Liberal Social Ethics: Confronting the Four Horsemen

“Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as Famine, Pestilence, Destruction and Death. They are only aliases. Their real names are Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cycle.” So wrote Grantland Rice in 1924 as the Army football team fell before the magnificently balanced backfield of Notre Dame. But though it was the age of athletic giants and the peaceful decade of the 1920s, even the most optimistic of liberal Protestant preachers doubtless found this memorable identification of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse somewhat confining, albeit Albrecht Dürer’s terrifying portrayal may have seemed rather pessimistic for the day. For the liberal social gospel was then confronting the Four Horsemen—in their twentieth-century manifestations—on several fronts, and its chief mouthpiece was The Christian Century (see Donald B. Meyer, The Protestant Search for Political Realism, 1919–1941 [University of California Press, 1960], pp. 44, 53 f.; Robert Moats Miller, American Protestantism and Social Issues, 1919–1939 [The University of North Carolina Press, 1958], p. 39; and The Christian Century, Oct. 5, 1938, p. 1187). They were moving together toward the victorious crest of 1928 when the social gospel appeared to be carrying all before its onward surge. It fought not with ancient weapons of biblical Christianity but with shining new ones forged in the twentieth-century crucible of liberal optimism, which proclaimed for all who would hear that man was inherently good, that his evolution could be assisted through environmental improvement. So pass good laws—and legislate the Kingdom into history!

Weapons Of The Social Gospel

Against the white horse of conquest and the red horse of war, the supreme Christian Century weapon was the outlawry of war, which was confidently legislated by the 1928 Pact of Paris, also called the Kellogg-Briand Pact (see earlier essays in this CHRISTIANITY TODAY series: Jan. 5, 19, Feb. 2 issues). For who then could see the long shadows of white and red horses moving toward Manchuria, object of Japanese aggression in 1931? (And onward to Ethiopia, Spain, China, Finland, Poland, Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, Korea, Algeria, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba …?)

If optimistic passage of a law was deemed appropriate to halt conquest and war, optimistic defense of the National Prohibition Act was the chosen weapon against the black horse of famine, which seemed to be running on a muddy track in the America of the 1920s. Its chief threat was singled out as the poverty and waste resulting from drunkenness, so prohibition was given priority over welfare state legislation. Rising to its defense, the social gospel rallied forces to contribute to a smashing 1928 election victory over the law’s opponents represented in the challenge of Al Smith. Unforeseen was the 1932 election reversal which brought repeal in 1933. Also unanticipated was the 1929 stock market crash which was to plunge the nation into a critical depression.

And what of the ultimate enemies reflected in the pale horse of death followed by Hades? Fighting was not as strenuous and unremitting on this front. Theological answers to ultimate questions, evangelistic and missionary quest for lost souls—these became a secondary theater of the conflict. Social gospel and Christian Century energies were primarily absorbed by political matters, true to American activist traditions. Al Smith’s religion did raise certain theological questions related to the issue of political freedom. And the 1928 Jerusalem Conference on missions was hailed by the Century for what it saw as a great thrust forward for modernism from positions held at the Edinburgh Conference of 1910. But the tall shadow of Karl Barth, who would wreak such havoc upon the liberal gospel, had not yet fallen across the English-speaking world. This would take place with telling effect in the 1930s. Der Römerbrief, published in 1918, would not be translated into English until 1933 (religious publishing houses being dominated by modernist advisors).

