HIstorical & Biblical Studies with Dr. Santos

Jasper Adams and the Judgment of America

David Q Santos

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Abstract

Jasper Adams, an Episcopal minister presented a sermon titled The relation of Christianity to civil government in the United States where he describes the challenges of uniting a religion and a civil authority. He argues that there had been problems with a union between the two that led to abuses and corruption of power. In his view the US Constitution had made an effort to prevent such corruption. He also argues that Christianity has always been the foundation of America and should always be the theological and moral compass for the nation. His fear is that the nation will let Christianity be diminished and bring judgment on America which would end like Sodom.

Article

Jasper Adams was a Protestant Episcopal minister, professor, and president of the College of Charleston of Carolina in early 1800s. He was a professor of moral and political philosophy. During his career he presented several sermons on the topics of religion and the government. Within these sermons Adams offered a theology of the relationship of Christianity to the American government as well as the government as a moral agent. This study examines the beliefs of Adams regarding the eschatological judgment of America.

His 1833 address to the Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church was preached in St. Michael’s Church, Charleston on February 13^th. Its title was The relation of Christianity to civil government in the United States. This message opens with a declaration of the eternality of Christianity which is able to adapt to any and all conditions of humankind. Adams appeals to prophecy to declare that there will be a strict union between the church and the state which he likens to the church-state relationship in the time of Constantine. However, Adams is critical of the kind of church-state relationship that the Roman Empire had with the Medieval church and that of the Church of England and the American Colonies. He notes the many abuses and corruption of power that can come from a union between the church and civil authority. He is not proposing that the church should run the government. He then explains that Americans are well aware of the trouble that can come from putting one form of Christianity in a union with civil authority. He argues that the Unites States Constitution had put clear barriers from this kind of union.

Adams makes the case that America was established as a Christian nation. To him this was not simply an accident of history. He makes two points on the issue of the origin of America’s Christian foundation. First, he gives credit to the Almighty who called the forefathers to America. Second, he gives credit to those forefathers. He explains that those forefathers were deliberate in designing the colonies as Christian communities.

The arguments presented by Adams are clear statements that he believes America to be a Christian nation. It was established as a Christian nation in a deliberate manner. He believes that God Himself established the nation. What is insightful about this sermon is how Adams approaches his fears for the future. First, while noting the unifying and uplifting power of Christianity withing communities he also notes that there is moral standard within Christian ethics that should be observed for many reasons, one of which is a future coming judgment. The concept of judgment is an underlying theme in Adams’ sermon.

Adams expands on the notion of judgment day by comparing the potential eschatological future with that of the destruction of Sodom. He then argues that Christianity cannot be allowed to decline while believers just stand by and idly look on. Rather, believers in the truth of Christianity have personal responsibility to stand against any influence that would undermine Christianity in America. His prayer is that no historian will ever have to record the shame and humiliation that America would receive if the judgments of Heaven were poured out on the American land because of unfaithfulness.

Adams’ case is that America is a Christian nation that was established in history. He argues that America will stand as long as it is faithful to the religion of the forefathers. Only God Almighty is able to judge the nation which He will do when Christianity is no longer the standard both faithfully and morally in the land.

Sources

Adams, Jasper. The relation of Christianity to civil government in the United States: a sermon preached in St. Michael’s Church, Charleston, February 13th, 1833, before the convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the Diocese of South-Carolina. Charleston: A. E. Miller, 1833.

Abstract

The economic troubles of the Great Depression have been a case study for economics for decades. Its cause and longevity have been analyzed in several ways. Much of the debate is related to why the depression was the “Great Depression.” This post examines research that argues that the social issues of the New Deal made a severe recession into the Great Depression. Secondly, it examines how this period gave rise to the Social Gospel.

Blog Post

The Great Depression of 1929-1932 is an interesting case study that many historians and economists have used to argue for their own economic worldview. Knowing the conditions of the long-lasting global depression is important for the discussion. The depression began in an era of America where many philosophies for governance were being discussed. Like today, social justice was a major concern and ideas of fairness were placed in juxtaposition with opportunity. The depression era was one of an unexpected financial crash with “conditions that were among the most difficult and chaotic in its history.”[1] A major cause of the longevity of the depression were these chaotic conditions and an unwillingness by some to recognize the need and benefit to restructure contacts, debt, and wages. Bernanke points out the challenges that some businesses had with workers whose wages were not depressed while the cost of goods plummeted. One of the reasons he points to for the severity of the depression is the “slow adjustment of nominal wages.”[2] In some industries like the railroad, the government had imposed higher wage rates.[3] The regulated wages sought to prevent workers from going on strike in an industry that was essential to the nation’s economy. While some have attributed the eventual recovery of the American Economy to the social programs of the era others see a very different picture. For example, Christina D. Romer argues that recovery was stifled by social programs and the recovery was a result of monetary expansion that drove demand.[4] This has undertones of the modern debate over minimum wages and a desire for some to impose a living wage, which for them is a moral imperative.

