“WHAT WOULD JESUS DO, IF HE WERE A MINISTER?”:
The Role of the Church in Charles Sheldon’s Social Gospel
Young-Hoon Yoon, DrewUniversity
“What would Jesus do, if He were a minister?” In his book, In His Steps To-day,[1] Sheldon presented a strong view on the importance of the church in citizenship and politics with this question. Sheldon strongly insists “if Jesus were on earth to-day,” He would provide many social programs in church to transform the society. As many Social Gospelers proclaimed , Sheldon believed that not only the church has “a mission in the world,” but also the church has “a mission to the world.”[2]Sheldon contributed to the emerging Social Gospel movement, especially through his numerous writings including twenty-six published religious novels. However, it is hard to evaluate him as a Christian socialist like some other leaders of that movement. Sheldon has an ambiguous view on Christian and/or secular dimensions of the world affairs. In general, Sheldon has been briefly described as one of the proponents of the Social Gospeland a contemporary liberal in most American religious historiographies. However, his readers have been more conservative evangelicals. The recent WWJD phenomenon shows this tendency well.
Sheldon was not a great thinker, nor an excellent organizer of the certain movement. Yet he was a sincere activist, as his biographer evaluates.[3] Sheldon was not interested in any theoretical argument, so he had not much mentioned about the contemporary theological arguments. Rather he blamed that because “theory” always brings about the serious schism in Christendom. He had never used a term, “social gospel,” and had not written any systematic concept for his social gospel message. His thought can be considered too naïve and shallow to stimulate the scholarly interest. Thus, scholars of American religious history have not studied much about his life and thoughts. Usually, the intellectual studies about him were focused on a single book, In His Steps. However, during the last couple of decades, several studies about his life and careers have been carried out. Timothy Miller’s biography of Sheldon is one important contribution to rediscover Charles M. Sheldon.
There is a problem in studying Sheldon, because most of his religious novels and other books became out of print, and can hardly be found in circulations.[4]Sheldon’s articles are also not available easily. In this paper, I will present Sheldon’s life and thoughts, focusing on his view on the church and his social ministries, with the careful examination of the primary sources, both published and unpublished. These materials are well reserved in Kansas Historical Society. This archival research helped me to better understandSheldon’s life and thoughts. Through this study, I was able to find that he was more than an author of a bestselling book. Firstly, I will analyze his version of “Christian socialism”with focusing on various influences upon Sheldon’s thoughts. I intend to present some evidences of a more evangelical nature of Sheldon’s social gospel, which is rooted in the Holiness revivals and social reforms. Secondly, I want to illustrate some remarkable aspects in Sheldon’s ministerial careers: His reforms in liturgy, education, social welfare, and other social campaigns for temperance, pacifism, and ecumenism. Finally, I will evaluate his ministry and thought with introducing the critiques to Sheldon from other scholars.
I. Christian Socialism?: Evangelical Nature of Sheldon’s Social Gospel
Charles M. Sheldon (1857-1946) was a Congregational minister and Social Gospel reformer. After his theological study at Andover Seminary, Sheldon began his ministry in Waterbury, Vermont (1886-1888), and in 1889 accepted what turned out to be a lifelong call to the newly formed Central Congregational Church in Topeka, Kansas(1889-1919). During his later years, he worked for the Christian Herald, first as editor-in-chief, then as a contributing editor (1920-1946). Sheldon was also known as the author of the best-selling novel, In His Steps.
The formation of Sheldon’s View on Theology
In Sheldon’s biographer, Timothy Miller's view, theologically, there is “no way to classify Sheldon other than liberal,”who accepted biblical criticism and evolutionism.[5]However, he does not provide a relevant example of Sheldon’s such theological position. Miller simply states Sheldon’s acceptance of the emerging liberalism, based on the circumstances of Andover Theological Seminary in Sheldon’s school years, and does not provide information about the specific professorsor other social gospelers who influenced to Sheldon. Sheldon himself mentions his opinion of the theological controversies during his Seminary years over the issues such as “second Isaiah” and “second probation.” Yet hewas unsatisfied with this kind of theological argumentsand with the Seminary’s unpractical curriculum. Sheldon criticized his professors, who taught only “cheap fashion” of theology, saying: “as I recall the courses there (Andover Seminary) was almost nothing taught about Bible schools or how to preach to boys and girls or meet the needs of common men and women.”[6]
James Smylie insists that Sheldon was influenced from the contemporary Christian socialists such as W. D. P. Bliss, George Herron, Josiah Strong, and W. T. Stead.[7]However, I cannot find significant comment about their influences in Sheldon’s writings.Richard Fox evaluatesSheldon’s social gospel is “the moderate Gladden-style” which combines “the individual soul building of liberal evangelicalism.”[8]Sheldon confesses that he had been influenced from two social preachers, Henry Ward Beecher and PhillipsBrooks. Sheldon admires them because of their message of “the proper relation of the church toward social questions of the day.”[9]In 1895, Sheldon attended the one-week summer school on applied Christianity at IowaCollege under the leadership of George Heron.[10]According to Woodworth, Sheldon was not strongly captivated by Heron at this time, although several of Heron’s supporters were Sheldon’s favorites such as George Gates, Josiah Strong, and Graham Taylor.[11]He supported several social gospel institutions and magazines which published to advance “applied Christianity,” such as The Kingdom andIndependent. However, he contributed the most articles in more evangelical social magazineChristian Herald and was ever its editor.
