Tragedy in Three Acts: A Revolution, a Theory, and a Theology That Devastated Western Christianity, Part 1
February 17, 2009
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Christianity Outside North America, Christianity in North America, Church Issues, Counterculture, Eschatology, Evangelism, Oddities Functions : Trackback,
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Most people have never considered the ideas I will be presenting this week. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone write on this subject (apart from me), either from a Christian or secular perspective. I believe with all my heart that what I write here today and in days to come is key to understanding nearly every issue facing modern society, and it explains much of Western Christianity’s history since 1820. Most of all, it helps us Christians understand how we must face the past to work toward a better future.
This is not a happy post, but one that might anger some. I know because I discussed elsewhere some of the issues raised covered here and people have reacted strongly. We do not want to face our failings. Humility does not come easily to us. But unless we understand the broken past, we will forever base our perceptions of the world on a flawed foundation.
Cerulean Sanctum, as a blog, covers issues facing the American Church. For the purposes of this post, we’ll expand that to include the West, England in particular. The story of how three social, intellectual, and theological changes rocked the Christian world and forever altered how we live, starts in that country.
And it does so, appropriately enough, with hot water.
Thomas Newcomen invented the steam engine, James Watt made it workable, and Richard Trevithick perfected its practicality for a number of small-scale uses. The advent of steam power combined with the growing use of machinery to enable mass produced goods. In England, the textile industry’s growing automation married the steam engine, which led to the increased use of powered machines in manufacturing. With iron foundries flourishing from the switch from coal to coke comes the first great wave of the industrial revolution in the early 19th century.
But the industrial revolution was not the first revolution of its kind in England. The agricultural revolution preceded it. Fat from the slave trade and its unusual abundance of resources and dense population, growing capitalism in England essentially stamped out the last vestiges of feudalism. Land ownership increased among the lower-middle class and poor. Better farming techniques raised production levels. Soon, the agricultural revolution in the English countryside spawned what was known as cottage industry. Farms churned out textiles and other goods produced in the home for sale on the wider market. This continued to build wealth among people without access to family estates. Boom times came to the whole of England.
Yet just as cottage industry was swelling the coffers of rural inhabitants, competition arrived in the form of the modern factory. 
Powered by steam, driven by iron machines that churned out goods faster than the home workers in the country could match, factories assaulted the agricultural revolution, laying waste to the shared wealth that cottage industry provided. The industrial revolution’s relentless march concentrated wealth in the hands of the few and created what would become a tragic revisiting of feudalism in England.
As cottage industry shriveled in the wake of industrialism, the youth of the countryside, seeing their future livelihoods threatened, abandoned the farm in droves for the promise of the factory. But as Charles Dickens would document in his novel Hard Times, the promise proved a lie. The factories, rather than doling out success, oppressed those who chose to work them. Sadly, as the youth went, so did the family farm. Without youthful labor, many families could no longer work the land and sold out to larger landowners or endured a form of indentured servitude to the same. Soon, entire families (and even villages) were forced into the factories. Destitute and manipulated by the wealthy factory owners, these farmers-turned-factory-workers became the new underclass.
Seeing this drastic change, the intelligentsia of England formulated a well-meaning but devastating question: How was it that some people prospered while others did not? The question dominated the parlors of mid-19th century England, spilling over into one of the bastions of thought, the Church. (This question will later have great ramifications for Christians, as we will see.)
Hard Times notes another trend in England of the 1850s. With the industrial revolution in full swing, England’s success piggybacked on the practical application of science. After all, applications of facts led to the invention of the devices that powered the factories. Facts were king, and science provided the answers that became fact. That thirst for fact based in science opened a large door, for the year that brought Hard Times yielded another book, On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin.
Contrary to what some might believe, the powerful idea in Darwin’s book that would forever engrave it in the modern psyche was not evolution, but the concept of the survival of the fittest. On the Origin of Species used science to explain the question of why some prospered and some did not. Those that did not were simply unfit to compete.
