Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Evangelism [ in America ] ..with links..

Introduction .. a good read ..



Evangelism has played an integral part in spreading the “Good News” throughout the history of religion in America. From colonial times to the present, evangelists have used such methods as the printing press to the Internet. Rooted in Fundamentalism, the Evangelical movement split off from its roots in the late 1800s, owing to differences in opinion about interpreting the Bible and other factors.

Spread of Evangelism

Spreading the Good News during colonial times was accomplished through books borne across the Atlantic on ships carrying colonists, or printed by Puritans on a press they brought to Boston in 1638. During the Great Awakening of the 1740s, white Protestant evangelists proselytized to black Americans. The Methodists were most successful, owing to their belief in a “near” rather than “distant” god, self help, liberation from sin through conversion, and their lively preaching and singing worship methods during evangelical revivals.

Led by John Wesley’s denunciations of the evils of slavery, blacks joined the ranks of Methodists throughout the middle and northern colonies. Evangelical revivals empowered the lower classes, including slaves, to publicly pray and preach. By the 1770s, black preachers were ordained and many led their own Baptist or Methodist congregations. During the War of Independence, large groups of blacks joined congregations in Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York City, and Charleston, South Carolina. Tensions began to develop as disagreements mounted between whites and blacks over the issue of slavery.

In November 1787, white elders attempted to relegate black parishioners to a newly built gallery in St. George’s Methodist Church of Philadelphia. Charismatic lay minister Richard Allen, the Reverend John Witherspoon, the only minister to sign the Declaration of Independence; and several others, refused to comply. Thus, they began to pray at the altar railings, to the consternation of white trustees.



As a result, Allen and others established Bethel church, which became the mother church of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (A.M.E.) in 1816, the first independent, black-supervised Protestant denomination. Membership in the denomination grew in the mid-Atlantic and Midwest regions.

Following the Civil War, A.M.E.'s numbers increased throughout the South. Since the church acted as a forum for addressing the social, political and religious needs of blacks, many leading black activists in the abolition movement were ministers. The first National Negro Convention was organized in 1830. The gathering met at Bethel A.M.E. Church in Philadelphia, with Richard Allen presiding.

Although black church membership was predominately female, only black males could be members of the clergy, since women were barred from ordination until the 20th century. Even so, women led home prayer meetings and served on auxiliary, missionary, and Sunday school boards. They were permitted to become traveling evangelists by the A.M.E. church, but women could not head congregations.

Following Reconstruction, some blacks joined the ranks of those seeking election to Congress and other political institutions. When violence and disenfranchisement drove them out of political offices, blacks cultivated their leadership abilities in the churches. Those strong leaders laid the foundation for the political and social contributions later made by such leaders as Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesse Jackson.



By the end of the 19th century, black church membership stood at 2.7 out of 8.3 million evangelical Americans, with Baptists constituting the majority of its population. Other denominations, such as the Holiness and Pentecostal churches, sprang up with the emphasis on doctrines of sanctification and speaking in tongues. In 1906, at the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles, black preacher William J. Seymour sparked the Pentecostal movement that swept the country.

During the 1960s and 1970s, in the midst of social and political unrest, such black militants as Malcolm X were attracted by the Nation of Islam organization's separatist ideals. In response, black Christian clergy formulated a new central message as one of liberation from oppression.

Holiness movement

During the Holiness movement of the mid-19th century, Methodists held Holiness camp meetings in the frontier states. Methodist Evangelist Phoebe Smith, one of the founders of the Holiness Movement, wrote the doctrine of Christian perfection. Also during that time, Asbury College was established in 1890, along with numerous other similar colleges and universities.

Evangelism in the 20th century

Evangelism turned to elaborate crusades in the 20th century. Such preachers as Billy Sunday attempted to convince nonbelievers that they should jump ship from their ancestral Christian denominations, and that religion was to be set apart from secular daily life. Tent revivals occurred in which dynamic, charismatic preachers captured the attention of thousands of peoples concerned about the afterlife, and staged "altar calls" to baptize many of them.

