the rise and unraveling of a certain segment of American life, as well as being tremendous family chronicles of Jewish Americans, the Faulkner of New Jersey both in terms of being rich in local history and in prose full of passionate intensity.

But then, in fairness, I read Updike now and again, in bits and spurts, and often found myself annoyed at his beautifully written but seemingly somewhat vacuous reviews in the New Yorker. Ian MacEwan has me rethinking Updike, by placing him also as a novelist for whom religious questions were central. Seemingly more comic than angst-ridden, his characters somehow, in ways they could never figure out themselves, found themselves perplexed by the most religious of questions, even amidst the most mundane of circumstances. A brief excerpt:

This most Lutheran of writers, driven by intellectual curiosity all his life, was troubled by science as others are troubled by God. When it suited him, he could easily absorb and be impressed by physics, biology, astronomy, but he was constitutionally unable to "make the leap of unfaith." The "weight" of personal death did not allow it, and much seriousness and dark humor derive from this tension between intellectual reach and metaphysical dread

This is the finest eulogy for Updike I think I have seen, and makes me want to go back and pick up some of his work that I deliberately avoided before.

As for Paul Harvey -- well, he does have a son, Paul Harvey Jr, who broadcasts, albeit now in competition with Fred Thompson and Mike Huckabee, who are also vying for the spot of Head Folkster Persona:

And so, as Journey sang on the final scene of that great classic of American religious drama, The Sopranos,

well the movie never ends, it goes on and on and on . . .

Turner Wins CT Book Award

By John Fea

I just found out that our own John Turner's Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ: The Renewal of Evangelicalism in Postwar America was the winner of the 2009 Christianity Today Book Award in History and Biography. According to the CT website, the judges offered the following praise for the book:

Turner's neutrality and great technical chops are exactly what this subject needed. Yet this is no dry account: He possesses both an unerring ear for the apt quote and a keen eye for the revealing scene. With these tools, Turner creates a fascinating window into the vibrant and angular culture of Crusade and the churning activism of (especially) 1960s and '70s American evangelicals.

Congrats, John--an honor that is well-deserved.

Faith and Skepticism in the New Common-Place

Paul Harvey

Don't miss Christopher Grasso, "Skepticism and Faith: The Early Republic," in the new Common-Place. Earlier we blogged about his piece "Deist Monster: On Religious Common Sense in the Wake of the American Revolution," Journal of American History 95:1 (June 2008): 43-68. The Common-Place piece is a more personal reflection on what forces shape one's historical questions, how they are related to present questions but not bound by them, and indeed often start long before current preoccupations became preoccupations. He writes:

I'm reminded of a colleague who recently published a book on warfare and American history from the colonial period to the late twentieth century. Reviews discussed the study as if it had been inspired by the Iraq war. The author certainly did not claim to live in a cultural vacuum, unaffected by the current state of affairs; still, his project began two decades ago and is based on exhaustive research. Histories, though written in a particular time and place and from a particular point of view, may inspire op-ed pieces but shouldn't be confused with them.

His project came out of exploring the papers of Ezra Stiles (Congregationalist minister and president of Yale College in the late eighteenth century), including Stiles's own very secretive and closeted struggles with doubt and skepticism.

By retracing my steps to my encounter with Ezra Stiles in the library, I don't mean to suggest that the project was incubated entirely in the archives. No research is completely unconnected to personal experience. That doesn't mean religious history, any more than other kinds of history, entails one of those confessional prefaces in which the author discloses his or her personal relationship to the faith tradition being examined. Perry Miller's atheism and George Marsden's evangelicalism no doubt influenced each man's studies of the Protestant theologian Jonathan Edwards, but the evaluation of their books should aim at the cogency of their interpretive arguments in relation to the available evidence rather than at the scholars' biographies. The historian's own religious belief or doubt is one of many factors shaping his or her particular perspective, a point of view that provides moments of both blindness and insight when trying to imagine the past.

Grasso's story focuses on a period usually characterized by the triumph of evangelicalism, moral movements inspired by it, and the demise of the skeptical Enlightened tradition. My own work (and that of many others) questions this story from the "underside of that millennium" [sorry, a little self-quotation], focusing on Native peoples, African Americans, and others. The focus here is different, for Grasso has dug into the archives of white Americans whose skepticism engaged in a constant dialogue with the rise of "America's God." As he explains,

But the story of the relation of skepticism and faith is more than the tale of a few marginalized freethinkers and artificially induced moral panics. Religious skepticism touched—and in some cases transformed—more lives than we might expect in the early American republic.

This is really an affecting, and an effective, piece, both for its history, its historiography, and its personal reflections on how we come to the topics we do, and how we think about those topics within our own personal and institutional contexts.

UPDATE: John Fea and Brad Hart have blogged further on this piece.

Lofton on Blum's W. E. B. DuBois

Paul Harvey

That omnivorous reader Kathryn Lofton reviews Ed Blum's W. E. B. DuBois: American Prophet, in Books and Culture's "book of the week" series. As with her previous review of Tracy Fessenden's Culture and Redemption, we have here a meeting of the minds between compelling book and extraordinarily interesting reviewer, so be sure to check it out. A little excerpt:

Yet perhaps Blum's most important contribution is not a religious remapping for Du Bois but rather an academic reimagining of religious biography. A myopic modernism has informed a generation of Du Bois biographers. Blum's accomplishment is to lasso a widely scattered body of evidence showing that when it comes to religion, biographers of Du Bois (and, we fear, others) are routinely tone-deaf to subjects sacred. May Blum's biography stand as the necessary rejoinder, inspiring future writers to find ways between the drily agnostic and the inevitably sacrosanct Du Bois.