Legacies of Christian Racism in America

Protestant clergyman Josiah Strong

Josiah Strong, from Our Country (1885)

http://www-personal.umd.umich.edu/~ppennock/doc-JStrong.htm

A century and a half ago no writer did more to popularize the idea of Anglo-Saxon supremacy than the Protestant clergyman Josiah Strong. His book, Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis, was written for a limited purpose: to promote missionary activity by Protestant churches. But it argued for foreign missions with ideas that captured a much wider audience than the limited one Strong had in mind. The book quickly sold almost 200,000 copies, and became something of a bible for those who were ready to be convinced that it was the destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race to dominate - even to eliminate - the savage races of the world.

"It seems to me that God, with infinite wisdom and skill, is training the Anglo-Saxon race for an hour sure to come in the world's future. Heretofore there has always been in the history of the world a comparatively unoccupied land westward, into which the crowded countries of the East have poured their surplus populations. But the widening waves of migration, which millenniums ago rolled east and west from the valley of the Euphrates, meet to-day on our Pacific coast. There are no more new worlds. The unoccupied arable lands of the earth are limited, and will soon be taken. The time is coming when the pressure of population on the means of subsistence will be felt here as it is now felt in Europe and Asia. Then will the world enter upon a new stage of its history - the final competition of races, for which the Anglo-Saxon is being schooled. Long before the thousand millions are here, the mighty centrifugal tendency, inherent in this stock and strengthened in the United States, will assert itself. Then this race of unequaled energy, with all the majesty of numbers and the might of wealth behind it - the representative, let us hope, of the largest liberty, the purest Christianity, the highest civilization-having developed peculiarly aggressive traits calculated to impress its institutions upon mankind, will spread itself over the earth. If I read not amiss, this powerful race will move down upon Mexico, down upon Central and South America, out upon the islands of the sea, over upon Africa and beyond. And can any one doubt that the result of this competition of races will be the "survival of the fittest?" - Josiah Strong

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Legacies of

Christian Racism in America

by R.E. Slater

From time to time, as I come across Christian racism of the past or present, I will place an article or two of both the good and the bad of that individual, institution, organization, church, denomination, or movement's mixed beliefs and attitudes.

In this first article, for all the wonderful Christian zeal Josiah Strong had for Jesus he also displayed the belief that whiteness is superior to non-whiteness. Josiah wished to missionize the non-white to improve their social and economic position not for the good of races but for the considerable good of America.

The racism we see present today was the same racism on display 160 years ago. If we went further back before the Civil War to the Colonial days of America we would find the same thing between upper white classes towards poorer white classes. The church during the early days of American colonialism had a chance to treat one-and-all with the same dignity and respect as the other. But in Europe this wasn't happening and it wouldn't happen in America either in it's "new lands of freedom" where John Winthrope spoke enthusiastically of America being a light in darkness or as a "City on a Hill".

It is why today, in the post-racist Trump era, the declining evangelical church continues to woo white supremacists and supremacist attitudes into their church and school structures preferring the alabaster world of the "white-Jesus" while exhibiting a Josiah Strong-like attitude of granting uplift - but not equality - to women, non-whites, trans- people, and so forth. Even as recently as last week Fox News mentioned that the only Afghans they wished to airlift out were Christian Afghanies and none other.

The lesson learned here is that to speak out against systematic racism will be to speak out against white America and any white Christian institutions unwilling to re-educate their congregations and school districts away from exhibited racism and racist attitudes these Christian organizations are condoning and overlooking (the religious right's strident 2021 arguments against Critical Race Theory comes to mind).

Racism won't end until the Christian church and American democratic society decides to end it. Until then we live with its unhealthy outcomes across many of America's social structures where we must continue to decrying it's harmfulness while attempting to personally rectify what others won't wherever we are.

