Doctrine and Race: African American Evangelicals and Fundamentalism between the Wars

by Mary Beth Swetnam Mathews

By presenting African American Protestantism in the context of white Protestant fundamentalism, Doctrine and Race: African American Evangelicals and Fundamentalism between the Wars demonstrates that African American Protestants were acutely aware of the manner in which white Christianity operated and how they could use that knowledge to justify social change. Mary Beth Swetnam Mathews’s study scrutinizes how white fundamentalists wrote blacks out of their definition of fundamentalism and how blacks constructed a definition of Christianity that had, at its core, an intrinsic belief in racial equality. In doing so, this volume challenges the prevailing scholarly argument that fundamentalism was either a doctrinal debate or an antimodernist force. Instead, it was a constantly shifting set of priorities for different groups at different times.

 

A number of African American theologians and clergy identified with many of the doctrinal tenets of the fundamentalism of their white counterparts, but African Americans were excluded from full fellowship with the fundamentalists because of their race. Moreover, these scholars and pastors did not limit themselves to traditional evangelical doctrine but embraced progressive theological concepts, such as the Social Gospel, to help them achieve racial equality. Nonetheless, they identified other forward-looking theological views, such as modernism, as threats to “true” Christianity.

 

Mathews demonstrates that, although traditional portraits of “the black church” have provided the illusion of a singular unified organization, black evangelical leaders debated passionately among themselves as they sought to preserve select aspects of the culture around them while rejecting others. The picture that emerges from this research creates a richer, more profound understanding of African American denominations as they struggled to contend with a white American society that saw them as inferior.

 

Doctrine and Race melds American religious history and race studies in innovative and compelling ways, highlighting the remarkable and rich complexity that attended to the development of African American Protestant movements.

Genres: History, Race, Theology, Christian, Nonfiction, Faith, Religion

217 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2017

About the author

Mary Beth Swetnam Mathews is an associate professor of religion at the University of Mary Washington.

Reviews

[Kimba Tichenor · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this well-researched monograph, Mary Beth Swetnam Mathews, an associate professor of religion at the University of Mary Washington, addresses the question of how African-American religious leaders responded to the modernist/fundamentalist controversy that defined white Protestantism in the interwar years. Although white Protestants saw modernism and fundamentalism as two irreconcilable approaches to Christianity, African-American evangelicals, Mathews argues, did not. Focusing on the publications of four African-American denominations (The National Baptist Convention, Incorporated, The National Baptist Convention, Unincorporated, The African Methodist Episcopal Church, and The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church), Mathews documents how African-American religious leaders in these denominations appropriated some elements of fundamentalism, e.g. the Bible as inerrant and divinely inspired, emphasis on traditional gender and sexual mores, and support for prohibition. However, a wholesale endorsement of fundamentalism's tenets was not an option for African-American religious leaders. As Mathews convincingly argues, fundamentalism was a racialized term. Its proponents defined Christianity as "the highest achievement of white civilization" and thus African-Americans could never achieve full fellowship within the fundamentalist community. Moreover, African-American intellectuals such as W. E. B. Dubois, saw the black churches as backward and as impediments to achieving full equality in American society. Thus to maintain their leading role in the fight for social justice, it was important that African-American Church leaders not unilaterally reject progressive ideas, even though many of the social changes of the era were anathema to their doctrine and belief. As a result, they found themselves "caught between the push/pull forces of religion and racial equality." This tension led them to develop a middle position - one that condemned neither fundamentalism nor modernism, but rather appropriated elements of both.

Mathews' study successfully challenges the notion of a "unified African-American church, highlighting the intense theological debates among African-American church leaders about how to respond to changing morals, Darwinism, and continuing racial inequality. By the author's own admission, the scope of the study is limited; she did not address the Holiness or Pentecostal movements; she also only briefly references the dramatic increase in African-Americans converting to Catholicism during the interwar years. Additionally, the voices of African-American women are largely absent from this study; this omission is particularly glaring given their crucial role in the post-WWII battle for racial equality and social justice.

