Have the Fundamentalists Won?

 Most preachers would be pleased if one of their sermons was remembered for 100 days. But Harry Emerson Fosdick preached a sermon 100 years ago that is still remembered today. That sermon delivered on May 21, 1922, was titled “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?”* 

Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878~1969) was, in the estimation of Martin Luther King, Jr., “the greatest preacher of the twentieth century.” He was also one of the first vocal opponents of Christian fundamentalism—and was, consequently, a primary target of the fundamentalists.

In 1921, and less than a year before his renowned May 1922 sermon, Fosdick was the guest preacher at missionary conferences in China and in Karuizawa, Japan. It was an eye-opening experience for him.

In The Living of These Days, Fosdick’s autobiography published when he was 78, he wrote:

It was one of the most informing and revealing experiences I ever had. For one thing, I saw fundamentalism for the first time in its full intensity. The missionary community was split wide open. On one side, some of the largest personalities and most intelligent views one could meet anywhere; on the other, such narrowness and obscurantism as seemed downright incredible.

In “Shall the Fundamentalists Win? Fosdick discussed briefly four of what the fundamentalists considered essential (=fundamental) to the Christian religion: the virgin birth of Jesus, the inerrancy of the Bible, the substitutionary atonement of Jesus, and Jesus’ literal second coming.

However, while he did not agree with the fundamentalists on those points of doctrine, Fosdick’s main criticism was not their doctrinal beliefs as such but their intolerance for those Christians, such as him, who espoused alternative interpretations of Christianity.

He emphasized, “We must be able to think our modern life clear through in Christian terms, and to do that we also must be able to think our Christian faith clear through in modern terms.”

Fosdick continued, “Now the people in this generation who are trying to do this are the liberals, and the Fundamentalists are out on a campaign to shut against them the doors of the Christian fellowship.”

So, this was the pivotal question, “Shall they be allowed to succeed?”

Fosdick’s answer to his question was of course in the negative, and he confidently concluded: “I do not believe for one moment that the Fundamentalists are going to succeed.”

But have the fundamentalists won? This month, various Christian writers have reflected on Fosdick’s 100-year-old sermon, and some have concluded that, indeed, the fundamentalists have won.

For example, James Lupfer, a Florida-based journalist, wrote, “100 years later, Fosdick’s question, ‘Shall the fundamentalists win?’ still echoes.” He concludes in that May 20 article published by Religion News Service, “The answer, improbable at the time, was, ‘Yes, they shall.’”

More importantly, Diana Butler Bass (b. 1959, ten years before Fosdick’s death), a trustworthy American historian of Christianity, posted four essays between April 29 and May 20 regarding Fosdick’s 5/1922 sermon.

The subtitle of the first one is, “A Century After the Question: They Have.”

Near the end of Bass’s fourth essay, she quotes Fosdick’s confident assertion about the fundamentalists failing and then concludes, “I confess that I do not share his certainty. I do not know if they will ultimately win, but they are—right now—stronger than ever.”

But I disagree with Lupfer and Bass and others who agree with them regarding the fundamentalists having won.

True, fundamentalists, now generally known by the label “conservative evangelicals,” have gained and wielded considerable political power and have been victorious in various culture war battles since 1980, but that is not what Fosdick was dealing with in his sermon.

(And it can be credibly argued that the Republican Party has “won” by using conservative evangelicals far more than the latter have “won” by their influence upon the GOP.)

Certainly, conservative evangelicals have “won” in some Christian denominations—such as the Southern Baptist Convention, which did succeed in dispelling moderates/progressives (such as I).

Most of the respected and influential Christian spokespersons cited in public media, though, are not conservative evangelicals (=fundamentalists). The latter are most often described somewhat disdainfully.

To paraphrase Fosdick, “I do not believe for one moment that the fundamentalists have succeeded.”

_____

* Fosdick’s sermon in its entirety can be found at this website.

** For further consideration of this topic, I recommend the detailed essay “Did the Fundamentalists Win?” posted on May 17 by my friend Brian Kaylor and his colleague Beau Underwood. And for more about Fosdick and Riverside Church (where he was pastor from 1925~45), see my 10/5/15 blog post.

Will the U.S. Remain a Democracy?

Benjamin Franklin, a four-hour documentary directed and produced by Ken Burns, first aired on PBS early last month. This blog was inspired by Franklin’s words near the end of that highly informative film. 

