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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 June 2018
The Christian church, including all its various branches, has been consistently susceptible to the forces that form or change cultures. Scholars claim that this adaptability has been extremely important in the rise and spread of the religion. In the American environment, Protestants formed voluntary associations that attracted people individually and by family groups. This environment actually shaped “denominations” even during the colonial period. One such denomination was the Presbyterians, who pioneered in the formation of a communion that existed as neither a “state church” nor a “dissenting” church body. As the United States experienced industrialization and growing complexity in economic and cultural patterns, the Protestant denominations were affected by those same forces. Thus, denominations naturally became what came to be termed “non-profit corporations,” subject to the limitations and problems of such organizations but also the beneficiaries of that system as well.
* A version of this artide will appear in The Organizational Revolution: Presbyterians and American Denominationalism, ed. Milton J. Coalter, John M. Mulder, and Louis B. Weeks (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991). This book is the fifth volume in a seven volume series entitled The Presbyterian Presence: The Twentieth Century Experience.
I am deeply indebted to the works provided by a number of scholars, induding Alan Trachtenberg, Richard Reifsnyder, Ben Primer, Alfred Chandler, and Robert Wiebe. Many others contributed to my thinking and to the text itself, espedally John Mulder, Milton J. Coalter, and Joel Alvis. Provisions by the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and the Lilly Endowment, Inc., for my sabbatical in the Fall of 1986 enabled this study to take place.
1. Griffin, Clifford S., Their Brothers’ Keepers: Moral Stewardship in the United States, 1800-1865 (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1960), espedally 23–43.Google Scholar
2. Fred J. Hood, “Presbyterianism and the New American Nation, 1783-1826,” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1968); re-offered as Reformed America: The Middle and Southern States, 1783-1837 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1980).
3. The text had been drafted when Marty, Martin, Modern American Religion, Volume I: The Irony of It All, 1893-1919 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1986)Google Scholar came to my attention. However, this ironic process seems to Supplement rather than repeat events and movements chronided in Marty's work.
4. Trinterud, Leonard, The Forming of an American Tradition: A Re-examination of Colonial Presbyterianism (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1949);Google Scholar McNeill, John T., The History and Character of Calvinism (New York: Oxford Press, 1960).Google Scholar
5. Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., Book of Order (Philadelphia: Thomas Bradford, 1789), 138,139.
6. Louis Weeks, “The Presbyterian Church, Inc.” and “Social Witness, Sodal Service, and Sodal Policy: Charles Stelzle and the Presbyterians” (Typescripts, Ernest White Library, Louisville Presbyterian Seminary).
7. Weber, Max, Theory of Social and Economic Organization, trans. Parsons, Talcott (New York: Oxford Press, 1947)Google Scholar, espedally II. 2. “Legal Authority with a Bureaucratic Administrative Staff.”
8. Chandler, Alfred D., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977).Google Scholar See also his “Entrepreneurial Opportunity in Nineteenth Century America,” in Explorations in Entrepreneurial History (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1962).
9. Wiebe, Robert, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967), 44–75.Google Scholar
10. Ibid., 133-163. Wiebe focuses on the change in Christian reliance upon the doctrine of “providence” as one indication; see 133-134.
11. Chandler, The Visible Hand, 130-33,377-418,490-97.
12. Trachtenberg, Alan, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982), 4.Google Scholar
13. Chandler, The Visible Hand, 9-10.
14. Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America, 6-7. See also Nachmias, David and Rosenbloom, David H., Bureaucratic Government, USA (New York: St. Martin's, 1980), Chapter 9.Google Scholar
15. Interestingly, the Sports events took place particularly on Sundays, and Presbyterian General Assemblies decried Sabbath violations until well into the 192(Ts.
16. Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America, 70-100.
17. Ibid. See also George de Marc, with Summerfield, Joanne, Corporate Lives (New York: Van Nostrand, Reinhold, 1982).Google Scholar
18. Furguson, Kathy, The Feminist Gase Against Bureaucracy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984).Google Scholar
19. In this period particularly, the term “blue-stocking” was used to describe Presbyterians in populär literature. Louis Weeks, “Presbyterian Culture: Views From the Edge” (Typescript, Ernest White Library, Louisvüle Presbyterian Seminary) describes this “elitism.”