And the challenge to the liberal social gospel by American neoorthodoxy embodied preeminently in Reinhold Niebuhr was yet to come. The pessimism of Niebuhr’s first book, published in 1927—Does Civilization Need Religion?—still lay safely within social gospel presuppositions. But he came to emphasize the extent to which the social gospel identified Christianity with the religion of social progress, and as early as 1932 he wrote sharply of its limitations. He criticized its prophet, Walter Rauschenbusch, as partaking of the liberal illusions concerning the possibility of constructing a new society through education and moral persuasion apart from class struggle. The Great Depression had struck, giving Niebuhr a receptive audience for his castigations of the social gospel for its identification of Christianity with mild socialism and less mild pacifism encased in an overall utopianism. In the thirties The Christian Century, among others, would hear much on man’s sinfulness and God’s transcendence, as Niebuhr moved to the right in theology and to the left in politics. Early in that period, he was pessimistically entertaining the possibility that American middle-class culture, at its zenith in 1929, would have fallen into full decay by 1950. He became in effect a fifth horseman to harry the social gospel which found in him its supreme critic. (For those readers whose sense of imagery is persistent: the color of Niebuhr’s horse is not known; his dialectic mounts a mottled steed.)

Donald Meyer’s portrayal of social gospel pastors is significant:

“For most of them, deliberate, systematic attention to politics and questions of social organization was their primary professional occupation, precisely as men of religion. They thought of their interest, in fact, as the heart of their religious evangel, as a ‘gospel,’ the social gospel.” “The social gospel could be regarded as, in a sense, reform with a Protestant gloss, the gloss interesting but inessential.”

“… For The Christian Century, the social gospel was in itself close to being the heart of the total evangel.… Discussions of theology appeared now and then, but the Century’s speciality was not critical and systematic. Rather it was unremitting attention to Protestantism’s place in the national culture, and in fact to Protestantism as culture and as the national culture.” “Ably, often enough brilliantly, edited, the Century was a voice incomparably more broadcast, though not necessarily more penetrating, than any other social-gospel organ. Aside from the liberal seminaries, there was probably no agency more responsible for keeping the passion vital in the ranks of the ministry” (op. cit., pp. 1 f., 53 f.).

If the glory year of 1928 appeared to be bringing in the Kingdom by means of the social gospel’s pacific arms, the tragic four years immediately following witnessed a decline and fall of stunning swiftness. Deafening was the discord between liberal optimism and those apocalyptic days. The Century optimism which had in 1911 seen the “near approach” of “inevitable” “universal peace” (Apr. 6, p. 2) had survived the World War. (With more Augustinian fervor than Augustinian insight, Chicago had been described as “a great city of God” [Mar. 24, 1910, p. 11].) The 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact triumph in August led onward to November’s Hoover landslide at the polls, an election the Century considered, over Niebuhr’s objections (Sept. 13, pp. 1107 f.), a “referendum on prohibition” (Sept. 6, p. 1068; Nov. 15, p. 1388).

To be sure, this was not the only issue of the campaign. Two others were also considered paramount—world peace and Roman Catholicism—and on all three Hoover was to be preferred, though this preference had not come easily for the Century. Hoover had made “strong utterances” on the Kellogg Pact while Smith evidenced “no intelligent understanding” of the outlawry of war. The Roman Catholic issue was regarded as a legitimate one, while the issue of liberal welfare legislation was not paramount—“Both parties are conservative …” (Nov. 1, pp. 1315–1318). But Smith had “chosen” prohibition as the decisive “battle ground,” and the Century chose “for Sahara” over Smith (Sept. 13, pp. 1098 f.).

“The Christian Century believes that the adoption of the eighteenth amendment was the most signal and significant project of self-discipline which a democracy ever undertook. We believe that it was not only a ‘noble experiment,’ as Mr. Hoover describes it, but that it was socially and economically exigent” (Nov. 1, p. 1317).

Prohibition, Part Of The Creed

Prohibition, the journal maintained, was also a religious issue even as Roman Catholicism. The conviction that the traffic in liquor for beverage purposes was “inherently and unqualifiedly evil” had been formed as “a part of the living creed of the churches.” The social gospel priority of politics over theology stood revealed without apology:

“It is a profound and intense moral conviction, a more vital article in the real creed of effective American Protestantism than the belief in the virgin birth of Christ. It was the Church’s legitimate activity in politics that brought the prohibition principle up to the level where industry and commerce united with religion to enact it into law.… Prohibition has come to be a part of the orthodoxy of churches” (Oct. 18, p. 1252).