The Constitutional Convention of 1787 opened its first session on May 25, exactly 235 years ago. The 55 delegates (from 12 of the 13 states in the new nation) chose George Washington to preside. Other notable delegates were James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Benjamin Franklin.

At 81, Franklin was the elder statesman at the Convention—and arguably the most influential.

When the time came to sign their drafted document, Franklin encouraged his fellow delegates to give the proposed Constitution their unanimous support, despite the fact that he himself did not approve of every aspect of the new plan of government.

Franklin concluded: “On the whole . . . I cannot help expressing a wish that every member of the Convention . . . would with me, on this occasion, doubt a little of his own infallibility, and to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to the instrument.”

“A Republic, if You Can Keep It”: these were the words spoken by Franklin as he was leaving the last session of the Constitutional Convention on September 17. It was in response to a question about the nature of the government in the new Constitution. 

The question was about whether the new country would be a monarchy or a republic. That is, would there be a king, or a government elected by eligible voters.

A republic is “a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law” (Merriam-Webster).

Preserving the U.S. government as a republic seems to be one thing current Republicans as well as Democrats agree on.

In September 2019, when House Speaker Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced the formal impeachment inquiry of Pres. Trump, she used the words of Franklin to back her arguments.

That same month, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump nominee, issued a book titled A Republic, If You Can Keep It.

Can the U.S. be Kept a Democracy? This is the burning question for the U.S. now. There seems to be little threat to the U.S. remaining a republic. The Republican Party is in support of that—although some question whether there is full support by the most ardent Trumpists. But the matter of remaining a democracy is a more precarious matter.

The Democratic Party is certainly not opposed to the U.S. remaining a republic, but they firmly believe it should be a democratic republic.

It should be noted that “democracy” is not mentioned in the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution. Accordingly, some present-day Republicans and rightwing “talking heads,” insist that the U.S. government is not and was not intended to be a democracy.

The Democrats, naturally, strongly disagree, as do most political science scholars. The title of a November 2020 article in The Atlantic is “‘America Is a Republic, Not a Democracy’ Is a Dangerous—And Wrong—Argument.” But that flawed argument has even been made by U.S. senators.  

In October 2020, Utah Senator Mike Lee (R) sent a series of tweets declaring that the United States is "not a democracy" and that "democracy isn't the objective; liberty, peace, and prosperity are.”*

Earlier this year, sociologists Phillip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry’s book The Flag and The Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy was published. The authors refer to democracy as rule by “the people,” which also includes universal suffrage, human rights, and equality under the law (p. 114).

They declare, “As white Christians approach minority status, white Christian nationalists are starting to turn against American democracy.” They further assert that “white Christian nationalism has become a serious threat to American democracy, perhaps the most serious threat it now faces” (p. 8).

As a White Christian who is definitely not a nationalist, I urge you to join in the struggle to keep the U.S. a democracy—a federal government of, by, and for the people such as Pres. Lincoln envisioned in his Gettysburg Address delivered in November 1863.**

_____

* For example, on Oct. 7, 2020, Lee tweeted, “We’re not a democracy.” That brief statement was “liked” by 31,600 people and retweeted over 4,500 times.

** For more about this, see my June 20, 2016, blog post.

The Meaning and Importance of Lament

Recently I have been attending biweekly online prayer meetings planned and led by David Nelson, a local friend who is a retired ELCA minister. The theme of the March 19 meeting was “Lamenting with the people of Ukraine.” That started me thinking about the meaning and importance of lament. 

An online dictionary defines lament as “a passionate expression of grief or sorrow.” As a verb, “to mourn” is perhaps the closest synonym of “to lament.” It is a word to be used in reaction to deeply distressing situations.

However, I found from recent use of “Google Alerts,” that “lament” is now widely used as an expression of sadness over some things that are of no major importance, such as the loss of an athletic contest.

Properly used, though, lament is the expression of grief over great loss, such as by death, destruction, or disaster—such as experienced by so many Ukrainians since the end of February.

Here is part of the opening “prayer of lament” used at the March 19 meeting:       

We recognize patterns of privilege and systems of discrimination.

Hear our lament, O God.

We see your creation destroyed by carelessness and greed.

Hear our lament, O God.

We weep for the war in Ukraine, for victims of violence.