The intelligentsia drew the next application of the fact of the survival of the fittest, therein solving the riddle of the underclass: Not all men are created equal.
This application of Darwin, what would become known as social Darwinism, would soon find its way into the Church and manifest in a most unusual bifurcation, as we will see in the days ahead.
By the 1870s, the industrial revolution had kicked into high gear, with steam-powered vehicles crisscrossing the planet. This opened distant lands to travel. As the ability to move about the planet increased, so did empires. For the wealthiest, it afforded more opportunity to plunder and grow richer. To them, it was a golden age, where the sun never set on the Empire, and the world was rife with possibilities.
The Church, seizing on what it saw as a Golden Age of Triumph, reinterpreted its eschatology to fit. The result reinvigorated postmillennialism, the school of thought that (in a nutshell) has the Church handing over a perfected earthly kingdom to Christ. Christians would invest their wealth and fix all the problems of the world through science, education, art, and the aesthetics of high culture, to be rewarded for their labors by the Master at His Second Advent.
Postmillennialism swept away most other schools of eschatological thought in the years between 1850 and 1929. It proved the backbone of the abolitonist movement, with many Christian abolitionists seeing slavery as a key impediment to delivering a perfected world to the Savior. All social evils fell under the withering gaze of postmillenialists, with social responsibility coming to the fore. Enduring institutions like the Salvation Army and my alma mater, Wheaton College (with its postmillenial motto of “For Christ and His Kingdom”), formed in this time period, fueled by the triumphalism of the age.
Few Christians would understand, though, that the triumph was instead a fatal miscalculation.
I firmly believe that industrialism, social Darwinism, and postmillennialism collided, creating a perfect storm that washed away key parts of the foundation that had supported the modern Church since the Reformation. In Part 2, I will explain how these three caught the Church asleep, damaged Western Christianity, and resulted in societal changes that the Church has been fighting fruitlessly ever since.
Thanks for reading. I hope you come back for more of this series.
Tags: Agricultural Revolution, Darwinism, Dickens, Hard Times, Industrial Revolution, On the Origin of Species, Postmillennialism, Social Darwinism, Steam, Survival of the Fittest, TriumphalismRelated posts
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- ‘I firmly believe that industrialism, social Darwinism, and postmillennialism collided, creating a perfect storm that washed away key parts of the foundation that had supported the modern Church since the Reformation’ : Sic et Non
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You left out an important name, Dan – Calvin. Calvinism, and the idea of predestination, laid a moral framework (the Elect and the rest) that Darwinism would graft onto. Darwin really only wrote about physical survival: the moral belief was there even before that.
(Ironically, Darwin was partially driven by his committment to abolition. He wanted to prove that all humans had a common descent, and thus the “scientific” underpinning of slavery was bunk.)
Yes, Elizabeth Anne, you touch on an important issue. I’m a little cautious in pushing this point, but you are right. That framework did fuel some of the social Darwinistic fervor and justify a lot of things that were not justifiable.
Have you read Max Weber? I don’t think he’s *right*, exactly, but I think his work is also critical to understanding Western European psychology.
“Calvin. Calvinism, and the idea of predestination, laid a moral framework (the Elect and the rest) that Darwinism would graft onto.”
Actually the Bible laid the groundwork for predestination and sovereign election, not Calvin.
Let’s not re-wage that war here and now. Can we at least say that Calvin was the one who fully articulated the idea?
You’ve got my attention, Dan. Interesting first installment, and I can’t wait to see where you’re going with this.
Bob,
Now that I’ve got that attention, I hope I’m wise enough to hold it and not disappoint! Thanks for reading.
Most of all, given your background, if you know of any books that have examined what I am discussing here, I would certainly like to know. I’ve not found anything that really goes into depths on how these three things interacted and their effect on the Church as a whole.
I don’t know if I agree or disagree. But I am looking forward to the rest of your challenging ideas. I do have a question though: don’t you think this is really just part of the larger issue of “humans aren’t perfect, and we can’t create perfect systems, but we keep trying” syndrome?