[Ruth]

An enlightening read only made possible by a high level of scholarship on the part of the author. The prose is dense and required close and slow reading on my part to process properly, but I'm glad I put in the effort because it reaped rewards.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

An eye-opening academic study of the relationship between African American Christians and two distinct groups—white fundamentalists and white modernists—during the 1920s and 1930s. The basic thesis is that African American church leaders were deeply conservative theologically and socially, with one obvious exception: they longed and advocated for racial progress. So while the vast majority of their theological and social convictions aligned with white fundamentalists, they found more common ground with modernists and liberals when it came to racial equality.

One clear takeaway from the book is that it’s historically inaccurate (not to mention insulting) to assume that African American theology is inherently suspect. If any group in the period between the wars was at risk of becoming theologically liberal, it wasn’t African Americans; it was white fundamentalists. Whites were far more enamored with modernism. In fact, in light of many whites’ flirtation with heterodoxy, many African American Christians were forced to view *themselves* as the de facto vanguard of sound doctrine and traditional truth. To put it bluntly, faithful black Christians today don’t have whites to thank for being doctrinally solid. Their forebears were doing just fine theologically while countless white fundamentalists flirted with modernism and perpetuated segregation.

[Jon Pentecost · Rating 3 out of 5]

Heartbreaking coverage of how fundamentalist Christians advocated for segregation, sidelined and undermined African American leadership in Christian circles, and advanced rather than opposed racist ideology even as they fought for the inerrancy of Scripture and the need for conversion.

Helpful in showing how African American Christians (particularly religious newspaper editors) saw the modernist/fundamentalist debate as a white Christian conflict, one where they were not welcomed by those they most agreed with theologically.

Fascinating to see the skepticism with which many of these editors viewed dispensational theology, seeing is as a newfangled theological invention.

The discussion of social concerns within black churches themselves felt unsatisfactory. I felt the author more clearly presented the social conservatism of African American Christians more than she did their theological conservatism. I wish there was more discussion of how African American pastors interacted with the ideas of evolutionary theory and Darwinism in terms of the ideas' moral implications. The coverage of the issue of prohibition was intriguing, and helped explain a larger divide in opinion among Christians over political options in addressing societal ills.

Racism is a wicked sin. The failure of churches to acknowledge and address this sin undermines an atmosphere of Christian charity and forgiveness, a motivation for missions, and makes the church look like the world. This book doesn't present solutions, but I left with a clearer picture of the myriad temptations towards sin that will present in a context where Christians fall into worldly thinking in the areas of racism and racial division.

[Adam Shields · Rating 5 out of 5]

Summary: Traditional Black denominations in the early 20th century were neither fundamentalist nor modernist. They were traditional Christians that upheld conservative theological values, but also believed in social justice, especially in regard to racism. 

I have never done this before. But I do not think I can really do better in posting about Doctrine and Race than to extensively quote the book itself. I made 28 highlights and a couple of notes and you can see all of them and the exact location of each on my goodreads page.

I limited my quotes to just 11. I did bold areas which I think are important.

Indeed, virtually all white Protestants, whether they supported fundamentalism, opposed it, or ignored it, assumed that white Protestant thought was normative and superior, so in that respect, fundamentalists were no different than non-fundamentalist whites.

Religious life in America was segregated and racially coded. Moreover, our understanding of the distribution of the formative books—The Fundamentals—needs an asterisk. While the current narrative holds that oil baron Lyman Stewart financed their distribution to all American ministers and missionaries, black Baptists and Methodists appear not to have received them. The adjective “white” should precede “American” in our telling of the Fundamentals creation story.

For white fundamentalists, and white Protestants in general in the United States, Protestant Christianity was the chief weapon available to civilize the various races. Such a trusting belief in the positive power of Protestantism was not confined to conservative evangelicals or fundamentalists. Josiah Strong’s Our Country, published in 1886, lauded the civilizing effects of “true spiritual Christianity.” Indeed, for many white Protestants in the United States, the benefits of converting various immigrants and minorities to Protestant Christianity were myriad and far-reaching. Black, Jew, Roman Catholic—all could improve themselves through religion, and all required it to be considered “American.”

