Work

The Christian & the Business World #5: The Industrial Church Revolution, Part 2

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Children in the MillsJuvenile delinquency and young women falling prey to the vice of the city—both were created due to massive shifts in the work lives of Americans during the Industrial Revolution. Both saw the Church in this country rise to meet the challenge.

In the case of the young women, in 1877 a relatively new organization, the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), stepped in to address the need. Seeing that many unmarried women were fleeing the farms in search of a better life in the city (or were part of the immigration stampede into the country), the YWCA decided to proactively deal with the problem of unskilled women moving into the city. Foresight proved them correct. The newly invented typewriter was a huge draw for women looking for decent work, and the YMCA started offering classes in the use of the device. These classes were remarkably popular and the pool of trained secretaries in the major cities was largely due to the YWCA. That organization also saw to the spiritual needs of the women, as well as to housing, medical provisions, and keeping oneself pure in a business environment that was so new that the rules were still being written even as the YWCA was teaching them.

The alternative for single women flooding into the city was often prostitution and the YWCA understood this. By meeting a great need, they were able to help keep women on a straight moral path and provide for food, shelter, and spiritual growth. This is the Church making the best of what could have been an awful situation.

This flight also contributed to the problem of delinquency. Once an important cog in the home economy, teenagers were left with nothing to do once farms were abandoned and factory reforms prevented the younger ones from working. Restless, farm-flight and immigrant children proved that idle hands were the devil’s play things. Crime rocketed up in the cities. The Church’s answer was a new idea: What if a ministry was founded that focused solely on the needs of youth?

Despite many years of research, I have not been able to pin down the exact date that a genuine youth-only ministry within a specific church first hit the spotlight. The first parachurch youth ministry of consequence was, interestingly enough, the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in Britain in the 1840’s, created by George Williams specifically to address the vagrancy of young men who, in this case, did have jobs in the factories, but were without family or away from home and were missing a fulfilled life. The YMCA grew rapidly and spread to America, only to be depleted by the Civil War as young men marched into battle. After the war, one of the major proponents of the YMCA, which was by all accounts not beholden to any one church, was evangelist Dwight Moody. His fame helped spread the YMCA vision of “The improvement of the spiritual, mental, social and physical condition of young men.”

From the parachurch YMCA, the focus began to drift back to churches in smaller locales that couldn’t afford a YMCA; some started their own ministries to youth. This helped further propel the whole concept that youth were a new ministry demographic. All this came about through the societal changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution. By the time Youth for Christ was popular in the 1940s, the idea that youth ministry was essential to the Church was a given.

But there are larger issues at work here.

Training women to have meaningful work in order to avoid a dissolute life is the Church meeting a practical business need while fending off corrupt social forces. On the other hand, youth ministry had its start in changes in the social fabric in Britain and America, then extended those to the spiritual. There is a very subtle distinction here.

Youth ministry’s long-term effect has been to take a family already fractured by societal changes caused by business practices coined during the Industrial Revolution and fracture it even further. While there is no doubt that on a granular level youth ministry has been effective in the lives of individuals (I include myself here), studies by researchers like George Barna have shown that, on the whole, the net effect of youth ministry today has been negligible on the spiritual and emotional welfare of youth. Christian youth are so much like their peers who don’t aspire to any Christian leanings as to be virtually indistinguishable. This is further proven by the horrendous attrition rate among Christian young people once they hit college. The majority come out of college completely stripped of whatever Christian faith and practice they possessed going in. Obviously, one must ask why this is if youth ministry were truly equipping youth to withstand the barrages of our cultural death-throes. We must consider whether the youth ministry model that was initially developed more than a hundred and sixty years ago is still valid.

The problems of youth ministry are compounded by the fact that it eventually sought to distance itself from conventional, whole-family ministry. In its infancy, youth ministry attempted to make the best of a bad situation in the lives of youth living far from home, but this is no longer the case. Most youth ministries in churches today appear to pride themselves on the fact they offer teens a chance to get away from their families and hang out with other teens. The net effect here has been that the typical youth minister has become the substitute parent for many teens. Since youth ministry tends to have its own separate teaching component, the incidental effect has been that parents have abdicated the Christian teaching role for their teens. This further alienates family members and leads to a loss of parental authority and respect.