With the advent of radio, evangelists took to the airwaves to preach their message. The first radio church messages were broadcast from Calvary Episcopal Church on January 2, 1921, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Such revivalist preachers as Billy Sunday, Dwight L. Moody, and Aimee Semple McPherson capitalized on the power of radio. By 1927, there were an estimated 60 religious groups operating their own radio stations.



In addition to radio during the 1940s and television in the '50s, Norman Vincent Peale and Billy Graham conveyed their message via the printed word on the largest scale in printing history. Early “self-help” books incorporated a Christian message and served as guides for living and thinking about life’s problems. Christian newspapers and magazines gained in circulation. Evangelical messages of salvation were found on the pages of the Christian Times and Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science Monitor. Even Christian romance novels hit the shelves when the “Christianization” of popular media began in the 1970s.

Few managed to make the leap from radio to television proselytizing, owing to its expense and demands. Nevertheless, beginning in the 1950s, Evangelism added to its Bible-based message a personality-based culture in what was called the “electronic church.” Billy Graham, a dynamic and charismatic public speaker, was the most accomplished at making the transition. His first nationally telecast crusade generated 1.5 million letters to the TV station. After the new form began to reach potential converts all over the world, other evangelists joined the ranks in the highly successful and profitable medium.

The new “televangelists” — Rex Humbard, Jerry Falwell,Oral Roberts, and others — captured millions of viewers and dollars as they established personality cults. People sent checks from their armchairs to fund everything from far-flung missionary facilities to amusement parks, before the roof caved in on the likes of Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson, and Oral Roberts. In varying degrees, their credibility was compromised when personal and financial scandals were exposed, beginning in 1988.



As distrust of televangelists grew, a period of self-correction began, aided by the National Religious Broadcasters. They established an Ethics and Financial Integrity Commission that set standards for its members. A gradual shift occurred, from personality-driven evangelism toward the development of Christian entertainment programming with such television shows as Christie, Seventh Heaven, and Touched by an Angel that filled the national broadcast network rosters. Meanwhile, televangelists moved over to satellite and cable networks.

Israel, family values, and the Christian Right

By 1979, the young country of Israel played a key role in the Biblical prophecy of the End Days, a central concern of Bible-based conservatives. Support of the Jewish state became important in the fulfillment of the Evagelicals' and Fundamentalists' vision of Armageddon, the scriptural venue where an apocalyptic battle will be waged between good and evil. That backing of Israel has run in tandem with the traditional support given by political conservatives.

Since the 1980s, the Republican Party has espoused "family values" as a way to capture conservative votes. The term became widespread following Vice-President Dan Quayle's speech in 1992, when he stated that it was the breakdown of family values that caused the Los Angeles race riots. The term played a significant role in the re-election of President George W. Bush, who won the support of most Evangelicals in 2004.



Typically, family values are described as virtues that promote the nuclear family with traditional roles for men and women. The Christian Right takes issue with same-sex marriages, abortion, contraception, and single-parent households. Such organizations as the Christian Coalition, Dr. James Dobson's Focus on the Family (FOTF), American Decency Association, Parents Television Council, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Office for Film and Broadcasting, espouse family values. Efforts are being made to severely restrict or eliminate television programming that does not support those values. Dobson's FOTF radio broadcasts, websites, and child-rearing methods in Dare to Discipline books have done much to popularize family values.

Evangelism goes high tech

Evangelistic websites slowly cropped up on the Internet in the early 1990s. The first provided informational websites for real-world evangelists, but were later seen as missionary fields not previously harvested. Thanks to the anonymous nature of that interactive communication tool, people feel more comfortable about sharing their personal beliefs and faith with a large audience, or with one unknown person.

Recently, sophisticated websites have offered multi-media presentations that incorporate sound, written words, movie, and video technologies. Those sites also offer online courses and mentoring.