The election was expected to be very close (Sept. 13, p. 1098), but the liberal optimism held: “We cannot turn back. We expect to witness the annihilation of the liquor traffic in America.” And this, despite “the wet press” with its “present seditious policy of stimulating the law’s violation” (Nov. 1, p. 1318). However, win or lose, no realistic political observer “can now dimly foresee the coming of the day when it will be possible to undo the 18th amendment” (Oct. 11, p. 1220). Hoover’s victory was seen as a great victory for prohibition, the “clearest” issue of the campaign. A Protestant crusade had been won (Nov. 15, pp. 1387 f.).

Century idolizing of prohibition was no new thing. After the 1916 election of Wilson over Hughes, the journal had declared that dry victories in that election had been more significant than the choice of a President (Nov. 16, p. 6). The next year the future of civilization was said to be dependent on the prohibition issue (Dec. 13, p. 8), and in 1919 Wilson was attacked for “unsoundness of conviction” on the matter, a “mortal offense” (May 29, p. 6). After the eighteenth amendment was adopted, assurance was given that it would never be “unwritten” (Nov. 19, 1925, p. 1434).

Thus in 1933 an editorial titled “This Is Armageddon!” comes as no surprise upon the occasion of Congressional submission of the repeal amendment to the states (Mar. 1, pp. 279–281). Response to repeal was: “We shall have to begin anew.” Prohibition through constitutional amendment was said to have been a mistake. Congressional regulation or prohibition was now preferred (Aug. 2, 1933, pp. 974 f.).

But the issue receded from the Century’s pages. In 1958 it noted, “Obviously prohibition, national or even statewide, is not a live issue now.” Prohibition proponents prior to repeal had, in concentrating on enforcement, “neglected their mission of public education.” “Prohibition failed. Now repeal has failed. The churches have failed; but we are not permitted to quit caring or to stop trying” (Dec. 10, p. 1420). But Century silence on the issue was the rule rather than the exception. Thirty years after repeal, the Virgin Birth remained considerably more a live issue for most American Protestantism than prohibition, the Century’s social gospel “creed” of the twenties notwithstanding.

Al Smith’S Religion

As has been noted, the Century saw prohibition as such an overriding issue as to make the 1928 election a referendum on prohibition. It was thus described in September and also in November both before and after the election. But earlier, in July, the journal had stated its conviction that Smith’s “membership in the Catholic church will be by far the most powerful single factor operating to influence the casting of votes” (July 12, p. 875). Later, Smith himself was seen narrowing the campaign down to the issue of prohibition.

“To say that this fight is really a fight against Mr. Smith’s Catholicism is to distort the facts. Had the democrats nominated Senator Walsh of Montana, there would have been no revolt in the south. Neither would large groups of protestants in other parts of the country have come to regard this campaign as a moral crisis. Yet Senator Walsh is a Catholic” (Aug. 30, p. 1040; see Sept 6., p. 1068).

(Said Reinhold Niebuhr: “It is idle … to make sweeping generalizations about the phenomenon of protestant opposition to Gov. Smith” [Sept. 13, p. 1107].)

The Century took strong exception to what it called “the browbeating tactics of Governor Smith and the Catholic-cowed press … which has accepted Smith’s Oklahoma City speech as an annihilation of the religious issue.… Those who make an issue of his Catholicism are bigots, says Mr. Smith.” The northern press, especially in big cities, was described as “tied hand and foot with Roman Catholic patronage.” In defending the propriety of discussing the religious issue, the Century declared:

“If a voter … holds that the system as projected by our Protestant-minded, Anglo-Saxon fathers is a better system than that with which a medieval church, dominated by a Latin mentality and controlled by a foreign oligarchy would displace it, why should he be stigmatized as a bigot because he refuses to jeopardize the social order in which he does believe by encouraging with his ballot the forces which desire to bring about the kind of a social order in which he does not believe? The whole appeal rests upon a perversion of democracy.”