The more influential people in Sheldon’s life and thought were his father, Stewart Sheldon who was also a Congregational minister and his uncle, Joseph Ward who later became the president of YanktonCollege. They were Sheldon’s “heroes.” In many of his wrings, Sheldon informs their definite influences for the personal piety, with the emphasis of Bible, prayer, and family altar, and clean and simple life style. Sheldon had a strong conversion experience in that family mood.[12]Also, he criticizedUnitarians and Deists,regarding them as “false thoughtsof a divine being.” He believed that God engages in and cares for the daily human affairs, and it is the reason that we call God, “Father.”[13]This belief was the basis of Sheldon’s social ministry. Sheldon admired Dwight Moody, calling him as “the greatest man of our days,” and frequently quoted his words in his writings. Also, he has a close relationship even with a fundamentalist, William Jennings Bryan: “I have had many meetings with Mr. Bryan. I do not agree with him on some matters of theology, but that does not have anything to do with my love for him and respect for him. One does not have to agree with a man’s theology to love his religion.”[14]
This word represents Sheldon’s theological(?) position. His focus is not in theology but in religion, and not in theory but in practice.[15]He was both liberal and conservative, but he hates the nominal Christians either liberal or conservative. He influenced from both Christian socialists and pious family. He was sympathetic to both Harry Emerson Forsdick and William Jennings Bryan. He loved to listen to sermons of both Brooks and Moody. He preached in both Federal Council of Churches or Christian Endeavor Convention and American Missionary Association.[16]The following Haight’s words would fit to describe Sheldon’s social gospel: “To align the church with an ideology, such as socialism would be tend to reduce human existence to a function of economics, but it has a social mission and role precisely in being spiritual and religious.”[17]
Sheldon’s Version of Christian Socialism
Sometime, Sheldon expressed the term, “Christian socialism,” in his novels.He presented that issue in The Heart of the World: A Story of Christian Socialism. The main character, Rev. Stanton wrote a controversial bestseller, Christian Socialist anonymously with the pen name Mark Burns. This book was argued among the people as the heresy of the dangerous social movement. In this book, Stanton (Sheldon) proclaimed the goal of Christian socialism is building up the kingdom of God with common ownership on control of all the world’s necessities. However, this Christian socialism receives “its inspiration and its progress from the divine source of the Holy Spirit,” and “the heart of the world is love.”[18]
Sheldon distinctively tells a story of struggle between capital and labor, in His Brother’s Keeper. Throughout this novel, Sheldon manifested his sympathetic understanding of labor’s poor conditions, but he also displayed abhorrence for violence. The main character, Eric who converted through association with Salvation Army, realizes that “the only permanent basis for any true settlement of labor and capital must be a religious basis.”[19]Sheldon was known as non-partisan, voting for the man more than for the party.”[20] The political system can be used for social reform, but the political approach to social problem failed in Sheldon’s novel. It indicates a more conservative position on this point than the other social gospeler. Similar issue was dealt in Sheldon’s dramatic narrative, In His Steps To-day. Sheldon stresses the mutual and cooperative effort for the solving the industrial problem. In this court drama, Jesus condemns the operator for their selfishness and greed. He does not justify the strike of the miner either, saying “it is not true that the right to strike is greater than the duty to work.”[21]
Sheldon was not socialist in political sense. Rather he is accused of being a socialist. When Sheldon was suggested to be a running mate of Presidential candidate of the Socialist party, his answer was one word, “No!” However, Sheldon used the term with a different definition. In New York Times, Sheldon defines Christian Socialist as “one who applied the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount to every life.”[22]Sheldon did not advocate any other social or political alteration of the capitalistic system. Rather he believed in “an enlightened and Christianized capitalism.”[23]Instead, Sheldon insists the logic of “right use” of property. Sheldon deduces that it is not sinful for wealth to be concentrated in the hands of a few if that wealth is put into “right use.”[24]The following Hopkins’ comment is right: Sheldon’s writing was “a plea for a socialized Christianity, not for a Christian socialism—a distinction worthy of note.”[25]
Sheldon believed when personal faith and social concern combined with meaningful actions would solve the tensions afforded by administrative discretion. Sheldon insists that this is the mission of every local church with the following slogan: “every church should be working on one local problem, at least, and what we need is doing! doing! doing!”[26] He declared that the church has “a definiteresponsibility for social reform,”to apply Jesus’ teaching “to government and the life of humanity as a social organism.”[27]As Thomas Cox well observes, Sheldon’s approach represented “an efficient balance of Christian stewardship and Progressive reform.”[28]
A Heir of the Nineteenth Century Evangelicalism
Sheldon believed and advocated major tenants of the Social Gospel message. At the same time, Sheldon emphasized the importance of individual piety, and portrayed the contemporary evangelical, holiness, revivalistic environments in his novels. His readers have been stimulated by these elements. This model of religion, “the holiness of individual and society,” can be found in the nineteenth century evangelicalism, and it is the heart of Wesley’s (Wesleyan) thoughts in the plain (less theological) language. As Jean Miller Schmidt states, “early social gospelers were evangelicals and they attempted in various ways to reconcile personal religion and social reform.”[29] The evangelical rhetoric, values, and morals permeated public discourses in the nineteenth century. This is also clearly represented in most Social Gospelers, especially in Walter Rauschenbusch, as many scholars agreed. (Sheldon was more conservative than Rauschenbush.)