Not only was Christianity a means to civilize African Americans, it was also a way of alleviating racial tensions. Writing about the Reverend Eugene E. Smith’s address to the annual gathering of Northern Baptists, Homer DeWilton Brookins explained that Baptists needed to help spread the Gospel to blacks to “help to Christianize the rising tide of race consciousness on the part of the negro.” Without the influence of Protestant Christianity, Brookins and Laws predicted a dire situation ahead for white and black Americans.

For him, as for other white fundamentalists who enjoyed black music, the music itself was a reinforcement of their views on blacks in general, especially in their belief that black religion was emotional. Because it came from black traditions, the music they produced was, in the eyes of whites, emotionally provocative, which allowed whites to continue their stereotype that blacks were caught in a religious childhood. The use of African American musicians reinforced whites’ racially coded ideas of black inferiority rather than provoking them to engage in a religious dialogue with the musicians and their pastors.

The deeper question for these writers was one of ecclesiology: how could you define the Christian church and include segregationists, lynchers, and racists? The simple answer was that you could not. Any understanding of the Christian message had to include a steadfast belief in the equality of all people before God. Since many white Americans could not meet this simple test, they were not really a part of the church of Jesus. Much as white fundamentalists had labeled liberal Protestants as outside the fold, African American Baptist and Methodist writers defined the church as an organization of like-minded people, alike in that they believed in equality. There were, of course, more layers to the definition of “Christian church” than just equality, but the bottom line for these writers was that social justice had just as much of a role to play in defining the true Christian as did doctrines like the Virgin Birth, the inerrancy of the Bible, and the substitutionary atonement of Jesus. For African American Protestants, doctrinal matters were important, but as the twentieth century progressed, the most important test was one of the examples of Jesus. In this interpretation of “What Would Jesus Do?” they demanded that white Christians observe the basic precepts of equality found in the Bible.

The author then pointed out that churches in America already were segregated and that segregation everywhere was an affront to Christianity. He asked, “if it be unchristian to ‘refuse any Negro the privilege of enjoying any church privilege,’ is it not just as unchristian to refuse any Negro the privilege of enjoying any social privilege? The church is God’s house, but so also is the world.” He expanded on this line of reasoning to include discrimination in employment, theaters, hotels, railroad accommodations, and restaurants—“Should Christianity be practiced only on Sunday and in the confines of the four walls of a church or should it be practiced seven days a week and everywhere?” For the Courier’s reporter, white Christians had lost the meaning of religion, and he compared them to residents of “pagan Rome” who “strut blindly and boastfully down the broad road to decay and oblivion.”

“There is something wrong somewhere,” he concluded, “this continued manifestation of the spirit of anti-Christ has its rootage in Pharasaical [sic] conceit and pride, and unless eradicated will find its fruitage in the alienation of the darker races of earth from Him whom we invoke as ‘Our Father.’” For Davenport, the continued hypocrisy of white Christians in the United States had global and eternal consequences. As long as Christ was presented as white and blacks as inferior, African Americans would turn away from the saving message of Christianity, as would “darker races” throughout the world. White Christians would inflict damage both in this world and the next with their continued insistence on segregation.

In 1927, Wright expanded and refined his call for equality under the banner of Christianity by employing the Hebrew prophet Amos and likening white Christians to “oppressors.” “Moral failure,” he declared, “proceeds with treading upon the poor all sorts of economic robbing,” including denial of crops, undercharging for labor, segregated and inferior school facilities, and the like. The “oppressors are morally decaying,” he continued, “whether they call themselves Israelites, Christians or what not. And God’s justice will certain assert itself if there is not a change.” The case was simple: white America had become what Amos had warned against—excesses and injustice. Wright chose verses from Amos, including the passage that Martin Luther King Jr. would later make famous in his “I Have a Dream” speech, “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24). “Amos does not mince words,” Wright aptly observed, “God wants Israel to repent, ‘to hate evil and love the good’—that is the only thing that will satisfy the justice of God.” But the United States was not engaged in such an effort. Instead, he argued that “it is wrong to mistreat your brother and think you can make it all right with God by giving Him a burnt offering. One of these days this American nation will wake up to understand the justice of God is not in the fine churches or great educational institutions, the wonderful choirs and eloquent sermons, it is in hating evil and loving good.”