Conclusion

Although the methods and players have changed, the Evangelical movement has remained constant in the flow of America’s religious history. Spreading the Good News will be guaranteed as long as the Constitution’s First Amendment continues to be upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. As stated, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof... .” With the most recent form of proselytizing on the worldwide web, the effects of that First Amendment guarantee will continue to be felt by those living in the United States as well as around the world.

- - - Books You May Like Include: ----

God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution .. http://www.booksyoumaylike.cfm/1267/God-of-Liberty-A-Religious-History-of-the-American-Revolution .. by Thomas S. Kidd.
Before the Revolutionary War, America was a nation divided by different faiths. But when the war for independence sparked in 1776, colonists united un...

From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism .. http://www.booksyoumaylike.cfm/1324/From-Bible-Belt-to-Sunbelt-Plain-Folk-Religion-Grassroots-Politics-and-the-Rise-of-Evangelical-Conservatism .. [inoperative] by Darren Dochuk. [see below]
From Bible Belt to Sun Belt tells the dramatic and largely unknown story
of “plain-folk” religious migrants: hardworking men and women from Oklahoma,...

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h3817.html

========

Book Review: From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion,
Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism
Published December 27, 2011

Click here to view or save this article in pdf format
http://ripjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Manzullo-Thomas-Dochuk_Review-a.pdf

From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism. By Darren Dochuk. W.W. Norton, 2010. 520 pages. $35.00.

[ .. another good read .. ]

The dominant narrative of evangelical politicization goes something like this: After decades of exile from public life following a series of embarrassing and highly publicized defeats in the 1920s, Bible-carrying Christians entered politics in the 1970s. Led by preachers-cum-pundits like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, an entire generation of Christian conservatives mobilized in response to issues like racial integration, abortion, and gay rights. Almost overnight, this army of holy warriors, marching under the banner of the Moral Majority, descended upon the nation’s capitol with a goal of resurrecting the mythical “Christian America” of yore.

As with all generalizations, this narrative contains nuggets of truth. But, as Purdue University professor Darren Dochuk argues in From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism, the traditional account obscures a fascinating regional and political tale. This tale, Dochuk claims, begins with the migration of hundreds of thousands of white evangelical Christians from the “western South”—states like Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas—to the West Coast. And it ends with the political ascendancy of Ronald Reagan, who claimed the presidency in 1980 thanks largely to the efforts of a unified evangelical electorate. Building on the work of scholars like Lisa McGirr and Steven P. Miller, From Bible Belt to Sunbelt virtually re-directs the discourse on evangelicals and politics. “Rather than an invention of Falwell and Robertson’s Religious Right,” Dochuk concludes, “evangelicalism’s politicization was a product of an earlier time made possible by an earlier generation, a generation that came of age on the West Coast during Roosevelt’s time, not Reagan’s” (xxiii).

Dochuk divides his book into four sections. The first, “Southern Errand,” describes the Arkies, Okies, and Texans who migrated to the Golden State in the 1930s and 1940s in hopes of finding well-paying jobs. These Dust Bowl migrants carried with them their deeply held religious faith, as reified in the numerous Baptist, Pentecostal, and Churches of Christ congregations that cropped up all along the West Coast in these years. Soon, these evangelicals discovered that their native Californian neighbors were not always sympathetic to their Southern ways; often, these Christians felt that their beliefs were at odds with the dominant liberal viewpoints and progressive thinking that dominated California culture. Nevertheless, these Bible-believers were determined to “proclaim the gospel,” even in the face of certain adversity. These “Christian citizens living west of the Mississippi,” Dochuk writes, “believed that their true calling was to advance the Christian heritage passed down to them . . . not simply to preserve it” (13). To hear them describe it, these sojourning evangelicals were on an “errand” to Christianize California.