Hear our lament, O God.
We weep for the families forced to separate because of war. 
        Hear our lament, O God.      

And now, on a much smaller scale, we lament for the families and friends of those fatally shot in Buffalo, NY, on May 14.

The importance and prevalence of lament in the Bible is often overlooked. It is not surprising that the happy, hopeful passages are more often quoted. But, in reality, expressions of lament are frequent in the Bible.

Psalms, the hymnbook of the Old Testament, includes many psalms of lament, including Psalm 22, which Jesus quoted on the cross as he was being executed: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (v. 1).

Lamentations is one of the (little-read) books of the Old Testament. In it, the writer (traditionally considered to be Jeremiah), “paints a portrait of utter devastation and appalling suffering: starvation, disease, slaughter, rape, scavenging, looting, and the desecration of holy things.”*

The five chapters of Lamentations depressingly portray the calamities experienced by the Israelites after the fall of Jerusalem in 587 B.C. But in the midst of all the lamenting, there are two verses that many people know and deeply appreciate.

Lamentations 3:22-23 says, “It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness” (KJV).

From those verses came the much-beloved hymn “Great is Thy Faithfulness” (1923) which has been sung often for nearly 100 years now.

Also, while the word lament is not used, a closely related idea is found in the New Testament as one of the Beatitudes spoken by Jesus declares, “Blessed are those who mourn” (Matthew 5:4).

Lament is of great importance for people who are suffering substantial loss—as well as for those who suffer in solidarity with such people.

When we are experiencing catastrophic circumstances, lament is highly appropriate. We don’t need people telling us to cheer up or suggest some quick fix for our felt grief.

Even in public worship, there needs to be time for lamenting as well as for rejoicing.

It is also important to lament for others—such as for those in Ukraine and in Buffalo, as well as so many others suffering in various places around the world.

As one writer explains, “Lament is a participation in the pain of others.” And, “Lament is not only for the suffering; it is for solidarity with the suffering. We love our neighbor when we allow their experience of pain to become the substance of our prayer.”**

Even when we ourselves are happy/content, love for others obliges us to lament with those who aren’t. If we don’t often lament in times like these, doesn’t that indicate a serious deficiency in our love/empathy?

_____

* From “Lamentations: A Bottle for the Tears of the World,” a book review of Christopher J.H. Wright’s book The Message of Lamentations (2015), accessible here.

** From Five Things to Know about Lament” by Glenn Packiam.

What about Book Banning?

Vital Conversations is a monthly discussion group for people in the Northland of Kansas City, and since February 2007 I have enjoyed being a regular part of that group. Last week the topic for discussion was the thorny issue of the banning of books in libraries and schools. 

What Books have been Banned?

Rather than discussing one book as usual, this time participants were asked to introduce and share comments about a banned book they had read.

There was quite a variety: “classics” such as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) and George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945) as well as more recent books such as And Tango Makes Three (by Justin Richardson, 2005) and All Boys are Not Blue (by George M Johnson, 2020).

Actually, I introduced two books: The Grapes of Wrath (1939), the classic novel by John Steinbeck (and the subject of my 5/10 blog post), and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (by Jesse Andrews, 2012).

A May 5 article on Esquire.com is titled “The 10 Most-Banned Books in America.” Steinbeck’s 80+ years old book is not on the list, but Me and Earl . . . is.

Given the current culture wars raging in the U.S., it is not surprising that five of those ten books are directly related to LGBTQ issues and three are about aspects of racism.

Why are Some Books Banned?

Books are banned in general because of controversial ideas that are considered a danger to the general public—or a privileged segment of society. The Grapes of Wrath, for example, was banned in some places because of its implicit criticism of capitalism.

Other books are banned because of “moral” objections. My impression from reading Me and Earl . . . was that it normalizes and even glamorizes sexual promiscuity, excessive profanity, and the use of tobacco and alcohol by high school students.*

But a major problem now is disagreement over what is moral. Religious conservatives tend to consider all sexual activity by gays and lesbians to be immoral and even their existence, as well as that of transgender persons, to be an aberration that must not be afforded public acceptance.

And White supremacists, most of whom are perhaps only latently such, find references to systematic racism highly objectionable, if not immoral, and oppose students being taught or allowed to read books that have anything to do with “critical race theory.”

Without question, it is “conservatives” of whatever stripe who clamor most for the banning of books.

