1925 was a watershed moment in North American life.
At the beginning of the 20th century, there had not been a major war in Europe for a century, and there had not been a major war in North America for half a century. Evangelical revivals had increased church attendance and spawned worldwide missionary efforts. They had also spurred wide-ranging social improvements. Schools, libraries, and hospitals had proliferated. So had a host of social service agencies—the YMCA, the SPCA, Boy Scouts, children’s camps, Sunday schools, the Salvation Army, street missions, and prison visitation ministries, among others. Slavery had been abolished. Laws had improved working conditions and limited child labor. Women were gaining increased rights and opportunities, including the right to vote (Canada in 1917 and the United States in 1920). The temperance movement was gaining strength, and Prohibition promised to eradicate alcohol and the crime, violence, and abuse that went along with it. Scientific and technological breakthroughs and economic growth were making people healthier and wealthier. Transportation and communication systems had been tremendously improved. Science and religion were working together to create a better world. The watchword of the day was “progress.” In theological terms, the prevailing ideology was a form of postmillennialism, the idea that the world would keep getting better and better until it emerged into the millennium, the thousand-year reign of Christ on earth.
The horrendous butchery of World War One should have provided a cautionary warning that the future might not be as rosy as was expected. However, in some circles, that brutal event was considered “the war to end all wars,” literally Armageddon, the last great battle that would usher in the millennium.
The mid-1920s changed all that.
The Scopes trial in July 1925 was the first highly visible crack foreshadowing the massive rupture that was coming. A Tennessee school teacher named John T. Scopes was prosecuted for teaching evolution. Evolution was the ultimate secular theory of progress, the idea that humanity had evolved over long periods of time from simple cell organisms and would evolve into a superior human race. The trial was widely publicized and had implications far beyond the fate of one teacher. It pitted science against the Bible, humanity against religion. It contrasted the belief in progress against the biblical idea of the fall. Christianity had been marching forward in harmony with science and education, and they were now being torn apart to pursue different trajectories.
This was not the only sign of the rupture. Prohibition was in force in the United States from 1920 to 1933. Prohibition was enacted by most provinces in Canada during World War One and repealed by most provinces in the 1920s. This attempt to “legislate morality” failed because North American society was divided on the issue. Some, especially Christians, supported it strongly, while others, especially the more secular minded, opposed it. Society divided here along similar lines as it did on the evolution question.
As the Roaring Twenties went on, it became clear that not only had the war to end all wars not ushered in the kingdom of God, but church attendance was beginning to decline in the Western world. The progress toward achieving heaven on earth was stalled. This, along with the Great Depression, the rise of Nazism and fascism, and World War Two, convinced many Christians that not only was the world not getting better and better, but the world was actually getting worse. Many Christians lost hope of improving society and turned to attempts to mitigate the damage in a troubled world. Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in 1935.
The great divide also affected Christian churches. On one side, some churches continued to believe in progress and embraced the social gospel. One of the earliest expressions of this was Walter Rauschenbusch’s 1917 book, A Theology for the Social Gospel. Rather than individual salvation, social gospellers focused on making society better, on achieving social progress, on creating the kingdom of God on earth. In Canada, the social gospel was promoted by the Social Service Council of Canada, founded in 1912, and by thinkers such as J.S. Woodsworth. This resulted in the founding of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (precursor of the New Democratic Party) in 1932.
On the other side, other churches refocused on the “fundamentals” of the Christian faith. These were codified by brothers Milton and Lyman Stewart in The Fundamentals: A Testimony To The Truth, a collection of twelve pamphlets published between 1910 and 1915. Rather than looking forward to improve society as a whole, fundamentalists looked back to the Bible and sought to save individuals through evangelism, rescuing the few who could be saved from a dying society.
In a sense, the divide between social gospelers and fundamentalists (also known as the “fundamentalist-modernist controversy”) could be considered a divide between optimists and pessimists. Social gospelers believed in progress, that the world was getting better and better, to the point that it would gradually emerge into the thousand-year reign of Christ. Stated another way, they were postmillennials, believing that Christ would return and the world would end after (post) the millennium. Fundamentalists were increasingly pessimists. They believed the world would go “from bad to worse” (2 Timothy 3:13), until it finally climaxed in the Great Tribulation. They were thus premillennials (in the general rather than the precise sense), believing that Christ would have to come before (pre) the millennium because humans could never build the kingdom of God on their own.
Besides the Scopes trial, 1925 also saw the creation of the United Church of Canada when Methodists, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists decide to merge into one mega-denomination, one of the first efforts toward church unity and ecumenism. (The World Council of Churches was established in 1937.) Informally, they called the new entity “Canada’s Church.” They hoped and expected that other denominations would also join and create a single, united national church. This new church would combine with social and political forces to build a better society. The new church was definitely in the camp that believed in progress and the social gospel. However, splinters from some of the founding denominations refused to join, and the result was not fewer denominations but more. Further, as it blended in with social and political forces, in time the United Church (like many other “mainline” and ecumenical churches) had little that was unique and original to offer, and this once mighty denomination is now on the path to oblivion.
At the same time that the United Church was uniting, another significant Canadian denomination was dividing. In 1926, the main Baptist denomination split into Convention Baptists and Fellowship Baptists. It is significant that the dividing issue was the denomination’s university (McMaster), with the “progressive” wing siding with the university against the more conservative or fundamentalist wing.
The divisions that started a century ago have continued to the present day. For the past century in North America, chaos has resulted from the great struggle between the two competing visions of the world—“progressives,” who believe all change is good, and conservatives, who want to return to the golden age of the past. This division has been evident in the church and in the social and political spheres in society as a whole.
Despite its admirable concern for the needy, the social gospel has largely proven to be a dead end for the church, as the “gospel” has tended to be subverted by the “social.” Organizations launched by the social gospel have mostly become secular. Attempts to build the kingdom of God on earth without God’s help have often ended in oppression and suffering, as communism has clearly demonstrated. The social gospel has the tendency to place humans in the place of God, overlook human sinfulness, and remove the anchor that restrains evil. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. On the other hand, a single focus on evangelism is also inadequate. Evangelism is essential. Until people are born again in Jesus, they cannot begin to build His kingdom. But Jesus also called His followers, once they have become His followers, to feed the hungry, satisfy the thirsty, welcome strangers, clothe the needy, look after the sick, and visit those in prison (Matthew 25:31-46 NIV). Like the other apostles, James said the same thing: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” (James 1:27). The early church overwhelmed the Roman Empire by following this direction. Irish monks evangelized northern Europe by establishing outposts that offered a variety of social programs. The evangelical revivals also combined evangelism and social betterment. So did many overseas mission agencies.
Is the world getting better or worse? The question is overly simplistic. History does not all flow in one direction. The Bible compares human society to the chaos of the ocean, with conflicting currents flowing in different directions, throwing up unexpected waves. No human predicted the rapid spread of Christianity across the Roman Empire, the evangelization of northern Europe by Irish monks, the Protestant Reformation, the evangelical revivals, the rise of Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement, the growth of the church in China, the increase in church attendance in North America after World War Two (and the concurrent decline in church attendance in Europe), the recent increase in church attendance in England, and Alpha. No human predicted the fall of the Roman Empire, the rise of Islam, the Great Depression, Nazism, the rise and fall of communism, nuclear weapons, AIDS, or Covid-19. Sometimes the same current produces both good and evil consequences. What we know is that in all things God is working for good (Romans 8:28) and that in all circumstances so should we.
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