At least initially, Dochuk claims, southern evangelicals pursued their “errand” while simultaneously supporting populist politics, a proclivity they carried with them from the South. Although many came to the West Coast as Social Democrats supporting some moderate New Deal programs for economic stimulus, southern evangelicals soon split over the best party to endorse. Dochuk describes this political paradigm shift in Section 2, “Southern Problems.” Those who defected to the Republican Party often felt that they had betrayed their southern heritage and a political vision that rightly provided for the poor and dispossessed. Those who stayed true to the party of their youth were increasingly alarmed by California Democrats’ visions of a racially egalitarian, politically progressive New Deal society—a vision that challenged evangelicals’ notions of white privilege, self-determinism, and economic security.

In a few short years, political shifts within both parties finally forced evangelical Democratic stalwarts to the realization that a change was necessary. That change came in the form of an alliance between evangelicals and big business—an alliance that linked disenfranchised plain folk Democrats with pro-capitalist conservative businessmen and intellectuals, both Christian and non-Christian alike. Partially an effort to prevent permanent New Deal reforms from taking hold, and partially an effort to create a united conservative coalition that could challenge an encroaching liberalism at the state and federal levels, this alliance ultimately succeeded in bringing evangelicals out of the economic and cultural margins and into the mainstream. More importantly, this alliance worked to unite the politically fragmented segments of evangelicalism, enabling these Christians “to continue their errand for Christian Americanism together” (137).

And continue they did, though now with ever-increasing amounts of social and economic capital. Dochuk explores these demographic changes—and the resultant religious and political transformations—in his third section, “Southern Solutions.” In the postwar years, many of Southern California’s white evangelicals ascended into the burgeoning upper-middle class and secured lucrative jobs in the region’s expanding industrial and professional economy. Now secure in their newfound wealth, evangelicals replaced Depression-era economic concerns with fear of communist infiltration and “one-world-order schemes” (as they often described the United Nations). Southern-born celebrity preachers like Billy Graham drew on these fears to stir national repentance and global revival.

Meanwhile, evangelical entrepreneurs formed alliances with suburban housewives and right-wing politicos to create a subcultural network of evangelical schools and colleges. These institutions, they hoped, would produce students dedicated to Protestant nationalism and free-market values—the kinds of students who could pursue (and perhaps complete) the errand their southern forefathers had begun.

Evangelicals’ twin desires to protect their schools and their wealth now merged with more mainstream conservative aspirations—national defense, individual autonomy from the state, racial privilege—to spur political activism. In turn, their southern errand became more tied to conservative politics. Evangelicals increasingly believed that their goal of a Christian America would come not just through evangelization but also through legislation. Thus, in the early 1960s, California’s southern evangelicals joined forces with other conservatives, Christian and non-Christian alike, in throwing their considerable resources behind the presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater. Inspired by his conservative conscience, “California evangelicals enlisted their churches, schools, associations, and ministries” on behalf of the Republican contender (229).

When this campaigning failed to see the senator ascend to the White House, liberal commentators declared the death of conservatism and almost giddily dismissed evangelical activism “as a final, fruitless attempt to thwart modernity” (255). Their conclusions were woefully short-sighted, as Dochuk reveals in Section 4, “Southern Strategies.” Instead of fracturing, Southern California’s conservative coalition gained momentum after 1964—and evangelicals remained at the movement’s vanguard. Goldwater’s defeat, though momentarily disheartening, in fact set the stage for the ascendancy of conservatism’s golden boy: a former movie star named Ronald Reagan.

Here was a candidate that all evangelicals could rally behind. They had looked askance at Richard Nixon, suspicious of his sympathies toward silk-stocking Republicans like Nelson Rockefeller; they had supported Goldwater despite his Jewish heritage and nominal Episcopalian faith. Now, in Reagan, they had found a candidate who claimed their same born-again faith and who articulated a compelling political vision, as well. Evangelicals—comfortably ensconced in upper-middle-class respectability and pristine suburban enclaves by the late 1960s and early 1970s—praised Reagan as the symbol of a new, reputable conservatism. He would run on a Republican agenda “drained of the fundamentalist poisons of the past and in command of the political center” (266), proclaiming a “color-blind conservatism” that placated evangelicals’ desire to address “the race issue” without resorting to liberal schemes like civil rights activism or big-government intrusions like social programs (274-276).

