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John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and the Interchurch World Movement of 1919–1920: A Different Angle on the Ecumenical Movement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Charles E. Harvey
Charles E. Harvey
Affiliation:
Mr. Harvey is professor of history inCalifornia State University-Chico, Chico, California.
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Extract

There is a certain irony in the title of Eldon G. Ernst's Moment of Truth for Protestant America, the standard interpretation of the Interchurch World Movement (IWM) of 1919–1920, because this broad and generally perceptive study of the IWM is based primarily upon an elaborate falsification of the historical record. That falsification was perpetrated in a document entitled “History of the Interchurch World Movement” prepared under the direction of Raymond B. Fosdick. Fosdick, who was the lawyer and long-term adviser of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., had the document compiled precisely to conceal the real role Rockefeller played in the organization. Research in Rockefeller's papers reveals the truth about his role and thereby illumines a significant aspect of the ecumenical movement and its relationship to wider historical trends. This overlooked aspect from the background of the liberal side of the fundamentalist controversy is particularly pertinent today as tensions mount between those who identify themselves as “liberals” and those who claim to lead a “moral majority” of resurgent conservatism. Perhaps Washington Gladden, the old social gospel advocate, was not entirely wrong when he referred to a Rockefeller contribution as “tainted money,” however idealistic Rockefeller's motives may have been.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , June 1982 , pp. 198 - 209
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1982

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References

1. Ernst, Eldon G., Moment of Truth for Protestant America: Interchurch Campaigns Following World War One (Missoula, Mont., 1972).Google Scholar This book is based on Ernst's Yale dissertation under Sydney Ahlstrom, who cites the study in his A Religious History of the American People (New Haven, Conn., 1972), p. 897.Google Scholar Ernst did not use the Rockefeller papers. “History of the Interchurch World Movement,” 2 vols. (hereafter cited as “History IWM”), Record Group 2, Box 42, Private Archives of the Messrs. Rockefeller, Rockefeller Center, New York, N.Y. (hereafter cited as PAMR).

2. Besides Ernst's study, see histories of the American ecumenical movement by leading participants. For example, MacFarland, Charles S., Christian Unity in Practice and Prophecy (New York, 1939);Google Scholaridem, Christian Unity in the Making: The First Twenty-five Years of the Federal Council of Churches (New York, 1948); Brown, William Adams, Toward a United Church: Three Decades of Ecumenical Christianity (New York, 1946);Google ScholarCavert, Samuel McCrea, On the Road to Christian Unity: An Appraisal of the Ecumenical Movement (New York, 1961);Google Scholaridem, The American Churches in the Ecumenical Movement, 1900–1968 (New York, 1968). The authoritative work on Mott is the new study by Hopkins, C. Howard, John R. Mott, 1865–1955: A Biography (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1980).Google ScholarMott's, autobiography is Five Decades and a Forward View (New York, 1939).Google Scholar

3. Speers to Rockefeller, 9 July 1919, Record Group 2, Box 42, PAMR.

4. Mott to Rockefeller, 13 November 1919, Record Group 2, Box 42, PAMR. For background on Rockefeller and industrial relations see Fosdick, Raymond B., John D. Rockefeller, Jr.: A Portrait (New York, 1956), pp. 143–187;Google Scholar and McGovern, George S. and Guttridge, Leonard F., The Great Coalfield War (Boston, 1972).Google Scholar

5. Ernst, p. 109; “History IWM,” chap. 3, p. 115, and chap. 4, p. 132. Rockefeller's own policy was to formally acknowledge labor's right to organize, but to recognize independent unions while developing company grievance systems and other benefits that would exclude organized labor and avoid collective bargaining.

6. “IWM Executive Committee Minutes” for 16 March 1920, as quoted in an eight-page typescript staff report prepared in Rockefeller's office in May to demonstrate his potential liability for IWM debts. [Starr J. Murphy], “The Interchurch World Movement,” Record Group 2, Box 41, PAMR.

7. Memorandum of Jerome D. Greene, 8 September 1913, Record Group 2, Box 49, PAMR. For a more thorough discussion of this issue see Charles E. Harvey, “Speer's Dispute with Rockefeller and Mott, 1910–1935: An Illuminating Interaction,” Journal of Presbyterian History, forthcoming. Greene, who was secretary of the Rockefeller Foundation, interviewed Speer along with other mission board leaders. The others concurred with Speer's comment on Mott, which referred to Mott's proposal that the Rockefellers endow a foundation to support ongoing efforts from the Edinburgh Conference. The Rockefellers did not endow such a foundation; they financed the Missionary Research Library instead. However, Mott's original proposal of 1911 may have provided the inspiration for the funding of the Interchurch World Movement in 1920.

8. Speer to Rockefeller, 5 October 1920, Record Group 2, Box 41, PAMR.

9. “Itinerary,” Record Group 2, Box 40, PAMR. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to John D. Rockefeller, Sr., 16 and 21 April 1920, Record Group 2, Box 40, PAMR. Rockefeller gave a series of addresses in 1915 and after, published as Rockefeller, John D. Jr, The Personal Relation in Industry (New York, 1923).Google Scholar The industrial relations theme is developed further in Charles E. Harvey, “Religion and Industrial Relations: John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and the Interchurch World Movement of 1919–1920,” Research in Political Economy 4 (1981): 199–227;Google Scholaridem, “John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and the Social Sciences: An Introduction,” unpublished. See also Mulherin, James, “The Sociology of Work and Organizations: Historical Context and Pattern of Development” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Santa Cruz, 1980).Google Scholar

10. Rockefeller to George Peabody, 15 April 1920, and McCormick to Rockefeller, 26 April 1920, Record Group 2, Box 40, PAMR.