For example, in 1917, the National Baptist Union-Review ran an Atlanta Independent article on Billy Sunday’s upcoming visit to the South and the opportunity he had to make a statement for racial equality. “It will not suffice for Mr. Sunday to invade the Southland,” the secular black paper wrote and the traditionalist Union-Review reprinted, “and denounce adultery, fornication, liars, hypocrites, bums, hobos, rascals, scoundrels, crap shooters, tramps and loafers, and leave untouched the lynchers, the ballot box thief, the segregator, the discriminator, the Negro hater, the promoter of racial strife and the mob leader who burns human beings at the stake because they are black.” Instead Sunday needed to confront the fact that his audience in the South would be composed of such people. Rather than be “deathly silent” on the matter, he should speak out. “If Mr. Sunday is sincere and is a lover of God and humanity,” the paper continued, “he has a splendid opportunity to preach the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man,” and, further:   That the gospel of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ knows no color line and that Jesus Christ died to the saving of all men who would believe on Him; that the black man is a common brother of the white man, and that the white man owes him both Godly and humane treatment; that before the law, the Negro is entitled to every privilege, every benefit accruing to the white man; that the double sessions in the Negro schools are wrong and wicked; that the suppression of the Negro’s vote at the ballot box is sin; that the counting him out on election day is stealing; that the unequal division of public school funds is legalized theft; that segregation is born of racial hatred and is sin; that the beating up and shooting down of Negroes on the street is sin; that the splendidly equipped school facilities for white children and death traps and dilapidated houses for Negroes is a misuse of trust funds and an act of base humanity.

As this book has shown, African American clergy in the interwar years navigated a treacherous course for their readers and parishioners as they sought to maintain traditional religious beliefs while also employing that same hermeneutic to advance racial progress. Challenged indirectly by fundamentalists to defend their orthodoxy, they could not call themselves fundamentalists. The white leaders of the fundamentalist movement shunned black religious leaders, demeaned their intellect, and prepared instead for a coming catastrophe. Black Baptists and Methodists, in turn, distanced themselves from the fundamentalist movement’s millennialism and its indifference to resolving racial issues. But at the same time, modernism held no real appeal for these commentators, who labeled the movement a white heresy even as they embraced some of its methodologies.

[Clifford Luebben · Rating 4 out of 5]

How did African Americans interact and react to the Fundamentalist - Modernist controversy as it raged in the 1920s-1930s? Mathews books provides in depth and informative insights to that question by primarily giving voice the leading black religious leaders of the day.

She first spends a chapter on how white fundamentalists interacted with and thought of black churches. Mostly they didn't, and when they did, it was often paternalistic at best. Those who come from (and are still a part of) churches that came out of or allied with the fundamentalist movement (such as myself) are likely to get defensive with this chapter. But however fairly or unfairly we find Mathews portrayal of the movement regarding race relations, it is clear and undeniable - even from the degree of institutional separation that exists still today - that white fundamentalists viewed Black Americans, even those that shared their core theological convictions, as "other". This is something those of us that are part of these movements cannot ignore, deny, or avoid wrestling with.

Mathew spends the rest of book showing how black religious leaders reacted to and interacted with the Fundamentalist - Modernest debates. For the sake of focusing her book and research, she draws primarily from the denominational newspapers & journals of the The National Baptist Convention Incorporated, The National Baptist Convention Unincorporated, The African Methodist Episcopal Church, and The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, all historically Black Protestant denominations that were already well established in this time period. There are times where I feel like Mathews might be letting her own biases slip in as she interprets these voices or infuses context without, at least directly, citing any sources (she clearly immersed herself in the topic, so perhaps these were cases of "the fish not noticing water"), but on the whole Mathews simply lets these leaders speak for themselves with her voice primarily summarizing or providing context.