“Does [the Catholic church] … exercise pressure upon its members to secure their support of [its] … policies?… Every organization exercises some degree of pressure upon its members, and that pressure is potent in proportion to the centralization of its authority, the compactness of its organization, and the sanctity which its members ascribe to it” (Oct. 11, p. 1219).

Just before the election, the Century seemed to be erecting a shield against any unearned charges of religious bigotry when it proclaimed the issue to be political and not religious because “Roman Catholicism is both a form of worship and a form of government.”

“Catholicism as a form of government comes into clash with American institutions in several definite areas of conflict such as marriage, education, and property, in addition to its clash with the fundamental principle of the relation of church and state.

“The Catholic question is not in reality a religious question at all. It is a political question—as much … as socialism is a political question.… The Christian Century has nowhere taken the position that the Catholic issue should alone be decisive of a citizen’s vote. No issue is absolute. It is qualified by other issues” (Nov. 1, p. 1317).

After the election the Century found no evidence that those who had voted solely on the Catholic issue were “sufficiently numerous to determine the electoral vote of any state” (Nov. 15, p. 1388).

The Century had also opposed Smith during his losing bid for the Democratic nomination in 1924.

“… Not every person who is constitutionally qualified is fit for office.” “Dean Inge puts it rather sharply when … he says: ‘No Catholic is more than conditionally a patriot.’ We would not like to phrase it so cuttingly.” “… Catholicism is fundamentally and constitutionally intolerant. Protestant tolerance and true American tolerance require that even the intolerant should be tolerated, but not necessarily that the intolerant should be placed at the head of the government (July 10, pp. 878 f.).

Just after Charles Clayton Morrison “refounded” the Century in 1908, the journal noted that William Howard Taft’s election to the presidency had come without any serious opposition being raised by the fact that he was a Unitarian. But had he been a Catholic, opposition would have been “justified” because of the papal theory of subordination of state to church. In any case, Catholic candidates “equally qualified in character and independent intelligence” with Protestant candidates would be “pretty hard to find!” (Nov. 21, p. 4).

In 1932 the Century believed that New York Governor Franklin Roosevelt’s bid for the Democratic nomination involved “the religious issue almost if not altogether as “inescapably” as Smith’s candidacy, due to Roosevelt’s “weak subservience” to the power of the Catholic Church: “… The question of his Americanism is bound to be raised by those citizens who are intelligently determined to keep our democracy free from church control of its laws and institutions” (Apr. 20, pp. 502 f.).

Temporal Power Of The Vatican

Through the years the Century kept up a running critique of Roman Catholicism not on theological grounds but on the issues of church-state relations and political freedom and morality. “… There is no first-rate nation in the world in which Catholicism is the established religion” (Oct. 25, 1917, p. 5). Much of the criticism was directed at the Vatican, which represented the ecclesiastical temporal power so strongly opposed by the Century. Near the end of World War I, the journal spoke of the pope’s “outward neutrality,” but observed that “his peace overtures have come at times which favored German plans” (Aug. 22, 1918, p. 4). During World War II an editorial entitled “Behind the Pope’s Peace Plea” reflected a similar mood:

“Pope Pius XII has at last decided that the United Nations are destined to win the Second World War.… He delivered a stinging rebuke to Hitler and his followers, although he still cautiously refrained from using names.”

“… The papacy has its own ends to serve. That these ends are primarily and solely concerned with peace only those can believe who never heard of General Franco or the Spanish war, who are ignorant of the concordats with Mussolini, Dolfuss and Hitler and who know nothing of clericalism in European history” (Sept. 15, 1943, pp. 1031, 1033).

