One of my mentors in graduate school was also an assisting priest at the Episcopal church my wife and I attended. I remember thinking the topic of the book she had published in 1997 based on her dissertation was incredibly dated. The topic was ecumenical Protestant internationalism between the world wars, and it featured prominently in one of the undergraduate intro courses she taught: American Religious History since 1865. I was among the teaching assistants for this course several times, and I was baffled by the fact that she devoted an entire lecture to the political activities of twentieth-century mainline Protestants. Didn't she know that the institutional work of these elitist and bureaucratic men was no longer of interest to historians of American religion? Didn't she know that so many of the young people in her church were embarrassed by these men and the monolithic church culture they had created?
Those of us who identify with inclusive orthodoxy often miss the virtues of the twentieth-century Protestant ecumenical movement as we reckon with life in its long shadow. There is certainly much to criticize about the mainline Protestant establishment then and now. The mainline denominations and the parachurch organizations that united them in the ecumenical movement reflected the flaws of elite American culture in the 1930s through 1960s: bloated bureaucracy, rigidly top-down authority structures, racism, sexism, classism, ageism, elitism, and more. But most of us do not need to be convinced that Protestant ecumenical institutions had flaws. Instead I want to highlight the ways we can learn from the successes and downfall of the mid-twentieth-century ecumenical movement. There is actually much to admire about the Protestant ecumenical movement, and our churches would do well to learn from that movement as we navigate the current political moment.
For this essay, I will draw on the historical insights of two of the relatively few scholarly books on Protestant ecumenism from the past twenty years (neither of which was written by mainline Protestants). The first is Jill K. Gill's Embattled Ecumenism: The National Council of Churches, the Vietnam War, and the Trials of the Protestant Left(2011). The second is more recent, Gene Zubovich's Before the Religious Right: Liberal Protestants, Human Rights, and the Polarization of the United States (2022). Gill is correct to note that many people do not have a good sense of what the ecumenical movement actually entailed. It was not simply pulpit-swapping or luncheons between Lutherans and Methodists to discuss what they have in common. Gill explains that ecumenism draws on an ancient vision "about the inherent unity and interdependence" of Christians, but beyond that it argues for "community over self-interest, peaceful discussion over violence, collaboration over competition, universalism over exclusivity, the prophetic role of the church to 'speak truth to power' over affirming an oppressive status quo, benevolence over individual acquisition, preaching social justice over mere personal piety, and the separation of church and state."[1] In practice, this meant that, for organizations like the Federal Council of Churches (and later the National Council of Churches), the favored method of navigating conflict was listening to opposing viewpoints and attempting to build consensus among Christians through respectful discussion and moral persuasion. Ecumenical leaders increasingly came under fire for this approach in the 1960s as many younger activists demanded bold action rather than consensus building. And yet, ecumenical leaders often did take actions that were seen as too bold by many Americans.
The Federal Council of Churches first publicly denounced segregation in 1946, remarkably early for an organization that represented the most respectable majority-white denominations in the United States. The Council's statement renounced segregation as "a violation of the Gospel of love and human brotherhood."[2] For years prior, the Council had attempted to fight "race prejudice" through education and personal moral persuasion, but a new emphasis on combating structural racism (they called it "the fundamental pattern of segregation") via political solutions accompanied the 1946 pronouncement. A significant portion of the internal organizational and mobilization work to get to 1946 was done by a man active in Council leadership named George E. Haynes, the first African American to receive a PhD from Columbia University. Haynes worked alongside people such as Benjamin Mays, the president of Morehouse College, and Liston Pope, a young Yale professor and white Southerner who used his social positioning to his advantage in discussions of racism and segregation in predominantly white spaces. In true ecumenical fashion, these men "tended to prefer negotiation, behind-the-scenes pressure, and bridge building over confrontation." Nevertheless, Zubovich notes, "they would occasionally publicly embarrass their white colleagues for their prejudices."[3] Gill credits the Black-led public action of the 1960s civil rights movement with inspiring "perhaps the Council's greatest contribution toward watershed legislative victories: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965." Though an increasing number of ecumenical Protestants did get out on the streets to march with civil rights leaders at this time, much of the work was more behind the scenes.[4] The pressure campaign on Midwestern senators and members of Congress orchestrated by prominent Black activist and faithful Methodist Anna Hedgeman was typical. At the center of her efforts was a massive letter-writing campaign she organized among predominantly white churches in her region.[5]
