12. GLORY

THE LAST DAYS OF THE GILDED AGE

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AMERICA

With the distancing in time from the Civil War, once again America fell back into a world of humanistic rationalism, pretty much along the same lines as what was developing in Europe.  Again, the Christian faith in America found itself deeply challenged by this intellectual-spiritual shift.   America "Liberalism" was growing rapidly in the world of academics, government, and even religion.  And it took on qualities not all that different from the political idealism of Karl Marx.  Liberals, such as the prolific writer and lecturer John Dewey, blamed flaws in the social structure, not flaws in the human heart, as the cause of the social problems still facing the country.  According to Dewey, if you reform the social structure then the problems will go away.  True, some "education" of the masses will have to take place in order to release them from the grip of antiquated thinking.  Like Lenin, Dewey believed that this was the special responsibility of those already enlightened to society's truths.  But (also like Lenin) he believed that this would be merely a temporary stage in social-cultural development that a society would have to go through, before the masses were ready to take on freely a fully enlightened world.  Thus American Liberalism came to be understood as a program of deep social reform – reform led (just temporarily, of course) by the more enlightened of society. On the governmental side of this same Liberalism was the Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendel Holmes, who took a very "progressivist" view of the American Constitution, understanding that it needed to be constantly adjusted to fit the changing context of society's ever-changing dynamics.  In short, the Constitution needed to be understood to be whatever the currently serving justices saw the need for it to be ... sort of a "Legal Realism" being their guide.  Thus the real Constitution was not to be found in an ancient document, but in the hearts and minds of very wise Supreme Court justices! Thus to a rising group of American Liberals, "democracy" was to be a social program "coming from above," not from the desires and actions of the unreformed masses. This same kind of "Enlightened Realism" also found its way into the Christian world of America, not surprisingly among some of its leading voices of the day.  Reason seemed once again to dictate the need to do some updating of the faith, getting it away from the ancient myths found in Scripture – in order to help the faith deal with the issues more at hand at the time.  Thus Biblical "text-criticism" became the fashion in seminaries training a rising generation of pastors to be more "realistic" in their approach to Scripture, and thus their Christian walk (and preaching). This was hardly a new development, something that had already shaken the Christian West back in the late 1600s and early 1700s.  And of course it demonstrated amply the horrors of such "enlightenment" in the French Revolution, dedicated to exactly that same post-Christian enlightenment – which unsurprisingly the Enlightened Ones ended up slaughtering each other because they could not agree on the directions such enlightenment was supposed to take them. But American Christianity had thankfully not really gone down that road very far, and subsequently – the mid-1700s to the mid-1800s – had  been able to return to its more traditional understanding of life and its dynamics, in order to put America back on track as being a "Covenant Nation" … and take on successfully the nation's accompanying challenges. But here at the end of the 1800s, a fully settled America found itself once again back in the mood to repeat the ways of the earlier "Age of Enlightenment."  The milder form this would take would be found in the development of the "Social Gospel" – an effort of Congregationalist pastor Washington Gladden, the Baptist pastor and seminary professor, Walter Rauschenbusch and the economist Richard Ely to find some kind of "middle ground" between Christian traditionalism and modern Secular science.  They skirted theological controversy by simply emphasizing that Christianity was about social service, to the poor and hurting.  Of course there was nothing particularly Christian about this, in the sense that any person of humane sentiments (Confucianist, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim) would find themselves agreeing that this was a very important way to go at life.  But ultimately it had nothing to do with Christ's eternal salvation.  Indeed, the Social Gospel treated such a traditional concern as very problematic. Washington Gladden Walter Rauschenbusch Richard Ely Then there was what appeared to most of the faithful as a very strong attack on Scripture as the foundation of all key Truths in life.  The huge and very traditionalist Presbyterian denomination found itself deeply troubled by the "text-criticism" offered by Union Theological Seminary's professor Charles Briggs, who was perceived as treating Scripture as folklore rather than absolute truth.  Briggs pointed out that Moses did not write the books attributed to him, but instead those writings were most likely put together many centuries after him – by drawing from four different traditions.  And he also stated that the second half of the Book of Isaiah most likely had been put together after Isaiah's death by his disciples. At a time when truth was coming to have a strongly material basis in the thinking of most Westerners, such attacks on the material or "factual" foundations of scripture appeared to most Christian Americans as being absolutely heretical.  Thus the denomination in 1893 voted to excommunicate Briggs, and attempted to remove him from Union Seminary.  Union Seminary, however, chose instead to remove itself from the Presbyterian denomination.  And Briggs continued his studies and teaching there. On the other hand, the very popular circuit preacher/evangelist Dwight L. Moody was able to take the rising social doctrines of Progressivism and combine them with the idea of cleaning up America's sins in anticipation of Christ's second coming, all without involving any commentary on the burning theological disputes of the day.  This made a lot of sense to independent-minded "Middle Americans" who simply wanted to find in their Christian faith the guidance they needed personally to get through the changing times of the late 1800s, and prepare for the eternal life to come.  Thus thousands came out to hear Moody's preaching. Also, there was a most unusual (unusual in terms of more traditional Christianity) pentecostal or charismatic "awakening" which broke out with the Azusa Street Pentecostal revival in Los Angeles in 1906.  And this in turn birthed the charismatic Assemblies of God denomination, which would grow – and is still growing to amazing size – not only in America but also internationally.  Thus it was still understood by many Americans that its nation still had God's work to pursue. Leaders of the Azusa Street revival But most tragically, few of the Secular "Enlightened Ones" on the other side of the spiritual fence at this point had any sense of the collapse of all reasonable social order awaiting them only a few years into the future (the coming "Great War" of 1914-1918).  They too were positive that they were moving into an "End Times," although not one delivered by God, but instead one delivered by the Human Reason by which they intended to guide the rest of society.  But sadly, this march forward of history would hit the country tragically when the Liberally enlightened American President Woodrow Wilson would take America into the ghastly European War in 1917, to make the world "safe for democracy."   So it was that democracy ("democracy" as conceived by political experts) rather than God's covenantal program would come to take over as America's main program.  The results would be very bloody, and ultimately very pointless.