20. Stelzle, Charles, The Church and Labor (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1907), 20–21.Google Scholar
21. Chandler, The Visible Hand, passim.
22. Forbes, Bruce David, “William Henry Roberts: Resistance to Change and Bureaucratic Adaptation,” Journal of Presbyterian History 54 (1976): 405-21.Google Scholar The penchant for stated clerks to share legal expertise certainly continued with more recent, annually re-edited publications of Presbyterian Law for Local Sessions and Presbyterian Law for Presbyteries and Synods by both Eugene Carson Blake and William P. Thompson.
23. In the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., for example, Minutes of the 1880 Assembly consisted of a total of 496 pages. Those of the General Assembly of 1915 ran to more than 1052. Reports of the permanent committees multiplied three times and more in size—from 508 pages in 1880 to 1790 pages in 1915. Beyond the mere bulk, the prose became more convoluted, more laced with references to administrators, and more detailed regarding finances. See also Primer, Ben, Protestants and American Business Methods (Ann Arbor, Mich.: U.M.I. Research Press, 1979).Google Scholar Primer concerned himself with The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the Episcopalians, the Methodists, and the Southern Baptist Convention during the first decades of the twentieth Century.
24. Again, trends already perceptible increased in intensity.
25. Coleman, James S., Power and the Structure of Society (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974).Google Scholar
26. Minutes, General Assembly, Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., 1879, 621-23.
27. Richard Reifsnyder, “The Reorganizational Impulse in American Protestantism: The Presbyterian Church (USA) as a Case Study (1788-1983)” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton Theological Seminary, 1984), 270-277.
28. See McGarrah, Albert (Lecturer on Church Efficiency in McCormick Theological Seminary), A Modern Church Program: A Study in Efficiency (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1915);Google Scholar idem., Modern Church Finance (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1916); and Cope, Henry F., Efficiency in the Sunday School (New York: Dutton, n.d.).Google Scholar
29. Annual Report, bound as Part II of Minutes, General Assembly, Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., 1871,6.
30. See Reifsnyder, ‘The Reorganizational Impulse.” These other Presbyterian bodies also began the era with decidedly less involvement in the mainstream of American Christianity than did the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.
31. In fact, the study of congregations generally has trailed the study of most other aspects and “levels” of Presbyterianism. Even such incisive works as Hopewell, James, Congregation, ed. Wheeler, Barbara (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987)Google Scholar pay little attention to the prevalent bureaucratization as affecting life together in congregations.
32. Bellah, Robert and others, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 176-79,Google Scholar makes the point more broadly. A second language of moral responsibility has also been lost, as well as the loss of communal expectations of the “town fathers,” according to that study.
33. Lynn, Robert W. and Wright, Elliott, The Big Little School, 2d ed. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1980), 107 Google Scholar, cites the perspective of John Wanamaker as an example of efficiency in Sunday School and retail sales alike. See also The Development ofthe Sunday Schools, 1780-1905 (Boston: Executive Committee of the International Sunday School Association, 1905) for a taxonomy of programs. See also Wallace M. Aiston, “A History of Young People's Work in the Presbyterian Church, (1861-1938)” (Th.D. diss., Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, 1943). By 1910, the pressure for using the same scripture lessons in all age groups had become significant.
34. Such institutions as the Y.M.C.A. and the Y.W.C.A. later spun off from their earlier, evangelical Christian orientation. See Roof, Wade Clark and McKinney, William, American Mainline Religion (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1987), 40–71,Google Scholar for discussion of the more recent breakdown of ascriptive loyalties and the process of extravasation.
35. Moody was the one who made of revivalism “big business” according to McLoughlin, William G., Modern Revivalism: Charles G. Finney to Billy Graham (New York: Ronald Press, 1959), 166–216.Google Scholar Moody established organizational criteria to determine selection of locations for his revival campaigns, among them sound financial support, the completion of the tabernade, the Suspension of “competing activities,” and a promise that all mainline Protestant denominations in the area would be cooperative. See Findlay, James F., Dwight L. Moody, American Evangelist, 1837-1899 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 195-97.Google Scholar
36. I followed the Christian Observer, at the time a moderate, independent news and feature weekly, after a Louisville Revival and read of continuing revivals and “Special meetings” lasting into a second year.
