Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T01:56:24.272Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The American Religious Depression, 1925–1935*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Robert T. Handy
Robert T. Handy
Affiliation:
Union Theological Seminary
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

“It is too early to assess the impact of the Great Depression upon American Protestantism,” wrote Robert Moats Miller in his recent study of American Protestantism and social issues in the period between the world wars. No doubt it is too early for any overall assessment, yet it is becoming steadily clearer that American religion passed through an important transition in the depression period. If we are to gain a fuller understanding of developments in American Christianity since the 1930's, then serious attention needs to be given to that bleak period. Inasmuch as our understanding of times long past are significantly influenced by our definitions of the present situation, attempts to deal with that particular period of crisis in our recent past may help us more adequately to see the whole story of American religion in fairer perspective. Furthermore, a number of recent dissertations, articles and books have dealt in whole or in part with the period between the wars; they provide guidance for handling the vast array of sources relevant for an understanding of religion in the depression, supply material for at least prcliminary interpretations, and point to the need for further analysis. This paper is one effort to suggest some interpretative guide lines for further exploration into an important topic.

Type
Announcement
Information
Church History , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , March 1960 , pp. 3 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1960

References

1. American Protestantism and Social Issues, 1919–1939 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1958), p. 63.Google Scholar

2. “The Recovery of the Religious Sentiment,” in Vergilius Ferm, ed., Contemporary American Theology: Theological Autobiographies (2 vols., New York: Round Table Press, 1932–1933), II, 367.Google Scholar

3. Atlantic Monthly, 143 (01–06, 1929), 378.Google Scholar

4. Turner, Fennell P. and Sanders, Frank Knight, eds., The Foreign Missions Conference of North America … 1926 (New York: Foreign Missions Conference, 1926), pp. 125–47.Google Scholar

5. “Some Conditions in North America that Affect Foreign Missions,” in Leslie B. Moss and Mabel H. Brown, eds., The Foreign Missions Conference of North America …1934 (New York: Foreign Missions Conference, 1934), p. 148.Google Scholar

6. Research Memorandum on Religion in the Depression (New York: Social Science Research Council, Bulletin 33, 1937), p. 51.Google Scholar

7. Based on a study of the figures by the Rev. Donald A. Crosby, whose assistance in the research for this paper I acknowledge with thanks.

8. Current History, XXXIII (10, 1930), 25.Google Scholar

9. Fry, C. Luther, “Changes in Religious Organizations,” Recent Social Trends (2 vols.; New York: McGraw-Hill, 1933), II, 1046.Google Scholar

10. High, Stanley, “The Need for Youth,” in Moss, Leslie B., ed., The Foreign Missions Conference of North America, 1929 (New York: Foreign Missions Conferene, 1929), p. 152.Google Scholar

11. “What the Church Has to Say to Business Men About Foreign Missions,” in Leslie B. Moss, ed., The Foreign Missions Conference of North America, 1928 (New York: Foreign Missions Conference, 1928), p. 85.Google Scholar

12. Home Missions Council Annual Report 1928 (New York: Home Missions Council, 1928), p. 80.Google Scholar

13. Kincheloe, , Research Memorandum, pp. 133 f.Google Scholar

14. Ibid., p. 51; Recent Social Trends, II, 1055.Google Scholar

15. The U. S. Looks At Its Churches (New York: Institute of Social and Religious Research, 1930), p. 58.Google Scholar

16. Weber, H. C., Evangelism: A Graphic Survey (New York: Macmillan, 1929), pp. 181 f.Google Scholar I have had the opportunity of seeing charts plotting the “evangelistic index” and summarizing membership trends prepared by the Rev. Harold Edgar Martin; in general they all show decline beginning about 1925 and not showing significant upturn until the middle 1930's.

17. The Decline and Revival of the Social Gospel: Social and Political Liberalism in American Protestant Churches, 1920–1940 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1954), p. 70Google Scholar, quoting Hough, Ellis J., “Terrors of the Protestant Ministry,” Presbyterian Advance, XL (01 30, 1930), 18.Google Scholar

18. American Protestantism and Social Issues, p. 47.

19. The Confessions of a Puzzled Parson (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1928), p. 191.Google Scholar

20. Does Civilization Need Religion? A Study in the Social Resources and Limitations of Religion in Modern Life (New York: Macmillan, 1927), p. 2.Google Scholar

21. “What Happened to the Progressive Movement in the 1920's” American Historical Review, 64 (1959), 833.Google Scholar See also the perceptive article by May, Henry F., “Shifting Perspectives in the 1920's” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 43 (1956), 405–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22. Theism and the Modern Mood (New York: Harper and Bros., 1930), p. 6.Google Scholar

23. The Great Tradition of the American Churches (New York: Harper and Bros., 1953), p. 196.Google Scholar

24. Belief Unbound: A Promethean Religion for the Modern World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1930), p. 20.Google Scholar

25. The Modern Temper: A Study and A Confession (New York: Harcourt Brace and Co., 1929), pp. 191 f.Google Scholar

26. Hart, Hornell, “Changing Social Attitudes and Interests,” Recent Social Trends, I, 403.Google Scholar

27. America Comes of Age (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1927)Google Scholar, trans. by H. H. Hemming and Doris Hemming, pp. 33, 38f.