Timothy Smith, Donald Dayton, Noris Magnuson, Ronald White, and Howard Hopkins argue for the evangelical origins of the American Social Gospel movement. According to them, the Social Gospel movement had been more influenced from the earlier pre-Civil War revivalism, with its radical social vision, rather than from the new liberal theological ideas or other social theories. According to Timothy Smith, perfectionism and evangelical revivalism become "socially volatile" when combined with a doctrine of "Christ's imminent conquest of the earth" with the Post-millennialism merged without a break into what became the Social Gospel.[30]White and Hopkins also observe, "… centered in the experience of the new birth in Christ, nourished by the recurring fires of revivalism, evangelical faith and piety were religious experiences for many who would later be affiliated with the social gospel."[31] The humanitarian social reform flowed earlier from Finney's revivals and Oberlin perfectionism. This religious tendency could influenceSheldon’s family, because he was born in Wellsville, New York, and had grown up moving around many areas of upstate New York and Massachusetts. These places were the principle settings of Finney's revivals. White and Hopkins include Sheldon’s name along with William Booth in their list of evangelical social gospelers.[32]
In his book, Salvation in the Slum, Norris Magnuson highlights Sheldon in his activities in“evangelical social magazine,”Christian Herald. Magnuson carefully examines the gospel welfare of the Holiness organizations such as the Salvation Army, the Volunteers of America, Christian and Missionary Alliance, and Christian Herald, in this book.[33]
Sheldon's Christology had not developed along with a soteriological basis. In His Steps has no emphasis of Jesus Christ as "Justifier" for our sins, or "Savior" from the condemnation of the sin. According to James Smylie, Sheldon’sChrist is “the Sanctifier,” through whose work the Christian may grow more and more in righteousness.[34]In his late years, Sheldon mentioned the name of John Wesley in the list of people whom he wanted to see in heaven.[35]In many characteristics, Sheldon’s spirituality and ethics can be considered to be rooted in the Wesleyan and Holiness movement during the nineteenth century. Holiness revival movements had shaken not only the Christian personal life but also the substance of the churches and society. Both individual and social perfectionism are clearly shown in Sheldon’s thoughts.
The Holiness Revivalism in Sheldon
Generally people regard the Social Gospel as liberal movement and the Holiness movement as conservative (in some senses a pre-fundamentalist) phenomenon. A historian of the Church of Nazarene, Rodney Reed wrote his dissertation on the unity of personal and social ethics in the Holiness movement between 1880 and 1910, of which period is well known as the “progressive era,” the golden age of the Social Gospel movement. Reed displays the themes of social reforms and personal moral code among the Holiness circle:
The Holiness movements are commonly depicted as having two distinct and separable ethical emphases. The first is a progressive, sometime radical, social ethic which placed holiness advocates in the forefront of such movements as the abolition of slavery, women’s rights, temperance, child welfare, and the care of the poor, the sick, and the imprisoned. The second is a rigorous personal ethic which condemned participation in many of the popular amusements and personal habits of the day such as the theater, the circus, card-playing, pool-shooting, dancing, tobacco, the wearing of jewelry and the like.[36]
If one summarizes Sheldon’s personal and social ethics, the above description can be directly quoted without revision. Sheldon’s social ethics was deeply rooted in philanthropy to the weak and the marginalized. His personal moral taboo restricts many popular entertainments which disturbs “simple” pious life, and did not prove any kind of extra luxury articles and activities for the economical reason as well as the moral standard. He argues that the use of the extra-luxury things is “disobeying the economic law of the use of God’s wealth.”[37]
Sheldon deepicted Jesusas the definite model of Christians conducts, describing Jesus as “the most religious Person.”[38] The emphasis of the humanity of Jesus in his earthly life is the core of Chrsitocentricism of the social gospel and the contemporary classical liberalism. For Sheldon, following in Jesus' steps means not just living with a specific moral ideal of what we might become. He emphasized Jesus as the center of not only Christian behavior but also of Christian worship. The traditional picture of Jesus is clearly represented in his rewriting of the gospel story, The Life of Jesus. Sheldon did not present any radical picture of Jesus in this book, faithfully, almost literally, adopting the narratives in the four gospels.[39]