Like no previous political candidate, Reagan galvanized the evangelical electorate, uniting them as a consolidated and influential voting bloc. Beginning in Southern California, evangelicals heralded The Gipper’s political ascendancy—first to Sacramento in 1966, and then to the White House in 1980.

Reagan’s presidency represents not only the success of California’s conservative coalition, but the maturation of southern evangelicalism. Once provincial and divided, these Bible-toting Christians now constituted one of the most powerful and visible movements in American society. They had cultivated more than a modicum of intellectual respectability and had achieved middle-class mobility. The success of their Sunbelt alliance—a informal network linking Los Angeles to Oklahoma City, St. Louis to Miami—could not be disputed. Evangelicals, in other words, had arrived.

Dochuk reaches this conclusion having done his homework. He rightly centralizes high-profile players like Graham, Reagan, George Pepperdine, Pat Boone, and “Fighting Bob” Shuler. He draws on primary source materials from a variety of archival repositories. (Indeed, how many scholars of twentieth-century American evangelicalism can claim to have researched at both the Pat Boone Headquarters and the Strom Thurmond Center?) And, wisely, he chooses to anchor his narrative with the voices of “plain folk” evangelicals. Drawn from a catalog of self-collected oral histories and sprinkled effectively throughout the text, the voices of these relatively unknown figures illuminate the lived realities of evangelical politicization. This hybrid approach—fusing traditional political history with a modified version of the “lived religion” methodology popularized by a generation of religious scholars—elevates Dochuk’s book above other recent studies of the Religious Right.

Further recommending From Bible Belt to Sunbelt is Dochuk’s attention to white evangelicals’ racial attitudes, a subject unfortunately overlooked by a great many scholars who examine this community’s politicization. Most take evangelicals’ feelings of white racial privilege as a given. Dochuk, while recognizing that racial privilege indeed motivated evangelicals at the ballot box as early as the 1930s and 1940s, is more even-handed. For instance, he locates Billy Graham’s decision to desegregate his southern revival campaigns as a turning point for this religious subculture, marking a shift away from Jim Crow-era attitudes while paving the way for their embrace of Reagan’s “color-blind conservatism” of the 1970s and 1980s. Dochuk’s treatment of Southern California evangelicals’ responses to the 1965 riots in Los Angeles’ Watts neighborhood (276-281, 294ff.) is particularly fascinating. More should be written on the racialization of these southern transplants—and of white American evangelicals in general—but Dochuk’s study takes a bold step in the right direction.

Nevertheless, the book is not without flaws, the most obvious being the author’s failure to succinctly define his term “evangelical.” Given the elasticity of this appellation even within the scholarly literature, it deserves clear definition; Dochuk’s oversight in this regard, therefore, is a significant one. Although it becomes clear even within the book’s first 80 pages that Dochuk’s evangelicalism includes segments of fundamentalism and even some theologically distinctive conservative Protestant denominations like the Churches of Christ, the absence of a singular, declarative definition of the term at the study’s outset left this reviewer feeling unmoored during the early chapters.

This, however, is but one critique of an otherwise stellar monograph—a monograph with a provocative argument far more nuanced than this reviewer has replicated here. Thoroughly researched and engagingly written, From Bible Belt to Sunbelt marks a major advance in the growing body of scholarship examining the roots of evangelical political activism.

Devin C. Manzullo-Thomas
Temple University

© 2011 – 2012, The Author. All rights reserved. Published electronically by the Journal of Religion, Identity, and Politics on behalf of the Author.

http://ripjournal.org/2011/book-review-from-bible-belt-to-sunbelt-plain-folk-religion-grassroots-politics-and-the-rise-of-evangelical-conservatism/