Should Any Book be Banned?

The prolific science fiction author Isaac Asimov (1920~92) is often quoted as saying, “Any book worth banning is a book worth reading.”

I agree with Asimov regarding books with controversial ideas being read by adults. But I couldn’t see any basis for thinking that Me and Earl . . . was worth reading—except perhaps to understand the nature of one of the most banned books in 2021 and the nature of some high schoolers now.

Perhaps some books just don’t belong in school libraries—any more than cigarette and beer vending machines don’t belong in school cafeterias.

Teenagers are legally “banned” from purchasing tobacco and alcohol. And they are “banned” from driving a car for most of their teen years. (In Missouri and many other states, a person can’t be fully licensed to drive until age 18.)

Thus, there are some generally accepted limitations on what teenagers can and can’t do, for their protection and for the good of society. Perhaps there are books that fit into the same category.

The problem, of course, is when books are banned because of prejudice against certain people who are demeaned because of their race or because of their sexual/gender orientation.

Given the absence of widespread agreement such as there is regarding laws regulating purchase/use of tobacco/alcohol as well as the age at which teenagers can legally drive, perhaps the best course of action is not to ban any books in schools/libraries.

Parents are responsible for teaching their own children what they think is good and appropriate, but they don’t have the right to regulate what other parents see as suitable or permissible for their children.**

_____

* I usually have high regard for articles published by The Guardian, but I was surprised (disappointed?) by a 2015 review of Me and Earl . . ., the last paragraph of which began, “Everyone should read this book.”

** Helpful treatment of this thorny topic is found in “Banned Books – Top 3 Pros and Cons,” updated in April 2022.

Tasting the Grapes of Wrath

Last week I finished reading John Steinbeck’s classic novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) again—decades after my previous reading of that powerful book. Although closely related to my two previous posts, I am writing again about the knotty issue of exploited laborers. 

Migrants and Immigrants

“What about the Immigrants?” was the title of my May 5 post, and this one might have been titled “What about the Migrants?” Whereas immigrants are people who move from one country to another, migrants move domestically from one region to another in their own country.

What is called the “Great Migration” was one of the largest movements of people in United States history. Approximately 6,000,000 African Americans moved from the American South to northern, midwestern, and western states from the 1910s until the 1970s.

The “Great Okie Migration,” another significant relocation of people in the U.S., took place in the 1930s as some 2,500,000 people migrated from the Dust Bowl region of the lower Midwest to California. Many of those migrants were from Oklahoma and were given the derogatory nickname Okie.

The Migrants in The Grapes of Wrath

As the many of you who have read The Grapes of Wrath know, Steinbeck’s book is about the Joad family, who traveled from Sallisaw, Okla., to the San Joaquin valley in California. Much of that trip was going west on Route 66, the Chicago to Los Angeles road that became a national highway in 1926.

Google maps indicates that the distance the Joad family traveled was more than 1,750 miles—and can be made in about 25 driving hours on today’s Interstate highways. But it took the Joads considerably longer than that in their rickety old vehicle.

But the worst of Joads’ troubles began after arriving in California. They were used at the discretion of the landowners and managers and had absolutely no bargaining rights. There were far too many migrants for the work available.

Those who did find work at a depressingly low wage one day might find the wage even lowered the next day as other migrants desperate to feed their families would agree to work for less.

The Joads’ decision to leave their home in Oklahoma and make the arduous trip to California was aroused by their vision of Calif. as a place of abundance for all.

Just before they left their old home, Grandpa Joad exclaimed, “Come time we get to California I’ll have a big bunch a grapes in my han’ all the time, a-nibblin’ off it all the time!’’

But Grandpa died long before the Joad family got to California, and for those who did make it, soon their vision of plentiful grapes and other fruit turned to grapes of wrath.

The online Merriam-Webster dictionary defines grapes of wrath as “an unjust or oppressive situation, action, or policy that may inflame desire for vengeance: an explosive condition.”

Those words appear only one time in Steinbeck’s novel by that name: “in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”

The “Grapes of Wrath” in 2022

The current situation in the U.S. is far different, and far better, than it was in the 1930s.

Now, rather than there being hordes of workers without jobs, there is a shortage of unskilled laborers. Still, there are far too many workers with jobs that pay far too little. Laborers deserve a living wage.