Peace,

R.E. Slater

September 2, 2021

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Josiah Strong

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Josiah Strong, from Book News, 1893

Josiah Strong (April 14, 1847 – June 26, 1916) was an American Protestant clergyman, organizer, editor and author. He was a leader of the Social Gospel movement, calling for social justice and combating social evils. He supported missionary work so that all races could be improved and uplifted and thereby brought to Christ. He is controversial, however, due to his beliefs about race and methods of converting people to Christianity. In his 1885 book Our Country, Strong argued that Anglo-Saxons are a superior race who must "Christianize and civilize" the "savage" races, which he argued would be good for the American economy and the "lesser races".^[1]

Overview

Josiah Strong was one of the founders of the Social Gospel movement that sought to apply Protestant religious principles to solve the social ills brought on by industrialization, urbanization and immigration. He served as General Secretary (1886–1898) of the Evangelical Alliance for the United States, a coalition of Protestant missionary groups. After being forced out he set up his own group, the League for Social Service (1898–1916), and edited its magazine The Gospel of the Kingdom. The League was later expanded to become the American Institute of Social Service, based on the concept of the Musée social.^[2][3]

Strong, like most other leaders of the Social Gospel movement, added strong evangelical roots, including a belief in sin and redemption. Strong, like Walter Rauschenbusch and George D. Herron had an intense conversion experience and believed that regeneration was necessary to bring social justice by combating social sin. Though they were often critical of evangelicalism, they thought of their mission as an expansion of it. Their primitivist desire for noninstitutional Christianity was influenced by liberal, postmillennial idealism, and their attitudes influenced neo-orthodox theologian Reinhold Niebuhr.^[4]

His best-known and most influential work was Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis (1885), intended to promote domestic missionary activity in the American West. When the work appeared, Protestants had long been accustomed to meeting the sorts of perils that Strong saw threatening the country's survival, Christianization, and world greatness. His work flowed from a tradition habituated to perceive threats to "our country". It was a tradition that helped ensure the end of slavery in defense of the Union during the Civil War, while also predisposing many northern Protestants to look past, if not entirely forget, the ex-slaves following the war.^[5] Historians also suggest it may have encouraged support for imperialistic United States policy among American Protestants. He pleaded as well for more missionary work in the nation's cities, and for reconciliation to end racial conflict. He was one of the first to warn that Protestants (most of whom lived in rural areas or small towns) were ignoring the problems of the cities and the working classes^[6]

Strong believed that all races could be improved and uplifted and thereby brought to Christ. In the "Possible Future" portion of Our Country, Strong focused on the "Anglo-Saxon race"—that is the English language speakers. He said in 1890: "In 1700 this race numbered less than 6,000,000 souls. In 1800, Anglo-Saxons (I use the term somewhat broadly to include all English-speaking peoples) had increased to about 20,500,000, and now, in 1890, they number more than 120,000,000."^[7]) had a responsibility to "civilize and Christianize" the world, sharing their technology and knowledge of Christianity. The "Crisis" portion of the text described the seven "perils" facing the nation: Catholicism, Mormonism, Socialism, Intemperance, Wealth, Urbanization, and Immigration. Conservative Protestants, by contrast, argued that missionaries should spend their time preaching the Gospel; they allowed for charitable activity, but argued that it did not actually save souls.

In 1891 a revised edition was issued based on the census of 1890. The large increase in immigration during this period led him to conclude that the perils he outlined in the first edition had only grown.^[6]

The term Anglo-Saxon before 1900 was often used as a synonym for people of English descent throughout the world.^[8] Strong said in 1890: "In 1700 this race numbered less than 6,000,000 souls. In 1800, Anglo-Saxons (I use the term somewhat broadly to include all English-speaking peoples) had increased to about 20,500,000, and now, in 1890, they number more than 120,000,000".^[7] In 1893 Strong suggested, "This race is destined to dispossess many weaker ones, assimilated others, and mold of the remainder until ... it has Anglo-Saxonized mankind."^[9]

Strong argued that, "The Anglo-Saxon is the representative of two great ideas, which are closely related. One of them is that of civil liberty. Nearly all of the civil liberty of the world is enjoyed by Anglo-Saxons: the English, the British colonists, and the people of the United States. ... The other great idea of which the Anglo-Saxon is the exponent is that of a pure spiritual Christianity." He went on, "It follows, then, that the Anglo-Saxon, as the great representative of these two ideas, the depositary of these two greatest blessings, sustains peculiar relations to the world's future, is divinely commissioned to be, in a peculiar sense, his brother's keeper."^[10]

