Backgrounds of the Restoration Movement: The Social Gospel, Sunday School, and the Third Great Awakening

I never heard of the social gospel growing up or in college, even though I graduated from David Lipscomb College, where I had a daily Bible class and daily chapel. In fact, the first time I heard the term was many years later in a deacons meeting. Some guys wanted the church to help pay for T shirts for the college ministry’s intramural football team. An older deacon objected, “We can’t pay for social events. That’s the social gospel!” I had no idea what the “social gospel” might be, but I sure didn’t think he had it right. And he didn’t.

I’ve also heard Church members condemn church fellowships as sinful “social gospel” … as though Jesus never ate with anyone … or we were never commanded to offer hospitality to one another.

So I looked it up. And it’s very important. Indeed, many debates going on in Washington DC today are all about the Social Gospel. It’s driven American politics for over 100 years. And it’s not about football or potlucks.

Sunday school

It all goes back to … Sunday school. Some reader may not know that there are actually Churches of Christ opposed to Sunday school. But for most of us, we figure Jesus was the first Sunday school teacher. I mean, it’s near the core of who we are. But it actually goes back only a couple of hundred years to the work of Robert Raikes, an English publisher, beginning around 1780.

In those days, children from poor families worked six days a week. Schooling was in private schools and had to be paid for, and so there was a large class of children growing up with no education at all. Many turned to crime, and certainly very few went to church. Raikes opened a Sunday school, that is, a school open on Sunday for children to be taught how to read and write in the mornings and to then attend church and study their catechism (basic Bible) in the afternoons. By 1831, over 1,250,000 boys and girls were enrolled in free Sunday schools — 25% of the population — which should give you an idea of the depth of poverty many suffered in England at the time.

As the Wikipedia states,

The schools were derisively called “Raikes’ Ragged School”. Criticisms raised included that it would weaken home-based religious education, that it might be a desecration of the Sabbath, and that Christians should not be employed on the Sabbath. “Sabbatarian disputes” in the 1790s led many Sunday schools to cease their teaching of writing.

Ponder that one for a moment. Many Christians considered it more important to honor Sunday as the “Christian Sabbath” — a very questionable doctrine — rather than teach Bible and literacy to child laborers! But we haven’t changed that much, have we?

The idea quickly moved to the United States in areas where factories used child labor. But over time, many states, and eventually the federal government, banned child labor. And then the states began offering free education, eliminating the need for literacy classes on Sundays. The churches, however, continued to teach children in conjunction with Sunday worship.

You see, until the Sunday school movement, Bible education came either from private schools (public schools didn’t become standard until the 20th Century), catechism classes (a series of classes taught before confirmation), or the preacher’s sermons. There were no weekly classes for most church goers. But once Sunday schools began, churches found classes to be both popular with the members and helpful for instructing members on doctrine.

Interestingly, Sunday school classes are now in decline in American evangelicalism, as many megachurches have eliminated classes in favor of small groups. How this change will impact the children in these churches remains to be seen.

The Salvation Army

Most people don’t realize that the Salvation Army is a denomination that spun off Methodism in England. The Wikipedia tells the story —

The Salvation Army was founded in London’s East End in 1865 by one-time Methodist minister William Booth and his wife Catherine. Originally, Booth named the organization the East London Christian Mission, but in 1878 Booth reorganized it along military lines when his son Bramwell objected to being called a “volunteer” and stated that he was a “regular” or nothing. [“Regular” meaning a soldier in the standing army.] The name then became The Salvation Army.

When William Booth became known as the General, Catherine was known as the “Mother of The Salvation Army”. William preached to the poor, and Catherine spoke to the wealthy, gaining financial support for their work. She also acted as a religious minister, which was unusual at the time; the Foundation Deed of the Christian Mission, stated that women had the same rights to preach as men. William Booth described the organization’s approach: “The three ‘S’s’ best expressed the way in which the Army administered to the ‘down and outs’: first, soup; second, soap; and finally, salvation.” …

The Salvation Army’s main converts were at first alcoholics, drug addicts, prostitutes and other “undesirables” unwelcomed into polite Christian society, which helped prompt the Booths to start their own church. …

As the Salvation Army grew rapidly in the late 1800s, it generated opposition in England. Opponents, grouped under the name of the Skeleton Army, disrupted Salvation Army meetings and gatherings, the usual tactics being the throwing of rocks, rats, and tar, and physical assaults on members of The Salvation Army. Much of this was led by publicans who were losing business due to the Army’s opposition to alcohol and targeting of the frequenters of saloons and public houses.

The Salvation Army’s reputation in the United States improved after it began disaster relief efforts after the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 and the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.