William Barber II and Liz Theoharis continue to lead the Poor People’s Campaign, an anti-poverty campaign that calls for "federal and state living-wage laws, equity in education, an end to mass incarceration, a single-payer health-care system, and the protection of the right to vote."

Here in the Kansas City area, Stand Up KC is an organization of fast food and retail workers who have joined forces to demand better wages and a voice (labor unions) for low-wage workers.** 

Those of us who are better off financially need to act in greater solidarity with those around us who are presently tasting the grapes of wrath.

_____

** Here is the link to the Poor People’s Campaign, and the link to the blog post I made about Barber is here. And you can find more information about Stand Up KC here. 

What about the Immigrants?

Immigration has long been a perplexing problem in this country. Tomorrow is the 140^th anniversary of the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first significant law restricting immigration into the U.S. But immigration continues to be a contentious and divisive issue.  

Fear of Immigrants

“Yellow Peril” is a racist term that depicted the peoples of East and Southeast Asia as an existential threat to the Western world.  

In the U.S., the racist and cultural stereotypes of the Yellow Peril originated in the 19th century, when Chinese workers, who legally entered the U.S., inadvertently provoked a racist backlash because of their work ethic and willingness to work for lower wages than did the local white populations.

Construction of the first transcontinental railroad in the U.S. began in 1863—in the middle of the Civil War. The completion of that challenging endeavor was celebrated with the driving of the “golden spike” on May 10, 1869, an event captured in this much-publicized photograph: 

Photo by Andrew J. Russell

What is missing in the image is even one Chinese worker, although some 15,000 Chinese laborers helped build the western part of that railroad (see this informative July 2019 article from The Guardian)—and 1,200 died in the process.

In the following decade, resentment against Chinese laborers in the U.S. bloated, especially in California, and President Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act on May 6, 1882. Seeking to stem the Yellow Peril, that Act prohibited the immigration of any more Chinese laborers.

Exploitation of Immigrants

There has long been exploitation of immigrants by capitalists. The treatment of the Chinese railroad laborers is one of the first clear examples. Even after 1882, though, throngs of European immigrants came to this country to work in hard jobs with minimal pay and harsh living conditions.

Some bestselling novels depicted the exploitation of such immigrants. For example, Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel The Jungle featured the plight of immigrants in the Chicago stockyards and meat-packing industry.

The hard lot of European immigrants working in the Michigan copper mines in 1913-14 are depicted in Mary Doria Russell’s captivating novel The Women of Copper Country (2019). (This was the first and the best of the twelve novels I have read so far this year.)

And while John Steinbeck’s powerful novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is mostly about domestic migrants, the “Okies” who went to California in the 1930s, in the 19^th chapter he wrote the following about the capitalists engaged in agribusiness:

Now farming became industry . . . . They imported slaves, although they did not call them slaves: Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, Filipinos. . . . [The businessmen said,] They don’t need much. They wouldn’t know what to do with good wages. Why, look how they live. Why, look what they eat. And if they get funny—deport them.

Fear of Immigrants Again

And now in 2022 there is considerable opposition to—and latent fear of—immigrants coming across the southern border of the United States.

Granted, the present opposition is ostensibly because such immigrants are “illegal,” but many are coming for the same reason so many Europeans came in the past: the hope for a better standard of living—and until 1924 there was little legal restriction except for Chinese laborers.

The current immigration debate in the U.S. (and many European countries) is between the liberal globalists and the conservative/populist nationalists. The former want a liberal immigration policy partly out of compassion for the needy and partly to promote a multi-cultural, interdependent world.

On the other hand, the nationalists want to protect the well-being of the people of their own country, but often with callous disregard for the needs of those desperate to find safer places to live and a place with better economic conditions.

There are certainly many in this country who strongly side with the nationalists, and Donald Trump’s appeal to them was one of the reasons he was elected President in 2016.*

But as a Christian, I can’t help but side with those showing the most compassion for the immigrants. After all, in Matthew 25:35 Jesus said, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”**

_____

* In October 2019, PBS aired Zero Tolerance, a documentary about how Steve Bannon used the immigration issue to help get Trump the nomination for the presidency in 2016 and how Trump used that as part of his MAGA appeal that resulted in his election.

** The Greek word translated here as “stranger” is ξένος (xenos), from which the English word xenophobia (=fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners) comes.