Life in Rural America

The Dorrance telephone switch-board
Kansas State Historical Society

The Dorrance Lutheran Church (one of 4 churches in town)
Kansas State Historical Society

A grain elevator built by German immigrants - who brought with them the winter wheat grown locally
Kansas State Historical Society

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Life in the urban "Middle America" (Grand Junction, Colorado)

Loeb and Hollis Drug Store in Grand Junction
Pennell Collection, University of Kansas

Latham's Grocery in Grand Junction
Pennell Collection, University of Kansas

The Pegues, Wright Department Store in Grand Junction
Pennell Collection, University of Kansas

Rudy Sohn's barber shop in Junction City, Kansas
Pennell Collection, University of Kansas

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Ladies' sewing circle - Black River Falls, Wisconsin
Historical Society of Wisconsin

Keeping up with the latest fashions in rural Industry, Illinois - 1911
(my grandmother is second from the left)

An American classroom - around 1900

Fire department No. One, Woodbine, New Jersey

An American family dining room - 1906



Kids waiting for ice delivery (and extra pieces!) - Cleveland - 1910

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And Middle America had its own "style" as to how it relaxed and enjoyed life

Rosebowl Football Game - 1902

Americans vacationing at Daytona Beach, Florida - 1904



Baseball - Boston versus New York - 1904

Traveling shows - an Indian "exhibit" -1904

The Saint Louis World Fair - 1904

Harvard versus Yale football - 1907

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And life in "big-city" America could be quite elegant

Wall Street - New York City

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THE GILDED CALM BEFORE THE STORM

So ... at the turn into the twentieth century most of Western society seemed to be clearly at the top of its game.  Many already called this the "Gilded Age" ... where everything seemed to be gold-lined.  True, the world was still engaged in rapid social change, and perfection had not yet been fully achieved.  But all this change seemed to be in a direction entirely positive in character ... and seemed to promise that utopia was at hand.  The common people were enjoying unprecedented new powers as designers of their own destiny.  Even kings and emperors seemed to have been brought under the power of the people.   Wealth was clearly expanding, though reaching the lower classes only with difficulty.  But even in this matter, just as the middle class had recently secured vital political and economic rights wrested from the old feudal order, socialist reformers were certain (Marx had clearly demonstrated to them how this all was an inevitable historical development) that soon the working classes would be wrestling those same political and economic rights from the middle class industrialists (or "capitalists").  Such utopian progress was certain ... and just around the corner. But storm clouds were gathering that would change this game plan dramatically ... in a way few observers anticipated in those first years of the twentieth century.  Europe was about to go through such a nightmare of events that even in finally getting through it all, Europe would never be the same.  The Gilded Age was about to come to a dramatic close.

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Go on to the next section:  World War One

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  Miles H. Hodges