Another twentieth-century ecumenical Protestant effort is both particularly relevant to our current moment and especially illustrative of the movement's behind-the-scenes activism. Mainline Protestants who had been active in Asian missions during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries also loudly opposed the Immigration Act of 1924, the infamous legislation that placed racist quotas on Asian immigration to the United States. Galen Fisher, a former mainline missionary to Japan, worked doggedly to tamp down the anti-Japanese hysteria that had begun to spike on the West Coast in the lead-up to World War II. The nature of his strategic efforts is captured in advice he sent to newly ordained Japanese American Episcopal priest John M. Yamazaki on his efforts to launch a committee in Southern California to oppose anti-Japanese activism. Fisher advised, "Let some one or more well-known white Americans (not Japanese-Americans) take the initiative. . . . Secure some prominent man to be chairman, preferably not one who is known simply as a Japanophile, [and] ask Governor Olson to be Hon. Chairman." Fisher's advice, though certainly controversial to activists now, was drawing on the ecumenical playbook of deploying the mainline's cultural capital to advance controversial causes. When Japanese internment did begin in spring 1942, ecumenical activists faced a dilemma: should they loudly and publicly denounce and oppose internment, or would it be more effective to use their considerable political connections behind the scenes? Is it acceptable to risk any degree of complicity with this totalitarian federal action in exchange for quiet effectiveness? Many activists from historic peace churches chose more public activism, while most mainline activists chose to work behind the scenes. One example of the latter strategy is the lobbying effort by ecumenical Protestants to implement "review boards" to distinguish the "loyal" from the "disloyal" Japanese Americans, so that the "loyal" ones could be released from internment as soon as possible. The grave moral compromise of at least pretending to believe that internment might be justified for some bad apples led to the release of thousands of interned Japanese Americans in 1943 and 1944 if they could be sponsored by an outside group. Unsurprisingly, the sponsoring groups, which also worked to find employment and housing for the formerly interned, were often congregations and organizations involved in the ecumenical movement.[6]
One of Zubovich's central claims is that the Protestant mainline was a key player in creating and disseminating the modern concept of human rights, a paradigm that really only began to take shape during and after World War II. Protestant ecumenism's approach to human rights had its roots in their efforts to address racism and segregation combined with aspirations to facilitate the creation of a global order united under a shared moral code in the wake of the devastation of the world wars. During the period during and after World War II, ecumenical leaders were at the forefront of drawing the link between racism and Jim Crow at home and imperialism and colonialism abroad. This insight was facilitated by ecumenical Protestantism's connections to Christians around the globe through interchurch as well as missionary contacts. Antiracism and anticolonialism were not, in fact, at the center of all early conceptions of human rights in the years after World War II. For example, Zubovich reports that the American Anthropological Association announced in 1947 that "human rights were antithetical to decolonization."[7] Organizations like the Federal Council played a pivotal role in moving considerations of racism and colonialism into the consensus on what human rights entail. According to Zubovich, one reason ecumenical Protestants were so influential in the discussion around human rights is that they "justified the New Deal, the UN, and the Black freedom struggle theologically, thereby endowing political liberalism with the cultural capital of Christianity."[8]
The ways the ecumenical Protestant establishment maneuvered politically both fueled its success and facilitated its downfall. Organizations like the Federal Council were more political than partisan, incorporating within their leadership both lifelong Republicans and lifelong Democrats.[9] The Council's effort to avoid getting drawn into a tightly circumscribed partisan position did not mean they were unwilling to speak boldly about what they thought were the political implications of the gospel. In fact, this boldness contributed to their downfall. The willingness of ecumenical leaders to take stands on issues like segregation and the Vietnam War that outpaced the political movement of most Americans meant that an opening was left for a countermovement to form within mainline churches. The opponents of ecumenical leaders' prophetic witness often exploited the gap between the political views of the clergy and the laity by positioning themselves as speaking for the "laymen." The leaders of these opposition movements were "the wealthiest congregants of ecumenical churches," often corporate executives or "business moguls." These conservative voices often advanced an argument that the church should stick to the care of souls and stay out of politics. One of their primary ways of asserting influence was controlling the purse strings of churches, denominations, and ecumenical institutions.[10]
On the other hand, many young activists coming of age in the 1960s and 1970s, though steeped in the values of ecumenical Protestantism, did not find the organizations of the Protestant establishment appealing for all of the reasons familiar to us. Bridge building and moral persuasion through respectful conversation with the ruling classes were not popular among young activists at the time for obvious and often legitimate reasons. On top of that, Gill wonders whether there was enough emphasis in Protestant ecumenical churches on the theological reasoning and "felt spiritual meaning" behind their political positions and their mode of politics. "To those outside of church hierarchies, the discourse often sounded as if liberal religion had become subservient to political ends, even if this was not necessarily the case," suggests Gill.[11]
The establishment church of the mid-twentieth century is not merely an embarrassment that overshadows the work of our churches today. For all of its flaws, the Protestant mainline at its height was incredibly successful in its political activism and cultural influence on behalf of the gospel. Perhaps we can learn from the former establishment's successes and failures. We continue to face vigorous critique from the right and the left, critique that often relies on frameworks reminiscent of those employed by the critics ecumenism faced in the last century. Though our material and social capital has dwindled considerably from the high tide of mainline influence, it is far from depleted. Our church institutions also maintain quite a few of the same moral and organizational flaws that are so clear looking back at the twentieth-century mainline. The religious landscape in the United States is indeed changing, and some old ways need to continue to bend and break. But our churches are of the type that weigh and learn from history and tradition. Let's not write the ecumenical movement out of the history that can be of use.
[1] Gill, 5-6.
[2] Zubovich, 120, 145.
[3] Zubovich, 134.
[4] Gill, 65.
[5] Zubovich, 244-245.
[6] Zubovich, 121-128.
[7] Zubovich, 150.
[8] Zubovich, 10.
[9] Zubovich, 11.
[10] Zubovich, 275.
[11] Gill, 422.