Notes

1. ^ Josiah Strong, Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis (New York: The American Home Missionary Society, 1885
2. ^ Information Beyond Borders: International Cultural and Intellectual Exchange in the Belle Époque
3. ^ The Encyclopedia Americana
4. ^ Matthew Bowman, "Sin, Spirituality, and Primitivism: The Theologies of the American Social Gospel, 1885-1917," Religion and American Culture, Winter 2007, Vol. 17#1 pp 95-126
5. ^ Grant R. Brodrecht, "Our Country: Northern Evangelicals and the Union during the Civil War and Reconstruction" (PhD diss., University of Notre Dame, 2008), p.8.
6. ^ Jump up to:^a b Muller (1959)
7. ^ Jump up to:^a b Josiah Strong, Our Country (1890) p. 208
8. ^ Irving Lewis Allen, "WASP—From Sociological Concept to Epithet," Ethnicity, 1975 154+
9. ^ Strong, New Era (1893) page 80
10. ^ Josiah Strong, Our Country (1890) pp. 208–210

Further reading

Works by Strong

• Josiah Strong on Anglo-Saxon Predominance, 1891, excerpt

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Josiah Strong

• Josiah Strong (1893). The New Era or The Coming Kingdom. The Baker & Taylor co. Josiah strong. complete text from Books.Google.com
• Address of Rev. Dr. Josiah Strong: The American missionary. Dec 1895 Volume 49, Issue 12 pp. 423-424
• Josiah Strong (1898), The Twentieth Century City, New York: Baker and Taylor
• Josiah Strong, Expansion Under the New World-Conditions. New York: Baker & Taylor, 1900.
• Josiah Strong, Religious Movements for Social Betterment. New York: Baker & Taylor, 1900.
• Josiah Strong, The Times and Young Men. New York: Baker & Taylor, 1901.
• Josiah Strong, The Next Great Awakening. New York: Baker & Taylor, 1902.
• Josiah Strong, The Challenge of the City. New York: Baker & Taylor, 1907.
• Josiah Strong, My Religion in Everyday Life. New York: Baker & Taylor, 1910.
• Josiah Strong, Our World: The New World Life. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1913-14.
• Josiah Strong, Our World: The New World-Religion. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1915.
• Our Country text^{[dead link]}
• Excerpt from Our Country
• Excerpt from Our Country
• Excerpt from Our Country

Secondary scholarly sources

• Berge, William H. "Voices for Imperialism: Josiah Strong and the Protestant Clergy," Border States: Journal of the Kentucky-Tennessee American Studies Association, No. 1 (1973) online
• Bowman, Matthew. "Sin, Spirituality, and Primitivism: The Theologies of the American Social Gospel, 1885-1917," Religion and American Culture, Winter 2007, Vol. 17#1 pp 95–126
• Deichmann, Wendy. "Women and Social Betterment in the Social Gospel Work of Josiah Strong," in Wendy J. Deichmann and Carolyn DeSwarte Gifford, eds., Gender and the Social Gospel (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003).
• Deichmann, Wendy. "Forging an Ideology for American Missions: Josiah Strong and Manifest Destiny," in Wilbert R. Shenk,ed., North American Foreign Mission, 1810-1914: Theology, Theory, and Policy (Wm B. Eerdmans Co. & Curzon Press, 2004).
• Deichmann, Wendy. "Manifest Destiny, the Social Gospel and the Coming Kingdom: Josiah Strong's Program of Global Reform, 1885-1916," chap. 5 in Perspectives on the Social Gospel: Papers from the Inaugural Social Gospel Conference at Colgate Rochester Divinity School, "Texts and Studies in the Social Gospel" series, Edwin Mellen Press (Lewiston, NY: 1992).
• Herbst, Jurgen. "Introduction," in Josiah Strong Our Country (Belknap Press 1963 edition)
• Luker, Ralph E. The Social Gospel in Black and White: American Racial Reform, 1885-1912 (1998).
• Muller, Dorothea R. "Josiah Strong and American Nationalism: A Reevaluation," The Journal of American History 53 (Dec. 1966), 487-503, online at JSTOR at most academic libraries.
• Muller, Dorothea R. "The Social Philosophy of Josiah Strong: Social Christianity and American Progressivism," Church History 1959 v 28 #2 pp. 183–201] online at JSTOR