The Industrial Revolution was responsible for the initial splits within family. The home economy that kept both parents at home working, supported by their children, was disrupted by changes in work emphasis and the rise of big business. Dads started working distantly and were gone for most of the day. This put added stress on moms to hold the family together. As work shifted to the cities, young people heard the siren call and left their traditional responsibilities behind. For farm families, this shattered the procession of farm life from one generation to another and hastened the move to cities. Youth moving to the cities encountered vice and the Church responded.

The larger question here that is left unanswered is whether the response of the Church was correct.

On the surface, the YWCA’s training of young women for secretarial work in light of the rise of business in the cities is admirable. They certainly addressed the need and were smart in doing so. But that larger question looms, particularly in the light of more than a hundred years of wisdom asks whether the Church missed the big picture for the details.

Even today, the Church is not asking whether the Industrial Revolution broke something, not only in society, but in the Church. In many ways, the Industrial Revolution was already in its maturity before the Church responded to it. Worse, still—and even today—no one in the Church in America is asking if the Industrial Revolution has a fundementally evil component that the Church swallowed without thinking. The Church certainly responded to the most obvious societal ills created by the Industrial Revolution as we have seen in part here, and while that was admirable, the results have been mixed.

In the next installment, The Industrial Church Revolution, Part 3, we’ll examine the “Jesus as CEO” concept that gained popularity in the 1920s and 30s along with Social Darwinism’s pernicious effects on the Church and business.

And thanks for reading this series!

Previous post in the series: The Christian & the Business World #4: The Industrial Church Revolution, Part 1

Next post in the series: The Christian & the Business World #6: The Industrial Church Revolution, Part 3

The Christian & the Business World #4: The Industrial Church Revolution, Part 1

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{Two interlopers are chilling out at Cerulean Sanctum…}

I’m bored. Let’s play a game.

How about “Guess the Era!”

Dunno. How’s it played?

I’m thinking of an era in American History. I’ll throw out a fact and you try to tell me when that fact would’ve been true.

Sounds dull, but I’ll go along because I am like soooooo bored.

Dad works.

Yawn.

Mom homeschools the kids.

Official Focus on the Family Nuclear Family of the 2000s, right?

Wrong.

Mom also works.

Ooh, James Dobson’s ticker starts palpitating

Mom works from home.

Collective sigh of partial relief at Focus. Hmm, this is a toughie, though.

Dad homeschools the kids, too.

Really?

Dad also works from home.

Is this the family of the future, circa 2020, all gussied up with Terabit Internet access via which their home import/export biz of rare Chinese herbs for medicinal purposes competes in the global marketplace?

Aah, that would be “no.”

Even close?

Not on your life. Actually it’s the United States circa 1776. Revolutionary War days.

Wow, I would have never guessed. You’d think with all those smarmy Deists running around the country then that dogs and cats would’ve been living together in sin and the whole economy would’ve collapsed faster than the wooden tea stirrer market after the Boston Tea Party.

Well, I wouldn’t go that far.

Say, that kind of lifestyle sounds kind of appealing. Work from home. Do the log cabin thing. Grow your own…. You know, I’ve been to Colonial Williamsburg. Lots of real colonial cuties if you know what I—

Okay, you two, take a hike. This is my blog and I want control back.

You always want control, Dan. You’ve got issues. I know a great Christian therapist I can recommend. He’s a bit Jungian, but all the same, he’s—

HIT THE ROAD!

Okay, we get the picture.

Man, he’s goin’ all Cotton Mather on us!

OUT!

{Sounds of stumbling and mumbling, then a door slam.}

Sorry about that folks. Serious topics sometimes need levity. And this one is serious. It’s about the Industrial Church Revolution. You may never have heard of it, but like many things that go awry, it begins with a lot of hot air. Steam actually.

A couple decades before the idyllic days of mom and dad working together in a home-based economy in America at the dawn of independence, two English Thomases, Savery and Newcomen, invented a mechanical engine that ran on steam. Steam engineAnd though it worked, it wasn’t until James Watt radically improved the design in 1769 that the first rumblings of pressure surfaced that would seal the fate of that storybook lifestyle of Mom and Pop Free America.

The English were the first to fall to what would later be called the Industrial Revolution. Steam power made possible a new strength in work. Some discovered that stationary steam engines could have wheels attached and be made to run on tracks. They weren’t fast, but they could haul heavy loads. Those tracks were made with massive presses, molds, and machines that cut and bent—all powered by steam.

But steam engines were expensive regardless of whether they became trains or not. And even though they allowed for the very power to build and create even more powerful machines, the labor to do the work simply could not be done from home any longer since few had the cash to have their own home steam engine built for private use. So Britain built centralized factories where people could come to work via the new modes of transportation that were developing, mechanizing much of the labor that had been done in homes by hand (particularly textiles— one of Britain’s major exports.)