Here in effect the social gospel was confronting the white horse of conquest, a new Roman imperialism now in religio-political form. At war’s end, Rome was seen probing “every fissure in the political and social structure in the interest of clerical power” (Aug. 22, 1945, p. 953). The Catholic Church “is definitely an obstacle to the democratization of Italy.” “The Vatican has never been the friend of democracy anywhere” (Mar. 28, 1945, p. 390). On the other hand, fascism “has historically proved itself to be compatible with Catholicism” (Dec. 22, 1943, p. 1497). Century readers were kept abreast of Catholic persecution of Protestants in places like Spain and Colombia. The coronation of Pope John XXIII in 1958 prompted the Century to repeat its 1939 description of the coronation rubric—which included the words “Ruler of the world”—as “blasphemous arrogance” (Nov. 26, pp. 1357 f.).

Franklin Roosevelt’s appointment of Myron C. Taylor to the Vatican (“an illegal ambassador”) was vigorously denounced as an “executive usurpation” which struck at the root of the American system of separation of church and state (Mar. 13, 1940, p. 344; Jan. 10, pp. 38–40; Feb. 14, p. 209). Harry Truman’s attempts to send Taylor and Mark Clark to the Vatican likewise provoked strong opposition: “illicit intrigue between our state department and the Vatican”; “President Surrenders To the Pope”; “unconstitutional”; “political Romanism is a tremendous and dangerous power”; “the campaign [in America] to promote the political interests of the Roman Catholic Church never ceases” (Apr. 3, 1946, p. 422; Oct. 31, 1951, p. 1243; Dec. 19, 1951, p. 1455; Jan. 30, 1952, p. 119). The Vatican, it was indicated, was not honest enough to admit its identity as both political state and religious society (Jan. 23, 1952, p. 95).

Church-state separation is at issue in Century opposition to Roman Catholic desires for public tax funds for parochial schools. In this connection Protestants were called on in 1947 to “lift high the banner to which all lovers of religious liberty can now repair” (Feb. 26, p. 264). In 1961, confronted by Cardinal Spellman’s demand for public funds for parochial schools, the Century declared for Protestant non-payment of taxes for this purpose even if laws were passed requiring such taxes (Feb. 1, p. 132). The journal also pronounced low-interest government loans for parochial schools unconstitutional (Mar. 22, p. 381). The “shortsighted, indulged self-interest of the Roman Catholic hierarchy” was charged with killing Federal aid to public schools (Aug. 2, p. 924). The Roman church’s flexing of muscles “should remove all doubt that it is a political as well as a religious institution” (Apr. 5, p. 412).

At the time of the founding of Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State in 1948, the Century defended its aims in opposition to the “vulgar epithets” of Roman Catholics (Feb. 18, p. 199).

Century grievances against the Roman church in America have been numerous and durable. It saw in 1924 a “menace” to American society in Catholic property holdings: “A dull and brutish power furnishes none of the makings of an intelligent and forward-looking society.” The Roman church “has never proved to be [a constructive social force] anywhere else, or at any other period of history, and it will not become such in our society, now or at any time in the future” (Oct. 9, p. 1927). In an editorial, “Who Killed Prohibition),” the Roman church’s opposition was listed as one of nine factors (Nov. 15, 1933, pp. 1430–1432). In calling for the outlawry of organized gambling, the Century noted that the Roman church “not only condones organized gambling, but actually conducts it to swell its own revenues”—an “indefensible position” (Mar. 21, 1951, p. 358). Inasmuch as the Century has said that “unplanned, uncontrolled population expansion may in the long run prove more of a threat to the American way of life than nuclear war” (Jan. 17, 1962, p. 78), its attitude toward Roman teaching on this subject is highly predictable. The church “errs in its teachings” (Aug. 17, 1960, p. 942), though hope is seen in that “all Roman Catholics today are not devotees of that fertility cult in the church that does most of the talking” (Oct. 1, 1958, p. 1100, italics theirs).

