The bind between American political allegiance and Protestant evangelical conservatism is a key which unlocks the door of much early American civil history especially during the antebellum era through the early 20th century. To be conservative and American meant that you must regard a Protestant form of Christianity, namely the revivalistic, moral gospel which declared a morally conservative view of the socio-political system as king.
In fact, not to be Protestant and politically conservative was in line with defaming the stars and stripes. Hart describes a situation in the early 20th century where the state of Utah elected and appointed a Mormon Apostle, Reed Smoot, to the U.S. Senate. Smoot underwent serious investigation from a Senate appointed committee to deliberate upon the ability of a Mormon to function in the place of a Senator given his religious views. The conservative Protestant ethos of the age was skeptical of any other religious conviction in its ability to be “American” and one who welcomed the “free-thinking” of the scientifically modernizing age. The same skepticism among the populist American attitude can be found with regard to Roman Catholics and other diverse religious cultures. America was supposed to be the home of the “Free,” but true freedom was being held captive by the religiously and politically conservative majority. There is no documented case of a committee being formed to investigate the ability of a Protestant Senator to function in his role with a “proper” American mindset.
Soon the tides turned and the scientific communities soon began to suspect the conservative Protestant as hindering the spirit of free-thinking as is evidenced by the famed debacle named Scopes Trial in the 1920’s. It was the result of this event that the evangelical conservative “fundamentalism” took a negative view in the eye of the public.
Not only was the fundamentalist-modernist controversy the result of two very powerful ideologies at odds, the confessionalists institutions, such as the Presbyterians, were also experiencing their own difficulties concerning the what it meant to be free-thinking and confessional. Many within the mainline confessional denominations began to adopt the mind of the revivalism and moralism of conservative Evangelical movement. The general public would have viewed the debates within the confessional churches between “Old Side” and “New Side” Presbyterians with the same eye as they viewed the battles respecting the conservative Evangelical Protestant churches and their liberal counterparts.
The controversy in the Presbyterian denominations during the early 20th century is best understood in the studying of the one J. G. Machen, a N.T. scholar and confessional Presbyterian. Machen describes the situation in the denomination best in his book Christianity and Liberalism where Machen called Liberal Presbyterian’s to abandon their ties to the denomination because they no longer ascribed to the creeds which defined the identity of Presbyterianism. Machen was, and still is, viewed as a fundamentalists tied up in the controversy of the 1920’s between liberals and fundamentalists, though this view is seriously mistaken. Machen was a fundamentalist in that he ascribed to the Orthodox teaching of the Presbyterian church as defined in the Westminster Confession of Faith. He was not a pietist, a revivalist, a moralist, a republican, etc. Machen can in no way be defined as a fundamentalist in the sense of a politically and morally conservative American whose religious expression was found in the pietist revivalism of the evangelical protestant churches who opposed liberalism on the grounds of its compromise to make Christianity more palatable within the advancing American civilization of science and technology. Machen opposed Prohibition. Machen thought prayer and Bible reading ought to be dismissed from Public education for it had no place in the secular system as a matter of free conscience. Machen was liberal in the sense the he supported the American system of life in democracy, but opposed its hand in the religious matters of personal lives where democracy was limited. Where most criticized Machen was his anti-American spirit of intolerance in the denomination and what it meant to be a Presbyterian. Machen, and rightly so, decried the spirit of pietism’s emotionally and experience and morality and its this-worldly concern of politics and life, and thought the life of the church to primarily a spiritual pursuit built upon a system of uncompromising beliefs. Some even accused Machen of acting in a similar manner as to the Popes of the R. C. Church, which, in the American system of political and social and even popular religious thought, was an unspeakable aberration of the American spirit.
Hart quotes Machen thought on the issue in length (pg. 94):
“You cannot expect from a true Christian church any official pronouncements upon the political and social questions of the day, and you cannot expect cooperation with the state in anything involving the use of force. Important are the functions of the police, and members of the Church, either individually or in such special associations as they may choose to form, should the police in every lawful way in the exercise of those functions. But the function of the Church in its corporate capacity is of an entirely different kind. Its weaons against evil are spiritual, not carnal; and by becoming a political lobby, through the advocacy of political measure whether good or bad, the Church is turning aside from its proper mission.”
Thus, Machen’s view of the purpose of the church determined his view of the role of the church in the life of the society of which it is a part. The church is in its very nature a voluntary association, and in the mind Machen, a voluntary association has every right to be intolerant and uncompromising in its beliefs and positions, otherwise it would cease to be a voluntary association. He thought involuntary associations ought always to be tolerant, such as governments, but voluntary associations, such as churches, have no responsibility to tolerance given the fact that it is in itself voluntary. Thus Machen called those who were a part of the voluntary association, but did not believe its principles, to leave and form their own voluntary associations upon their own beliefs. In the case of the Presbyterian church, the belief required for admittance in the voluntary association is the Westminster Confession and the infallible rule of the Bible. If one did not hold these beliefs, that one ought, out of intellectual honesty and truth of conscience, to leave voluntarily, just as he or she joined. Machen was calling people to be un-American, that is, “intolerant and sectarian.” (pg. 97) Machen, for this view, was derided and dismissed from the [without proper trial, mind you] Presbyterian denomination.
Machen’s intolerance though was limited to matters of theology and did not meddle in the advances of science, especially with regards to evolution. Where pietist conservative protestants made or broke fellowship around the belief or denial of evolution, Machen declared it a matter of scholarship outside the bounds of theology and the church, thus one could legitimately hold to a view of evolution where God was simply the cause of the process. Machen followed in B. B. Warfield’s thought where there was a distinction between creation and providence. Machen would not budge on matters of theology, but he would provide room for matters that were not so concerned with the teaching and revelation of the Scriptures. As long as one believed God was the originator of life, it didn’t matter how that life formed. Contrary to this view were the conservative evangelical protestants who made subscription to certain views on matters of science paramount to orthodox conservatism. Hart writes referring to the Scopes Debacle, “In fact, Bryan, approached the intellectual controversies of the 1920’s precisely in reverse fashion from Machen. While the pietist was flexible on the issue most pressing to the confessionalist – namely, Presbyterian theology – Bryan opposed a matter on which Machen believed Christians could legitimately disagree. This difference reflected the fundamental tension between pietism and confessionalism – whether Christianity is parochial and churchly or a public and experiential religion.”
The common argument among scholars and laymen alike is that confessionalism or creeds encourage, and if not even foster the anti-intellectualism of that confessing group. Indeed, this may be the case in some instances, but it need not be the case. History has demonstrated thousands of brilliant minds, minds who gave way to the intellectual freedom of the renaissance and reformation. Minds like Luther, Calvin, Edwards, Erasmus, Newman, just to mention a few associated to theology and education. There are countless other authors, painters, engineers, scientists, doctors, who confess the creeds of the Churches. Machen, himself, was a brilliant man; a man of scholarship, letters, and one who instantly demanded a readers or hearers respect. One Mencken described Machen this way: “His Biblical studies had been wide and deep, and he was familiar with the almost interminable literature of the subject.” (pg. 107) Maybe it is not the creeds that are responsible as a source of anti-intellectualism, maybe it can be properly attributed to a sort of simple-mindedness ascribed to revivalist evangelicalism characterized by experientialism and emotionalism. The confessions are intolerant, and they need to be, but they need not be anti-intellectual.