Americans, still wanting to show the former homeland a thing or two, decided they could do it, too. Mass production of guns in factories started in the United States around the same time as the British burned down the White House. Mass production meant good money, but also mass workers. And masses of workers responded by venturing out of the home and into distant factories.

Meanwhile, factories chugged away in Britain even as “malcontents” like the Luddites protested, busting up mechanized knitting machines and other signs of the young Industrial Revolution until they themselves were busted up by the British army. Some were exiled to America. But the real problem of factory life did not emerge until a young scientist named Charles Darwin came along in 1843 with a challenging new biological theory he called “transmutation.”

By this time, economies in both Britain and America were beginning to undergo a steady change as more people left the hard life of farming the cursed ground for the hard life of factory work. Over in England, intellectuals started listening to Darwin’s ideas and saw natural correlations between it and the growing class distinctions in that country. Of course, it made sense to them that an underclass of workers existed in the factories to make products that the intelligentsia could use. Those miners mining coal to power the engines of the Industrial Revolution were a form of unevolved man. This was natural selection at work. Some were meant to prosper due to their superior breeding and intellect, while some were relegated to mines and factories filled with sweat. Only later was a name attached to this idea: Social Darwinism.

So far, this story hasn’t had much Church in it. The fact was that the Church was ignorant of the gathering storm or, in the case of many churches in England, were actually championing Darwin’s ideas and the work ethic of the factories. Certainly some clerics protested the grim realities of how men, women, and children were treated in the mills and mines, (favorite author Charles Dickens chronicled this in Hard Times, exposing the harsh realities of poor factory workers to the middle and upper classes of Britain), but despite some reforms in 1833, the factories chugged on, grinding up the poor with them.

It is here that we see the first effects not of the Church on the Industrial Revolution, but the Industrial Revolution on the Church. Postmillennialism came to full bloom in both Britain and America after the Civil War, and this was largely due to the idea that science and technology were advancing so quickly that a new day was upon the Church that enabled Her to reach the world using the latest tech advances of the day. It was “Onward Christian Soldiers”—a hymn that reflects that thinking better than any other—and The Salvation Army ushering in the Age of Christ and His Church Triumphant.

Cities boomed as agricultural workers bought into the propaganda that life was better in the cities. Immigration in America further added workers to the expanding factories. The traditionally respected home economy languished in the face of the new: steel, oil, and the railroads. Secretary, Typewriter, & RogueAnd a little book called “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection” hit the shores of America.

Now as fin de siecle America flowed into the glories of the dawning 20th century, the Church finally realized that something had changed in the country—and not for the better. As youth left the farm for the city and immigrant children were left with little to do (once factories were deemed off limits to children due to various reforms), juvenile delinquency erupted in the crowded cities. Not only this, but wholesome young farm women learned of greater opportunities in the city serving as a secretary. So en masse they signed up to learn how to use the newly invented typewriter and headed to Metropolis.

But the evils of the city preyed hard on the virtue of these naifs and churches finally understood that something had to be done about them and the growing ranks of juvenile delinquents.

In the next installment of this series, The Christian & the Business World: The Industrial Church Revolution, Part 2, we’ll take a look at the radical new ideas the Church developed to finally address the massive social upheavals it had ignored for far too long, and how those ideas have drastically altered the look and mission of the Church in America.

Previous post in the series: The Christian & the Business World #3: Subduing the Earth

Next post in the series: The Christian & the Business World #5: The Industrial Church Revolution, Part 2

The Christian & the Business World #3: Subduing the Earth

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So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
—Genesis 1:27-28 ESV

And so God created work and gave Man the right of dominion (or the very imprimatur to work and be satisfied in it without apology.) Read to the end of that chapter and note how God saw that this was a good thing.

One of the first pieces of business God set for Adam was to name the animals.

So out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.
—Genesis 2:19-20 ESV

Clearly, God was pleased and perhaps even amused by what Adam named the creatures God placed before him. We take the same pleasure from our children when they ascribe names and meaning to the things in this world that they encounter daily.

It has always startled me that so early on God let go of the reins, so to speak, to let His man assert a name for the very creatures God Himself created. I get a kick out of the fact that whatever Adam named the animal, God agreed that Adam’s choice of name was what that creature was. Tenant farmer plowing the fieldsIn this way, God viewed His Man as a partner for achieving His will.