For some, the New Deal solved the problem of economic morality. The fair thing to do was to create a society where the government could care for the populace. This progressive idea had existed for some time and had even entered into the world of religion. As the government moved toward socialism so did some in Christian circles which sparked vigorous debates among religious leaders. One of the most vocal proponents of this view of social ethics was Walter Rauschenbusch, one of the developers of the Social Gospel. Rauschenbusch believes that Jesus Himself was a prophet, who sought to accomplish social awareness, and through His faith, “transform the common hope.”[5] On the issue of wages he writes, “Look now, the wages of the workingmen who have reaped your fields, which you have fraudulently retained, cry out against you and the outcries of the reapers have come to the ears of the Lord of Hosts.[6] Rauschenbusch made the case that the Bible affirmed communism.[7] Carl Henry, a premillennial fundamentalist was an alternate voice in the inter-war period. Henry saw the social movements of America as an error in worldview and theology. He argues that the liberals were looking for a utopian kingdom in the present rather than affirming the future hope in the kingdom of Jesus Christ. He writes, “During the past two generations, creative ethical thinking was done by those whose ideology was divorced from New Testament…”[8] He added, “The troubled conscience of the modern liberal, growing out of his superficial optimism, is a deep thing in modern times.[9]

If one accepts the arguments of Bernanke, that the liberal social programs of the New Deal had the opposite effect that was intended, then it can be understood that those social programs did harm to the people of America. Those programs were claimed to offer opportunity while they produced extended poverty, economic depression, and societal decline. The depression opened the door to criticism of capitalism and republicanism by social liberals. The depression also opened the door to another gospel where hope is found in modern application of communistic ideas in the name of a present kingdom without the King of kings. Before this, the Church was most often the place where people sought for hope in troubled times. While the political application of a social Gospel may have sounded good, it turned people to the government for their hope and away from Biblical Christianity.

Bibliography

Bernanke, Ben S. “The Macroeconomics of the Great Depression: A Comparative Approach.” Journal of Money, Credit and Banking 27, no. 1 (1995): 1-28.

Ben S. Bernanke. “Nonmonetary Effects of the Financial Crisis in the Propagation of the Great Depression.” American Economic Review 73, no. 3 (1983): 257-276.

Henry, Carl F.H. The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1947.

Higgs, Robert. “Crisis, Bigger Government, and Ideological Change: Two Hypotheses on the Ratchet Phenomenon.” Explorations in Economic History 22 (1985): 1-28.

Romer, Christina D. “What Ended the Great Depression?” The Journal of Economic History 52, no. 4 (1992): 757-84.

Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis in the 21st Century. San Francisco: HarperOne, 2009.

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[1] Ben S. Bernanke, “Nonmonetary Effects of the Financial Crisis in the Propagation of the Great Depression,” American Economic Review 73, no. 3 (1983): 257.

[2] Ben S. Bernanke, “The Macroeconomics of the Great Depression: A Comparative Approach,” Journal of Money, Credit and Banking 27, no. 1 (1995): 24.

[3] Robert Higgs, “Crisis, Bigger Government, and Ideological Change: Two Hypotheses on the Ratchet Phenomenon,” Explorations in Economic History 22 (1985): 24.

[4] Christina D. Romer, “What Ended the Great Depression?” The Journal of Economic History 52 no. 4 (1992): 757.

[5] Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis in the 21st Century, (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2009), 53.

[6] Ibid, 85.

[7] Ibid, 100.

[8] Carl F.H. Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1947), 34.

[9] Ibid.

C. I. Scofield and Polotics

Introduction

Cyrus Ingerson Scofield (August 19, 1843 – July 24, 1921) was a theologian of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. He experienced the rise of both theological and political progressivism. This article attempts to examine the life and ministry of Scofield in light of the economic and political conditions of the early twentieth century. Scofield was able to take what D.L. Moody had begun in establishing a network of like minded fundamentalist Christians that included some of the most well recognized seminaries and publications in America. He did this in a country that was rapidly dividing between progressivism and fundamentalism. The economic conditions were equally dividing among the industrialist and traditional agrarian.