37. See Davison, Archibald, Protestant Church Music in America (Boston: E.C. Schirmer, 1933)Google Scholar for a study of attitudes and conditions in the early part of the Century. Ellinwood, Leonard, The History of American Church Music (New York: Morehouse-Gorham, 1950)Google Scholar asserts that in some churches quartets had become populär much earlier in the Century.
38. The minutes of various congregations I have studied show great attention to choir directors, musicians’ requests, and budget considerations regarding the organ.
39. Minutes, General Assembly, Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., 1902, 120.
40. This seems the time period when congregations that could afford 50% for benevolence offerings became the paradigm for generosity.
41. Thompson, Robert E., A History ofthe Presbyterian Church in the United Sates (sie) (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1895), 230,231.Google Scholar He calls the section “Polypragmatic Pastors.”
42. Smith, Gary, “The Spirit of Capitalism Revisited: Calvinists in the Industrial Revolution,” Journal of Presbyterian History 59 (1981): 482-97.Google Scholar
43. Weber, Herman C., Statistics, Presbyterian Church, USA, 1826-1926 (n.p.: Board of Christian Education, 1927).Google Scholar The Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. grew from 578,671 in 1880 to 1,513,240 in 1915; the Presbyterian Church in the United States grew from 120,028 to 332,339 during the same period.
44. Indeed, produetion of the design chart for General Assembly organization required the Services of a Consulting firm and the work of at least fifteen committees together with numerous discussions and modifkations in the General Assembly Council.
45. Weber, Statistics, 142; Minutes, General Assembly, Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., 1870 and 1871.
46. Minutes, General Assembly, Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., 1919,182.
47. Weber, Siatistics, 51, 56. He related major growth to revival efforts, and he designated declines as resulting from wars and times of controversy. He also named the influenza epidemic of 1918 and 1919 as a major cause of membership dedine.
48. Stelzle, Charles, A Son of the Bowery (New York: George H. Doran, 1926),Google Scholar and Principles of Successful Church Advertizing (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1908). On Stelzle, see Nash, George H., “Charles Stelzle: Social Gospel Pioneer,” Journal of Presbyterian History 50 (1972): 206-28.Google Scholar
49. See Piper, John, “Robert E. Speer on Christianity and Race,” Journal of Presbyterian History 61 (1983): 227-47Google Scholar, and my “Francis J. Grimke: Racism, World War I, and the Christian Life,” Journal of Presbyterian History 51 (1973): 471-88.
50. Melton, Julius, Presbyterian Worship in America (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1967), 107–111.Google Scholar See also Kerr, Hugh T., “The 1906 Book of Common Worship: An Amusing Footnote,” Journal of Presbyterian History 58 (1980): 182-84,Google Scholar who quotes one minister's Speech opposing adoption: “We accept canned meat, canned milk, canned fruit, and canned vegetables, but we can't stand for canned prayers.”
Kerr also quotes the poem of one William Lampton in reply: “Its up to preachers everywhere, To drop the long and rambling prayer And try the best and latest brand Although the mossbacks called it ‘canned’”
51. Eugene Carson Blake, Stated Clerk of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., perhaps best illustrates the point, though pressures have existed on every one of the stated clerks. See Brackenridge, R. Douglas, Eugene Carson Blake: Prophet With Portfolio (New York: Seabury Press, 1977).Google Scholar
52. Minutes, General Assembly, Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., 1902, 10-26, for example, listed all Board of Home Missions locations in Alaska, the Synod of Indian Territory, and elsewhere. The list proved lengthy indeed. See also Nelson, William E., The Roots of American Bureaucracy, 1830-1900 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982)Google Scholar for a wider analysis of the same phenomenon.
53. In early decades, it may have been Men's and Women's Bible classes. More recently, Singles’ groups and Service bodies might function in a similar, semi-autonomous fashion. Of late, my attention has been called to several congregations that now designate one minister as the “Executive Pastor.”
54. Hutcheson, Richard, The Wheel Wthin A Wheel (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1978).Google Scholar