We don’t tend to think of work as worship, but it is. In this simple act of naming the animals, Man is worshipping the Lord by utilizing the gifts of intellect and creativity God instilled in him. That same worship goes on every day when we work.

Some have confused the later curse God places on Adam with a cursing of work, but what does it actually say?

And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
—Genesis 3:17-19 ESV

God did not curse work, but the ground. The call to subdue the earth and God’s handing dominion of the earth over to man proves that God thinks work is a valid and good thing still. I firmly believe that God takes pleasure in our work, even if we don’t. By working, we are continuing the call placed on us in the Garden, worshipping God in our work though we don’t realize it.

I’ve worked in a number of industries and for plenty of supervisors over the years. Today, I work at home and own my own business. As a freelance writer, I can attest that there’s not a whole lot of “the sweat of my brow” in what I do. In fact, the tendency is for my backside to broaden rather than to have it firmed up by toiling under the hot sun on a piece of ground that reluctantly gives up its fruits. That said, my wife and I have the beginnings of a farm on our land, having planted a fruit orchard and with plans to put in an acre or two of wine grapes later on. Whether I like it not, that will be the kind of work that suffers from the cursed ground in Genesis 3. But as for my writing career, the pleasure is only dampened by tough customers—and there’s no way that will get better until the Lord returns. Then who knows just what I will be doing for work?

In the course of time I’ve endured some backbreaking and downright noxious work. Possibly the worst thing I ever did in my life was when I was eighteen working for college money. I worked at the same pharmaceutical company my father worked for. Being sans skills, I was in maintenance at the plant. At one point I donned a Haz-Mat suit for two weeks and crawled through blistering hot ventilation shafts suspended seventy feet above the floor, scraping off built-up crusts of various drug residues. At 6′ 4″ tall and 190 pounds at the time, it was a narrow fit for me and a simply hideous task for anyone. Add in the undersized respirator they gave me and it was hell to just breathe—though removing it could’ve proven fatal. I also had to wear a “pinger” so they knew here I was in the shafts should some misfortune beset me and they had to cut me out—dead or alive. Of course, the older guys didn’t want to do that job, even if they had more elbow room up there. They’d all probably done it once in their time there.

Yet still, God was pleased with that work, although I felt like death at the end of the day.

God does not give us a pass to slack, no matter how tough work might be. He commanded us to work and work we must or else the apostle Paul will have something to say about it:

Now we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, because we were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone’s bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you. It was not because we do not have that right, but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living.
—2 Thessalonians 3:6-12 ESV

…aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may live properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.
—1 Thessalonians 4:11-12 ESV

I think it is important here to point out that Paul is not recommending that we live as islands unto ourselves when he says, “Be dependent on no one.” It is quite clear that the early Christians saw that no one wanted for anything; certainly there were people who had needs that needed to be met and were thus dependent on benevolence to some extent. Rather Paul means that we not sponge off people while living a life of idleness. He affirms work.

Yet it wasn’t until the Reformation that work took on a new splendor. Martin Luther’s theology held work in high esteem, proving it to be a reflection of the work that God Himself performed. Luther’s strong work ethic, later reinforced by John Calvin, was instrumental in the ascendancy of existing German trade guilds that set new standards for entrepreneurship. It would be no stretch to say that the Reformation was the death knell for feudalism. This “power to the people” movement, however, did not result in communism or socialism, but pure capitalism.

But no matter the system, not all work is created equal. We all know people who work jobs that we would shrivel us to nothing in a week. And despite the tech revolution we are in, some jobs are still physically exhausting (Alaskan crab fisherman anyone?) or mentally draining. Many of us have come home from work and all we think about his work, even when are trying to sleep to get up the next day to work some more. Ecclesiastes nails it:

What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity. There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? For to the one who pleases him God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.
—Ecclesiastes 2:22-26 ESV

But in the end, work still brings meaning and purpose. It also brings mystery. Again, from Ecclesiastes:

What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man.
—Ecclesiastes 3:9-13 ESV

Now with these three brief intros, I think we’ve set the stage for looking at some of the tough issues we Christians face with work. In the days ahead, I’ll be exploring the nature of modern work, the American Church’s response to today’s business environment, and how we can pursue a radically different work ethic as Christians, an ethic I think can change the world.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope you have been blessed so far.

Previous post in the series: The Christian & the Business World #2: Economic Systems

Next post in the series: The Christian & the Business World #4: The Industrial Church Revolution, Part 1