For me several things stood out (and were among those things highlighted by Mathews). First that the Fundamentalist - Modernist Controversy was generally seen as a white debate. They were generally on the theological side of the fundamentalists and saw modernism as a distinctly white heresy with some going so far as to call modernists "White Infidels". They were generally on the culture war side of the fundamentalists, with black church leaders actually being ahead of white church leaders in condemning the dance halls of the day (which was a surprising thing for me to learn). One of the surprising (for me) exceptions to black church leaders doctrinal alignment with (some) white fundamentalists was in Dispensationalism which most black church leaders rejected as being as newfangled an idea as modernism. Of course the least surprising exception to alignment was in matters of race relations. And this exception was so significant to black church leaders it made many of them question whether the "White Man's Religion" could even be counted as Christianity. Since they were generally outside the debate and its tribalizing effects, black church leaders were apparently less resistant to reading and learning from modernist thinkers and willing taking those things from the modernists they saw as in line with Scripture. The most obvious example being their embrace of the language of social justice. As Mathews puts it "For these black evangelicals, being a Christian meant right belief and right living, being theologically traditional and socially progressive in terms of racial equality. A Christian did not frequent dance halls and speakeasies, nor did a Christian prevent someone from voting because of their skin color."

As the after effects of the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy still cause many Evangelicals today to bristle at the words "social justice", this might be the lesson from history we'd do best to learn from. For us to heed today the biblical critiques black church leaders of the "Interwar Years" wrote about the white fundamentalist leaders, and to see from their example that "Bible or social justice" is a false and unbiblical dichotomy.

For an academic work, this was a rather accessible and even enjoyable read. I would recommend it to those who have any interest in the topics it addresses.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

I expected more interplay and interactions between white fundamentalists and black protestants given the title (they are largely siloed in reality), but this was an interesting study nonetheless. It's well worth noting that plenty of our evangelical forebears simply did not take seriously the implications of the gospel and built up barriers with black believers. My main complaint with the book is that the scope is not terribly wide, only looking at several white fundamentalist leaders and black Protestant publications; it gives a snapshot but there is not enough to say if this was wholly representative of the state of affairs in the 1920s and 1930s. These were two groups that were largely lockstep in theology, but divided by the white fundamentalists' prejudice and segregationist practices.

A couple of quotes that caught my attention:

"'The Blackshear outburst,' the editor wrote, 'calls attention again to the inconsistency of white church members sending their children, their young men and women, as missionaries to Africa while right among them are a dark skinned people in need of the same gospel and to them is exhibited such stuff as the southerner has brought to a sharp angle for acute study. It is but another instance of the fall down of white Christian professors at the color line.' The editorial asked a question that many other African American religious writers had also raised: why did white Americans seem to have so much charity and evangelistic zeal for people of color in other countries and continents when they could not treat their own neighbors of color with the simple decency taught by their religion?" (pg. 138)

"Despite the racism, segregation, and hypocrisy they saw in white Christian churches, African American Baptists and Methodists were not willing to abandon Christianity. Indeed, they insisted that the fault lay not with the religion but with its misguided white adherents." (pg. 139)

[Mr. Perry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Answered a lot of questions about American evangelicalism and..."how we got here" in regards to the disparity between black and white protestant Christians in the U.S. (as in, what was "the church"[the clergy of the time] doing to foster and/or inhibit the racial oppression of the time, how did black clergy navigate through trying to maintain orthodoxy while also viewing contradictions in said orthodoxy amongst their white Christian bretheren, and the prevailing thoughts of the day that have unfortunately in many ways not changed much)...

Might write more about this book on the blog I'm working on...I took notes :)

[Zach Hollifield · Rating 4 out of 5]

A deeply sad but entirely unsurprising history of the refusal of white conservative Christians to link arms with their conservative black brothers and sisters. More positively, it is also a history of demonstrated faithfulness to the full gospel in all spheres of life by those black Christians.

[Josiah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Page 155 provides a good summary of what this book was about:

"The white leaders of the fundamentalist movement shunned black religious leaders, demeaned their intellect, and prepared instead for a coming catastrophe. Black Baptists and Methodists, in turn, distanced themselves from the fundamentalist movement’s millennialism and its indifference to resolving racial issues. But at the same time, modernism held no real appeal for these commentators, who labeled the movement a white heresy even as they embraced some of its methodologies."