It seems to me the Bible is filled with stories of people who have ideas (some better, some worse), but all falling short in the end.
Israel so wanted to be like everyone else that they essentially made their lives miserable for the next few thousand years. As humans we just seem to really like to move out on our own. That seems to be more of the problem than capitalism, socialism, or any other type of “ism”.
I understand that industrialism has a lot of problems. But is it any more screwed up than any other idea we’ve tried?
e. barrett,
Sin is at the root of everything bad. How we understand sin and our ability to perceive it matters, though. This is the story of how we missed it in the 19th century and the ramifications for us in the 21st century.
Got my attention too… and not made me angry yet! Look forward to the rest of the series.
I look forward with interest to where you’re going with this…Human philosophy has always at the root the sin of declaring humankind equal (at least) with God. Thus Humanism, merely a modern way of declaring, “You will surely not die!”
While you are pondering, don’t forget the Eugenics philosophies, which took social darwinism to active extremes, and found a willing partner in some areas of those who called themselves The Church. Laying the groundwork for Hitlers final solution, it also delayed the US entry into World War 2, not on isolationist grounds, but because many of the intelligentsia of the US agreed with Hitler. It was when the unwashed masses were faced with the acts of Nazi Germany that Eugenics was swept away.
Christianity has much to answer for…And we have unfortunately attempted now to apply the mass-marketing tricks of Madison Avenue to the very personal act of rejecting the original sin. Mega-churches, revivals, “seeker-friendly” and celebrity preachers have made a mockery of Christ and His death, and all because we are still trying to create heaven on earth by our own strength. We may as well be called “Mechanically Separated Christians” for all use we are.
Ah, David, you are indeed getting ahead of me!
Dan (and David),
I’m very much looking forward to the rest of this series.
David: your last paragraph manifested something I’ve been feeling for a while. Thank you for putting it into words.
Joe.
This is like waiting for the next edition of a serialized cliff hanger. As part of the immediacy crowd, I want it now!
Patience, patience. I know. You’d think after all these years, I’d have learned some… Of course, I do wish the Lord had just granted it back all those years ago when I made the mistake of asking for more.
Good job, Dan. Keep us thinking.
I am taking a graduate level class on cultural history of the US in 1860-1920. This is a great post and really fits everything I have been reading the last month. Rebecca Edwards and David F. Noble have some great works on that time period.
Wow! I can hardly wait until the second installment. This is good stuff. I’m wondering if Finney will be thrown into the pot somewhere…LOL.
Great …Looking forward to the rest….
Fascinating! On the tails of Elizabeth Anne’s comment about Darwin’s abolitionist impulses–I understand that another nineteenth century philosopher (Spencer?) was also responsible for the spread of social Darwinism which the tycoons of the day quickly embraced. Darwin himself rejected social Darwinism; he believed man had evolved beyond mere self-interested competition.
On a different, but related, note, Chris Hedges, author of American Fascists and When Atheism Becomes Religion, spoke at the University of Missouri last night on The Looming Collapse of the American Empire. While his focus is different from yours, his message certainly correlates with it. The transcript is available here: http://dandelionsalad.wordpres.....is-hedges/
Naomi:
Don’t think Hedges and Dan are much different on this one…:^)
Naomi, Bene D, et al.,
Like many of the op/ed crowd, Hedges is 99 percent right on the problem. However, when he expresses his view on what the core principles are that we have forgotten, he blows it big time. Universal healthcare? Is he serious? The United States isn’t in the mess it’s in because of a lack of universal healthcare (and trust me, I have very strong opinions concerning healthcare issues).
The United States is in the position it is in for a very good reason.
As some of you regular readers know, my church has been showing The Truth Project. Last night was the teaching on The American Experiment. This comment by Alexander Solzhenitsyn from his Templeton Address (1983) was quoted. It begins thus:
The leaders we have around the world have been raised in a higher educational wasteland founded on the principle that God is a nice idea, though not a genuine reality. Therefore, we must do what we think is best. (Ironically, what Russia thought was best—Marxism—was born amid the confluence of industrialization, social Darwinism, and postmillennialism.)