28. “American Protestantism Since the Civil War. I. From Denominationalism to Americanism,” Journal of Religion, XXXVI (1956), 1.Google Scholar

29. Cf. Chap. III, “Christina Americanization,” of my We Witness Together: A History of Cooperative Home Missions (New York: Friendship Press, 1956) pp. 64–82.Google Scholar

30. Lynd, Robert S. and Lynd, Helen Merrell, Middletown: A Study in Contemporary American Culture (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1929), p. 406.Google Scholar

31. “Let Religious Education Beware!” Christian Century, 44 (1927), 362.Google Scholar

32. Faith and Nurture (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1941), p. 41.Google Scholar

33. Confessions of a Puzzled Parson, p. 14.

34. A Christian Manifesto (New York: Abingdon Press, 1934), p. 202.Google Scholar

35. Lynd, Robert S. and Lynd, Helen Merrell, Middletown in Transition: A Study in Cultural Conflicts (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1937), p. 295.Google Scholar

36. American Prolestantism and Social Issues, p. 63.

37. “Christian Education,” in Samuel McCrea Cavert and Henry P. Van Dusen, eds., The Church Through Half a Cenutry: Essays in Honor of William Adams Brown (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936), pp. 243 f.Google Scholar

38. Douglass, H. Paul and Brunner, Edmund deS., The Protestant Church as a Social Institution (New York: Harper and Bros., 1935), p. 208.Google Scholar

39. Research Memorandum, p. 1.

40. Pope, Liston, Millhands and Preachers: A Study of Gastonia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1942), pp. 126, 128Google Scholar; Middletown in Transition, p. 297; Boisen, Anton T., “Religion and Hard Times,” Social Action, V. (03 15, 1939), 8–35.Google Scholar

41. E.g., cf. Boisen, loc. cit.; Clark, Elmer T., The Small Sects in America (rev. ed.; New York: AbingdonCokesbury Press, 1949), pp. 16–20, 218 f., 230.Google Scholar

42. Horton, Walter Marshall, Realistic Theology (New York: Harper and Bros., 1934), p. 35.Google Scholar

43. “The Evangelicals' Dilemma,” Atlantic Monthly, 136 (07–12, 1925), 368–74.Google Scholar

44. Christian Century, 50 (1933), 1403.Google Scholar

45. Cf. Ahlstrom, Sydney E., “Continental Influence on American Christian Thought Since World War I,” Church History, XXVII (1958), 256–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46. “Organized Religion,” American Journal of Sociology 38 (07, 1932—05, 1933), 907.Google Scholar

47. “Calm After Storm,” Christian Century, 56 (1939), 479.Google Scholar

48. “Religion,” American Journal of Sociology, 47 (07 1941–05, 1942), 894.Google Scholar

49. America Comes of Age, p. 46.

50. Middletown, p. 406.

51. Wayne Wheeler, as quoted by Carter, Paul A., The Decline and Revival of the Social Gospel, p. 37.Google Scholar

52. Religion in 20th Century America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952), p. 18.Google Scholar

53. “Beyond Modernism: A Sermon,” Christian Century, 52 (1935), 1552.Google Scholar

54. Niebuhr, H. Richard, Pauck, Wilhelm, and Miller, Francis P., The Church Against the World, (Chicago: Willett, Clark and Co., 1935), p. 102.Google Scholar

55. Ibid., pp. 1 f.

56. “The American Protestant Churches and the Depression of the 1930's” (Th.M. Thesis, Princeton Theological Seminary, 1950), p. 125.Google Scholar

57. Bureau of the Census, , Religious Bodies: 1936, I (Washington: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1941), 51.Google Scholar

58. The Catholic Spirit in America (New York: Lincoln Mac Veagh, The Dial Press, 1927), p. vii.Google Scholar

59. The Story of American Catholicism (New York: Macmillan, 1941), p. 613.Google Scholar

60. Protestant-Catholic-Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology (Garden City: Doubleday and Co., 1955), pp. 139 f.Google Scholar