All Things Human: Henry Codman Potter and the Social Gospel in the Episcopal Church

4. Political Righteousness

117 4 Political Righteousness Writing in 1912, Walter Rauschenbusch argued that four major social institutions—family, church, education, and politics—had become Christianized because they had “passed through constitutional changes which have made them to some degree part of the organism through which the spirit of Christ can do its work in humanity.” He admitted that including political life among the redeemed institutions might seem “a staggering assertion, for of all corrupt things surely our politics is the corruptest,” and acknowledged that “the tattered clothes and questionable smells of the far country still cling to the prodigal.” Because in this context his rhetorical intent was to emphasize the need to Christianize the one remaining major social institution, economics, he nevertheless maintained that the nation’s “political communities are constitutionally on a Christian footing.”1 Rauschenbusch and many of his contemporaries affirmed this belief largely as a result of the reforms of the early years of the twentieth century, now somewhat imprecisely known as the Progressive Era. Social Christianity was an essential component of the intersection of political and religious reform impulses that gave rise to Progressivism. The transition from the antebellum reform agenda to the turn-of-the-century Progressive agenda was made possible in part by the efforts of postwar Christians to address the conditions wrought by industrialization and urbanization. Their socialization of a previously individualized gospel not only entailed an understanding of the involvement of the churches in the nation’s political life that differed significantly from that of their predecessors but also helped establish the broad political constituency necessary for the success of Progressivism.2 118 All Things Human Righteousness in Nation and City From the earliest colonial settlements, the Protestant hope for Christian America included the extension of democracy and the Christianization of government. After religious disestablishment, this hope no longer entailed legal sanction and public support for Christian beliefs and practices. It did, however, entail an emphasis on Christian morality as the foundation for a reformed social order and its government. Advocates of a Christian America viewed morality as the essential link between religion and civilization, and the voluntary acceptance of such morality as the means of achieving the goal of Christianization. Church and state may have been separate, but there was to be no separation of religion and morality from the realization of the common good.3 The close connection between religious and political affiliation in the nineteenth century reflects this relation between morality and government. In terms of the analytical tool developed by Paul Kleppner and employed by Robert Swierenga, “pietist” (evangelical) Christians tended to be Whigs and, later, Republicans while “liturgical” (nonevangelical) Christians tended to be Democrats. In the tradition established by Thomas Jefferson and continued by Andrew Jackson, the Democratic party emphasized a limited and secular government, individual autonomy, and cultural diversity . Liturgical Christians became Democrats in part because their theologies ascribed the process of salvation to extraworldly agencies and thus could more easily accommodate a secular government. In addition, especially after the Awakenings and to the extent that their constituencies consisted of primarily immigrant populations, liturgical denominations were minorities resisting conformity with the dominant evangelical Anglo-Saxon majority. Evangelicals tended to become Whigs and Republicans because these parties affirmed the positive role of an unofficially Protestant Christian government in regulating personal and social behavior for the purpose of establishing a Christian civilization.4 Of course, as with all such constructs, the application of this liturgical -pietist continuum to nineteenth-century American political life is not precise. The case of the Episcopal Church, for example, indicates that the various points on the continuum could find expression within a single denomination. One reason for this diversity is that within the Episcopal Church, not only the pietist Evangelical party but also the liturgical High Church party maintained a positive assessment of the state. This positive assessment is inconsistent with that of other liturgical denominations and can be regarded, as Swierenga argues, as an exception due to “cross-pressures and particular historic contexts [which] may change Political Righteousness 119 patterns or create unique situations.”5 For the Episcopal Church, such cross-pressures would include the heavily Anglo-Saxon character of the denomination and the influence of the Anglican social theory that had been developed in the context of that church’s establishment in England. In the postwar Broad Church movement, perhaps uniquely in American Protestantism, both liturgical and pietist positive assessments of...