For a perfect illustration of this, look at the cabinet our new president has selected. They are the brightest of the bunch with regard to this godless, modern education, yet they are devoid of what matters most.
As I have noted in this two-part series, Christians jumped on this bandwagon and promoted the ideals that flourished during the 19th century without realizing that the ultimate base of those ideals was man-centered and godless. The result was inevitable. We helped foster the very beast that would turn and bite us. The upper class Englishman of refinement and proper Christian breeding failed to realize a truth that the good ol’ boy down South knows instinctively: You lie down with dogs, you get their fleas.
One of the men of my church who was at that meeting (and who comments here from time to time) said that he believes that it is too late for America. That may well be. We may be at the end of our empire. We may even be at the end of the world. I don’t know.
What I do know is what Solzhenitsyn so perfectly summarizes: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.
But there is hope in that statement. And the hope is that men will remember God. That’s where we come in. My question, therefore, must be this: What are we doing to help men remember God?
I think Hedges is a bit extreme in his statements, and I find his defaulting to myriad underlying assumptions, judgments, and stereotypes and other agenda-driven dribble a bit obnoxious. I think he has some good points, but the tenor of his delivery sounds a little Chicken littleish to me. I much more appreciate Dan’s thoughtful analysis and more even handed approach.
Not to mention that Dan (and probably anyone else reading this blog) brings a key ingredient to the party–namely, that there is a faithful God who hears us, and wants to be involved in bringing life even in dire situations such as the current economic crisis. I don’t see much of that perspective in Hedges’ address.
Then again, I could be wrong, and the world as we know it may be coming to an end in the next few weeks.
But what does it mean for a nation-state/culture to “remember God”? Do you mean returning to a pre-Enlightenment mix of Catholicism and pagan superstitions? To use your own example, at what point in history has Russia remembered God?
Naomi,
Excellent question! And how much can a nation or state really engage with these issues, especially in the times we find ourselves in where the affairs of nations seem dominated by politics, economics, and geo-political strife–with God seemingly far from the collective consciousness of the major players on these stages? I guess that this has always been the case.
I suppose one the the Christian hopes is for an awakening similar to the 1st and 2nd great Awakenings in American history, which had an influence on culture and society (but of course one which inevitably wanes with the progress of time).
Another thought I had is of a grass roots kind of awakening that has been taking place in many non-western countries over the past 10-20 years. Its individual units are small and de-centralized in nature, fast growing and centered around house churches and other simple expressions of church life. Perhaps this could be a vehichle of the kind of systemic transformation that all of us feel in our hearts the true gospel of the kingdom contains?
Any other good thoughts out there about how we as the church can alter our lifestyles or even our expression of faith, both individually and as a community of faith?
The name Naomi was looking for is Herbert Spencer, and so-called social Darwinism is really “social Spencerism,” and i’d argue in the interest of historical fact that there was much interest in the era of the Corn Laws and the Irish Question (think Swift and Eliot, and Disraeli v. Gladstone) over wanting to justify why some prosper, usually by inheritance or marriage (think Austen), while others are stuck in squalor.
Darwin was not interested in many of things that were later claimed on his behalf, most emphatically the idea of applying “the survival of the fittest” to society. See Darwin’s work with the “Down Friendly Society” and the appalling Rev. Ffoulkes (and his very different response to evangelist Fegan, let alone the original Lady Hope story), and Ffoulkes i suspect anticipates where this series is going with regard to Churchianity and class justification as it plays out in faith communities. But i think it helps to clarify what’s to be laid at Darwin’s doorstep and what has no reasonable connection – as with Karl Barth, who later in his life liked to remind people that he was “not a Barthian.”
No doubt, Jeff. In many ways, Darwin lost control of his creation, and many others ran further with it. Spencer is most notable.