Senator John F. Kennedy’s presidential ambitions raised anew the religio-political questions of 1928. One acquainted with Century attitudes through the years might expect opposition to Kennedy’s candidacy. But it was not to be. However, the journal did raise the issue, asserting early in 1959: “Politically, ours is and must remain a secular state.” This was interpreted to mean not state adoption of a “secularistic creed,” but rather state neutrality respecting the rival claims of churches.

“The separation of church and state does not demand the separation of religion and politics, but it does require that church and state, the institutions of religion and politics, shall limit themselves or be limited to their own realms of freedom. This is pluralism.”

The fact that the Roman church hierarchy periodically challenges the pluralistic nature of the American political order “constitutes a serious liability to Catholic candidates for high office” (Mar. 4, pp. 252 f.). The Century did not like the Kennedy “capture” of the Democratic party at the Los Angeles convention (July 27, 1960, pp. 867 f.); it complained that both party conventions had “shunted aside” the best men, Adlai Stevenson and Nelson Rockefeller, for competent political manipulators (Aug. 10, p. 915).

1928 And 1960

As in 1928, the journal believed Catholicism to be a legitimate campaign issue, but held that one’s vote should not be decided on this issue alone (Oct. 26, p. 1236; June 22, p. 740). But while in 1928 it was one of three “paramount and decisive” issues, in 1960 it was not listed among “the major issues”—“international relations, foreign aid, civil rights, schools, defense, slums, depressed areas, agriculture, a worthy national purpose” (Sept. 28, p. 1109). The Century favored election of liberal congressmen to make possible “the enactment of humanitarian legislation” (Oct. 26, p. 1237). And Kennedy was known to be more liberal than his Republican opponent Richard M. Nixon.

On the religious issue, the journal seemed reassured by Kennedy’s pronouncements on church-state separation in a way that it had not been by Smith’s in 1928 (ibid., p. 1235; Sept. 28, p. 1109). There were more Roman Catholics now and ecumenical winds were blowing. In October, Century editor Harold E. Fey told the United Church Women of Greater Chicago that he had not yet decided between the two presidential candidates. And Charles Clayton Morrison, founder and for 40 years editor of the Century, turned to CHRISTIANITY TODAY for publication of an open letter to Kennedy which indicated that he, Morrison, was distinctly unsatisfied with the extent of the candidate’s statements on church and state.

Social Reconstruction Could Wait

Prohibition, Roman Catholicism, and world peace—these “immediate” issues in the 1928 election, affirmed the Century, pressed “so hard upon the liberal Christian intelligence” as to make them paramount and decisive. Thus they overrode the “important” long-time issue of fundamental economic and social reconstruction, though the journal was “impatient … to see it joined in our American political arena by the appearance of a genuine party of innovation.” Hoover’s “apologetic for private initiative and the competitive system” was “as fallacious as it is able” (Nov. 1, pp. 1315 f.). He was seen ranging himself “with the extreme conservatives” “on the tariff and on the economic order in general” (Aug. 23, p. 1016).

Reinhold Niebuhr spoke of a lack of “the measure of appreciation for Gov. Smith’s liberalism which one might expect from a liberal journal like The Christian Century.” He held up the need for “rebuking the whole reign of big business as exemplified in the republican [sic] rule of the past eight years.” Were the choice between only Smith and Hoover, he’d vote for Smith. As it was, “my vote will go to Norman Thomas” (Sept. 13, pp. 1107 f.). Responded the Century:

“If the use of the injunction in labor disputes, the development of superpower corporations, imperialism in the Caribbean, and similar questions were the only issues involved in this campaign The Christian Century might find itself in either the Smith or the Thomas camp. But anyone with any sense of political reality knows that these are not even major issues.” “If Governor Smith wins the presidency, he will win it, not as a progressive, but as a wet” (ibid. pp. 1098 f.).

Events on Wall Street a year hence would eventually transform economic and social reconstruction, rightly or wrongly, into a major issue for the Century. The black horse of famine would outride its identification with drunkenness to be darkly descried in the gloom of depression as the capitalistic system itself.

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