11. Notes for a talk based on Matthew 16:24, 18 March 1894, Record Group 2, Box 11, PAMR.

12. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., “Why I Am a Church Member,” Record Group 2, Box 40, PAMR. This twenty-page typescript contains the marginal note by staff members Charles O. Heydt, “For present not to be used.”

13. See correspondence between Rockefeller and Raymond Fosdick and other materials from May and June 1920, Record Group 2, Box 42, PAMR. Pledges to the denominational campaigns came to $176 million, half the goal; pledges to the IWM central treasury drive amounted to only three Out of the forty million dollar target.

14. See correspondence of summer and fall 1920, Record Group 2, Boxes 41–43, PAMR; “History IWM,” later chapters; various reports in Federal Council of Churches, The Churches Allied for Common Tasks: Report of the Third Quadrennium of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America (New York, 1921);Google Scholar but most notably Speer, Robert E., “The Present Situation in the Church as a Whole,” in Christian Unity: Its Principles and Possibilities, ed. Broad, William Adams (New York, 1921), pp. 138–156.Google Scholar

15. Apart from a large bibliography on the fundamentalist controversy, see Fosdick, Harry Emerson, The Living of These Days: An Autobiography (New York, 1956),Google Scholar and Fosdick, Raymond B., Chronicle of a Generation: An Autobiography (New York, 1958).Google Scholar

16. Rockefeller to Raymond Fosdick, 17 July 1920, Record Group 2, Box 42, PAMR.

17. Raymond Fosdick to Rockefeller, 29 June and 8 July 1920 Record Group 2, PAMR.

18. Raymond Fosdick to Rockefeller, 30 July 1920, Record Group 2, Box 42, PAMR. Charles R. Watson, president of the American University at Cairo, Egypt, was the first director.

19. A. W. Armor to Raymond Fosdick, 23 January 1922, and subsequent correspondence by Fosdick, Record Group 2, Box 43, PAMR; “History IWM,” chap. 8, pp. 25–26.

20. Lynd, Robert S., “Crude Oil Religion,” Harper's 145 (09 1922): 425–434;Google Scholaridem, “Done in Oil,” Survey 49 (November 1922): 136–146. Correspondence between Lynd and Rockefeller, 1921–1922; and Galen M. Fisher, “History of the Small City Study,” 20 March 1924, Record Group 2, Box 43, PAMR; Lynd, Robert S. and Lynd, Helen M., Middletown (New York, 1928);Google ScholarFosdick, Raymond B., John D. Rockefeller, Jr., p. 213;Google Scholar [Fisher, Galen M.], The Institute of Social and Religious Research (New York, 1934).Google Scholar See also Harvey, Charles E., “Robert S. Lynd, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and Middletown,” unpublished.Google Scholar

21. Rockefeller to Mott, 20 December 1932, Record Group 2, Box 43, PAMR.

22. Hogg, W. Richey, Ecumenical Foundations: A History of the International Missionary Council (New York, 1952).Google Scholar Rockefeller to Albert L. Scott, 18 April 1932, Record Group 2, Box 52, PAMR.

23. Hocking, William Ernest, Re-Thinking Missions: A Laymen's Inquiry after a Hundred Years (New York, 1933);Google ScholarPetty, Orville A., ed., Laymen's Foreign Missions Inquiry: Fact Finders' Report, 7 vols. (New York, 1933);Google ScholarSpeer, Robert E., “Re-Thinking Missions” Examined (New York, 1933), p. 37.Google Scholar

24. Memorandum of Arthur W. Packard, 21 April 1934, Record Group 2, Box 43, PAMR. The major works of Douglass, H. Paul, culminating his numerous studies for the Institute, were Church Unity Movements (New York, 1934)Google Scholar and The Protestant Church as a Social Institution (New York, 1935).Google Scholar Douglass shortly after became the editor of the ecumenical journal Christendom, which provided the principal forum for the World Council of Churches between the Oxford and Edinburgh conferences of 1937 and its founding in Amsterdam in 1948. His work constituted significant inspiration for the Review of Religious Research.

25. Speer, “Re-Thinking Missions” Examined, p. 54. For more on Speer, see Wheeler, Reginald, A Man Sent from God: A Biography of Robert E. Speer (Westwood, N.J., 1956).Google Scholar Speer allowed no biography during his lifetime. His papers are in the library of Princeton Theological Seminary, which is named for him. He is considered extensively in Lefferts Loetscher, A., The Broadening Church: A Study of Theological Issues in the Presbyterian Church since 1869 (Philadelphia, 1957),Google Scholar but a new study is needed of the man and his influence.

26. Fosdick, Raymond B., John D. Rockefeller, Jr., p. 220–228.Google Scholar