Politics and religion are often linked to one another. So, when examining the success of Christian enterprise one must ask what is driving it; changes in faith or if faith is driving politics and economics. What conditions allowed for someone like Scofield to succeed in the market place of ideas and opportunity in America?

Who was Scofield?

Scofield was born in Michigan in 1843. He had intended to go into law by enrolling into a Tennessee law school. His education was delayed with the beginning of the Civil War. After the war he found employment as a lawyer in Kansas before becoming a US district attorney and state legislator. He was forced to leave those positions under allegations of corruption causing his marriage and life to fall apart. Under the influence of evangelist Dwight L. Moody he became a Christian. Moody encouraged Scofield to become a minister in a Congregationalist church first in Massachusetts and then in Texas. Along with his success in pastoral ministry, Scofield became a popular speaker at Bible conferences.

Scofield desired to help the average Christian to be able to do their own study of Scripture. He believed that reading and study of the Bible was the key to the Christian life. He recognized an inability of many Christians to apply Scripture to their own lives. This led him to the world of Christian publication. He wrote the popular Scofield Reference Bible which was published in 1909.

The Scofield Reference Bible

Scofield’s reference Bible included footnotes that were readable to the average Christian layperson. These notes were also conservative in nature which stood in direct contrast with the teaching of many seminarians of that day. These reference Bibles allowed Christians to reject the modern literary criticism that questioned the authenticity and reliability of the Bible. It is a key element to the division between progressivism which many Christians were accepting and fundamentalists. Its popularity can be seen by the number of Bibles sold. It sold more than two million copies by the end of World War II in 1945. Another important component of the Scofield Reference Bible is that it was premillennial and dispensational. This is a key feature as many popular and successful preachers of the past like Jonathan Edwards had been postmillennial in their eschatological beliefs. The optimistic postmillennial theology had been shaken because of the Civil War. The anticipation of the world continuing on a positive trajectory would go on to be unsettled by World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II. The pessimistic view of dispensationalism provided answers about the present state of the world in Scofield’s day and for years and events that followed. Scofield’s writings portray a world with a corrupt and decaying society that would eventually fail and collapse. For example, he wrote, “in a yet larger sense to the final crash of the present world-system at the end of the age.”^[1] The failure of optimistic eschatology left a vacuum that would be filled by Scofield’s premillennialism for many believers. Like any good entrepreneur minded minister, Scofield took the proceeds of his reference Bible and invested it. In 1914 he established the Philadelphia School of the Bible which would produce many important pastors and theologians that maintained a fundamental and dispensational theology.

The economic conditions of the early nineteenth century provided opportunities for Scofield. On one hand there was societal upheaval and economic inequality that many interpreted as the failed system Scofield argued that the Bible predicted.  For many in the country wages were on the rise. Church membership was also on the rise. “In 1906 the population of the United States was 84,246,252; by 1956 it was estimated 168,091,000. The rate of the increase in these 50 years was 99.5 percent. In that same period membership in religious bodies rose from 32,936,445 to 100,162,529, or 204 percent.”[2]

The impact of the Scofield Reference Bible was dramatic. First the Scofield Reference Bible became popular and second; many seminaries embraced higher criticism and liberal theology. Christians who used the Scofield Bible became estranged from the theology of new pastors, who had been trained in liberal schools, who then attacked premillennial beliefs.^[3] Dispensational Premillennialism, the theology espoused by Scofield, became the dominate view of many churches in America, especially among Baptists, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians,^[4] despite the attack of more liberal pastors and theologians. Scofield’s Bible college led to a multi-decade long dynasty of dispensational and fundamental thought.

Bibliography

Blaising, Craig A. “Developing Dispensationalism Part I: Doctrinal Development in Orthodoxy.” Bibliotheca Sacra 145, no. 578 (1988), 133-9.

Trumbull, Charles Gallaudet. The Life Story of C. I. Scofield. New York: Oxford University Press, 1920.

Walvoord, John F. “Reflections on Dispensationalism.”, Bibliotheca Sacra 158, no. 629 (2001), 131-7.

Wolf, Richard C. “1900–1950 Survey: Religious Trends in the United States.” Christianity Today (April 1959).

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^[1] C. I. Scofield, ed., The Scofield Reference Bible: The Holy Bible Containing the Old and New Testaments (New York; London; Toronto; Melbourne; Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1917), 727.

[2] Wolf, Richard C., “1900–1950 Survey: Religious Trends in the United States,” Christianity Today (April 1959).

[3] John F Walvoord, “Reflections on Dispensationalism.”, Bibliotheca Sacra Volume 158, 629 (Dallas TX: Dallas Theological Seminary, 2001), 132-33.