Notice how this story fits the scriptures —

(1 Pet 2:12)  Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.

The Salvation Army is, of course, a bit odd. They wear uniforms and have military titles. Nonetheless,

The Salvation Army is the second largest charity in the United States, with private donations of almost $2 billion for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2007.

Has anyone ever seen a Salvation Army church building? They have worship services like any other Christian denomination, but they obviously prefer to spend their money on things other than large, prominent buildings. As different as they are, their good works are so well respected that they’ve become a honored part of society.

The Third Great Awakening

After the Civil War, American Christianity was faced with many challenged —

* In the South, Reconstruction and vast numbers of freed former slaves.

* In the North, vast numbers of European immigrants.

* The so-called Second Industrial Revolution, which brought many people to the cities from farms to work in factories. 12-hour shifts and child labor were common.

* Theological liberalism, arriving from Europe, in which inspiration of the scriptures was being questioned.

* Darwinism, which led to social Darwinism, the idea that the strong should survive and the weak should not.

* The rise of socialism and communism as political theories.

* The rise of big government. Many Americans began to see government as the solution to the woes of mankind.

Many denominations split over liberalism. A new movement called “Fundamentalism” was founded. Unlike how the term is used today, “Fundamentalism” was originally an effort to preserve Christian orthodoxy against liberal views.

Billy Sunday

At the same time, the great revivalists Dwight Moody and Billy Sunday traveled the country, preaching to vast crowds, and converting thousands.

Billy Sunday had been a professional baseball player, and he used his fame to become the Billy Graham of his day, preaching to over 100,000,000 people, with 1,250,000 responses. Sunday preached to crowds so large that special buildings — tabernacles — had to be built to hold them all. He often preached meetings that lasted for a month.

Sunday may have been the first to have preached the “sinner’s prayer,” declaring his listeners saved as soon as they spoke the prayer inviting Jesus into their hearts.

Like Charles Finney, Sunday was nominally a Calvinist, but he believed Christians could be converted by their free will response to the word preached.

Dwight Moody

Moody was another great revival preacher, who traveled with hymn writer Ira Sankey. The story is told —

Just at a moment when [Sankey] was in considerable doubt as to the suitable course [whether to travel with Moody], a card was brought him which on examination proved to be from Mr. Moody. It requested him to meet Mr. Moody at a certain street corner that evening at six o’clock. Mr. Sankey did not know what he was wanted for, but he accepted the invitation, and, accompanied by a few friends, met the appointment promptly. In a few minutes Mr. Moody appeared, and without stopping to speak, walked into a store on the corner and asked permission to use a dry-goods box. The permission granted, the evangelist rolled a large box out to the edge of the sidewalk, and then calling Mr. Sankey aside asked him to climb up and sing something. Mr. Sankey complied. A crowd began to collect, and Mr. Moody getting upon the box began to preach. Mr. Sankey says of that sermon, “He preached that evening as I had never heard any man preach before.” The hearers, most of them workingmen on their way home from the mills and factories, were electrified. They hung on every word, apparently forgetting that they were tired and hungry, and when Mr. Moody closed, which he was forced to do by the density of the crowd, he announced that he would hold another meeting at the Academy of Music, and invited the crowd to accompany him there. Arm in arm with Mr. Moody, Mr. Sankey marched down the street singing hymn after hymn as he went, the crowd following closely at their heels. Mr. Sankey has since declared that this was his first experience in Salvation Army methods. The meeting in the Academy of Music was necessarily brief because the convention was soon to come together, oddly enough to discuss the question, “How shall we reach the masses?” and as the delegates came in Mr. Moody, with a short prayer dismissed the meeting.

Here’s another Moody story —

In the same place one day, as Mr. Moody was working in the after-meeting, he came to a man in the centre aisle and said, “Are you a Christian?” To this question the man replied, “Yes sir. I am glad to say, Mr. Moody, I am.” Passing on, he came to one who was not a Christian. He suddenly turned to one of the ushers and said, “Tell that man to come here” (referring to the one who was glad he was a Christian). As he approached, Mr. Moody said, Sit down there and talk to this man.” Whereupon the man replied, “You will have to excuse me, Mr. Moody; that is something I never do.” Mr. Moody turned to him quickly and said, ” Either sit down and talk to that man, or else sit down and let some one talk to you.

And so we see America being pulled in two directions. The great revivalists of the time were saving souls across denominational lines, preaching to thousands at a time, while others were pushing American Christianity more and more toward a liberalism that removed miracles and God from the Bible, turning the Bible into a self-help handbook.

(Sankey wrote over 1,000 hymns, including the “Ninety and Nine,” “Why Not Tonight?,” and “Beneath the Cross of Jesus.”)