[4] Craig A Blaising, “Developing Dispensationalism Part I: Doctrinal Development in Orthodoxy,: Bibliotheca Sacra Volume 145, no. 578 (1988), 134.

Abstract

Innovation and opportunity often are derived from necessity. This is the case with postbellum Texas cattle producers. These producers returned from the war to discover that they had a cattle surplus. This surplus was well above the local demand while other parts of the country were industrializing and had a taste for beef and the means to afford it. This study examines the economics that drove the cattle movement between 1865 and 1900.

Post War Population Changes and Beef Demand

Food production and economics are often directly tied to shifts in population demographics and income. The Postbellum era is an excellent case study of economic principles in many ways. One such example of this is the supply and demand of beef in the United States. Cattle were first taken into Texas commercially in 1714 and became an important part of the economy of the South West.[1] Following the Civil War the population of Texas was between 60 and 80 thousand.[2] Though the population of cattle had grown to about 5 million head[3] that needed to be sold. In comparison there was an economic boom in the north with more people who had money to spend. The value of cattle in Texas was minimal, but nationally the prices were being driven up by demand. Between the 1880s and 1900 the price of cattle rose by 73 percent.[4] By 1900, the population of Texas had grown to over three million.[5]

This shift is depicted in the 1948 film titled Red River which cast John Wayne as Thomas Dunson, a Texas cattle producer determined to get his cattle to market on the Chisholm Trail, eventually arriving at a rail location where the cattle could be sold and shipped east. Demand for these cattle was primarily in the “Carolinas, Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania.”[6] In addition, there are numerous works on this topic in every venue including fiction, non-fiction, official government archives, and statistical records. On one hand the shift in economic circumstances of postbellum Texas is simply supply and demand, while it has also become the stuff of mythologized and romanticized legend and myth. This brings up the problem of studying this era and topic in history using fact-based material without losing the aura of the story in its construction. Population graphs and cattle prices do not tell the entire story. However, the demographical data, income statistics, and historical records of cattle prices do support much of the story. An example of this is found in non-farm and skilled labor income shifting by 27% and 38% respectively.[7]

There is a clear division between historical circumstances between the postbellum north and that of Texas. Following the war Texans found the local markets for Beef to be satiated and the residents to be cash poor. This demonstrates how in the past the lack of transportation could impact a local market. This same effect still exists within the livestock trade when a local market finds reasons to either need local cattle or the local demand decreases. Today this is often seasonal and weather dependent. Rain and good feed mean local cattle prices increase until the conditions change.

As transportation options opened up following the need to move cattle to other locations the population demographics began to change. The population of Texas by 1900 nearly doubled while the US population grew by about 25%.[8] Innovation led to optimism and opportunity in the west.

Bibliography

Journals

Love, M. Clara. “History of the Cattle Industry in the Southwest,” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 19 no. 4 (1916), 371.

Skaggs, Jimmy M., “Cattle Trailing,” Texas State Historical Association: Handbook of Texas, (2020).

Archives

Bicentennial Edition: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970. “Chapter K: Agriculture.”

Lebergot, Stanley, Wage Trends 1800-1900, Bureau of the Budget, (1960): 487.

Nebraska Studies. The Civil War & Texas Beef. https://nebraskastudies.org/en/1850-1874/beef-moves-to-nebraska/the-civil-war-texas-beef/. Accessed 3/26/2022.

Texas State Library and Archive Commission, United States and Texas Populations 1850-2017, https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/abouttx/census.html. Accessed 3/26/2022.

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[1] Love, M. Clara. “History of the Cattle Industry in the Southwest,” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 19 no. 4 (1916), 371.

[2] Texas State Library and Archive Commission, United States and Texas Populations 1850-2017, https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/abouttx/census.html. Accessed 3/26/2022.

[3] Nebraska Studies. The Civil War & Texas Beef. https://nebraskastudies.org/en/1850-1874/beef-moves-to-nebraska/the-civil-war-texas-beef/. Accessed 3/26/2022.

[4] Bicentennial Edition: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970. “Chapter K: Agriculture.”

[5] Texas State Library and Archive Commission, United States and Texas Populations 1850-2017, https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/abouttx/census.html. Accessed 3/26/2022.

[6] Skaggs, Jimmy M., “Cattle Trailing,” Texas State Historical Association: Handbook of Texas, (2020).

[7] Lebergot, Stanley, Wage Trends 1800-1900, Bureau of the Budget, (1960): 487.

[8] Texas State Library and Archive Commission, United States and Texas Populations 1850-2017, https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/abouttx/census.html. Accessed 3/26/2022.